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U.S. attorney general: Hollywood, tech companies “pawns of Chinese influence”

reuters.com

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Re: U.S. attorney general: Hollywood, tech companies “pawns of Chinese influence”

#101

Post by ralmidani »

hungryhobo wrote: post #90
ralmidani wrote: post #58

I detest Trump (voted for Clinton) and most, if not all, senior members of his administration, including Barr. But that doesn't prevent me from ultimately being OK with some of their statements/actions, even if they're all for the wrong reasons. The regime in China represents evil on a scale that is probably unprecedented in Earth's history, and anything that can stop or slow its world domination should be welcomed o…

do you find it kinda scary that you can hate a regime so much given that you've never been to said country? I'm 99% sure you've never been to China given what you wrote.

Not going to address this post directly, but a quick glance at hungryhobo's comments shows that at least the first three pages (i.e. the most recent comments) are exclusively about defending the regime in China. If that's not trolling, I don't know what is.

Re: U.S. attorney general: Hollywood, tech companies “pawns of Chinese influence”

#102

Post by api »

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #80
Shivetya wrote: post #5

They need to be called out. The amount of virtue signaling these companies do in the US does not excuse their actions elsewhere. This is not confined to the US either, countries in other parts of the world will engage in actions for the Chinese government they would not do at home or without great public fanfare about how they are against it.

These companies are putting up quotes like: "Silence is not an option" and "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere" While happily doing business with the CCP, and keeping mum about Chinese human rights abuses.

There's a simple economic explanation for this. There are more black (and BLM sympathizers of other races) customers in the US for these companies than there are Chinese customers and especially Chinese customers affected by CCP injustices. On the flip side the CCP gates access to the enormous Chinese market. Result: in the US signaling support for civil rights issues is probably a net win, while for China sucking up to the CCP is probably a net win. I don't think personal opinions factor into it much, especially for large publicly traded companies.

Re: U.S. attorney general: Hollywood, tech companies “pawns of Chinese influence”

#103

Post by brighton36 »

MR4D wrote: post #28
birken wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the difference between virtue signaling and marketing when a corporation is doing it?

Virtue signaling implies morals. Marketing doesn't.

I used to think that. Marketing is all about moralizing the product.

Re: U.S. attorney general: Hollywood, tech companies “pawns of Chinese influence”

#104

Post by dang »

NeutralCrane wrote: post #88
scarface74 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean like the government stopped doing business with Saudi Arabia after 9/11 or how we didn’t support the Osama led Sandinistas in the 80s? The US government can’t exactly stand up tsk tsking with any type of moral authority on anything.

[flagged]

Please keep this tired trope off HN. It's fallacious to begin with [1], and canned arguments are not what we're looking for on HN—if you think about it, comments like this are covered by the site guideline:

When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."

[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

Re: U.S. attorney general: Hollywood, tech companies “pawns of Chinese influence”

#105

Post by 8note »

e5india wrote: post #81
throwaway894345 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Critiques of the “capitalist system” would be better if you articulated a system that worked better on balance . In other words, a system that solves for these problems, but which introduces many other, worse problems (e.g., famine, ethnic cleansing, imprisonment/execution of political dissenters, etc) is not a better system on balance. If we struggle to find such an improved system, it probably means that the curren…

No it would not necessarily be better, on balance. A critique of a system is not meant to be an attack on it nor an argument that there is necessarily some other better system. In fact, I would argue that the difficulty with having these conversations nowadays is precisely your response. In the American context at least, most of the time when people point out the failures in Capitalism people mean it more in the way…

It's not just that capitalism encourages sacrificing other values, it punishes keeping those values since one of your competitors will make the sacrifice and profit

Re: U.S. attorney general: Hollywood, tech companies “pawns of Chinese influence”

#106

Post by dang »

scarface74 wrote: post #46
Shivetya wrote: post #5

They need to be called out. The amount of virtue signaling these companies do in the US does not excuse their actions elsewhere. This is not confined to the US either, countries in other parts of the world will engage in actions for the Chinese government they would not do at home or without great public fanfare about how they are against it.

Called out by the current government that dog whistles? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog-whistle_politics I’ll take virtue signaling over dog whistling any day. I bet he doesn’t call out Apple after Cook kissed the golden ring during the photo op last year.

