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Comment by herbst | Hacker News Reader

Do we want America as a world leader? Enforcing their dated moral views on us trough controlling money flow and social media? We do have accept violence but no nudity in our media when our society is the exact opposite?

Yes that's whatabouttism but the world actually does suffer from the current state as well

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I'm not sure I want America to be the world leader. But I am definitely sure I don't want it to be China.

But that's not what it is about.

China doesn't seem to try to enforce global policies (right now) nether do they claim the moral right for OUR society.

Sure they do. They just do it through second-order effects so it seems less obvious what's going on. I recall an instance where an American basketball team owner said something in support of the Hong Kong protests. His team was immediately banned from China, both physically and via broadcast.

Being able to publicly censor foreigners who dislike your policies is a useful power.

When you control economic access to a billion people, you don't always need guns to get others to do that you want. (China does have plenty of those guns, though, if and when they decide they need them.)

I’d note Chinese culture is even more conservative regarding nudity and just as glorifying of nationalist violence.

I totally agree. But it doesn't influence me here in Europe.

And so far I haven't seen any signs that china is trying to change that.

While visa and master banning all related to sex has real life consequences. Same with social media showing a skewed censored view on sexuality because of morality views that do not fit the society I live in. Until a few years ago you couldn't watch TV without something exploding and the US military somehow saving the day in every second movie.

We have to comply to rules that do not apply to our society.

I get that but I don’t get what barriers exist preventing competition that meets your cultures norms. There’s no state mandates involved? I suspect the answer is scale of market giving scale of impact, as well as overall quality of production and post production of American media. What’s your take? Particularly in the space of internet technologies it feels like “nothing stops you.” But I also think global social media companies are generally “family” oriented more than American morality oriented, and are opting for an intersection of cultural norms to be as minimally controversial as possible. Most cultures on earth are considerably more conservative than America, let alone Europe. Europe is very much an outlier in human cultures.

You are right I guess. Movies being the best example. Netflix and all companies that followed opened up investments in international movies and within only a few years US movies appear to be the minority, at least on German streaming sites.

Today we have several real time payment methods "better" than credit card. I still can't sell a dildo with paypal, but I do have options now (if I don't care about us customers who expect credit card payments)

Social media ist lost cause anyway.

Maybe that should be my point. America is losing its influence, and it's obviously afraid. I am afraid when America is afraid because history has shown in might react wildly.

In America this is a non issue to be honest. The rest of the world rarely registers. The American market is so vast in itself that is the primary focus. The issue of China has more to do with the courting of totalitarianism (Russia, North Korea, and various other bad guys), destabilization of international institutions, aggressive economic espionage, etc. I think the #1 vs #2 GDP is about as big a non issue to most Americans as nudity in Europe. I think this is a hold over from the 1950-1980’s, but American society now is much more insular and focused more on the Kardashians clothing choice.

Not even "dated", nudity being OK goes back quite a way.

That's not what I ment. Visa&Master, whoever rates movies, facebook they all allow violence but no nudity.

In Europe nudity definitely is more normal than violence. America is forcing their different moral view on our media, normalizing violence and ashaming the youth with oldschool sexual views.

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