As TikTok grows, so does suspicion
economist.com
economist.com
In my opinion the application should be shut down as soon as possible, but there are many lessons to learn from it. And most of them have little to do with technology.
There is too much sharing, IMO, without a doubt. That being said, they are not near synonymous as TikTok is.
Data regulation, privacy, influence through exposure are real issues worldwide. Tiktok has a raised profile due to its closeness with a governing state body.
At least governments respond to their people (especially in the case of democracies, much less so for authoritarian governments, but they still have to worry a minimum to avoid revolution). Corporations respond to profit only, everything else be damned.
> especially in the case of democracies, much less so for authoritarian governments, but they still have to worry a minimum to avoid revolution
What do you think is more likely to still be relevant in 100 years from now, China or Facebook? I think a 'revolution' is more likely to affect Facebook than China
I wonder. If your product is used to recruit soldiers, spread propaganda, disseminate hate speech, and organize and deploy said concentration camps or their equivalent, are you liable and culpable? If you've known for years and done next to nothing about sectarian violence and genocide, are you still blameless? When moderation could have been hired and trained for an immaterial amount of profit? SEA wages are notoriously low in dollar terms. Poorly implemented machine learning models don't suffice to halt genocide. Greed, ignorance, malevolence, sloth, arrogance. Take your pick.
https://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory/kill-facebook-fail...
https://www.globalwitness.org/en/campaigns/digital-threats/r...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebo...
However government knowing about your private stuff is
Homophobic governments shouldn’t know about gay peoples privacy
Christian governments shouldn’t know about women’s abortion
The government can help, it shouldn’t get in the way — which is very much what can do under a dictatorship
It is not that government = bad.
It is that government having data which allows for influence of people == destruction of democracy as the government is supposed to reflect the will of people rather than the other way around. It is an incredibly short path to: autocracy, oligarchies, dictatorships, etc.
Yes they're separate actors, but programs like PRISM suggest that they're still on a very short leash
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-fbi-icloud-exclusiv...
So much of this framing however is being pushed/forced/rulings or judgement driven decisions.
You get the sense that TikTok is like "cool, yeah, we'll add that to our roadmap"
That being said they are also highly disparate with a variety of motivations and are incredibly hard to whip (using this the way its used in congress) into directions that are nuanced. Things like "we wanna make more money" "regulations/unions are bad" ofc oligarchs in the US manage to see eye to eye on, but anything further nuanced - that class discipline - is harder to achieve in the US than China
Wasn't everyone freaking out just a few years ago when Russian government was manipulating people with political groups on Facebook? And that's even with Facebook's earnest effort to prevent these things. With this company, there's a direct tie in with an adversarial government.
Yes, ideally I don't want anyone to have my data, but lets not pretend Zuck and CCP are the same thing
> Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel #coronavirus (2019-nCoV) identified in #Wuhan, #China.
The CCP is at least very indirectly accountable to their own people and holds their country's long term interests in mind even if they do not care about the people and hold the usual abhorrent views of authoritarians towards minorities. This is extremely evil, but pales in comparison to an unaccountable corporate entity with what little human oversight it has steered by a combination of narcissists, neofuedalists and literal apocalypse cultist theocrats.
Can try to instigate hate
Extremism
Cause democracy to fall
Make people feel hopeless in a possible future war, and just give up before trying so they can achieve their goals with ease
“Lawful” or “chaotic” relate to whether the character embrace order.
Yes, if by everyone you mean Americans, because their country was the target. There are many countries where media has been manipulated by the CIA, too.
"Currently, China remains the primary source of fentanyl and fentanyl-related substances trafficked through international mail and express consignment operations environment, as well as the main source for all fentanyl-related substances trafficked into the United States. Seizures of fentanyl sourced from China average less than one kilogram in weight, and often test above 90 percent concentration of pure fentanyl."
Presumably, if the CCP wanted to do so, they could put an end to the groups shipping this deadly substance into the United States.
Presumably, if the United States wanted to do so, they could put an end to the groups shipping this deadly substance from the China.
Just changed the wording a little to show the bias in this sentence. Why do think China would be more successful than the U.S. in prohibiting illegal drugs?
This is assuming manufacturing is being done by large groups... but it usually is. Manufacturing tiny amounts is much much harder than importing tiny amounts.
> As a non-US, non-Chinese citizen, is there something that makes TikTok espionage and Facebook not? Or is it just "china scary"?
There's problems with US big tech and TikTok but the case against TikTok is easier to push through.
There's nothing wrong with patching the first of many holes in your roof and starting with the one easiest to get to.
---------
My primary emotional and ethical driver is to point out my own government (the US) not living up to its marketing material, but it doesn't mean I wouldn't support eliminating a vector for another (openly autocratic) government to meddle with my country as well.
Edit: distinguish my reply to prior comment from my ramblings about my reply.
It is surprisingly that simple.
While the US and the western governments have their issues, they are still largely law abiding. China, however, is not. Additionally, under Xi, it has become more authoritarian and more willing to undo the rules based order that has someone kept the world somewhat sane since WWII.
I don’t know why anyone would be afraid to say this.
The U.S and China are entangled in ways you cant imagine.
Rules were made to be broken!
Edit: profile I am replying to has the following in their about section: "about: I play music and I code videogames. I live in Brighton, UK." so assuming the "hi from venezuela" was sarcastic.
Has there ever been a lasting trade embargo that was based solely on moral and ethical grounds?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Che_Guevara#/media/File:CheinM...
More so: Russian Federation != Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China%E2%80%93Venezuela_relati...
What was once a beautiful nation is now rife with crime, even the military of all things is told not to have cell phones out by stop lights because somebody will swing on by on a motorcycle and hijack the phone. From the darn military! Still surprised they get away with it.
I also remember hearing from a relative that Chavez would basically bring Cuban doctors over from Cuba.
China has supported violent Juntas in Myanmar, and Sudan. It has essentially performed a coup in Hong Kong. And of course it loves supplying weapons to latin countries via Norinco. And it's doing economic damage and putting more of those countries in debt, just like it took Hambantota International Port from Sri Lanka.
Both are racking up kills elsewhere in Africa too.
Links please? Saying nothing / neutral Verbal approval Material support All these can be interpreted as supporting military Juntas.
And military Juntas are not necessarily bad. For example, SK was developed effectively through a Military Junta government. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Republic_of_Korea
> It has essentially performed a coup in Hong Kong.
What is this? HK is part of China right?
> it loves supplying weapons to latin countries via Norinco.
Nothing special, China's aim is the largest weapon exporter.
> And it's doing economic damage and putting more of those countries in debt, just like it took Hambantota International Port from Sri Lanka.
This is shown to be a myth, as some other comments here suggested.
> Both are racking up kills elsewhere in Africa too.
What is this?
There have certainly been a bunch of opinion pieces expressing that opinion coming out at the same time. Which is incredibly weird, unless... oh right, opinions can be bought and China has a history of doing that.
Mystery solved I guess.
The case is that western media is so fixitated on negative coverage on China, so much so that any positive or neutral coverage will be seen as carefully manipulated campaign.
Every thread of China topic, here on HN, will see your type of comments consistently.
The real mystery is not that there is positive or neutral report on China.
The real mystery is why US people seem cannot use their brain on China topics...
Chinese media is state controlled, and no alternative is possible. If they wanted credible positive reporting, then they have only themselves to blame.
> There have certainly been a bunch of opinion pieces expressing that opinion coming out at the same time.
I was talking about English media. That's a reasonable assumption, since you are commenting on the HN comments, which is part of English media, and heavily influenced by mainstream English media, obviously.
You are an american or not is not relevant.
> If they wanted credible positive reporting, then they have only themselves to blame.
Wow.
Let's jail the SoB based on media reports. This is what you suggest, right?
"The only possible way to understand is by standing back in the stillness that lies underneath thinking and sees things as they really are. It's like watching hundreds of colors, each of them trying to persuade you it happens to be the most important one-then stepping back and seeing they all form a single rainbow. Thoughts in themselves are always leading to division and separation. But all thoughts, together, are a single whole." (from "Reality")
I'm not sure Imperial Japanese rule would be so much better, though.
Which is fairly tame in terms of securing geopolitical influence and enables more win-win arrangments. Especially with respect to Laos - a landlocked country with (to be blunt) zero long term development prospects. Laos per capital GDP growth has been on pace with booming Vietnam that has access to outsource manufacturing and maritime trade. Laos should be worse off than Cambodia that has 60% of current Laos per capita GDP. Even their largest export/growth sector - hydropower to Thailand is enabled by PRC (not to sound patronizing). PRC infra projects setup Laos to be the battery of region + rail connectivity for other exports = only real viable of short/medium term growth strategy for a undeveloped landlocked country with poor human development. Go look up gdp per capita trends of ASEAN since 2000 when PRC growth started blowing up, also LATM during same period. You'll be hard pressed to find any country whose per capita GDP increased by 8x like Laos. Many are luck with half that. As for societal changes on border regions that benefits from flow of migrant and economic development, that's what happens when countries get richer - things change. If you think that's a bad deal then I'm curious if you can find a better one, especially for a land locked country with no maritime access.
It is easy to look everything through the lens of GDP but it is a poor measure of healthiness of a society from sociological perspective.
> Just repeating "landlocked country" twenty times doesn't paint the clearest picture. ... >untapped mineral resource
Being landlocked is one of the major development traps, it's highly relevant. And the point is Laos is landlocked AND underdevelopped in both infra and human capita. They're not going to be Switzerland without generations of development, if ever. All those untapped resources can't be economically exported relative to sea trade... incidentally why PRC rail development in Laos also game changer. Improves economics of rare metals (gold, Laos other huge export) but less for bulk cargo like agriculture. Laos has zero prospect for being an ag-commodity export power. The most profitable specialty ag trade had export potential of something like 600M. There's simply a ceiling on how much ag can uplift, it's why largest growth sector in last 20 years is industry, which requires capital investments, for a poor country like Laos, it means FDI and period of upheaval caused by new wealth and modes of exploitation.
