I think people reading the article should familiarize themselves with ASPI [0]. Their funding comes from: Embassy of Japan, Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Australia, Lockheed Martin, BAE Systems, Northrop Grumman, Thales Group, and Raytheon Technologies. I would take everything they write with a grain of salt since they have a huge conflict of interest in pushing a new cold-war rhetoric.
I think CCP is a concern, however that is currently just in China. Which mean whatever china is doing with internet should be prevented in every where else.
Their sponsors also include Google, Microsoft, Oracle, etc. who would likely prefer not to escalate the ‘new cold war’ since it would hurt their profits.
Not really. Facebook is quite publically trying to get Chinese social media banned simply to avoid the competition. Microsoft is directly benifiting from the promised TikTok ban by potentially getting TikTok US for a much lower price.
No, as clearly listed on ASPI's official website, Google, Microsoft, Oracle are sponsors of ASPI's International Cyber Policy Centre (ICPC), they are not sponsors of ASPI itself.
ASPI sponsors and ICPC sponsors are listed separately on ASPI's official website for a reason.
But it’s really besides the point. Instead of attacking the authors or their sponsors, perhaps we should focus on the content instead. What’s happening here would be equivalent to me attacking you or the parent (and vice versa) for having a comment history pushing CCP talking points.
the ASPI is also behind the Uyghur forced labor story a month ago. But if you go to the actual paper and download the PDF https://www.aspi.org.au/report/uyghurs-sale, then one by one click through the primary source and Google Translate it, it's just mainstream Chinese news and social media contents about reducing unemployment, out-of-province workers and multi-ethnic social events re-"narrativized" to mean forced labor.
Also a couple of criticisms from Australian elected officials themselves
Chinese officials called them "reeducation camps" to western reporter. I cannot imagine that Chinese officials would be oblivious to the fact that "reeducation camps" and "concentration camps" are synonymous in Westerners' minds. If not, then it is a surprising and huge blunder. No matter what is happening there, even what officials have officially shown western media, crosses our moral boundaries. The optics of putting adults in 24/7 education centers, that are gated (and doing the same to kids), is not seen as an okay thing to do.
> If not, then it is a surprising and huge blunder.
Ya, no disagreements there. The Chinese government has zero PR capabilities. Every response from their foreign ministry's spokesperson to a leading question sounds like a painful mea culpa.
> No matter what is happening there, even what officials have officially shown western media, crosses our moral boundaries.
I don't think most consider the UN to be upholding Western values. That's also not their prerogative since they also aren't distinctly Western. The permanent members are: China, France, Russian Federation, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Sure, that's 3 to 2, but not exactly like US/Western overlords.
> OIC
Since when is the OIC considered "Western"?
> The Chinese government has zero PR capabilities.
> Not that any of them have more PR power than China either.
China has a lot of PR power. part of which is exactly what the article and topic at hand are about. This is so far removed from reality that I'm not exactly sure how to respond.
I'm not sure how exactly to respond either. Your response seems unrelated to the thread so far.
> I don't think most consider the UN to be upholding Western values.
Of course my reply doesn't respond to your questions on western values. It's the first time you bring up "western values". That's why I asked what you're referring to as "our".
> China has a lot of PR power. part of which is exactly what the article and topic at hand are about. This is so far removed from reality that I'm not exactly sure how to respond.
Maybe you're right. I wouldn't know how to quantify it. Can you name a single thing in the past decade came into your consciousness from Chinese PR (that isn't re-broadcasted from western editorials)?
> Since when is the OIC considered "Western"?
Wait, I thought the west cares about the whole thing now because of Muslim freedom and eagles and all. Now Muslim opinions on Muslims are irrelevant? That's the most "Western" thing to say :)
> It's the first time you bring up "western values". That's why I asked what you're referring to as "our".
See my original comment
> Can you name a single thing in the past decade came into your consciousness from Chinese PR (that isn't re-broadcasted from western editorials)?
What's in the parenthesis makes that a near impossible criteria since western media does do global coverage depending on what you mean by editorials. It is important to remember that the media here doesn't have to report back to any single entity. There's multiple countries, multiple organizations. Each with their own bias. But every country does report on global news.
If we are considering news that isn't editorials, then yes, plenty. There's been plenty here on HN. TikTok's response was on the front page. Several news organizations have defended TikTok. Some have issued (non-editorial) pieces on both sides. There's a lot of talk of military, which is PR. Economics. Quite a lot of economics and how fast China is growing. That's PR too. How quickly China dealt with covid 19. That's PR too.
So either this is trivial or impossible depending on your statement in parenthesis.
> Now Muslim opinions on Muslims are irrelevant?
HN has rules about acting in good faith. Willfully misrepresenting comments, trolling, and baiting are not allowed here. [0]
> This report recommends (on page 50) that governments implement transparent user data privacy and user data protection frameworks that apply to all social media networks.
Sounds like a good initiative. Unfortunately, I expect most social media networks to resist that kind of regulation. Except maybe for TikTok and WeChat, since regulation would be better for them than the total ban they're facing.
> Governments should require that all social media platforms investigate and disclose information operations being conducted on their platforms by state and non-state actors. Disclosures should include publicly releasing datasets linked to those information campaigns.
I thought the point of social media networks was so that governments can conduct surveillance and information campaigns.
I thought the point of social media networks was so that anyone who pays enough[1] can conduct surveillance and information campaigns[2].
[1] It is claimed that "enough" could be under the corporate coffee budget.
[2] They might pronounce conducting these activities as "using custom and lookalike digital insights to create meaningful audiences and reach your business goals" however.
It seems the US (and Australia) is hell bent on banning Wechat, if they think this is going to win any minds of wechat user, they're just dead wrong. People use wechat to communicate with their family and friends, just like how people in the west use facebook, except more.
Imagine if you are a Chinese person overseas, all of your family and friends are on wechat, then one day BAM it's all banned. Would you be thankful for US government for 'saving your personal information from CCP'?
The day that Apple removes Wechat from appstore is the day they sell their last iPhone in China. You can't live in China without it, simple as that. It essentially replaces phone numbers.
The purpose is not to win the minds of Chinese citizens. There’s little that can be done to counter a lifetime of propaganda, even more so when its citizens obtain most of their information from heavily censored platforms controlled by the CCP.
> The purpose is not to win the minds of Chinese citizens. There’s little that can be done to counter a lifetime of propaganda, even more so when its citizens obtain most of their information from heavily censored platforms controlled by the CCP.
Actually, that's probably the only good justification for banning WeChat. If someone's views were formed by propaganda, when you disconnect them from their reinforcement, they'll probably at least mellow with time. The point to point communications features of WeChat can mostly be replaced, but less so with the social media aspects.
IIRC, the CCP spends considerable effort trying to maintain influence over the Chinese diaspora (for instance, by getting control of foreign Chinese-language newspapers), though this effort pales in comparison to their domestic efforts.
> The day that Apple removes Wechat from appstore is the day they sell their last iPhone in China. You can't live in China without it, simple as that. It essentially replaces phone numbers.
No. I will just buy iPhones for my parents and start using iMessage. I simply cannot wait to see WeChat got banned in Europe. Disclaimer: a Chinese living in Germany.
They are Android users now, nothing stops them continue using WeChat on Android to communicate with other Android users. They just have a (better) way to communicate with their son without WeChat.
You are right. But it's just too much trouble to force the olds to change anything if you don't have a good enough reason.
It's very difficult to say something like this and has an effect: "Mom and Dad, there's much cooler and securer chat app out there, let's try it out." They will just say WeChat is good enough and they don't care about privacy because they don't anything to hide.
But it'd be much easier to ask them like this: "Mom and Dad, those asshole Americans and Europeans and Australians banned WeChat and I can't reach out to you anymore, can we please switch to that much cooler and securer chat app?" This will likely work.
