Indian government blocks access to forty-three mobile apps

How did you arrive to this analysis of his comments?

no im not saying that at all. i said what i said, you drew a simplistic conclusion based on what i said which fit your own narrative: "but I think giving the rest of what Modi does this would be more cynically down by the Indian government than you make it out to be."

not sure what any of that had to do with what i said, i was not trying to make out anything. i was simply stating that something that can be added to this perspective regarding OPs post, is that there are simultaneous forces at play. you do understand that two things can happen at the same time right? one does not negate another?

Yes, I remember the 80s, and the USSR was one of those things you just assumed would be around for the foreseeable future, like marijuana prohibition (though for that one there was more of an inkling of possibility given more time). What you can say "within reason" depends on what you think everyone else thinks you can say, so equilibria are both really stable and subject to surprising flips when they finally tip over -- sort of like digital logic.

on small scale, consistently ignore and boycott all attempts by governments to do so. They are not allmighty, they cannot place an armed cop behind every single citicen. If you are in a country that has some functioning democratic institutions, you may also try using them

are you sure that would happen? Make no mistake, I get that Western powers do have cultural and economic agendas (McDonald republics and such). But if you look at Japan and South Korea, they didn't really have significant protests or any "installed leaders".

Anti-CCP propaganda like rule of law, free elections, not having a dictator run the country, right to clean air and clean water. That propaganda sounds extremely dangerous to the first-degree relatives of CCP becoming billionaires off the working masses. I live in a western city, full of 18 year old students driving Porsche's, whose parents are in the CCP. Every time I see that, I feel bad for the peasants in the countryside toiling away in the countryside.

This move is less about muslims and more about countering china's recent aggression in the border as pointed out in other comment. Chinese are occupying sizable Indian land since the pandemic broke and has been involved in unprovoked aggression in the border. This move is more of a soft ball approach to counter those aggression.

While this may be the case, the Indian government was happy to turn a blind eye to the situation in Xinjiang till recently, when relations with China were good. Now that relations have soured, India is keen to highlight every stain on China's record.

That's a very loose analogy.

> What is with programmers and their utter failure to understand an analogy, is it their literal mind? Is it the lack of socialization when growing up?. "Data is the new oil" just means that it is an important economical and political asset, that's it

“Data is the new oil” is used by Reliance, an oil company. It may be you who isn’t thinking deeply enough.

The analogy is bad because oil has a specific geopolitical history. That history was caused, in part, by oil’s nature as an extracted nonperishable commodity. Opining on policy with respect to consumer data, a non-extractive, perishable differentiated good, with reference to oil reserves is misguided. Oil also has a specific national history in India. One that involved the state investing in, protecting and buying through domestic middlemen.

“Data is the new oil” is a different message from e.g. “data is the new gold.” It advocates porting a specific regulatory regime to India’s digital economy. One featuring politically-connected national champions.

It’s such a common HN trope now, I’ve stopped even noticing it unless I’m looking fit it:

User 1: A is like B

User 2: Wrong! Here is a very detailed description of why A is not literally and exactly B, therefore A is not like B.

You can find this pattern over and over in the comments section. If you ever want to generate a giant tree of pedantic, nitpicky responses here, simply post a car analogy, and let the programmers do the rest of the writing.

If you look at the list of apps, pretty much all of them requires some kind of back-end. Even if its 100% FOSS, the back end will cost money. Therefore someone has to pay for it somehow and someone will profit.

Its obvious to their best interest that the one that profit is an Indian company, with ties to the government.

For a start, your home address, Cc info. Your inside layout of the house - how amenable you are to communist propaganda by looking at the indoors of the house. On the other hand, If you are govt official or person working in defense or research - they could easily bug your house while you are there and get daily briefings. I am not saying lalamove does this - but it is a possibility, think about why US and UK are so hell bent on banning huewei. Every country has a right to secure its border. To be fair, china is not exactly a warm neighbor too . China attacked india in 1962 and recently occupied leh and ladakh region. Tibet has been occupied by china. Taiwan, Hongkong have serious concerns with china's influence. On the other hand, you will find tons of companies like lalamove in india .

One, i for one would not welcome having an ethno-centric authoritarian state spying on me. I certainly wouldn't be happy if say the Nazis Germany or the stasi were spying in india. Your response is very similar to "I've got nothing to hide" argument for government spying.

Second, just because lalamove didn't do anything ontoward for you, doesn't mean that chinese companies don't spy on anyone. Maybe you should look at the rich history of china's industrial espionage, or how US and Soviet Russia spied on each other during the cold war.

Third, this is part of a economic and trade war against china. Maybe you should read about how an authoritarian state works, and how subjugated people get treated by oppressors. Go look at tibet, taiwan, Hong Kong, uyghur, ww2 poland etc etc.

I'll add a final point. I have found most such arguments made by people who hate the current indian government, which is indeed a bad one. But people are so hell bent on opposing the government that they even speak positives of entities that are against india, like china. Food for thought for you, what would your reaction be if it was the indian government doing similar things of industrial espionage, economic war, and spying. Would you say that modi was welcome to see that you ordered furniture from ikea?

Not necessarily dangerous.

1930s Germany didn't hate the japanese, despite them being very different from them (appearance, culture). Instead, they hated the German/european jews, who were basically visually indistinguishable.

A world peace as dictated by the US? No thanks.