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Comment by postcert | Hacker News Reader

The most disheartening part of this ban is that it’s just about the only thing the government can agree on. IMO Mitt Romney slipped the truth in saying: “Some wonder why there was such overwhelming support for us to shut down potentially TikTok or other entities of that nature. If you look at the postings on TikTok and the number of mentions of Palestinians, relative to other social media sites — it's overwhelmingly so among TikTok broadcasts."

TikTok is the first and just about the only place I’ve seen content about corporate greed, the accelerating disappearance of the middle class and the real downstream effects of US foreign policy that hasn’t been whitewashed.

The ball is in China’s court now, if they can provide a space where this class consciousness can continue to grow they’ll easily get equal/better (though I think magnitudes greater) returns than Russia’s recent social campaigns.

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> The ball is in China’s court now, if they can provide a space where this class consciousness can continue to grow they’ll easily get equal/better

We can hope the CCP's consciousness grows and they shutdown their concentration camps, stop organ harvesting, and start having elections.

The ball is in their court.

We can talk TikTok being allowed after that.

Maybe every other country should ban American imports until we stop bankrolling Israel if that's your position.

Sure. Plenty of people to trade with who don't support terrorists like Hamas.

This is like saying that people who are against civilian casualties in the wars in iraq and Afghanistan are all pro 9/11 and love al-qaeda. How does the boot taste?

What's the implication? That we as a society and/or government have a more just consciousness?

There are certainly are issues in China but are these "popular headline" talking points worse than the suffering we have here? And that's even after assuming they are factual.

We sell prison labor for pennies. We allow individuals to create epidemics and slap them on the wrist. We allow the future of our next generations to be squandered for today's profits. We allow our government to be just as captive to the desires of private parties in a way that's effectually reduced elections to a non-choice.

I don't think anyone with a conscious can say we're any better and that's without taking into account our worst contributions of genocides/wars/instability to the global community.

But in the end w/e, you have your freedom tinted glasses on (it must be nice) and the average american is screwed on our current trajectory.

The difference between prison labor and Uyghur forced labor camps:

In the US those people lost their rights by committing criminal acts and were convicted by a jury of their peers.

In China, the Uyghurs were forced into camps because of their ethnicity.

No different than Nazi Germany. And yes those camps are real.

Btw the prison labor camp talking point is a common 50 cent army tactic. Not sure if you're doing it for free or...

Let me genuinely ask you something because you seem to be all over this thread with a strong different opinion, and I'm not so arrogant as to believe it's impossible that I'm wrong.

Do you really think, in real world terms, that China could not accomplish the types of infiltrations / surveillance it would deem strategically important without tiktok? Considering that they already compromise government systems on a regular basis (which I can provide links for if you're curious)

Do you genuinely think that corruption / lobbying has nothing to do with this ban? What is your primary concern that makes you in favor of this?

Do you look at things like facebook and instagram and either not see the blatant propaganda on there or not see a problem with it?

I'm just wondering if we are disagreeing on the facts or if we have fundamentally incompatable values, I want to understand.

Nice pivot. Don't want to talk about the Uyghur camps eh?

Respond to the prison labor vs concentration camps point, since you brought up prison labor in attempts to compare convicted criminals to an ethnic group being forced into labor.

I don't have a point, that wasn't me talking about it. The Uyghur camps are horrible, horrible things, and legalized slavery in the US is also horrible. I don't think they are equal at all but tbh I just don't know enough about the Uyghur situation to have an educated opinion on it generally or specifically in regards to the tiktok situation.

Although I do think there's some degree of equivalence specifically in regard to a specific ethnic group being forced into labor since you mentioned it, but I don't want to go on a tangent because that's not what I brought up and not what I was talking about.

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