> never knew how to handle that
Yeah that's what happens to nouvel rich everywhere. That's a sign of development. Laos is not usefully connected to English sphere via geography... again they're landlocked and only large economic connector is PRC. If people want to make money therer it's only prudent to learn Chinese and which will increase integration, especially in border regions. Why would Laos look to rest of world when the fastest growing region is Asia? Learning English is one way street to being brain drained and losing your best.
> GDP but it is a poor measure of healthiness of a society
This is true, ergo why Xi prioritized correcting the excesses of Deng's unbalanced growth that had caused huge problematic culture shifts. Every country that's gone through rapid growth will need manage that transition. Per capita GDP is strongly correlated to Human Development Index for a reason, you need money to make a healthy, educated, productive society. At end of day Laos/PRC relationship enables Laos to have more omney than her geography would otherwise enable. It's not upper income but it's a path out of subsistence if managed properly by Vientiane, which they may absolutely fail at.
Perhaps on an internal level. But for those of us in third countries what matters is how they act outside their borders, and the US is doing considerably more dronestriking of their political enemies than China is.
(And even if you just look at domestic aspects, the relevant area is one of the exceptions. The NSA seems to be decoupled from any oversight - its leaders lie to congress with impunity, any attempts to hold them to account via the courts are dismissed...)
Who's acting outside of their borders again?
Most of these 'wanted' bases are wanted in the same way the subjects of any other protection racket want their opressor.
It may not be profitable for "the US" as an abstract whole, but the US is not a unitary entity; it's very profitable for the largest lobbying organisations in the US (Lockheed etc.).
It's generally both - they're getting both American and foreign taxpayers to pay for their stuff.
> And doesn't the foreign location usually make money from the base being there?
If you're only looking at the direct impact of the base, sure, it tends to mean there are a bunch of young American men with money to burn around (though they also tend to be a not entirely positive influence in terms of e.g. sexual assaults). But the full package of obligations that goes with it tends to add up to something that's costly for both sides, and the people with the supply contracts are the only real winners.
The american taxpayer only benefits insofar as they are goven crumbs so they do not revolt or use what little democratic control they have to reign in the beast.
From the point of view of the rest of the world, there is nothing really to distinguish the US from the CCP other than the CCP are slightly more forward thinking in some of their projects in terms of long term benefit to themselves and are (momentarily) more brutally authoritarian. On the US side the main downsides aee they're currently dominant and there is a real danger of the US being taken over by a literal apocalypse cult that seeks climate change as an end to seek rather than merely something to be ignored where possible as the current incumbents do.
Other than that, one imperialist is the same as another -- to some degree even for the other countries in the imperial core.
The USA extracts more benefit from having a base in Australia than they pay for it.
Furthermore, the US is waging economic war on half the world since I have memory of it, isn't it time the rest of the world starts to protect themselves?
That doesn't make it right. Ukrainians are scared right now, that's not the right mental state to take decisions that will trap you for decades or more into a state of subjection to the US.
Also I don't care wether they want or not, the US must not expand further or we're basically asking for them to rule the world even more then they're currently doing. Plus I know by experience Ukraine will be better off without US bases.
My country has several US bases and this makes us a target for any US enemy and at the same time makes us a puppet state, lacking any sovereignty especially when it comes to foreign politics. Ask most people in my country, they'll tell you the bases can burn to hell.
Those bases are not there to defend us, their role is that of an offensive platform. We have many nuclear weapons ready to launch in case Biden decides it's time to fuck up some population.
I feel my safety and wellbeing are actively compromised by having foreign military bases on our soil.
Plus the American soldiers hosted in our country committed violence and rape several times and this is all documented and confirmed by our courts. Those yankees can definitely and quickly go home.
I am from Eastern Europe and closer ties with US, although have a price, are the preferred option.
Soldiers should be judged accordingly, but it’s an incident and not US supported norm.
I think you don’t get sentiment from this part of the world.
I think the reason the US gets a pass in the international political zeitgeist is that it's motives serve a greater peace. In the past imperial powers have largely used their militaries to enrich their own mercantilist motives; the us has been the opposite, it has used trade and greed to bolster a security stance that has been positive for a lot of people (if you look at trade figures the beneficiaries of us-led trade globalization has mostly been other countries, ironically, mostly china, < 10% of us GDP is foreign trade).
Not to diminish the suffering of Latin American nations under us meddling, the pax Americana has directly brought peace to Europe which has basically been infighting since the beginning of time -- that's 450 million people that are not at each other's throats. Is that worth a Pinochet or two (Allende was no saint either), and bombing a few thousand innocent pashtuns, destabilizing iraq? I can't say, but at least I understand why people give the US a pass.
lol, PLEASE
The US Has Been at war 225 out of 243 years since 1776
Where does one even begin...
Wait, I don't even need to talk in conditionals. I Googled it and apparently it has indeed been done several times, and the results are what I expected.
https://brilliantmaps.com/threat-to-peace/
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/may/05/us-threat-demo...
By the way, those are countries near another warmonging superpower... What if you poll South America?
20 Years!
Edit: Downvotes, whats the best way to deal with colossal failure... pretend like it never happened. Afghanistan, huh? what are you talking about.
CIA helped in getting Lumumba and wanted to put a halt to his movement. They along with Belgian officers even tried killing him by poisoning his toothpaste.
CIA overthrew Mosaddegh in Iran which lead to where they are today in terms of an oppresive theocratic government.
And US military and CIA are acting as world police in Somalia.
The point is obvious to anyone even tangentially following the israel-palestine conflict: Israel is a close ally to the us and heavily supported by them in their brutal occupation of Palestine.
Yes sir! Will do sir! Thank you for improving the quality of discourse sir!! Where would we be without your guidance sir!
These are the results of people that have lived under a unipolar world and have forgotten the horrors of pre pax americana.
If anything, my point was the same but for people in Asia in regards to China/Russia.
Do you think that the answer to this question will be the same post Covid and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine?
And, in the same light, China’s increasingly threatening rhetoric against Taiwan?
THAT, and the fact that this conflict is being exported to other democratic countries is a threat to democracy, although not so much to World Peace.
2013 was before Russia's first hostilities against Ukraine and also before China started to flex their military muscles. Also, at that time, the Obama administration was involved in several wars as well as the use of drone warfare against their enemies elsewhere. I don't find it surprising that many would feel that the US was the greater threat at that time, even though the threat level overall was much lower at the time.
Trust me, Russia and especially China is a much bigger threat to democracy nowadays
And that's not a Godwin because the CCP's rhetoric these recent years is extremely racist and aggressive. They are feeding their population with a warped view of non-Han, non-Chinese people.
You may want to consult the so called 'global south' on that question who represents the majority of people on the planet and seems to have quite a different impression. Undoing America's 'rule based order' isn't a geopolitical threat to the world, it's a geopolitical threat to the US. Why would billions of people on earth be afraid of living in a world where their countries have actual influence? You may want to get used to the fact that you're not going to get to define what's 'sane' for everyone for much longer.
And I am from the global south, I don’t know anyone that thinks the US is a threat
China and Russia on the other hand, yes, very much
But it has happened
China tried with Vietnam but failed
Russia tried with Afghanistan but failed
France under Napoleon could do a lot of stuff in continental Europe
And the list goes on
This is absolutely untrue. The CIA operates in clear violation of both US and foreign law and flaunts it, and they suffer no consequences whatsoever.
The US is corrupt at the highest levels, with entire governmental organizations totally exempt from the laws that apply to everyone else.
The many shameful aspects of US foreign policy absolutely should be brought to light, but that doesn't mean retreating to defeatist nihilism. There can be something new under the sun, and US occupations of the past 40 years have been markedly different from previous empires. It's not enough progress as a society, but it is progress.
We dont all want to live in a theocratic bi-party corporatist paradise, crushed by personal loans to cure grandma s broken leg, to exgaerate a bit. I live in China and while I dislike the communists just as much as the next guy, I'm quite unsure what's so good about the US.
It's just as much a giant country blabbering all day long about how we should be their protectorate (I'm French), a lot like China...
But yeah let s not be afraid to say China, Xi in particular, are in an endless dictator trap, covering the crimes of the past with the crimes of the present. I just wouldnt put all my bets on the US evolving better just because God wrote their constitution or whatever else they think make them so virtuous.
> I don’t know why anyone would be afraid to say this.
Probably because it's not that they are afraid, they simply don't agree. For many people around the world, the US and Europe have inflicted far greater problems over the past 0-100 years.
If they've got to be under the thumb of some foreign power, they ought to choose the US over china or russia. At least in a democracy, there's ways to change the public opinion.
Yeah, who cares about the bad stuff 3-5-10-20 years in the past! All those US wars and coups are not applicable since the USA has turned into a bright, shiny fairy now!
"If they've got to be under the thumb of some foreign power, they ought to choose the US over china or russia."
Yeah, the US holding a gun to your head and saying: You are either with us or against us. Many nations want to make their own independent sovereign choice. Your diplomats actually use this language when they feel they can push folks around.
