[throw10920]

Whataboutism (doesn't matter if another entity does it - if it's wrong, then pointing out another entity doing it is fallacious), redirection, and false dichotomy (you can care about the US and China doing it - for all you know the parent poster was in the EU and does care about both).

Nobody mentioned the US upstream of your comment until you did. This is obvious propaganda - one of the classic maneuvers in the PRC influence playbook is, when called out on anything, to try to implement whataboutism with the United States (even if it's not relevant, like here, which is equally sad and funny).

[lmm]

> Nobody mentioned the US upstream of your comment until you did.

No, because programs sending telemetry to the US is so routine that and pervasive that we don't even remark on it.

> This is obvious propaganda

Now who's committing a whole catalogue of fallacies?

[throw10920]

> No, because programs sending telemetry to the US is so routine that and pervasive that we don't even remark on it.

That's not a valid reason. Nice try, though.

> Now who's committing a whole catalogue of fallacies?

Calling a fallacious and manipulative comment that literally follows a country's propaganda playbook "propaganda" isn't a fallacy - it's just true.

It's extremely telling that you didn't comment on any of the actual points that I made, such as it being a false dichotomy and whataboutism - because you know that I'm right, and so you had to resort to insinuations and redirections yourself. Congratulations, you just proved me right.

[alex_smart]

The original comment was neither false dichotomy nor whataboutism. It was a simple point that the rest of the world is already used to their data being snooped by the US government. So apart from US exceptionalism, there is no particular reason they would be especially alarmed by the prospect of their data being sent to "Chinese servers".

[kouteiheika]

What OP's saying is fundamentally true though? Unfortunately most people don't really care about privacy, regardless of whether it's going to an American company or a Chinese one.

[bluGill]

Not exactly. Most US companies have a presence in Europe and so give at least an attempt to obey European laws. While the laws are different and not as strong, the US has privacy laws in place that will protect you. China might have some of those same laws - but they don't apply to the government at all (the US makes some attempt to have laws apply to the government)

That doesn't mean you should be happy with data in America, but China is worse.

[gsnedders]

Last I knew Opera still had a decent amount of engineering staff in Poland, and still had some in Sweden, both in the EU, plus still has some amount of staff in Norway, not in the EU but definitely in Europe.

That’s not to say their privacy story is fantastic, but they very much still have European operations.

[alex_smart]

> US has privacy laws in place that will protect you

They don't protect us at all. Thanks to Snowden, we all know that the US government has extremely sophisticated and wide-ranging ability to get access to any data we share with American companies.

> but China is worse

And why so?

[throw10920]

> They don't protect us at all.

Factually incorrect. US privacy laws pose a huge burden to US intelligence. The 4th amendment still applies. Warrants still exist.

> Thanks to Snowden, we all know that the US government has extremely sophisticated and wide-ranging ability to get access to any data we share with American companies.

Citation needed.

> And why so?

In the PRC, there are no privacy laws to protect you from the government. "Private" companies are an extension of the government and all of the larger ones are required to have a CCP party member on board to ensure that they are "aligned" with what the party wants. The party happily disappears dissidents at will, threatens dissidents in other countries, requires that all domestic companies provide encryption keys (or otherwise made encrypted data accessible) on demand with zero warrants or other legal protections, maintains the largest network of surveillance cameras in the world (several times more than the total number of those in the United States), and many more things.

This is extremely common knowledge, easily searchable online, and is factually and categorically different than anything the US, or any other Western country, does. Only the terminally ignorant or the propagandists believe that the PRC's surveillance is remotely similar to that of any western country - the available evidence comprehensively disproves that conspiracy theory.

[mananaysiempre]

> [T]he US has privacy laws in place that will protect you [...] (the US makes some attempt to have laws apply to the government)

I believe the US stance is that nobody outside the US is entitled to court relief against the US government regarding their privacy, and nobody outside the US and EU is entitled to any relief at all, even from the executive (the “Data Protection Review Court” non-court, formerly the “Privacy Shield Ombudsperson”). In the EU, there are some protections in some countries but for example the GDPR specifically does not apply to governments.

I mean, the Chinese government is worse on this, but the US is nevertheless really bad and a number of EU countries also suck to a remarkable extent. Until the US press starts dropping the “of Americans” from their latest surprised-Pikachu headlines on “mass government surveillance of Americans”, I’m unconvinced the situation will improve.

[alex_smart]

Getting snooped on by the US government being so normalized is obviously not propaganda though? Right?