It is high time we got used to companies being fined a reasonable fraction of their revenue. And TikTok's global revenue last year alone was estimated at $20 billion to $26 billion [1].
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/17/technology/tiktok-ban-byt...
€530m is ~$600m, so this fine is at least 6% of their relevant 2024 revenue, and likely substantially higher. I don't know enough about their business practices to know if that's a big enough chunk to make up for what they gain by cheating, but it's definitely not a wrist slap.
Never mind, I forgot, Western Intelligence orgs are trusted sources of truth and definitely wouldn't spy on me or lie to me. My Bad!
Calling this "double standards" or hypocrisy isn't technically wrong but it's also very tedious. Of course countries have a different policy towards their own spies and foreign spies. Why should anybody ever expect otherwise?
Personally I don’t like that the US government runs mass surveillance against US citizens.
Also mass surveillance and spies are related but have some differences. The US can run mass surveillance through US corporations without spies, though I’m sure they also have spies.
Pretty bad.
You mean besides forced divestment under threat of an outright ban?
Because I consider TikTok's situation in the US very seriously bad.
https://www.axios.com/2025/05/04/trump-tiktok-ban-extension-...
Other fines? Going by amount, it seems somewhere in the top 20 of highest single case fines of all time. Top 3 if we just look at privacy fines in Europe.
> It is high time we got used to companies being fined a reasonable fraction of their revenue
How does "getting used to it" changes the classification? It's still a massive amount, even it such numbers are becoming more common. And especially as they should not become common.
Except state actors.
If global revenue is $20B and we assume 20% profitability, that's $4B, and so this fine is 15% of global profit.
That's a gigantic fine.
You also have to remember that tons of these regulations are vague and unclear and massively open to interpretation, and that companies can genuinely believe they are complying, and their lawyers agree, but then judges still rule otherwise, because it's ultimately just a matter of opinion because of the vagueness.
You also have to remember that individual countries fining on global revenue runs the risk of fines "duplicating" each other for the same or similar behavior, again bankrupting a corporation when the goal should be to change behavior.
Nah, hollywood accounting is alive and well in tech. Especially in Ireland, where plenty of tech companies are being "charged" slightly absurd fees for services or trademark licenses by subsidiaries or parents in other countries to avoid making a profit on their tax filings.
Yes you can certainly shift things around at the country level. But when you add up all the subsidiaries together in the single global corporation (the publicly traded one when it exists), the numbers are the numbers. Income minus expenses is a single, stable number that you can't fudge.
If a company is taking £billion out of a nation's spending power, and doing so with nefarious practices, that's what should be fined.
If bankruptcy is a worry, then comapnies shouldn't fly so close to the sun when adopting immoral practices.
Income is the only reliable thing you can tax. Trying to calculate profit for international companies is an absolute joke which is massively inefficient. Why an Earth should governments employ entire teams to second guess internal bookkeeping?
If you want to take a billion from a nation's citizens, better be sure you're providing a legal service. I mean, are drug dealers punished on profit?
> Income is the only reliable thing you can tax.
Then why does every country on earth tax corporate profit, not income?
> Why an Earth should governments employ entire teams to second guess internal bookkeeping?
Because that's how you make sure companies pay their taxes? Because it's a net gain to employ those teams because they find much more tax cheating than it costs to employ them?
> If a company is taking £billion out of a nation's spending power
Companies don't. They take cash and in return provide services that are even more valuable. The entire idea of free trade is that it's positive-sum for all.
This is the equivalent of the famous Babbage anecdote, but for the law. That's absolutely not how the law or regulatory compliance works, not in Europe at least.
If there weren't vagueness and shades of gray, then appeals courts would barely need to exist.
Finland for example will fine you 100k for speeding if your income is high enough. In the UK fines range from 50% of your weekly income (band A) to 600% of your weekly income. Someone on £500 a week income and spending that on housing, food etc, could pay £3k. Someone with the same offence on £50k a week would be fined £300k.
Individuals are also taxed on all their income, whereas corporations are taxed only on their profit.
