Is the US about to split the internet?

And the idea that jobs that were formerly done in the US have not been exported to China is ludicrous.

1. Costs on top of salary are more expensive in the EU (better worker's rights, more vacation, higher taxes)

2. EU has a more fragmented market than the US in terms of language, demographics, regulations, etc.

These don't necessarily apply to China or India.

Edit: I don’t recall now. The android app may have been in public beta or just released at the time.

Eg, they do exist in Australia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_Austral...), Japan (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_Japan) etc..

I agree with the thrust of your general argument, but feel it necessary to point out that the list of countries with substantial and automatic filtering mechanisms is much larger than that. Eg, I've experienced censorship in Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, and India.

Legal means can still involve brute force; for example, when a court somewhere decides that a certain type of content is abhorrent and should be put on an automatic DNS blacklist that ISPs are required to use.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_and_surv...

Perhaps they don't care about performance, but rather control. The Qing dynasty of Imperial Chine ruled from 1644-1912:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qing_dynasty

They got their asses handed to them starting in the 1800s of course:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_of_humiliation

But the current leadership may be happy with performing at 75% of open societies if they still get to run things: enough development to keep the outsiders at bay, not enough openness to cause trouble.

As long as their general rising prosperity, it may be good enough for most folks in China as well:

> It must be understood that liberalism and nationalism developed in China in lockstep, with one, in a sense, serving as means to the other. That is, liberalism was a means to serve national ends — the wealth and power of the country. And so when means and end came into conflict, as they inevitably did, the end won out. Nationalism trumped liberalism. Unity, sovereignty, and the means to preserve both were ultimately more important even to those who espoused republicanism and the franchise.

> China’s betrayal at Versailles did not help the cause of liberalism in China. After all, it was the standard bearers of liberalism — the U.K., France, and the United States — that had negotiated secret treaties to give Shandong to the Japanese.

> Former liberals gravitated toward two main camps, both overtly Leninist in organization, both unapologetically authoritarian: the Nationalists and the Communists. By the mid-1920s, the overwhelming majority of Chinese intellectuals believed that an authoritarian solution was China’s only recourse.

* https://supchina.com/2019/07/22/why-do-chinese-people-like-t...

I do, however, think the view that "open societies have systematically outperformed authoritarian ones over the past century" is potentially naive, dangerous even. Did the 18th and 19th century "prove" that expansionist imperialism is superior to nationalism, democratic liberalism, etc?

We have a tendency to narrate history with cause-effect dynamics that compliment our ideals. If you believe in open society (I do), you tend to make this an anchor in your historical worldview.

In any case... the west, especially the US, is what "outperformed." If Roosevelt had been Russian & Lenin American, I don't think the 20th century would have played out the same but backwards. There are too many factors at play. History is not determined by ideological positions.

Post WWII, western european states certainly did outperform warsaw pact states. I think that's the strongest evidence of "superiority," but again there are many factors. Not least among them, Western germany traded within a much wealthier trade block. A similar dynamic affected China in the 80s. They suddenly had access to wealthy western markets. This creates wealth regardless of governing economic systems.

In my view, the political imperative is backwards. Open society must succeed for open society ideals to prevail. This as opposed to "success is important, therefore open societies ideas must be adopted." There is no ideological position that guarantees success. That is itself a communist perspective... messianic rationalism.

I don't believe history to be deterministic. Open societies are valuable for their own sake. How they perform is, IMO, attributable to "execution" above all else.

It doesn't bear thinking about!

Let’s put it this way: the Chinese Constitution makes strong guarantees about freedom of speech and press. But it doesn’t matter since there is no court to enforce any of that, China lacks any checks and balances and officials mostly rule by fiat and hierarchy.

It's good thing that more than just the US presidency is up for grabs in November then! To those who can vote in that election, find out where your potential legislative representatives stand on issues related to executive power. They have the ability to limit it, whether the president volunteers or not.

What I'm trying to say: it's better to be spied on by somebody that can't kidnap you. The Chinese can't really kidnap you in Europe, the US very much can.

And of course, the third option is preferred: don't be spied on by the US OR China, at least not to that degree. But that would require European Data Sovereignty, and that'll likely not go over well with the US, which is why the EU won't try.

I'm not going to China any time soon, but I need to cross the border to the US for work sometimes, and for pleasure sometimes, too. Since 9/11 that border has been an aggressive and hostile place marked by frequent highly authoritarian interventions and it has escalated even more under Trump. And its reach extends now onto our phones and thus into our private lives and this spying now extends online and profiles are being made of all sorts of people without them knowing. This has always happened, but its reach is far wider than before.

Being flagged by the US gov't hurts me directly, China only indirectly. I don't trust the US federal regime, and neither should (most) Americans.

EDIT: love being downvoted along with the other (European) comment. It's clear many Americans still don't get how their government behaves to its so-called allies. Ask Angela Merkel how she felt about having her phone tapped. Maybe the EU and other allies need to start randomly detaining US citizens with "strange names" or "suspicious profiles" and keeping them in rooms for hours, interrogate them, search their phones, then let them go with a smirk and a "have a nice day." Maybe then US citizens will understand how odious this is.

Because this is the messaging the people will accept, a dictator could just say that's the way it is deal with it but they don't, they use the narrative the people will accept.

> Then the government gets to decide what is or isn't misinformation. >> The only solution people provide is that we need to get rid of the bad information

There is no "the government" its just people, two factions the red flag and the blue flag both get their information from their own isolated sources of what is accurate. The truth is somewhere in the middle ground with both sides deciding that whatever doesn't fit their current clic is misinformation. Democracy is great at giving us two flags instead of one but I don't really give a fuck about flags I care about individual freedom.

> A population with good critical thinking skills is necessary in a democracy.

100% and I feel our democracy is failing because people are just not motivated toward critical thinking, its difficult and calls yourself into question, what if you are wrong? or supported something you no longer believe in? in a world with cancel culture and mob justice? Fascism is a low effort alternative for many. Simple problem: all the other flag wavers, simple solution: get rid of them.

If democratic countries want to remain that way we need to give up our tyranny and flag waving in support of real freedom. People won't do it naturally we need to change the system to encourage people to think by rewarding them for doing so. Change peoples motives toward critical thinking and democracy and away from fascism and tyranny.