But to friends I am not so nice. I force them to communicate with me either through iMessage or email (or Telegram, but it's banned in China). Some friends switch to iPhone and we still keep in touch (but probably not solely because of me), and others didn't and we lose touch ever since. It's just a choice we all have to make at some point.
The responsibility of the US government is not to placate any citizen from another country, it's to protect its own citizens' data. Any Chinese app being used in your own country at a massive scale is a liability waiting to be (or already) used by the Chinese Govt.
The responsibility of the US government is to its residents, not just its citizens. These includes being an attractive location for foreign visitors with money and labor to spend in US.
And also to be member of the world community.
Finally many Chinese people with friends in China are citizens.
How much would you recommend importing Chinese censorship before it outweighs the benefits you're suggesting here? I'm not saying there's no valid trade-off there, but catering to the needs you're describing does have a cost.
'A member of the world community' in the same way that China is 'a member of the world community'?
Let's be clear: the Chinese government is going to cause its citizens great pain because it performs this information manipulation with its own technology. It is at fault if other countries take steps to protect the world from the CCP's actions, not the nations taking those steps. Don't victim-blame either the other countries or the Chinese people, both of who are harmed by the CCP's actions.
Same way that Iraqi was freed from Saddam, it's all his governments fault for having weapons of mass destruction.
Speaking of information manipulation, just because people have the freedom to access all information, doesn't mean they won't be manipulated, you're seeing this happen in front of your very eyes.
At least in China people know they're not seeing the full story from the media. They know they can't access certain website because of censorship. In the US people just swallow whatever that they happen to see and believe, the results are comical.
In many ways, Chinese people are less manipulated than certain set of people in America. There were genuine anger when Li Wenliang died. But then eventually they realized that shits so much worse elsewhere - meanwhile in the US people still believe that disease China is worse because - manipulation? Or inability to overcome cognitive dissonance.
You do realize that China and the US are held to different standards because of different stated goals.
If we want to uphold freedom and be a part of the world community then yes, we in fact cannot sink to the same tactics and policies as the Chinese government.
Actually this is a well understood principle, and is in fact why our police cannot use criminal tactics to catch criminals (at least on paper).
Apparently, China is having no problem attracting foreign investment while conducting every kind of human rights abuse that exists including genocide. So, not sure, your point stands in practice.
If the international students I've met are any indication, trying to win the hearts and minds of Chinese nationals is a lost cause. It's not a problem of information. The problem is they already know what the CCP does and they agree with it on the basis of it being necessary for the good of society.
You've got to be kidding me. Why can't they have a genuine opinion of their own? You may not agree with them because you have different values, but that's very different from claiming that their opinions are illegitimate and merely a result of "brainwashing".
I find it very strange (understatement) that on the one hand people say they support the Chinese people, but on the other hand when Chinese people have a different opinion, then those Chinese people are dismissed as being brainwashed, a paid shill, spies, etc. Way to dehumanize them.
Oh, it couldn't possibly have anything to do with the fact that the past 40 years have been the best out of 4000 years, the fact that 800+ million people have been lifted out of poverty, that dirty streets have been transformed to clean ones, that famines have disappeared and everybody has enough to eat, that violent crimes have nearly all disappeared and the streets are safe.
I don't say this because I've been fed propaganda, I say this because I saw it with my own eyes. When I grew up, nearly nobody travelled abroad. 15 years before I was born, people couldn't choose what to wear, what work to do, where to live. All of that has changed, and today hundreds of millions of Chinese travel abroad, and they nearly all return voluntarily. Some choose to emigrate, but that number declines every year because China gets nicer every year.
Before you accuse me of being brainwashed: the above is corroborated by Kishore Mahbubani, ex-Singapore diplomat, ex-UN Security Council head. Is he brainwashed too?
I'd say your opinion is just due to lack of perspective. There are more things that are important than the ability to express political dissent. Freedom from hunger, freedom from being robbed, freedom to get medical care without being bankrupted, freedom to travel. All of these aspects HAVE improved.
Of course there are still many problems. But you're judging China through a single dimension only. That's not fair.
Why is China's relative improvement even remotely relevant to whether or not we should allow communications systems it controls to operate within the United States?
Because the Chinese government doesn't allow dissent, it doesn't allow free expression. You can't reasonably expect me to believe they all have different values when dissenting ideas are banned from the country and vocal dissent results in disappearances and imprisonment. And yes, this includes dissent expressed overseas, look up Operation Fox Hunt.
I find it very strange that on the one hand people say the Chinese people just all have different values, but on the other hand ignore the terrifyingly huge totalitarian propaganda infrastructure that prevents any dissenting ideas from being legitimately expressed and discussed in China.
That's because you evaluate "good vs bad" on a single dimension only. There are other things that are at least as important as the freedom to express political dissent. Such as freedom from hunger, freedom from poverty, freedom from being robbed, freedom to travel where you want.
If you compare China from 40 years ago to China today, then these are literally the best 40 years in 4000 years. Yes not everything is perfect, yes there is limited ability to dissent. But come on, when your children were starving, your house was run down, the streets were polluted and dirty, your children and belongings were always at risk of being abducted by criminals, you couldn't choose what clothes to wear; and then flash forward 40 years later, ALL of that has changed, is it so hard to imagine that some people could be grateful for the progress even if not everything is perfect?
When your country has been at war and revolution for 100 years, due to different factions that kept fighting each other until the end of days, is it so hard to imagine that one day you're tired of that, and desire unity over conflict?
Live and let live. I don't say you have to value that. It's fine for western countries to value the ability to politically dissent, as a primary value. But why do you have to force that value down the throat of others, that have had a very different history?
I wasn't evaluating good or bad, just don't tell me that the Chinese people can be truly said to value anything when their government doesn't allow them to freely express anything other than what the CCP values. You asked why can't they have a genuine opinion of their own? Here's your answer. I'll leave your beautifully written apologia of totalitarianism alone.
And yet when people express their opinions outside of China, where the Chinese government does not control what they say, you still choose to believe only those opinions that fit your preconceptions.
China is not "totalitarian". There's a huge range between "fully free" and "totalitarian", and while China is more on the latter side than most western countries, it's not all the way there, and is way more to the former side than the USSR was. What sort of totalitarian regime lets people freely travel abroad where they can learn about all the things that are banned in the home country? 40 years ago you may have been right to describe China as totalitarian. Get on with the times.
Like I mentioned before, China does pursue dissidents beyond its borders. Look up Operation Fox Hunt.
China bans dissident websites and internet platforms that don't comply with their censorship, they actively censor dissenting speech and amplify propaganda on social media like Douyin (owned by ByteDance, whose CEO also publicly pledged to work towards "Strengthening the work of Party construction, carrying out education among our entire staff on the “four consciousnesses,” socialist core values, guidance of public opinion"; oh, fun fact, ByteDance owns TikTok), they also monitor private communications on WeChat and ban apps that don't allow this, remove protesting apps from the Chinese iOS App Store (eg. HK), bans foreign journalism, arrests heads of publications critical of the regime (eg. Jimmy Lai), tracks and detains ethnic religious practitioners (eg. Uighurs) and seizes authority over local religious chapters (eg. Catholic church), declares that it is the “basic responsibility” of schools to strengthen students’ sense of national identity (said by the Education Bureau, reported by SCMP) and revises the history curriculum to omit embarrassing sections of China's dynastic history.
So when someone leaves China to go abroad, they've just left a country that controls what information they can consume online and from mainstream news, controls what they can publish online and say on social media, mandatorily monitors and punishes what they say in private to their own friends and family via p2p services like WeChat and Zoom, controls what religions you're allowed to practice, controls religious authorities, and ensures your education builds up your nationalism.
