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The Internet has been colonized by spies who work for corporations and governments, but it's been going on for well over a decade, as this article notes: > "By

The Internet has been colonized by spies who work for corporations and governments, but it's been going on for well over a decade, as this article notes: > "By the time ByteDance was founded in Beijing in 2012, Google had been reading our emails over our shoulders, Amazon had been watching us shop, and Twitter and Facebook had been mediating our messages to friends and foes for years. Indeed, Zhang Yiming, the millennial software engineer who set up ByteDance, modeled himself and aspects of his new company on Silicon Valley. Zhang, who briefly worked for Microsoft before going out on his own, was once fond of quoting Steve Jobs and Jack Welch." It would be highly surprising if the ByteDance-Beijing relationship was all that different from the Google/Verizon-Washington relationship (2013): https://www.corpwatch.org/article/verizon-and-google-helped-us-government-spy-reporters https://www.corpwatch.org/article/verizon-and-google-helped-... > "Technology companies willingly provided information to U.S. government agencies to help the Obama administration snoop on reporters from the Associated Press (AP) and Fox news in order to ostensibly crack down on leaks that pose a "threat" to national security."

b112 4y ago
It would be highly surprising if the ByteDance-Beijing relationship was all that different from the Google/Verizon-Washington relationship (2013): No, no it wouldn't.
Xeoncross 4y ago
> relationship was all that different It's not the relationships of the parties in control that worries me. It's the arrests and abductions of the people that concerns me. Thankfully, posting banned ideas or government critical stuff in the US doesn't involve being arrested by the police and being held for months or years. The CCP is a completely different beast, it has no issues jailing people for speaking the wrong things, forcing it's citizens into reeducation camps, welding them locked into buildings and much worse.
- falcolas 4y ago
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  - boc 4y ago
    What are you talking about? You need to cite sources about people in the US getting “vanished” for simply using a VPN. This is sounding like agitprop.
    - falcolas 4y ago
      > You need to cite sources about people in the US getting “vanished” for simply using a VPN. The restrict act hasn't passed yet. So no, I can't cite anything but the jail time and fines proposed in the bill.
      - pessimizer 4y ago
        We must pass the Restrict Act, because anyone arguing against the Restrict Act will have no evidence against the Restrict Act until we pass the Restrict Act. Sadly, the passage of the Restrict Act will require those arguing against the Restrict Act to be jailed for Misinformation on Behalf of a Foreign Power if they have no evidence. If they do have evidence, however, they will be jailed under the Espionage Act.
  - yafbum 4y ago
    Who has been "vanished"in the US? Jack Ma was essentially on house arrest for over a year after flying a little too close to the sun with his IPO plans. Peng Shuai was on house arrest for denouncing sexual abuse by a CCP member. The psychological, widespread chilling effects of these high profile "vanishings" has absolutely no commonality with the Patriot act (bad as it is).
    - pphysch 4y ago
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- jonhohle 4y ago
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  - 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
    > Julian Assange is not a journalist https://apnews.com/article/52f4a2f42dba4f6b9afe026e57d51e96 https://apnews.com/article/52f4a2f42dba4f6b9afe026e57d51e96 https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/04/julian-assange-got-what-he-deserved/587008/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/04/julian-ass...
    - trackflak 4y ago
      I'd be surprised if the state didn't utilise its network of media contacts to discredit him.
      - 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
        So you're just going to assert, in drive-by fashion, that these journalists are government shills? Do you have any evidence that supports that claim? Do you say that about everyone that you disagree with?
        uoaei 4y ago
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        TheRealDunkirk 4y ago
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        somenameforme 4y ago
        It's kind of funny. At first I was going to say, what do you expect - a line on his CV 'worked as a medium for US propaganda'? But bizarrely enough, that's completely accurate. Michael Weiss is editor in chief at the 'Institute of Modern Russia.' It's part of Radio Free Europe [2], which is literally a propaganda outlet owned by the US government. But the reason I decided to look this up is something much more simple than these facts. That Atlantic article reeks of state propaganda, and if it's not sending your propaganda detector to 11, you really need to get it tuned a bit - especially in this day and age. More often than not, you're not going to be able to find a link on somebody's CV or Wiki or whatever directly tying them to state interests, but I mean this just isn't how "normal" people think, behave, or write. It's like he's desperately trying to convince you of a position, by making you believe that thinking otherwise would be absurd. Note the stark similarities in style and rhetoric to something like this [3] piece from the NYtimes in the leadup to the Iraq War. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institute_of_Modern_Russia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institute_of_Modern_Russia [2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Free_Europe/Radio_Liberty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Free_Europe/Radio_Libert... [3] - https://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/06/opinion/irrefutable-and-undeniable.html https://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/06/opinion/irrefutable-and-u...
- toss1 4y ago
