zlacker

Elsewhere on HackerNews there are discussions about how GDPR regulations affect the internet entirely - not just in the EU.

And there are famous examples how California environmental regulations bring up the quality of products US-wide so everyone benefits from safety and consumer protections not just people in california.

In both cases, this is because it's easier to just have ONE version of a product if your market subset (EU, California) is big enough to justify it becoming the DEFAULT version of the product.

I...am truly terrified this is where we are heading with censorship and Chinese policies and the rest of the free and open web. At what point do companies that have to censor information for their chinese audience decide it's just less of a hassle to have the same censorship apply blanketly world-wide?

>>deanCo+(OP)
This situation is very advantageous for China companies. They can access foreign markets unhindered, but foreign companies can't access their market without cowtowing to the CCP, and not all companies ready for it.

Maybe the correct solution would be to symmetrically block China's businesses in US and EU, so they would have to abandon either censorship or export of services

>>deanCo+(OP)
> At what point do companies that have to censor information for [local] audience decide it's just less of a hassle to have the same censorship apply blanketly world-wide?

This has already happened. The U.S. has much more strict standards regarding nudity than the rest of the world in general, but the world has largely adopted U.S. norms, and nudity is now censored worldwide. So much for multi-culturalism.

>>deanCo+(OP)
That may be what they are doing.

And let us be clear - it is bad enough when the major tech companies gladly apply CCP or RUS filtering within those territories.

The CCP is the friend of no one but themselves, and they are global expansionists. The RUS govt is an international criminal syndicate masquerading as a govt.

If the tech companies start applying those same CCP/RUS standards globally, then the response should be to shut off those countries from the internet.

>>teddyh+L6
Indeed -- at least in English. Continental Europe is a bit more sensible, IMO ;-).

>>toss1+ub
Our companies are more powerful than our governments right now. They censor what they want when they want on behalf of their world view and government bidding.

>>foxhop+Y61
Yup, and yet here they are kowtowing to the world's authoritarian governments, just for a few dollars.

They're happy to sellout their users, and everyone's freedoms for a few more dollars this quarter.

We need to stop respecting that like it is an accomplishment.

Yet the downvotes show that people even hear fail to see the paradox of intolerance.

There is one thing that a tolerant society cannot tolerate - intolerance. If intolerance is allowed, it will drive out all tolerance. So it must be stamped out.

Since China is clearly not tolerating free speech on the Internet, it should lose it's access to the internet. Short of that step, we will soon see that the Internet is run by CCP's rules.

(&ya, I hear all the arguments about 'engagement', avoiding balkanization of the internet, etc. - they've all been proven false - tolerating authoritarianism is the worst failure)