When the government wants your socials

Jeffrey Ngo is from Hong Kong. He used to talk about politics all of the time with his friends in group chats and on social media, from casually sending memes, to planning protests. What happens to online speech when you're unsure how much the government is monitoring your speech, and what the repercussions will be if they don't like it? Show notes: PROFILE: For Jeffrey Ngo, The Fight For Hong Kong is Far From Over http://PROFILE: For Jeffrey Ngo, The Fight For Hong Kong is Far From Over (The Hoya) Social Media and the Hong Kong Protests https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/social-media-hong-kong-protests (The New Yorker) Hong Kong protesters join hands in 30-mile human chain https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/aug/23/hong-kong-protesters-join-hands-in-30-mile-human-chain (The Guardian) Hong Kong national security law: What is it and is it worrying? https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-52765838 (BBC) Credits: This episode was produced by Grace Tatter. It was co-hosted by Amory Sivertson and Ben Brock Johnson. Mix and sound design by Emily Jankowski.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Support for this podcast comes from Is Business Broken?, a podcast from the Marotra Institute at BU Questrom School of Business. A recent episode explores how AI is reshaping our schools. Stick around until the end of this podcast to preview the episode.

• 0:18Speaker 01

  This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Football has a play for just about everything. You can go deep, keep it on the ground, or draw up something nobody sees coming. And whether you want to run a flea flicker or the touch push, you need a plan to fit your unique situation. That's why State Farm takes the time to get to know you, so they can help personalize coverage for your life and budget. Now that's a solid game plan. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.

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• 1:17Amory Sivertson?

  WBUR Podcasts, Boston.

• 1:25Ben Brock Johnson?

  Hey, y'all. Before the show starts, we just want to remind you that we set up secure lines for you to communicate with us. If there's anything you need to share anonymously or very carefully in this time that we are living.

• 1:38Amory Sivertson?

  Yeah, we have a Proton Mail account that is [email protected]. Or you can text or call us on Signal. That number is 646-456-9095.

• 1:57Ben Brock Johnson?

  We should also mention that WBUR is an NPR member station and that the CEO of NPR, Catherine Marr, chairs the board of the Signal Foundation, the nonprofit that supports the messaging app. Anyway, if there's anything you need to be in touch with us about and you want to be careful with how you share that information and protected, that's how you get in touch. WBUR Secure Tips at proton.me or call us or text Signal 646-456-9095.

• 2:34Ben Brock Johnson?

  It may be rare for someone to have their life forever altered at the age of seven, but it's possible that Jeffrey Noe is one of the rare ones.

• 2:45Speaker 05

  It was a very hot and humid day. It's our very brutal summer days in Hong Kong. And, you know, I had never seen that many people.

• 2:52Ben Brock Johnson?

  Jeffrey was with his family, who had decided, along with many, many other Hong Kong residents, to speak truth to power.

• 3:02Ben Brock Johnson?

  Were people joyful or angry, or was it scary for you, never seeing that many people before? Do you remember how you kind of felt about it?

• 3:12Speaker 05

  It was definitely not scary. I mean, it was just that people weren't moving at all because the streets were so filled and, you know, we were taking over, I think, at least like three lines of traffic. You know, sometimes I go back and look at footage from 2003 to remind myself of what it felt like.

• 3:31Ben Brock Johnson?

  Why do you go back and watch footage of it? What motivates you to do that?

• 3:36Speaker 05

  I think it's just thinking about how that was a defining moment in terms of me being political. I mean, 2003 was a very eventful year, both in Hong Kong and all around the world.

• 3:48Amory Sivertson?

  Eventful because of the SARS pandemic, which hit Asia and Hong Kong, an epicenter for the illness, particularly hard.

• 3:57Speaker 06

  In China, thousands have been quarantined. Entire apartment complexes have been locked down.

• 4:04Amory Sivertson?

  With everybody stuck at home and glued to their TVs, even seven-year-olds were getting a sense of what was happening elsewhere in the world.