  >>posting banned ideas or government critical stuff in the US doesn't involve being arrested by the police and being held for months or years. I would not be so confident about that, at least until the US and other western countries wise up to the CCP's tactics, which may be starting. E.g., CCP is running overseas "police stations" to intimidate and harrass people oversead, and the US FBI finally just arrested two people doing so in New York City. >>TikTok spied on me. Why? Short answer, is that it, along with every other Chinese company, has no choice other than to bend to the will of the CCP. Plus, they have no ethical boundaries (other than crossing the CCP) in seeking absolute market position, and this journalist had done something to threaten that dominant position. [0] https://www.npr.org/2023/04/17/1170571626/fbi-arrests-2-on-charges-tied-to-chinese-outpost-in-new-york-city https://www.npr.org/2023/04/17/1170571626/fbi-arrests-2-on-c...
- deleted 4y ago
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- drevil-v2 4y ago
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  - zht 4y ago
    Those are physical acts of violence?
  - mint2 4y ago
    “Protesters” aka Jan 6 rioters and insurrectionists attempting to overthrow democracy by invading the capital.
  - alpos 4y ago
    They may indeed like to disagree, as I'm sure anyone who has broken the law would and is entitled to. Hence the existence of a fair trial and the possibility of a "not guilty" plea along with the opportunity to present a defense before a jury. One could argue about the fairness of any trial or set of trials, of course, and we should definitely do that and work out what we the people think of those trials as well as what we want to see in a fair trial. However, if you are trying to say that what those people did was just a protest or just speech, you will need to address the actual crimes the people going to jail were charged with and convicted of. Otherwise, your argument there is not convincing at all. It's not just free speech when you destroy property, break into government buildings, assault cops and government employees, actually invade and interrupt a session of congress, trespass in government offices, and actually try to locate the vice-president with the loudly declared intent to hang him.
- Convolutional 4y ago
  > Thankfully, posting banned ideas or government critical stuff in the US doesn't involve being arrested by the police and being held for months or years. Let me think of groups of people in the US and if they have been treated like this - C language programmers...we'll there is Julian Assange. > no issues jailing people for speaking the wrong things, forcing it's citizens into reeducation camps, welding them locked into buildings China has more than four times the US population, yet the US incarcerates more people than China does. In that context it does not sound like much of a knock "China locks up less than a quarter of the people the US does!" Well - yes.
  - lisper 4y ago
    > the US incarcerates more people than China does Yes, but mostly because of race, not politics. (Not that that's any better, but the underlying dynamic really is different.)
    - 0000011111 4y ago
      Right the book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness is a good primer for this concept. https://www.googleadservices.com/pagead/aclk?sa=L&ai=DChcSEwi4l5yoyd7-AhWG8-MHHQi2C6wYABAAGgJ5bQ&ohost=www.google.com&cid=CAESbeD2ASZz_7bsWiQ_5BFCAZ2wuqI0RRiv3bCQSTH4g8Pmbu2POusB9taySfFPoJNdBeMyBf2MsL7As_mYLopBuljac-mX_2Cei5VdRFe9jTZr_KyaYHn_J8174M28ix2sgqzxMwKX6cDUmiz1RW8&sig=AOD64_1ghZassSX5ETcNLYql03H3H0q7zA&q&adurl&ved=2ahUKEwiB_pGoyd7-AhX0kYkEHbt1AUoQ0Qx6BAgFEAE https://www.googleadservices.com/pagead/aclk?sa=L&ai=DChcSEw... Same with this wiki page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_States#:~:text=According%20to%20the%20U.S.%20Bureau,18%25%20of%20the%20female%20population https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_St....
      - ipaddr 4y ago
        Where is the harvesting of organs chapter?
        gmerc 4y ago
- hn_throawlles 4y ago
  > Thankfully, posting banned ideas or government critical stuff in the US doesn't involve being arrested by the police and being held for months or years. regretfully, being poor and in certain parts of the USA is sufficient to get sucked up by the system. no ideology necessary, just getting caught and loaning money for bail is enough to get swallowed by this beast. i suppose the CCP pays for these systems directly? whereas the American way has a distributed system of crony 'entrepreneurs' (shoddy lawyers, loan sharks, court bureaucrats and so on) all keeping this system of private jails and other 'services' and industries built around people 'breaking the law'
- pessimizer 4y ago
  Black activists accused of sowing discord https://amsterdamnews.com/news/2023/05/04/black-activists-accused-of-sowing-discord/ https://amsterdamnews.com/news/2023/05/04/black-activists-ac... > Just because you advocate programs that are not aligned with or approved by the U.S. government, siding with anti-racist, anti-colonial forces should not make you a target of U.S. cointelpro actions, raids on the homes of citizens, and humiliating arrests.
  - leereeves 4y ago
    > indicted on April 18 for allegedly working on behalf of the Russian government and Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) to conduct a “malign influence campaign” designed to “sow discord” and “advance Russian propaganda.”
  - lo_zamoyski 4y ago
    Interesting slant, given developments like this[0]. [0] https://catholicherald.co.uk/fbi-spied-on-american-catholics-amid-suspicion-of-links-to-right-wing-groups-documents-reveal/ https://catholicherald.co.uk/fbi-spied-on-american-catholics...
  - throwaway290 4y ago
    Your example is about what exactly? Yes Russia intervenes and China does too, you expect it to not be acted upon? By the way in China as of this month saying something that is against national interest is punishable under espionage law. If they want they can jail you for using VPN to access something outside of great firewall.
- dpratt 4y ago
  I have very little to fear, on a personal level, from the CCP. They may or may not be collecting data on me, and I find that distasteful and somewhat scary, but they are not a direct threat to my personal liberty, safety or civil rights. The NSA, CIA and the US intelligence-industrial complex, however, is a direct and credible threat to me. Perhaps not today, and hopefully not tomorrow, but as history has shown us, governments change, sometimes wildly so, in a short period of time while still holding the trappings and lip-service of their predecessors. If you dismiss the concerns about warrantless data collection, tracking, active suppression of free discourse and political targeting of people who ideologically threaten those in power (no matter the political background), well, you just haven't been paying attention.
  - ipaddr 4y ago