Corporations are effectively intermediaries in production chains. Profit is the only meaningful metric, how much value do they add. Individuals are at the "end" of the chain, how much value do they consume.
The proper analogy of a fine being based on income for an individual, is for a fine being based on profit for a corporation.
> simply bankrupt a corporation, which is not what you want if your goal is to change behavior.
Yes it is. Nuke the corporation and burn all the investors. This will teach a lesson.
The goal of punishment is correction of behavior, not destruction.
By your logic, we ought to apply the death penalty for stealing a candy bar. Because that will teach a lesson too, no?
Deterrence: Destruction of the corporation serves as a lesson to the rest of society, to scare them away from doing the same.
Incapacitation: A corporation which no longer exists cannot reoffend.
Retribution: The deserve nothing less.
Denunciation: Overlaps with deterrence; gives people the benifit of knowing they live in a society where wrongdoing is punished. Suppresses vigilantism.
Restoration: The funds retrieved by bankrupting and liquidating the corporation can, at least in principle, go towards undoing the harm the corporation caused.
As for stealing candy bars, I think there is merit to going light on children. But corporations? Corporations are not children. They aren't even people. They deserve no mercy.
What?
Corporations provide us with valuable products and services we rely on. They employ people.
Corporations aren't evil, as you seem to think. Like people, they make mistakes, because they're made of people.
Your attitude is sociopathic, quite honestly. It scares me.
This is explicitly not a concern under GDPR. The "one-stop shop" mechanism means that all issues across the EU get funneled to the lead supervisory authority, which is always Ireland because that's where EU subsidiaries are headquarters for tax purposes.
Companies don't protect user data. They store, silo, and secure user data for as little cost as possible. No meaningful consequences means they will continue to harvest and disperse user data at an increasing rate until we get serious about requiring responsible practices and accountability.
The risk of being bankrupted is what will keep a corporation behaving well.
Penalties should be fatal to a corporation. If Microsoft or some random new startup had to follow the same regulations and protect user data to some bare minimum standard, and we apply the same degree of penalty, rather than some arbitrarily large fine which the mega corps are happy to pay, we can affect behavior.
The big companies have teams of lawyers who effectively (and sometimes explicitly) collude with the beancounters and MBAs to enshittify their products and services and milk every last drop of revenue, even exploiting the data of non-customers who just happened to encounter some peripheral surveillance apparatus.
We need to protect individual data privacy and restrict anything except informed consensual tracking. We need to mandate ephemerality and basic security standards. We need to make violations of these regulations lethal to a company, and impose mandatory minimum jail time for c-suite offenders.
Anything short of this results in overt, blatant, repeated violations of the laws by the big companies because they're happy to pay $5m or even $50m if it means they extract $500m more revenue and lock out any potential disruptive competition.
This would effectively mean that giant platforms which cannot responsibly store and manage user data would not be able to continue operation at the scale they're at. It would mean fragmentation and decentralization of various services, disincentivizing monopoly, improving market health, driving product and service progress.
Without harsh and extreme consequences that are as meaningfully painful to FAANG sized megacorps as they are to a one man startup, the problems won't ever be resolved. FAANG and tech outpaced regulation, resulting in effectively the total pwnage of data for more or less every living human on the planet. This is unacceptable, and the only way it changes is for the US to drop the hammer on the exploitive and irresponsible practices that led us here.
Let these asshats go bankrupt. We don't need Meta or Alphabet or Amazon. They're not entitled to screw the world for profit. If they can't operate ethically and responsibly, then they shouldn't be allowed to operate at all.
1. The goal of the fines is to act as a deterrent and to encourage companies to get back into compliance.
2. The arbiters aren't operating in a vacuum. Bankrupting services that the citizens of a country rely on is unpopular and not in service of goal #1.
3. We know that this is the case because Uber and other ride sharing services were able to violate the law and convince voters to have the law changed to permit these services.
4. Fines impacting net revenue are dealt with seriously by companies when they are adequately large, e.g. 10% of net revenue. Compliance departments are not funded as a job creation or charity exercise. When companies report earnings, these fines frequently determine whether earnings guidance is achieved. This impacts company officers' compensation.
tl;dr, you passionately believe in these views, but it is not one held by the majority. Your minority view should not be the basis of public policy.
