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Comment by imwithstoopid | Hacker News Reader

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China has been waging a cyber war with the U.S. for some time now. The conflict is already existing . China is not a media created adversary.

They limit the types of U.S. businesses that can operate in China and it it’s not unreasonable that we respond in kind.

This isn’t about actual harms or actual privacy risks. Facebook directly interfered in the 2016 election and no laws changed, no one went to prison, Mark Zuckerberg had a few cringe moments in front of Congress and then they pretty much forgot about him. So the message I’m getting is, no actual existential harm will come to a social media company that allows that to happen.

That’s because you cannot lay the result of the 2016 election at Facebook’s doorstep.

Functionally they were used for five things:

1. Political advertising, which is what all campaigns engage in.

2. Discussions of the election by our own citizens, sometimes critical, more often an echo chamber or virtual throat stabbing contest.

3. News about the election which is free name recognition for all of the candidates the media considers worth talking about.

4. Market research by the campaigns.

5. A platform for foreign propaganda including psy-ops, which is bad and should be addressed, but not even close to bad enough to effect the outcome of an election as much as many might want to think that it did.

You can’t really pin the 2016 election on Facebook specifically since any information on there competes with any information not from there and there was a lot more not-Facebook information involved in that election, but Facebook by that point made for a nice scapegoat that nobody has any real sympathy for. Remember too that it was real Americans that actually filled in their ballots that decided the election for every single candidate on the list.

> Facebook directly interfered in the 2016 election

Is this a reference to Cambridge Analytica? Their electoral effects were mostly dismissed.

Mostly because they were exaggerated claims from Cambridge Analytica's own marketing material.

neither of those mean much with regards to tiktok specifically though.

Looks like hatred instilling propaganda worked well on you

It’s possible that I’m a victim of propaganda and it’s possible you are. The way to determine who is more likely to have fallen for propaganda is to compare respective beliefs against known facts. It is indisputable that Chinese hackers have stolen U.S. technology secrets and that China prevents/restricts who can operate there much more so than the U.S. Given this and China’s overt human rights violations on a grand scale in the western part of the country it’s clear that a conflict exists as a clash of both culture and national security.

Do you believe the same for the US involvment in the ukraine conflict? The wars in the middle east? Vietnam? Korea? and so on? If not, what differences made you arrive at a different conclusion?

To be clear I'm not implying you are wrong in terms of a conflict is being setup with China, just curious if your criticism is consistently applied. Many if not most news outlets are saying exactly what you are, but only make this distinction for China.

I'm more than happy to go through that list, but I suspect I will be downvoted anyway for merely explaining my own beliefs (which is what you are asking for)

- Ukraine - a contrived proxy war and we are very generously and bravely assisting in the avoidable deaths of as many Ukrainians as possible. I'll go even further - neoliberal support in the US is comes from this notion that Trump and Putin are penpals, so if we punch Putin, its like punching Trump

- Middle East Wars - worst geopolitical decision since ww2, probably ruined the US forever

- Vietnam - a massive mistake...and I mean MISTAKE. this was not evil on the US part, but a legit misunderstanding. We mistook a civil war for a Red Wave

- Korea - neutral...but it was the last time we faced off against China militarily and although we massively outgunned them, they probably delivered the single worst military defeat in US history (Chosin Resevoir). By any rational assessment we should have demolished the Chinese, instead they demolished us.

Thank you for explaining, I certainly wont downvote (not that I know how to anyways). Sorry in advance if you get nuked just for answering my question. Those are certainly opinions that seem consistent to me and are not just the usual parroting of <choose a media outlet> that seems to be so prevalent now. You've restored my faith in the free thinking public just a little bit today, so thanks.

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