The equivocating in this thread boggles the mind.

- Windows isn't the only other OS, nor would that mean that what the CCP is doing with HarmonyOS is OK.

- Backdoors are the rule, not the exception in China. This is not true of the US.

- I disagree with the Patriot Act and NSLs, but let's not forget that the US is a free democracy and that those laws can change if there is political will. That isn't the case in China.

Its like people completely forgot Prism. The caricature like understanding from Americans of China is mind boggling. I guess decades of McCarthyism takes its toll on the American mind.

I'm Canadian, and I haven't forgot PRISM. It's not a caricature to call China an authoritarian government. PRISM doesn't change the later.

Every time someone brings up the CCP doing something bad, I need to suffer some whataboutism re: the USA that is supposed to justify it. Backdoors are bad wherever they appear. Because China is an authoritarian regime, it can backdoor openly without consequence.

And the consequences of discovering backdoors in the US were (checks notes) a manhunt for Snowden.

This is my eternal question on HN: Why is every criticism of China, no matter how small, invoke a million people who spring out of the wood work to decry the acts of the US by way of justification or radical digression.

I am desperately pleading for an answer because for some reason there is a group of folks on this godforsaken website that can't help themselves from doing so and it's driving me absolutely mad.

Can we please just acknowledge a criticism or statement of fact about the CCP? Is that allowed?

There is literally zero evidence that the OS has backdoors, so what are you even on about? Just look at the thread and how many people are just mindlessly regurgitating the most abstruse anti-China propaganda, meanwhile only a few people were talking about how hypocritical these allegations are.

I mean, there is the built-in iCloud backdoor that spies on Chinese citizens for the CCP: https://support.apple.com/en-us/111754

Considering how far America has gotten backdooring the iPhone, it would not surprise me if China had far more control than we thought.

Maybe ask the group of people that feels need to fill every PRC topic with CCP spy, CCP bad diversions, i.e. the parent comment that started this. Then ask yourself why people can't equivocate between similarly "bad" US / PRC actions without customary muh freedom/democracy/violates are exceptions narrative. US NSL is exactly like CCP NSL, especially if you're subject to it, i.e. non American. Doubly so if you're Canadian where FVEY info sharing explicitly targets you to circumvent domestic spying regulations. Democracy and political will to change US system will doesn't apply to Canadians. And it hardly applies to Americans, because like PRC, NSL related topics functionally aren't subject to votes. If any thing the [dead] response clowning windows/US is more useful, because the inherent untrustworthiness of Windows is why PRC moving to indigenous systems.

> Then ask yourself why people can't equivocate between similarly "bad" US / PRC actions without customary muh freedom/democracy/violates are exceptions narrative.

Pretty much nobody on this site (besides particular corporate sycophants) will deny that the US has nightmare-inducing surveillance capabilities. It's not hypocritical to call-out and identify another authoritarian overreach in another country that also threatens it's citizens.

This isn't a slight against Chinese citizens or American citizens, for that matter. We know exactly who to blame - Google, Apple and Microsoft for rolling over when governments asked them to get backdoored. This started a privacy-shattering precedent that undermined trust even further than ever before, but now we accept it and readily spread it to our family in the form of a smartphone. Look at how easily all of us were fooled.

Promote software freedom. Get people off proprietary shitware and bugged hardware. That's what matters to me, and any government that better enables me to do that earns my respect.

This thread is about Chinese domestic sovereign software and hundreds of Westerners come out of the woodwork to decry it and start talking about backdoors and authoritarianism, which has literally zero to do with the topic at hand. It seems like you guys are so brainwashed that you get instantly triggered just reading the word "China".

It happens in every thread like this and it’s extremely frustrating, especially when you dig into the US side and find out it’s not as bad as the sensationalists make it seem.

Wasn’t prism bad enough? You think the US would stop at making backdoor?

to me it seems like there are systems of control in US, China, West whatever and the western ones are just a lot more subtle or savvier than the chinese equivalents but functionally serve a lot of similar purposes (For example, US media is always in lockstep on important issues despite being a "free" press!)

Windows sends data to Microsoft and Microsoft shares the data with the government. This is official and mandated by the law.

But XiongMai plants backdoors in their CCTV firmware so that data is shared with anyone interested, all around the world. Of course it magically turns out, that cameras they supply for the government are not vulnerable. What a coincidence...

More like Spy vs Spy [1] in this case.

[1] https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/meet-the-cuban-expatri...