Russia: uses their natural resources as weapons, invaded Ukraine, supports dictatorship in Syria
China: embargoes anyone that dares to have a relationship with Taiwan or talks bad about the CCP, provokes Taiwan like crazy, likely will invade it in the next 10 years
This is just the recent stuff, China has invaded Vietnam and fought against UN coalition that was protecting South Korea against North Korea aggression
Russia has done so much ** i am going to take too long to write
And these are only what affect other countries, they have done horrible things to their domestic population as well…
Ukraine views Donetsk/Luhansk People Republics exactly the same.
Why is Ukraine right and China not?
Eventually, beaten by Mao, Chiang Kai Shek and its army invaded Taiwan and claimed it theirs. The CCP never ruled the island of Taiwan.
Your analogy is wrong and there's no really other country with a similar history in the world. The CCP loves making claims based on dubious (i.e false) historical basis.
Edit:
> barely 2 centuries 400 years ago
Wiki says it was 1683–1895, so 2 centuries but just 130 years ago. It was then ceded to Japan after China defeat in a war, so it had to be Chinese before that (otherwise, how could China cede it?).
Edit:
> [Wiki says:] In September 1945 following Japan's surrender in WWII, ROC forces, assisted by small American teams, prepared an amphibious lift into Taiwan to accept the surrender of the Japanese military forces there
In 1945 the Chinese civil war was still ongoing, but WW2 has already finished, Japan lost, and ~300k Japanese residents of Taiwan were expelled from the island. There was no fighting during the takeover, so I don't think it can be called an invasion.
There are important differences between that situation and Ukraine, but... I don't believe they are enough to invalidate the whole analogy. My understanding is that both PRC and ROC see themselves as continuation of imperial China, which means both have equal claim to Taiwan (and mainland). Taiwan was colonized by Japan for some 50 years, but I don't think that's enough to claim it's inherently Japanese (especially after the deportation of Japanese citizens). If not, then it has to be Chinese.
So: there was a civil war in China, then because of unrelated happenings a part of China that was occupied by Japanese became Chinese again, and then an external power chose one of the warring sides in the civil war and unilaterally gave a part of Chinese territory to that side. Is this about right?
If so - I see enough parallels to current Ukraine situation to say that I don't believe my analogy breaks down, as you said. Following 2014, there was a civil war in Ukraine (honestly, saying it was a "special anti-terrorist action" is as valid as calling Russian invasion "special military operation"). The insurgents did not get a newly reclaimed land to retreat to, so they stayed where they were. Then an external power chose one side of the civil war, and propped it up so that they won't fail. There was next to no fighting during proclamation of secession. A few years later, separatists backed by the external power were recognized unilaterally by that power as independent entities. It was even similar timeline: ROC went to Taiwan in 1945, but the island was officially recognized as not-Japanese in 1952. That's 7 years; in Ukraine it was 8 years (2014-2022).
The more successful/bigger side of the civil war in both case never considered the other side anything other than rebels and terrorists. The less successful sides claim to be freedom-fighters trying to exercise their right to self determination.
The only real difference is that the powers backing ROC didn't, for one reason or other, try to help them retake more of the territory of the more successful side - but they were arming that side for 70 years now.
I really don't think the differences make the two situations incomparable.
My point is not that Taiwan never was under Chinese rule, but a) it never was really integrated to China like most current chinese provinces (China boasts about a 5000 year long history, loosely controlling (5% of) an island for 200 years before losing it at the very end of the their these 5000 years is not a very strong claim), b) never controlled the entirety of the island because Chinese settlers stayed on the coast, the rest of the island was under aboriginal control (which were not a uniform block) c) never cared about it (it was under the rule of a former pirate turned governor - look up Koxinga) and never did anything with it.
Chiang's army retreated to Taiwan but it's a matter of semantic. It was under Japanese occupation until the end of WW2. Chiang raised the question of Taiwan to the Americans who at that time couldn't care less about that tiny island because they had so much on their plate. The Americans were like "sure, whatever, go for it", but nothing was officially signed (iirc) and Chiang and his army invaded the island and went on to subject it to an horrible authoritarian rule for the next decades.
Final words, about the R.O.C claiming China. That's a sad legacy of Chiang's lunacy. And now the CCP says that if the R.O.C dares to say that they're independant (which they are, but can't say it) they will invade. So Taiwan is stuck with this nonsense because of the threats coming from the Chinese government. Also Chiang had a chance to have a seat the UN but refused because he wanted to be the only China. The rest is history.
Most of what I wrote above comes from the book "Forbidden nation" by Jonathan Manthorpe (and other books but that one covers the history of Taiwan since the very beginning.)
Edit: I posted that before you edit (which I haven't read yet).
Edit 2: I'm not arguing against the parallel with Ukraine which I know nothing about. Just against the analogy with a hypothetical US state leaving the union.
Ah, ok. Yeah, I know basically nothing about the US and that analogy was indeed not a great one. I was thinking about Ukraine more, as it's both close by (to me) and happening right now.
In any case, thanks, I learned a bit more about the Taiwan history and will spend some more time reading about it, as it seems quite interesting :)
Far better that compared to Obama's "moderate", rapist rebels who evolved into ISIS. All the scenes of jubilation and crying when women were unchained from basements in Aleppo never made it to the US media and were taken down in 15/20 mins on youtube. The mind-boggling thing is that Aleppo was liberated from Al-Nusra by the Syrian Army - the US were providing weapons to folks on their own terrorist list!
"China: embargoes anyone that dares to have a relationship with Taiwan or talks bad about the CCP, provokes Taiwan like crazy, likely will invade it in the next 10 years"
Regarding China and Taiwan, the amount of American ignorance here truly astonishes me. When the United States moved to recognise the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and de-recognise the Republic of China (ROC) in 1979, the United States stated that the government of the People’s Republic of China was “the sole legal Government of China.”
The recent statements by the US president seem to reverse that acknowledgement severely enflaming tensions. Washington is playing with true fire here - China has no interest in invading Taiwan as long as they can moderate Taiwanese policy and as long as Beijing is recognised as the real Chinese government. But Biden is regularly being used as a play-the-dotard puppet by the War-Hawks to inflame tensions, with a nod-and-a-wink later: oh my dear, he didn't really mean it. Until the next inflaming statement comes out of his mouth.
If the US attempts to worsen the state of affairs and keep escalating tensions with statements of support for Taiwanese independence, then YES, there will indeed be an invasion. It will be utterly brutal and Taiwan will be annexed in the end - unless the US is willing to suffer heavy casualties in the hundreds of thousands and transition to a war-economy (which they will not as that would make the donors un-happy. They need to be paid more not less for arms)
Tens of thousands of Taiwanese lives will be lost to American egos and the American military industry who are always looking for the next war to keep their billionaire shareholders fat and happy. More Transfer of Wealth from the American taxpayer to the American elite.
For free of being called xenophobic and racist.
Edit: to be clear, I don't condone China's actions. I see both the US and China as very bad actors on the world stage.
Clearly, they think that these are important sovereignty issues such that they’ve clamped down or disallowed these services entirely.
The ability to manipulate people via state sponsored algorithmic tweaks to TikTok’s ranking algorithm is a powerful tool.
You don’t need to do much to sour US’s support for Taiwan in the eyes of just a minority. Or you don’t need to do much to tweak the algorithm such that content about politicians friendly to China is ranked higher than others.
For many parts of the world, the USA is the biggest threat and tyrant in the world causing significant pain, loss and helplessness for hundreds of millions. Usually followed by deep hatred. I know folks who have lost their entire family to the USA. Unlike Ukraine, US acts of civilian violence rarely make the news or if they do, they are glossed over.
Only an American/NATO nation citizen can believe this utter nonsense. The only rules being followed were the ones the USA laid out with its military fist, crushing of the opposition and sponsored coups - all in their favour.
Now that they finally have a serious competitor, the US is getting antsy. I am frankly speaking utterly glad for China's ascent. It will keep the USA in check (somewhat).
First thing in agenda: invade Taiwan and cause a chip shortage in the world that will cause the greatest economic crisis you will ever see!
More people are dying in Yemen every-day thanks to US embargoes and US weapons than in Ukraine, but not a whiff about it in Western news. No photos of Yemeni mothers holding dead children. No photos of limbs being blasted off by US supplied bombs. Americans who support their military and state are ignorant, sanctimonious hypocrites of the highest order.
Though the Chinese are everyday provoking Taiwan like crazy nowadays and does a hell lot of economic coercion to other countries
They also had some recent borders disputes with India which did end up with deaths
I'm sure that Hong Kongers see it that way ahahaha.
They then suppressed any autonomy in Hong Kong for decades, installing a ruthless puppet government.
Oh really? The two systems where a CCP chill was placed at the top of the power and where protests were violently repressed?
Talk about being "freed" of colonial rule.
Without the will of Hong Kong citizens. That's the reverse of freedom.
> Hong Kong still has a democracy
It's not. The CCP simply dictates what happens in Hong Kong.
> Not hard to grasp.
Hong Kong being under the dictatorial boot of China is indeed not very difficult to grasp.
Without fair elections? I don't think so.
> It is the will of Hong Kong citizens to be free from British imperialism.
As decided where?
Show me the referendum voting results then?
So it isn't a democracy.
Why are we letting FB off the hook? Why are we letting any of the platforms that harvest data off the hook? FB tweaked their algos to literally see if they could fuck with people's moods. They know the power they hold, and they constantly refine it to keep people's attention. At some point if FB promoted via algo something that riles up a group of people against another group of people to the point of violence, how is that any less bad? Especially, since that's what has happened?
And people wonder why we’re so divided
Not abiding to whose law? Those international laws that even the US and its allies would not respect when it's not convinient to their agenda and narrative.
This has led to the destruction of Irak, Libya, the killing of Lumumba, and scores of other exemples across all continents.
