Quite the opposite. China (the country, not China the economy) is investing billions into developing tech companies to surveil their citizens. Those apps are all centrally controlled by the Chinese government. They can freely suppress discussions without you ever knowing. Hell, they don't even need to censor it but only need to make it less discoverable.
As soon as those apps reach the western hemisphere (or just anything outside China) and become dominant communication mediums, the Chinese government will be able to dictate opinion in the West.
Thats exactly how HN keep misteriously pushing things out of the top 30 no matter how many upvotes.. Also theres control in the flagging mechansim - as in shrugs, we don’t know, it was flagged by some users... shrugs again..
Im just making the case about HN not because I disagree with their job of keeping things civil, in fact this is much less toxic a platform than many others. My point is that whoever has the control can dictate whatever they see fit or serves their interest. For that reason I’d never use TikTok, not even to see what it is about because of who is backing it
In-Q-Tel is well known here. Do we know enough about Chinese investment? Are Huawei and ZTE private companies, private with state's investment, co-owned by the state, or owned by the states to further Chinese's causes with a private facade? There should be more discussion about them here.
What do you think the ad networks and social networks are all already doing? Reddit just deleted a whole subreddit... (which ultimately moved to its own website).
At some point it's not really about censorship or freedom of speech anymore... and more about not letting the other guys win.
I think quite the contrary, China has very limited interest in using propaganda to influence the western-sphere. I used to be very inline with these news but as my old friends from youth progress in their careers in China (many in those 'state based' sectors), I grow increasingly skeptical as I know more about their mundane jobs. Yes a lot of policies seem to be from a backward society, but actually a lot are benign and these perceived 'agenda' don't really exist in real life. To be quite frank technology-wise China is still vastly behind world's frontier.
I got a little baby boy so I couldn't edit in time. Apologies if the comment above doesn't contribute much to the discussion. I don't want to come across as irrational/delusional. What I wanted to convey is that through my friends I get some insights as how that technology involved is put to work for the government. What I understand has some distance from what's been reported. That's all.