That's financial risk.
For criminal risk, a change to existing laws would have to be made; they currently carry only civil penalties to the organizations involved. I think that those laws would be popular. They would have to be carefully crafted to narrowly target behavior without unacceptably impairing capital investment and business formation. That would negatively impact the quality of life of the countries' residents.
No need to go bankrupt, just force-issue more shares, diluting the existing shareholders. These are then sold on the open market and the revenue goes to paying the fine.
Only if the share price drops to zero does the company then go bankrupt.
So the end result is that potentially hostile countries can run vast spying operations for a long time with no major consequences. As long as they do it with funny videos with annoying soundtracks.
Meta has had multiple rounds of €xxxM fines already from the EU.
That's like asking why can I buy things from facebook marketplace but can't use my American credit card on vk.com?
Look at a company like Tesla whose stock is super high but profits low. A percentage of profits wouldn't mater to them. But government control via stock would get their attention and the attention of stock owners real quick.
Now we all know it is not normal but then it should be handled with a lawsuit/law enforcement. Don’t think any organisation is going to do that far alone.
And you can't really just look at the 3%, you have to factor in what benefits (money, political sway, whatever) they received in exchange for the data. For simplicity, if they got paid, I don't know, $150M/yr from China for the data and they've been sending data for (at least) 4 years... They would have made a profit despite the fine!
($150M is obviously pulled out of my ass, just as a demonstration of how when you look at the fines from a bigger context, it might just be a line item on the expense report that's worth taking the risk on)
I've always found this viewpoint a bit childish, with little regard for how businesses work IRL (even the ignoring the obvious profits vs revenue part). Reminds me of how every comment section re: some crime story is people calling for death penalty or how a mob should kill them first. Justice is never that simple.
I understand people want businesses they don't like to simply not exist anymore but that doesn't mean it's rational to throw up insane fines because you spent 2min doing back of a napkin math of revenue * (imaginary deterrent %)
> For simplicity, if they got paid, I don't know, $150M/yr from China for the data and they've been sending data for (at least) 4 years... They would have made a profit despite the fine!
The Chinese government doesn't need to pay companies to exfiltrate data from companies within their reach.
It's childish to view fines as a percent of revenue rather than an absolute number...? That's certainly an odd take.
Fines are meant to be a deterrent. If you fine Microsoft $50,000 they will literally not notice. If you fine my locally owned convenience store $50,000 they will probably be forced to close. It's absurd to ignore that.
>I understand people want businesses they don't like to simply not exist anymore
I did not say this, or anything close to it.
My entire point was that looking at a number in a vacuum and saying "that's massive" or "that's not that big" is silly. What's "massive" to some companies is a tiny blip on the radar of other companies.
I cannot understand anyone who thinks looking at fines in context is "childish".
Not looking at fines in context is something only the largest and richest of companies would be a proponent for, because it would make the fines absolutely meaningless for them while being effective against anyone smaller.
To someone on $500k a year, $1k is a night out in vegas.
To a billionaire, $1k is toilet paper.
By "EC" [1] standards. If you not pay for the product "EC", you are the product. Microsoft, Google, Apple, Amazon pay good money to "EC".
[1] European commision.
And in terms of jurisdiction - it's a bit like you visiting Ireland on holiday and committing a crime - and then arguing they have no jurisdiction over you as you are only there for 2 weeks.
It's ridiculous.
A more accurate version of your analogy would be Ireland choosing to punish a tourist for littering with a dramatically higher penalty than native Irish would face based on their New York salary.
EDIT: here's more about the general mechanism I'm referring to https://archive.is/0hcAK
And yes, everything a multi-billion dollar company does is indeed the government's business - and the people's business. We have a right to regulate them as we see fit.
Ireland offers a favorable tax and regulatory environment, within the EU, so this punishment is not only Ireland’s business. It represents the EU.
How much value did tiktok derive from flaunting these privacy laws? It's not entirely unlikely that it was less than 530M€.
The law does say global revenues, and I think that is a deterrent to treating fines as just a cost of doing business.