    If you run a business, visit or know someone from China you will be targeted. If you try to publish an article against China and have a high profile your secrets will come out. But if you are nobody why worry about the NSA, FBI, etc they have better people to target
  - imiric 3y ago
    You don't have to be a citizen of the nation that does the spying for the data they collect on you to be harmful. Following your logic, nobody outside of the US or China has reasons to be concerned, which is not the case. Governments—particularly those of the world's greatest superpowers—have influence outside of their borders, and can make your life hell, no matter where you currently live. They can restrict your freedom to travel, censor your public speech, and target you electronically in many ways. This can happen if you fall on their radar for whatever reason, including by mistake. Good luck getting off that list, and getting your life back after that. If I'm rating which government I'm more afraid of, it would be the one that has a totalitarian control over its citizens, and no regard for human life. Otherwise, they're all equally harmful to my wellbeing.
- d0mine 4y ago
  People were cancelled for much less in US
- thiagoharry 3y ago
  The Black Panthers and victims of Mcarthism wiuld disagree. The current whistleblowers like Snowden also would disagree.
  - jacooper 3y ago
    And assange.
  - BeFlatXIII 3y ago
    For these exact reasons, I'm more comfortable with Xi Jinping's cronies spying on my every movement than my own government. The Chinese only do that stuff to their own citizens and I'm a zero-value target to them. US authorities may feel like being petty one day.
    - kelipso 3y ago
      Seriously. What happened to that whole philosophy that the founding fathers had about being wary of our own government and the tendency of governments to overreach to control its citizenry. That entire sentiment seem to have disappeared especially in the last few years in favor of China-Russia-terrorism-whatever new bs hysteria.
      - thfuran 3y ago
        The red scare wasn't in the last few years.
    - bluefirebrand 3y ago
      https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detention_of_Michael_Spavor_and_Michael_Kovrig#:~:text=The%20detention%20of%20Michael%20Kovrig,by%20her%20father%20Ren%20Zhengfei https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detention_of_Michael_Spavor_.... China absolutely does not limit their abductions to their own citizens. If you're in China, you're fair game.
      - BeFlatXIII 3y ago
- anigbrowl 3y ago
  While I don't think the US is on the same scale as the CCP, I also think you're being a little naive. Expressing the wrong ideas or misjudging the time/place to do so can absolutely land you behind bars.
- lenkite 3y ago
  > Thankfully, posting banned ideas or government critical stuff in the US doesn't involve being arrested by the police and being held for months or years. Which parallel world are you living in ? I would like to migrate there to this utopian USA.
simmerup 4y ago
The difference is the US is a country with checks and balances of power. In China when the CCP says jump however, there’s no recourse
- falcolas 4y ago
  > checks and balances of power Only in theory, when it comes to National Security Letters. If you can't prove the government spied on you specifically, you can't take them to court to get a check or balance.
  - ethbr0 4y ago
    It's important to note that NSLs are an exception rather than a rule, and one over which a freely elected body (Congress) has oversight. I'm not sure the same claim can be made about China.
    - falcolas 4y ago
      An exception used around 10,000 times per year as of 2005. And congress hasn't done anything to reign them in. And I'll freely admit that China is going to be worse, with less oversight. But not only is the comparison a fallacy, it's cold comfort for the rest of the world (not to mention many non-naturalized American citizens).
      - 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
        Were they all Americans? How many warrants were served for comparison?
        pessimizer 4y ago
        You should look that up.
        sudosysgen 4y ago
        The NSA doesn't need an NSL to spy on non-Americans.
runtime_blues 4y ago
I find it hard to interpret such whataboutism as sincere. If you care about these perceived abuses by US tech companies, why wouldn't you applaud the outcry against TikTok? At the very least, it moves the needle in the right direction. It increases the awareness of industry practices and helps flesh out some constraints. Even if you're of the mindset that there's no practical difference between the US government and an authoritarian communist dictatorship that murdered millions of its compatriots for having the wrong political views, why defend their right to do the things you hate?
- nebulousthree 4y ago
  It's because the pot is calling the kettle black and then getting annoyed when it is called out on it. It's not that complicated, and it doesn't call into question the legitimacy of the criticism. It just says: "you've had shit under your own shoe this whole time and only now that I got some under mine are you complaining about the smell"
  - ImPostingOnHN 4y ago
    you're literally describing logical fallacies: tu quoque and whataboutism in fact, "the pot calling the kettle black" is a textbook example of a tu quoque logical fallacy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pot_calling_the_kettle_black https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pot_calling_the_kettle_black
    - pphysch 4y ago
      "Whataboutism" is not a logical fallacy, in fact it is the opposite. "We need to do X because A is bad because it does Y" "But we also do Y, shouldn't we also do X for us?" Logic says yes. "Whataboutism" was invented to kill basic logical inference, in the context of the bipolar Cold War era. Using that term to kill discussion and browbeat is anti-intellectualism, pure and simple.
      - ImPostingOnHN 4y ago
archgoon 4y ago
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2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
> The Internet has been colonized by spies That's definitely not you or your deflecting and derailing comment which rocketed to the top or the whatabout comrades who make it impossible to discuss this topic here.
duxup 4y ago
Google can push back, US companies can do that, and do do that. That system isn't perfect but I'd rather go with apps from more free countries than those that are not free. ByteDance has no choice.
- smolder 4y ago
