India bans TikTok, WeChat, and dozens of other Chinese apps

No tear will be shed for those apps, regardless from which country they come from (I know this is very targeted due to recent tensions, but its still a step in the right direction re privacy)

If Indian government sees no harm in US apps whilst banning Chinese apps, this is the definition of diplomatic pressure. Asymmetry is the tool used to apply this pressure.

Your point is valid - we have no way to know Facebook algorithms and it is a blackbox, but this isn't supposed to be a symmetric comparison for aforementioned reasons.

For US-based firms, that’s simply not the case.

Yes, YouTube needs to make sure Nike is happy. But Nike didn’t just kill two dozen Indian soldiers.

Certainly there’s privacy related concerns with US companies - as with Chinese companies. But nobody had accused the DoD of manipulating YouTube search rankings.

If the DoD wants to conduct a YouTube propaganda campaign, they can buy advertising like everybody else.

Like, I get that the milquetoast world advertisers want to live in is some kind of lens that colors the views and opinions presented by their platforms. It's just that the worst that happens from being influenced by it is it that you live a more boring life and consume more product. That's not nearly as worrying as being influenced to hating racial minorities in an attempt to distract from the South China Sea or something.

Advertisers are not a homogeneous block. YouTube et al can afford to piss off some advertisers; if they're pissing off all advertisers, the material is probably extremely objectionable to most humans.

I challenge you to point out an example of content that has been banned from youtube because it offends advertisers, that you really think the banning of which is a significant issue. There's no shortage of material on YT hypercritical of Goldman "Vampire Squid" Sachs.

Whereas there is a long litany of material banned from Chinese networks for obvious political reasons. Furthermore, if you don't like YT's policy, you can use other video sharing sites or even gasp host your own videos. Try doing that in China and see how long it takes for men with guns to show up.

YouTube and its advertisers aren't countries, and aren't engaged in recent, deadly military skirmishes with India.

>> The reality is that Chinese firms and government operates together intimately. Nearly all sizable firms have a party secretary that is involved in board level decisions, and steps in when things get political. You can ponder who has the final say.

> No, I get this, but here's the thing: YouTube and, more specifically, it's advertisers do everything that you're accusing China of. There are material consequences if YouTube doesn't keep in line. What this means is that a status quo that pleases advertisers will be maintained.

You're basically saying: "YouTube has to please group X, TikTok has please group Y. Since they both have to 'please groups,' they're doing the same things!" That's a flawed comparison, because the the devil is in the details: the relevant differences between group X (YouTube advertisers) and Group Y (the Communist Party of China) get obscured when you're reasoning about such high level abstractions.

Unless or until they approach the scale of a nation-state (and to be fair, many do) it seems like commercial interests are at the very least clear (and arguably market-driven and subject to competition).

For a specific if arbitrary example: I don't think Facebook values privacy (or YouTube free speech) but that's a side effect of their primary objective. Maybe it's a distinction without a difference, but it sure feels more sinister when the app is purpose built for privacy-invasion or opinion-manipulation.

And in Canada, corporations are not exactly actors which perform rigid functions outlined by the government.. the liberals, who are currently in power, don’t have party members sitting at the top of companies whose function is to literally oversee compliance to liberal propaganda.

China isn’t quite as bad as western media makes them out to be, I’d argue that in many ways they have been improving and loosening up, but it’s silly to pretend that YouTube is no different than TikTok or that Amazon is no different than Alibaba.

So they actually have a good influence, redirecting marketing dollars for "marketing" ( since it looks good on the outside).

China doesn't care, they even block Winnie the Pooh.

You can’t pass legislation that makes another government open itself up to transparency though. That’s the fundamental difference

Also I wouldn't say that YouToube is controlled by an " fascist-lite corporate oligarchy". It something different then fascism, maybe even worse.

It's also off topic in that TikTok being banned doesn't mean YoutToube is better or shouldn't be banned. India just didn't have to fear a militaristic invasion of the US corporate oligarchy...

(6/100,000 in US VS <1/100,000 in China)

Maybe US has some problems on its own...