If their global revenue was $1000, and the local revenue is $1, fining them $0.10 isn't going to help much.
If you do business in Europe, there's a bunch of (good!) privacy regulations you have to comply with. One of these is that you're not allowed to transfer the data to a jurisdiction that doesn't follow equivalent protections to the GDPR[0]. TikTok transferred European user data to their Chinese servers, which is a pretty obvious no-go, since the Chinese government is an authoritarian watchdog that inherently can't guarantee these protections (as the GDPR also applies to transferring data to the government.)
Ireland has jurisdiction because the EU offers something called the "one stop shop" concept, where a foreign company can declare that they have EU headquarters in a specific member state, and from that point on the only EU regulations they have to directly worry about are how they're implemented in that country in specific[1]. Every major tech company is therefore in Ireland because the country is small enough to essentially steamroll local politicians with lobby money, leading to very lax enforcement until the EU starts applying pressure.[2]
[0]: This also causes issues with data transfers to the US, and in the most extreme interpretation, makes it so that you probably can't do business with both Europe and the US at the same time in the first place. This is because of the CLOUD act, which goes across jurisdictions and is something the US government can use to compel any service provider to hand over data.
[1]: Of course, a country can still have it's own laws that a company can run afoul of on top of that.
[2]: Other countries with this issue are Luxembourg (Fintech companies love Luxembourg because they can just hire all the good lawyers, meaning you can't negotiate legal disputes there effectively) and the Netherlands (which is a EU-based tax haven for large corporations that aren't in either sector.)
No, it's because Ireland had a very low corporation tax with the strategy of becoming the preferred HQ for foreign companies in the EU.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporation_tax_in_the_Republi...
"By 2018, Ireland had received the most U.S. § Corporate tax inversions in history, and Apple was over one–fifth of Irish GDP. Academics rank Ireland as the largest tax haven; larger than the Caribbean tax haven system."
Malta is (along with Gibraltar) a preferred destination for gambling operators.
Then Brexit happened and they just moved to the nearest available option.
It's more about taxes and an efficient well-understood legal system (similar to the Delaware advantage on the latter). While the DPC used to be kinda useless, it has somewhat gotten its act together, and today issues most of the big GDPR fines. If you were trying to specifically avoid GDPR scrutiny, you'd locate elsewhere.
At the base level, I suppose my point was about morality, but my intent was about rationality. A country can write laws that it can take all the money a company earns across the entire globe, but it's not a very reasonable position, IMO.
I can tell you Russia’s “fine” is not reasonable because it’s not enforceable and exists to be purely performative. It’s not the same thing as Ireland putting a fine based on global revenue but still within their power to enforce.
> The Irish national watchdog serves as TikTok’s lead data privacy regulator in the 27-nation EU because the company’s European headquarters is based in Dublin.
This is likely under the GDPR, whose penalties are based on global revenue. If TikTok doesn't like it, it is of course free to cease activity in Europe (strictly speaking the GDPR also protects European citizens outside of Europe, but in practice if a company doesn't operate in Europe there is little that the EU can do).
[0]: https://www.barrons.com/articles/trump-campaign-donations-ti...
[1]: https://www.msnbc.com/the-reidout/reidout-blog/tiktok-ceo-tr...
[2]: https://mezha.media/en/2025/01/17/tiktok-to-be-the-main-spon...
Seems pretty dumb if you're a Chinese Propaganda wings to fund foreign political opponents who literally want your society to fail. But I guess if Western Intelligence sources tell you they are a propaganda wing IT MUST BE TRUE!
It's worth nothing that the parent comment didn't call them a "communist" propaganda arm and you seem to have added that so you could say it wouldn't make sense for "communists" to donate to RIGHT WING politicians, which is a rather weak argument that ignores decades of geopolitics.