The western world has been responsible for destructions and destabilisations all in the name of ensuring the economical and political future of their countries.
The West would happily support and never critise authoritarian regimes such as Rwanda just because it's convinient to them, and in the same sentence accuse China and Russia. I've never seen calls for democracy in place of the Kagame's regime for example.
You are failing to see the forrest for the trees, and at the same time overlooking so many details just to prove a point.
It's all perspective, China and Russia say the exact same thing about the US.
Can't believe people still fail for that kind of propaganda...
Essentially threats to folks up north. Down here (in Latin America) and other places such as the entirely of Asian and African countries, US has been a threat since it exists.
US is still moving it's pieces here in Brazil, Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador. Not to mention espionage on half of the world (thanks WikiLeaks)
China isn't going to shoot my dog at 4am and throw me in a concrete box.
And if I were a Chinese or Russian citizen, I'd be far more wary of domestic apps than US apps for precisely the same reason. Not playing favorites here, it's just a jurisdictional arbitrage question in a world dominated by tyranny.
If you bring together three people from USA, Russia, China then none of them will have trouble naming the two biggest threats. None of them will agree, but they’ll all name 2 of the same 3 anyone from anywhere in the rest of the world would name.
A spooky example of TikTok-the-emergent-system's ability to influence people at scale. This one gave me pause. https://www.wbur.org/endlessthread/2022/06/03/tiktok-tics
Contrary to facebook where people would literally "Follow" their political parties, workplaces, friend groups from school/work/gym/life, etc.
Just go buy some sunscreen already.
Lets say apple engineers all have kids who use tiktok and some of the kids or engineers do something shady and someone gets blackmailed. As a consequence apple launches 3months later and in the meantime someone from china launches a killer phone with the same or almost as good tech specs. Sure the apple fans may wait it out but that could be a billion dollars of sales to china that would have went to USA
That's one of the point of espionage. To get a competitive or monetary advantage. If facebook did this to other companies within the states, at least the country isn't losing money
The other would be things used to jail innocent people but for the most part I don't think thats how tiktok is being used
In the US, you can intimidate Facebook and Google.
You can't do that to TikTok.
Not saying that TikTok is benevolent or not a surveillance operation, just that they are not yet as big, insidious, or effective as Facebook or Google.
Oh you might actually be surprised about that one
So given that this [1] is the general capability of what the algorithm can do, it looks like that it is the largest and the most dystopian controlled experiment of the 21st century. Even worse than Facebook.
We have hit a new nadir on screwing with 'users' with this new digital crack / cocaine invention that Bytedance has created.
Still pretty entertaining though.
Also just because they use Twitter to sign in, it doesn’t mean they have access to any private data.
(a) they track you even though you are not on their app [1] (b) they own 55% of app downloads in the US [2]
[1] https://media.ccc.de/v/35c3-9941-how_facebook_tracks_you_on_... [2] https://app.finclout.io/t/b9BbQa4
And yes, China bad.
there’s the individual-level view, and the state-level view.
i, as an individual, don’t really care if China has my location data or shopping data. what are they going to do with it? they can exert soft power over me: propaganda; distort my worldview a bit.
meanwhile, if my own government has access to this same data, i suffer direct consequences. my odds of getting arrested for nonviolent crime (e.g. political activism; buying drugs online) go way up when my govt surveils me: far less so when it’s a foreign govt doing this.
it doesn’t have so much to do with individuals making foolish tradeoffs over their own interests IMO: the way espionage plays into this is as an alignment gap between individual and state interests.
It seems like an error to assume these two forms of surveillance are mutually exclusive.
At any of
> the Starbucks you’re using for free wifi
> the ISP your endpoint is using for internet access
> the data centers in which Tiktok is serving you data
> the device on which you didn’t write the OS or any background programs written on it
Presumably anyone with the power and inclination to listen or influence the design of the above can intercept any non-encrypted or not-yet-encrypted data you’re exchanging (and if they’re a state actor, probably get access to whatever information they’d need to perform decryption) - including your government.
This is not to say you're not being surveilled (as to which apps you use, etc) but there is relatively little unencrypted traffic coming out of most devices in 2022.
Five men were charged with stalking and harassing Chinese dissidents in the US, including by seeking to derail the election bid of a congressional candidate: https://www.asiafinancial.com/five-charged-with-harassment-o...
I've long wondered if we might (past or future) see a social media company be successful mostly because, in their infancy, they were indirectly funded by intelligence services in exchange for data access. However, I assume as operations scale, it gets harder for that sort of link to stay secret.
See well documented: Intelligence community v.s Trump v.s Facebook v.s Russian propaganda campaign v.s traditional "manufactured concent" of citizen.
How these players interplay is what is at stake.
If helps tremendously if some of the actors are "trying" have enough independent thought and don't suffer too much when they push things in more liberal & egalitarian direction.
More than FB and Google?
Press X to doubt.
Google, Facebook and others collect heaps of data. TikTok is hardly a special case.
1. Like Google and Facebook, TikTok does not author the "content" to which they provide access that serves as the "bait". They sit in between the author and the consumer and collect. The lesson I see here is that intermediaries need to be regulated.
I don't think you can close a platform like this again. It won't be the end of civilization either and perhaps another platform will at one day take its place. Arguably the privacy protection for western users are even better if the data doesn't leave China.
TikTok might get engagement and device data but that's about it.
I assume this is the classic case of "China Bad" "USA Good" (or less bad because it's not China)
In the past few weeks I've been observing a lot of marginal content trending on the platform which indicates to me that a lot of the more quality posters aren't posting new content.
The minute quality creators leave a platform is the minute it dies. TikTok has not really been rewarding creators fairly, and pushes the idea that organic growth is possible, and that people have become really successful, but many creators realize after months of working for little to no reward that it's a false narrative.
There are billions of accounts on these platforms yes, but the main question is are they actively posting, engaged, and satisfied? The answer is most likely no, and that's why Twitter didn't sell fast too.
I wrote about this issue just earlier today -
Tiktokers are generally following YouTuber model in how they monetize their content, minus Ads revenue share.
Would anyone with talent, skills, and self respect jump to do it?
Working for free at a large and quite profitable company?
The problem is that because of how perception can be manipulated on social platforms based on that success illusion. It makes people think that the success comes just for creating simple content, and trumps one's ability to prioritize making money to do real world things like paying rent and for food. It's borderline exploitation of children, who often over expose themselves just for likes, and that is going to be bad for their future prospects in being taken seriously when they want to get real world and respectable jobs.
It's free work with little reward. The brand deals go to celebrity creators, NOT to normal creators, while the platform profits massively and underpays most everyone who does the real work. Most of the influencers on these platforms find that even the popularity they gain fades quickly in the real world, especially as the platforms begin to decline in popularity as well, and the minute they stop working hard for free.
We need to stop fooling ourselves about it all.
Posting tiktoks =/= working a 9-5 at Microsoft
It's not different than acting or professional sports; and it's far better than Facebook/Twitter model where they monetize your content with no path revenue at all. Among my list of problems with YouTube/TikTok, the revenue model is not one of them.
Vine died because quality creators left the platform, and they left the platform because Vine wasn't willing to pay them to stay. The formula is remarkably simple and for these next generations, many of them only know social media personalities. I fear that your definition of "quality content" has been shaped by your upbringing; what you consider "simple content" is "real content" for people who grew up on these platforms. I'm sure you are unaware of the thousands of creators who have millions of followers in niches you have never even heard about. While the content is "simpler" it is more diverse than you can even imagine; and thats where the staying power comes from.
I heard the opposite story from 2 creators in my local language.
Their growth on Tiktok is crazy, one got a million followers in less than a year, this is almost impossible in YouTube or Any Facebook based social media, also the amount of interaction and views on videos is amazing compared to YouTube.
Its why many are going to tiktok, even if they don't like the Platform, its actually possible to reach people, while on other platforms such as Instagram, you have to pay to reach even half of your followers.
Viewers can watch a lot more 15-second or 1-minute videos than 10-minute videos. If 5-10 minute videos start becoming popular, expect the reach new creators can get to drop drastically.
1. https://screenrant.com/tiktok-videos-minimum-maximum-length-...
It's bewildering how they warehouse so much content that will really not endure, at some point they're likely going to need to archive a lot of TikTok user posts, because the content is very low quality overall, and a lot of the content generated is limited by it's context.
It probably be a huge sticker shock to see the monthly cloud hosting bill for any one of these apps.
On instagram I am increasingly seeing ads for popular sports and music stars - which I would suspect could be triggered by unsatisfying reach or growth for them and Instagram cutting down even more on free exposure.
If TikTok can sustain a mechanism that boosts new creators it will be golden for a long time. Organic growth seems to be dead for Instagram and YouTube unless someone puts in 10x the effort than for TikTok.
The problem is that there are so many people addicted to the possibility of being a popular influencer that no one is being honest about how little real success and money they make on these platforms... In truth it may be a possibility that most users are completely faking social media success.
TikTok forces use primarily of it's app, and only offers limited use in web browsers, which makes their methods less transparent.
How do most users interact with TikTok? through the FYP (for you page) which is the algo curated feed that you can endlessly scroll through. From my observations - FYP starts out by showing you content from creators in your geolocation (drains so much battery cuz it loves to use location services). From there it will try to associate you with trending hashtags in content you are more likely engage with. Most important engagement metric is watch-time. So if you complain that your tiktok is full of porn/horny content then you probably have high watch-time in these areas. It will alternate between showing you vids of high user engagement (1M+), medium engagement (<1M) and low engagement (<1K) in the trending hastags/topics it associates with you.
So the content and trends move very fast. Eventually your schtick gets old.
