Someone help me understand why I should care more about the Chinese government having my data than my own. My own government actually has power over me.
You probably should not care about it. The only real threat that China poses to people who live in the West is nuclear war, but that is already deterred by mutually assured destruction and in any case the Chinese government having your social media data does not make it any more likely that they are going to start a nuclear war. China's government is a threat to the people who live in the areas that it controls. Since I live in an area that the US government controls, the US government having my data is almost certainly a bigger danger to me than China having it, although to be fair the US government having my data probably is not a very big danger to me either. I find the NSA's activities to be more insulting than actually frightening.
The value of the data can be as simple as knowing what negative messages/videos you'll continually watch and how those videos, in part, impact larger swaths of the population. And with data sharing between apps and devices, you could likely track actions across much of the web to the influence of these videos.
It's in China's interest, and others, to destabilize the populations of it's enemies. Traditionally this could be through propaganda, but a potentially more powerful force could be to make the population depressed, angry, confused, and distracted. This impacts the real world in your day to day, the communities you live in, and the quality/intentions of elected officials.
Now this could easily be accomplished even with the best intentions from the company creating the software. So how nefarious or not this actually is, or how much manipulation the Chinese government is applying here is totally debatable.
I'm not arguing for one side of that or the other. My point is data is super powerful, is often tied to apps and devices you don't realize, and can be used to motivate action at large scale, so the holder of the data really does matter.
That said, US companies and others outside China also have tons of data and use it for their own profit and potentially to spread propaganda and destabilizing information. In the US, however, the chance of malintent being the driving force is less probable and, as far as I can see, tend more to be influential actors or groups. In these cases, the software company and regulators are more likely to to moderate or suppress this because it can be bad for business. When it's a geopolitical foe who is or simply can cause issues this way, the intentions and lack of regulation are far more problematic.
Do you think that a country as large as China has agents in your country? If not, then continue to live a blissful life, if so, then how do you think those agents, or agents of any large country, accomplish tasks in other countries?
Perhaps you don't have access to anything they want, but perhaps you're a stepping stone to something they do want.
And perhaps you are not today, and of course perhaps all the children in your country are not today, but one day, some of them will be. Some of them will even grow up to be Senators, CEOs, etc. Perhaps, some of those children today, have parents whom China does want to influence.
Setting aside the far more malevolent impact of American power, China has no way to use my data to oppress me. The US does, and routinely uses social media data against its own citizens and people abroad.
hax0ron3|2 years ago
tomatokoolaid|2 years ago
It's in China's interest, and others, to destabilize the populations of it's enemies. Traditionally this could be through propaganda, but a potentially more powerful force could be to make the population depressed, angry, confused, and distracted. This impacts the real world in your day to day, the communities you live in, and the quality/intentions of elected officials.
Now this could easily be accomplished even with the best intentions from the company creating the software. So how nefarious or not this actually is, or how much manipulation the Chinese government is applying here is totally debatable.
I'm not arguing for one side of that or the other. My point is data is super powerful, is often tied to apps and devices you don't realize, and can be used to motivate action at large scale, so the holder of the data really does matter.
That said, US companies and others outside China also have tons of data and use it for their own profit and potentially to spread propaganda and destabilizing information. In the US, however, the chance of malintent being the driving force is less probable and, as far as I can see, tend more to be influential actors or groups. In these cases, the software company and regulators are more likely to to moderate or suppress this because it can be bad for business. When it's a geopolitical foe who is or simply can cause issues this way, the intentions and lack of regulation are far more problematic.
rationalist|2 years ago
Perhaps you don't have access to anything they want, but perhaps you're a stepping stone to something they do want.
rationalist|2 years ago
CPLX|2 years ago
[deleted]
ssnistfajen|2 years ago
Source?
kieselguhr_kid|2 years ago