TikTok shops, advertising, culture all are very capitalistic and I don't get any of these claims, nor has there ever been any proof outside of trust me bro from western establishment types. Their business model is very capitalistic, and they are very good at that game. They simply want to serve the most popular content to as many people as possible, sorry to those who's favorite content is off-putting and rude to most people (racists/misogynist/transphobic content). Just because TikTok does not want to serve that content, (and trust they still do), this does not make them a propaganda machine. It makes them not idiots at running a social media business... How much revenue does Parler, X, Truth Social have these days? TT makes 4-6x all those SM companies combined.
€ is.
For example, in German it's usually written postfix, but in Dutch it's usually prefix.
> Placement of the sign varies. Countries have generally continued the style used for their former currencies. In those countries where previous convention was to place the currency sign before the figure, the euro sign is placed in the same position (e.g., €3.50).[7] In those countries where the amount preceded the national currency sign, the euro sign is again placed in that relative position (e.g., 3,50 €).
> In English, the euro sign – like the dollar sign ⟨$⟩ and the pound sign ⟨£⟩ – is usually placed before the figure, unspaced,[8] the reverse of usage in many other European languages
> The European Union's Interinstitutional Style Guide (for EU staff) states that the euro sign should be placed in front of the amount without any space in English, but after the amount in most other languages
GDPR fines can be very significant, the rules allow penalties either as a percentage of a company’s global revenue or as a large fixed amount whichever is higher. This ensures even the biggest companies feel the impact. Plus, these fines are public and transparent. Every big fine is announced and reported, which means there’s a reputational hit alongside the financial one. That publicity is intentional: it adds pressure on companies to improve, making the fines a real deterrent rather than just a quiet cost of doing business.
It’s also worth clarifying where the fine money goes. It doesn’t just line Ireland’s pockets. In practice, the money goes into the EU budget. If Ireland collects a hefty fine, that amount is basically offset against what Ireland would normally contribute to the EU budget. If people in other EU countries were affected by the violation, those countries can request a portion of the fine as well. In short, Ireland isn’t profiting solo from these fines, it’s just the point of collection because that’s where the companies are based.
Interestingly, some comments here call the fines 'insane' (too harsh) while others say they’re 'a slap on the wrist' (too lenient). That contradiction highlights the misconceptions around GDPR fines. In reality, these penalties are meant to be serious enough to matter, but proportionate to a company’s size and the offence. They’re not intended to destroy a business, but they’re definitely not nothing either, they serve as a real consequence to encourage companies to respect people’s privacy.
It should be noted that this is used to establish a maximum fine.
Then the regulator can fine at X% of the maximum fine.
It should be noted, that this is established to avoid that individual EU member states fine too little to attract business (Like Ireland has previously had issues on re. too little taxing)
Ireland paying x less dues is practically equivalent to them earning x money; it does just line Ireland's pockets. (Of course this is just the portion that isn't requested by other EU countries)
This is roughly what I'd expect. The EU does very little law enforcement directly, most is done through national regulators.
This is the reverse of the Apple situation, where the EU fined the Irish government for not collecting enough taxes from Apple.
This seems to be a fine issued in the Republic of Ireland which is not part of the UK (but, unlike the UK, is still part of the EU).
Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but the income from the money eventually flows into the overall EU budget, so it's like we (EU residents) get a tiny rebate on our taxes. But seems to also depend on each country, Spain is somewhat unique in that the DPA seems to keep it themselves.
Yeah, sorry if I was unclear, I didn't mean that residents would literally have a line item on their tax bill because of the fines. But since the fines go into the overall budget, it's like the budget grows (in a very small amount) without people having higher taxes.
Don't know specifically about this scenario, but I've never seen a government's general revenues account treated like this. Governments rarely pay "dividends" - unless you're a targeted voting block they decide to go after.
Ireland is a small market. It'll take forever to make 530m in profit in Ireland for Tiktok.
The verdict is for the entire EU, they'd have to exit the EU market.
Meanwhile this is a very interesting read on their corporate structure: https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/13247/defau...
"On corporate structure specifically, there is a misconception that TikTok UK is a subsidiary of ByteDance's operations in China. This is not the case. TikTok UK is owned by global parent company ByteDance Ltd, incorporated in the Cayman Islands"
.. now, everyone talks about China as a global enemy of freedom and accountability, but I think Grand Cayman is underestimated as a bad actor or protector thereof.
