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Comment by lazyeye | Hacker News Reader

Sidenote: Why does the west allow China to run a social media app like Tiktok globally whilst China itself blocks all external apps within its own borders?

Arguing that if we block them we are just as bad as them is niave to me. Like giving away all concessions in a trade negotiation to gain the high moral ground.

Seems like such an obvious question to me.

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>Why does the west allow China to run a social media app like Tiktok globally whilst China itself blocks all external apps within its own borders

I never understood why can CCTV, CGTN, Global Times etc. freely upload and stream on Youtube. Same level as RT or even worse.

inb4 "FrEe SpEEch" + "they are a private company and they can do whatever they want"

Not to disagree, but if we go down this direction, we need to then ask [1]:

- What about search? (Baidu vs Google or Bing)

- What about news agencies? (CGTN and Xinhua vs BBC and The New York Times and The Guardian)

- What about the Internet itself? (Great Firewall vs effectively none)

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_websites_blocked_in_ma... "List of websites blocked in mainland China"

What you're suggesting I think is a tit-for-tat strategy, which has game theoretic advantages, though I'm not sure what the eventual result would be in this case since it seems unlikely that China would allow Facebook, Twitter, NYT, etc..

It would put some constraints on Chinese surveillance and influence operations.

I'm much more worried about USA and NSA than China. One is well known with murders around the world with support of it's populous.

This is precisely the way China would like us to view things. "Hey the US is worse, access for China should be open slather.."

I can't imagine a similar kind of view (China bad!) doing much for your career in China.

This might be a reason why China wins....

Agreed, they probably laugh at us from time to time and rightfully so.

Because some people see multiculturalism and melting pot environments as a good thing that improves society by moving our own culture forward. From this position mirroring the behavior would make no sense because the solution is misguided and self-harming.

China are doing it and by all objective accounts are doing very well.

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