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Not sure I consider Chinese spyware any worse than the US spyware of Facebook, as a resident of neither country. Hand wringing about TikTok seems more rooted in

Not sure I consider Chinese spyware any worse than the US spyware of Facebook, as a resident of neither country. Hand wringing about TikTok seems more rooted in sinophobia than genuine privacy concerns, from where I’m sitting.

redblacktree 6y ago
Without the racist framing of "sinophobia," fear of the Chinese state is a legitimate one. They are a totalitarian regime engaged in a variety of human rights abuses and dystopian-fiction-made-reality. From Uyghur concentration camps to "social credit scores," there are a lot of reasons to fear the Chinese state that have nothing to do with racism or xenophobia.
- xapata 6y ago
  Indeed, I know many Chinese people who are afraid of the Chinese state.
  - redblacktree 6y ago
    It looks like they may also be brigading this post. Two downvotes pretty quickly on my comment. Maybe I'm out-of-touch with Hacker News norms, but I didn't think I said anything that warrants downvotes. Edit to add: I don't make this post to complain about downvotes. The point was the potential brigading, since we're talking negatively about the Chinese state.
    - scottLobster 6y ago
      Yeah, it's been a pattern on recent posts concerning China that any comment describing CCP malevolence gets instantly downvoted, and often responded to with the same extremely weak what-aboutisms and other non-arguments, accusations of Sinophobia and such. So either there's a rather unintelligent group of Hacker News users who just show up to downvote and post bad arguments on every article criticizing China and then disappear, or we're seeing some of China's finest 50 cent warriors in the comment section.
      - La1n 6y ago
        Sure, people who downvote you are unintelligent or paid shills. You cant even imagine that you might be wrong, or people have different opinions?
        scottLobster 6y ago
        No, but people who post the same logical fallacies again and again (almost like they're getting them off a list somewhere) and never address the actual argument probably are. It's like pointing out that POC living at higher latitudes likely need Vitamin D supplements because the sunlight isn't intense enough for darker skin to produce enough Vitamin D naturally, because that's how melanin works. Then someone jumps in, down-votes you, calls you racist, and points out that white people need vitamin D supplements too. The rules of logic say those are bad/non-arguments, not me. Once or twice is an unintelligent person. A consistent long-term pattern makes it likely some variety of shill/troll/plant, or Chinese intelligence in the case of China-related articles.
        FooBarWidget 6y ago
        Nah, I think you're being too paranoid. I see plenty of less-China-critical (not even pro-China) comments get downvoted, and China-critical comments upvoted. Also, CCP shills are a nice myth but they don't operate overseas. The real shills serve a very different purpose: they are hired by local governments to cheat the central government into giving them promotions, by showing the central government comments from "happy citizens".
        scottLobster 6y ago
        Oh I'm sure they operate in even greater numbers internally, but I'm equally sure China puts out as much foreign propaganda as they think they can get away with. "Sinophobia" in response to criticism of verified CCP actions in particular seems an attempt to weaponize the current cancel culture in the west. Hell China did likewise to the Mongol tribes for centuries until Genghis Khan came along. It's not like sowing discord among one's rivals is a new or novel strategy, and while Hacker News might be intelligent enough on average to see through it the bulk of the internet lacks that sort of scrutiny. Suggesting China and America are moral equals might not carry much weight in America, maybe even Western Europe, but Africa? The Middle East? South America? China has certainly tried more radical operations in the past, posting a swarm of "nudge" posts on social media to try and inch world opinion its way seems like an easy call if I were the Chinese propaganda ministry. They have motive, means and opportunity.
ardy42 6y ago
