One of the privileges of being a U.S.-based founder is internationally, no one asks you to answer for the actions of Uber, Exxon, or pharma bro as though all companies in the U.S. came from one homogenous mass.

I'm not talking about criticisms of a particular company when it's the one being discussed. Should Theranos be criticized for their own failings? Yes. Should every U.S. startup be suspected of being similar because of another company's actions because in a population of 300M, someone else did a thing? You tell me...

I wouldn't mind it if someone pressed me about those companies, Uber can absolutely be managed on the local government level, and the other bad stuff that these big companies do is within the range of activism. It's not 100% my responsibility, but there's probably at least a 1 a few zeroes after the decimal.

Secondly, when one company gets away with something in the US, we have a fairly good reason to believe that other companies could get away with something similar. So, if I were a person in any country (even the US), and I needed to decide whether or not I could trust a US company not to do something to me, legal precedent in the US would actually be very relevant.

To make this concrete, I bet Europeans have become rightfully wary by now about the data privacy implications of banking/shopping or otherwise making an account with US business.

Thing is, the Chinese companies who do shady things absolutely get punished. Not just slap-on-the-wrist fines, but jail time and sometimes death penalty. Legal precedent is not why legit founders get harassed for being Chinese.

We're not talking about well-thought-out questions about legal precedence, but random trolls calling their products 'cheap Chinese knock-offs' even when they are original, and even in cases where it's a similar version to something, if it's made in the U.S.A., we call that "private label" or "white label." Or "generics."

I agree. I mean, we shouldn't treat all Chinese startups suspect because of shady practices by Baidu and the PLA. Though that the PLA was involved in that medical scam a few years back does make the whole government as suspect. Baidu also didn't get much punishment, they pretty much got away with it.