• 4:12Speaker 05

  I remember the invasion of Iraq. You know, I remember names like Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney. I was a little kid watching TV.

• 4:21Amory Sivertson?

  A lot about Jeffrey's political identity goes back to this time, when he was stuck at home watching world news, then out in the streets with his family to question a key decision made about Hong Kong's future.

• 4:34Speaker 05

  2003 was the first large-scale protest in Hong Kong after the handover.

• 4:43Ben Brock Johnson?

  Six years earlier, Britain had handed over control of Hong Kong to China after more than 100 years of British colonial rule. As part of that handover, the two countries made a deal.

• 4:55Amory Sivertson?

  Hong Kong would be part of China, but for a period, it could still operate somewhat autonomously. It would have a capitalist economy, the kind it was used to having, and a slightly different political setup than the mainland. The promise was: one country, two systems.

• 5:12Speaker 05

  So they framed it, specifically, the Chinese side framed it as an extension of the way of life. Obviously, that's not how most Hong Kongers saw it. A lot of Hong Kongers, especially those who migrated to Hong Kong after World War II, actually did so precisely to flee the Chinese Communist Party regime.

• 5:30Ben Brock Johnson?

  Jeffrey says many Hong Kongers were not happy about the deal. Because while they didn't necessarily want total independence from China, they did want some autonomy.

• 5:40Speaker 05

  When it comes time for decolonization, we should respect the right of self-determination, and the colonized people should have a voice to decide what happens to a sort of post-colonial future.

• 5:51Ben Brock Johnson?

  Democratic organizers protested every year after the handover. And from 1997 to 2002, protesters and the Chinese government seemed to be in a staring contest about who should be in control. This was a pile of political tinder that had been building in Hong Kong. And then, there was a spark.

• 6:14Ben Brock Johnson?

  A new piece of proposed legislation called Article 23 that would limit Hong Kongers' ability to speak out against the Chinese government.

• 6:23Amory Sivertson?

  So in 2003, hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets to protest the proposed law, including Jeffrey and his family.

• 6:32Speaker 05

  And in Article 23, there's this clause that says that it is the Hong Kong government's responsibility to enact national security legislation against things like sedition or treason.

• 6:44Ben Brock Johnson?

  This proposed law, Article 23, is what turned a pile of political tinder, colonization, decolonization, with limited representation, and what many Hong Kongers felt was a lack of self-determination into a bonfire.

• 7:08Amory Sivertson?

  It's been about 22 years since then, 22 years that have not been quiet in Hong Kong. And in that time, Jeffrey has become an activist organizer, has left Hong Kong, and he isn't sure if he'll ever be able to go back.

• 7:24Speaker 05

  Who knew if you could write something on Facebook and be like, I hate the national security law because it violates all the freedoms that we've enjoyed for years, the Chinese government should back up. Who knew if you wrote something like that, whether that could land you in jail for five or 10 years, if not, you know, life behind bars?

• 7:45Amory Sivertson?

  I'm Amory Sivertson.

• 7:47Ben Brock Johnson?

  I'm Ben Brock Johnson, and you're listening to Endless Threat.

• 7:50Amory Sivertson?

  We're coming to you from WBUR, Boston's NPR.

• 7:54Ben Brock Johnson?

  And today, we're telling you the story of Jeffrey Ngo, as a way of telling you the story of how social media's role in protest and oppression is evolving around the world and at home, wherever home is.

• 8:23Amory Sivertson?

  Hongkongers never had a true democracy. But what they did have, thanks to the one-party, two-systems framework, was at least more democratic than mainland China.

• 8:34Ben Brock Johnson?

  For example, the mainland effectively has one political party, the Chinese Communist Party. Hong Kong had multiple.

• 8:43Amory Sivertson?

  In mainland China, the government controls the media. But Hong Kong had an independent press and court systems that were independent from China. And crucially, they had the right to protest, which they did, a lot.

