[cmurf]

Saudi Arabia is also a totalitarian regime. It suppresses speech, executes citizens prejudicially and extrajudicially even outside their own borders, arrests and charges women's rights activists of treason, dozens of executions by beheading of non-violent drug offenders per year, human rights activists are arrested and imprisoned without trial, and so on.

Maybe we should just stop doing business with Saudi Arabia too, is that your point? No more Saudi Arabia oil for the U.S. or even all of the western world? In fact they're still treated as a U.S. ally.

[chrischen]

No but we need their oil and alliance. It benefits us so that is ok—oops, I’ve said too much.

[djsumdog]

oh we totally should. The US has historically extracted resources from regimes who play nice. When they stop playing nice or might want something a little better, the US goes all Iraq/Iran/Libya on them.

The foreign aid of high income countries (US, EU, etc.) is always used to prop up autocratic governments for resource extractions. It's how high income states enforce autocratic policies outside their borders, in order to keep their citizens happy with cheap oil and cheap plastic crap.

[lostlogin]

What do you suggest doing though? It would seem that giving them lots of money and arms isn’t a good way of dealing with them either.

[kinguking]

I wish I could upvote this 1000 times

[ptomato]

Yes, we absolutely should stop doing any business with both Saudi Arabia and China, both of which are brutal murderous totalitarian regimes.

Failing that, however, considering the two options for global social networks are precisely limited to

a) there are no global social networks b) there are global social networks but only ones that are directly controlled by the CCP

I'm pretty alright with a).