This isn’t about actual harms or actual privacy risks. Facebook directly interfered in the 2016 election and no laws changed, no one went to prison, Mark Zuckerberg had a few cringe moments in front of Congress and then they pretty much forgot about him. So the message I’m getting is, no actual existential harm will come to a social media company that allows that to happen.

> Facebook directly interfered in the 2016 election

Is this a reference to Cambridge Analytica? Their electoral effects were mostly dismissed.

Mostly because they were exaggerated claims from Cambridge Analytica's own marketing material.

That’s because you cannot lay the result of the 2016 election at Facebook’s doorstep.

Functionally they were used for five things:

1. Political advertising, which is what all campaigns engage in.

2. Discussions of the election by our own citizens, sometimes critical, more often an echo chamber or virtual throat stabbing contest.

3. News about the election which is free name recognition for all of the candidates the media considers worth talking about.

4. Market research by the campaigns.

5. A platform for foreign propaganda including psy-ops, which is bad and should be addressed, but not even close to bad enough to effect the outcome of an election as much as many might want to think that it did.

You can’t really pin the 2016 election on Facebook specifically since any information on there competes with any information not from there and there was a lot more not-Facebook information involved in that election, but Facebook by that point made for a nice scapegoat that nobody has any real sympathy for. Remember too that it was real Americans that actually filled in their ballots that decided the election for every single candidate on the list.

Looks like hatred instilling propaganda worked well on you

It’s possible that I’m a victim of propaganda and it’s possible you are. The way to determine who is more likely to have fallen for propaganda is to compare respective beliefs against known facts. It is indisputable that Chinese hackers have stolen U.S. technology secrets and that China prevents/restricts who can operate there much more so than the U.S. Given this and China’s overt human rights violations on a grand scale in the western part of the country it’s clear that a conflict exists as a clash of both culture and national security.

are you really ready to go to war over the NYTimes telling you Uighurs are mistreated? the US has been the world leader is violating the rights of Muslims for the past fifty years, but now we are apparently indignant?

no, you are being set up to hate China for mostly no reason (well, there is a good reason...Taiwan needs US aircraft carriers and air power)

we saw this in 2002 running up to Iraq..it was crazy how many Americans all of a sudden were in a lather over Saddam Hussein...it was all programmed by the media. everyone now likes to talk about how it was a terrible decision...guess what, in 2002 pretty much everyone was enthusiastically on board (as instructed!)

I'm certainly no fan of the PRC but there is a huge difference between disdain and a willingness to engage in a war the US and Taiwan might very well lose (badly) with Americans dying

or are we just going to be at war forever?

> willingness to engage in a war the US and Taiwan might very well lose (badly) with Americans dying

Based on Russia's performance in Ukraine and China's military might seemingly less than Russia's I doubt the US Navy has a tough time keeping China out of Taiwan, let alone the entire military might of the US

I recommend looking up the Battle of the Chosin Resevoir....worst military defeat ever suffered by the US (worse than Bastogne imho), the Chinese didn't even have one gun per soldier...some didn't have boots...they DEMOLISHED the best equipped army in the world (and this was during Korea when the US military was the unquestioned top dog)

and btw if you are going to go look at casualty counts, don't bother, its well understood that the Chinese lost ten men for every US soldier killed...they still won

Hard to definitively claim victory for either side in the battle you mention. The Chinese outnumbered the US 4 to 1 and still got blasted, the Chinese unit was out of commission for months following the battle while the US forces maintained unit integrity.

In the years since the gulf between capabilities has grown, and especially seeing how Russia can't crush Ukraine using castoff NATO gear China will be wise to not poke the bear.

> guess what, in 2002 pretty much everyone was enthusiastically on board (as instructed!)

mmm, no. In 2002 "everyone" pretty much agreed that invading Iraq was a bad idea. People only went along with it after it happened to "show support for the troops." Or have you forgotten the "Hate Bush, love the troops" bumper stickers?

I know it’s a concept that is hard to grasp for CCP followers to understand but it is possible to criticize the CCP and past American actions. The U.S. is not a saint. Neither is China.

neither of those mean much with regards to tiktok specifically though.

> China has been waging a cyber war with the U.S. for some time now.

Americans are all retreating into paranoid fantasies.

well I mean we're doing it to them too. it's not paranoid to assume large countries are engaged in just-barely-sub-causus-belli levels of shit against each other.

But that doesn't make trying to ban or force the sale of tiktok anything more than a depressing/transparent sinophobic propoganda exercise.

It’s not paranoia to think that China and the U.S. are engaged in a cyber conflict. For quite some time China has engaged in cyber warfare to steal American technological secrets and to spy on the U.S. We spy on them. Both nations are adversaries of each other and it’s not paranoia to recognize the blatantly obvious.

> They limit the types of U.S. businesses that can operate in China

I'm confused, I'm supposed to hate China but...also do business there?

can you point me at a trade agreement that requires China to allow unlimited access to American companies?

I really hope all the China hawks here go enlist...its the perfect time, with tech laying off and the military far short of recruitment goals...don't go ask other people to die for your upvotes

I don’t in the world of extremes that you do. There is a room for other emotions between hate and love. In arrogance neo-liberals thought China embracing market reforms and “free” trade would liberalize/weaken the CCP. It did not work. We have long passed the point whereby China can be viewed as anything other than an adversary. China has engaged in state sponsored hacking and theft of American technological secrets and in a cyber war with the U.S. It’s not a conventional war.