Sure, they don't control what they say outside the US (sometimes). They just control everything else that forms the very foundations of thought, speech, identity, and character.
Seems pretty total to me. Maybe I'm just not with the times enough to understand your convincing argument that they're not totalitarian because they allow people to travel.
I won't mince words: there is zero legitimacy to the public support of a totalitarian regime by the subjects inside the totalitarian regime that controls and grooms them.
>> You are seeing them in their first moments outside of the complete control of the Chinese Communist Party. Deprogramming takes time.
> You've got to be kidding me. Why can't they have a genuine opinion of their own? You may not agree with them because you have different values, but that's very different from claiming that their opinions are illegitimate and merely a result of "brainwashing".
After 10 years or so, some of my Chinese friends are a little embarrassed by some of the things they said/positions they took when they first came here as students.
I have been in the US for ten years. I came from China after undergrad and I got a PhD from a top US University. I still do not agree with banning WeChat/Tiktok on the basis of "national security" or "privacy". In your mind, I am still "programmed". To me, this is simple and plain arrogance.
Why has Wechat became pretty much the only way the oversea Chinese communicate with their family and friends in China? One of the reasons is, CCP has banned the rest.
How do you know that the anonymous online petition signers are all Chinese Americans?
And for WeChat becoming so ubiquitous, it's a case of network effect. China isn't the outlier, the West is. Try living in South America without Whatsapp.
Actually facebook (Owners of whatsapp) does engage in censorship.
They censor nipples, kamallaharris.info website, and certain right wing groups.
I think the fact that you are this one-sided in the “censorship” department shows how propagandized you’ve become. Propaganda is everywhere, done by all factions. It’s not just something the communist party does. Every party does it.
I don't have to imagine. I'm a Chinese living in US. I use Wechat to video chat with my parents who live in China every week. In the past a couple weeks I have been trying to convince my dad to find a backup plan. Apparently anything owned by Facebook isn't an option. I don't know if Signal is an option but he won't try anyway. Telegram isn't an option. Snap isn't an option. So we went back to good old Skype. Guess what, there isn't Google play store in China. The Huawei app store (my dad uses a Huawei phone) doesn't have Skype in it. He managed to find the Chinese Skype website, operated by a company that isn't Miscrosoft but MS's partner in China, to download the APK, then his Huawei phone rejected to install it, because the APK isn't blessed by some Huawei security thingy.
We eventually settled down to use QQ which is also owned by Tencent. He also mentioned we could use this Tencent business meeting app, or that Alibaba business meeting app (dingding), but at that point i rejused. I was quite fed up after he couldn't to install Skepe on his phone. I think MS is one of the US companies that's so willing to bend over to most requests from Chinese gov but they are still treated like crap. If Trump bans QQ as well then I will just call my parents with the good old international telephone call. These Chinese tech co isn't gonna get another weekly active user just like that.
I even thought about setting up my own Jitsi server and let them just Jitsi to it, then i thought it must be even harder than installing Skype. VPN isn't an option. Any other way to circumvent the GFW will be too complicated for them. They will all be too low bandwidth to video chat anyway. Plus, illegal. You can find cases where individuals got punished because they use VPN. The government even lists them on a website. They ain't hiding or sugar-coating this crap no more.
So after this process, if you ask me, a Chinese living overseas, which side I'm gonna blame for how we got here, guess what, it won't be the US gov.
(Also this is from a burner account because I don't want nobody to knock on my parents door for this post.)
As a software engineer, I don't think the process you went through is of much use. Unless the US set up a firewall ala China you can still call your parents with the wechat already installed on your phone any time.
Also, you probably should buy your dad a computer.. I've never heard of anybody having trouble to install skype on a computer. Since Huawei was blocked from transaction with any US entity, I guess it make sense why Skype doesn't exist on Huawei store? Not by their choice if I have to guess.
Not that I am aware of. Only alternative is iMessage, but if you enable "Messages in Cloud", your data will be backed-up to "Guizhou-Cloud" and they might or might not be encrypted there.
WeChat alternatives? I don't think there's even any alternatives to that in any form. But for messaging there are still apps that support e2ee that you can use in the mainland.
> WeChat alternatives? I don't think there's even any alternatives to that in any form.
ByteDance (the same company as TikTok) launched feiliao [0, 1] last year to compete with WeChat but I don't think they gained much market share. Also, it obviously has no end to end encryption for chats.
"This report recommends (on page 50) that governments implement transparent user data privacy and user data protection frameworks that apply to all social media networks. If companies refuse to comply with such frameworks, they shouldn’t be allowed to operate. Independent audits of social media algorithms should be conducted. Social media companies should be transparent about the guidelines that human moderators use and what impact their decisions have on their algorithms. Governments should require that all social media platforms investigate and disclose information operations being conducted on their platforms by state and non-state actors. Disclosures should include publicly releasing datasets linked to those information campaigns."
Yes. If we could get Google, Facebook etc. to do this. That would be great. Thanks, signed someone in Europe.
Sounds nice, unfortunately “independent audits” will be done by 2-3 companies closely tied to the establishment (just like how strategy consulting is done by 3 companies and finance audit is done by 4 companies).
I actually thought about something like this and came up with a solution. Please excuse me for being naive. It's blockchain technology. We can build a social media based on blockchain technology, makes the history of content in social media unalterable and transparent. Users are not allowed update contents they have posted but the authorities. Any content removal request from the authorities will be carried out automatically but broadcasted to all users. Hence the authority can have full control of the social media and have transparency implemented.
Somehow these social media giants from the west would be allowed to collect crazy amount of data on their users, but tiktok would be deemed illegal.
If there was a real concern for users privacy and safety this would've been taken care of awhile ago.
All this is just war drums that try to seem like privacy concerns.
US corporate greed gave China a platform for world domination by offshoring everything. Now that the tiger is loose, us plebs need to go to war for them.
Just wish there was a place like HN but with people who see the bullshit in imperialism. This is the place I come for rational discussion but when it comes to geopolitical issues, the globalist/western propaganda is rampant. Being from a country that has always been under US interventionism makes it unnerving. Lots of the people here, even if more (copy)left leaning, when it comes to geopolitics they just believe the western anti-communist koolaid; which is the reason I refrain from commenting anything that goes against the "commom sense" western propaganda.
The problem is the US doesn't have a monopoly on imperialism anymore and is not the only country pursuing questionable practices with respect to technology. A lot of critics of US policy changes on topics like this one have their own set of blinders on when it comes to this fact. You end up seeing a weird kind of cognitive dissonance in comments as a result.
It's generally best to avoid this trap by either talking about what the likely end results will be (fragmented web ecosystems bounded by per-country restrictions) or to talk in country-neutral objectives (no country should allow massive data collection and privacy breaches in apps, regardless of their place of origin).
Somehow these social media giants from X would be allowed to collect crazy amount of data on their users, but Y’s would be deemed illegal.
Could unironically be answered “Yes, and?” in a rational discussion about geopolitical issues, especially one without a globalist (or specifically western) bent.
I’ve gone ahead and done that in response to the GP just now.
Rational geopolitics usually lead to war. Because rationality, the kind you talk about, is a farce, a rationalizing, that hides the true motives. When these are not acknowledge you can't critic the actions on the correct terms. Thus these "rationality" usually spirals out of control.
Friendship, joint ideals empathy, are not strictly rational.
Friendship, joint ideals, and empathy don’t exist at the international level without a third party security guarantor keeping the various sides down, see: the history of Europe pre 1945 (and post ~2030 or so).
You’re not coming to HN to look for a rational discussion of geopolitics, you’re looking for someone to agree with.
