Isn't this just plain racist? Is there any actual reason to believe that there's any privacy issues with Deepin, other that that it was made by Chinese people? Not to mention that I've never heard this particular FUD before, so I'm doubtful that it "tends to ignite" anything.
Nope. When people say "Chinese origins", they mean it is designed in People's Republic of China, which many people distrust for political reasons. If it was designed in Taiwan or Singapore, which are also populated by Chinese, it would be called "Taiwanese" or "Singaporean" origin, and would not make any controversy at all.
Claiming that "it's not against the Chinese but against their government" is also sometimes a convenient and not completely honest way to deflect claims of racism. The same happens with Israel and it can be quite insiduous.
When people have to notice and discuss the Chinese origin of everything, all the time, "but just because of the Chinese government's policies" in my view they complain too much...
And when it's not the government, it's pollution, or IP theft, or because they eat dogs (in some part of the country), or whatnot.
> a convenient but not completely honest way to deflect claims of racism
And sometimes claims of racism can be a convenient but not quite honest way to deflect criticism of policy.
Could we avoid straw man arguments?
There is an element of racism on issues related to China. There is no point denying it.
There is certainly less of it (or at least it is much less obvious) than during the anti-China campaign in the West/US during the 50s and 60s but it is still there.
As I wrote, some people just complain too much... It's quite obvious in this thread.
We can - but that wasn't a straw-man argument.
> There is an element of racism on issues regarding China.
I agree. There is also an element of "that's racist" being used to deflect criticism.
A comment with similar contents as yours but "pro-China" would immediately be labelled as coming from a 'bot' or someone paid by the Chinese government.
I find this fascinating. The current climate regarding China is fantastic book material for Noam Chomsky.
Edit: I'd like to add. There are so many conflicts and animosities and distrust that have zero to do with racism. Our troubles with Russia are entirely ideological, for example. And especially in geopolitics, the issues that cause conflict usually revolve around pragmatic things like resources, economic/military power, spheres of influence, etc.
Being negative about people simply based on their nationality is racist.
Those attempts at denying that because a country or a people are not "a race" is ludicrous.
If I say that I don't like Mexicans that's racist, for example. If I try to deny it because that's not "a race" I will only ridiculise myself even more.
Or it is not racists when governments do it, but is racists when individuals/companies do it?
It's probably too much to put ordinary people under suspicion right away, but for for legal bodies it's totally reasonable if you ask me. To assume that you can run business in an authoritarian country and be totally independent from the government is plainly naive. Even if you are not formally a member of the ruling party.
Funny enough, I remember reading an article on Hackernews yesterday about how Firefox should not include DoH by default because one of the reasons being privacy concerns about data being sent to cloudflare, in the US.
I don't think this has anything to do with racism and shouldn't be treated as such. Privacy should be a legitimate concern.
Try doing the reverse in China, I'm sure half of HN's userbase would have received an unwelcome visit from the local cops by now...
https://www.deepin.org/en/2018/04/14/linux-deepin-is-not-spy...
Domistically a very weak argument could be made that the US doesn't violate the rights of their own citizens as bad as China, but between FISA courts, the NSA and programs like PRISM (which is more than a decade old now), this argument barely makes sense.
But in my opinion, it's definitely better than having the same person running things for who-knows how long, regardless of the integrity of that person.
Does the US persecute Black people worse than CCP persecutes anyone, for non-"privacy" reasons? Maybe.
You really don't need to start throwing accusations like 'racism' around, just because you're ignorant of the context involved.
Deepin has indeed been around for a while. It is, as far as I can see, fully open source. Is there any indication that it's doing anything shady? Would a shady distribution last for 15 years in the privacy-conscious, code-scrutinizing Linux world?
Even if there are genuine indications that Deepin is shady, I wish the article had just mentioned those, rather than vaguely gesturing at its Chinese origins as if it's obvious to anyone that anything Chinese is suspicious. That's what I think is racist.
If some software from the US or EU was up to no good, I can use the law to bring them to court. In China, I'd first need to ask myself, if not maybe the lawmakers themselves requested the software to do no good.
EDIT: The same could also be said for US/EU governments, yes, but it is more subtle here (i.e. they label you a criminal/terrorist to legitimate installing e.g. a trojan on your PC, whereas, if I'm not mistaken, in China they could just make it a law to have trojans installed on every PC), so I still feel like the law somewhat protects my rights.
> I can use the law to bring them to court.
I wouldn't be so certain of that. There are two issues with this:
1. The no good would have to be illegal either in the civil sense for you to take them to court, or illegal in the criminal or regulatory sense for government to act. Obviously not all no good is codified in law.
2. Law is necessarily high latency - it requires the no good to have already taken place in order for action to be taken against the doers of no good
> i.e. they label you a criminal/terrorist to legitimate installing e.g. a trojan on your PC
This has its own issues:
1. the terrorist label will be applied unilaterally: no one is going to come and ask you if you're a terrorist before you get closer scrutiny.
2. It would be a mistake to think some form of constitution is going to help, in the long run. Laws can be changed. Even the US Constitution has amendments.
We're all only ever a few unhinged politicians away from no good governance.
a. This quote was taken from @revelation - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6033481
Also, consider how much harder it is to change the constitution here compared to China.
Basically, what I'm trying to say is that power is more balanced in the Western world compared to China, and I consider that a good thing.
...but it does have its faults too, e.g. I find it appalling how slow politics, the economy and citizens react to the impending climate disaster. And yet, I'd still pick this world in which we'd have to fight each other over water and oxygen to a world run by totalitarian governments. And I hope I am exaggerating...
I'm going to agree with your wider point that power does appear to be more balanced in the West than China, at least until such times as a few more unhinged politicians have their way, but I also want to point out that...
The world over, big companies, powerful individuals, and the media, have much closer ties to government than you and I ever will.
Because if we don’t continually reflect on that balance of power, and the civil society institutions necessary to support it, we will loss it.
That's entirely the case. Just because you keep trying to spin it as racist doesn't make it so.
Settle down there Satan.
My Chinese made coat hangers aren't much of a risk
This has nothing to do with anyone's Han-Chinese-ness, don't be ridiculous.
It's entirely about Chinese-Communist-Party-ness, government influence.
All governments are doing everything they can to spy on each other, that's a known quality. The CCP probably has a greater ability quantitatively due to China being a significant manufacturer of devices that could present risks.
We're right to ask these questions and attempt to examine the chain-of-trust.
There's no need to get hysterical about it.