Huawei anti-porn filter may be active non-Chinese devices. [UPDATED]

LemmysMum@lemmy.world to Technology@lemmy.world – 146 points –

UPDATE: Crisis Averted.

So...it's both not what I thought it was, and what I thought it was.

Turns out my 5 year old phone has developed some rendering issues. The message I can only assume is the result of an image being turned sideways getting caught in the renderer's cache or buffer and presenting as a 'ghost' similar to burn in. The image in question was a meme right here on lemmy:

https://lemmy.zip/post/4349105

And presented as below but with less than 1% opacity.

====== Original.

I found a device level messaging overlay on my Huawei device that sits above the application layer. It displays a very low contrast transparency with more transparent text. The imagery is not burn in, I thought it was which is how I found it. Moving a mottled grey image around on the screen in a low light environment makes the text more visible. The text in question seems to be an anti-porn message reading along the lines of "THE NUDITY IS FUN UNTIL YOU WAKE UP AND REALISE YOU'RE OVERWEIGHT"

The image is not permanent and is not always visible.

This messaging would seem in-line with Huawei's own anti-porn filtering service. It seems that Huawei have their anti-porn filtering service running for non-Chinese devices sold outside of China. It would seem they've tried to hide the anti-porn system rather than disable it on foreign devices.

I'd be interested to know if anyone else with a Huawei device has noticed anything similar or is able to confirm that the same occurs on their device. For reference mine is an Australian bought Huawei nova 3i model INE-LX2.

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  1. Everything is made in China.

  2. Affordability, there's a reason I'm using a 5 year old sub AU$500 smartphone.

3 Suitability. It works well, has all the functionality I need.

  1. Strong consumer protections and tech watchdogs in Australia generally have our backs with electronics.

  2. China adjacent 5 eyes country under the yoke of the US military industrial complex; my data is balls deep in a dozen intelligence agencies anyway.

Downsides: No tap pay.

  1. "Made in China" and "Made by China" are different.

  2. Used phones are good and cheap. Profit because other people are greedy.

  3. Most phones "work well". That's not a reason to choose a bad phone.

  4. The consumer protections are the same for all phones. That's not a difference between different companies.

  5. This is just you saying you don't care about these privacy issues. But you made this post???

You're confused about what you want and think Huawei is a good deal. You are being unnecessarily cheap.

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  1. I hate when people say this. Very untrue. Samsung makes the vast majority of their phones in Vietnam, for example. It's pretty damn easy to find one not Made in China if you do 5 seconds of searching.

My phone is made in Vietnam.

My wife, too. If you don't mind me asking, what manufacturer?

It's a Samsung Galaxy S8. I don't know how to find out who the actual manufacturer is.

We have a Samsung plant in Thai Nguyen in the north. Very cool, I didn't know they'd been putting phones out for that long.

At least in the US I bought a pretty nice 18 month old Motorola without a bunch of crap on jt for $150.

Motorola Mobility LLC, marketed as Motorola, is an American consumer electronics manufacturer primarily producing smartphones and other mobile devices running Android. Headquartered at Merchandise Mart in Chicago, Illinois, it is a subsidiary of the Chinese multinational technology company Lenovo.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_Mobility

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