Same here. HN has recently been swamped with polarizing geopolitical rhetoric. Finding it more difficult to get any rational discourse outside the pro-US echo chamber
You may try visiting a forum based in your own country, as HackerNews is based primarily on Silicon Valley in the United States. I think you're completely barking up the wrong tree if you're looking to support communism or speak positively of communism in any United States hosted/primarily based setting and for great reason!
I don't know. On one hand there is no choice, on the other hand there is illusion of choice.
I would say that no choice is more honest. The illusion of choice is a bit like the fake buttons on traffic lights, it's there to make you think you are in control of something while you are really not.
On a similar note, as a US citizen I am more concerned with what data the US Government or US companies have on me than anything the CCP might have on me.
This might be naive but it seems like we have a much bigger privacy problem in the US.
I think it is naive. What's at stake here isn't the Chinese version of the CIA/NSA/FBI blackmailing you with collected info, it's China extending its censorship into US communication platforms. Dissenting speech against the CCP's interests will curiously disappear while pro-CCP propaganda is amplified. China would have control over discussion of its regime even in the US.
Somehow these social media giants from the west would be allowed to collect crazy amount of data on their users, but tiktok would be deemed illegal.
Yes. It’s a separate issue.
If there was a real concern for users privacy and safety this would've been taken care of awhile ago.
Yes. The concern is over the entity exploiting the data, not the exploitation of data itself.
All this is just war drums that try to seem like privacy concerns.
It’s an explicitly political article that mentions China by name 7 times. ASPI is a defense & strategic policy thinktank.
US corporate greed gave China a platform for world domination by offshoring everything. Now that the tiger is loose, us plebs need to go to war for them.
The recommended actions are for governments & social media companies, not users or non policy making citizens.
You miss the entire point which is stopping a communist foreign government from collecting large scale data on US citizens. The US government doesn't give a shit about Google, Apple, and Facebook collecting information they use on US citizens.
I don't get your worries. Yes your conversation will be monitored. But you know that. And let's face it, 99.9% of your conversation won't be political (I'm just making an educated guess here; I don't know you), nor about sensitive subjects.
If you want to talk about sensitive subjects, you can always ask those friends to get off Wechat and on a different channel, specifically for those subjects.
For the 99.9% of fun, personal conversations that are about cat photo sharing, pizza recipes and the latest celebrities, Wechat is not a problem. CCP really doesn't care about those, they just care that nobody on Wechat causes trouble (by their definition of "trouble").
When do you accidentally say something considered not OK, the worst that happens is that the message gets deleted. They don't go after people unless you're instigating mass protests or something like that.
You won't get advertisements about CCP propaganda. Unless you subscribe to those channels yourself.
I can tell you that AI, NLP, software, Portland Protest, and Donald Trump all aren't sensitive subjects.
Tiananmen obviously is.
But let's face it. Are you going to talk about Tiananmen and similar subjects all day long? Most Chinese people are apolitical. As I said, 99.9% of your conversations won't be about anything political.
Yes I get that you're ideologically opposed to censorship, and that we "shouldn't have to" move to a different platform to talk about certain subjects. I agree.
I'm not talking about ideology, I'm talking about what's practical. You want to put up a barrier between yourself and your Chinese friends on the odd chance that 0.1% of your conversations might be about Tiananmen, and you can't be bothered to move to another platform? You have to pick your battles.
Let's face it: even if you refuse to use Wechat due to ideology, you won't change anything about the censorship policy. And your Chinese friends clearly don't care, and if the Chinese government answers to anybody then it would be first to them, and maybe a few kilometers behind them, be interested in what you think. So why are you taking this ideological stance for them? Isn't Chinese censorship mainly their problem and not yours?
If you want to convince your Chinese friends of how evil CCP is, and therefore that they should ban Wechat, go ahead. But don't you think that it should be their choice and not yours?
> You want to put up a barrier between yourself and your Chinese friends on the odd chance that 0.1% of your conversations might be about Tiananmen, and you can't be bothered to move to another platform?
This kind of thinking is exactly why WeChat should be banned. China has banned every other means of communication, so it's the only option. Banning WeChat isn't a provocation, it's reciprocation.
Reciprocation, for what? For censoring their own citizen? That's like saying China should sanction the US for crimes during BLM.
Of course censorship isn't okay, but US doesn't get to play world police.
And you're supporting this attack in order to spite China, while totally ignoring practical outcomes for Chinese people, the very people you claim to support?
"We support you, we just hate your government. So we'll forcefully liberate you, even if you didn't ask for liberation."
> Reciprocation, for what? For censoring their own citizen?
It doesn't matter why they are banning every other means of communication. The fact is, they are banned.
It's not a matter of spite. In every other area of international relations, reciprocation is how things get done. You tariff me, I tariff you. You restrict visas for me, I restrict visas for you.
It would suck for Chinese people overseas. That would be unfortunate. They should petition their government to unban a few means of communication!
Your tit-for-tat comparison makes no sense. Censoring messages on Wechat does not affect US. You’re making up a non-existant attack from China against US. Your attitude is 100% spite, you're just rationalizing it.
If the ban is limited to the US only, and if they provide clear conditions on how to resolve this problem (such as pointing out which concrete US data laws are violated, and talking about clear steps towards resolving those violations) then you may have a point.
But the ban is world wide. Even inside China. And there are no conditions, it's a ban that cannot be resolved.
Claims of spying is just an excuse. They want to burn China's prosperity down to the ground.
The CCP is absolutely censoring, monitoring and harvesting data from every app that is based and controlled from China, especially WeChat.
That is publicly stated policy.
There is no need for 'tit for tat' apps from China should be banned by every reasonable jurisdiction outside China for that reason alone.
Without even getting complicated, just using EU GDPR as a basis for banning it would be just fine under already established legislation.
We just went through the entire 20th century of trying to overcome such bad regimes, the only reason that China is able to get away with any of it is due to basic economic power i.e. trade interdependance.
So it's time to reconsider and realign - too bad Trump pulled out of the TPP because that would have been a good first step.
Wechat should comply with local laws. I completely agree with that.
But at the same time you're also saying that, regardless of law, the fact that the Chinese government can monitor the data, is justification for banning all Chinese apps.
You're so proud of rule of law, but once it's about China you're throwing rule of law away, and the only reason is because you want to stick it to them?
If you limit your statement to "it should be banned because it violates concrete laws" then I would agree. But "it should be banned because it's Chinese" is absurd and unfair.
Look at the Tiktok ban: they accuse Tiktok of forwarding data to the CCP, yet no concrete evidence of such practice has ever been shown. Everything is based on the speculation that it could happen. Well, okay, we can solve that via a security audit, right? Audit all the infrastructure, all the firewall rules, all the communication channels, and exhaustively prove that privacy laws are being adhered to. But no, nobody's interested in such an investigation. Chinese apps are guilty until proven innocent, and nobody's interested in proof of innocence or proper due process. Is your belief in western values really that shallow?
I get the feeling that I'll be downvoted again if I don't make myself clear with a disclaimer, so here goes: I support the idea of democracy in Hong Kong. Unfortunately, the current movement has many problems (understatement) and cannot be called a true democratic movement. Here are some Hong Kong'ers with a different perspective: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fk-m6FDMYg0
Note: there's no great firewall in Hong Kong, so it's normal that they post to Youtube.
Those US flag wavers were limited to some in Hong Kong only. The rest of the population (including Hong Kong) has a very different opinion. See the above videos, posted by Hong Kong'ers.
Furthermore, how exactly does the US plan to liberate people? Here's what's done so far:
- Hong Kong Human Rights bill, which damages the Hong Kong economy.
- Banning Chinese companies, which damages both the Chinese and the US economy.
I believe that your intentions are genuine, but I don't believe the US govt's intentions are. To them it's all a political game, like "liberating" Iraq from that evil dictator who conjured weapons of mass destruction out of nothing.
