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Trump’s WeChat curbs halted by judge on free speech concerns

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Re: Trump’s WeChat curbs halted by judge on free speech concerns

#271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

American companies aren’t supportive of this. Also, the USA doesn’t give the president unchecked power, which is why this injunction simply shuts the ban down until the government can prove in court that it is legal. An authoritarian regime would have no concept of independent judicial review.

The American democracy didn't respond to the authoritarian plans other than hoping that the judicial system will do its work. This is too little too late, especially when republicans are in a frenzy run to shape judicial benches all over the country. The democratic answer, as I mentioned above, would be for Congress to introduce proper legislation to answer to this new situation where a foreign company operates a soc…

Separation of powers and checks and balances are key to the USA not being an authoritarian country, otherwise we would be more like China where the official branch is only checked by their superiors (if any).

Congress is another check on executive power and is also checked itself. However, the judicial system is designed to be way more responsive and definitive than the legislative branch.

Re: Trump’s WeChat curbs halted by judge on free speech concerns

#272

Honest question for Chinese users of WeChat: have you ever thought twice about WeChat posts and communications, whether they'll be deemed "acceptable" to censors? Everyone I know self-censors nearly constantly, if unconsciously. A good example: in a discussion of this case I was reading today in Chinese the author ironically noted that he couldn't summarize the US government's position because in a large WeChat group…

I’m not Chinese, but I do fear what I say on wechat because I know there’s a possibility I’ll be blocked from entering China again, or worse, blocked from exiting.

I also fear what I say on American sites for similar reasons, and because I’ve dealt with normal people trying to hunt me down just because of online comments.

Re: Trump’s WeChat curbs halted by judge on free speech concerns

#273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My parents were in high school while segregation still existed. There's no question they got opportunities many black americans the same age did not, which absolutely had a direct and significant impact on my life. Redlining remained legal into the 70s, and was continued with the thinnest of fig leafs concealing it into the 90s. Covert discrimination in loan and rental applications continues to this day. Many studies…

You called me a bigot. I can’t respond. I’m stuck. Nowhere to go. Native Americans can invest in themselves. When they take the patrimony of the Federal government, they don’t. https://youtu.be/pQ4lnDy2xnQ The same is true of the blacks. Before LBJ decimated them, they were on their way to be independent. They were starting to make money equal to whites. They were establishing their own cities with arts like Harlem.…

Do you live near any of the Indian reservations mentioned in your video? I was born in SD and adopted to white parents. I'm a member of the Lakota Sioux Nation. I'm intimately aware of the hardships facing Native American people and have seen both sides of it.

Native American children were effectively kidnapped from their families well into the 1970s. To imply the suffering, segregation, and racism ceased 160 years ago shows how entirely misinformed the general populace is. Wounded Knee was only 110 years ago.

The implication that their poverty is self-inflicted is a massive exercise in reductionism, and completely neglects to mention the hardships that manifest in these areas exclusively due to the inaccuracies you're spouting.

Re: Trump’s WeChat curbs halted by judge on free speech concerns

#274
This is why it needs to be dealt with via data privacy laws, not a one-off shoot-from-the-hip bit of executive action.

Privacy laws with escalating penalties up to a ban would accomplish the same thing, not just for for the high-profile panic examples of the moment, but for problems of this sort in general.

Re: Trump’s WeChat curbs halted by judge on free speech concerns

#275
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a sovereign nation, as an abstract entity, can do, is distinct from what its executive leader can do. The only time they happen to coincide is, by definition, in the case of autocracy.

But in this case, the executive has the authority to ban things based on national security. And if that power isn't properly applied, the courts will intervene. What "autocracy" are you referring to?

GP didn't say the US is an autocracy; they said that the top-level comment implied a US autocracy. In this case, yes, the courts intervened.

Re: Trump’s WeChat curbs halted by judge on free speech concerns

#276
post #4

I always wondered how we squared disallowing things like WeChat and TikTok with freedom of speech. This whole thing feels a bit hyperbolic. Is there real danger lurking around the corner if we allow people to shit post on TikTok, for instance? Genuinely curious here.

The laws involved are all about banning financial transactions - people sending money to ByteDance.

IMO those laws are being abused in this case to suppress speech, but the laws themselves had a legitimate purpose.

Re: Trump’s WeChat curbs halted by judge on free speech concerns

#278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How long is China going to put on the mantle of victimhood over events 160 years in the past?! 160 years in the past? The Chinese reparations, totalling $US 61 billion is today's dollar equivalents, were only completed in 1940. Then China sided with the Allies in WWII. 15 million Chinese lost their lives in that war. But I wouldn't characterise Chinese trade policy as victimhood. Chinese entrepreneurs don't rely on…

> Then China sided with the Allies in WWII. 15 million Chinese lost their lives in that war. That was under the Kuomintang regime, who fled to Taiwan in 1949

The families and friends of the dead didn't flee to Taiwan.

This is like saying that the Poles didn't deserve reparations from Germany for WWII because the pre-war republic wasn't restored and instead there was a new regime. The country and people exist independently of the governing system.

Re: Trump’s WeChat curbs halted by judge on free speech concerns

#279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please. At this point, both blacks and Indians are able to take various Federal and State monies to be the best they can be. The Indians have relative sovereignty. They could take their federal and casino monies and plow them into an R&D bonanza. Blacks in the US have a golden ticket to pretty much any institution they wish to attend. Both have had trillions of US dollars plowed into their communities over the year v…

Yeah honestly what more could these people want - it's not like people are calling them Indians to this day or suggesting they can't think freely enough to "escape" the Democratic "plantation". Read some books not written by Candace Owens you tool.

I love how you dislike a black woman thinking on her own and coming to a different conclusion. You’d support her as long as she stayed on the plantation and thanked you for the provisions. As soon as she thinks contrary to you, she’s at best a maker of tools.

Remember any black person having the audacity of thinking on their own is not black. https://youtu.be/We6Qr9-dDn8

Re: Trump’s WeChat curbs halted by judge on free speech concerns

#280
post #236
post #10

I have been studying Chinese for 7 years. Many of my Chinese friends live in Los Angeles and WeChat is central in their life... Getting a job, taking orders, doing all kinds of business, paying for things. They don't know the phone numbers of their friends. Many don't speak English or their English is not very good. If it is completely cut off they will still find ways to communicate but arguably it will be more like…

Are you kidding? Their excuse for not being able to perform any normal civilized function would be because WeChat got banned? That's pathetic.

Please don't post in the flamewar style to HN.

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

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