> Not sure I consider Chinese spyware any worse than the US spyware of Facebook, as a resident of neither country. I consider it quite different, because I know I'm more opposed to the ideology of the CCP than I am of the US. The US isn't intractably opposed to liberal democracy, but the CCP is: From the OP: > To that end, this long history looms large in how China thinks about its relationship to the U.S. specifically, and the West generally. China is driven to reverse its “century of humiliation”, and to retake what it sees as its rightful place as a dominant force in the world. What few in the West seem to realize, though, is that the Chinese Communist Party very much believes that Marxism is the means by which that must be accomplished, and that Western liberal values are actively hostile to that goal. Tanner Greer wrote in Tablet: > ... > This understanding of China’s belief that it is fighting an ideological war explains why the severe curtailing of freedom that happened in Hong Kong this month was inevitable; if the Party’s ideology is ultimately opposed to liberalism anywhere, “one country-two systems” were always empty words in service of China’s rejuvenation, and Marxism’s triumph. To see that reality, though, means taking China seriously, and believing what they say.
- msbarnett 6y ago
  > I consider it quite different, because I know I'm more opposed to the ideology of the CCP than I am of the US. I don’t know that I’m particularly enthused about either country’s ideology, hence my more skeptical view of the idea that any of the major US social media networks are “better”.
  - scottLobster 6y ago
    Don't need to be enthused to acknowledge one is better than the other. At the end of the day the NSA/facebook is far less likely to use my information to hurt me than the CCP. The only difference is I live in the US, so the CCP doesn't really care and can't really reach me without committing a potential act of war anyway. If I moved to China and maintained my same social media habits I'd be disappeared rather quickly, and possibly organ harvested. Consider that if you use TikTok anything you post will show up in your dossier should you ever visit China, even as a tourist. And you're giving that info freely, better hope the CCP doesn't decide to use it against you while you're there to make a political statement. They've done and are doing far worse over less.
xapata 6y ago
Do you agree with the censorship and propaganda policies of mainland China? If not, Sinophobia is not paranoia.
- msbarnett 6y ago
  No, but then again I’m equally opposed to much of contemporary US politics and the long history of US meddling in foreign countries affairs to obtain anti-democratic results that happen to favour US goals (broadly, Latin American 20th century history), so again, this “TikTok’s data gathering is an existential threat to freedom but please pay Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Google et al no mind” framing is... unconvincing to say the least.
cameronbrown 6y ago
Ah yes, because the US is well known for its Muslim concentration camps, social credit scores and surveillance panopticon. > Hand wringing about TikTok seems more rooted in sinophobia than genuine privacy concerns, from where I’m sitting. This is a strawman. People dislike the CCP not the Chinese.
- msbarnett 6y ago
  > Ah yes, because the US is well known for its Muslim concentration camps, social credit scores and surveillance panopticon. Perhaps I simply don’t consider the Hispanic concentration camps, private credit scores that still gate hiring, access to healthcare (via hiring) and renting and apartment, and surveillance panopticon powered by Google, better?
  - cameronbrown 6y ago
    Are you serious? The US does not have Hispanic concentration camps. It DOES have a private prison problem, but not death camps.
    - msbarnett 6y ago
      I guess we’ll see how well the detainees in those ICE camps fare in the face of an out of control COVID outbreak. I wouldn’t care to try to parse any moral superiority between how apologists want to characterize the ICE camps and how Chinese apologists want to characterize the Uighur camps, myself. Neither strikes me as terribly deserving of our defense.
    - La1n 6y ago
      Concentration camp =/= Death camp
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
    - YarickR2 6y ago
addison-lee 6y ago
No doubt spyware is bad from either country, but TikTok was caught trying to suppress content from "ugly, poor, or disabled" users. Do you still support the app knowing that? https://theintercept.com/2020/03/16/tiktok-app-moderators-users-discrimination/ https://theintercept.com/2020/03/16/tiktok-app-moderators-us...
- msbarnett 6y ago
  I didn’t say I supported it at all. I merely said I don’t see how it’s worse than the major US social networks. Like say Facebook, which has been caught multiple times allowing employers and housing advertisers to illegally exclude groups like Black people, from seeing job postings and apartment listings. Again, I don’t know that what TikTok has been shown to be doing is any worse.
  - addison-lee 6y ago
    Sorry, didn't mean to put words in your mouth.
foepys 6y ago
Look at Hong Kong where China just yesterday told the political parties that holding any pre-election for Hong Kong's parliament is an aggressive act against China. Or look at the Uyghur internment camps. Or the one child policy that effectively turned some communitys 80% male. There is no opposition in China that can speak up against this.

