this post was submitted on 13 Mar 2024
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The fundamental difference is who is in control, and for what purpose.
American spyware is controlled by corporations, and is all about selling you shit you don't need.
Chinese (and Russian) spyware is--apparently--controlled rather directly by their respective governments, and is being used to suppress democracy and increase polarization in the US and EU.
I don't like any spyware. But the latter category--spyware that's functionally state-sponsored--is clearly more immediately dangerous. The former is more like a slow-growing cancer.
All of the US corporate social media platforms are part of the US military-industrial-intellegence complex now. Look at their boards of directors and executives. Look at the Twitter Files. Look Hamilton 68.
Look at Reddit:
.
TikTok as well. The US already forced them to move their service to the US on an American-owned hosting provider, and they have already put people with a history of aligning with “American interests” into executive positions, like CEO Shou Zi Chew and vice president Michael Beckerman.
They have their eye on the fediverse now: Atlantic Council » Collective Security in a Federated World
Twitter files are mostly a tool for Elon Musks policy. Wiki entry shows enough of why they are problematic. The Hamilton 68 controversy isn't a big thing like you are pretending. If anything their database was misunderstood. https://www.businessinsider.com/what-is-hamilton-68-russian-online-influence-tracker-2023-2?op=1
Glad to see the first comment in this chain being one calling out the usage of the Twitter files as a serious supporting point for anything but a point of deflection by Mr "I don't use pr firms".
Immediately emptied out a salt shaker on how I viewed everything else in the original comment :| homie thinks the Twitter files are relevant.. ehhh I probably don't have much interest or respect in any of their other opinions
Here’s my heuristic for whether to take someone seriously:
How’s the weather in Kekistan?
guess I'm being downvoted by the tinfoil hats in here anyway. Same as the twitter users, it's often not bots that are the problem but rather dumb people :-(
There's already loads of upvote/downvote bots in the fediverse here - would not be shocked if a large portion of them are from governments
There are not loads of upvote/downvote bots on Lemmy… yet. We admins see all the votes; we see the patterns.
Id be surprised if all admins of every instance that's federated with Lemmy are all on the same page, let alone looking for narrative driven bots.
I see "Ukrainian combat footage" with hundreds of upvotes and no comments, there was also an article speaking positively about facebook that had lots of upvotes and no comments (it's in my history of you look, because I commented lol) - those look like red flags to me
I don't find the first strange, but I also find combat footage both interesting and not worth commenting on. Plus I think a lot of people just upvote Ukraine stuff and move along because there's no more conversation to be had in general.
That second one does seem a little weird, but Lemmy's more than capable of licking corporate boot when you phrase it correctly to them. I've always found that strange in general.
You must be getting botted right now, amirite?
So it's only okay for them to suppress democracy and increase polarization if they use American platforms? Because that's already happening.
One that we can actually fight, I might add, and we should.
Absolutely.
I mean, that's part of the reason that I'm here, rather than The Place That Shall Not Be Named. That, and because my account was permanently banned because I suggested torching the house of a someone flying a nazi flag.
I'm not defending China here, but since Snowden we now know that American corporate spyware does serve the government. And they are suppressing democracy - this isn't a democracy yet, and peaceful protests for democracy are met with violent police resistance - Occupy, BLM, etc.
I sincerely hope that Lemmy can grow large enough to serve as a staging ground for democratic protests in America, just because it's not corporate controlled.
I would love to know how all the cat and cooking videos in my tiktok feed are being used to suppress democracy 🙄