• 8:56Ben Brock Johnson?

  Every year on June 4th, Hongkongers would honor the protesters killed at Tiananmen Square in 1989. They marked the anniversary with a vigil, a big symbol of their autonomy from the mainland, where you can't even acknowledge that the massacre happened.

• 9:12Amory Sivertson?

  A few weeks later, on July 1st, the anniversary of the handover, Hongkongers would typically gather on the streets again to protest against any overstepping from China. They essentially had an annual protest season.

• 9:26Speaker 05

  Even though we weren't necessarily democratizing, we were at least somewhat preserving our way of life in terms of the ability to assemble and to protest.

• 9:36Ben Brock Johnson?

  True to his seven-year-old self, Jeffrey stayed involved in these protests, even after moving to the United States for college at NYU. And in his sophomore year, there was a particularly big protest.

• 9:49Amory Sivertson?

  Part of the original handover deal between the UK and China was that eventually, Hongkongers would get to vote for their leader directly, unlike on the mainland. Remember, one country, two systems.

• 10:01Ben Brock Johnson?

  But this hadn't happened yet. Their leader was still selected by committee.

• 10:06Amory Sivertson?

  Then, in 2014, China's Congress voted that Hong Kong citizens could vote for their leader, but only from a list of candidates who were basically handpicked by the Communist Party.

• 10:18Ben Brock Johnson?

  This did not fly in Hong Kong.

• 10:20Speaker 06

  The pictures are simply incredible coming out of one of the world's major financial centers.

• 10:29Amory Sivertson?

  Protesters planned to flood Hong Kong's Central District, where most of the city's banks are located. Central is an important hub, not just for the city, but for the entire world. Because Hong Kong's banks connect trade between mainland China and everywhere else.

• 10:45Speaker 05

  In the beginning, it was called Occupy Central.

• 10:48Ben Brock Johnson?

  So it was inspired by Occupy in New York, potentially?

• 10:52Speaker 05

  Tactically, yes. But in terms of the ideological underpinning, I would say no, because it was not an anti-capitalist movement. It was much more that we wanted to do something disruptive. And what better way to do it in the middle of an international financial center than to literally stop traffic and pedestrian moving in where the banks are, right? So that was the idea.

• 11:13Ben Brock Johnson?

  The protest spread beyond the Central District and the banks. Thousands of protesters with tents and umbrellas flooded the streets. Whole swathes of the city came to a standstill.

• 11:25Speaker 07

  Something, it's clear, has got to give. These protesters aren't moving anytime soon. And Beijing is unlikely to want to lose face by offering compromise.

• 11:34Amory Sivertson?

  The protesters used umbrellas to shield themselves against the tear gas and rubber bullets from the police. As the story goes, this caused an American on Twitter to dub the protest "The Umbrella Revolution."

• 11:53Ben Brock Johnson?

  A lot of activists in Hong Kong actually preferred to call it "The Umbrella Movement," because they weren't trying to overthrow the government as part of a revolution. They were just exercising the democratic rights promised to them during the handover.

• 12:06Amory Sivertson?

  By 2014, Hong Kongers were protest pros.

• 12:10Speaker 05

  This is the city where, like, middle school kids, when they're like 13, 14 years old, would band together and show up at a protest against the high, you know, the public school curriculum. There's such a vibrant tradition of civil society, of protest, of organizing.

• 12:29Amory Sivertson?

  But now, there was a new tool at their fingertips: social media.

• 12:36Ben Brock Johnson?

  Social media had already helped fuel the Arab Spring in 2011, and later that year Occupy Wall Street in New York, which got a lot of attention.

• 12:45Amory Sivertson?

  Including from the Chinese government. They were trying their damnedest to make sure a protest movement like that didn't happen in China. They cracked down on internet access, limiting what sites everyday citizens could see and what news they could read and share on social media. This censorship is known as the Great Firewall.