But one large difference is that they had a private army and used it to force through their ways in any non EU country.

It is not absurd to say that the East India Company did occupy India like a country would have occupied another country they won against in a war.

They where also one of the main driving force behind the Anglo-Chinese War (see Opium wars).

What do you think PRISM and Five Eyes are? It is my experience that people who bring them up as huge evils have no idea what they are. They typically think that PRISM allows the NSA to read anybody's email (as opposed to being an ingestion system for data collected by the FBI) and that Five Eyes allows governments to indirectly spy on their own citizens, both of which are ridiculous ideas that are legally impossible.

By analogy you're basically equating tortute in order to prevent the detonation of a bomb to torture in order to detonate a bomb.

Yes, ethically all sides are compromised but as things stand they are by no means all the same.

Also, no one included SA as part of the West.

There is a reason why I used the word hadwaveingly.

And yet China manages to fail this low bar stunningly. To the point that they are running actual concentration camps for Muslims. Something no Western government has done, and the last one to do finished paying reparations to the victims 4 years ago, 70 years after it happened.

PRC corporations have a history of behaving in a mistrustful manner, combined with their obligations to the PRC State which treats its citizens as subjects, and sometimes not even its citizens, but anybody of Chinese descent, PRC corporations absolutely should be singled out and treated with mistrust. Our corporations have the obligation to turn a profit for their shareholders and sometimes that even means entering into a contract with the government, but theirs also have the obligation to advance the interests of the State. Dual mandates, even when not initially at odds with each other, often eventually come into conflict with each other, and State-owned or controlled corporations often don’t even have the profit incentive but are instead subject to politics. See also: the American corporations Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for examples of why they’re a bad idea, although their enterprises are domestic.

This is off topic but since you brought it up, we’re not the free speech absolutists that we believe we are. What we took issue with specifically was the idea of a central government regulating speech, assembly, the press and the establishment of churches. We still had established churches for quite some time, but they were governed by the States, not the United States. Let me quote you the First Amendment:

> Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Everything you really need to know is in the first five words. It’s a prohibition on Congress, not a grant of rights, and this would later come to be incorporated against the States as well such that their legislatures have the same restrictions. The reason this amendment exists at all was 1. To quell dissent from the Anti-Federalists which campaigned against the Constitution in the ratification conventions and 2. Because then and now, we’re a nation of dissenters. Many of the people that migrated from Europe to the United States were religious dissenters or penal colonists living in exile. I don’t know to what degree you studied the Huguenots in French history, but they made a few attempts to establish themselves, each time French politics seeking their resupply attempts after the initial landing, before receiving a land grant in what is now Brooklyn, and then was part of the New Netherlands.

This is another slippery slope and Covid-19 will increase censorship further. Indeed India by censorship legitimize the censorship regimes around the world (including China).

Been working with Internet since it's early years in 1991 and hope it remains free. But it seems less and less likely given every country wants to create it's own Internet, as it became important for being in power.

I'm not surprised you're being downvoted as I've tried to make this point with American friends before and gotten the same reaction 10/10 times.

To use a very topical example: in other jurisdictions outside of the US, racism is a crime, and speaking out in favor of it or discriminating against someone verbally is not protected by free speech.

In fact, jurisdictions outside of the US often do not even have a definition for the "right to free speech" – it's obvious that you can say whatever you want.

It just so happens that by saying some of those things you may be doing something illegal, not unlike how threatening someone isn't a protected action in the US. So it's not so much a matter of censorship, but one of limits to rights. Every right has certain limitations, and free speech isn't absolute, be it in America or elsewhere.

In France, censorship is a real problem for most intellectuals and individual citizens . Assa Traoré, the leading personality protesting against police violence has been repeatedly sued. Charlie Hebdo, the satiric newspaper that was attacked by terrorists who killed 12 people had been repeatedly sued. Eric Zemmour, a right-wing intellectual has also been condemned for speaking. Citizens who have placed a "Macronavirus" (concatenation of Macron, our president and Virus) sign in front of their house have spent a night at the local police station.

"Hate Speech" is a way too broad definition. And the censorship in France is getting bigger and bigger, notably since the highly-controversial Avia Law that forces Social Media platforms to censor "Hate Speech".