redblacktree 6y ago

Without the racist framing of "sinophobia," fear of the Chinese state is a legitimate one. They are a totalitarian regime engaged in a variety of human rights abuses and dystopian-fiction-made-reality. From Uyghur concentration camps to "social credit scores," there are a lot of reasons to fear the Chinese state that have nothing to do with racism or xenophobia.

xapata 6y ago
Indeed, I know many Chinese people who are afraid of the Chinese state.
- redblacktree 6y ago
  It looks like they may also be brigading this post. Two downvotes pretty quickly on my comment. Maybe I'm out-of-touch with Hacker News norms, but I didn't think I said anything that warrants downvotes. Edit to add: I don't make this post to complain about downvotes. The point was the potential brigading, since we're talking negatively about the Chinese state.
  - scottLobster 6y ago
    Yeah, it's been a pattern on recent posts concerning China that any comment describing CCP malevolence gets instantly downvoted, and often responded to with the same extremely weak what-aboutisms and other non-arguments, accusations of Sinophobia and such. So either there's a rather unintelligent group of Hacker News users who just show up to downvote and post bad arguments on every article criticizing China and then disappear, or we're seeing some of China's finest 50 cent warriors in the comment section.
    - La1n 6y ago
      Sure, people who downvote you are unintelligent or paid shills. You cant even imagine that you might be wrong, or people have different opinions?
      - scottLobster 6y ago
        No, but people who post the same logical fallacies again and again (almost like they're getting them off a list somewhere) and never address the actual argument probably are. It's like pointing out that POC living at higher latitudes likely need Vitamin D supplements because the sunlight isn't intense enough for darker skin to produce enough Vitamin D naturally, because that's how melanin works. Then someone jumps in, down-votes you, calls you racist, and points out that white people need vitamin D supplements too. The rules of logic say those are bad/non-arguments, not me. Once or twice is an unintelligent person. A consistent long-term pattern makes it likely some variety of shill/troll/plant, or Chinese intelligence in the case of China-related articles.
        FooBarWidget 6y ago
        Nah, I think you're being too paranoid. I see plenty of less-China-critical (not even pro-China) comments get downvoted, and China-critical comments upvoted. Also, CCP shills are a nice myth but they don't operate overseas. The real shills serve a very different purpose: they are hired by local governments to cheat the central government into giving them promotions, by showing the central government comments from "happy citizens".
        scottLobster 6y ago
        Oh I'm sure they operate in even greater numbers internally, but I'm equally sure China puts out as much foreign propaganda as they think they can get away with. "Sinophobia" in response to criticism of verified CCP actions in particular seems an attempt to weaponize the current cancel culture in the west. Hell China did likewise to the Mongol tribes for centuries until Genghis Khan came along. It's not like sowing discord among one's rivals is a new or novel strategy, and while Hacker News might be intelligent enough on average to see through it the bulk of the internet lacks that sort of scrutiny. Suggesting China and America are moral equals might not carry much weight in America, maybe even Western Europe, but Africa? The Middle East? South America? China has certainly tried more radical operations in the past, posting a swarm of "nudge" posts on social media to try and inch world opinion its way seems like an easy call if I were the Chinese propaganda ministry. They have motive, means and opportunity.

ardy42 6y ago

> Not sure I consider Chinese spyware any worse than the US spyware of Facebook, as a resident of neither country. I consider it quite different, because I know I'm more opposed to the ideology of the CCP than I am of the US. The US isn't intractably opposed to liberal democracy, but the CCP is: From the OP: > To that end, this long history looms large in how China thinks about its relationship to the U.S. specifically, and the West generally. China is driven to reverse its “century of humiliation”, and to retake what it sees as its rightful place as a dominant force in the world. What few in the West seem to realize, though, is that the Chinese Communist Party very much believes that Marxism is the means by which that must be accomplished, and that Western liberal values are actively hostile to that goal. Tanner Greer wrote in Tablet: > ... > This understanding of China’s belief that it is fighting an ideological war explains why the severe curtailing of freedom that happened in Hong Kong this month was inevitable; if the Party’s ideology is ultimately opposed to liberalism anywhere, “one country-two systems” were always empty words in service of China’s rejuvenation, and Marxism’s triumph. To see that reality, though, means taking China seriously, and believing what they say.

