Disappointed w/ China slams

General Feedback
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I’ve been browsing ‘other’ areas here and was reading Rex M. Lee articles/news and was disappointed in the besmirched & targeted undertones against other countries, one country to be exact. China.

… plus their app developer partners that include Meta/Facebook, ByteDance/TikTok (China), Amazon, and others.

Several times the same tactic is used to stomp China. I don’t see Amazon (US), or Meta (US).
This finger pointing is in other articles as well. If Purism has a hate on for China, is a company that sells internationally a place to advertise it?

Another article again, points finger directly at China:

Today, smartphone owners are being simultaneously surveilled, and data mined by numerous multinational corporations, including those from China,

Of course the “data mined by numerous multinational corporations,” doesn’t have a country, none that does what China does I’m sure. The US would never do what other countries do to spy on other countries. Heaven forbid!

If Purism wants to use their site as a racist attack on foreign country (note singular) it should do it for every country, including the US.

Before anyone shouts it out, I am not a ‘commie’, and not racist. I don’t group people by what their leaders say and do. I do see shame in companies that live in glass houses with a bucket load of stones shaming others. Shouldn’t it be pointed out that it’s not OK to spy on the US, but OK for the US to spy on all others, including it’s own citizens?

Just having that -stuff- on the site helps erode the image of Purism. Maybe if Purism decides to bring the ad for L-5 ad down a few notches to what it really is, then edit the obvious shots at China and show that Purism is not biased, political, or prejudiced?

Boiled down, it’s “The pot calling the kettle black”
{ It means a situation in which somebody accuses someone else of a fault which the accuser shares , and therefore is an example of psychological projection, or hypocrisy. (…Wiki)}

~s

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China has a social credit score system and has many aspects of its political system that is authoritarian. Not to say USA is perfect, but you will always find people from the USA referring to China with a negative connotation in these regards. Especially with a company focused on privacy. I would have thought this is obvious.

I don’t think anyone specifically hates people from China, or their culture. It is really just the government.

In the USA people are usually encouraged to speak their mind to a degree that many other places do not either enjoy, or encourage.

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Completely valid feedback for you to give - but maybe you should direct it specifically to the author so that he sees your feedback. You didn’t tag him in, for example.

Fairly obviously the marketing of the Librem 5 USA is in explicit and direct contrast with China. There’s no way round that (although not relevant for the specific article that you are responding to). This also applies to the Librem Key but perhaps with a lower profile.

My opinion: China is doing a lot wrong and deserves a lot of criticism - and they are big enough and ugly enough to defend themselves.

In respect of TikTok specifically, this is a hot political topic in the US (and here for that matter), and has been for some years. Trump wanted to ban it. Montana has banned it (although doubtful whether the ban will even stand up in court, let alone be effective).

Here, the TikTok app must be removed from all government devices (which is a pretty lightweight ban, but the government could go further in the future). If it were my choice, all social media apps would be removed from all government devices unless the government employee’s job role specifically involves social media interaction e.g. PR / media.

In respect of social media specifically, I tend to agree with you. Calling out TikTok because it’s Chinese is kind of missing the bigger picture. All social media companies are bad to their users - but that is their business model and everyone understands that.

In certain limited circumstances TikTok is identifiably worse - such as: you regularly make comments on social media about China, or: you are a Chinese citizen, or: you are located in China. If none of those things apply then I doubt that a social media customer can meaningfully be more concerned about TikTok than other social media companies.

That said, several countries have expressed concern about China (and Russia) using social media for political interference i.e. not from the perspective of the individual social media customer but from the perspective of the country as a whole. The difficulty I have with that argument is that I think China and Russia are smart enough just to use US social media companies for their political interference. So to be convinced by this argument, I would have to be convinced that the US government has cracked down enough on US social media companies so that US social media companies are 99.9% free of foreign political interference.

So I guess your point could be: what level of political commentary from a company is appropriate? The downside of political commentary for a company is that for every M customers who agree there will be N customers who disagree. Some of that will then influence purchasing decisions, in either direction. So a company needs to have worked out which way the wind is blowing.

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You opinion is completely invalid. You clearly have no clue about geopolitics and strategic offensive / defensive maneuvers.

It is unfortunate that you have been pill pulled into believing any comments at geopolitics and strategic offensive and defensive maneuvers have anything to with racism. Here is a quick lesson for you:

  • The world is in a perpetual war at the following levels: personal, family, group, city, state and country.