Not everyone is meant to be an entertainer, but now pretty much everyone invested in social media operates as if a camera is constantly on them.. This ego-centric self-esteem-influenced social media "influencer model" drives even terrible things now too, like school shootings and personal harm.
We (europeans and americans) cant do really anything in China, we have essentially no rights and cant really conduct business. Unlike chinese who are pretty much granted all of that when they want to immigrate or conduct business in EU/US.
China protects their businesses from American competition but we don’t protect our businesses from Chinese competition.
Protect them from international threats works if the goal is stabilizing domestic business for national security purposes. Ask airlines for most of their history. Or look at the ability to use American car factories for the defense production act.
Will it produce the best product for their customers? Probably not. Look at American made cars. Not the best product.
Will it produce the best outcome for employees? American car companies employee thousands of union jobs that pay very well.
What if we successfully starve the competition? What if we don’t? No amount of government intervention was able to kill foreign car companies. But American car companies are still chugging along providing valuable employment to many Americans.
And btw, the job market for very qualified people in China arguably at least rivals the one in Europe, i.e. you can get better salaries in China than in large parts of Europe.
We - Europeans and pretty much anyone who's not an American - can't do really anything in US.
Can you elaborate?
Where in the world is more convenient for a foreigner to start and run a business?
To compare, within EU I have all the usual rights, from establishing a company to healthcare.
If US or EU companies can’t operate similarly in China, I see no reason to allow it the other way.
If they don’t have a valid international drivers license (presumed because they don’t drive at home) then literally yes we do de facto ban them.
But it’s not about giving the people less rights at home it’s demanding they give us as much rights as we give them. The framing is backwards. Why do we honor their license (for men or women) if they don’t honor ours (incl our women)? Why is it not wrong to demand they treat us as well as we treat them? “If you want America to honor your licenses then you must honor ALL American licenses as equally as America does”
Don’t tolerate intolerance. Don’t play games with bad governments.
Disclaimer: I have no idea what actual Afghani laws around driving look like I’m just using your example.
the initial tolerance of the intolerance is due to the idea that by freely trading and allowing trade in such a (asymmetric) fashion, the less democratic country would democratize. Over time, the gov't would become more open and "westernize".
That is a miscalculation by the US administration (particularly clinton's, but i won't pin this onto any particular one, as it's a wide policy not decided by a single administration). Neither russia nor china had leadership that would see themselves removed from power - that is their primary prerogative as dictators. And any policy changes that those countries implement is first, and foremost, a policy to keep themselves in power. To the extend that their policies benefit the people, it's done for the express purpose of keeping themselves in power, and never a primary objective.
Therefore, it's clear now, that neither china nor russia would want to integrate themselves in to the west as allies and partners. They forever see the west as an adversary to which they must best - it's an imaginary threat, made real by the fact that democratizing means disposing of dictators.
This can only end one way. I hope it's the west that wins, because despite the woes and poor performance, it cannot be worse than the alternative.
Sure you can. You just have to conduct your business in China under the same rules that Chinese businesses in China have to follow.
Most countries or pseudo-countries work this way. For example the EU is about to tell US companies conducting business in Europe that they have to use USB-C for device charging ports and impose a bunch of limits on what exclusive feature hardware makers can include on their devices.
But those same rules apply to European businesses operating in the EU and to Chinese companies operating in the EU and to anyone else operating there, so it is fine.
This is one of the reasons international businesses often set things up so that they have separate companies in different countries. You set up BigCorp USA, BigCorp China, and BigCorp Germany as separate companies incorporated in those jurisdictions, with the latter two handling all your Chinese and EU customers respectively.
Same happens with non-tech businesses. If you wanted to open a chain of international bookstores, you'd face all kinds of restrictions on what books you can sell in various countries. A lot of books that would be fine in your San Francisco store might get you in serious trouble if you carried them in Saudi Arabia. But they would also get a Saudi owned bookstore in trouble too, so you aren't being treated differently.
Isn't one of the rules that foreign companies are required to partner with, and thus share all of their trade secrets with, a domestic Chinese company?
Similar fears were expressed about music corrupting the youth. And TV rotting their brains. And video games turning them into mass murderers.
And yet, even with all the actual addictive poisons generations of youth have imbibed, those youth turned into us and here we are posting on HN.
Facebook, Twitter, and HN hold a different behavior because they are used for asynchronous communication between general users while TT is full of parasocial relationships between the created and fans. FB and Twitter also offer more utility than TikTok, an example being small businesses using Facebook and Twitter instead of a website.
I tried it for a week or so, found it not very interesting and gave up.
TT isn't unique in parasocial relationships though. Most of the discourse around those relationships actually center around yt and twitch for a reason (and to a lesser extent twitter and onlyfans). If anything tiktok is better than streaming platforms because there's less of that illusion of familiarity; you only see the content creator for minutes at a time before another's there to replace them (twitch you see them for hours at a time and often people only identify strongly with a few streamers).
I'd also argue against the utility argument. Tiktok has allowed for both information and misinformation to spread on its platforms, but that's a non unique argument. Small business accounts on tiktok have also flourished, a commonly repeated piece of advice currently is for small business owners to create accounts and just record their daily routines. Businesses like specialty stationers have exploded in recognition due to this.
The much stronger case against tiktok over other social media's is your communication point. There's little opportunity there for people to actually, you know, socialize with each other. It's content and only content, and even YouTube comments have more meaningful opportunities for educated discussion. It's more similar to twitch chat in that regard but even on twitch content creators regularly engage in discourse publicly. Tiktok enables this through its reply system, but because of its content delivery system you might never see that.
TT is a bottomless content hole and isn’t that different from other bottomless content holes because they are that. TT takes it a step further with their format focusing on short, attention grabbing content, a best-in-class recommendation algorithm, and rewarding their creators with more views than other networks.
I don’t know if I agree Tiktok fosters better (do we mean healthier?) parasocial relationships than other socials. There’s a certain intimacy from the cell phone camera that YouTube and twitch doesn’t have (twitch has a different intimacy, but like you said they are on for hours a time). I think when TT creators are encouraged to upload multiple times a day, compared to once a week on YouTube or twitch, pushes something that feels closer seeing a best friend than watching your cool cousin.
I absolutely agree that TikTok is better for marketing a business than other networks, but it doesn’t have much of any utility beyond that. I wonder about the effectiveness of communicating over DM with businesses over Instagram vs tiktok.
For the record I’m addicted to YouTube and HN and don’t currently have accounts on any of the other services mentioned.
I think TT's algorithm is the strongest selling point. Vine had even shorter content and even faster dopamine hits but ultimately died (I can't recall if Music.ly died or was absorbed before it met a natural fate). I can't speak towards monetization but I hazard that TT creators still make most of their money from sponsorships (like twitch and YT) based on that one Hype House thing. That said, the algorithm might be a bit overstated in its strength. Put enough creators together on the same place all trying to be relatable, add in the fact that people are going through dozens if not hundreds of videos at a time, you're bound to yield several hits. In this sense, I think TT is successful not directly because of its format, but in that it's achieved a critical mass because of its format, and that critical mass allows it to easily perpetuate itself.
I think the parasocial relationships aren't "better", except that TT is "better" than Twitch and YT because it's harder to develop these parasocial relationships. Maybe your theory about phone cameras is correct, but I think what's absent is that sense of _address_. On YT, creators will often call their viewers under some aggregate nickname, or make direct references to their audience in a way that invites closeness. Combine this with frequent references to their fanbases as "communities" and I think that YT and Twitch have developed something of a cultural illusion that TT has not yet developed (again, mostly second-hand as I no longer frequent the platform). Again, this remains to be seen, but I lean towards seeing IG as the model here: where you can have similarly frequent posts, cellphone livestreams, and videos (and now shorts). However, since IG is usually not criticized as heavily for parasocial relationships as YT and Twitch, I really think that the difference maker is the systems of address and sense of community that, at the very least, has not fully developed on TT.
This drive to post personal content to the entire world (in order to be popular) is pretty harmful, lasts potentially forever, and can be devastating to reputation for children and even adults in years ahead...
That being said, just because coffee and methamphetamine have comparable effects on paper doesn't mean that they pose the same level of risk. A difference of degree is still a difference, and at least from my own experiences I'm starting to wonder if the human brain is biologically equipped to handle the addictive overstimulation modern life exposes it to.
I'm not sure how you'd measure that... Right now there seems to be a heart disease and obesity epidemic, which I understand is primarily due to sugar and processed foods, but I find it hard to believe the massive amounts of TV watching and computer use plays no role in that, if not a significant one.
With TV, there was also the passivity effect, people were just fed a diet of propaganda with little way to do much about it, whereas now at least there's some choice although I'm not sure we're much better off and what the tradeoffs are. Prior to TV and radio, people weren't very educated at all, so it's kind of hard to compare. We don't get the science experiments we need out of natural development.
Then, I can't know but I wonder if a society where more reading and radio wouldn't be better in some important ways.
Then, yeah what if TV is like coffee but a certain kind of Internet use does turn out to be like a more addictive drug...
The platforms have all been highly opportunistic upon captive audiences since the pandemic began, and they probably know their days are numbered I imagine.
I guess the economist has it wrong then:
> As the first consumer-facing app from China to take off in the West, TikTok is a source of pride in Beijing. But the app’s Chinese ownership makes politicians elsewhere uneasy about its tightening grip on their citizens’ attention
As in, there are apparently sub companies, that are in the US, not in china, that makes it different.
Sure, the US "sub companies" are located physically in the US and managed day-to-day by US-based employees but they are still owned by a Chinese parent company meaning at the end of the day, they still report to managers/executive in China and are obligated to follow directions given to them by people working for Chinese parent company. If the Chinese government cotrols the Chinese parent company then they, by definition, control the US-based company as well.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/12/18/zoom-he...