All these examples, have been made with non-evil governments. Our current president is a centrist and the last one was a leftist. Now, imagine what could happen when the far-right has to decide what "Hate Speech" is? I don't want to live that, and the Rassemblement National has been rising to dangerous levels.

We would be much better with constitutional and absolute free speech as in the US.

I was thinking more about companies that have actually had militaries, the Dutch East India Company being a prime example.

I think there’s a difference, but if you don’t think so, why?

For a bad actor, the cost-reward looks pretty low (if we assume a high initial investment like a couple hundred million dollars to approach our goal of data collection in a shorter timeframe), but for a government that is probably totally doable.

TikTok is bound to the CCP in a way that has no comparison in the west.

Consider a group of Neo-Nazis that want to stage a peaceful protest espousing their ideology. They get their permits and set out in a town square, chanting all kinds of anti-Semitic and white power nonsense. The question "are the Neo-Nazis being intolerant?" is a tricky one. On one hand, the answer is a resounding "yes," but on the other, they're the proverbial dog that's all bark and no bite.

Consider some local Jewish group that wants to stage a counter-protest. I'll give you the same question: are the Jewish protesters being intolerant? Again, it's a tricky one: they might argue they're being intolerant of the Neo-Nazis' intolerance (as I'm sure Popper would say).

The Neo-Nazis could, in turn, argue that they aren't being intolerant at all - they're just exercising their First Amendment rights. In fact, it's the Jewish counter-protesters that are the ones being intolerant! So we're just going around in circles debating who's being "intolerant," what "intolerant" means, and what it takes to go from "tolerant" to "intolerant" -- the classic sorites paradox[1]. This is all equivocation.

When we look at simpler tests like Mill's Harm Principle, the problem is simplified! If, the Neo-Nazis aren't harming anyone, they're free to do whatever they please -- as are the Jewish counter-protesters. Harm is a lot easier to wrap one's head around than "tolerance," so that's why I think it's a much more palatable litmus test.

[1] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/sorites-paradox/

>Violence used to curb violence is peace. Peace used to ignore violence is violence.

So an eye for an eye, eh? And if I use my eye to look away, I also deserve to lose it? I think you are a dangerous fellow. I'd sooner allow someone to say some mean things on the internet than let someone like you ever get into a position of power.

I personally had to come up with arguments to justifiably censor people to stop the sub I became a part of, from becoming more of a chess pool.

I was a card carrying member of the market place of ideas/ free speech camp till 12-13 years ago, at which point it was clearer to me that giving free speech to certain groups was the same as allowing prions to proliferate in the food chain.

Which is why stronger moderation was required to reverse the descent into madness - it worked.

The people who were hateful bigots were ejected and made their own forums, where they promised never to ban dissenting voices.

Sure enough, they too started banning voices because

1) they weren’t there for free speech in the first place, just for indoctrination.

2) free speech meant that They became petri dishes for even more extreme material and eventually had to be banned or risk getting the entire forum/subreddit removed.

————

I’d love alternate interpretations for it, if possible, but the experience from these multiple natural experiments show that letting malicious Machiavellian actors on your platform will result in the abuse of normal users and the tolerance of the system.

I am wary of his claims too.

Economic expansion is slightly lesser degrading than border expansion.

You may bankrupt a man, he will sulk and move on, but if you occupy his land, he will lash out.

You should read about China's antics in African countries.

https://qz.com/on/china-in-africa/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Reed_Bank_incident

"On 13 June 2019, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman pronounced the incident and "ordinary maritime accident".[10] The following day, the Chinese Embassy in Manila released a statement via Facebook claiming that a Chinese fishing boat, Yuemaobinyu 42212, "was berthed near Reed Bank when it was suddenly besieged by 7 or 8 Filipino fishing boats". In attempting to evade the Filipino boats, the Chinese vessel's lightning grid cable dragged into the Filipino boat's pilothouse, causing the boat to tilt and founder.[11] This Facebook post however, was later deleted.[12]