• 13:06Ben Brock Johnson?

  But because Hong Kong was somewhat autonomous, Hongkongers had way fewer restrictions. They could get their message out on social media.

• 13:14Amory Sivertson?

  And so, unlike in 2003, when the protests against Chinese interference were more of a local story, people around the world were talking about the umbrella movement.

• 13:25Speaker 05

  There were Facebook groups, there were text message chats and so on and so forth, where you had people in Sydney, in Paris, in my case, in New York and in Washington, you know, people in Vancouver, in London, and so on and so forth. We all wanted to do something to support the protests back home. And most of that, if not all of that, occurred on Facebook. I mean, it was really, we would create like a Facebook event. We would invite all our friends who were Hongkongers in the city, and then their friends would invite all their friends. And so, in the end, we had like 300, 400 people come.

• 13:58Amory Sivertson?

  The umbrella movement lasted for nearly 80 days. Organizers estimated that more than a million Hongkongers participated at some point.

• 14:07Ben Brock Johnson?

  The protests did not result in fair and open elections for Hong Kong's leader.

• 14:11Amory Sivertson?

  But they did get people even more energized in civic engagement. Some of Jeffrey's friends even formed a new political party called Democisto, derived from Greek and Latin words that mean "stand for democracy."

• 14:26Ben Brock Johnson?

  Jeffrey was able to get involved from abroad. Once again, thanks in part to social media. Then in 2019, another protest movement started simmering back home.

• 14:37Speaker 07

  Tens of thousands of people in Hong Kong have taken part in a demonstration against a plan change to extradition laws.

• 14:44Amory Sivertson?

  This time, the Hong Kong Legislative Council was proposing a law that would give the Chinese government more power to arrest Hongkongers and extradite them to the mainland to be tried in China's courts, which, to people in Hong Kong, did not sound like one country, two systems.

• 15:02Ben Brock Johnson?

  Jeffrey flew home to Hong Kong in May. By then, organizers were reporting that hundreds of thousands of people had taken to the streets.

• 15:10Amory Sivertson?

  And that was nothing compared to what happened next.

• 15:14Speaker 05

  The protests really broke out on June 9.

• 15:16Speaker 07

  A city brought to a standstill today by an enormous protest.

• 15:21Amory Sivertson?

  According to estimates, 1 million people marched to Hong Kong's government headquarters in protest of the extradition bill.

• 15:32Ben Brock Johnson?

  And many of them returned to the streets the next week, and the next.

• 15:38Speaker 05

  A summer of vacation and research turned out to be a summer of protest.

• 15:42Amory Sivertson?

  This felt even more extreme than the umbrella movement did in 2014. There were more confrontations with the police, but also more information.

• 15:52Ben Brock Johnson?

  Once again, social media played a huge role in documenting the protests. And by 2019, the technology had advanced. Now, with a smartphone, almost anyone could livestream, as long as they had good cellphone service.

• 16:07Amory Sivertson?

  And here's the thing about Hong Kong: They have excellent cellphone service, some of the fastest mobile internet connections in the world.

• 16:15Ben Brock Johnson?

  And mainland China also had pretty speedy internet, but the mainland also had that restrictive Great Firewall. So in 2019, Hongkongers could use the internet in a way that mainlanders could not, to broadcast their political fights around the world.

• 16:31Speaker 05

  Whenever there's a protest that breaks out, or like a confrontation between protesters and police break out, you could just take out your smartphone, you could livestream that, and then mostly on Facebook and Instagram as well, and you would have thousands of views within minutes.

• 16:51Speaker 05

  I'm having dinner in between protests. I've got to look out if the riot police is coming into the restaurant. But I also have like three phones. One of them, I'm looking at live streams on Facebook to see where the next protest is. One of them, I'm looking at Telegram channels. And the other one, I'm probably in like a bunch of Signal groups with friends. And with my, you know, with people on my team and where are they, are they safe? You know, it's just like, there is the acceleration of the, of the human experience in general, not just in terms of protest. But then, when it comes to protesting, it's even more accelerated.