Who knows how this data they are harvesting at scale will be exploited by AI in the future. It is pretty scary.
e.g. does it go into funding data privacy related activities/work?
So fines like this normally go into the general pot of government spending.
In the UK, data breach fines are spent on running the enforcement organisation - with the remainder going back to the state. https://ico.org.uk/about-the-ico/who-we-are/how-we-are-funde...
The EU budget itself doesn't really change so it's not "more money" in a practical sense
(I realised I might've skipped a step but this fine is EU wide, not Ireland specific, the fine gets paid to the EU IIRC)
lol, ok. Chinese intelligence services must be completely asleep at the wheel (doubtful)
Although I suspect US regulators won't like this approach because they want to syphon EU users data up as much as China.
There's not countries. There's not borders. There's just wealth. Concentrated wealth.
And FB, Insta, Google, Youtube, ..?
The only difference with TikTok is that it is based in china.
We need services that respect user privacy and are not a longterm security threat.
China is an expansionist dictatorship. It would be ridiculous to suggest it is more trustworthy than the US.
The US is actually acting rationally IMO. People just look at headlines and do not dig into the reasons. You might not agree with the reasoning, but it is not irrational. For example the tariffs clearly follow from arguments made by Trump's appointees (such as Bessent and Marin) even before the election, and definitely before being appointed.
One of the big problem with the US suddenly becoming so adversarial (whether rationally so or not) is that the choice for Europe may be to choose between the lesser of 2 evils, which in Europe's eyes could very well end up being China. China at least tend to behave consistently and predictably over a long term. The US radically changing behaviour every 4 years, and now even multiple times within a 100 day span, is just really really difficult to deal with. Not to mention making direct threats to European countries and generally working to oppose European interests.
China never threatened to annex portions of EU countries, unlike the US.
If anything, China is definitely more reliable, as its only disputes with EU are on trade, not anything ideological or that threatens the integrity of each party.
China might be more reliable than the US right now, but ideologically they are further away from the EU than the US I think.
EU has issues with human rights violations regularly happening in China. China has even sanctioned European politicians voicing critique.
Why is the EU judging when they still violate human rights themselves?
I think when Europeans criticize China for not having the same values as them, they should learn some history about how European powers tried to tear China apart and take advantage of it. Start with the photo of Austria-Hungary, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United States and the United Kingdom forces inside the Forbidden City.[1]
Perhaps China not having the same values of European powers is a good thing in terms of overall peace?
I would love to hear from EU citizens on why they should be the judge of all human moral values when their countries have arguably done more collectively to disturb the peace of others in the last 300 years than any country in Asia.
[0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fiD24uEvY1U
[1]https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/50adfa2ae4b0cc...
> Perhaps China not having the same values of European powers is a good thing in terms of overall peace?
I fail to see why that could be the case. Why would different values support peace?
> I would love to hear from EU citizens on why they should be the judge of all human moral values when their countries have arguably done more collectively to disturb the peace of others in the last 300 years than any country in Asia.
Again you assume one is only able to voice concerns if you are doing better in a certain area. You are also treating different governments of different times in a country as a single entity. FYI: In most countries there is more than one party in government over time and parties have different values.
I don't think it's valid to say you can only criticize somebody if you are doing better on that front. We should all watch and criticize other countries so humanity can improve.
I fail to see why that could be the case. Why would different values support peace?
Again you assume one is only able to voice concerns if you are doing better in a certain area. You are also treating different governments of different times in a country as a single entity. FYI: In most countries there is more than one party in government over time and parties have different values.
Many (if not most) Europeans think it is perfectly fine when they criticise other countries; but when people from other countries criticise Europe, these very same Europeans tend to agitatedly accuse these critics of interference in their domestic affairs.
From these Europeans' point of view, humanity progresses in pre-ordained stages, and Europe has already reached the end of history, the pinnacle of human development, and other countries just need to catch up.
> because we've seen what happens when Europe has more power than the rest of the world. It wasn't pretty for the rest of the world.
