XPost: comp.misc, talk.politics.misc, soc.culture.china
On Tue, 30 Mar 2021 10:18:53 -0000 (UTC)
"4urEyezOnly" <
no@no.com> wrote:
A news source you may have noticed I’ve picked up lately is Protocol,
who gives some pretty good coverage of the tech space with a focus on what’s going on in China. Recently they undertook a survey with
1,578 members of the US tech community. Among the results was a
surprising consensus among this group that “Big Tech” is both too powerful and causes more harm than good.
More than 40% feel that Amazon, Google, Facebook and Apple should be
broken up.
This is true. The "internet" for the most part are just these 4
companies and it's disgusting to think that is the case.
Another item is co-operation with Law Enforcement, where 44% of the respondents felt that Big Tech should not cooperate with Law
Enforcement Agencies.
That said, over half the respondents want better relations with China
and that if a Cold War with China were to erupt (I think we’re a
little past that, tbh), it would “cripple U.S Tech Companies.”
The issue as I see it is where in the US, Big Tech is emerging as
another check against state power, à la Network State vs Nation State
that we talk about in the AxisOfEasy salons so often, in China's Big
Tech is the State, or at least just an appendage of it.
I think if Big Tech here thinks they can bring China around to a more classically liberal economy through osmosis, remember that's what the
Western diplomats thought would happen since their admittance to the
WTO, and that isn’t exactly how things have played out.
I doubt they've ever thought about it that way.
Instead, as per James Green’s lengthy account of US-China relation to liberalism:
"China is now presenting itself as an alternative model to liberal
democracy in the areas of economic management, political governance,
media manipulation, and technology control. “ <https://www.chinafile.com/reporting-opinion/viewpoint/defense-of-diplomacy-china>
Let's face it for what it is: Big Tech wants to work with China
because a) China throws a lot of money around and is one of the
forces (along with Saudi Arabia) buoying up unicorn valuations in
Silicon Valley and b) they’re salivating over the prospect of gaining access to the Chinese market and are willing (despite their
performative woke-isms at home) to turn a blind eye to the systemic
human rights abuses there.
<https://www.protocol.com/newsletters/protocol-china/tech-workers-on-china>
This is the issue isn't it. All these multi-national companies want to
have a share of the "china-pie" that they're willing to turn a blind
eye and even openly supportive to the draconic systems china has been espousing. No matter how I look at it the future is very bleak for all
of us.
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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