> The written regulations that give the Ministry of Public Security the right to just “take it” are the Regulation on Internet Security Supervision and Inspection by Public Security Organs (公安机关互联网安全监督检查规定).
But the law in question http://www.gov.cn/gongbao/content/2018/content_5343745.htm doesn't actually grant public security organs the right to just "take it" as the blog post claims. Having the authority to request on-site network security audits or do penetration tests would certainly give spies ample opportunity to find ways to exfiltrate data, but that doesn't mean they're legally allowed to do so.
I guess not many people care whether Chinese intelligence agencies spy on TikTok users legally or extralegally, but I just wanted to know whether there really was such a law. Apparently not.
Absolutely zero separation between Chinese and American business regardless of what they claim.
I would also assume that US police and intelligence have access to Facebook, Google, etc. regardless of what anyone says.
End to end encrypted or it is not private. No exceptions.
Yeah, just like US. TikTok isn't any different from, say, YouTube in this regard.
Completely different to China just having access to that data.
It's no wonder that the largely liberal audience of HN supports the subversion route the US takes compared to the more brutal but vastly more honest way the Chinese do it.
It’s like those stories of Russians on FB making maga rally events. They don’t know it’s not an American doing things they just follow along.
The main fear is not that it is a foreign owned app - after all, most people in the countries all over the world are using foreign owned (US) apps - it is because it is the first non-US app used by US citizens which unnerves both the US government and US commentariat.
Whether those fears are justified or not, I suspect US will follow the China's vision of the internet, prioritise national security concerns over freedom of choice, and ultimately ban TikTok
I do think more regulation are likely in order. There are some very good arguments for not letting children under a certain age to be allowed on the social media platforms. However, the enforcement of those laws is spotty and is left to parental controls.
What we need is an outbreak of social media literacy among the youngest members of society. Like, this needs to be taught at school in first grade or something.
Now the question is if West defends or is it up for grabs for other countries that already built their own walled gardens.
This seems like a classic case that needs some more direct regulatory intervention.
Asking grade school children to weigh the geopolitical consequences of their cat videos is never going to happen. You’re talking about an age group which is still learning basic literacy.
The solution is regulation, we already regulate children's television programming for this exact reason.
If by "present problem" you mean, the fact that TikTok happens to have been built by a Chinese company, then I see what you mean.
Even still, for a democracy, the best protection against any potential threat is to prepare its citizens. In this case, the citizenry needs to be prepared cognitively.
Arguably, it would help, if we started early -- get them while they are young?
I don't see what other long-term things that a democracy can do.
Other than starting a war in the near-term, I suppose?
This is such a pie in the sky suggestion that I'm forced to wonder if you even pay attention to US politics. To give you some context some of the biggest issues in education right now is:
1. Arming teachers with rifles
2. Dismantling the public school system and replacing them with vouchers.
The last federally mandated educational solution, No Child Left Behind, was a massive failure and has soured most future federally mandated educational policies. Asking underfunded teachers to teach 9 year olds why they shouldn't use the "funny cat app" because of complex geopolitics will end up ignored at best or lead to incredibly xenophobia at worst (Ms. Adams told me not to use TikTok because China is evil, henceforth all asians are out to trick me).
>I don't see what other long-term things that a democracy can do.
Actually enforce data privacy laws universally. Of course this will anger the Facebook/Google trillion dollar oligarchs so we are told there is nothing we can do. The crux of the issue is that US wants everyone else data (EU, Oceania, Asia) but it doesn't want other companies to do the same. Your solutions are either you ban it for hegemony reasons, and pray that Europe/India/Japan/Australia doesn't enact the same law, or you ban it for privacy reasons.
There's no way I would trust managers, certainly, their managers to not simply regurgitate the most "CNN-friendly" curriculum imaginable. Maybe pre-2015 I would agree. US education simply isn't a trustworthy system at the moment. The threat has already arrived and the good teachers are leaving in droves.
It's a lot easier to lie about your age on a Facebook sign-up form than to buy drugs or alcohol, and teens will find a way to do the latter if they want to.
I use TikTok loads and I'm completely onboard with the idea that it's extremely concerning for democracy. Nuanced education doesn't help any more than it would for say, healthy eating advocacy vs fast food industry. We need carrot and stick approaches.
As you can imagine, citizens from other countries are observing this development with great interest.
tiktok is addictive and much of the content is low bar , slapstick and sexually suggestive thirst traps .
there may be a good share of high quality content , but we all know time spent is on garbage.
our grandparents said “tv will rot your brain” and we laughed at them, but maybe because we just didn’t notice
tiktok will finish the job
besides that literally the only reason we need to oppose tiktok is that it's chinese. i'm fine with them manufacturing commodity goods but they should not be providing any cutting-edge tech to us. personally i would like to see the government try to subpoena the tiktok algo from oracle and make it public so anybody can knock it off. that would be some poetic justice against china.
Tiktok has just been better at surfacing the content. Also tiktok is more for consumption and less for socializing with friends or acquaintences.
We truly are living in a computer's world where what AI thinks of us is increasing "the truth". Who has gotten time for nuance.
> sexually suggestive thirst traps
Not realising that only they (and people with similar tastes) are seeing X. And it says more about them than it does about TikTok.
There’s plenty of room for thoughtful critique of TikTok and it’s current/potential impact on society - but this ain’t it. The original article by the economist is much closer.
So no, we’re all not on there checking out soft porn.
Last I checked - everyone's doing alright.
If it's the kind of check where you look around, and see that the world goes by - then the same "everyone's doing alright" could be said to dismiss all of history's horrors so far.
Interestingly it also separates a lot of the users from the rest, people call them [thing]-toks and crossovers aren't very welcome. Kinda like subreddits, but algorithmic.
> By offering different videos from time to time, the system is also able to get a better sense of what's popular among a wider range of audiences to help provide other TikTok users a great experience, too. Our goal is to find balance between suggesting content that's relevant to you while also helping you find content and creators that encourage you to explore experiences you might not otherwise see.
https://newsroom.tiktok.com/en-us/how-tiktok-recommends-vide...
If someone else is complaining about their experience, we shouldn't be dismissive of it, it could easily be a real concern based on dark patterns the platform leverages.
For example, the platform can amplify triggering content to someone who exhibits schizophrenic traits, or it can show self harming or depressing content to someone who exhibits bipolar traits.
It's harmful to assume algorithms can't be implemented without flaws, agenda, and human bias... Actually it's willfully ignorant to think that anything inherently made by humans can be made without flaws and bias.
A foreign political party tuning the algorithm to affect public opinions? I think this is even more impactful than data snooping. It's also a lot harder to detect and prevent.
That's about 75% of the way through the article.
The reality is, Facebook is where content goes to die.
I'm not even saying it isn't, I just think it's basically unknowable.
It eats into the consent manufacturing pipeline that the US has carved out and that's the reason they're really worried.
"Military recruitment is down because of TikTok!" No. There are just service members who are showing what it's really like there.
So many videos are just reaction videos, or doing trends which are the same concept (e.g. a dance, or challenge) just by different people. There's so much reptition, lots of creators that keep doing the same shtick because that's what gets them views. But it's so much worse than something like youtube where it's something that has to be condensed into a few seconds so it's all very superficial.
If china is a rival to the US, why do they have one of the most favorable trade deals?
And it's not true they have one of the most favourable trade deals, many tariffs are still in effect.
Perhaps the US should adopt a tit for tat policy with regards to China in this matter?
US rules the world through a liberal voting political propaganda; a rule-based capitalism market economy; a USD denominated financial structure.
Sure, US blocked Huawei through rule of law; and you think China has no laws to block FB & Google? But behind the cloak of laws regulations, the intention of mutual exclusion is pure and same, nothing different.
I don't have an answer for you, but when you rephrase the point you're getting at it's easy to see there are plenty of valid reasons, because this is not true:
> There are no reasons for the US to give a favorable trade deal to a country that is otherwise a rival
Can you specify a specific reason? There are historic examples of trade deals made for this reason such as with the Soviet Union or communist china. However I cannot think of an example where a country has given unilaterally favorable trade terms to a rival except out of fealty/tribute.
Is this now US policy too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTCqXlDjx18
Hearing that people think you can 'just' replicate Shenzen somewhere else makes me giggle.
Unfortunately for the US it also goes for batteries and other green energy tech that the US turned their back on in favour of oil these past decades. You can't just replicate Xinjiang polysilicon production, without which we can't have PV solar cells, also primarily made in China. CATL is probably the largest manufacturer of EV class batteries in the world. China makes more EVs than the rest of the world many times over, etc.
Now they are also leading in nuclear, rolling out 200GW of next-gen reactors, they have their own fusion experiments.
They have been leading in AI research for the last 10+ years.
The days of China being cheaper are long long gone. You go to China because you can get access to talent, work ethic and optimised supply chain + logistics that can't be bought anywhere else on earth for any price.
That dominance isn't going to be easily displaced because it's the product of decades of investment and R&D.
So if the EU forces Facebook to store EU's citizens data in the EU. What would prevent Facebook copying that data to the US?
Or have some American (potentially working for the NSA) remotely accessing EU data?
When any other country has a law like that, they are obviously the bad guys.
In China there is no:
1. Public legal process for data requests 2. Now that I think about it, there are no requests for data at all (they don't have to ask, it's just given) 3. Ability for any Chinese company to say no to gov requests
Surely you don't view these circumstances as the same?
