While all the search engines, including Google News, Bing News (previously known as MSN News), Baidu News etcetera are mostly catering news and contents from various news sources without any prejudice, Yahoo News is clearly playing the role of a diehard propaganda machine of the political Left. Reporters at Yahoo News also are accused of peddling fake news or biased news.
In October 2019, a former Yahoo engineer, Reyes Daniel Ruiz, pleaded guilty to federal charges of illegally accessing user accounts. Ruiz had hacked about 6,000 users’ accounts, including those of his friends, co-workers and many young women, seeking sexual images and videos.
But that was not the last or only case. According to sources, Yahoo has been regularly infiltrating into accounts of users – particularly right-wing activists and passing it to left-wing bloc, including media houses and even intelligence agencies.
The source said, in the United States, Yahoo and its sister project Yahoo News are clearly inclined towards the Democratic Party and socialists, while Yahoo News has become a major platform that publishes series of contents against the leaders and prominent activists of the Republican Party and former US President Donald Trump, while Yahoo News is playing vital role in defending Joe Biden and members of his family, including Hunter Biden.
Yahoo News is also notoriously against the publication of details of Hunter Biden’s laptop. That is why, one of the missions of Yahoo News has been to demonize organizations such as Project Veritas and Marco Polo, as these organizations – particularly Marco Polo have investigated the case of Hunter Biden’s crimes and corruption and been regularly publishing details on Hunter’s laptop.
In March 31, 2015, during the presidency of Barack Obama, the Washington Post in an article titled ‘How Yahoo News ruins journalism’ wrote: “…But the best essay is a tale about an emperor with no clothes. In “Purple Reign,” Baffler senior editor Chris Lehmann reports on his stint as managing editor of Yahoo News’s news blog — a “Beckett-like simulacrum of a journalism shop”.
Yahoo paid inclusion
In March 2004, Yahoo! launched a paid inclusion program whereby commercial websites were guaranteed listings on the Yahoo! search engine after payment. This scheme was lucrative but proved unpopular both with website marketers (who were reluctant to pay), and the public (who were unhappy about the paid-for listings being indistinguishable from other search results). As of October 2006, Paid Inclusion ceased to guarantee any commercial listing and only helped the paid inclusion customers, by crawling their site more often and by providing some statistics on the searches that led to the page and some additional smart links (provided by customers as feeds) below the actual URL.
But, Yahoo! has been criticized for funding spyware and adware—advertising from Yahoo!’s clients often appears on-screen in pop-ups generated from adware that a user may have installed on their computer without realizing it by accepting online offers to download software to fix computer clocks or improve computer security, add browser enhancements, etc. The frequency of advertising pop-ups for spyware, generated from a partnership with advertising distributor Walnut Ventures, who had a direct partnership with Direct Revenue, could be increased or decreased based on Yahoo!’s immediate revenue needs, according to some former employees in Yahoo!’s sales department.
According to information obtained from a credible source, Yahoo!, along with Google China, Microsoft, Cisco, AOL, Skype, Nortel and others, has cooperated with the Chinese Communist Party in implementing a system of internet censorship in mainland China.
In September 2005, Reporters Without Borders reported that in April 2005, Shi Tao, a journalist working for a Chinese newspaper, was sentenced to 10 years in prison by the Changsha Intermediate People’s Court of Hunan Province, China (First trial case no. 29), for “providing state secrets to foreign entities”. The “secrets” were a brief list of censorship orders he sent from a Yahoo! Mail account to the Asia Democracy Forum before the anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre.
The verdict as published by the Chinese government stated that Shi Tao had sent the email through an anonymous Yahoo! account, that Yahoo! Holdings (the Hong Kong subsidiary of Yahoo) told the Chinese government that the IP address used to send the email was registered by the Hunan newspaper that Shi Tao worked for, and that police went straight to his offices and picked him up.
In February 2006, Yahoo! General Counsel submitted a statement to the US Congress in which Yahoo! denied knowing the true nature of the case against Shi Tao. In April 2006, Yahoo! Holdings (Hong Kong) was investigated by Hong Kong’s Privacy Commissioner for Personal Data.
On June 2, 2006, the union representing journalists in the UK and Ireland (NUJ) called on its 40,000 members to boycott all Yahoo! Inc. products and services to protest the Internet company’s reported actions in China.
In July 2007, evidence surfaced detailing the warrant which the Chinese authorities sent to Yahoo! officials, highlighting “State Secrets” as the charge against Shi Tao. The warrant requests “Email account registration information for huoyan1989[at]yahoo.com.cn, all login times, corresponding IP addresses, and relevant email content from February 22, 2004, to present”. Analyst reports and human rights organizations have said that this evidence directly contradicts Yahoo!’s testimony before the U.S. Congress in February 2006.
Criticism of Yahoo! intensified in February 2006 when Reporters Without Borders released Chinese court documents stating that Yahoo! aided Chinese authorities in the case of dissident Li Zhi. In December 2003 Li Zhi was sentenced to 8 years imprisonment for “inciting subversion”.
Wang Xiaoning is a Chinese dissident from Shenyang who was arrested by authorities of the People’s Republic of China for publishing controversial material online.
In 2000 and 2001, Wang, who was an engineer by profession, posted electronic journals in a Yahoo! group calling for democratic reform and an end to single-party rule. He was arrested in September 2002 after Yahoo! assisted Chinese authorities by providing information. In September 2003, Wang was convicted of charges of “incitement to subvert state power” and sentenced to ten years in prison.
On April 18, 2007, Xiaoning’s wife Yu Ling sued Yahoo! under human rights laws in federal court in San Francisco, California, United States. Wang Xiaoning is named as a plaintiff in the Yahoo! suit, which was filed with help from the World Organization for Human Rights USA. “Yahoo! is guilty of ‘an act of corporate irresponsibility,’ said Morton Sklar, executive director of the group. “Yahoo! had reason to know that if they provided China with identification information that those individuals would be arrested”.
Yahoo!’s decision to assist Chinese government came as part of a policy of reconciling its services with the Chinese government’s policies. This came after China blocked Yahoo! services for a time. As reported in The Washington Post and many media sources:
The suit says that in 2001, Wang was using a Yahoo! e-mail account to post anonymous writings to an Internet mailing list. The suit alleges that Yahoo!, under pressure from the Chinese government, blocked that account. Wang set up a new account via Yahoo! and began sending material again; the suit alleges that Yahoo! gave the government information that allowed it to identify and arrest Wang in September 2002. The suit says prosecutors in the Chinese courts cited Yahoo!’s cooperation.
Human rights organizations groups are basing their case on a 217-year-old US law to punish corporations for human rights violations abroad, an effort the Bush administration has opposed:
In recent years, activists working with overseas plaintiffs have sued roughly two dozen businesses under the Alien Tort Claims Act, which the activists say grants jurisdiction to American courts over acts abroad that violate international norms. Written by the Founding Fathers in 1789 for a different purpose, the law was rarely invoked until the 1980s.
On August 28, 2007, the World Organization for Human Rights sued Yahoo! for allegedly passing information (email and IP address) with the Chinese government that caused the arrests of writers and dissidents.
The lawsuit was filed in San Francisco for journalists, Shi Tao, and Wang Xiaoning. Yahoo! stated that it supported privacy and free expression for it worked with other technology companies to solve human rights concerns.
On November 6, 2007, the US congressional panel criticized Yahoo! for not giving full details to the House Foreign Affairs Committee the previous year, stating it had been “at best inexcusably negligent” and at worst “deceptive”.
