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I have seen a lot post talking about how Chinese companies collect US citizens data but I never seen a Chinese person complain about it. Do they think US doesn't have the power to abuse that data?

Really curious

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[-] grue@lemmy.world 19 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Sampling bias from the fact that you're reading posts written in English, not Mandarin.

(By the way, I'm actually not as concerned with Chinese companies collecting my data as I am with American companies doing it, precisely because China doesn't have jurisdiction over me, while the US does. Similarly, I would expect Chinese people to be more afraid of Chinese data collection than they are of US data collection.)

[-] ghodawalaaman@programming.dev 1 points 2 days ago

Actually 小红书 has a in built feature where it automatically translates Mandarin to English so that might not be the issue

[-] Battle_Masker 15 points 2 days ago

Have you been looking for opinions that the Chinese have about foreign entities collecting their data? I haven't, and generally don't, so that's why I haven't heard anything about it

[-] artifex@piefed.social 20 points 2 days ago

Probably for the same reason I'm not concerned about Chinese companies collecting my (US) data -- what the hell are they going to do with it? I already know all the terrible things that my local/national companies and state/federal government are doing with citizens' collected data; there's real, well-known risk there. Compared to local actors, foreign ones are not nearly as incentivized to do anything with it.

[-] safesyrup@feddit.org 31 points 2 days ago

Most naive comment i have read today. Foreign countries do heavily influence politics based on collected data. So does the US, so does China, so does Russia.

[-] artifex@piefed.social 12 points 2 days ago

Unless you're going to spend the rest of your life in a cave somewhere (an increasingly good-looking option), then it's a legitimate matter of perspective imo. Every activity carries some inherent risk, and my current viewpoint is that domestic entities are the worse option compared to foreign ones. Will China/Russia try to use US data to influence US elections? Of course. But you know what? So do US-based political operatives. So does Meta and Microsoft. The difference is that Meta and Microsoft have unfiltered access to our data (we give it to them), and the direct ability to lobby/bribe our politicians. Might a Chinese company try to sway my opinion on some Chinese/other foreign topic? Yes, of course. But so does every big tech company, every cable news operator, and so many millions of US-run websites. The domestic operatives have more access and are capable of doing more damage.

[-] voxthefox 5 points 2 days ago

Yeah but this is socialized risk (political influence) for personal gain (access to the apps)

A vast majority of the public do not see themselves as vulnerable to propaganda targeted at themselves, or at least they dont see it happen in real time. So the risk is abstract to them at best but more likely seen as non-existent, while the gain is immediate and concrete.

[-] thermogel@lemmy.ml 3 points 2 days ago

Because they're probably dealing with their version of surveillance from CCP. It would be interesting to hear conversations from privacy experts and advocates over there, and share experiences of what we're all dealing with.

this post was submitted on 08 Apr 2026
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