• 17:33Ben Brock Johnson?

  Hundreds of thousands of people showed up day after day. They posted about the protests on Instagram, Telegram, Facebook, Twitter. And also something called LIHKG, a Hong Kong-specific forum that Jeffrey describes as kind of a cross between Reddit and 4chan. LIHKG has some sketchy stuff, but the anonymity helped fuel this huge grassroots movement.

• 17:58Speaker 05

  There was a lot of initiatives spearheaded by anonymous online folks. And that largely occurred on that platform.

• 18:08Amory Sivertson?

  In August of 2019, it was time for Jeffrey to return to school in the US.

• 18:13Speaker 05

  I thought I was gonna come back, you know, maybe in half a year, maybe like Christmas break, New Year's, or that if not, at the very latest, the following summer. I did not know that that was gonna be my last day in Hong Kong.

• 18:27Amory Sivertson?

  The day of Jeffrey's flight, August 23rd, is now known for something called the Hong Kong Way. Thousands of protesters made a human chain.

• 18:38Speaker 07

  Pretty much as far as the eye can see, stretching down one of the major roads here on the island of Hong Kong.

• 18:44Amory Sivertson?

  It was more than 30 miles long.

• 18:47Speaker 07

  Chanting slogans like "Free Hong Kong", "You're calling this..."

• 18:51Ben Brock Johnson?

  Jeffrey was reading about it as his plane took off. And so that's the image he had of his home. His neighbors, friends, former classmates, all holding hands, 30,000 feet below.

• 19:06Speaker 05

  It was such a strange moment in the protest because by that point, there had been a lot of violence from the police. And some of the episodes between the protesters and the police had been very, very confrontational. But that night was just so peaceful. And then everything from that point onward, I understood, you know, from a distance. And it was never the same for me again.

• 19:34Ben Brock Johnson?

  Because of the live streams, Jeffrey was able to keep up with what was happening at home, almost in real time.

• 19:40Amory Sivertson?

  The protesters showed up weekend after weekend going into 2020. They only petered out when COVID lockdowns shut down the city.

• 19:49Ben Brock Johnson?

  Jeffrey decided not to make his annual summer return back to Hong Kong because of the pandemic. But he was still paying attention and hearing rumors about a new law that would affect protests and free speech, a new law more severe than anything that had come before it.

• 20:07Speaker 05

  Hong Kong was beginning to hear from like informal sources, there were rumors saying that the Chinese government wanted to implement something very drastic in Hong Kong. And we all were very, very unsure.

• 20:20Amory Sivertson?

  More in a minute.

• 20:45Speaker 00

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• 20:58Speaker 06

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• 21:07Speaker 00

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• 21:25Speaker 01

  This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Football has a play for just about everything. You can go deep, keep it on the ground, or draw up something nobody sees coming. And whether you want to run a flea flicker or the tush push, you need a plan to fit your unique situation. That's why State Farm takes the time to get to know you so they can help personalize coverage for your life and budget. Now that's a solid game plan. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.

• 21:54Speaker 02

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• 22:29Ben Brock Johnson?

  In June of 2020, Jeffrey and everyone he knew was waiting for a new law from the Chinese government, something they worried could threaten life as they knew it in Hong Kong.

• 22:40Speaker 05

  It was just panic.

• 22:44Speaker 05

  And then on June 30th, 2020, at 11:00 PM local time in Hong Kong, the law just came into effect.

• 22:53Amory Sivertson?

  The new law is known as the National Security Law. In the past, the Chinese government had tried to influence Hong Kong lawmakers to pass security legislation that would tamp down on any criticism of the Communist Party, going all the way back to seven-year-old Jeffrey doing just that with his family in 2003. But this new law was a mandate from Beijing with no input from Hong Kong.

• 23:18Ben Brock Johnson?

