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If China wants to use protectionism to wage digital economy warfare, let's respond in kind. No more Wechat, TikTok, Alipay, or League of Legends or Valorant, un

by dannyw 6y ago

If China wants to use protectionism to wage digital economy warfare, let's respond in kind. No more Wechat, TikTok, Alipay, or League of Legends or Valorant, until China gives equal treatment to foreign internet firms. Note: Valorant installs a kernel driver as part of the "anti-cheat" system; described by many as a rootkit: https://www.osnews.com/story/131665/riot-games-maker-of-league-of-legends-installs-rootkit-with-their-new-hit-game-valorant/ https://www.osnews.com/story/131665/riot-games-maker-of-leag... Valorant's parent company is Tencent, the same company mentioned in this tweet.

alexmingoia 6y ago
This behavior isn’t unique to Chinese companies.
- pjc50 6y ago
  That's basically the problem, isn't it? In order to address this behaviour, the West would have to admit that it was bad, and that it was also bad when done by western companies, and have a coherent theory of privacy.
  - Yetanfou 6y ago
    Nope, the problem here is that Recent does this, had it been Microsoft who was caught (as has happened several times) the problem would have been that Microsoft did it. The problem, in other words, is not related to the identity of the perpetrator. In some cases that identity might be a country - Tencent, Vkontakte, etc - while in other cases it is some commercial entity with probable ties to a country - Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter, Google, Apple, AT&T, etc.
- Wolfenstein98k 6y ago
  Correct, but it is much more typical and common of them than any other nation. This has been a major issue for decades across many countries, all of whom have been lobbying (for instance in the WTO) to crack down on Chinese IP theft, their use of non-Chinese citizens' data for censorship training purposes, etc
- weare138 6y ago
  Of course it happens here too but US companies are liable to US laws and civil penalties. Good luck filing a lawsuit in the US against a company in China. I'm sure the courts in China will make your US class action lawsuit their top priority.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
systemvoltage 6y ago
To clone Chinese OSS, you need WeChat account or OTP+Phone in China. This feels totally against the principles of good faith in OSS dev. They can clone and take advantage of the rest of the world’s efforts while returning nothing back. Asshole, is the term for such entities. To be fair, some cool Chinese developers do have repos on GitHub. They’re not the majority though. Edit: Hold on folks, I need to find source of this. Edit2: I am pretty sure I was using Zhaodao.
- oefrha 6y ago
  Wait what? Last time youtube-dl got taken down on GitHub, someone advertised a Chinese mirror https://gitee.com/mirrors/youtube-downloader https://gitee.com/mirrors/youtube-downloader, and I was able to clone it just fine. Not sure where you got the idea that you need a WeChat account to clone. Are you talking about some other site?
  - stjohnswarts 6y ago
    I just tried it with no issues. Maybe they meant to sign up and use it as a developer you have to have something traceable by the CCP?
- joshuaissac 6y ago
  > To clone Chinese OSS, you need WeChat account or OTP+Phone in China Do you have a source for this? I tried signing up on Gitee (Chinese GitHub alternative), and it did not ask me to prove that I had WeChat or a phone number. > some cool Chinese developers do have repos on GitHub Mirroring their projects on GitHub might be fine, but given the current relationship between China and the US (where GitHub is hosted), Chinese developers would be better off hosting their main repo elsewhere.
  - systemvoltage 6y ago
    I need to find the source. I didn’t use Gitee and it was a couple of years ago, forgot where I was trying to download. I remember getting a QR code to get access to the code. Other login options were Baidu, WeChat, and Weibo. Edit: I think I was most likely using Zhaodao. https://zhaodao.ai/ https://zhaodao.ai/
echopom 6y ago
> If China wants to use protectionism to wage digital economy warfare, let's respond in kind. No more Wechat, TikTok, Alipay, or League of Legends or Valorant, until China gives equal treatment to foreign internet firms. That's not how the US Judiciary systems works. You can't ban dozen of apps based on "suspicious behaviour". You need to start an investigation , then you need to collect proofs , then based on those proofs prosecutor we'll be able to decide to sue or not , and ultimately a judge will decide to ban those apps or not. It's why our western constitutional democracy are doomed to fail. Our democracies move and react slower than authoritarian regime like China , Russia plus we have many economic interest with them. It's unlikely any politician would ban those apps . Trump tried with Tik Tok, a judge blocked the order[0], and I agree with the justice. You can't block an app because you don't like it. You need some solid evidence to prosecute and stop a private a entity. [0]https://www.wsj.com/articles/tiktok-download-ban-is-blocked-by-second-judge-11607390564 https://www.wsj.com/articles/tiktok-download-ban-is-blocked-...
- davedx 6y ago
  > It's why our western constitutional democracy are doomed to fail. Quite a hyberbolic leap from not being able to arbitrarily ban foreign software to “democratic countries are doomed”. Weird
- pratio 6y ago
  I don't think we need to worry about western democracy when talking about a software company shopping your browser history. Apps and games have developed on all corners of the globe have done this and are doing this.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
jeswin 6y ago
China exported $125B worth of mobile phones. Cutting Google Play Store off would seriously harm their ability to sell outside - I wonder why Google doesn't play hard ball.
- Sebb767 6y ago
