[AnthonyMouse]

Something with ~0% market share outside of China and which trades the US having root for China having root is not a viable alternative.

In theory you could have something produced by a country other countries might be willing to trust, but the number of countries that are both trustworthy and large enough to sustain a globally-viable platform is practically the empty set at this point.

Which means the thing it calls for is something open source, since that both allows contributions from multiple countries and solves the trust issue by leaving no single entity in control of it.

[adjejmxbdjdn]

One of the ironies of the TikTok-China discussion was that as an individual in the US, I would much prefer the Chinese govt have access to all my data over the U.S. government, just like I suspect individuals in China would be much better off if the U.S. government had all their data over the Chinese government.

So giving your data to the Chinese government, while not a great solution, may still be preferable over giving it to the U.S. for someone in the EU given the closer relationship between EU governments and the U.S. than EU governments and the Chinese government.

Of course, this may be the opposite of what you want from a national perspective.

[tiahura]

My bank account is much more likely to get wiped by Chinese hackers than the CIA.

[MichaelZuo]

This doesn’t sound well reasoned.

If the USA were to ever weaken into irrelevance then yes messing with foreign HarmonyOS users might have some possibility that can’t be easily dismissed.

As long as the USA doesn’t become completely toothless then the incentives would point in the opposite… as long as Huawei behave scrupulously they are nearly guaranteed to win and dethrone the incumbents for most of the world.

[AnthonyMouse]

The US has already banned Huawei from doing business in the US.

Moreover, everybody knows how the enshittification cycle works at this point. They don't openly betray you when they have 0.3% market share, they just fit you for a noose that gets tighter as their market power increases. But because everybody now expects that to happen, who is going to use it to begin with if it's not open source and correspondingly resistant to rug pulls?

[MichaelZuo]

Did you misread some words?

I dont see how US decisions on Huawei are relevant to the prospects of HarmonyOS in the future, when that’s already been priced in?

[Zigurd]

Viability is debatable. There are tens of millions of smartphone users in the US who are vastly more exposed to US law-enforcement abuses and intrusiveness than anything China would care to try. Chinese emigres excepted.

In other words China doesn't have to be trustworthy as long as the mountains are high and the emperor is far away.