161–170 of 306 posts
Well, since US fails to compete in other ways...
What? The U.S. failed to create competing social apps? You realize the only reason WeChat exists is because China didn't let western companies compete, right?
I think blocking LINE was a bigger factor. For a time it was growing rapidly in China and it ultimately won in Japan and a couple of other Asian markets.
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PSA: If you have an Android phone, you can download WeChat directly from wechat.com. You don't need to go through the Google Play store because your OS supports your freedom to some degree to install whatever you want on hardware that you OWN. If you have an iPhone, sorry that your phone company's CEO is pretty much a dictator and is complicit in restricting the freedom of Americans.
How come the argument "you can just buy an android phone" doesn't apply to iOS users in the same way "you can just sideload an APK" does to Google play store users? This isn't a rhetorical question, I'm genuinely curious about how people think of these distinctions.
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Good points. It's crazy the level of power I'm learning our executive branch has... Government is dangerous without checks and balances.
Much of government was designed with expectations of certain norms being followed that are now being violated. There are a lot of checks and balances (e.g. impeachment) that could be executed if a branch of the government was willing to cooperate.
The U.S. has simply become an authoritarian state of a different color. My fiancée is prevented from returning and we are prevented from using our primary communication method simply because the so-called president wants to personally gain from these actions (i.e., swindle a re-election).
And what am I supposed to use to pay for things when I visit China now if WeChat is removed from AppStores?
Freedom my ass. Facebook, Google, and the others all collect the same if not more data than these apps, and those companies have shown time and again they do not have the American people’s best interests at heart and abuse the data collection and their power. So what are we doing here?
Instead, I suspect there was collusion between Facebook and Trump’s cronies for them to have released Instagram Reels when they did.
I’m genuinely curious what the perceived threat is here. Is it as simple as “China is going to read everyone’s stuff and use machine learning to figure out what the cool kids are doing and then brainwash them?”
My take on it is that it's a distraction tactic. The current administration is pissed off at China for a variety of reasons, and wants to punish them, while also taking attention away from intelligence reports about Russian election interference.
WeChat ban is just evil, no justifiable benefit. Almost all the users in America are overseas Chinese who use it to talk to friends and family in China and send money.
Calling the ban evil is a bit hyperbolic IMO, or maybe just incomplete. Phones with the software could easily be compromised. Users with the software can be profiled and tracked by the Chinese government pretty easily. The Chinese market bans most of America's social media software, and we're entering a trade war. All these are real, legitimate reasons to ban it.
Just because some people want to turn the US into a mini PRC doesn't mean we have to embrace their noxious, evil value system.
I’m genuinely curious what the perceived threat is here. Is it as simple as “China is going to read everyone’s stuff and use machine learning to figure out what the cool kids are doing and then brainwash them?”
Remember that this all started when a bunch a kids used TikTok to play a prank and sank a Trump rally: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/21/style/tiktok-trump-rally-...
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> The Chinese market bans most of America's social media software, and we're entering a trade war. America is not China and should not frame its policies based on China's policies. While, I agree there is a need to retaliate but 'be like China' is hardly the way to do it.
No this is not "be like China", don't flatter yourself. When Facebook and Twitter was banned, there were imminent security threats as these platforms were used for organized crimes in China, and these companies simply ignores the requests from Chinese government to remove certain accounts. Google decided to not comply with local rules and left China by itself. US didn't even bother to find a plausible excuse
I'm not going to defend thr Tiktok thing, but its basically equally dumb, its just that here teens dunking on the government isn't a crime.