Comment by lumenwrites | Hacker News Reader

Comment by lumenwrites | Hacker News Reader

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> American ideas and values are inconspicuously spread through memes (in the original sense of the term) and foreign children, teenagers and young adults are raised on them.

Honestly, in the case of my country (and probably many others), this is a huge improvement. Thank god the internet and social media have exposed me to the American ideas and values as I was growing up. I don't agree with all of them, but living with my head filled with the culture and values of my own country would've been so much worse.

All that stuff about "freedom" and "human rights" and "spreading democracy" may sound corny, unless you live in a place that doesn't have enough of those.

Exporting its values is probably the best thing America could've done for my country.

I could stand to hear less about American politics though)

> Any nation that wants to retain control over their culture and values should have social media sovereignty.

I'd rather control my own culture and values myself (by choosing what things to read and what websites to visit), than having someone else control them for me (which, in practice, just means censorship and/or propaganda).

Freedom and human rights weren't invented and aren't exclusive to America, as for spreading democracy I find the track record more horrific than corny.

You do not currently have control over your culture and values, you said yourself you're glad America exported its values to your country and exposed you to them. Good or bad, it should be clear you're not living in a vacuum with absolute control over what you see and believe.

If you adopt a free-market attitude to these questions you will end up being controlled by whoever has the most money and the worst morals, companies and people who will prey on our worst instincts, algorithms which reward anger and division, which prey on addiction triggers and so on. The content you consume will be controlled to present you with ideas, news and perspectives that are politically and economically advantageous to their country, and often contrary to the best interests of your own.

And to be clear there is no dichotomy between the status-quo and censorship. There is a million alternatives, the Digital Markets Act for example is a good start that should begin to break up social monopolies and companies which abuse network effects. Digital sovereignty just means you make available alternative tools to your population which are free of foreign influence.

The us is the biggest advocate though, and actually the most idealistic one. How idealistic they are, is visible in trade policies for example. The moment trump went back on free trade, all those mercantilist empires showed there true colors. Manufactured here, exported everywhere, just as it was practiced in Manchester centuries ago, allover.

There are actually very few countries which are freedom and democracy avatars. And they can export culture within the us sphere (japan, south korea/ some european countries come to mind) freely. All other culture/value spheres, are quite supressive/ethno centric (china, russia), hiding behind a thin veneer of "external propaganda".

The us secret service agencies interventions are a mess and the decay into a traditional empire is real, but overall, if you really look into other countries and cultures, its alot better, open, integrate the best of all worlds, then what you will find elsewhere.

I especially started to despise the "hollow husk" disney world "freedom" image some dictatorships export. People fall for that nonsense all the time and its ridiculous. Some nice videos of dancing people and skyscrapers, without any visible dissent, do not make freedom.

> as for spreading democracy I find the track record more horrific than corny

Hang on, in which period of world history did the world enjoy more widespread peace and democratic rule than during Pax Americana?

Or are you claiming that the most peaceful and democratic era of history happened in spite of the US, not in any way due to it?

I don't have any objections to criticizing the US but my read on its history in this context is basically - once it expanded as far as it could militarily it decided the next best thing to do was build up a global network of nations it could trade with and make money off of. Those powers needed to be peaceful and stable so frequently ended up being democracies.

spreading democracy I find the track record more horrific than corny.

Has there been another nation in history that it was better to lose a war against rather than win? Compare Germany, Japan, South Korea to Vietnam, North Korea, Afghanistan. Perhaps the Achaemenid Empire also qualifies.

'Most money' I won't argue but I don't see how 'free market' leads to 'worst morals'. In a 'free market of ideas' people do their best to choose the best morals, some tomfoolery might make that harder to distinguish but people aren't helpless babes with no capacity for critical thought, and most of us rightly disdain empty virtue signaling.

> In a 'free market of ideas' people do their best to choose the best morals

The problem is not this, the problem is morals and free market look like they shouldn't be in the same place.

For example, Facebook controls majority of the social media traffic. People use them for reasons other than morality but Facebook itself is a deeply immoral company. So, free market is supporting an immoral idea because of amoral reasons and this is happening subconsciously.

This is a dangerously naive view. The US lied about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, committed mkultra against its own citizens, and infinitely more.

It's not a trustworthy place, just has higher production standards for their propaganda vs your home country.

Im a strong critic of US policy, but this kind of hyperbole is noise that hinders actual discussion.

In the US there is free press, which is why everyone knows and speaks freely about these things. When Bush 2 was pushing his administration's lies about WMDs, a large chunk of the population saw through the deception immediately, and another large chunk also saw through the deception but decided to go to war anyway. We still have the ability to think about our own history in ways that would be inconceivable in many places. That ability is maintained by individuals exercising their rights.

There is objectively no comparison between the state of things in the US and say Russia. These are not two different cases of the same model or two sides of the same coin, they are utterly different models and practices of governance. The US is also so culturally focused on rights and freedom that people don't understand the first amendment only protects citizens from action by the government, and people are able to hold onto this notion because of the extent to which they are generally left alone.

That's just not true. During WW2 Disney was occupied by the US military because Walt was anti-war. The federal government under Bush and Obama routinely spied on dissidents ( see the Michael Hastings report).

Time and time again, just like every other country, people who disagree with the Rich and Powerful or the government get crushed.

Again American propaganda is simply better than other countries and it comes from deliberate practice. For example the US military works very closely with Hollywood and videogames like the best selling Call of Duty series.

The US was doing much worse stuff during the WW2 era, this was during segregation after all. I don't actually disagree with any of your points. In fact another example is how torture is consistently portrayed in a positive light in hollywood movies (when it's the "good guys" doing it).

My point is that the fact that we are freely having this discussion, and able to access reliable sources of information without government impediment, is in itself very significant in the context of human experience on earth in 2022. The US is still in a situation where we can self-correct. Crying wolf about the state of press freedom is counterproductive and harms the credibility of people working to actually improve things.

For example, what the US is doing to Julian Assange is wrong. However, if Russia had been equally pissed at him they would have simply murdered him long ago. There is still a system within which to work in the US, and pretending it doesn't exist is self-defeating and draws attention away from possible solutions.

I wish america would export its values of speech and guns here. It'd be a massive improvement. I find it strange that the latter is never an exported value (only ever clandestine exported goods) and only some of the former.

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