  It's unclear to what extent such corporate pushback against the USG is genuine conflict as opposed to theater/PR cover. I don't think it's a safe assumption either way. The incentives to pretend industry has more independence than it does are there, and methods of such deception have been seen before.
  - duxup 4y ago
    I think it is unlikely we have a conspiracy so vast, across a ton of companies that they put up fake legal fights, have fake warrant canary notices ... and nobody ever leaks out that they're all fake.
    - smolder 4y ago
      It doesn't require a vast conspiracy, certainly not something more vast than the kind of conspiracy that Snowden alerted everyone to. I would guess the truth is somewhere in the middle... That there is genuine pushback but also theatrics to project independence.
      - duxup 4y ago
        >It doesn't require a vast conspiracy It would if we account for the fact that we haven't seen any reports of fake legal fights / warrant canaries and etc. >I would guess the truth is somewhere in the middle I don't understand this phrase, wouldn't that just mean the bigger lie / conspiracy wins every argument? How do you weigh such things reliably?
    - ailef 4y ago
      There doesn't need to be any conspiracy. If it's good for PR reasons to show they are fighting, companies will do it anyway without the need to coordinate.
azinman2 4y ago
You can always count on HN for whataboutism
- photochemsyn 4y ago
  It's good to have a broad overview of the subject, don't you think? Wouldn't you want to know whether or not the TikTok outrage is genuine, or perhaps engineered by other social media corporations worried about loss of market share? Maybe this is all about economics and 'national security concerns' are just the vehicle for expressing that concern (as market manipulation is a harder sell?). P.S. Have you noticed that both Twitter and Youtube have adopted TikTok-type formats, in terms of Twitter video feeds and Youtube Shorts?
  - azinman2 3y ago
    Except it’s not a broad overview of the subject, it’s little factoids that equate bad behavior with other bad behavior, except there are many substantial difference which are neglected in the conversation. It is a relevant question to wonder what prompted the concerns and bills… is it national security of is it economics? That’s not what’s being questioned, and even then there’s no good basis to know so it’s hard to go anywhere other than conspiracy theory. I actually fully buy that both are plausible and likely, but I have no basis for the economics other than Meta’s lobbying. But the whataboutism always shifts away the conversation from the moment at hand by dismissing it all as something that meta/google do. We can at face value look at the risks of TikTok doing it and understand that they’re maybe legitimate national security concerns. By broadening, we end up just ignoring this completely. I have noticed the copy cats. The concern from congress has been what can the CCP know via TikTok; not what can TikTok know as an independent entity. I personally do see the control of information and the knowledge of attention being a national security risk, which is unfortunate as I think they have the better product.
- mardifoufs 3y ago
  What you call whataboutism is what many would call precedent, which is an essential concept in legal discussions. Crying whataboutism to shield your side only gets you so far.
gataca 4y ago
Is this an attempt at being edgy? The relationships between the companies and their host governments is not the point, its the differences between those governments that matters. Just one example of the difference is the Chinese government has camps for ethnic groups it doesn't like.
- throwaway742 3y ago
  What if I told you there is a higher percent of our African American population incarcerated than the percent China's Uighur population that is incarcerated?
singularity2001 4y ago
The hope of a free internet sits rotting in a prison somewhere in Britain.
ajross 4y ago
I think that kind of argument is really muddying the waters. Google/Amazon/Facebook[1] have absolutely not been "reading our emails over our shoulders" in any kind of human sense. And all those companies have extensive policies and enforcement structures designed deliberately to prevent the kind of abuse detailed here with TikTok. And it's been decades, and they've really been quite good about it. There are abstract arguments about whether that kind of data centralization is a good or bad thing, and I think that's fine. But that's extremely different from "this company actively spied on its enemies". And I think we need to treat with that distinction and not muddy it. Because if your point becomes "Facebook and Google and Amazon are bad too" it becomes isomorphic to "oh well, nothing can be done", because in practice society is OK with the existing giants. We shouldn't be OK with active spying! [1] Twitter is more of an open question right now, certainly the promiscuous release of the "Twitter Files" nonsense didn't tend to exhibit an institutional inclination toward privacy.
AbrahamParangi 4y ago
The implicit claim that, "actually the US and China are the same regarding human rights, balance of power, authoritarianism, etc." is by far the weakest argument in this domain.
- pessimizer 4y ago
  Nobody cares what you think (except for parents and loved ones), they might care why you think it. Sneering at a claim isn't an argument.
  - AbrahamParangi 4y ago
    It's not about what I think, it's just simply untrue.
  - ipaddr 4y ago
    I cared. In fairness even less care what you qualify as a counter-point
- photochemsyn 3y ago
  The only thing I pointed out was that the two 'Great Powers' have a curiously similar obsession with spying on domestic civilian populations. You added the other issues for some reason. It is true that authoritarian control freaks are my least favorite people, regardless of what government they're affiliated with - but I don't doubt that the American version, given free rein, would rush to introduce the methods used in China to control the population.
  - AbrahamParangi 3y ago
    Well, as a counterpoint to "America is the same" I would direct your attention to this handy map of how long the current national leader has been in power for each country - there are some pretty clear distinctions (https://preview.redd.it/gzqeeslcyez91.png?width=1024&auto=webp&v=enabled&s=494725432490a86cb838f4bf27775017544782dd https://preview.redd.it/gzqeeslcyez91.png?width=1024&auto=we...)
greatjack613 4y ago
This piece smells like ccp propaganda. @dang

