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Comment by kumarvvr | Hacker News Reader

This is an incredibly bad faith argument. What are you saying? Because everything is propaganda, either everything should be allowed or everything should be banned?

What happens within the borders of a country is different, even if it is spying and suppression of human rights and what not.

The destiny of a country should be in the hands of it's people. Be it good, bad or worse. But if you allow propaganda from another country to enter into your media, all is lost. Why? Because you lose faith in everything. How is one sure the revolution in a country is pure bred from that country? How is one sure the change one sought is because of the needs of the people of that country?

It's an incredibly dangerous situation. Even if your own govt. spies on you, stopping the propaganda of a foreign country takes precedence at all costs, if necessary, even by war.

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> Because everything is propaganda, either everything should be allowed or everything should be banned?

How are either of those things worse than let's ban this propaganda but allow that propaganda? Is propaganda only bad if you happen to 'disagree' with it (ie not be as extensively indoctrinated by it)?

> Because you lose faith in everything.

Including, according to your argument, propaganda from who you think (because of propaganda) are on your side.

Propaganda from what is supposed to be your own side is actually, if anything, more repugnant and indefensible than 'enemy' propaganda.

> Even if your own govt. spies on you, stopping the propaganda of a foreign country takes precedence at all costs, if necessary, even by war.

So when your own country, while not spying on you, spreads propaganda in another country, you think it's totally understandable if that other country starts a war over it?

> So when your own country, while not spying on you, spreads propaganda in another country, you think it's totally understandable if that other country starts a war over it?

Yes. In today's world where mis-information and propaganda can topple governments and wreak havoc in societies, it's imperative that a destructive act of propaganda be seen akin to an actual act of war.

Well, I don't agree it warrants actual warfare, but I'm upvoting you for taking a consistent stance.

American social media app's dominate my country. Google 99% market share. Facebook/Instagram 95% market share in social. 5eyes/PRISM (they're not gonna forgive snowden, he ruined their reputation) monitors my country (not part of the anglospehere) and I never consented.

Am I supposed to tell my government to block American apps so that I can compete with American apps or on "national security" grounds? Because this is the trend American's will see. And if Zuck is reading this, you're shooting your own foot. What do you think is gonna happen? You're pitting the government against TikTok because your company cannot compete fairly. You think you'll win like this? Your Facebook/Instagram will get banned in future by other democratic countries in future because of the precedent you're going to be setting.

Let China do it's thing. It may very well turn out that their way of governance is better. Losers stick to old ways, if it turns out it's the superior system, they'll clearly be better.

But for a system to be proven takes decades/centuries. As long as China does not force it's system, it's fine in my eyes.

>Am I supposed to tell my government to block American apps so that I can compete with American apps or on "national security" grounds?

The primary motive is to curb propaganda. If all the countries in the world blocked data collection, businesses all over would stop data collection.

>You're pitting the government against TikTok because your company cannot compete fairly

Perhaps. But if the new competing app also collects data, the govt. ought to shut it down. Ultimately, I want data collection to stop.

>It may very well turn out that their way of governance is better

Governance is different from protecting basic human rights. An authoritarian government is a danger to the whole world. You can see that already happening with Turkey.

How is Turkey a danger to the whole world?

And didn't the Turkish people vote in Erdogan?

It is actually a very interesting example to set that Microsoft is buying English speaking TikTok regions. I wonder how many other unions or countries are considering forcing Facebook, Google, etc to sell their local operations to a local company?

Countries are propaganda. They’re imaginary lines controlled by information.

If you really think the rest of the world is that dangerous, then block off all foreign websites...

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