  Because the Chinese market is extremely large. Cutting them of will hurt them in the short term, yes, but it will also force the development and popularization of local alternatives, which will hurt Google very much in the long term - see their recent examples with CPU development and Huawei's own Playstore.
  - temeritatis 6y ago
    This is not aimed personally at you; i've always had a problem understanding why big companies need to dominate all the market? If i have a successful local business, it's not hurting me that others do as well. I don't need to expand all over the globe to be successful. What's wrong with google not operating in china? Why can't google flourish as it is without dominating the market? I think you get my point here so i won't give more examples. I never did understand why people and organizations want to accumulate extreme amounts of power and wealth either. Like the bad guys in many movies. Of course that would defeat the purpose of the movie, but i often found myself thinking that if they spent half of that energy to the betterment of them selves (and others), it would probably be a pretty sweet life.
    - kangaroozach 6y ago
      Stock prices are tied to valuation which is based on expectations of growth. If you lower you growth goals and therefore projections, then the valuation tanks and the stockholders value drops. Management and employees are motivated by equity in companies like Google and therefore rely heavily on growth potential.
    - Sebb767 6y ago
      > i've always had a problem understanding why big companies need to dominate all the market? If i have a successful local business, it's not hurting me that others do as well. Well, in this case, Google would leave billions of dollars in revenue and hundreds of millions of users on the table. Not only would it hurt their bottomline, it would also hurt their products as they train on user data, which has quite strong network effects. This is really a different scale than a local business. If you have that with a single owner, she/he might be content with what she has and choose not to expand further. Google, on the other hand, has multiple of layers of management which need to report to thousands of owners, quite a few of which expect constant growth. This is really not one person who can be content with the size; it's multiple people who get their salaries based on growth and report to thousands of investors, which, for the most part, care about increasing their shares value. Leaving so much money on the table just for the sake of it is a hard sell in this structure. > This is not aimed personally at you No offence taken :)
blackrock 6y ago
Relax dude. Tencent QQ does not represent China. It’s just one company. Facebook does some shady shit too. Like stealing all your phone contacts list, without your permission. This is also a terrible invasion of your privacy. By your logic, since Facebook is an American company, then by extension, this shitty behavior is reflective of all of America. Besides, who uses QQ on their computers anymore?
- gruez 6y ago
  >Facebook does some shady shit too. Like stealing all your phone contacts list, without your permission. Without informed consent maybe, but without permission? I doubt it. Please enlighten me on how the facebook app is able to bypass the android/ios sandbox. >By your logic, since Facebook is an American company, then by extension, this shitty behavior is reflective of all of America. If facebook has a mandatory CCP err- DNC/RNC member on its board, I'd be inclined to agree with that.
- bassman9000 6y ago
  It’s just one company. There's no private Chinese companies, only CCP subsidiaries. Comparisons with e.g. Facebook are moot. At this point, comments like this are plain disingenuous, or purposefully misleading.
  - blackrock 6y ago
    What about getting a National Security Letter from the US government? Apparently, your company and your industry, must be important enough that the government will send you a Top Secret document, forcing you to comply, and also forcing you to maintain the secrecy of its existence, and to even deceive your customers of ever enacting its mandates. This sounds to me like the exact same thing as your argument here. That there are no private American companies, only American subsidiaries. And if you’re just a small private company that runs a noodle restaurant, then I highly doubt that the CCP really gives a damn about your company. What are they going to monitor? What magic ingredients you put into your soup?
    - 6y ago
bigpumpkin 6y ago
Too bad the government can't ban a communications platform under the First Amendment. Just give the offending companies huge fines (billions of dollars) instead.
serf 6y ago
>Note: Valorant installs a kernel driver as part of the "anti-cheat" system; described by many as a rootkit: https://www.osnews.com/story/131665/riot-games-maker-of-leag https://www.osnews.com/story/131665/riot-games-maker-of-leag... yeah. that's going to be more-and-more commonplace, too. I don't know why it's suddenly fashionable/allowable to touch ring 0 as installed software, but here we are. the irony of the whole thing is that while game-devs rootkit clients in order to pull in more marketing data/telemetry/whatever else the ToS allows them to steal, the real game cheaters out there are using extremely cheap CotS parts to create artificial man-in-the-middle clients that they can manipulate instead, with the host PC totally oblivious that the computer that's plugged into it as a HID is the one cheating. I've said this thousands of times, I'll use this opportunity to say it again : the only method available to routinely and reliably find game-cheaters is through constant statistical analysis of the players performance/inventory/score versus the environment they're in. The days of tuning such a system will be filled with false-positives, but it's the only way to accomplish anything near comprehensive anti-cheat. Need to get a few bucks for the project? Call that statistical analysis machine learning and say that you're going to provide it as a service. Sit back and watch the money flow in.