  The National Security Law established a separate commission in Hong Kong to deal with violations of the law and allowed for trials to be held on the mainland. It allowed for wiretapping and surveillance if you were even suspected of breaking the law. If you knew of somebody breaking the law, you were required to report them or face up to 14 years in prison.

• 23:45Amory Sivertson?

  Jeffrey and his friends had already been in a state of uncertainty while they waited for this new law to come down. When it finally did, there wasn't exactly a clap of clarity.

• 23:55Speaker 05

  I think the thing that shocked everyone when the text of the national security law became available was the, first of all, how ambiguous the language was.

• 24:06Ben Brock Johnson?

  In some ways, that was the scariest part. The law didn't specify exactly what type of speech or action crossed the line, leaving people to feel that almost anything political was now forbidden, just like on the mainland, where protests are quickly squashed and activists are often arrested and punished.

• 24:30Ben Brock Johnson?

  One of the reasons we wanted to talk to Jeffrey was because his social media and online community was a really important part of his Hong Kong activism, especially because he spent so many years participating from halfway around the world.

• 24:43Amory Sivertson?

  At this moment in 2020, he was awaiting this rumored new law that could affect how people protest. He had no idea how things might change.

• 24:52Ben Brock Johnson?

  That feeling of uncertainty about when the government might react to what you do or say might sound familiar if you're living in the United States right now. Increasingly, we are hearing stories about customs and border officials questioning American citizens when they re-enter the country about what they say online. In a few cases, they've requested to search citizens' phones and then have looked through their private messages.

• 25:20Amory Sivertson?

  It's not exactly widespread, but it's enough to spawn dozens of articles and Reddit threads about how to stay safe. A lot of people are thinking about how to lock down their tech and social media in ways they just didn't before. People who aren't American citizens are even more confused about what they're allowed to say, even privately.

• 25:40Ben Brock Johnson?

  More than 1,500 students had their visas revoked in March and April. While hundreds of those visas have since been restored, many of the affected students say they don't know why they were targeted in the first place. As of this recording, the State Department has stopped student visa interviews while they expand its social media vetting process. The Department of Homeland Security has said it will continue to monitor social media to decide who can stay in the country and who has to go. We wanted to know how all of this unease will change how we talk to each other, especially online.

• 26:18Amory Sivertson?

  We can't see into the future. And yes, China and the United States are very different. But what happened to Jeffrey after this moment in 2020, with the threat of this new law hanging over his head, is kind of a window into how online spaces here could change.

• 26:35Ben Brock Johnson?

  For Jeffrey, the minute in 2020 that the new national security law went into effect, everything started to shift.

• 26:45Speaker 05

  That was the day I left my organization, Democisto. And then the group decided to fold a few hours later because it was just not viable with the sweeping, you know, language of the bill.

• 27:00Amory Sivertson?

  All of the leaders of Democisto, the pro-democracy political party that Jeffrey helped organize, resigned as well. Within hours, they had tweeted that the entire party was disbanding.

• 27:12Speaker 05

  You could feel it half a world away just by looking at the behavior online.

• 27:18Ben Brock Johnson?

  Jeffrey said that before the national security law, all sorts of political organizations used social media to get out their message.

• 27:26Speaker 05

  There would be like lawyers' concern groups, doctors' concern groups, teachers' concern groups. You had labor unions, you had political parties, you had teachers' unions. I mean, it was just such a vibrant scene.

• 27:39Amory Sivertson?

  Now, there was a rush to pull anything that went against the new law offline. Individuals were deleting their old political tweets and Facebook statuses, and organizations were just folding altogether.

• 27:51Speaker 05

  They would sort of put a statement on Facebook, on Instagram, press release, whatever. And then those pages would either stop updating altogether or they would just disappear.