Here is the page for the US CLOUD ACT: https://www.justice.gov/dag/cloudact
Where is the similar page detailing how the CCP balances civil rights with security?
The US (famously) does not have Allies, only temporary allegiances.
If you're discussing ties to government, Twitter and Facebook have members on their boards publicly who are sitting and/or former members of government including, at least in facebooks case: Robert Kimmitt (who was United States Ambassador to Germany from 1991 to 1993, Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs from 1989 to 1991, General Counsel of the U.S. Department of the Treasury from 1985 to 1987, and National Security Council Executive Secretary and General Counsel from 1983 to 1985).
Is it different rules for us in Europe? or are you suggesting that we should never have allowed this to happen?
tl;dr: Why is US/China much different from EU/US or US/Japan (whom also makes a resounding impact on our technology and strongly affects our culture in the west).
The US has routinely spied on Europe, allowed backdoored technology to make it's way into the continent including to spy on government officials from another sovereign (allegedly allied) nation.
It's hard for me not to draw direct comparisons, because other than the surface level of "everything's fine, we have a common culture and we're all white" - I don't see them as being much different.
Of course you're right, they're not the same, we don't see them the same. But China has arguably done less to the US than the US has done to the EU.
Can you explain it to me?
This is a baffling assertion that takes about ten seconds to debunk. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/at-prayer-breakfast-obama-conde...
Can you quote a single US senator who openly called “life from conception” what it is, like they called out antivaxers?
I'm a supporter of abortion but this is going to be fun I think.
Your point being? As a reminder, we’re talking about democrats failing to condemn extremist ideas.
To your point, I think democrats and republicans positions on climate are very different: https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/07/us-support-for-envir...
That would go against your point that they support "largely the same ideas".
Facebook is not banned in Europe. Spotify is not banned in America. Both are banned in China. On that basis alone both entities have ample cause to limit China's influence in their own domestic spheres.
The whole history of the XX century
When there are reciprocal markets between countries with similar approaches to government and law, there isn’t much of a problem. When one country adds tariffs, the other usually just matches them.
Closest I can think of are Ocado and Monzo, neither of which (especially the latter) are big enough to compare yet. Perhaps Just Eat (UberEats competitor) too which recently announced US partnership with Amazon. (Veering off-topic here but I've long been surprised that Deliveroo hasn't massively expanded globally? That's the dominant one in London at least, and very quickly ate Just Eat's lunch, which long predated it.)
Skype, Shazam, iZettle, Mojang etc
I’m not sure it would be different for social networks. (similar to how the match group owns practically all the dating sites and apps; interestingly I just found out that the match group refused to pull out of Russia.)
The US, similarly, ought be free to feel that EU is not the same as China, and allow a different economic relationship with the EU than with China. The US is currently amicable with the EU and is thus willing to treat the EU very differently than with China.
Hopefully non-US tech finally will lead to reasonable regulation: Storage of citizen's data on national ground and protection against arbitrary surveillance by foreign governments whether perceived friend or for.
Unfortunately the push to simply ban anything Chinese is strong as it has massive commercial interest of old US-tech (Facebook, Google) behind it. But it is not in our (Europeans) interest and I hope our politicians can resist.
Citation needed.
Ultimately, it all boils down to known trajectories. The EU and other places in the general area such as the UK, are all known to have histories of their own no doubt. Not just good histories, but bad as well. We trade with Germany, despite WWII. We trade with middle eastern countries, despite having many beliefs and ideologies and laws that are not exactly loved by all to put it lightly. We trade with even out economic adversaries because why not. Cheap labor, etc.
In all of these cases where we trade with any one of these places that someone could make some argument or another that they would be undesirable trade partners for; the future trajectory of that nation is what is the key point of where the decision is based off of to keep trading, or go with sanctions, etc and so forth.
The key to understanding this as I do, is the basis of Canada still trading with China when USA decides not to, or to restrict trade, etc and so forth. This is because our government for the past while now has decided that they wanted to help China get out of its economic slump from the past decades. And so of course since America tends to be a bit hawkish around working with communism in any form, while Canada has more socialist roots established; we tend to be more willing to work with such nations than America tends to. (And this absolutely sometimes pisses them off, government wise so to speak. And the nationalist types...)
Now in the past, most of this would have been water under the bridge, and nothing to be concerned about. Trade is trade, nothing more, nothing less; usually.
But with the advent of all of this digital revolution we are going through, and politics being stuck into everything that has a usable screen; the end result is stuff like this where countries with histories of X thing that Y government doesn't like automatically get extra scrutinized.
Especially when those countries have active militaries that support that kind of regime in said country. Doubly so when that country is in support of those militaries. One might say militia instead, but I fail to see the difference once they own navy vessels. I think this should be a fair opinion on the matter.
Anyways, right or wrong on the military/militia part as I may be, the end point is that we are seeing a rise in more extreme behavior in that country, in this case China and Russia lately; and so it only makes sense to be even more scrutinizing of anything to do with them.
Literally anything, since again; politics is in everything now.
Even us in Canada are starting to pull back from China, even though we are doing it at a slower rate. Our government is trying very hard to basically only enact these kinds of retracting changes only when it is going to hurt their future election outlook the least; or hurts their opponents outlook the most.
As for an example of this in action; Huawei 5G networks are effectively banned in Canada now. It took a while to come into fruition, but it finally happened. Whether or not they were right or wrong to do so is not my hill to fight on right now, but it is a great example of them biding their time til the last moment.
Far from me to defend American imperialism, but this is not true, is it? The USA has a decent list of long standing alliances, that include a variety of countries: Japan, Australia, Canada, UK, South Korea, among others.
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/633024-america-has-no-perma...
From Henry Kissinger, US Secretary of State.
Edit: if I'm reading right, it seems to be a quote from Dinesh D'Souza's book "What's so great about America" quoted by Henry Kissinger in his book "The White House Years"
https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Henry_Kissinger (Quotes -> 1980's)
Aside from the aforementioned countries, I'd say Israel is quite a strong ally of the United States.
The US has a number of nations with which its interests have long aligned with, and are likely to continue to, and are formalized via treaty. I’m ok with calling those alliances.
For example: There could be war between Finland and Sweden, but it’s fair to call them allies, in this day and age, they are friends… friends can still fall out. I know he says permanent friends, but permanence in friendship is simply the act of not sabotaging it.
In the same way it might be fair to call the US and Canada allies, but given that the US has been considerably more hostile to the EU, even spying on politicians, I think the quote is more telling than you believe.
Look at the history of Europe and observe the shifting trends of alliances.
But that's not what happened, is it?
Enemies turned into allies. That's quite the opposite of what you said.
What? Are you a troll or just a cpp bot?
NATO is an alliance, and also the US has many other defense pacts. (AUS, and more). Those are not temporary allegiances (if you call 70 years 'temporary' then you are either trolling or just delusional).
China, on the other hand, sounds perfectly capable and willing of manipulating our society to make it weak and broken, while at the same time forbidding the same content in their land.
I'd argue it even predates tiktok and it could explain why media and politicians are so much worse than 30 years ago. The other explanation is that we got complacent, and all great empires need generational weakness before collapsing.
Probably there's a bit of truth in both.
As it appears, China actually supported war in Europe. As long as it didn't happen during the games.
So yes, China should be under suspicion a lot more than the US from an European viewpoint.
Ps. I'm from Belgium
i'm not OP, but yes.
>Is it different rules for us in Europe? or are you suggesting that we should never have allowed this to happen?
this should never have been allowed to happen.
the mass collection and storage of video, audio, location data, public and private messages, browsing history, topics of interest, sentiments and mood, social graphs, menstrual status, political leanings, and so on, is a travesty. it is an unprecedented and powerful invasion of personal privacy, and it's happening to every online adult and child around the world, and there is essentially no way to opt out, and no expectation that the collected data will ever be deleted.
if it only scares you when china does it, something's weird.
What's the basis of social elites are coming uniformly from the population?
I think it's obvious that the social elites in all areas are predominantly from wealthy and affluent families. So the line of thinking of 85% teens corresponding to 85% or some number close elites, is baseless at best, and misleading at worst.
I’m sure there are “elite” families who strictly forbid their children from using social media, but I suspect this population is very low. In my own anecdotal experience, the most affluent teens had the most access to drugs and things our parents forbade us from having.
I just can’t make this different enough. I see the difference, just not enough.
It is al interessting, and the users are a nice research group.
But here in the Netherlands, 25% of the young people have the chance to become illiterate (yes become, reading/writing/communication skills dropping after primary and/or high school), part of it is the mobile phone, part of it social status and background.
By Plato's standards[1], we're doing better than ever!
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phaedrus_(dialogue)#Discussion...
On the other hand, TikTok is a result of the stagnant US-made social media platforms. TikTok did innovate and gained its market share fair and square.
As I said it multiple times before, I hope US takes the EU approach, that is, regulating the data access and not the Chinese approach of banning.
US is facing this issue for the first time and it is a touchy topic. But please consider the implications, what happens if each political block chooses the banning/blocking approach? Do you want to live in a world with each country having its own separate internet?
A lot of people are quick to rise the pitchforks and believe in the US superiority but ironically they demand government solution upon free market failure. I was genuinely scared about the future of the internet when the Trump admin tried to force acquisition by US tech giant or App Store ban over TikTok. What a relief when it failed.
I remember Vines taking off in popularity before it being shut down for a reason I never fully understood.
That is false. Many young people who are material for such position, don't care about tiktok.
National security is the sum total of the individual earned securities of each citizen, no more or less.
The distortion occurs when "national security" becomes the interests of a business elite, or a political party, or the job security of the security services themselves. We lose focus about what "security" really is.