by dannyw 6y ago

alexmingoia 6y ago

This behavior isn’t unique to Chinese companies.

pjc50 6y ago
That's basically the problem, isn't it? In order to address this behaviour, the West would have to admit that it was bad, and that it was also bad when done by western companies, and have a coherent theory of privacy.
- Yetanfou 6y ago
  Nope, the problem here is that Recent does this, had it been Microsoft who was caught (as has happened several times) the problem would have been that Microsoft did it. The problem, in other words, is not related to the identity of the perpetrator. In some cases that identity might be a country - Tencent, Vkontakte, etc - while in other cases it is some commercial entity with probable ties to a country - Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter, Google, Apple, AT&T, etc.
Wolfenstein98k 6y ago
Correct, but it is much more typical and common of them than any other nation. This has been a major issue for decades across many countries, all of whom have been lobbying (for instance in the WTO) to crack down on Chinese IP theft, their use of non-Chinese citizens' data for censorship training purposes, etc
weare138 6y ago
Of course it happens here too but US companies are liable to US laws and civil penalties. Good luck filing a lawsuit in the US against a company in China. I'm sure the courts in China will make your US class action lawsuit their top priority.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

systemvoltage 6y ago

To clone Chinese OSS, you need WeChat account or OTP+Phone in China. This feels totally against the principles of good faith in OSS dev. They can clone and take advantage of the rest of the world’s efforts while returning nothing back. Asshole, is the term for such entities. To be fair, some cool Chinese developers do have repos on GitHub. They’re not the majority though. Edit: Hold on folks, I need to find source of this. Edit2: I am pretty sure I was using Zhaodao.

oefrha 6y ago
Wait what? Last time youtube-dl got taken down on GitHub, someone advertised a Chinese mirror https://gitee.com/mirrors/youtube-downloader https://gitee.com/mirrors/youtube-downloader, and I was able to clone it just fine. Not sure where you got the idea that you need a WeChat account to clone. Are you talking about some other site?
- stjohnswarts 6y ago
  I just tried it with no issues. Maybe they meant to sign up and use it as a developer you have to have something traceable by the CCP?
joshuaissac 6y ago
> To clone Chinese OSS, you need WeChat account or OTP+Phone in China Do you have a source for this? I tried signing up on Gitee (Chinese GitHub alternative), and it did not ask me to prove that I had WeChat or a phone number. > some cool Chinese developers do have repos on GitHub Mirroring their projects on GitHub might be fine, but given the current relationship between China and the US (where GitHub is hosted), Chinese developers would be better off hosting their main repo elsewhere.
- systemvoltage 6y ago
  I need to find the source. I didn’t use Gitee and it was a couple of years ago, forgot where I was trying to download. I remember getting a QR code to get access to the code. Other login options were Baidu, WeChat, and Weibo. Edit: I think I was most likely using Zhaodao. https://zhaodao.ai/ https://zhaodao.ai/

echopom 6y ago

> If China wants to use protectionism to wage digital economy warfare, let's respond in kind. No more Wechat, TikTok, Alipay, or League of Legends or Valorant, until China gives equal treatment to foreign internet firms. That's not how the US Judiciary systems works. You can't ban dozen of apps based on "suspicious behaviour". You need to start an investigation , then you need to collect proofs , then based on those proofs prosecutor we'll be able to decide to sue or not , and ultimately a judge will decide to ban those apps or not. It's why our western constitutional democracy are doomed to fail. Our democracies move and react slower than authoritarian regime like China , Russia plus we have many economic interest with them. It's unlikely any politician would ban those apps . Trump tried with Tik Tok, a judge blocked the order[0], and I agree with the justice. You can't block an app because you don't like it. You need some solid evidence to prosecute and stop a private a entity. [0]https://www.wsj.com/articles/tiktok-download-ban-is-blocked-by-second-judge-11607390564 https://www.wsj.com/articles/tiktok-download-ban-is-blocked-...

davedx 6y ago
> It's why our western constitutional democracy are doomed to fail. Quite a hyberbolic leap from not being able to arbitrarily ban foreign software to “democratic countries are doomed”. Weird
pratio 6y ago
I don't think we need to worry about western democracy when talking about a software company shopping your browser history. Apps and games have developed on all corners of the globe have done this and are doing this.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

jeswin 6y ago

China exported $125B worth of mobile phones. Cutting Google Play Store off would seriously harm their ability to sell outside - I wonder why Google doesn't play hard ball.

