I would never claim that China is performing less surveillance of its citizens. They definitely are a world leader in this, in a very bad way.

However, mindless commenters spamming social credit demerits on any post that mentions China only serve to feed the exaggerations and inaccuracies.

Fine, what national security obligations are US-based social media companies meeting that TikTok/ByteDance is not?

Like what? What are American companies required to do to protect your privacy that TikTok doesn’t do because they are a Chinese company?

There has been a widespread misconception that China operates a nationwide and unitary social credit "score" based on individuals' behavior, leading to punishments if the score is too low. Media reports in the West have sometimes exaggerated or inaccurately described this concept.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Credit_System

Conservative thinktanks (National Center for Public Policy Research) be conservative thinktanks. Despite all the other major corps rolling back DEI programs, it’s nice to see the likes of Apple and Costco pushing back against the right wing nutjobs. Not sure if they’re doing so for profits or morals, but I’ll take either at this point.

Why should my tax dollars be used to bail out someone who bought a multimillion dollar home in a high risk area? Why should home owners get all the profits from owning but get to skirt the risks?

I try to stay practical about it. A screwdriver manufacturer is not an arms dealer. But if your work only has value in the violent world of war, then I think it’s worth asking yourself if you’re comfortable with that. I don’t always disparage people that are, even though I certainly couldn’t stomach it.

My rule of thumb is to ask whether the defense industry is the only customer for the product. The company I work for does sell some to defense, but the products were not designed with defense as the primary purpose. It still doesn’t feel great to me, but I’m finding it increasingly difficult to avoid defense funding nowadays.

That’s a harder question to answer and depends more on your own moral compass. Do you believe that having better defensive capabilities empowers the users of your creation to feel safe enough to do evil things? I certainly don’t think you could absolve the makers of anti-missile systems who supply militaries that are committing genocide.

Doesn’t make you any less responsible when the fruits of your labor are used to murder civilians.

Why do we “need” to change laws to artificially inflate the price of cars? Don’t we give enough money and government control to Ford and GM?

That particular Snickers bar was briefly worth $1,000.