b112 4y ago

It would be highly surprising if the ByteDance-Beijing relationship was all that different from the Google/Verizon-Washington relationship (2013): No, no it wouldn't.

Xeoncross 4y ago

> relationship was all that different It's not the relationships of the parties in control that worries me. It's the arrests and abductions of the people that concerns me. Thankfully, posting banned ideas or government critical stuff in the US doesn't involve being arrested by the police and being held for months or years. The CCP is a completely different beast, it has no issues jailing people for speaking the wrong things, forcing it's citizens into reeducation camps, welding them locked into buildings and much worse.

falcolas 4y ago
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- boc 4y ago
  What are you talking about? You need to cite sources about people in the US getting “vanished” for simply using a VPN. This is sounding like agitprop.
  - falcolas 4y ago
    > You need to cite sources about people in the US getting “vanished” for simply using a VPN. The restrict act hasn't passed yet. So no, I can't cite anything but the jail time and fines proposed in the bill.
    - pessimizer 4y ago
      We must pass the Restrict Act, because anyone arguing against the Restrict Act will have no evidence against the Restrict Act until we pass the Restrict Act. Sadly, the passage of the Restrict Act will require those arguing against the Restrict Act to be jailed for Misinformation on Behalf of a Foreign Power if they have no evidence. If they do have evidence, however, they will be jailed under the Espionage Act.
- yafbum 4y ago
  Who has been "vanished"in the US? Jack Ma was essentially on house arrest for over a year after flying a little too close to the sun with his IPO plans. Peng Shuai was on house arrest for denouncing sexual abuse by a CCP member. The psychological, widespread chilling effects of these high profile "vanishings" has absolutely no commonality with the Patriot act (bad as it is).
  - pphysch 4y ago
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jonhohle 4y ago
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- 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
  > Julian Assange is not a journalist https://apnews.com/article/52f4a2f42dba4f6b9afe026e57d51e96 https://apnews.com/article/52f4a2f42dba4f6b9afe026e57d51e96 https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/04/julian-assange-got-what-he-deserved/587008/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/04/julian-ass...
  - trackflak 4y ago
    I'd be surprised if the state didn't utilise its network of media contacts to discredit him.
    - 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
      So you're just going to assert, in drive-by fashion, that these journalists are government shills? Do you have any evidence that supports that claim? Do you say that about everyone that you disagree with?
      - uoaei 4y ago
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      - TheRealDunkirk 4y ago
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      - somenameforme 4y ago
        It's kind of funny. At first I was going to say, what do you expect - a line on his CV 'worked as a medium for US propaganda'? But bizarrely enough, that's completely accurate. Michael Weiss is editor in chief at the 'Institute of Modern Russia.' It's part of Radio Free Europe [2], which is literally a propaganda outlet owned by the US government. But the reason I decided to look this up is something much more simple than these facts. That Atlantic article reeks of state propaganda, and if it's not sending your propaganda detector to 11, you really need to get it tuned a bit - especially in this day and age. More often than not, you're not going to be able to find a link on somebody's CV or Wiki or whatever directly tying them to state interests, but I mean this just isn't how "normal" people think, behave, or write. It's like he's desperately trying to convince you of a position, by making you believe that thinking otherwise would be absurd. Note the stark similarities in style and rhetoric to something like this [3] piece from the NYtimes in the leadup to the Iraq War. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institute_of_Modern_Russia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institute_of_Modern_Russia [2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Free_Europe/Radio_Liberty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Free_Europe/Radio_Libert... [3] - https://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/06/opinion/irrefutable-and-undeniable.html https://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/06/opinion/irrefutable-and-u...
toss1 4y ago
>>posting banned ideas or government critical stuff in the US doesn't involve being arrested by the police and being held for months or years. I would not be so confident about that, at least until the US and other western countries wise up to the CCP's tactics, which may be starting. E.g., CCP is running overseas "police stations" to intimidate and harrass people oversead, and the US FBI finally just arrested two people doing so in New York City. >>TikTok spied on me. Why? Short answer, is that it, along with every other Chinese company, has no choice other than to bend to the will of the CCP. Plus, they have no ethical boundaries (other than crossing the CCP) in seeking absolute market position, and this journalist had done something to threaten that dominant position. [0] https://www.npr.org/2023/04/17/1170571626/fbi-arrests-2-on-charges-tied-to-chinese-outpost-in-new-york-city https://www.npr.org/2023/04/17/1170571626/fbi-arrests-2-on-c...
deleted 4y ago
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drevil-v2 4y ago
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- zht 4y ago
  Those are physical acts of violence?
- mint2 4y ago
  “Protesters” aka Jan 6 rioters and insurrectionists attempting to overthrow democracy by invading the capital.
- alpos 4y ago
  They may indeed like to disagree, as I'm sure anyone who has broken the law would and is entitled to. Hence the existence of a fair trial and the possibility of a "not guilty" plea along with the opportunity to present a defense before a jury. One could argue about the fairness of any trial or set of trials, of course, and we should definitely do that and work out what we the people think of those trials as well as what we want to see in a fair trial. However, if you are trying to say that what those people did was just a protest or just speech, you will need to address the actual crimes the people going to jail were charged with and convicted of. Otherwise, your argument there is not convincing at all. It's not just free speech when you destroy property, break into government buildings, assault cops and government employees, actually invade and interrupt a session of congress, trespass in government offices, and actually try to locate the vice-president with the loudly declared intent to hang him.
Convolutional 4y ago