So? In 7.5 million people, you can find examples of pretty much any opinion you can think of. I can find videos from Westerners who will lecture you like they're reading from a CCP propaganda script.
> Those US flag wavers were limited to some in Hong Kong only.
Of course: anyone who did that in China outside of Hong Kong would have been arrested immediately, just like anyone who would try to do that now inside of Hong Kong (due to the new national security law).
> The rest of the population (including Hong Kong) has a very different opinion.
I'm not so sure, even before the national security law, a call for liberation would have been pushing the boundaries. If an opinion is literally illegal, it's impossible to say with any kind of reliability how prevalent that opinion truly is (or what kinds of opinions people would hold, without the threats and their second and third order effects).
> Furthermore, how exactly does the US plan to liberate people? Here's what's done so far:
> - Hong Kong Human Rights bill, which damages the Hong Kong economy.
> - Banning Chinese companies, which damages both the Chinese and the US economy.
The most obvious is to drop the economics uber alles outlook, and limit engagement to areas that might eventually lead to positive results on the human rights front.
>>> "We support you, we just hate your government. So we'll forcefully liberate you, even if you didn't ask for liberation."
>> You do recall there's a pretty high-profile movement of Chinese citizens, some of whom were waving American flags and asking for liberation?
> Furthermore, how exactly does the US plan to liberate people? Here's what's done so far:
I didn't say it had a plan or that it could, I was merely pointing out that as a matter of fact, that liberation was wanted and asked for.
Did you even watch the video? They aren’t talking about supporting CCP, they’re examining what’s wrong with some of the protest movement’s attitude. There is literally zero CCP-sourced material in what they say.
When someone has an opinion that differs from yours, you downplay it as being an exception to the rule. For some reason, you stick to the default position that most Chinese people overwhelmingly want liberation from US, and that any evidence to the contrary is an anomaly.
It’s up to you to believe what you want. But I will let you know that I disagree, and that you ought to reexamine your axioms.
> Did you even watch the video? They aren’t talking about supporting CCP, they’re examining what’s wrong with some of the protest movement’s attitude. There is literally zero CCP-sourced material in what they say.
I watched a bit, but it seem to start reason from some East vs. West stereotypes so I took a peek at some of their other videos. One "National Security vs Democrazy: Analyzed with Facts and Logic" appeared to try to justify the new HK National Security law by appealing to superficial readings of some foreign laws, and the others like "Italians: "HK Separatists are Traitors, EU is Failing" - Keybros SOFTtalk Ep.2 🇮🇹 (3/3)" appear to be collections interview of random Westerners with rather fringe views. If they said anything interesting, feel free to summarize them in text, but I think I have better things to do with 20 minutes.
> When someone has an opinion that differs from yours, you downplay it as being an exception to the rule. For some reason, you stick to the default position that most Chinese people overwhelmingly want liberation from US, and that any evidence to the contrary is an anomaly.
You know, I didn't actually say any of what you claim I did.
I didn't watch all of their videos, but you certainly have a point with regards to them interviewing people with fringe views. For what it's worth, I've sent this feedback to them and they say they plan to do something about it.
> If you want to talk about sensitive subjects, you can always ask those friends to get off Wechat and on a different channel, specifically for those subjects.
Isn't you device already potentially compromised when you install WeChat?
On iOS, every app is fully sandboxed from all others. You can't even run background processes on iOS. Anything that modifies system behavior (such as activating a VPN that snoops traffic) requires system confirmation dialogs. No compromise can happen here.
On Android, isolation is not as strict and there are more holes. But each app runs as a separate Linux user, and with each Android version Google locks down the security model more.
Rootkits like you find on Windows just aren't possible on iOS and Android.
I believe they still allow clipboard snooping. I can't confirm nor deny whether Wechat does this.
Apple and Google should do something about that and further restrict their security model.
When I saw "curating and controlling global information flows" I honestly couldn't tell if they meant that as a bad thing that TikTok was doing or a good thing that Western governments should be doing. I made fun of the concept of doublespeak when I first read 1984 but I think I get it now.
People are pushed into these awful chat apps by the anticompetetive behavior of smart phone OS vendors. The next time you argue for the merits of walled garden app stores think about the damage cooperate controlled chat app servers and curated feeds have done to the internet and the public.
There's some important distinctions that come up with every single time we talk about Chinese apps, so I want to lay them out (disclosure: American). And can we just stop going through this literally every single time?
1) FAANG does this too:
- I complain about that and so do many others here. Expect these people to also be upset about WeChat and TikTok. Anything else would be hypocritical. It is the same fight. We know. Stop the whataboutism.
- While FAANG often willingly shares data with the government and the many eyes, it is not unfettered. We've been making gains in the privacy regime and some of these companies are starting to say no (i.e. come back with a warrant).
- There is a difference, although slight (but meaningful), between a distribution of companies having my data vs a centralized body that controls all regulation.
2) They're just going after China:
- There's a difference between your own government having your data and a foreign government. Especially when tensions are escalating between them.
- See above where gov doesn't have unfettered access (not true in China).
- We're complaining about FAANG too, it just isn't relevant in a conversation about TikTok and WeChat and derails the conversation with whataboutism.
3) What about xyz app?
- Same reason we complain about Facebook over other apps. Scale matters. Of course we're going after the app with a billion users before we go for an app with 100k users.
4) Zuckerberg just wants to make a WeChat (super app) alternative:
- See 1.1. I'll complain about that too. Wouldn't touch it with a ten foot poll. No way.
5) Something about government involvement ipso facto bias.
- If you aren't looking for bias in every source that you read, what are you doing? Read, analyze, internalize. Every source has a bias. They define specific interests. Bias does not mean false. It is not a coup de ta. Yes, we should be aware, but people aren't bringing it up for the same reason we don't bring it up in literally every conversation: because we're aware and it often doesn't serve as a meaningful contribution to the discussion.
Facebook is banned in China so there's no use in driveling over whether or not Facebook should do this or that, or Google should do this or that (Google also being banned in China)
This is simply the US copying China this time. I support banning all Chinese apps. Let it begin.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 187 ms ] thread[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Strategic_Policy_In...
ASPI sponsors and ICPC sponsors are listed separately on ASPI's official website for a reason.
https://www.aspi.org.au/sponsors
But it’s really besides the point. Instead of attacking the authors or their sponsors, perhaps we should focus on the content instead. What’s happening here would be equivalent to me attacking you or the parent (and vice versa) for having a comment history pushing CCP talking points.
Also a couple of criticisms from Australian elected officials themselves
https://www.afr.com/policy/foreign-affairs/the-think-tank-be...
https://www.australiachinarelations.org/content/theres-more-...
on the ASPI who still defends the Iraq War, Syrian regime change war and argues that the west should have went to war in Ukraine.
There's a longer editorial version of the criticism here: https://thegrayzone.com/2020/03/26/forced-labor-china-us-nat...
Ya, no disagreements there. The Chinese government has zero PR capabilities. Every response from their foreign ministry's spokesperson to a leading question sounds like a painful mea culpa.
> No matter what is happening there, even what officials have officially shown western media, crosses our moral boundaries.
Who is "our" in this case? It doesn't seem to include the U.N. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-rights-un/china-say... or Organization of Islamic Cooperation https://www.oic-oci.org/docdown/?docID=4447&refID=1250. Not that any of them have more PR power than China either.
I don't think most consider the UN to be upholding Western values. That's also not their prerogative since they also aren't distinctly Western. The permanent members are: China, France, Russian Federation, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Sure, that's 3 to 2, but not exactly like US/Western overlords.
> OIC
Since when is the OIC considered "Western"?
> The Chinese government has zero PR capabilities.
> Not that any of them have more PR power than China either.
China has a lot of PR power. part of which is exactly what the article and topic at hand are about. This is so far removed from reality that I'm not exactly sure how to respond.
