Comment by filleduchaos | Hacker News Reader

Comment by filleduchaos | Hacker News Reader

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I consider things like the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians in the Middle East or the treatment of children in US border camps to be "areas that really matter". For some very strange reason, most Americans I have spoken to find it unreasonable to treat companies like, say, Github or Microsoft with the same level of vitriol that is currently being leveled at TikTok for being affiliated however tenuously with the CCP.

My career would pretty much be a non-starter if I refused to use such companies' services for just as solid (if not more solid) ideological reasons as the ones that are apparently driving y'all to approve of bans/other boycotts of TikTok. As a pretty much neutral third party I've come to the quite logical conclusion that the outrage is largely hypocritical theatre and is thus not really much of my concern.

(It is worth nothing that there are Americans who for instance pressure Github to drop their ICE contract. As far as I can see they're a minority without the influence to make a difference.)

> For some very strange reason, most Americans I have spoken to find it unreasonable to treat companies like, say, Github or Microsoft with the same level of vitriol that is currently being leveled at TikTok for being affiliated however tenuously with the CCP.

It's because this is the CCP: https://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/20/world/asia/chinas-new-lea...:

> Communist Party cadres have filled meeting halls around China to hear a somber, secretive warning issued by senior leaders. Power could escape their grip, they have been told, unless the party eradicates seven subversive currents coursing through Chinese society.

> These seven perils were enumerated in a memo, referred to as Document No. 9, that bears the unmistakable imprimatur of Xi Jinping, China’s new top leader. The first was “Western constitutional democracy”; others included promoting “universal values” of human rights, Western-inspired notions of media independence and civic participation, ardently pro-market “neo-liberalism,” and “nihilist” criticisms of the party’s traumatic past.

Add to that practices like the Xinjiang cultural destruction/forced labor camps, the dystopian nightmare of what's happening in Hong Kong, and a domestic surveillance apparatus that makes the people who complain about Stingrays look like whiny babies, which all show that it's not just talk.

The US and Western companies like Microsoft definitely have issues, but they don't hold a candle to the CCP's.

And I wouldn't count TikTok/ByteDance's affiliation with the CCP as "tenuous." How much power to say "no" do you think they have?

America's involvement in the Middle East and Afghanistan are "not just talk". Drone strikes are not just talk. Its treatment of undocumented immigrant children at its borders is not just talk. Pointing as many fingers as you can at China does not erase America's own atrocities - what, exactly, does the civilian death toll from America's manufactured conflicts struggle to hold a candle to? How, exactly, is the violent approach that the US has taken to the protests currently going on within its borders so much less of a dystopian nightmare than in Hong Kong?

> And I wouldn't count TikTok/ByteDance's affiliation with the CCP as "tenuous."

Github clearly, demonstrably, directly supports ICE's operations with its contract services.

Microsoft clearly, demonstrably, directly supports the US military's operations with its contract services.

What clear, demonstrable, direct support does TikTok give the CCP that I can point to as a reason why I disdain it, the way I can point to Github's ICE contract or Microsoft's JEDI contract? I would actually be quite interested in evidence of such a thing.

Why am I expected to swallow my revulsion for the American war machine and use Github's or Microsoft's services, but not do the same for TikTok?

> How much power to say "no" to them do you think they have?

This...is not the gotcha that you might think it is. Even if they're implicated in harm, ByteDance at least has the dubious excuse of being compelled to do so by the state. Github, Microsoft and co voluntarily choose to (and even compete to!) be a part of the American state's apparatus of violence because of money of all things - that really, really does not translate into me having more respect and/or trust for them than for ByteDance.

> America's involvement in the Middle East and Afghanistan are "not just talk".

Huh? I didn't say that. I thought it was pretty clear when I said "talk" I was referring to Document Number 9.

> How, exactly, is the violent approach that the US has taken to the protests currently going on within its borders so much less of a dystopian nightmare than in Hong Kong?

Because the dystopian part is the sense that the curtain is coming down there and it's all over, not anything to do with the quantity of bullets or tear gas. What's going on in the US feels more like a step on the long, dirty road of making progress. It was good that the police acted against protesters the way they did, because that behavior wasn't new, and it reinforced the protester's points and lead to a tipping point in public opinion.

> What clear, demonstrable, direct support does TikTok give the CCP that I can point to as a reason why I disdain it, the way I can point to Github's ICE contract or Microsoft's JEDI contract? I would actually be quite interested in evidence of such a thing....

> This...is not the gotcha that you might think it is. Even if they're implicated in harm, ByteDance at least has the dubious excuse of being compelled to do so by the state.

ByteDance's willingness or unwillingness is not my actual concern, and I honestly don't really care about that. What I do care about is the fact that they're under the control of an organization where Document Number 9 reflects official policy goals, and TikTok's popularity gives that organization potential capabilities here that it shouldn't have.

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