> Thankfully, posting banned ideas or government critical stuff in the US doesn't involve being arrested by the police and being held for months or years. Let me think of groups of people in the US and if they have been treated like this - C language programmers...we'll there is Julian Assange. > no issues jailing people for speaking the wrong things, forcing it's citizens into reeducation camps, welding them locked into buildings China has more than four times the US population, yet the US incarcerates more people than China does. In that context it does not sound like much of a knock "China locks up less than a quarter of the people the US does!" Well - yes.
- lisper 4y ago
  > the US incarcerates more people than China does Yes, but mostly because of race, not politics. (Not that that's any better, but the underlying dynamic really is different.)
  - 0000011111 4y ago
    Right the book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness is a good primer for this concept. https://www.googleadservices.com/pagead/aclk?sa=L&ai=DChcSEwi4l5yoyd7-AhWG8-MHHQi2C6wYABAAGgJ5bQ&ohost=www.google.com&cid=CAESbeD2ASZz_7bsWiQ_5BFCAZ2wuqI0RRiv3bCQSTH4g8Pmbu2POusB9taySfFPoJNdBeMyBf2MsL7As_mYLopBuljac-mX_2Cei5VdRFe9jTZr_KyaYHn_J8174M28ix2sgqzxMwKX6cDUmiz1RW8&sig=AOD64_1ghZassSX5ETcNLYql03H3H0q7zA&q&adurl&ved=2ahUKEwiB_pGoyd7-AhX0kYkEHbt1AUoQ0Qx6BAgFEAE https://www.googleadservices.com/pagead/aclk?sa=L&ai=DChcSEw... Same with this wiki page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_States#:~:text=According%20to%20the%20U.S.%20Bureau,18%25%20of%20the%20female%20population https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_St....
    - ipaddr 4y ago
      Where is the harvesting of organs chapter?
      - gmerc 4y ago
hn_throawlles 4y ago
> Thankfully, posting banned ideas or government critical stuff in the US doesn't involve being arrested by the police and being held for months or years. regretfully, being poor and in certain parts of the USA is sufficient to get sucked up by the system. no ideology necessary, just getting caught and loaning money for bail is enough to get swallowed by this beast. i suppose the CCP pays for these systems directly? whereas the American way has a distributed system of crony 'entrepreneurs' (shoddy lawyers, loan sharks, court bureaucrats and so on) all keeping this system of private jails and other 'services' and industries built around people 'breaking the law'
pessimizer 4y ago
Black activists accused of sowing discord https://amsterdamnews.com/news/2023/05/04/black-activists-accused-of-sowing-discord/ https://amsterdamnews.com/news/2023/05/04/black-activists-ac... > Just because you advocate programs that are not aligned with or approved by the U.S. government, siding with anti-racist, anti-colonial forces should not make you a target of U.S. cointelpro actions, raids on the homes of citizens, and humiliating arrests.
- leereeves 4y ago
  > indicted on April 18 for allegedly working on behalf of the Russian government and Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) to conduct a “malign influence campaign” designed to “sow discord” and “advance Russian propaganda.”
- lo_zamoyski 4y ago
  Interesting slant, given developments like this[0]. [0] https://catholicherald.co.uk/fbi-spied-on-american-catholics-amid-suspicion-of-links-to-right-wing-groups-documents-reveal/ https://catholicherald.co.uk/fbi-spied-on-american-catholics...
- throwaway290 4y ago
  Your example is about what exactly? Yes Russia intervenes and China does too, you expect it to not be acted upon? By the way in China as of this month saying something that is against national interest is punishable under espionage law. If they want they can jail you for using VPN to access something outside of great firewall.
dpratt 4y ago
I have very little to fear, on a personal level, from the CCP. They may or may not be collecting data on me, and I find that distasteful and somewhat scary, but they are not a direct threat to my personal liberty, safety or civil rights. The NSA, CIA and the US intelligence-industrial complex, however, is a direct and credible threat to me. Perhaps not today, and hopefully not tomorrow, but as history has shown us, governments change, sometimes wildly so, in a short period of time while still holding the trappings and lip-service of their predecessors. If you dismiss the concerns about warrantless data collection, tracking, active suppression of free discourse and political targeting of people who ideologically threaten those in power (no matter the political background), well, you just haven't been paying attention.
- ipaddr 4y ago
  If you run a business, visit or know someone from China you will be targeted. If you try to publish an article against China and have a high profile your secrets will come out. But if you are nobody why worry about the NSA, FBI, etc they have better people to target
- imiric 3y ago
  You don't have to be a citizen of the nation that does the spying for the data they collect on you to be harmful. Following your logic, nobody outside of the US or China has reasons to be concerned, which is not the case. Governments—particularly those of the world's greatest superpowers—have influence outside of their borders, and can make your life hell, no matter where you currently live. They can restrict your freedom to travel, censor your public speech, and target you electronically in many ways. This can happen if you fall on their radar for whatever reason, including by mistake. Good luck getting off that list, and getting your life back after that. If I'm rating which government I'm more afraid of, it would be the one that has a totalitarian control over its citizens, and no regard for human life. Otherwise, they're all equally harmful to my wellbeing.
d0mine 4y ago
People were cancelled for much less in US
thiagoharry 3y ago
The Black Panthers and victims of Mcarthism wiuld disagree. The current whistleblowers like Snowden also would disagree.
- jacooper 3y ago
  And assange.
- BeFlatXIII 3y ago
  For these exact reasons, I'm more comfortable with Xi Jinping's cronies spying on my every movement than my own government. The Chinese only do that stuff to their own citizens and I'm a zero-value target to them. US authorities may feel like being petty one day.
  - kelipso 3y ago
    Seriously. What happened to that whole philosophy that the founding fathers had about being wary of our own government and the tendency of governments to overreach to control its citizenry. That entire sentiment seem to have disappeared especially in the last few years in favor of China-Russia-terrorism-whatever new bs hysteria.
    - thfuran 3y ago
      The red scare wasn't in the last few years.
  - bluefirebrand 3y ago
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detention_of_Michael_Spavor_and_Michael_Kovrig#:~:text=The%20detention%20of%20Michael%20Kovrig,by%20her%20father%20Ren%20Zhengfei https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detention_of_Michael_Spavor_.... China absolutely does not limit their abductions to their own citizens. If you're in China, you're fair game.
    - BeFlatXIII 3y ago
anigbrowl 3y ago
While I don't think the US is on the same scale as the CCP, I also think you're being a little naive. Expressing the wrong ideas or misjudging the time/place to do so can absolutely land you behind bars.
lenkite 3y ago
> Thankfully, posting banned ideas or government critical stuff in the US doesn't involve being arrested by the police and being held for months or years. Which parallel world are you living in ? I would like to migrate there to this utopian USA.