• 28:06Speaker 05

  I don't want to say all of that to say that Hong Kong just gave up overnight. But I would say, yeah, it was drastic. And it was particularly jarring because Hong Kong had just for so long been known as a city of protest. I mean, this is the kind of city. This is one of the freest, if not electorally the most democratic place. For a long time, it was one of the freest places in Asia. And so to see all of that just sort of disappear overnight because of the fear. I mean, that was really, really jarring.

• 28:41Amory Sivertson?

  Can you say more about that fear, Jeffrey? Like, what is the danger for people posting about politics now? What are the consequences?

• 28:50Speaker 05

  There were no legal precedents because it was just so new. And so for folks on the ground, it was like, OK, I'm going to be very careful with what I say in person and very careful with what I post online. Because if I do anything that apparently crosses the line, what if national security agents knock on my door at 5 o'clock in the morning and take me away? There's no recourse. There's no frame of reference. I think that was the problem.

• 29:22Amory Sivertson?

  People in Hong Kong don't know if a political Facebook post or a message will lead to a slap on the wrist or a long prison sentence. So they've just started to self-censor, which has totally changed the tenor of even casual group chats.

• 29:38Speaker 05

  I think we are all very politically aware group of people. And so in the bygone days, that was whatever that was before 2020. I mean, it was very common for us to talk politics. I mean, it's just part of... It's just part of what Hong Kong people talk about or talked about. And we would make jokes, we would poke fun at the government, we would be sending political memes. And I think we continue to do that to one another among those of us who are abroad. But we don't really do that to people in Hong Kong.

• 30:14Ben Brock Johnson?

  Which brings us back to this original question we had. When people don't know if their words online will come with severe consequences, how does online life change?

• 30:25Speaker 05

  When I go on Instagram and I and I look through the stories posted by my friends, who are Hongkongers, I mean, from one story to another, you could really tell who's where. If it's like remotely political, you would not see someone in Hong Kong sharing that news on the story. If you see that news of like a protest of 3,000 people on the streets of London outside the Royal Mint Court in Tower Hamlets against the proposed plan to expand the Chinese embassy, 99% of the time that person sharing that story is a Hongkonger who's currently abroad.

• 31:01Ben Brock Johnson?

  In other words, if a friend posts something about Hong Kong, they're probably not in Hong Kong.

• 31:08Amory Sivertson?

  Many of Jeffrey's former Democisto colleagues live abroad, with exorbitant bounties for information leading to their arrest.

• 31:16Ben Brock Johnson?

  Other activists have been arrested as soon as they landed in Hong Kong, sometimes for merely attending a protest, much less organizing one, in ways that reminded us of how the American government has detained foreign students involved in campus activism over the war in Gaza, even if they weren't particularly active in those protests.

• 31:37Amory Sivertson?

  Like in the case of Rumesa Aztark, the Tufts graduate student who spent six weeks in an ICE detention center in Louisiana. Rumesa has since been released, but she still faces deportation, all because of a single op-ed she wrote about Gaza for the Tufts student paper.

• 32:01Ben Brock Johnson?

  For now, Jeffrey isn't interested in finding out whether or not he'll go to jail if he goes home. He's staying away from Hong Kong.

• 32:08Speaker 05

  Now, I have to say that unless you're on some kind of wanted list, or unless you have a bounty on your head, you don't definitively have proof that you can or you cannot go back to Hong Kong. And this is the level of ambiguity that the Hong Kong authorities operate on. Because if you don't know, then you might have the self sense that if you still want to go back, or if you don't know, then you might not go back, and a certain level of the freedom of movement has been deprived. You accept that that is a part of your life before the national security law, that you're not going to get back.

• 32:51Speaker 05

  But then in exchange for that, there are certain things that you can do and say.

• 32:57Ben Brock Johnson?

  Well, Jeffrey is doing research in London for the moment. He needs to come back to the US. That's because, in addition to his activism, he is finishing his PhD in history at Georgetown University. His dissertation is, of course, about Hong Kong in a global context.

• 33:15Amory Sivertson?

