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by nxx 2141 days ago
The same applies to the US. It would be extremely naive to think otherwise.

The US government/congress has one thing going for its ruling (and global reach): its control over all globally significant media platforms. The most recent example being that the congress could invite tech companies to testify before the congress and accuse them of political biases without much evidence ("why did Google censor conservative contents? My father can't see my political ads!"). If Tiktok were to succeed in the US, for the first time ever US lawmakers would not be able to exert influence on a social network with real reach to the US demographic. That would be terrifying to U.S lawmakers.

Separately, the comparison between China banning Google and US banning huawai, DJI, tiktok is moot: China set their (extremely authoritarian, no denying of that) rules, Google complied initially, censored search but decided it was too much and pulled out. In other words, regardless of the merits of the rules, China was applying the same rules to all companies. Google decided to not comply, others did not.

U.S. at the moment outright target specific companies, without specifying any rules being violated and in the process leverage its tech dominance in the private sector (app stores) to bully foreign companies to sell.

It's unfortunate that US has effective monopoly over tech platforms. Even the EU is toothless facing US in this space (GDPR).

2 comments

Oh by the way, isn't Tesla an AI, mobility, computer-on-wheel company? Surely that's no less dangerous than DJI or Huawai?
You can try saying something negative about Xi in China and count how many minutes before it gets deleted. And try the same on Twitter against Trump.

You will see the difference.

I have lived in China till I was 20. I saw the difference.

There is no clear boundary between the good and the bad. There are shades of gray.

But there is certainly differences between North Korea and say Iceland.

Trump may be a rogue. But it takes a rogue to fight a bigger rogue.