Thank you. It doesn't make sense to me how much people trust our companies so much more than Chinese ones for no reason. This country has an abysmal track record when it comes to respecting its citizen's rights or privacy. Propaganda working as intended I suppose.
It’s not no reason. At a fundamental level I don’t trust the companies any differently. But at a professional level, nobody is going to question my using Claude or OpenAI in a professional capacity - to work on customer projects, analyze their data, etc.
I also consider Microsoft to be the biggest industrial spy in the world, them and google both are no doubt mining everything you type into office / gsuite, all your emails, etc. But nobody bats an eye when you write a word doc about some sensitive matter.
If my customers thought I was feeding their data into a Chinese owned LLM API (which to be clear I’m not), I don’t think it would go over well, and I’d be exposed legally to all sorts of things.
So the reason is risk aversion and desire to participate in US / western commerce. One can debate the actual threat, but why would you ever risk sending your data to a processor perceived as dodgy?
Suppose a US citizen, residing and working in the US and never traveling to China, crosses The Powers That Be. Which Power is more likely to do worse things to said citizen? Pretty unlikely they'll be rendered to one of the illegal Chinese jails in Brooklyn, more likely they'll be sent to Gitmo or a black site.
This. For a typical citizen, your own government is a far bigger threat than a foreign one.
That's why, all other things equal, I try to keep my own government happy or ignorant, but don't really mind what I share with foreign governments, especially ones who won't forward the info to my own government.
Both are abysmal, but as a US citizen bad behavior from Chinese corporations and government is vastly more limited in how negatively it can impact my life in a practical way than bad behavior from US corporations and government.
It's far from the top shelf, and even then I can totally still compare. I would say the very concept of privacy (at least when it comes to digital presence) does not exist in China. There are no expectations of privacy and if you need it you have to circumvent the rules.
This is worse don't get me wrong. But doesn't take away anything from the fact that the case here is indeed abysmal.
Surprises me that on Hacker News of all places, where people are tech-literate and educated, people still seem to trust our companies and governments as if they didn't have an established track record of spying and screwing us over.
It’s just a coincidence that both the US and china have the absolute worst privacy concerns. They are the top shelf IMO. Comparing them I’d say they’re about equal, really, especially once we consider the financial sector and credit.
You know you're sitting here on the open Internet complaining about the US government with literally zero fear of any repercussions in any sense whatsoever?
You should go to an actual authoritarian country and just ask someone their opinion on their government.
The difference between flippant, hyperbolic complaining (you) and someone who will actually glance over their shoulder and totally clam up in response to that type of question is quite chilling in reality.
The US is not authoritarian. But in terms of surveillance and privacy violations, we’ve really pushed it to the absolute limit. All of your communications are effectively tapped, especially since the US government can coerce private companies without letting you know.
There are very few exceptions, and of those that exist virtually all are under existential threat constantly.
The fact that (for now) there are no consequences has no connection to the original point about privacy.
The fact that China acts punitively with the data they gather on their citizens, and the US does not (yet), doesn't change at all the fact that the US actively harvests that data in a very aggressive way.
There may or may never be a time where the US starts acting on it, covertly or openly. But still, they're siphoning all of my data, and all of yours too and I don't see why we are downplaying it by saying it's worse elsewhere.
A country that siphons up data and then arrests you for saying mean things about Dear Leader is a lot, a lot worse than a country that siphons up data and then basically can't do anything with it.
I don't think it should be downplayed, but it certainly isn't the same. It just isn't. It's ridiculous and counterproductive to describe it as such.
> I don't see why we are downplaying it by saying it's worse elsewhere
This would suggest it is not worse elsewhere? Or are you saying it is worse elsewhere, but it being worse elsewhere is not a reason to downplay it here? Which, I agree with.