China released a revised statement on 18 June 2019, this time omitting the narrative that Yuemaobinyu 42212 had been besieged by 7 or 8 Filipino fishing boats. The statement referred to the incident as an "accidental collision" between fishing boats and offered sympathies to the Filipino fishermen.[13]

In August 2019 Chen Shiqin, the president of the Guangdong Fishery Mutual Insurance Association sent a letter to the Philippines apologizing for one of its member's ships sinking F/B Gem-Ver and subsequently abandoning its crew.[14] It was initially reported that the apology was accepted, but this was later refuted by the Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs.[15]"

The initial reaction to the incident certainly looks like bullying. What would you call it?

>>Speaking of state victims, here's a fun fact - India rounded up all of its ethnic Chinese residents (including Indian citizens) and put them into an internment camp for 5 years with no apology or compensation.

There was an actual war going on at that time. There is a perception in India that China backstabbed the Indian prime minister of that day. I am fairly certain not one person in China would agree.

Isn't that exactly what USA did to its Japanese citizens during World War II? Is that supposed to prove anything one way or another? Yes, during war lots of ugly things happen. But that's why nobody likes to go to war, isn't it? The first casualty of war is the truth.

>WhatsApp is owned by Facebook, whose main social media service has been blocked in China since 2009.[208] In September 2017, security researchers reported to The New York Times that the WhatsApp service had been completely blocked in China.[209][210]

>According to Time, Sarsenbek Akaruli, 45, a veterinarian and trader from Ili, Xinjiang, was arrested in Xinjiang on November 2, 2017. As of November 2019, he is still in a detention camp. According to his wife Gulnur Kosdaulet, Akaruli was put in the camp after police found the banned messaging app WhatsApp on his cell phone. Kosdaulet, a citizen of neighboring Kazakhstan, has traveled to Xinjiang on four occasions to search for her husband but could not get help from friends in the Communist Party of China. Kosdaulet said of her friends, "Nobody wanted to risk being recorded on security cameras talking to me in case they ended up in the camps themselves."[211]

Are they still putting people in concentration camps for having an app on their phone?

I don't think any substantial shift will happen in near future.

FTFY.

Think about the "special relationship" among the UK/US that is (definitely was) primarily based on values.

The Saudis are a pragmatic ally, not a values-based one. Both exist.

Defeatism around something so critically important to the success of a country isn't a plan.

Any government is only as good as the trust people place in it. A trusted government invites trust-worthy candidates, is held to a higher standard of transparency, etc. If you want a government that you can trust, you may want to write to your congress-people and ask, for instance, that they ban corporate funding of elections (through those ridiculous dinners), Super PACs, etc. By the people, for the people, after all.

https://www.ybw.com/vhf-marine-radio-guide/warning-dont-get-...

You almost got it. We do indeed need to make it harder to spy on people. Not doing anything is not the better option right now.

https://www.lawfareblog.com/beijings-new-national-intelligen...

All Chinese companies are completely at the mercy of CCP. No two ways about it. If tomorrow a War does break out between India and China, then the CCP can utilize these apps to spread propaganda to influence Indian public against the Government. Foreign interference is grounds for strengthening National Security. And this ban is not from the Government alone. Indians have literally been demanding a boycott of Chinese apps and goods for well over a year now! So it is actually the Government which has acted late!

You can read more about it here: https://www.thequint.com/tech-and-auto/tech-news/tiktok-app-...

It is not easy to get an app rating to go down from 4.9/5 to 1.3 within few days on Google Play Store when it has close to 1.5 billion downloads. You can imagine the anger among the Indian public.

Aadhaar has data like DOB, PAN, Address, Passport details which can be used for identity theft etc. It's a nightmare once it happens to anyone.

"Imagine if US.app and China.app were both spyware"

But India only banned the China spyware and left the US spyware roam free. If they truly cared about spyware, many other apps do similar stuff, scooping just as much data.

Unfair to who?

Whether I agree with it or not (I don't). China gets to have it's cake and eat it too. Big win for China, wouldn't you say?

If everyone else is willing to leave the cake on the table, It's perfectly fair for China to have it if you ask me.