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by arsenico 784 days ago
What's the hypocrisy here?
2 comments

Not the parent, but I think the main hypocrisy is to claim that freedom of enterprise and that freedom or speech are paramount, and then cracking down on Tiktok.

The fact that Tiktok has 60% ownership by investment funds (most of which are US based), is just the cherry on top.

Personally, I think that some amount of censorship is warranted (see the "paradox of intolerance"), but I think that then the US should dial back all of that "land of the free" rethoric

People and companies in the U.S. (and parts of the U.S. government) have frequently said that it's bad of the Chinese government to prevent U.S. companies from having Chinese users, and to prevent people in Chinese from choosing to see material from U.S. companies and users. We've said that this wasn't a legitimate thing for Chinese law to do, on account of human rights law, free speech principles, and also trade treaties. We've tried hard to help people in China circumvent technical restrictions on accessing foreign content and services, and often claimed that was appropriate as a matter of upholding Chinese people's autonomy.

(I say "we" here because I've personally done those things.)