As a non-american, we don't really have a choice of using a "native" social network that only has interference from our own government.
Also, hopefully soon you will: https://urbit.org/
- IDs stop the spam problem and give people control over something that keeps its reputation (and they're cheap).
- Federated systems normally suck because administering the servers and keeping decentralized versions in sync is hard. Urbit's design fixes this.
- Encrypted by default, ability to be as easy to run as FB (eventually, not right now). Peer to peer with the address space and key issues solved from first principles.
- Stability over long time horizons due to design (goal being indefinite), the urbit abstraction layer doesn't change and state can always be recomputed - changing pieces are implemented via jets to communicate with whatever underlying OS is doing the normal stuff.
It's a clever design and solves a lot of problems with modern computing, people often dismiss it out of hand because Yarvin's politics are stupid (he's no longer involved in the project and hasn't been for some time). Peter Thiel's Trump support was stupid too, but that doesn't mean he doesn't get a lot of other stuff right.
You are correct that China cannot project power in the sense that they can't easily invade a country or level shattering economic sanctions but they have proven themselves quite capable of targetting individuals in other nations both online and in the real world.
Either way, there is a moral imperative to prevent China from gaining the ability to project power the way the US can. The US being able to project that kind of power is shitty, and the two entities being able to do that is even shittier.
I wonder how many non-Americans think two entities being able to do it is better than one, because at least they can counter-balance each other.
Not just with force; I was recently thinking about how the US during the cold war tried to be "nice" to the "third world" to keep them out of the "sphere of influence" of the Soviet Union. Currently China is trying to project it's "soft power" that way too to get less developed countries into it's patronage, but the US isn't really doing that at the moment (see for instance approaches to distributing covid vaccine...).
I (who is a usa citizen) personally am not really sure which is preferable, only one super-power, or two. Either way the world is in for a rough ride.
At least in the U.S., we have the intent of moral fiber permeating through our founding document, and probably at least half the population still fervently believes in these principles or tries to behave as though they matter.
China doesn't give a fuck. Their government is a communist dictatorship, and their sole concern is the expansion of their power through force.
Those who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.
It's so hard to take you seriously when you make claims like this. Nobody cares about your founding documents, folks look at what the US does. And what it does is send drone strikes to hit schools, it bullies countries into doing what it wants without offering anything in return, etc. I genuinely cannot currently see a worse superpower.
With gratitude as a dominant force in ones's life, one is able to step back and see pictures other than what one wishes to see. One is able to stop buying into hysteria.
It is sad that some politicians use military as their play tool for nefarious purposes. Biden sent troops into Syria almost immediately upon assuming his current position. Reprehensible.
But... this doesn't apply to looking at China, only to looking at the US, for some reason?
This is a very confusing conversation, you seem to be switching the parameters of what we're talking about.
We started out talking about the general dangers of a superpower in the world, especially to people not citizens of that superpower. Is that still what we're talking about? Are the purported invention of air conditioning or the internet in the US relevant to that conversation? Is "gratitude as a dominant force in one's life" relevant to it? How does "gratitude as a dominant force in your life" effect your view of China? How should it effect the view of someone in a country getting significant investment or foreign aid (or cough vaccines) from China? Are you asking us to have a different attitude toward evaluating the danger of the US as a superpower to the rest of the planet vs evaluating the danger of China as a superpower to the rest of the planet? With one we should center gratitude and avoid hysteria, but with the other we should.... center hysteria and avoid gratitude?
Other countries don't use social media much, because they are culturally just not as interested in it.
There's a few countries where you can't really avoid being on any social network and that social network is not domestic, but those you can probably count on one hand. Off the top of my head I can just come up with Australia, India and Indonesia.
I do not agree with Chinese stance on democracy or human rights but I admire their willingness to play by their own rules. Not opening their markets and rolling out the red carpet for Silicon valley was wise.
I disagree. People will (somewhat) expect you to have a WhatsApp in many European countries, but hardly anyone will expect you to use Facebook.
At least in my circles Facebook is a wasteland. Many people haven't even posted anything in years, and if I was trying to reach anyone via Facebook I'd settle in for a long wait - until they check it in a month or two.
You won't notice it if you just open Facebook, because Facebook will fill your feeds with people who are active, but when I go through my list of contacts there it's obvious less than one in five are still actively using it.
I don't claim total knowledge of the situation everywhere, but I do keep in contact with people of a lot of different countries.