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Comment by FirmwareBurner | Hacker News Reader

>But due process!!".

If only they would give the same due process to the users and app devs before they close their accounts.

Companies want and exploit all the perks of the liberal democratic western societies that helped them make what they are today and reciprocate with defying the laws and tax avoidance, while bowing down to foreign dictatorships no problem.

The only way you stop them abusing this is to put an executive to jail. Because that's why they instantly bow down to China. Braking the law in China is a legal problem with personal accountability, breaking the law in the west is just an accounting problem that you can easily pay your way out of.

The moment you put someone in jail, everyone stops breaking the law immediately, because nobody likes the idea of going to jail.

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If Careless People is to be believed, not even then. In that book Facebook was perfectly happy to have employees spend time in jail, as long as it wasn't Zuckerberg or Sandberg.

It's not just that people go to jail in the PRC, after all it's not like Tim Cook or other western executives need fear extradition to the PRC or something, it's more like because for better or (mostly) worse the PRC is a single party government, if one aspect of that government says "do this, or we close this 1.3 billion person market to you," it's a threat with actual teeth.

In the USA any given administration can try something like that and one party or the other will work with whatever company is being sanctioned out of pure spite, or will know that divisions in the USA mean that all that a company needs to do is play just enough lip service to appear respectful to the current admin. Worse case scenario, they wait four years. See: nvidia flagrantly selling cards to the PRC through Singapore.

I disagree with the "dictatorship of the proletariat" ideology, but to be fair the remnants of it that survived Deng Xiaoping does seem to somewhat work in resisting the influence of foreign capitalists.

>it's not like Tim Cook or other western executives need fear extradition to the PRC or something

Tim Cook isn't going to jail in China, Apple has local employees of their branch that can go to jail and pretty sure they don't want to so they aren't gonna defy their government.

>I disagree with the "dictatorship of the proletariat" ideology

Sure, but then the masses easily switch their opinions when they see the whole due process is only for the super rich, and when they break the law it's an open and shut case.

> Sure, but then the masses easily switch their opinions when they see the whole due process is only for the super rich, and when they break the law it's an open and shut case.

I'm a bit confused by this, can you help me understand what you mean?

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