LogFAQs > #979425765

adjl posted...

Are they not equivalent? Certainly, China's censorship of foreign media is on another level, but it's still the same principle of "we don't want other countries being able to influence our people." I have pretty much no faith that Amazon, Google, or Meta wouldn't sell the same info to China for a sufficient price, nor do I expect that the American government is any less likely to abuse whatever data they collect or use platforms within their control to manipulate people than China is. This is solely a matter of "I'm more comfortable with people that are ostensibly on my side doing these things than people that aren't."

While China's censorship is an issue -- and their control is more encompassing -- this isn't even a censorship issue with the app, it's a potential national security issue. And the reason other nations get a free pass (not all of them, but most) is because we literally don't have a government glaringly stealing secrets that's either used by their government or given to their companies.

The CCP's probably isn't just that it's an authoritarian regime with some appalling human rights issues -- including the continued use of slavery and allegations of illegal organ harvesting -- it's also a kleptocracy in the very broadest sense of the term. And the only thing that keeps people from calling them out on it is, hypocritically enough, actual racism because these same individuals wouldn't tolerate these behaviors from majority-white nations.