Please don't take HN threads further into political flamewar. Where it leads is equal parts predictable, nasty, and dumb. We're trying for better than that here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: U.S. attorney general: Hollywood, tech companies “pawns of Chinese influence”

#107

Post by CypherSnyper »

thethethethe wrote: post #64
medium_burrito wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because they have inordinate influence, same as with all the movie studios that are now heavily reliant on China for money. Most countries don't do great stuff constantly, but China is definitely outdoing itself the last few years: - Hong Kong - Organ harvesting - Enslave/sterilize Muslim minorities - Sinking Vietnamese fishing boats - Killing Indian soldiers - Coverup of the whole virus situation until it was too la…

Ehh you could say the same about the US. The US is currently: bombing several countries, putting asylum seekers in high density prisons, blatantly ignoring a global pandemic, assassinating foreign leaders, disproportionately killing and imprisoning black people, using its currency to maintain global hegemony, starting trade wars with pretty much everyone, allies included, spying on the entire world, allies included,…

[dead]

Re: U.S. attorney general: Hollywood, tech companies “pawns of Chinese influence”

#108

Post by hungryhobo »

ralmidani wrote: post #101
hungryhobo wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

do you find it kinda scary that you can hate a regime so much given that you've never been to said country? I'm 99% sure you've never been to China given what you wrote.

Not going to address this post directly, but a quick glance at hungryhobo's comments shows that at least the first three pages (i.e. the most recent comments) are exclusively about defending the regime in China. If that's not trolling, I don't know what is.

Can't argue my point and has to resort to ad hominem, kinda figured.

But I think it's just as important having people with different opinions on this platform, I think you kinda prove my point

Re: U.S. attorney general: Hollywood, tech companies “pawns of Chinese influence”

#109

Post by nostrademons »

tomp wrote: post #12
vmception wrote: post #7

What it really comes down to is determining if we are doing the Cold War thing or not. To many of us, the cold war is over, and the other 300 years of rolling the nation state concept across the world is over too. As it is very easy to operate in a borderless global economy - at least between major economic unions - if you are privileged enough. If you absolutely need people to pick a side again, just say so. Otherwi…

The problem is, if you think you’re not in a Cold War while the other guy thinks you are. Before you realize it, it’s already too late.

I think one point the grandparent is alluding to is that there are more than two ways to slice up the world. Cold-War thinking assumes a bipolar world - Allied vs. Axis, U.S. vs. Russia, NATO vs. Warsaw Pact, now U.S. vs. China.

But that's not the only way to look at the world. Even restricting yourself to dualities, you could also view it as Commerce vs. Guardians [1], people who think for themselves vs. people whose opinions come from those around them [2], zero-sum thinking vs. positive-sum thinking, or those who divide people into two groups vs. those who don't. With many of those lenses the nation-state as a social organizing principle is obsolete: people look out for their own interests and make contracts with each other when it's mutually beneficial.

I think this is a particularly useful worldview when it comes to large mega-corps. Apple is on Apple's side, and to some extent on their customer's side; both the CCP and the AG dislike them.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_of_Survival

[2] http://paulgraham.com/orth.html

Re: U.S. attorney general: Hollywood, tech companies “pawns of Chinese influence”

#110

Post by dang »

xbar wrote: post #93
supernova87a wrote: post #70

What's the concern that's being identified in all these stories? It would be good to have an enumeration of clear concerns. Is it that: 1) the companies are letting Americans' hardware be controlled / data escape and be monitored in China, or 2) that people in China subject to their laws (un-American as those laws may be) are being monitored (and worse)? Because if it's the first topic, how do we not manage to buy/re…

[flagged]

> FYI, if you stand up two false straw men, you look like a collaborator with the CCP. You communist.

This breaks the site guidelines—quite badly actually. Insinuating that someone is a "collaborator" is...well, it's hard to believe that we've returned to an age where people do this kind of thing, however trivially on the internet. Adding joke tags doesn't help much, and it's notable that you didn't wrap your entire insinuation in them anyhow.

Would you mind reading https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and using HN in the intended spirit? Note that they include:

Assume good faith.

"Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data."

Edit: so far, every comment your account has posted has been using HN for political/ideological/national battle. That's not what this site is for, and we ban accounts that do this, so please don't misuse HN this way. No, that's not because we're communist collaborators—it's because we're trying to protect HN from flamewar, regardless of which angle the flamebait flies in from.

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