I say good. I'm in favour of all anti-chinese policies. What do our resident pardians make of this?

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-53686507

For the global Chinese community, WeChat is more than a chat app: it is often the primary means of staying in touch with friends and family back home.

So the decision last week by US President Donald Trump to order American firms to stop doing business with WeChat has sent shockwaves rippling out.

"WeChat has become the 'it' tool for Chinese-speaking people, no matter where you are around the world," one Shanghai resident told the BBC.

The billion-user app is primarily a social networking platform but can be used for a host of daily activities like shopping, gaming and even dating.

But WeChat has a less innocent side, and is seen a key instrument of China's internal surveillance apparatus.

A Wuhan doctor, Li Wenliang, was reprimanded by police last December after he sent messages to colleagues on the app, warning them about China's initial coronavirus outbreak. Toronto-based research group Citizen Lab also found WeChat had been censoring information about Covid-19.

good, but i’m sure the usual suspects will go on and on about ‘xenophobia’ or whatever

A country which unabashedly collects people's data (including data of foreigners) is banning applications that allow other countries to do the same, and Americans seem to be perfectly fine with this.

I wonder how it got to this point, in a country where gun rights exist so that people can overthrow tyrannic governments.

ahem

fuck china

jokes on you, i shot my iPhone.

while i agree that the concerns about chinese spying are incredibly hypocritical considering american companies' (and government's) collecting and handling of personal data, i still think it's a net positive to reign at least one side in. yes, the virtue signaling is real, the motives are highly corrupt and self-dealing, and it's not based on any genuine principle - but that doesn't make tik tok or wechat worth protecting.

there are other means to communicate with your family. i'm sure this sucks for many good people, but pretty much everything that hurts the CCP (and doesn't escalate disproportionally) is good for the rest of the world.

*China asshoe

Good, now close Walmarts.

Fuck China

Sucks for Chinese people who are out of the country and want to keep up with their families.

However, if it's really used as a spy tool as much as it's said, then I understand why the ban is necessary.

The company that owns WeChat is Tencent, which also owns all of League of Legends, 80% of Path of Exile, 40% of Epic Games who own Fortnite, etc. etc. so this could have far reaching implications in the electronic space in general.