https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism
China is irrelevant to the average western internet user, to whom the US govt is indeed an oppressive presence.
China is irrelevant to the average western internet user, to whom the US govt is indeed an oppressive presence.
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18061698 and marked it off-topic.
The comment that set this all off was short and made a single point that can be accurately described by a cliche. There was nothing else to it. I an understand not wanting people to dismiss real arguments with cliches, but I don’t think that’s what happened here. When someone brags about using a straw man to deflect reasonable criticism, it merits a response.
Maybe, but that response shouldn't just classify the argument as an instance of the cliche, since that would be low-effort shitposting, as you point out. HN already has the downvote arrow to express that kind of disagreement.
I guess adding “legit” mobile ads might help, but I don’t like that as I think mobile ads are a completely miserable experience. And people would probably still rip it off and install their own ads anyway.
You simply can’t trust any APKs you find by googling. (Obvious to most people on HN, of course.)
I'm curious why my original question was downvoted. I thought it was a valid question.
One thing I want to add is, many people around the world (for example many in India and China) don’t have access to Google Play. People with Amazon devices don’t have Google Play (although it doesn’t seem like there a lot of them).
It’s difficult for a small team to deliver a good product to all those different groups of people, and it’s frustrating that they’re instead serviced by the black market.
You know, because China would NEVER attempt to spy on, influence, or blackmail foreign programmers, business people, scientists, or other professionals.
China publishes a report every year on human rights abuses in the USA that has a number of valid criticisms (incarceration rate of black males, police shootings, etc), but that doesn't make the US Department of State's report on Chinese human rights abuses any less valid.
> I like to remind people of shit like this when they claim that the United States government is an "oppressive" presence on the Internet.
Why do you feel the need to bring up China when someone talks about the US govt spying on their online activities?
The active measures taken by the Chinese government are pretty much the opposite of the US/Five Eyes' SIGINT approach to things.
I do not agree with either, and think that both should be highly publicized, and awareness raised. However I think that the Chinese method of police state social control is on a whole other magnitude of "fucking with the Internet" than what is possible in the US with constitutionally/bill of rights protected freedoms.
> I like to remind people of shit like this when they claim that the United States government is an "oppressive" presence on the Internet.
Why do you feel the need to bring up China when someone talks about the US govt spying on their online activities?
China is an order of magnitude times worse than the US. I'm not sure why you feel the need to keep arguing that point when I already agreed. But none of that is relevant when someone is complaining that they don't like their own US govt spying on them, "passive" or otherwise. For you to bring up China in that context is whataboutism.
The initial topic of this thread is China, not the US, so it seems to me that criticizing China cannot, by definition, be whataboutism in this particular context.
I'm not personally inclined to dismiss things as "whataboutism" as though it were an automatic debate ender, but if you do, then you have to restrict your discussion to China's sins in this thread.
> I like to remind people of shit like this when they claim that the United States government is an "oppressive" presence on the Internet.
In January, the US Senate passed a bill to renew the NSA’s warrantless internet surveillance program for six years with minimal changes. If walrus01's friends had brought up that topic at the time, it sounds like he'd have defended the program because China is worse. Whataboutism.
Calling out hypothetical whataboutism of someone else is like whataboutism squared on your part, though. Hyper-whataboutism. Meta-whataboutism.
Not that there's anything wrong with that, of course.
I've seen it referred to as the hypocrites favourite meme, and I am inclined to agree.
Also, China is hardly irrelevant, least of all here, a discussion thread about the technical issues surrounding state surveillance in China.
But to be serious, I don't see how China is irrelevant to the average Westerner.
They manufacture a lot of the products consumed in the West. They are also responsible for a lot of the plastic floating in the water http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-tons-of-...
From a US perspective:
They are responsible for the most damaging intelligence breach in US history https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Personnel_Management....
Google, a US company, is starting to head toward China and play in that market after getting tired of not being evil.
US senator heading the Intelligence Committee had a Chinese spy right under her nose for almost 2 decades: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/explain-the-chinese-...
Even for the rest of the world with China and US clashing over spheres of influence and doing their power-play everyone is affected.