Any company running out of mainland USA is going to have serious privacy problems due to USA influence and their need to comply with both local laws and the government’s interest in influencing public sentiment.
Yes, if you care about privacy both the large Chinese services and the large American services are bad.
If you use Facebook or Instagram assume that the NSA has all your data, and that someone might try to manipulate you. If you use TikTok assume that China has all your data, and someone might try to manipulate you. You either choose your poison, or you stay on services that aren't in the limelight
One big difference is in the US the companies are not required to manipulate content to serve USG interests. TikTok may downrank or censor HongKong videos because the government forces them to - the same does not happen at American companies.
I think the 'assume they have all of your data' is paranoid (particularly for encrypted stuff like whatsapp), but people should probably more careful about this kind of thing than they are anyway. The US has laws and rules around access, you may not agree with them - but they are far and away better than the CCP's approach.
The CCP is running concentration camps for a minority population of their own citizens, invading and taking over neighboring countries (HK with an eye towards Taiwan), and censoring pooh bear from the internet because of a light hearted comparison to Xi. The police call foreign students in the US to threaten them over their internet activity: https://www.vice.com/en/article/jgxdv7/chinese-police-are-vi...
End-To-End encryption is useless if like in the case of WhatsApp you don't control the client, but a company beholden to US secret courts does. "“For the past decade, N.S.A. has led an aggressive, multipronged effort to break widely used Internet encryption technologies,” said a 2010 memo describing a briefing about N.S.A. accomplishments" [1]
> The US has laws and rules around access
I'm not a US citizen and reside outside the US, which from my limited legal understanding means that the US law doesn't give a crap about me
I agree that in recent decades China has a worse human rights record, which is a major factor when you "choose your poison".
All reasonable points, though I think whatsapp is secure - I think for most people the best choice is Signal for general messaging and assuming everything else is largely public.
Even in Signal people can and do take screenshots, so really probably just best to be cautious of anything in writing that you wouldn't want published.
This is one reason I'm excited about Urbit - I think it'll be cool to get out of the dependence on centralized services.
You're right about Chinese government behavior. But “the same does not happen at American companies.” --- no, but they censor the internet in obedience to Pakistani demands.
That was excellent. Especially the dialog, totally on point. The horrible thing is that it is barely an exaggeration. US companies are in bed with a government that is conducting an actual genocide, as you point out. And then there is the middle east....
But as far as Google and Pakistan goes, most people who have an inkling of this think that the censorship only affects results served within Pakistan. But, in fact, the censorship affects search results served within the US. Google has allowed the Pakistani government, as well as various pressure groups and other governments, to influence what US people see within the US.
Why is it frustrating when others point out that the most popular services, which are usually from the USA, also have the same kind of problem of being under the influence of the respective government, but nobody seems to be as worried about it? The criticism almost always comes up whenever a service provided by a Chinese company is mentioned in any context. China has shown no interest that I know of in spying on non-Chinese citizens, so I feel like it's probably less problematic to use a chinese service than an American one if your only worry is that someone is spying on you, specially considering how there's plenty of evidence of the USA spying on the whole bloody planet, including heads of state of allied countries, for f'sake...
>It often feels like the work of bots or government shills
Do you think I'm a bot because I disagree with you? Maybe you are the bot... how can we verify you're not? :D good luck getting to the bottom of that.
> China has shown no interest that I know of in spying on non-Chinese citizens
Assuming that this assertion is true what motivates China to be so authoritarian towards their citizens but not so to the rest of the world? Is it altruism or inability?
Does China only spy on their own citizens but not the rest of the world because they like the rest of the world more than their own citizens and they want the rest of the world to have rights and freedoms that they believe their own citizens don't deserve?
If it comes down to an inability to spy on the rest of the world what do you think will happen when China does develop the ability to spy on the rest of the world?
> China has shown no interest that I know of in spying on non-Chinese citizens
I believe China has kept tabs on 2 groups of non-Chinese citizens: 1. foreign nationals within China borders, and 2. foreign nationals who are ethnically Chinese.
It's frustrating because it's not the topic of conversation, and it only serves to derail it as we're doing now.
If we're discussing the high cost of apples and someone brings up oranges, it doesn't change the fact that apples are expensive.
> Do you think I'm a bot because I disagree with you?
No, but a lazy comment doing s/China/USA/ certainly reads like it. And if you've seen some of the threads on Reddit or Twitter it becomes pretty clear some accounts search for any negative discussion about China and interject with whataboutism, which would be pretty easy to automate.
Yes it is, because the topic invariably includes "alternatives" or things that are "better". Those things are nearly always things the US has made. They are not better. Yes, it's bad. Everyone knows this. Adding value to that conversation is giving alternatives or offering some new insight into the nature of badness and how it's different flavours should be looked upon.
Introducing ideas associated to the topic that expand it and offer new perspectives is of course welcomed.
The issue with the China apologist comments is that their intent is to damage control by attacking the negative sentiments that would make the country look bad and steering the conversation towards the evils of other countries, i.e. whataboutism. This behavior is so prevalent online that you'd be hard pressed to find any discussion that criticizes China without it.
I'd also find it frustrating if in any thread that criticizes the US there would be comments about how China is worse. That might be the case, but it doesn't minimize US' problems and only distracts from discussing them. Yet such comments are much less frequent--I'm not sure if I've ever seen one.
If you use Facebook or Instagram assume that the NSA has all your data, and that someone might try to manipulate you. If you use TikTok assume that China has all your data, and someone might try to manipulate you. You either choose your poison, or you stay on services that aren't in the limelight