Comment by tonyhart7
Comment by tonyhart7 4 days ago
well china does it too with google,fb etc back then, and other nation do it too
albeit not outright banned it all together but sometimes they prefer homegrown company/technology
Comment by tonyhart7 4 days ago
well china does it too with google,fb etc back then, and other nation do it too
albeit not outright banned it all together but sometimes they prefer homegrown company/technology
Sure. I just noted the irony that the US discourse has sounded a lot like "we are better than China, we are more free" for decades.
But we are, there is no irony. China has the great wall and massive corporate espionage games to steal state and corporate secrets. The US and its various federal intelligence agencies have certainly done nefarious things but never quite as documented at the level as China's. They actively monitor all of their Social Media, block most foreign social media. I can easily go to any Chinese social media/website from the US.
In some ways, this is still true, even surrounding this decision.
Do you think there were many people standing outside of government buildings in Beijing protesting the potential ban of Facebook and Google while politicians of different political parties were debating the ban in the country's primary legislative body? Do you think you could launch a campaign for office on repealing said ban in China?
That wasn't the case in the late 00s when those hacks happened.
But wouldn't you say that there is some irony there, still?
I see multiple comments saying "shut up, we're not China!", but that's not what I meant :-). I just meant that there is some irony here.
And that next time we criticize China's protectionism, we may take a step back and think that we do it too, sometimes.
I mean, let's be clear: Facebook and Google are very much banned in Mainland China.
> albeit not outright banned it all together
No they absolutely do just ban them.
It's not just that Google or FB can't operate Chinese-specific sites as a business within China, from within China you can't even get to the foreign/international versions of those sites, because they're blocked by China's firewall. Wikipedia has a whole list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_websites_blocked_in_ma...