The crazy thing for me is the lack of reason around talking about China and the West.
The article basically says: "China is bad because it sells technology irresponsibly" (while implying the west does it responsibly)
yogthos points out that this is wrong, since there is ample evidence of the US and it's companies selling repressive technology to repressive regimes.
Then people start attacking his argument by saying "but IN CHINA it is worse". And there are a lot of these comments despite the fact that the article, nor the comment, are talking about 'where it's worse'.
If it was any other line of reasoning, this wouldn't be happening on hacker news.
I think this particular set of responses is talking not about selling repressive technologies, but about the state of surveillance in those home countries.
That is my interpretation of yogthos' comment wasn't that there was ample evidence of the U.S. selling repressive technology to repressive regimes (FWIW indeed there is), but rather that it's rich for Western residents to criticize Chinese surveillance (within China) given that the West has essentially the same surveillance within its respective countries, just hidden a lot better. Hence there is no moral high ground for the West to stand on.
My own take is that I don't care about moral high ground or no moral high ground, nor am I even sure I'm criticizing the Chinese government per se. I do think the state of surveillance is a factor in China's current economic success (in fact that's one reason I find it rather terrifying from a personal perspective since that makes it attractive as a model to follow) and that's done wonders for a lot of people in China (though certainly not everyone).
I do think though that the situation is very different between the two areas (certainly at least China and the U.S.), to the degree that saying the two systems are essentially the same, just with different amounts of public acknowledgment from their respective governments, is glossing over too many important differences.
The article basically says: "China is bad because it sells technology irresponsibly" (while implying the west does it responsibly)
yogthos points out that this is wrong, since there is ample evidence of the US and it's companies selling repressive technology to repressive regimes.
Then people start attacking his argument by saying "but IN CHINA it is worse". And there are a lot of these comments despite the fact that the article, nor the comment, are talking about 'where it's worse'.
If it was any other line of reasoning, this wouldn't be happening on hacker news.