Is this also true for highly-funded, money-losing SV startups focusing on growth. Why or why not?
So should no one speak out against concentration camps, cultural genocide, and mass sterilization in China today because the same things have happened historically in the United States? China being an adversary should have nothing to do with it? If we can't point out such a problem with an app, then the road we're going down is we can't say anything else about China either.
Why is the solution not to make broad data collection illegal?
Edit:
> So should no one speak out against concentration camps, cultural genocide, and mass sterilization in China today because the same things have happened historically in the United States?
Not at all - those things are genuinely awful, but one key difference is that Facebook, Google, and others are still siphoning up people's data today. This isn't something that happened in the past. I think the comparison is quite valid.
Just one example: There are no reports of Meta (etc) logging my keystrokes and data OUTSIDE of what I enter into the app/website.
It comes down to what you believe is the lesser of two evil systems of governance. I will not hesitate to criticize the United States, NATO, the central banks, or the IMF, and I have many problems with them; I would still prefer to live under their system as opposed to the kind of world that China proposes. I live in the United States, and to an extent I want the United States to remain stable. Why should I not be concerned that an adversary in both policy and philosophy gets to have as much influence as TikTok over the minds of millions of Americans?
The only way I could see viewing US tech and China tech as equal is if one has no connection to the soil on which they stand, or perhaps if they live outside those two systems. I don't live outside of those systems. I live in the United States. I don't think the future proposed by the United States or any of its tech companies is as bad as what China proposes to bring to the world.
> one key difference is that Facebook, Google, and others are still siphoning up people's data today.
Again, that is a point that no one is disputing. And why emphasize today? As far as I am aware, TikTok doesn't plan to mine data. It already does. Regardless, I can't see how it's defensible to allow an adversary that much influence over our psychology. It's one thing for us to essentially cause our own problems, but it's another to invite problems from nations that would be thrilled for the United States to either be under its complete control or not exist at all.
Edit: Typo
It won't do a damn thing to reduce TikTok's growth either. Nothing will until TT becomes replaced by the next thing.
The reason there's always someone starting a subthread about it is because Silicon Valley and the United States has, had, and will continue to have all the same incentives and problems for international users. [1]
It's not a very interesting conversation, because it adds nothing that hasn't been said a million times, but neither does another lap around the 'China bad' rhetorical track.
[1] And also domestic users, but they have some means of recourse for it.
So, any Chinese tech company is de facto going to have all of its data accessible by the Chinese government, by default.
The legal system in China is whatever the party wants it to be.
Hello, I'm an appsec engineer working on product privacy for a large multinational company. I have a pretty accurate, battle tested, mental model about data privacy w/r/t international verticals. I have worked with our China vertical and also worked on key escrow separation models. You might even be able to figure out which company, based on the above.
It's interesting to see you make these claims about me when you know nothing about me.
On December 16, 2005, The New York Times reported that the Bush administration had been conducting surveillance against U.S. citizens without specific approval from the FISA court for each case since 2002.
In 2011, the Obama administration secretly won permission from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to reverse restrictions on the National Security Agency's use of intercepted phone calls and e-mails, permitting the agency to search deliberately for Americans' communications in its massive databases.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Foreign_Intellig...
I would really like to see people in North America demand better from their leaders instead of patting ourselves on the back about how at least we're better than China.
[1] https://www.oregonlive.com/business/2022/09/tool-gives-polic...
This is true, and bad, but consider another difference in this situation:
In the US, companies were able to respond to this revelation by shoring up their security practices, and people exercised their right to openly criticize the government. This is not possible in China.
The US government still has and has always had access to all data about US citizens.
Bizarre that you think that stopped.