Police investigates TVB's news app weird push notifications

Hong Kong's media broadcaster TVB has reported an abnormal incident to the Hong Kong Police Force after detecting a series of abnormal push notifications on 3 May.

In a statement, TVB said a total of 23 consecutive push notifications involving abnormal content were sent out via TVB NEWS mobile app in 21 minutes after midnight. The spokesperson said, "TVB has also carried out multifaceted investigations and has immediately strengthened system monitoring to prevent the reoccurrence of similar incidents. Police officers of the Cyber Security and Technology Crime Bureau collected evidence in concerned offices at TVB City today in the afternoon. TVB will fully cooperate with the police for further in-depth investigations."

The push notifications contained content irrelevant to any news. For example, some of the pushes were "hi", "hihi", "test" and "yooooooo". Some other pushes also contained content in simplified Chinese, including "absolutely do not allow anyone to challenge the 'one country, two systems' principle and bottom line", "Lee Ka-chiu to meet reporters", and "the principle of patriots administering Hong Kong".

At the same time, TVB's website was down and it kept displaying "There is no relevant news content at present." The site returned to normal at about 12:30am. The Standard said TVB's wireless information technology department had launched an investigation. It also followed up on whether its system was hacked.

In addition to the latest incident, TVB faced another issue regarding a series that used blackface to portray Filipina domestic workers. In the series, actress Franchesca Wong plays the role of "Louisa" from The Philippines with visibly darker skin. A video circulating online shows Wong applying make-up on her legs, and saying in a Filipino accent that she is transforming into another person and sun-tanning. The video was originally posted by Wong's fellow actor Lam King-ching on Instagram, but Lam deleted the video on his personal account afterwards.

Wong's performance was lauded by local media despite the brownface incident. In response to the incident, a spokesperson of TVB told MARKETING-INTERACTIVE that "through her professional performing techniques and sophisticated handling of role-playing, the character Louisa was successfully portrayed."

However, Wong has apologised on her Instagram account after her role ignited criticism from the Filipino community. 

Wong said on her Instagram that she has taken some time over the past few days to process her emotions, reflect, speak to members of the community and listen to the many voices that have reached out to her.

"I sincerely apologise to all who have been negatively affected in any way by the seventh chapter 'Jeh Jeh' of the Barrack O'Karma 2 1968 drama series, and my role in it. I have learned through this incident that professionally trying my best to analyse, interpret and act a given role to fulfil the storyline, is only part of the job," said Wong. She added that she "genuinely had no intention to disrespect or racially discriminate any ethnic group" and seeks forgiveness for getting it wrong.

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