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Comment by moussess | Hacker News Reader

Here is a list on what restrictions Chinese citizens live with

- Workers in state sectors can be banned from traveling out of China https://www.scmp.com/news/article/3265503/chinas-expanding-t.... Also, non 1st tier city citizens can have a hard time getting passports, essentially a ban of travelling

- banned from using trains or airline if they are on the social credit score ban

- banned from moving money out of China for more than $50k a year

- banned from accessing foreign websites. VPN is technically illegal, and using it can get you into trouble

- banned from accessing porn

- banned from using a long list of restricted words on social media, from Winnie the Pooh, to "support Xinjiang people"

- banned from using TikTok

- banned from protesting against lost wages from state enterprises

- banned from group protesting

the list goes on and on and on

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Ok, that’s their country what does it have to do with us? Also why do we do this:

> https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2023/10/24/shadowbanning-...

This is why it’s good to have a social media company free of US control.

> Ok, that’s their country what does it have to do with us?

I mean, nothing really. You could say the same about Israel and Palestine, or Saudi Arabia and Iran, or China and Hong Kong. Human rights abuses are perfectly acceptable in today's society, as long as they're out of sight and out of mind. He who controls visibility into human suffering controls the way people perceive his control. Hasbara, in Israeli vernacular.

> Also why do we do this:

Because Zionist lobbying exerts disproportionate control over both the US tech industry and the legislative apparatus regulating it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-BDS_laws

You're not going to drive a wedge between people by repeating the Israel stance, though. If you tried to expose China's same abuses for working slave labor to death or suicide, you'd be suppressed in exactly the same way America suppresses your anti-Israel content. From a national security perspective, TikTok's existence is about whether another country can impose their own double-standard on top of America's own populist opinion. Today it's the war in Gaza, but tomorrow it will be about suppressing democracy in Taiwan for the "betterment of global peace" et. al. You can't deny China's plans to use TikTok for war with a straight face - by many accounts it's already started.

Yes it's great to have chinese companies on american soil that prevent people from saying "taiwan number one" in games like marvel rivals.

So much freedom!!!!

Do you hear yourself? Are you insane?

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