I agree with your point (as I understand it), but to my knowledge there isn't and never has been a division of national apparatus dedicated to defence of culture, national values, and the sanity of our children from insidious foreign propaganda. And as for direct counter-propaganda we are not allowed to direct psyops internally, at least not with a taxpayer's dollar.
The "disappearance of the perimeter", as understood through the lens of the Huawei debacle is an example of how fast this has materialised and ambushed us in the social media age. But to be honest, I see the same problems with Facebook or US companies filtering and amplifying values.
There isn't an easy answer. There are not enough human resources. There is very little common agreement. Nobody wants to open that can of worms. Doing so would mean going up against powerful businesses and I don't think the IC has the stomach for it or can adapt to the changing threats fast enough.
So we just keep pretending "national security" is limited to industrial espionage by the Chinese or hacking by the Russians and so on.
That's why I think individual Digital Self Defence via education is the only option. It needs baking into the curriculum for age 6 upwards.
Are we really sure this follows (even if the numbers are correct)?
You cannot have an open free global internet without having it be the case that people will use foreign services. If you do not think that's worth the tradeoff then state clearly what you want: for the internet to be cut up into disjointed silos along geopolitical lines.
Not a problem during the decades of Voice of America broadcasts, of course.
You could maybe make a better case for something like Western cultural exports like music and movies. e.g. Like The Beatles with impressive centralised data gathering. Marvel movies, but more addictive.
All I know is that when I go on Facebook I just see angry boomers being quasi political, when I go on Instagram I am filled with envy, when I go on twitter I feel overwhelmed by the sheer flood of information and vileness, and when I go on Tik Tok I feel happy and a new ambition to pick up the guitar again.
So what is it about YouTube that makes people more likely to become radical incels willing to shoot up a school, and TikTok makes people more like to learn a new dance routine and leave with a smile?
You can be a nobody in the middle of nowhere with no followers and if you have a cool concept it will spread out.
If you only consume western media and social networks, this is certainly the conclusion you are led to. But if you observe your surroundings with your own eyes, my experience is that there is a stark contrast with the above quote. I have travelled continuously all over the west for the last five years and I have found people to be kind, generous, and friendly.
There’s money and power in dividing people. I don’t think we are as divided as the news media and social networks would have us believe.
And then there's a portion of nice people who will befriend you and then use for their benefit.
And then there's one's own bias. When traveling, at a random city in foreign country you'll probably pick a bar accordingly, skip heated topics and distance yourself from people that may cause trouble. Meanwhile engagement-driven interwebs make sure you meet such people and keep discussing.
I do think that they are angsty about a foreign government having control over a major social network. Imagine if a partially Chinese-owned company had to make the call of whether or not to ban the account of a sitting US President, for example. Plus, I have zero doubt that the US government requires Microsoft, Facebook, and other US tech companies to give them access to data in extremis, and there's no reason for the US gov't to expect China not to.
Crazy but Twitter has better content when it comes to bike lanes.
Valid arguments are grayed out and the top comment is an unfounded "TikTok is the most successful espionage operation of the 21st century". Looks like HN can't break out of its own bubble.
The first group seem to be missing the terrible things the US has done to the world. It has had unrivalled military and economic dominance for the best part of a century and it has abused that power. Whether that’s invading countries, organising coups, killing foreign citizens in large numbers via CIA operations, etc etc, America has shown little restraint. I think often folks are not aware of this, because (a) a lot of America’s imperialism doesn’t get much news coverage in the west and (b) the victim countries are often not very interesting or significant to that audience. Only the really obvious events like Iraq get flagged.
And on the other side, there is this tendency to demonise America and defend other countries in order to criticise America. So, ignoring the realities of what China and Russia have done to other countries and their own people. I mean, just look at the eastern block communist countries, or what is going on in Ukraine now, to see how Russia operates. I’m less knowledgeable about China but internally the government has tried to unite the country by eliminating all types of diversity in very disturbing Orwellian ways. Externally it hasn’t found its military feet quite yet, but we can see the use of soft power to cripple countries in a way not dissimilar to western imperialism.
I think what does bother me is that either viewpoint is very black and white, very simplified, and ignores the positive things that those countries do achieve. The truth is the world is complex, it’s a mixed bag, and “America is great” or “America is pure evil” are viewpoints that lack any sense of nuance. I mean, America is not one president or one set of staff or one institution. Its government is multifaceted and can be in public disagreement with itself.
I think the big issue with America is the influence of corporate power, the way capital interacts with democracy, that’s its biggest sin when it comes to geopolitics, that’s where to focus your anger and inquiry.
I wonder why U.S. firms pay U.S. senators to loosen data privacy laws, such that they can compete with TikTok. U.S. firms seem to think that the cost changing privacy laws is greater than the cost of paying news outlets to turn public opinion against a business rival.
The US market for one, is so tilted in favor of established firms that use their market positions to build moats and buy or crush any upstart competitors and focus all their on attention on lobbying and rent seeking behaviors that the only place for legitimate contenders to appear is from places like China where American firms can't just buy them out of existence.
That being said, I would take that claim with a big grain of salt, for multiple reasons. First you need to look at the relevant generation where tiktok is strong, whether youtube can break that monopoly. Also, it's fairly easy to make existing youtube users "try out" shorts via an in app pop up, and then mark that down as successful use of the feature. If your app has enough users, you can reach relevant usage counts easily, even though none of the users are there for the shorts feature only.
Also, what matters with social apps like these is also not just the content consumption but whether friend groups etc. are communicating on that app or another one. This has extremely strong network effects that are hard to break.
[0]: https://www.investors.com/news/technology/google-stock-rises...
But it wasn't built to appeal me (or you), but other parts of the population, people who prefer tiktok like experiences.
For me personally, the reason to use shorts every now and then is because tiktok is authwalled while shorts is not. But I don't know what other users of shorts would say why they prefer it.
Just trying to recreate some of the UI aspects of it is just cargo culting.
YouTube could be just as good, even without shorts, if it actually gave people what they want instead of what makes YT the absolute maximum amount of money over.
A global superpower that systematically employs military agression to impose its will somewhere far away around the globe is definitely authoritarian. Even if it had managed to create a convincing brand of democracy benifiting only, like, 5% of global population.
EG - North Korea is the most authoritarian state in the world but we haven’t seen them “invade” anyone “in the last 20 years”. The two are not directly related.
“TikTok’s growing role as a news platform has sparked fears that, in the words of Ted Cruz, an American senator, it is “a Trojan horse the Chinese Communist Party can use to influence what Americans see, hear and ultimately think”.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_in_China
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_killings_by_law_enforc...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarcera...
The same goes for incarceration. In US 3M people can't use Internet due to being incarcerated, but in China more than 1.5B have significant restrictions. (This is just an example for the idea of total restricted freedom)
Given the efforts that China has put in to stopping the spread of cov19 over the past 2 years, that seems delusional.
Also, Chinese life expectancy has exceeded the US now[1]
[1] https://www.vice.com/en/article/v7vevb/us-life-expectancy-fa...
> The same goes for incarceration. In US 3M people can't use Internet due to being incarcerated, but in China more than 1.5B have significant restrictions. (This is just an example for the idea of total restricted freedom)
All countries have restricted interactions on the internet. Go ahead and google how to make a pressure cooker bomb and see how long you have a job after the secret service starts asking your employer questions about you, or download some songs and get sued 150k per song by the RIAA.
Given the head start by foreign countries and the radical nature of the internet (totally different way to communicate) some caution and restrictions probably aren't out of order.
As for your second one, your attempt to claim the restrictions are similar is going into wrong ears here. Both the cooker claim and the songs claim are laughable.
If you're American, this is the most "throwing stones in a glass house" accusation to make about another country.
My impression was that the healthcare here is very expensive, but not bad. Besides, US does not prevent people from demanding better.
In China, it's just an instrument the state turns on and off as needed for population control.
The difference in approaches is so interesting.
[citation needed]. Various accounts I've seen claimed it was more like a financial fine; forced abortions sound like Zenz-type fabrication.
You should see our incarceration rate for Chinese Americans.
> abortion is legal in China
I'd have to say, between abortions being prohibited and abortions being mandatory, the mandatory abortions are significantly worse.
In this case Facebook.
I'm really puzzled by how the US believes in free speech, but when speech comes from another country, it's a security risk. Now I totally get that China can use propaganda for "bad ideologies", but again, isn't propaganda part of free speech?
What this whole thing reveals, is that US likes to influence other countries (with its long history of foreign policy), but is afraid to be influenced by others, so it's a bit hypocritical.
And if it's not hypocritical, it's fair game at worst.
Not coming from a country who considers themselves at war with us.
It's not a secret China exports a lot of stuff, not sure it would export things to countries it is at war with.
China sees the US as a threat and has been attempting to undermine the US at every turn. Many Chinese students in the US basically become spies due to the threats against their families. The Chinese government has been propagandising people in the US with Confucius Institutes. A Chinese spy was sleeping with a US house member and another was on a US senator's team. I'm sure there are more cases than just these two as well.
They are infiltrating the US to destroy us from within so they don't need a hot war. People in the US either don't know or don't care.
As for exporting goods to the US. With cheap labor it hollows out the middle class in the US. We used to have good paying jobs for non college educated people but those jobs were offshored to China. This weakens the general population and causes increased drug use and other actions of despair. By continuing to send us goods they are keeping the US restricted in what they can do. If China blocked exports it would devastate the US economy.
When you put this limbic weapon in the hands of a communist regime, incredibly bad things will happen. Facebook at least had some backlash over manipulating their users mood using their platform. It’s not hard to imagine China attempting some fairly subversive things with TikTok. I would never sign up for it.