msbarnett 6y ago
> I consider it quite different, because I know I'm more opposed to the ideology of the CCP than I am of the US. I don’t know that I’m particularly enthused about either country’s ideology, hence my more skeptical view of the idea that any of the major US social media networks are “better”.
- scottLobster 6y ago
  Don't need to be enthused to acknowledge one is better than the other. At the end of the day the NSA/facebook is far less likely to use my information to hurt me than the CCP. The only difference is I live in the US, so the CCP doesn't really care and can't really reach me without committing a potential act of war anyway. If I moved to China and maintained my same social media habits I'd be disappeared rather quickly, and possibly organ harvested. Consider that if you use TikTok anything you post will show up in your dossier should you ever visit China, even as a tourist. And you're giving that info freely, better hope the CCP doesn't decide to use it against you while you're there to make a political statement. They've done and are doing far worse over less.

xapata 6y ago

Do you agree with the censorship and propaganda policies of mainland China? If not, Sinophobia is not paranoia.

msbarnett 6y ago
No, but then again I’m equally opposed to much of contemporary US politics and the long history of US meddling in foreign countries affairs to obtain anti-democratic results that happen to favour US goals (broadly, Latin American 20th century history), so again, this “TikTok’s data gathering is an existential threat to freedom but please pay Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Google et al no mind” framing is... unconvincing to say the least.

cameronbrown 6y ago

Ah yes, because the US is well known for its Muslim concentration camps, social credit scores and surveillance panopticon. > Hand wringing about TikTok seems more rooted in sinophobia than genuine privacy concerns, from where I’m sitting. This is a strawman. People dislike the CCP not the Chinese.

msbarnett 6y ago
> Ah yes, because the US is well known for its Muslim concentration camps, social credit scores and surveillance panopticon. Perhaps I simply don’t consider the Hispanic concentration camps, private credit scores that still gate hiring, access to healthcare (via hiring) and renting and apartment, and surveillance panopticon powered by Google, better?
- cameronbrown 6y ago
  Are you serious? The US does not have Hispanic concentration camps. It DOES have a private prison problem, but not death camps.
  - msbarnett 6y ago
    I guess we’ll see how well the detainees in those ICE camps fare in the face of an out of control COVID outbreak. I wouldn’t care to try to parse any moral superiority between how apologists want to characterize the ICE camps and how Chinese apologists want to characterize the Uighur camps, myself. Neither strikes me as terribly deserving of our defense.
  - La1n 6y ago
    Concentration camp =/= Death camp
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  - YarickR2 6y ago

addison-lee 6y ago

No doubt spyware is bad from either country, but TikTok was caught trying to suppress content from "ugly, poor, or disabled" users. Do you still support the app knowing that? https://theintercept.com/2020/03/16/tiktok-app-moderators-users-discrimination/ https://theintercept.com/2020/03/16/tiktok-app-moderators-us...

msbarnett 6y ago
I didn’t say I supported it at all. I merely said I don’t see how it’s worse than the major US social networks. Like say Facebook, which has been caught multiple times allowing employers and housing advertisers to illegally exclude groups like Black people, from seeing job postings and apartment listings. Again, I don’t know that what TikTok has been shown to be doing is any worse.
- addison-lee 6y ago
  Sorry, didn't mean to put words in your mouth.

foepys 6y ago

Look at Hong Kong where China just yesterday told the political parties that holding any pre-election for Hong Kong's parliament is an aggressive act against China. Or look at the Uyghur internment camps. Or the one child policy that effectively turned some communitys 80% male. There is no opposition in China that can speak up against this.