What are you talking about? China with it's national real-time citizen tracking using 'social credit' scores, facial recognition, and internet firewalls really cares about your privacy?

Ok, spend all your time going after the ad company and ignore the government which is 1000x worse and will control your life or toss you in a cell. Good luck with that.

He's not ignoring that? He's pointing out the laws are stricter when dealing with private companies. You are talking about two completely orthogonal laws or standards.

It's connected to their other comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17158209

The laws are not stricter (they arent even laws yet), and they are meaningless in those areas because the government itself already defies them.

>they are meaningless in those areas because the government itself already defies them.

That doesn't make laws meaningless.

In this more specific case, it's very difficult to judge China's policies with an even tilt because private Chinese companies are ad hoc lifted to "public status" when they're convenient for the government to leverage.

But China grants legal exemptions without especially good or consistent oversight over those countries. The net result is an awful lot of folks who get a legal exemption for a specific aspect of their business and then tend to run roughshod in other less scrutinized areas.

>very difficult to judge China's policies with an even tilt because private Chinese companies are ad hoc lifted to "public status" when they're convenient for the government to leverage.

How is this different from any other western government?

Having worked at a high profile government contractor, my observation is that you don't get the same kind of leverage other folks report. Also, the bidding process is cuthroat and subject to public scrutiny here.

Now if you're taking about security contractors, that's different and the same the whole world over I guess.