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China blocks Meta's acquisition of AI startup Manus

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Re: China blocks Meta's acquisition of AI startup Manus

#261

Post by culi »

qwertyuiop_ wrote: post #162

There has been a lot of discussion here on why the founders were detained and whether this is normal for other countries. All one has to do is look at what Chinese Communist Party has done to Uyghurs to understand how far they will go to neutralize opposing thought. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Uyghurs_in_Chin...

That's not any more relevant than if I were to bring up the US' own concentration camps.

In August of 2024, the ACLU released a report on these camps called "Resistance, Retaliation, Repression: Two Years in California Immigration Detention".

Here's some of the issues it highlighted:

- forced labor in order to afford to eat. The $1/day "Voluntary Work Program" is the only way you're gonna get enough food to live. And if you refuse to work or try to protest, ICE doesn't have to give an excuse to send you into solitary confinement. CoreCivic sells this labor to companies

- extensive use of solitary confinement often for "minor disciplinary infractions or as a form of retaliation for participating in hunger strikes or for submitting complaints"

- dozens of documented deaths from forced labor and medical neglect

No doubt these issues have only gotten worse since the publication of this report.

https://www.aclunorcal.org/publications/resistance-retaliati...

The US holds 25% of the world's prison population. It is one of the few countries in the world where someone's voting rights can be taken away for being inprisoned. Prisoners also have to pay "rent" but don't have a way of making money. If they do ever get out, they're saddled in debt for the rest of their lives—increasing the chance they go right back in to this for-profit scheme

Re: China blocks Meta's acquisition of AI startup Manus

#262

Post by nutjob2 »

giwook wrote: post #222
andersonpico wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> China arbitrarily traps people in China without any such thing or any due process whatsoever. What makes you think there's no legal process for blocking nationals from leaving China?It's a very common instrument and in a bunch of countries it's an administrative measure with even less scrutinity than a judicial mandate. Do you consider France or the UK to be a countries without rule of law or due process? But to th…

America is not exactly a shining moral example for the world, particularly these days, but these Chinese apologist takes can be a bit baffling to read at times.

It mostly doesn't make any sense and seems to be motivated by some kind of animus or bigotry. But maybe understandable given the current administration's behavior.

Re: China blocks Meta's acquisition of AI startup Manus

#263

Post by cma »

strangegecko wrote: post #27
stego-tech wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect this is more of a warning shot to others attempting the same playbook ("Singapore-washing", as I've heard folks call it): the state is watching, and shifting geopolitics means it's in their interest to retain successful talent and entities at home rather than let opposition have them. If anything, I'm genuinely surprised it took them this long. America's been doing this for decades without much in the way o…

What examples do you have of the US government doing to CEOs what has happened to people like Jack Ma and many other public figures? For China, there are so many examples of people doing 180s and being full of contrition after those interventions, it's hard to imagine anything but severe intimidation or worse happening behind closed doors.

https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2025/01/16/congress/ti...

Re: China blocks Meta's acquisition of AI startup Manus

#264

Post by MaxPock »

thrownthatway wrote: post #93
stego-tech wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

While I don’t agree with your tone, and I’m sure an unbiased reading of history also wouldn’t agree with your tone… Who would you rather be world police? One or more of Cuba, Iran, China, Russia ?

Anyone of those would be better than the US

Re: China blocks Meta's acquisition of AI startup Manus

#265

Post by andsoitis »

drbscl wrote: post #245
andsoitis wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Marking someone as a flight risk for committing a crime is common practice in all countries. I guarantee the same would've happened in the US if this was the reverse situation.

> for committing a crime

What’s the crime?

Re: China blocks Meta's acquisition of AI startup Manus

#266

Post by cma »

calebkaiser wrote: post #40
henry2023 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wasn’t Llama a leak that got so popular meta decided to change their whole approach? I was working at Google at the time. Before Llama, releasing weights was not even worth a discussion.

If I'm remembering right, it was weirder than that, as Llama's originally release strategy was sort of bizarre. You did have to apply for access, but if you met their criteria (basically if you were the right profile of researcher or in government), you got direct access to the model weights, not just an API for a hosted model. So access was restricted, but the full weights were shared. I believe that the model was l…

I don't think it was much of a leak, there was no significant verification--I think .edu email approved automatically. It was probably just there because copyright law related to it was more uncertain then, but they had stronger fair use case with an academic/research gate on it.

Re: China blocks Meta's acquisition of AI startup Manus

#267

Post by daishi55 »

andsoitis wrote: post #265
drbscl wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Marking someone as a flight risk for committing a crime is common practice in all countries. I guarantee the same would've happened in the US if this was the reverse situation.

> for committing a crime What’s the crime?

Violating the export laws as cited elsewhere in this thread.

Re: China blocks Meta's acquisition of AI startup Manus

#268

Post by bryan_w »

andsoitis wrote: post #265
drbscl wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Marking someone as a flight risk for committing a crime is common practice in all countries. I guarantee the same would've happened in the US if this was the reverse situation.

> for committing a crime What’s the crime?

Enjoying a succulent meal, I guess

Re: China blocks Meta's acquisition of AI startup Manus

#269

Post by adithyan-rk »

What does "annulment" even mean once the deal has closed? The weights, IP, and engineers are already inside Meta. Beijing can force the founders to sign whatever they want, they're physically there, but you can't claw back code that's already been integrated. This is a signaling move. The real impact is on the next deal: any China-origin founder eyeing a Singapore or Delaware flip now has to price in "state summons you home" as a real risk. India had a softer version in 2022–23 when RBI rules pushed PhonePe, Groww, and Razorpay to reverse-flip back before IPO.What does "annulment" even mean once the deal has closed? The weights, IP, and engineers are already inside Meta. Beijing can force the founders to sign whatever they want, they're physically there, but you can't claw back code that's already been integrated. This is a signaling move. The real impact is on the next deal: any China-origin founder eyeing a Singapore or Delaware flip now has to price in "state summons you home" as a real risk. India had a softer version in 2022–23 when RBI rules pushed PhonePe, Groww, and Razorpay to reverse-flip back before IPO.

Re: China blocks Meta's acquisition of AI startup Manus

#270

Post by RobertoG »

bit-anarchist wrote: post #141
RobertoG wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to be joking. The media is almost daily full of China scares. Also, the comments here are not talking about who started this war, with the GPU sanctions and the arrest of the daughter of Huawei's founder. Does it mean the Chinese are the good guys? No, because there are not good guys, but there is certainly a side that is extremely aggressive an can't conceive that others can have their own interests. And it…

> The media is almost daily full of China scares That gets repeated a lot. Is there any source? > there is certainly a side that is extremely aggressive an can't conceive that others can have their own interests. And it's not the Chinese. Ask the Taiwanese about it. Or most countries dealing with border disputes with the PRC.

The Taiwanese? This is actually a perfect example of what I was saying.

Talking about 'Taiwan' and 'border disputes with the PRC' meanwhile the USA is doing a maritime blockade of Cuba and Iran. And that it's without talking about bombing countries or military deployed thousand of miles away from their borders, of God forbid, unconditional support to Israel, who just displaced one and a half million people.

But, let's forget about all those small details, don't you see how the Chinese are very bad?

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