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India bans TikTok, WeChat, and dozens of other Chinese apps

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Re: India bans TikTok, WeChat, and dozens of other Chinese apps

#361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sometimes this means it’s product/platform can be used to disseminate possibly dangerous information, but it also can be regulated in response. I don't think this is true specifically in the case of America. Who are you going to get to actually grapple that beast of a multi national? Yeah, lots of people talk about it, but politics ultimately requires a degree of consensus. When you have investors calling up their…

Never intended for this to mean it was easy or anything. As you noted already it isn’t always. However this also admits it can be done as I mentioned too. You can’t pass legislation that makes another government open itself up to transparency though. That’s the fundamental difference

> However this also admits it can be done as I mentioned too.

That wasn't the intention

Re: India bans TikTok, WeChat, and dozens of other Chinese apps

#362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This might be a shock to most people in the western world, but if you go on almost ANY news website in china, the headline news is dedicated to government propaganda. Those people would be even more shocked by the extent to which this is true in the western world as well.

In China, all headlines are designed to propogate the SAME propoganda. In other parts of the world, all headlines are designed DIFFERENT propagandas.

“Look how many sauces we’ve got to choose from for McNuggets!”

Re: India bans TikTok, WeChat, and dozens of other Chinese apps

#364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are YouTube algorithms open? I don't really see a difference here. Nation state vs. private corporation is different on paper, but I don't see why. They're both going to react to material stimuli to increase their standings.

Good point. But YouTube is not controlled by an authoritarian fascist-like government which has a world view in direct opposition to what you could refer handwaveingly as "western" and is currently pushing to become the dominant power in the world. If you furthermore consider how bad the "western world" (mainly Britten and the East India Company) had treated it in the past, some aspects of the Chinese culture and the…

This is a joke. The "western world" created PRISM and Five Eyes and has been meddling in elections in the third world for almost a century. Additionally, what do you define as the "western world", because by some measures it includes some actually fascist governments like e.g. Saudi Arabia.

A) Having democracy does not correlate with having transparency and freedom, this has been de facto proven.

B) If the "western world" is the bar, the bar is low.

Re: India bans TikTok, WeChat, and dozens of other Chinese apps

#365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are YouTube algorithms open? I don't really see a difference here. Nation state vs. private corporation is different on paper, but I don't see why. They're both going to react to material stimuli to increase their standings.

You don't see a difference between an ideological party which interns millions of people by ethnicity (among other glaring issues), and a corporation seeking profits from a video platform?

On the question of black box algorithms, no because it's not relevant.

Re: India bans TikTok, WeChat, and dozens of other Chinese apps

#366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Sino-Indian border dispute is one of the most frightening things going on right now. Two nuclear superpowers are fighting with "rods and swords"[1], restrained only by, well, restraint . Covid and police violence are bigger issues right now in my opinion, but a nuclear war could get worse than either one quite quickly. That said, I'm glad to see this not getting much press coverage in the US. The political discou…

Personally, as an Indian, I don't see this situation escalating too much, especially not anywhere close to a nuclear war. Indian and Chinese leadership is mature enough to understand that a serious conflict will hurt both their ambitions. Plus, neither can really afford a war right now.

You're probably right and I hope you are.

Re: India bans TikTok, WeChat, and dozens of other Chinese apps

#367
post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah: https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-india-china/indians-hold-f... China is basically using these apps as spyware.

Our (India) data is already a public property due to security breaches in Aadhaar. What more can TikTok get?

[deleted]

Re: India bans TikTok, WeChat, and dozens of other Chinese apps

#368
post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The paradox of tolerance is bullshit though So do you tolerate intolerance?

That isn't a natural dichotomy, it's silly to break down problems into that sort of black and white ("you're either for us or against us!" sort of nonsense). There are always multiple choices. The real question is whether reacting with similar intolerance leaves you better off - or has any meaningful influence on the bad actors in question. Diplomacy is full of these tradeoffs.

But it is you cannot be tolerant of all things. You can't simultaneously be tolerant of cats and of people who wish to ban cats. Those two things cannot simultaneously be accepted.

Re: India bans TikTok, WeChat, and dozens of other Chinese apps

#369
post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s about allies versus active enemies. There are shootouts on a regular basis between India and China, and they’ve intensified recently.

> There are shootouts on a regular basis between India and China, and they’ve intensified recently. There are no "shootouts". There are standoffs sometimes (think once a year if you want to define regularity) due to the loosely demarcated Line of Actual Control (LAC) between India and China. It's usually a melee. Even the recent escalated incident wasn't a shootout. There are agreements between Indian and Chinese gov…

20 Indian soldiers died just two weeks ago: https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/16/asia/china-india-border-clash...

Re: India bans TikTok, WeChat, and dozens of other Chinese apps

#370

I'm seeing lots of comments about national security-style concerns, and framing this in terms of the recent India-China skirmishes. That all makes sense. Where I think a lot of folks are missing the point is that this is also a tremendous boost to local Indian entrepreneurship. One of the really clever aspects of China's Great Firewall is that it keeps out international competition, which would crush local startups.…

While I agree about symmetric response to China, here is the problem:

> By banning more advanced, foreign competitors, India gives its local entrepreneurs a chance to grow hugely successful domestic apps, which can then compete internationally.

If India bans international apps from competing within India, wouldn't Indian apps from these new found enterpreneurs expect the same response from other countries? There is a paradox here.

Why should any country allow Indian apps if they cannot compete in India? You realize this is the exact same situation as what India is doing with China. Now replace China with India.

What hypocrisy!

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