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Comment by lightgreen | Hacker News Reader

There’s a quite a large difference between Google spying and China spying. When Google “spies”, users get more relevant ads. When China spies, people get into “Vocational Education and Training Centers” and other bad things happen.

Chinese spying is like 10000 times worse in practice.

But in theory, when dealing in absolutes, there is no difference, both are spies.

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Let's be honest: Google has been known to be in bed with the NSA and other agencies as well. It's very disingenuous to pretend Google only serves you ads but has no relations to the US national intelligence community but Chinese apps do.

If you have some references to confirm your theory about Google and NSA, please share a link.

Otherwise it is just ZOG theory.

Also, the statement about “being in bed” is very vague and non informative.

Feigning ignorance doesn't make facts disappear.

This would be much more productive conversation if someone explained what they mean by Google being in bed with NSA and shared a link.

the difference is that the US is using spying to stop people from doing illegal things. China is using spying to silence/monitor anyone who disagrees with it's government.

Yes, both countries are definitely spying on people via social media apps. But what they're using it for is different.

Both governments use spying to stop people from doing things they made illegal in their countries.

I'm not here to argue the Chinese government is better than the US one. It's absolutely and unquestionably worse.

But from a perspective in Europe they're both foreign governments that I have no say in and that are not here for my best interest.

If you really have European interests at heart, you would be banning both American and Chinese apps to give room for your incumbents to rise.

I've made that argument a few hours ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23755863

>the difference is that the US is using spying to stop people from doing illegal things.

I don't think this is entirely accurate...

> When Google “spies”, users get more relevant ads.

Not always about ads. Remember Cambridge Analytica data scandal.

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