Asian and American: Navigating Dual Identities in the Digital Age

It’s been over four years since Trump’s tweet referring to COVID-19 as the “China virus” fueled waves of hate speech and misinformation on social media against the broader Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) community. The online exchanges spilled over into the real world, leading to a rise in physical attacks against Asian Americans. My parents, originally from Hong Kong, were living in the Pacific Northwest during this time. Surrounded by pro-Trump flags near their rural home, they rarely ventured outside, prioritizing their health and also their safety. Their online group chats were the only source of solidarity as they endured glares and overheard racial slurs while running errands nearby.

Despite Trump’s role in sparking this rise in anti-Asian hate, in November 2020, the aunties, uncles, and friends I grew up with—and many other Hong Kong Americans—voted for him. It sounds self-defeating that they would vote for a president who disparaged them and put a target on their backs. But as immigrants, their choice was heavily influenced by what they consumed online from both the U.S. and from Hong Kong. Like many other communities of color with connections abroad, my family exists with a foot in two cultures, sometimes navigating political divides. This duality extends to the digital realm, presenting a complex challenge for our safety, particularly amid the rising anti-Asian sentiments in the U.S.

My parents immigrated to the United States from Hong Kong before the British handover to China in 1997. I was born and raised in the U.S. during the dot-com boom when the internet was ushering in a new age of possibilities. For my parents, this meant social connectivity, a thread to their distant families and past lives. Social media—and eventually messaging apps—replaced expensive overseas phone calls, and the convenience and ease of sharing moments digitally helped maintain connections to friends and family who remained in Hong Kong. In this way, we were tethered to Hong Kong through these exchanges.

The joy of digital reconnection for my family and others has been gradually overshadowed by political shifts, as digital rights and freedoms in Hong Kong began to erode. As the Chinese Communist Party took steps to strengthen control over Hong Kong’s central government, Hong Kongers continued to access Facebook, YouTube, and online media outlets even as they were banned on the mainland by the Great Firewall. Years of crackdowns on press freedoms, attempts to revise history, and protests came to a head in 2020 when China passed a sweeping national security law, enshrining the practice of data exfiltration from companies in Hong Kong. A recent addendum to the law mandates online platforms to ban accounts and users that post illegal content related to crimes like sedition and treason, which are purposefully vaguely defined. Beijing’s attempt to exert more control over Hong Kong through the national security law has since impacted the rights of individuals online and offline, as well as Hong Kongers worldwide.

My family felt the ripple effects of the national security law immediately. Taking the lack of defined boundaries of government surveillance and censorship into account, and influenced by the urging of several pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong, my parents quickly shifted their group conversations to Signal and Telegram for their end-to-end encryption features. My dad self-censored on Chinese-owned platforms like WeChat, limiting his conversations with his sister to be as apolitical as possible. My mom stopped sharing pro-democracy content with friends and family in Hong Kong for fear of leaving a digital trail that could result in criminal convictions. Pro-democracy media outlets like Apple Daily were forced to close, beginning the process of curtaining off Hong Kong from my parents and the rest of the world. Though much of everyday life in the U.S. remained the same, their relationships with friends and family in Hong Kong started becoming more careful, deliberate, and ultimately more distant.

“My family exists with a foot in two cultures, sometimes navigating political divides. This duality extends to the digital realm.”

When the 2020 election was upon us, Hong Kong Americans saw the survival of Hong Kong as an existential crisis. Many Hong Kong Americans and Hong Kongers saw Trump as a tactical bulwark against Beijing’s increasing power, a view widely circulated by friends and trusted online communities. Their understanding was also heavily shaped by the anti-Biden content they consumed on Chinese-owned platforms like WeChat, notorious for pushing content crafted for outrage. Even American-owned platforms like WhatsApp and Facebook circulated pro-Trump disinformation pushed by CCP-backed accounts, in no small part due to the lack of non-English content moderation. In the end, the Hong Kong-American vote was swayed to a great degree by Trump’s “tough on China” brand.

The Hong Kong American story is not an exception; it is the norm for AAPI communities. Traditional news sources, like the television or print media, are becoming increasingly obsolete for all Americans, and even more so for Asian Americans who might be non-native English speakers. The internet and its various platforms have become a critical source of information for AAPIs, who hail from over 21 different ethnic groups and languages, and a source of connection to their cultural homes overseas. But this diversity also makes disinformation difficult to track and even more complicated to combat. In turn, AAPI communities are particularly vulnerable to the impacts of misinformation and online products designed without consideration for community needs.

Two open questions in cybersecurity and technology will be critical to the security of the AAPI community in this context. First, there is a growing emphasis on trust and safety. The term extends beyond a phrase used in Big Tech circles to describe teams and policies tasked with protecting customers against harmful content. It encompasses a deeper ethical dilemma: Whose trust and safety do we value and prioritize most? Companies that build products and platforms used by minority communities must grapple with this question. Immigrant communities and non-English speakers are especially vulnerable when American-owned tech companies fail to prioritize robust content moderation policies to address hate speech or mis/disinformation.

Second, there is the emerging technology “cold war” with China that could complicate how the Asian American population is perceived in the U.S. Recent legislation forced ByteDance to sell TikTok due to national security concerns regarding data exfiltration and dissemination of propaganda. TikTok is one indicator of many rising tensions: the race to decouple the technology supply chain and export controls on the semiconductor industry are other signs. It would not be a stretch to imagine the racial profiling resulting from the narrative of China as a national security threat. In 2022, the Department of Justice shut down the China Initiative, which aimed to curtail Chinese economic espionage, after it came under criticism by academics for targeting Asian American researchers. Of the initiative’s targets, 90 percent were of Chinese heritage—and cases resulted in a mere 27 percent conviction rate. This is part of a broader history of racial profiling for the sake of security, echoing past injustices like “Yellow peril,” the Chinese Exclusion Act, and the internment of Japanese-Americans during WWII.

For Asian Americans and other Americans of color this election year, efforts to target their communities with misinformation are already underway and ramping up. And these threats will only evolve in complexity and frequency in the age of AI. Prioritizing the trust and safety of AAPI groups—and working to disrupt harmful racist narratives stemming from the “China threat”—will be paramount to securing our safety. Many AAPI lives are split among personal, cultural, and political ties that inform how we decide to interact with the world, both on and offline. Our cybersecurity, data privacy, and physical security will depend on our governments and large tech companies embracing the fact that protecting individuals requires more than a “one-size-fits-all” solution.

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