> I don't think most consider the UN to be upholding Western values.
Of course my reply doesn't respond to your questions on western values. It's the first time you bring up "western values". That's why I asked what you're referring to as "our".
> China has a lot of PR power. part of which is exactly what the article and topic at hand are about. This is so far removed from reality that I'm not exactly sure how to respond.
Maybe you're right. I wouldn't know how to quantify it. Can you name a single thing in the past decade came into your consciousness from Chinese PR (that isn't re-broadcasted from western editorials)?
> Since when is the OIC considered "Western"?
Wait, I thought the west cares about the whole thing now because of Muslim freedom and eagles and all. Now Muslim opinions on Muslims are irrelevant? That's the most "Western" thing to say :)
See my original comment
> Can you name a single thing in the past decade came into your consciousness from Chinese PR (that isn't re-broadcasted from western editorials)?
What's in the parenthesis makes that a near impossible criteria since western media does do global coverage depending on what you mean by editorials. It is important to remember that the media here doesn't have to report back to any single entity. There's multiple countries, multiple organizations. Each with their own bias. But every country does report on global news.
If we are considering news that isn't editorials, then yes, plenty. There's been plenty here on HN. TikTok's response was on the front page. Several news organizations have defended TikTok. Some have issued (non-editorial) pieces on both sides. There's a lot of talk of military, which is PR. Economics. Quite a lot of economics and how fast China is growing. That's PR too. How quickly China dealt with covid 19. That's PR too.
So either this is trivial or impossible depending on your statement in parenthesis.
> Now Muslim opinions on Muslims are irrelevant?
HN has rules about acting in good faith. Willfully misrepresenting comments, trolling, and baiting are not allowed here. [0]
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
HN has rules about acting in good faith. Willfully misrepresenting comments, trolling, and baiting are not allowed here. [0]
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
> This is so far removed from reality that I'm not exactly sure how to respond.
HN has rules about acting in good faith. Willfully misrepresenting comments, trolling, and baiting are not allowed here. [0]
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
We're going places my friend.
Sounds like a good initiative. Unfortunately, I expect most social media networks to resist that kind of regulation. Except maybe for TikTok and WeChat, since regulation would be better for them than the total ban they're facing.
I thought the point of social media networks was so that governments can conduct surveillance and information campaigns.
[1] It is claimed that "enough" could be under the corporate coffee budget.
[2] They might pronounce conducting these activities as "using custom and lookalike digital insights to create meaningful audiences and reach your business goals" however.
Imagine if you are a Chinese person overseas, all of your family and friends are on wechat, then one day BAM it's all banned. Would you be thankful for US government for 'saving your personal information from CCP'?
The day that Apple removes Wechat from appstore is the day they sell their last iPhone in China. You can't live in China without it, simple as that. It essentially replaces phone numbers.
Actually, that's probably the only good justification for banning WeChat. If someone's views were formed by propaganda, when you disconnect them from their reinforcement, they'll probably at least mellow with time. The point to point communications features of WeChat can mostly be replaced, but less so with the social media aspects.
IIRC, the CCP spends considerable effort trying to maintain influence over the Chinese diaspora (for instance, by getting control of foreign Chinese-language newspapers), though this effort pales in comparison to their domestic efforts.
No. I will just buy iPhones for my parents and start using iMessage. I simply cannot wait to see WeChat got banned in Europe. Disclaimer: a Chinese living in Germany.
It's very difficult to say something like this and has an effect: "Mom and Dad, there's much cooler and securer chat app out there, let's try it out." They will just say WeChat is good enough and they don't care about privacy because they don't anything to hide.
But it'd be much easier to ask them like this: "Mom and Dad, those asshole Americans and Europeans and Australians banned WeChat and I can't reach out to you anymore, can we please switch to that much cooler and securer chat app?" This will likely work.
But to friends I am not so nice. I force them to communicate with me either through iMessage or email (or Telegram, but it's banned in China). Some friends switch to iPhone and we still keep in touch (but probably not solely because of me), and others didn't and we lose touch ever since. It's just a choice we all have to make at some point.
And also to be member of the world community.
Finally many Chinese people with friends in China are citizens.
Let's be clear: the Chinese government is going to cause its citizens great pain because it performs this information manipulation with its own technology. It is at fault if other countries take steps to protect the world from the CCP's actions, not the nations taking those steps. Don't victim-blame either the other countries or the Chinese people, both of who are harmed by the CCP's actions.
Speaking of information manipulation, just because people have the freedom to access all information, doesn't mean they won't be manipulated, you're seeing this happen in front of your very eyes.
At least in China people know they're not seeing the full story from the media. They know they can't access certain website because of censorship. In the US people just swallow whatever that they happen to see and believe, the results are comical.
In many ways, Chinese people are less manipulated than certain set of people in America. There were genuine anger when Li Wenliang died. But then eventually they realized that shits so much worse elsewhere - meanwhile in the US people still believe that disease China is worse because - manipulation? Or inability to overcome cognitive dissonance.
If we want to uphold freedom and be a part of the world community then yes, we in fact cannot sink to the same tactics and policies as the Chinese government.
Actually this is a well understood principle, and is in fact why our police cannot use criminal tactics to catch criminals (at least on paper).
I find it very strange (understatement) that on the one hand people say they support the Chinese people, but on the other hand when Chinese people have a different opinion, then those Chinese people are dismissed as being brainwashed, a paid shill, spies, etc. Way to dehumanize them.
I don't say this because I've been fed propaganda, I say this because I saw it with my own eyes. When I grew up, nearly nobody travelled abroad. 15 years before I was born, people couldn't choose what to wear, what work to do, where to live. All of that has changed, and today hundreds of millions of Chinese travel abroad, and they nearly all return voluntarily. Some choose to emigrate, but that number declines every year because China gets nicer every year.
Before you accuse me of being brainwashed: the above is corroborated by Kishore Mahbubani, ex-Singapore diplomat, ex-UN Security Council head. Is he brainwashed too?
I'd say your opinion is just due to lack of perspective. There are more things that are important than the ability to express political dissent. Freedom from hunger, freedom from being robbed, freedom to get medical care without being bankrupted, freedom to travel. All of these aspects HAVE improved.
Of course there are still many problems. But you're judging China through a single dimension only. That's not fair.
I find it very strange that on the one hand people say the Chinese people just all have different values, but on the other hand ignore the terrifyingly huge totalitarian propaganda infrastructure that prevents any dissenting ideas from being legitimately expressed and discussed in China.
If you compare China from 40 years ago to China today, then these are literally the best 40 years in 4000 years. Yes not everything is perfect, yes there is limited ability to dissent. But come on, when your children were starving, your house was run down, the streets were polluted and dirty, your children and belongings were always at risk of being abducted by criminals, you couldn't choose what clothes to wear; and then flash forward 40 years later, ALL of that has changed, is it so hard to imagine that some people could be grateful for the progress even if not everything is perfect?
When your country has been at war and revolution for 100 years, due to different factions that kept fighting each other until the end of days, is it so hard to imagine that one day you're tired of that, and desire unity over conflict?
Live and let live. I don't say you have to value that. It's fine for western countries to value the ability to politically dissent, as a primary value. But why do you have to force that value down the throat of others, that have had a very different history?
China is not "totalitarian". There's a huge range between "fully free" and "totalitarian", and while China is more on the latter side than most western countries, it's not all the way there, and is way more to the former side than the USSR was. What sort of totalitarian regime lets people freely travel abroad where they can learn about all the things that are banned in the home country? 40 years ago you may have been right to describe China as totalitarian. Get on with the times.
