The fundamental difference is who is in control, and for what purpose.
American spyware is controlled by corporations, and is all about selling you shit you don’t need.
Chinese (and Russian) spyware is–apparently–controlled rather directly by their respective governments, and is being used to suppress democracy and increase polarization in the US and EU.
I don’t like any spyware. But the latter category–spyware that’s functionally state-sponsored–is clearly more immediately dangerous. The former is more like a slow-growing cancer.
All of the US corporate social media platforms are part of the US military-industrial-intellegence complex now. Look at their boards of directors and executives. Look at the Twitter Files. Look Hamilton 68.
Look at Reddit:
- Facebook Partners With Hawkish Atlantic Council, a NATO Lobby Group, to “Protect Democracy”
- Jessica Ashooh: The taming of Reddit and the National Security State Plant tabbed to do it
- A Reddit AMA Claiming To Be A Uyghur Quickly Exposes A CIA Asset Slandering China
- r/neoliberal was created by a neoliberal think tank » BPR Interviews: The Neoliberal Project
.
TikTok as well. The US already forced them to move their service to the US on an American-owned hosting provider, and they have already put people with a history of aligning with “American interests” into executive positions, like CEO Shou Zi Chew and vice president Michael Beckerman.
They have their eye on the fediverse now: Atlantic Council » Collective Security in a Federated World
Twitter files are mostly a tool for Elon Musks policy. Wiki entry shows enough of why they are problematic. The Hamilton 68 controversy isn’t a big thing like you are pretending. If anything their database was misunderstood. https://www.businessinsider.com/what-is-hamilton-68-russian-online-influence-tracker-2023-2?op=1
Glad to see the first comment in this chain being one calling out the usage of the Twitter files as a serious supporting point for anything but a point of deflection by Mr “I don’t use pr firms”.
Immediately emptied out a salt shaker on how I viewed everything else in the original comment :| homie thinks the Twitter files are relevant… ehhh I probably don’t have much interest or respect in any of their other opinions
There’s already loads of upvote/downvote bots in the fediverse here - would not be shocked if a large portion of them are from governments
There are not loads of upvote/downvote bots on Lemmy… yet. We admins see all the votes; we see the patterns.
The former is more like a slow-growing cancer.
One that we can actually fight, I might add, and we should.
I’m not defending China here, but since Snowden we now know that American corporate spyware does serve the government. And they are suppressing democracy - this isn’t a democracy yet, and peaceful protests for democracy are met with violent police resistance - Occupy, BLM, etc.
I sincerely hope that Lemmy can grow large enough to serve as a staging ground for democratic protests in America, just because it’s not corporate controlled.
It’s not corporate controlled, but there’s a lot of CCP and Kremlin propaganda on here. I wouldn’t trust any protests coming out of Lemmy right now.
You’re ignoring PRISM, though. All data that American big tech has on you is being handed over to the NSA.
Obviously the US has some semblance of democracy here and the PRC doesn’t, but we’re wasting our time by just making tiktok an American company.
I’m not ignoring it, and shit like that really, really worries me. And I’m not pleased with our gov’t trying to try Julien Assange, or that Edward Snowden has had to flee to Russia (!!!) for exposing an illegal NSA program. OTOH, we know for certain that certain keywords, phrases, events, etc. are actively suppressed on Chinese social media platforms and can’t be publicly discussed, contrasted with the very lively debate about viewpoint suppression in American social media. We know, for instance, that despite conservative tears and shouting to the contrary, that Facebook and Twitter were actively amplifying conservative voices, because outrage drive engagement. But a search for Tianmen Square on Weibo, for instance, isn’t going to bring up anything about massacres of student democracy advocates.
My main reason is I’m an American, China (probably) can’t do shit to me. But here I’m subject to so much shit America can do legally and illegally, with zero repercussions.
If China fucked me in particular over, odds are it would at least spark debate here. If America spied on my messages and stopped me from protesting something, that’s just a Tuesday afternoon here.
The only reason why Congress wants to ban it, is due to pressure from news agencies and the government, because TikTok can’t be controlled by the CIA. You can’t manufacture consent of the people if the content comes from someone else you don’t control.
https://www.npr.org/2024/03/13/1237501725/house-vote-tiktok-ban
They’ll ban tiktok but won’t punish overly aggressive police.
They’ll ban tiktok but won’t make food or rent affordable.
They’ll ban tiktok but won’t denounce Israel’s bullshit.
They’ll ban tiktok but won’t cancel student loans.
They’ll ban tiktok but won’t take Covid seriously.
Honestly way less afraid of China snooping on my data than US corporations. Only one of those groups regularly colludes with the FBI/CIA/other three letter agencies.
Hah! yeah
How does Microsoft always fly under the radar?
2013: Microsoft handed the NSA access to encrypted messages
Microsoft has collaborated closely with US intelligence services to allow users’ communications to be intercepted, including helping the National Security Agency to circumvent the company’s own encryption, according to top-secret documents obtained by the Guardian.
The files provided by Edward Snowden illustrate the scale of co-operation between Silicon Valley and the intelligence agencies over the last three years. They also shed new light on the workings of the top-secret Prism program, which was disclosed by the Guardian and the Washington Post last month.
I’m not big of a fan of Chinese surveillance but to most peoples point that have already posted here, if this was about privacy then the government should be passing laws to protect consumer privacy as a whole and not just targeting Chinese companies. Really shows that the government doesn’t give a shit about your privacy just who’s able to get it.
Is this a joke?
- List of Atrocities committed by US authorities
- Second Thought: Are We The Baddies?