simmerup 4y ago

The difference is the US is a country with checks and balances of power. In China when the CCP says jump however, there’s no recourse

falcolas 4y ago
> checks and balances of power Only in theory, when it comes to National Security Letters. If you can't prove the government spied on you specifically, you can't take them to court to get a check or balance.
- ethbr0 4y ago
  It's important to note that NSLs are an exception rather than a rule, and one over which a freely elected body (Congress) has oversight. I'm not sure the same claim can be made about China.
  - falcolas 4y ago
    An exception used around 10,000 times per year as of 2005. And congress hasn't done anything to reign them in. And I'll freely admit that China is going to be worse, with less oversight. But not only is the comparison a fallacy, it's cold comfort for the rest of the world (not to mention many non-naturalized American citizens).
    - 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
      Were they all Americans? How many warrants were served for comparison?
      - pessimizer 4y ago
        You should look that up.
      - sudosysgen 4y ago
        The NSA doesn't need an NSL to spy on non-Americans.

runtime_blues 4y ago

I find it hard to interpret such whataboutism as sincere. If you care about these perceived abuses by US tech companies, why wouldn't you applaud the outcry against TikTok? At the very least, it moves the needle in the right direction. It increases the awareness of industry practices and helps flesh out some constraints. Even if you're of the mindset that there's no practical difference between the US government and an authoritarian communist dictatorship that murdered millions of its compatriots for having the wrong political views, why defend their right to do the things you hate?

nebulousthree 4y ago
It's because the pot is calling the kettle black and then getting annoyed when it is called out on it. It's not that complicated, and it doesn't call into question the legitimacy of the criticism. It just says: "you've had shit under your own shoe this whole time and only now that I got some under mine are you complaining about the smell"
- ImPostingOnHN 4y ago
  you're literally describing logical fallacies: tu quoque and whataboutism in fact, "the pot calling the kettle black" is a textbook example of a tu quoque logical fallacy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pot_calling_the_kettle_black https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pot_calling_the_kettle_black
  - pphysch 4y ago
    "Whataboutism" is not a logical fallacy, in fact it is the opposite. "We need to do X because A is bad because it does Y" "But we also do Y, shouldn't we also do X for us?" Logic says yes. "Whataboutism" was invented to kill basic logical inference, in the context of the bipolar Cold War era. Using that term to kill discussion and browbeat is anti-intellectualism, pure and simple.
    - ImPostingOnHN 4y ago

archgoon 4y ago

[dead]

2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago

> The Internet has been colonized by spies That's definitely not you or your deflecting and derailing comment which rocketed to the top or the whatabout comrades who make it impossible to discuss this topic here.

duxup 4y ago

Google can push back, US companies can do that, and do do that. That system isn't perfect but I'd rather go with apps from more free countries than those that are not free. ByteDance has no choice.