  He's currently on an F1 student visa, the same type of visa that's been revoked in many recent cases. So he didn't feel comfortable talking about how now the American government is sowing uncertainty about what rights students like him actually have. But he did have some advice after a lifetime of activism.

• 33:35Speaker 05

  You can't tune out, because once you do, once you decide that you're going to give up, you're not going to resist, then it's much easier for those in power to win.

• 33:47Ben Brock Johnson?

  Jeffrey is essentially living in political exile. The online political chatter that once fueled his activism is quieter now, that his friends at home are afraid to speak.

• 34:00Amory Sivertson?

  No one is expecting Hong Kong to regain any sort of democracy soon or ever. And still, Jeffrey's not tuning out.

• 34:13Amory Sivertson?

  Back in 2020, you told The Hoya, the Georgetown paper,

• 34:19Amory Sivertson?

  in an interview, you said, quote, "I'm an optimist, not a naive one. I just believe that history moves generally towards more humanity." Do you still see things that way, five years later?

• 34:34Speaker 05

  That's a good question. I think

• 34:39Speaker 05

  I think it's more difficult for someone like me to say that in 2025 because of the external circumstances. I don't want to I don't want to lose the optimistic part of me. But objectively speaking, I think things have gotten worse. I think we are in a more uncertain time politically. And so I would say it's more difficult. But I wouldn't reverse what I said. Something seems impossible until it just happens, right? I mean, as late as 1986, maybe even a bit of 1987, it would have been crazy for anyone to predict the impending collapse of the Soviet Union. Yet it did happen in 1991.

• 35:25Speaker 05

  On the whole, if we zoom out and we look at the overall trajectory, I still believe that things will eventually move in a positive direction, even though right now, I mean, sometimes it's difficult to see.

• 35:52Amory Sivertson?

  As this episode was being published, we were watching protests in Los Angeles in support of immigrants and against what protesters view as the Trump administration's aggressive violation of noncitizen rights. And we were watching as those protests spread from Los Angeles to other cities around America. If you have thoughts on how we should be talking about that, we are all ears. Get in touch.

• 36:21Ben Brock Johnson?

  This episode was produced by Grace Tatter.

• 36:24Amory Sivertson?

  It was co-hosted by me, Amory Sivertson, and Ben Brock Johnson.

• 36:28Ben Brock Johnson?

  It was mixed and sound design by Emily Jankowski and edited by Meg Kramer.

• 36:32Amory Sivertson?

  The rest of our team is Franny Monahan, Dean Russell, our production manager Paul Vikes, and our managing producer, Suma Tijoshi.

• 36:39Ben Brock Johnson?

  Endless Thread is a show about the blurred lines between the online world and democracy.

• 36:44Amory Sivertson?

  If you have an untold history, an unsolved mystery, or some other wild story from the internet that you want us to tell, hit us up. Endless Thread at WBUR.org.

• 37:07Speaker 00

  Support for this podcast comes from Is Business Broken?, a podcast from the Marotra Institute at BU Questram School of Business. Follow Is Business Broken wherever you get your podcasts. And listen on for a preview of a recent episode featuring Janet Kang, Executive Director of the Just Horizons Alliance, on who stands to benefit from AI in education.

• 37:30Speaker 02

  I am absolutely in favor of AI in learning in the right context. And just to explain why you're excited about it. Oh, my gosh, individualized support, right? Personalization. And to be able to scale quality education in places where it was historically impossible. So for certain kinds of learners with different kinds of learning styles and disabilities, for example, speakers of different languages, there are amazing ways AI can boost learning. It just has to be with the right context. And age appropriateness is something we do a lot of work in, because it is very different, depending on where in that maturity cycle you are in terms of how your brain develops.

• 38:08Speaker 00

  Find the full episode by searching for Is Business Broken?, wherever you get your podcasts. And learn more about the Marotra Institute for Business, Markets, and Society at IBS.BU.edu.

• 38:27Speaker 01

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• 38:55Speaker 00

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