Shutterstock, the well-known online purveyor of stock images and photographs, is the latest U.S. company to willingly support China’s censorship regime, blocking searches that might offend the country’s authoritarian government, The Intercept has learned.

The publicly traded company built a $639 million-per-year business on the strength of its vast — sometimes comically vast — catalog of images depicting virtually anything a blogger or advertiser could imagine. The company now does business in more than 150 countries. But in China, there is now a very small, very significant gap in Shutterstock’s offerings. In early September, Shutterstock engineers were given a new goal: The creation of a search blacklist that would wipe from query results images associated with keywords forbidden by the Chinese government. Under the new system, which The Intercept is told went into effect last month, anyone with a mainland Chinese IP address searching Shutterstock for “President Xi,” “Chairman Mao,” “Taiwan flag,” “dictator,” “yellow umbrella,” or “Chinese flag” will receive no results at all. Variations of these terms, including “umbrella movement” — the precursor to the mass pro-democracy protests currently gripping Hong Kong — are also banned.

Shutterstock’s decision to silently aid China’s censorship agenda comes at a time of heightened scrutiny into the relationship between corporate America and President Xi Jinping’s authoritarian regime. Household names like Apple, Blizzard Entertainment, the NBA, and Google have all garnered harsh criticism for letting the policy directives of the Communist Party of China, and the gilded promise of a billion customers, dictate company strategy. Deciding to censor is a particularly stark inversion of values for Shutterstock, which markets itself as an enabler of creative expression.

The photo company’s relationship with China dates back to at least 2014, when it struck a distribution deal with ZCool, a Chinese social network and portfolio site for visual artists. Last year Shutterstock announced a $15 million investment in ZCool, noting that owing to the partnership, “Shutterstock’s content now powers large technology platforms in China such as Tencent Social Ads,” an online advertising subsidiary of the tremendously popular Chinese internet conglomerate Tencent.

Shutterstock’s censorship feature appears to have been immediately controversial within the company, prompting more than 180 Shutterstock workers to sign a petition against the search blacklist and accuse the company of trading its values for access to the lucrative Chinese market. Chinese internet users already struggle to discuss even the tamest of taboo subjects; now, it seemed, the situation would get a little worse, with the aid of yet another willing American company.

“Yes, we’re a creative photo and video marketplace, but we are also an editorial news hub,” one Shutterstock employee told The Intercept. “Want to write a story about the protests in Hong Kong? They never existed. Want to write about Taiwan? It never existed. Xi Jinping is NOT a dictator because he specifically said so. This is dark shit.”

The text of the petition, provided to The Intercept, can be read in full below.

Shutterstock’s founder and CEO Jon Oringer replied to the petition several days later; those hoping for a change of heart were to be disappointed. Shutterstock’s pro-censorship compromise with the Chinese government was justified, Oringer argued, because to refuse to do business in China rather than help the country’s government expand its information control scheme would be the real act of craven corporate turpitude: “Do we make the majority of our content available to China’s 1.3 billion citizens or do we take away their ability to access it entirely? We ultimately believe, consistent with our brand promise, it is more valuable for storytellers to have access to our collection to creatively and impactfully tell their stories.” Shutterstock with a bespoke censorship feature was “more empowering” and “will better serve the people of China than the alternative,” Oringer continued.

Oringer’s company-wide response is also reproduced below.

Following Oringer’s letter and the implementation of the search term blacklist, some employees fear the use of censorship at the company will grow: “He offered no consolation in terms of what our actions will be when China requests to add an X number more search terms to the censorship list,” the Shutterstock staffer told The Intercept, “or if another country comes to us with a similar request. We are devastated.”