smolder 4y ago
It's unclear to what extent such corporate pushback against the USG is genuine conflict as opposed to theater/PR cover. I don't think it's a safe assumption either way. The incentives to pretend industry has more independence than it does are there, and methods of such deception have been seen before.
- duxup 4y ago
  I think it is unlikely we have a conspiracy so vast, across a ton of companies that they put up fake legal fights, have fake warrant canary notices ... and nobody ever leaks out that they're all fake.
  - smolder 4y ago
    It doesn't require a vast conspiracy, certainly not something more vast than the kind of conspiracy that Snowden alerted everyone to. I would guess the truth is somewhere in the middle... That there is genuine pushback but also theatrics to project independence.
    - duxup 4y ago
      >It doesn't require a vast conspiracy It would if we account for the fact that we haven't seen any reports of fake legal fights / warrant canaries and etc. >I would guess the truth is somewhere in the middle I don't understand this phrase, wouldn't that just mean the bigger lie / conspiracy wins every argument? How do you weigh such things reliably?
  - ailef 4y ago
    There doesn't need to be any conspiracy. If it's good for PR reasons to show they are fighting, companies will do it anyway without the need to coordinate.

azinman2 4y ago

You can always count on HN for whataboutism

photochemsyn 4y ago
It's good to have a broad overview of the subject, don't you think? Wouldn't you want to know whether or not the TikTok outrage is genuine, or perhaps engineered by other social media corporations worried about loss of market share? Maybe this is all about economics and 'national security concerns' are just the vehicle for expressing that concern (as market manipulation is a harder sell?). P.S. Have you noticed that both Twitter and Youtube have adopted TikTok-type formats, in terms of Twitter video feeds and Youtube Shorts?
- azinman2 3y ago
  Except it’s not a broad overview of the subject, it’s little factoids that equate bad behavior with other bad behavior, except there are many substantial difference which are neglected in the conversation. It is a relevant question to wonder what prompted the concerns and bills… is it national security of is it economics? That’s not what’s being questioned, and even then there’s no good basis to know so it’s hard to go anywhere other than conspiracy theory. I actually fully buy that both are plausible and likely, but I have no basis for the economics other than Meta’s lobbying. But the whataboutism always shifts away the conversation from the moment at hand by dismissing it all as something that meta/google do. We can at face value look at the risks of TikTok doing it and understand that they’re maybe legitimate national security concerns. By broadening, we end up just ignoring this completely. I have noticed the copy cats. The concern from congress has been what can the CCP know via TikTok; not what can TikTok know as an independent entity. I personally do see the control of information and the knowledge of attention being a national security risk, which is unfortunate as I think they have the better product.
mardifoufs 3y ago
What you call whataboutism is what many would call precedent, which is an essential concept in legal discussions. Crying whataboutism to shield your side only gets you so far.

gataca 4y ago

Is this an attempt at being edgy? The relationships between the companies and their host governments is not the point, its the differences between those governments that matters. Just one example of the difference is the Chinese government has camps for ethnic groups it doesn't like.

throwaway742 3y ago
What if I told you there is a higher percent of our African American population incarcerated than the percent China's Uighur population that is incarcerated?

singularity2001 4y ago

The hope of a free internet sits rotting in a prison somewhere in Britain.

ajross 4y ago

I think that kind of argument is really muddying the waters. Google/Amazon/Facebook[1] have absolutely not been "reading our emails over our shoulders" in any kind of human sense. And all those companies have extensive policies and enforcement structures designed deliberately to prevent the kind of abuse detailed here with TikTok. And it's been decades, and they've really been quite good about it. There are abstract arguments about whether that kind of data centralization is a good or bad thing, and I think that's fine. But that's extremely different from "this company actively spied on its enemies". And I think we need to treat with that distinction and not muddy it. Because if your point becomes "Facebook and Google and Amazon are bad too" it becomes isomorphic to "oh well, nothing can be done", because in practice society is OK with the existing giants. We shouldn't be OK with active spying! [1] Twitter is more of an open question right now, certainly the promiscuous release of the "Twitter Files" nonsense didn't tend to exhibit an institutional inclination toward privacy.

AbrahamParangi 4y ago

The implicit claim that, "actually the US and China are the same regarding human rights, balance of power, authoritarianism, etc." is by far the weakest argument in this domain.

pessimizer 4y ago
Nobody cares what you think (except for parents and loved ones), they might care why you think it. Sneering at a claim isn't an argument.
- AbrahamParangi 4y ago
  It's not about what I think, it's just simply untrue.
- ipaddr 4y ago
  I cared. In fairness even less care what you qualify as a counter-point
photochemsyn 3y ago
The only thing I pointed out was that the two 'Great Powers' have a curiously similar obsession with spying on domestic civilian populations. You added the other issues for some reason. It is true that authoritarian control freaks are my least favorite people, regardless of what government they're affiliated with - but I don't doubt that the American version, given free rein, would rush to introduce the methods used in China to control the population.
- AbrahamParangi 3y ago
  Well, as a counterpoint to "America is the same" I would direct your attention to this handy map of how long the current national leader has been in power for each country - there are some pretty clear distinctions (https://preview.redd.it/gzqeeslcyez91.png?width=1024&auto=webp&v=enabled&s=494725432490a86cb838f4bf27775017544782dd https://preview.redd.it/gzqeeslcyez91.png?width=1024&auto=we...)

greatjack613 4y ago

This piece smells like ccp propaganda. @dang