Sebb767 6y ago
Because the Chinese market is extremely large. Cutting them of will hurt them in the short term, yes, but it will also force the development and popularization of local alternatives, which will hurt Google very much in the long term - see their recent examples with CPU development and Huawei's own Playstore.
- temeritatis 6y ago
  This is not aimed personally at you; i've always had a problem understanding why big companies need to dominate all the market? If i have a successful local business, it's not hurting me that others do as well. I don't need to expand all over the globe to be successful. What's wrong with google not operating in china? Why can't google flourish as it is without dominating the market? I think you get my point here so i won't give more examples. I never did understand why people and organizations want to accumulate extreme amounts of power and wealth either. Like the bad guys in many movies. Of course that would defeat the purpose of the movie, but i often found myself thinking that if they spent half of that energy to the betterment of them selves (and others), it would probably be a pretty sweet life.
  - kangaroozach 6y ago
    Stock prices are tied to valuation which is based on expectations of growth. If you lower you growth goals and therefore projections, then the valuation tanks and the stockholders value drops. Management and employees are motivated by equity in companies like Google and therefore rely heavily on growth potential.
  - Sebb767 6y ago
    > i've always had a problem understanding why big companies need to dominate all the market? If i have a successful local business, it's not hurting me that others do as well. Well, in this case, Google would leave billions of dollars in revenue and hundreds of millions of users on the table. Not only would it hurt their bottomline, it would also hurt their products as they train on user data, which has quite strong network effects. This is really a different scale than a local business. If you have that with a single owner, she/he might be content with what she has and choose not to expand further. Google, on the other hand, has multiple of layers of management which need to report to thousands of owners, quite a few of which expect constant growth. This is really not one person who can be content with the size; it's multiple people who get their salaries based on growth and report to thousands of investors, which, for the most part, care about increasing their shares value. Leaving so much money on the table just for the sake of it is a hard sell in this structure. > This is not aimed personally at you No offence taken :)

blackrock 6y ago

Relax dude. Tencent QQ does not represent China. It’s just one company. Facebook does some shady shit too. Like stealing all your phone contacts list, without your permission. This is also a terrible invasion of your privacy. By your logic, since Facebook is an American company, then by extension, this shitty behavior is reflective of all of America. Besides, who uses QQ on their computers anymore?

gruez 6y ago
>Facebook does some shady shit too. Like stealing all your phone contacts list, without your permission. Without informed consent maybe, but without permission? I doubt it. Please enlighten me on how the facebook app is able to bypass the android/ios sandbox. >By your logic, since Facebook is an American company, then by extension, this shitty behavior is reflective of all of America. If facebook has a mandatory CCP err- DNC/RNC member on its board, I'd be inclined to agree with that.
bassman9000 6y ago
It’s just one company. There's no private Chinese companies, only CCP subsidiaries. Comparisons with e.g. Facebook are moot. At this point, comments like this are plain disingenuous, or purposefully misleading.
- blackrock 6y ago
  What about getting a National Security Letter from the US government? Apparently, your company and your industry, must be important enough that the government will send you a Top Secret document, forcing you to comply, and also forcing you to maintain the secrecy of its existence, and to even deceive your customers of ever enacting its mandates. This sounds to me like the exact same thing as your argument here. That there are no private American companies, only American subsidiaries. And if you’re just a small private company that runs a noodle restaurant, then I highly doubt that the CCP really gives a damn about your company. What are they going to monitor? What magic ingredients you put into your soup?
  - 6y ago

bigpumpkin 6y ago

Too bad the government can't ban a communications platform under the First Amendment. Just give the offending companies huge fines (billions of dollars) instead.

serf 6y ago

>Note: Valorant installs a kernel driver as part of the "anti-cheat" system; described by many as a rootkit: https://www.osnews.com/story/131665/riot-games-maker-of-leag https://www.osnews.com/story/131665/riot-games-maker-of-leag... yeah. that's going to be more-and-more commonplace, too. I don't know why it's suddenly fashionable/allowable to touch ring 0 as installed software, but here we are. the irony of the whole thing is that while game-devs rootkit clients in order to pull in more marketing data/telemetry/whatever else the ToS allows them to steal, the real game cheaters out there are using extremely cheap CotS parts to create artificial man-in-the-middle clients that they can manipulate instead, with the host PC totally oblivious that the computer that's plugged into it as a HID is the one cheating. I've said this thousands of times, I'll use this opportunity to say it again : the only method available to routinely and reliably find game-cheaters is through constant statistical analysis of the players performance/inventory/score versus the environment they're in. The days of tuning such a system will be filled with false-positives, but it's the only way to accomplish anything near comprehensive anti-cheat. Need to get a few bucks for the project? Call that statistical analysis machine learning and say that you're going to provide it as a service. Sit back and watch the money flow in.