  • The war never ends. Ever.

  • The war has always been the same and always be the same and it is always fought on two fronts: land/resources and whose genetic group controls those resources. There are only two choice in this war: you and your genetic group choose to survive your you decide to die. There are no other options.

  • In the past this war was fought on the battlefield, and to some extent it still is. In the modern world the war if fought through propaganda, information warfare, immigration and strategic commercial asset allocation.

One of the things that most people don’t understand until they begin their journey into any of the rabbit holes is that they all exit at the same place. Once you get out and see the real game the world is playing there is no return from Wonderland. Things are forever fake and surreal but you learn the most important lesson: humans don’t have free will or opinions. Their opinions are provided to them on a menu by those that control the information sources and humans simply choose from that menu. Those that create the menu don’t care if you choose american versus chinese versus christian, as long as you choose from their menu they control the rules of the matrix and you are theirs.

That is to say, everything you posted is not your opinion. It is nonsense fed to you by those in control and you are just a parrot in their cage.

It’s a harsh critique, but I am the only one here that will tell you the truth. Everyone else is afraid. You won’t understand any of it now, but you will in the near future as the West slowly lurches toward total civil war.

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You contradict yourself by sharing this, which is an opinion.

But also, in response to OP, stating,

The Chinese government is oppressive and bad. Saying that is not racist. To the contrary, the Chinese government is racist, as shown by their continual efforts to destroy minority people and cultures within China: for example, Tibetans and Uyghurs, among others.

Yes, western governments (e.g. USA) are also often oppressive and bad, but not as bad as the Chinese government. How can you possibly tell? Simple: in, for example, USA, you are free to express, in any form you want, that the government is oppressive and bad; in China, people live in fear of reprisal if they speak against the Chinese government.

Everyone who still has the freedom to do so, should continue speaking out against the racist Chinese government.

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You lost me at “no clue about.” Bye.
~s

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A country with the possibility of killing kids in schools with heavy weapons not “just” once a year or the racist private prisons or the attack against Assange or Snowden. The way of doing bad things is different, but on similar levels.

And even if I would say “Europe do things better” … we also let people die that comes from Afrika, sell war weapons to “the bad” and support things against people like Assange or Snowden (else they could get asylum here like every other government haunted person) etc.

About topic itself:
I also was seeing what Sharon said, but I didn’t care a lot. Librem USA has the pro of more local products and all it’s benefits. But if I got spied by China or USA makes no difference to people of Europe. And we have an agreement that US-companies are not allowed to transfer data to USA because of surveillance laws (works partly, but no chance against whole big tech right now).

I was buying L5 not to get rid of surveillance by china, but against surveillance of big tech from USA (and own government) and therefore I don’t care a lot of marketing speech about bad China. :smile: As US-company I can understand why they’re not too harsh with the USA.

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IMO:
That’s a given. The OP isn’t about people per se, it’s about companies using their logo to leverage public opinion regardless of what country. We get lambasted every minute of every day with propaganda. I’d like to see one forum, one web site I can read through that isn’t trying to get me to hate or dislike or approve of, via innuendo, or double reversing propaganda any person, thing or country.

My point was, still is, I saw, …“Meta/Facebook, ByteDance/ TikTok (China)” and ilk more than once.
The only thing I’m sorry about my post, is that no one flamed me for not believing the earth is :upside_down_face:

It would appear at first thet the author whose articles I referred to, did’;t care what FB, ByteDance, or even mention Twitter, or Youtube country. Just china’s TicTok.

If China is all as bad as some say, then why are those people so at home with half the products in their home has the name China on it somewhere.

I asked, at some point, what the difference is between the $800. L5, and the $2,000 L5.
Are we ready to pay 3 - 4 times as much for locally made T-shirts, show laces, computer chips, clothes, shoes, spice jars, and much more has something to do with China.

I think companies should take a learned lesson from Anheuser-Busch products and never, ever take sides with anything political. As soon as they do, they have irked the ire of the other customers.

