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Comment by matsemann | Hacker News Reader

Yeah, as an European it almost feels nice to diversify, so US agencies&companies don't know everything about me..

In this situation the diversification means also the CCP will know everything about you.

1 superpower vs 2 superpowers both of questionable morality doesn't make a difference.

Don't forget we talk about 6.5 billions humans that US already treats as sub-humans as in being entitled to less basic human rights than US citizens. If US wants rest of the world to actually give a damn lets start with this simple issue.

Till then no, I don't care much if also chinese have my browsing data.

If you're a civilian on the receiving end of some bombs, it doesn't make a big difference indeed. For everyone else it does, unless we are taking that high ground argument in which everything is doomed and everyone is a jerk.

But the CCP is not our government, and at least it can mean that your government knows less about you.

In the old East Germany, it wasn't a problem that the CIA knew everything about you. It was that the Stasi did.

> But the CCP is not our government,

But there are Chinese dissidents and Tibet independentists in your country which are at risk, so it's OK if China spies on those because "they are not your government"?

https://edition.cnn.com/2016/04/13/opinions/j-michael-cole-o...

I don't think they are at risk while they remain here in my country. It's very unlikely that the Chinese government decides on a strike against any dissident here. That's more typical of the US like they did yesterday in Afghanistan.

The US also kidnapped people in Europe to send them to torture camps in the middel east. The US military was also caught buying location data from muslim prayer apps, we can guess how that data was used.

So your example of "US dissident" is the head of a global terrorist organization?

China will also call those dissidents terrorists, and some may even fill that definition. And we can end up agreeing: for example, last month, Sweden decided that the political refugees it has been hosting are now terrorists and should be extradited, as requested by Turkey in exchange of not vetoing the country's accession to NATO.

Nobody really cares what they are called, important is what happens to them. The ones put bombs and kill people, the others say nasty things about a government. This is what makes the difference between who got killed by the US (because bombs) and who got killed by Putin (because ooh critics) or who got killed by the CCP (because ooh muslim).

But let's not forget what started the discussion: we play here the game of relativization to justify the CCP spying on tiktok users. That's all there is to know.

So we shouldn't use TikTok because... Chinese dissidents who live in the US can be harmed?

Unless you use some sort of totally de-googlified phone (if such a thing exists), it will still be both governments knowing everything about you.

Yes, but in the last 20 years, US has actually invaded foreign countries (Afganistan, Iraq and Lybia), while PRC is only threatening to invade Taiwan.

The PRC is "only threatening" to invade Taiwan? By "only threatening" you mean by regularly sending war planes into Taiwan's Air Identification Defense Zone[1][2]? Do you really believe the line between "only threatening" and provoking is wide enough to not be of any concern? Also it's curious you left out the whole Uyghur Xinjiang internment camps thing out of your comparison between US and the PRC.

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-61642217

[2] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-58794094

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