Yes. It’s a separate issue.

If there was a real concern for users privacy and safety this would've been taken care of awhile ago.

Yes. The concern is over the entity exploiting the data, not the exploitation of data itself.

All this is just war drums that try to seem like privacy concerns.

It’s an explicitly political article that mentions China by name 7 times. ASPI is a defense & strategic policy thinktank.

US corporate greed gave China a platform for world domination by offshoring everything. Now that the tiger is loose, us plebs need to go to war for them.

The recommended actions are for governments & social media companies, not users or non policy making citizens.

Doesn't seem like much of a choice.

I would say that no choice is more honest. The illusion of choice is a bit like the fake buttons on traffic lights, it's there to make you think you are in control of something while you are really not.

This might be naive but it seems like we have a much bigger privacy problem in the US.

https://observer.com/2017/05/dnc-lawsuit-presidential-primar...

It's generally best to avoid this trap by either talking about what the likely end results will be (fragmented web ecosystems bounded by per-country restrictions) or to talk in country-neutral objectives (no country should allow massive data collection and privacy breaches in apps, regardless of their place of origin).

Could unironically be answered “Yes, and?” in a rational discussion about geopolitical issues, especially one without a globalist (or specifically western) bent.

I’ve gone ahead and done that in response to the GP just now.

Friendship, joint ideals empathy, are not strictly rational.

You’re not coming to HN to look for a rational discussion of geopolitics, you’re looking for someone to agree with.