When the dictionary points to bad faith arguments, your name comes up.
Comment on TikTok set to be banned in the US after losing appeal
tardigrada@beehaw.org 2 weeks ago@thingsiplay
Because another countries takes away freedom and eliminates the free market, makes it a non argument if the US does the same? The US is doing the same what China does.
If so, why then haven’t you long been criticizing China the same way you do now the US? Where are these posts?
(Just to say that: The US, China, EU, and all the others can ban Tiktok, Twitter, FB, and all the centralized data collectors. I wouldn’t miss any of them, and I think it would be better for the world. But the hypocrisy here in this thread is very telling.)
giotheflow@lemm.ee 2 weeks ago
LukeZaz@beehaw.org 2 weeks ago
I agree with you that “free market” standpoints aren’t very good places to criticize this decision from – except to point out the hypocrisy of the right-wing, which I do think the original comment was trying to do – but it has to be said that nobody is obligated to criticize both China and the U.S. equally in order to not be a hypocrite.
One simple example of why would be that most if not all users here have absolutely no say at all as to what China does. There aren’t a lot of Chinese citizenry here. But there are a lot of Americans. It so follows that it makes sense to criticize the U.S. more, because many people on Beehaw can actually do something about it, especially in aggregate.
It doesn’t help to criticize China much either, anyway. China’s bad, yes; we know. Even among honest-to-god capital-C Communist circles, China is controversial. Posts about it tend to do three things: 1) Create a sort of misery/anger circle-jerk, 2) arbitrarily and unnecessarily signal to others that you aren’t a tankie, when nobody should really need to clarify that in most scenarios, and 3) further U.S. propaganda interests by taking people’s time and attention away from issues they’re more likely to be able to do something about.
I’m obviously not in favor of forgetting what China’s done, either, but there’s a happy middle-ground I think a lot of Western-centric sites sail right past, and I don’t think any of it is helpful.
tardigrada@beehaw.org 1 week ago
There aren’t a lot of Chinese citizenry here. But there are a lot of Americans. It so follows that it makes sense to criticize the U.S. more, because many people on Beehaw can actually do something about it, especially in aggregate.
I agree that there are most likely more Americans (or other ‘Westerners’) here than Chinese, yet there are many tankies here with alt accounts on Beehaw. It is them who spread the Chinese propaganda, criticizing the West in general while being silent on China.
Vodulas@beehaw.org 1 week ago
I don’t think that is what was going on here, though. They were saying TikTok and Facebook are both equally bad. You may not agree, but at no point did they say it was a good thing that China gets your data. They said it is bad that both China and the US get your data.
thingsiplay@beehaw.org 2 weeks ago
So you are saying I am hypocrisy, because you could not find posts in my history criticizing China? And that makes my critique about the US less true or acceptable? I no longer believe in good faith of your discussion here and will end discussing with you. You have the last word if you want.