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Comment by newbie578 | Hacker News Reader

You are forgetting one major point. You cannot equate the US and China. I can go on TikTok and make a video making a joke about the US president and nothing will happen to me. However if I am in China and make a TikTok video about Winnie The Pooh, I am going to end up in jail.

So yeah, it is not the same for CCP to have data on me or NSA.

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If we've learned nothing else the last 4 years (last few decades really, but the last 4 years really hits home), it's that so much of what we take for granted about the US being supposedly safer or having a saner, more hands-off government is based far more on norms of behavior than actual legal protections for anyone, or legal guardrails that prevent whoever's in charge from abusing their power.

So you've got a point, but nowadays it's like you're comparing the risk of crossing a street blindfolded on a highway during the day vs. a 4-lane expressway in the middle of the night. One is a lot safer than the other but let's not pretend that either one is rational or advisable.

On the other hand, reporting on coronavirus in Florida can get you arrested. https://www.npr.org/2020/12/08/944200394/florida-agents-raid...

And of course there's HN favorite wikileaks...

> The search warrant was authorized as investigators tried to learn who sent a chat message to a planning group on an emergency alert platform, urging people to speak out publicly about Florida's coronavirus strategies.

> The message stated, "it's time to speak up before another 17,000 people are dead," according to member station WFSU, citing the probable cause affidavit.

> As the agents enter, one points their weapon upstairs. Jones says the agents pointed a gun at her and at her children.

It's hard to convince me that we're the "good guys" when we're pointing guns at children because their mother spoke out against the official government position.

I'm sure she'll get off without a conviction after draining her life's savings to defend herself. Hopefully it launches her career, if there's still a democracy left. At least they didn't execute her.

She wasn't arrested, but they seized her computers.

>However if I am in China and make a TikTok video about Winnie The Pooh, I am going to end up in jail.

you don't actually, people shitpost on the Chinese intranet like crazy. Some social media company might try to filter what you post but we're not in Mao's era.

Also it's kind of circular and meaningless to elevate the US above China simply by holding up American values. Someone in China could say the same, "hey look over there they can openly mock the president and spread conspiracies on the internet, they've turned into idiots, you can't equate China with the US!"

Tell that to Jack Ma.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/06/technology/china-ant-grou...

yeah if you're one of the richest people in China don't bait the CCP and financial regulators before doing the largest IPO in the nation. That's different from someone posting memes on the internet.

Well, you do have to give China’s financial regulators credit here.

Jack Ma’s Ant Financial was doing some really shady business practices.

Like keeping essentially 0% money on their books for collateral.

And they filed to go public, in 2 months. Which is incredibly fast, that nobody had the time to review what their business was all about.

And even when they got approval at the lower levels, the higher levels didn’t get to think it through yet. So they decided to pause Ant’s IPO at the last minute. With the requirement that they have 30% of the money held back as collateral.

The Ant business model had a serious possibility of destabilizing the entire financial system of China, and possibly the world.

Nobody really cared when Ant was private. Make all the money you want. But being a public company is a whole different ball game.

I think China dodged a bullet here. It’s better to be safe, than sorry.

"The Ant business model had a serious possibility of destabilizing the entire financial system of China, and possibly the world.

Nobody really cared when Ant was private. Make all the money you want. But being a public company is a whole different ball game."

Can you elaborate why its ok for a private company to destabilize the the entire financial system of China, and possibly the world? Why is it bad when its a public company?

Look at the insane leverage in Ant's personal loan services.

Jack Ma is not punished because of his speech. His speech is a reflection of his perceived punishment of "innovation" which is really just a amplified version of the financial insanity already happened in US.

And Jack Ma actually can challenge the main stream rhetoric, can you say that 911 at least in part was a result of US foreign policy?

To be honest I feel more comfortable with China having my data than the US. For one thing I’m a non citizen living in the US. I have no idea what data the US government has on me or how they’ll use it against me. We’ve also all seen the hostility the US has shown towards immigrants lately. Where as China has very limited ability to impact my life. Maybe US citizens has more protection than I do, but from what we’ve all seen last decade or so I wouldn’t feel very comfortable even if I was a citizen.

The same act is being committed regardless of whether it's TikTok or Facebook: collecting as much information on the general population as possible. If you can stop this from happening in the first place, it doesn't matter if the CCP or the Trump Administration or the Biden Administration or a future Putin administration want to use that information (ie. for political reasons), it won't exist on company servers for them to use.

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