Minorities are running things. And things are changing too fast. So fast that hate is most likely the most common feeling of all.
~s

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IMO:
I don’t think it is the job of Purism to speak out against anything or anyone. I believe it’s own ToA has rules about that, rules it broke. Mind you, we all get away with skirting the rules here. :wink:
As soon as a company gets political, it loses a part of their customers, or, leave with a bad taste in their mouth.
The article didn’t target Meta/Facebook, just mentioned them, or whatever the others were. The author leaned on China. That’s all it was about. But it hit a nerve by some obvious anti-China no-matter-what good people.
China is ~almost a mirror of the USA,.or vice versa.
ECHO: Slavery, bigotry, racism, and most prisoners country of the world is not supposed to be taken as a compliment.
China has about 1.412 Billion. The USA about 331.9 Million.
China crime rate pre capita 0.53 (2018 and declining every year from 2014)
USA crime rate per capita 395.7 (2021 and on decline since 1990)

My reason for the stats (best available), is to show that every country has it’s closet full of skeletons.

~s
~ Almost only counts in horseshoes and grenades.

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Yes. I considered who to post to about it. I still don’t know whose who. I thought of you, Amarok, and few others from the list I looked through. I also thought to make it private to avoid personal opinions about China rather than the topic. As for Rex himself (I hope he is OK with that), I wasn’t sure where he fit into the higher anarchy. So, I threw my thoughts into the recycle corner of my brain, and went for the throat.

My bad, as usual, :wink:
~s
Can’t get any likes if I can’t like my own posts. Yeesh! :rofl:

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If you stand for anything at all then you should speak out. Clearly Purism stands against surveillance capitalism. That is core business (in my opinion) and therefore needs to be marketed. They are perfectly entitled to speak out against it. It is not a stretch to go beyond surveillance capitalism to surveillance in its many other forms - and speak out against those too. Chinese surveillance is next level.

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Neither do I know, but if they are his words then he is accountable for them. He can take the feedback or defend his choice of words as he sees fit.

Your post was too long. :wink: Give me a reason to agree with some of what you wrote and a reason to dis‍agree with some of what you wrote … and you won’t get a “like”. That’s just me though.

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Well its quite simple. China is an authoritarian state. Most western countries at least have the illusion of an election. Meanwhile China basically has a dictator who carted out the previous president on live television while changing rules to keep the current president in power. Although many western countries are trying their very best to be like China it seems nowadays.

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The USA is spying on germany, its government and its citizens. Big time. This is no secret and it has been going on for decades. It’s disgusting.

A few examples, out of countless other ones:


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All governments spy tom. Kinda obvious. They make movies about it.

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I don’t work for Purism.

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There seems to be a fair bit of Whataboutism in this topic.

The core questions are:

  1. Did China get “slammed” in any posts by Rex M. Lee?
  2. If so, was it justified? (and, again, it is really up to the author to justify it, or recant)

A topic can always be derailed by all sorts of “but XYZ does bad sh*t too” which
a) leads to the topic’s being dragged way off topic into all sorts of other digressions, and
b) often fails to invite anyone to question the “moral equivalence” between what XYZ did and what the original subject did.

In the interests of staying on topic, I will answer the first question.

  1. No, China did not get “slammed”, in my opinion.

So that we can read the actual posts and in context.

The second quote in the OP is from: https://puri.sm/posts/purism-offers-secure-private-voice-data-services-for-smartphone-owners/ (2 mentions of China) - dated 11 May.

The first quote in the OP is from: https://puri.sm/posts/is-advanced-ai-a-reason-to-decouple-from-the-centralized-internet/ (3 mentions of China, and also 1 mention of Russia) - dated 17 May.

If someone doesn’t think that China got “slammed”, we can replace the first question by all sorts of weaker questions like: did China get called out? singled out? etc.

It certainly seems as if China got singled out (other than the additional mention of Russia).

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I can see you perused my post. Reading it provides a better understanding so no one goes off helter skelter to beyond left field.

NO! The “mentions of China” were tied to “TicTok (China)” there were no mentions about Facebook, included in the same sentence, as to it’as country, no country named for ByteDance. Just China. No country’s suggested for the “others” either. Just China.

Here, let me finish that ‘article’ (AKA rant).

The sentence reads:

A professional event teller (no reporters any more) would have written it like this:

That was mentioned in my ‘too long’ post. I think too many read to a point where they have already formulated their retort. I had a opinion about undertones of a article. It is but I wish was just an observation and what I thought of it. Then it was taken out of context and spun up to be about how bad China is. There is a place for that under New Topic.

There is a line that says it all. “Caution, anything you say can and will be taken out of context and used against you in the courts of Social Media.”

Mmm. what ever. It has become a world of more hate than tolerance.

I don’t care what ‘leaders’ think, say, and do about China. That is off topic. IMO

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Thanks, but your’e off topic. China bashing is available via New Topic.

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Why is this in Site Feedback?