China bans dissident websites and internet platforms that don't comply with their censorship, they actively censor dissenting speech and amplify propaganda on social media like Douyin (owned by ByteDance, whose CEO also publicly pledged to work towards "Strengthening the work of Party construction, carrying out education among our entire staff on the “four consciousnesses,” socialist core values, guidance of public opinion"; oh, fun fact, ByteDance owns TikTok), they also monitor private communications on WeChat and ban apps that don't allow this, remove protesting apps from the Chinese iOS App Store (eg. HK), bans foreign journalism, arrests heads of publications critical of the regime (eg. Jimmy Lai), tracks and detains ethnic religious practitioners (eg. Uighurs) and seizes authority over local religious chapters (eg. Catholic church), declares that it is the “basic responsibility” of schools to strengthen students’ sense of national identity (said by the Education Bureau, reported by SCMP) and revises the history curriculum to omit embarrassing sections of China's dynastic history.
So when someone leaves China to go abroad, they've just left a country that controls what information they can consume online and from mainstream news, controls what they can publish online and say on social media, mandatorily monitors and punishes what they say in private to their own friends and family via p2p services like WeChat and Zoom, controls what religions you're allowed to practice, controls religious authorities, and ensures your education builds up your nationalism.
Sure, they don't control what they say outside the US (sometimes). They just control everything else that forms the very foundations of thought, speech, identity, and character.
Seems pretty total to me. Maybe I'm just not with the times enough to understand your convincing argument that they're not totalitarian because they allow people to travel.
I won't mince words: there is zero legitimacy to the public support of a totalitarian regime by the subjects inside the totalitarian regime that controls and grooms them.
> You've got to be kidding me. Why can't they have a genuine opinion of their own? You may not agree with them because you have different values, but that's very different from claiming that their opinions are illegitimate and merely a result of "brainwashing".
After 10 years or so, some of my Chinese friends are a little embarrassed by some of the things they said/positions they took when they first came here as students.
Probably you might be aware of this https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/we-people-support-... Over 100k Chinese American petitioned to ban Wechat and TikTok in the US.
And for WeChat becoming so ubiquitous, it's a case of network effect. China isn't the outlier, the West is. Try living in South America without Whatsapp.
They censor nipples, kamallaharris.info website, and certain right wing groups.
I think the fact that you are this one-sided in the “censorship” department shows how propagandized you’ve become. Propaganda is everywhere, done by all factions. It’s not just something the communist party does. Every party does it.
Over 600k American petitioned banning Bill Gates' Foundation obviously.
We eventually settled down to use QQ which is also owned by Tencent. He also mentioned we could use this Tencent business meeting app, or that Alibaba business meeting app (dingding), but at that point i rejused. I was quite fed up after he couldn't to install Skepe on his phone. I think MS is one of the US companies that's so willing to bend over to most requests from Chinese gov but they are still treated like crap. If Trump bans QQ as well then I will just call my parents with the good old international telephone call. These Chinese tech co isn't gonna get another weekly active user just like that.
I even thought about setting up my own Jitsi server and let them just Jitsi to it, then i thought it must be even harder than installing Skype. VPN isn't an option. Any other way to circumvent the GFW will be too complicated for them. They will all be too low bandwidth to video chat anyway. Plus, illegal. You can find cases where individuals got punished because they use VPN. The government even lists them on a website. They ain't hiding or sugar-coating this crap no more.
So after this process, if you ask me, a Chinese living overseas, which side I'm gonna blame for how we got here, guess what, it won't be the US gov.
(Also this is from a burner account because I don't want nobody to knock on my parents door for this post.)
Also, you probably should buy your dad a computer.. I've never heard of anybody having trouble to install skype on a computer. Since Huawei was blocked from transaction with any US entity, I guess it make sense why Skype doesn't exist on Huawei store? Not by their choice if I have to guess.
Jitsi works in mobile web browsers and yes it can access camera
ByteDance (the same company as TikTok) launched feiliao [0, 1] last year to compete with WeChat but I don't think they gained much market share. Also, it obviously has no end to end encryption for chats.
[0] https://www.feiliao.com/
[1] https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/19/bytedance-flipchat/
The US government is not trying to 'win the minds' of wechat users.
Also, why would Apple pull it in China?
I think you are misunderstanding the motivations for the ban.
"This report recommends (on page 50) that governments implement transparent user data privacy and user data protection frameworks that apply to all social media networks. If companies refuse to comply with such frameworks, they shouldn’t be allowed to operate. Independent audits of social media algorithms should be conducted. Social media companies should be transparent about the guidelines that human moderators use and what impact their decisions have on their algorithms. Governments should require that all social media platforms investigate and disclose information operations being conducted on their platforms by state and non-state actors. Disclosures should include publicly releasing datasets linked to those information campaigns."
Yes. If we could get Google, Facebook etc. to do this. That would be great. Thanks, signed someone in Europe.
If there was a real concern for users privacy and safety this would've been taken care of awhile ago.
All this is just war drums that try to seem like privacy concerns.
US corporate greed gave China a platform for world domination by offshoring everything. Now that the tiger is loose, us plebs need to go to war for them.
Bah.
It's generally best to avoid this trap by either talking about what the likely end results will be (fragmented web ecosystems bounded by per-country restrictions) or to talk in country-neutral objectives (no country should allow massive data collection and privacy breaches in apps, regardless of their place of origin).
Could unironically be answered “Yes, and?” in a rational discussion about geopolitical issues, especially one without a globalist (or specifically western) bent.
I’ve gone ahead and done that in response to the GP just now.
Friendship, joint ideals empathy, are not strictly rational.
You’re not coming to HN to look for a rational discussion of geopolitics, you’re looking for someone to agree with.
Doesn't seem like much of a choice.
I would say that no choice is more honest. The illusion of choice is a bit like the fake buttons on traffic lights, it's there to make you think you are in control of something while you are really not.
https://observer.com/2017/05/dnc-lawsuit-presidential-primar...
This might be naive but it seems like we have a much bigger privacy problem in the US.
Yes. It’s a separate issue.
If there was a real concern for users privacy and safety this would've been taken care of awhile ago.
Yes. The concern is over the entity exploiting the data, not the exploitation of data itself.
All this is just war drums that try to seem like privacy concerns.
It’s an explicitly political article that mentions China by name 7 times. ASPI is a defense & strategic policy thinktank.
US corporate greed gave China a platform for world domination by offshoring everything. Now that the tiger is loose, us plebs need to go to war for them.
The recommended actions are for governments & social media companies, not users or non policy making citizens.
The Australian Financial Review says:
The think tank behind Australia's changing view of China
The Department of Defence-backed Australian Strategic Policy Institute has become a flashpoint in the breakdown of consensus in Beijing.
https://www.afr.com/policy/foreign-affairs/the-think-tank-be...
I don't get your worries. Yes your conversation will be monitored. But you know that. And let's face it, 99.9% of your conversation won't be political (I'm just making an educated guess here; I don't know you), nor about sensitive subjects.
If you want to talk about sensitive subjects, you can always ask those friends to get off Wechat and on a different channel, specifically for those subjects.
For the 99.9% of fun, personal conversations that are about cat photo sharing, pizza recipes and the latest celebrities, Wechat is not a problem. CCP really doesn't care about those, they just care that nobody on Wechat causes trouble (by their definition of "trouble").
When do you accidentally say something considered not OK, the worst that happens is that the message gets deleted. They don't go after people unless you're instigating mass protests or something like that.
You won't get advertisements about CCP propaganda. Unless you subscribe to those channels yourself.
Everything you put in there, the CCP will use to learn about you, your connections, your friends.
And what is a 'sensitive subject'? AI? NLP? Software? Portland Protest? Donald Trump?
"When do you accidentally say something considered not OK, the worst that happens is that the message gets deleted."
This is a really odd thing to say.
1) "When you accidentally say something" ... what kind of ridiculous world is that?
2) "Worst case, deleted" - obviously there are far worse things that can happen.
" get off Wechat and on a different channel, specifically for those subjects."
Yes, do that for everything.
I can tell you that AI, NLP, software, Portland Protest, and Donald Trump all aren't sensitive subjects.
Tiananmen obviously is.
But let's face it. Are you going to talk about Tiananmen and similar subjects all day long? Most Chinese people are apolitical. As I said, 99.9% of your conversations won't be about anything political.
Yes I get that you're ideologically opposed to censorship, and that we "shouldn't have to" move to a different platform to talk about certain subjects. I agree.
I'm not talking about ideology, I'm talking about what's practical. You want to put up a barrier between yourself and your Chinese friends on the odd chance that 0.1% of your conversations might be about Tiananmen, and you can't be bothered to move to another platform? You have to pick your battles.
Let's face it: even if you refuse to use Wechat due to ideology, you won't change anything about the censorship policy. And your Chinese friends clearly don't care, and if the Chinese government answers to anybody then it would be first to them, and maybe a few kilometers behind them, be interested in what you think. So why are you taking this ideological stance for them? Isn't Chinese censorship mainly their problem and not yours?
If you want to convince your Chinese friends of how evil CCP is, and therefore that they should ban Wechat, go ahead. But don't you think that it should be their choice and not yours?
This kind of thinking is exactly why WeChat should be banned. China has banned every other means of communication, so it's the only option. Banning WeChat isn't a provocation, it's reciprocation.
Of course censorship isn't okay, but US doesn't get to play world police.
And you're supporting this attack in order to spite China, while totally ignoring practical outcomes for Chinese people, the very people you claim to support?
"We support you, we just hate your government. So we'll forcefully liberate you, even if you didn't ask for liberation."
Live and let live. Is that so hard?
It doesn't matter why they are banning every other means of communication. The fact is, they are banned.
It's not a matter of spite. In every other area of international relations, reciprocation is how things get done. You tariff me, I tariff you. You restrict visas for me, I restrict visas for you.
It would suck for Chinese people overseas. That would be unfortunate. They should petition their government to unban a few means of communication!
It removes spying on US users.
But the ban is world wide. Even inside China. And there are no conditions, it's a ban that cannot be resolved.
Claims of spying is just an excuse. They want to burn China's prosperity down to the ground.
That is publicly stated policy.
There is no need for 'tit for tat' apps from China should be banned by every reasonable jurisdiction outside China for that reason alone.
Without even getting complicated, just using EU GDPR as a basis for banning it would be just fine under already established legislation.
We just went through the entire 20th century of trying to overcome such bad regimes, the only reason that China is able to get away with any of it is due to basic economic power i.e. trade interdependance.
So it's time to reconsider and realign - too bad Trump pulled out of the TPP because that would have been a good first step.
But at the same time you're also saying that, regardless of law, the fact that the Chinese government can monitor the data, is justification for banning all Chinese apps.
You're so proud of rule of law, but once it's about China you're throwing rule of law away, and the only reason is because you want to stick it to them?
If you limit your statement to "it should be banned because it violates concrete laws" then I would agree. But "it should be banned because it's Chinese" is absurd and unfair.
Look at the Tiktok ban: they accuse Tiktok of forwarding data to the CCP, yet no concrete evidence of such practice has ever been shown. Everything is based on the speculation that it could happen. Well, okay, we can solve that via a security audit, right? Audit all the infrastructure, all the firewall rules, all the communication channels, and exhaustively prove that privacy laws are being adhered to. But no, nobody's interested in such an investigation. Chinese apps are guilty until proven innocent, and nobody's interested in proof of innocence or proper due process. Is your belief in western values really that shallow?
You do recall there's a pretty high-profile movement of Chinese citizens, some of whom were waving American flags and asking for liberation?
https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/hong-kong-pro...
https://sg.news.yahoo.com/university-hong-kong-students-wave...
Note: there's no great firewall in Hong Kong, so it's normal that they post to Youtube.
Those US flag wavers were limited to some in Hong Kong only. The rest of the population (including Hong Kong) has a very different opinion. See the above videos, posted by Hong Kong'ers.
Furthermore, how exactly does the US plan to liberate people? Here's what's done so far:
- Hong Kong Human Rights bill, which damages the Hong Kong economy.
- Banning Chinese companies, which damages both the Chinese and the US economy.
I believe that your intentions are genuine, but I don't believe the US govt's intentions are. To them it's all a political game, like "liberating" Iraq from that evil dictator who conjured weapons of mass destruction out of nothing.
So? In 7.5 million people, you can find examples of pretty much any opinion you can think of. I can find videos from Westerners who will lecture you like they're reading from a CCP propaganda script.
> Those US flag wavers were limited to some in Hong Kong only.
Of course: anyone who did that in China outside of Hong Kong would have been arrested immediately, just like anyone who would try to do that now inside of Hong Kong (due to the new national security law).
> The rest of the population (including Hong Kong) has a very different opinion.
I'm not so sure, even before the national security law, a call for liberation would have been pushing the boundaries. If an opinion is literally illegal, it's impossible to say with any kind of reliability how prevalent that opinion truly is (or what kinds of opinions people would hold, without the threats and their second and third order effects).
> Furthermore, how exactly does the US plan to liberate people? Here's what's done so far:
> - Hong Kong Human Rights bill, which damages the Hong Kong economy.
> - Banning Chinese companies, which damages both the Chinese and the US economy.
The most obvious is to drop the economics uber alles outlook, and limit engagement to areas that might eventually lead to positive results on the human rights front.
>>> "We support you, we just hate your government. So we'll forcefully liberate you, even if you didn't ask for liberation."
>> You do recall there's a pretty high-profile movement of Chinese citizens, some of whom were waving American flags and asking for liberation?
> Furthermore, how exactly does the US plan to liberate people? Here's what's done so far:
I didn't say it had a plan or that it could, I was merely pointing out that as a matter of fact, that liberation was wanted and asked for.
When someone has an opinion that differs from yours, you downplay it as being an exception to the rule. For some reason, you stick to the default position that most Chinese people overwhelmingly want liberation from US, and that any evidence to the contrary is an anomaly.
It’s up to you to believe what you want. But I will let you know that I disagree, and that you ought to reexamine your axioms.
I watched a bit, but it seem to start reason from some East vs. West stereotypes so I took a peek at some of their other videos. One "National Security vs Democrazy: Analyzed with Facts and Logic" appeared to try to justify the new HK National Security law by appealing to superficial readings of some foreign laws, and the others like "Italians: "HK Separatists are Traitors, EU is Failing" - Keybros SOFTtalk Ep.2 🇮🇹 (3/3)" appear to be collections interview of random Westerners with rather fringe views. If they said anything interesting, feel free to summarize them in text, but I think I have better things to do with 20 minutes.
> When someone has an opinion that differs from yours, you downplay it as being an exception to the rule. For some reason, you stick to the default position that most Chinese people overwhelmingly want liberation from US, and that any evidence to the contrary is an anomaly.
You know, I didn't actually say any of what you claim I did.
Isn't you device already potentially compromised when you install WeChat?
On Android, isolation is not as strict and there are more holes. But each app runs as a separate Linux user, and with each Android version Google locks down the security model more.
Rootkits like you find on Windows just aren't possible on iOS and Android.
I believe they still allow clipboard snooping. I can't confirm nor deny whether Wechat does this.
Apple and Google should do something about that and further restrict their security model.
Except most people will never get those updates.
1) FAANG does this too:
2) They're just going after China: 3) What about xyz app? 4) Zuckerberg just wants to make a WeChat (super app) alternative: 5) Something about government involvement ipso facto bias. Can we actually discuss the article now?This is simply the US copying China this time. I support banning all Chinese apps. Let it begin.