Indeed. At the height of their power, the Europeans and the Americans colonised, pillaged, plundered, murdered, started wars, and enslaved. This isn't ancient history either; e.g. after World War 2 the French tried to re-colonise Vietnam, fought in a war against the Algerians to prevent them from declaring independence, and has continued meddling in the Sahel States up to the present day, among other atrocities.
And don't get me started about how the IMF has frequently been wielded as an extractive tool by Western nations to exploit impoverished countries in times of desperation. So when the West falsely accuses [0][1] China of debt trap diplomacy, the hypocrisy is palpable.
[0] https://yawboadu.substack.com/i/142330715/is-debt-trap-diplo... [1] https://thediplomat.com/2020/01/the-hambantota-port-deal-myt...
Like who gave the EU the right to be the arbiter of moral values?
Either way, that does not give Europeans higher morals than others.
Edit: I also forgot to mention their human rights violations with regards to the Uyghurs and other minority groups.
I can produce quite a list of human rights violations from the US too, if we are playing this game.
I was not trying to paint China as a happy friendly country. I was just saying that right now China is less of a threat to EU than the US, when those in power in the US numerous times voiced their ideological hatred for Europe
If you don't believe my words and still think people are oppressed in Xinjiang or whatever place, please apply a Chinese visa and visit here. If your visit is short-term, then a visa is not even needed.
Your narratives about China reflect self-projection. Western historical treatment of minorities doesn't mirror our approach. It's like saying Chinese people are too oppressed to afford bread or are forced to pick cotton—ignoring that bread isn't a Chinese staple and cotton-picking doesn't carry any other cultural meanings here.
By the way, if I said capitalism makes Americans too poor to eat rice, wouldn't you find that ridiculous? I'm sure you would, because you guys generally don't eat rice. This projection is exactly what your views about China represent.
Radical islmaists are definitely a thing, but don't you think, the chinese government considers anyone extremist not ok with one party rule?
(I don't expect a honest answer, since you need a vpn to communicate)
And that you don't find information and that your chinese friends don't find know about controversal topic, then this is rather a obvious sign to me, that chinese censorship is working.
This issue is essentially one of trust. If a person cannot be trusted by others, then even if they list facts, others won't believe them. Therefore, even if the Chinese government proves that every extremist is a real one, the West will still believe there are innocent people wrongfully accused among them. I think only mutual communication and firsthand witnessing can eliminate trust issues. According to this webpage[1], if you are a citizen of those listed countries, you can visit China for 30 days without needing a visa.
[1]: https://bio.visaforchina.cn/MAN3_ZH/tongzhigonggao/187866261...
VPNs and encrypted messaging apps like Telegram are technically forbidden but practically tolerated. This selective enforcement extends to politically sensitive topics. While the Tiananmen Square events of 1989 remain officially censored, most Chinese citizens know about them through VPN access. Other historical events like the Cultural Revolution are not cencored and are actually taught in schools.
About me, I have studied in the U.S. and lived extensively in China, so I guess, from your standard, I'm one of the least brainwashed people in China? I know lots of cencored information but none of them relates to Xinjiang opperession. Therefore, as an educated person who lived in U.S. and China, I can confidently state that reported oppressions in Xinjiang are false narratives.
You also talked about one-party rule. Oh c'mon, a lot of people, including more than 50 minority groups, dislike the one-party rule. It's meaningless for the government to oppress one specific group.
Extremists face detainment in re-education camps for two specific reasons: First, their radical beliefs exceed public tolerance—unlike most Muslims, they engage in violence. Second, they combine religious extremism with separatist ambitions. These interventions target violent extremism and territorial separatism specifically, not related to the one-party rule. Furthermore, the number of extremists is very small. I don't think they constitute a large portion in Uyghurs. So it's not millions of extremists, I think it's at most thousands.
You may heard lots of such fake news from BBC, CNN, NYT newspaper, etc, and these media outlets function as propaganda tools. I can give you an evidence: BBC and CNN used to report a lot Chinese human rights violations. But during the Trump administration, they magically fliped to support China and praise China a lot. This dramatic shift proves that they are political tools, or at least part-time political tools when speaking of China, that simply convey the message what they're ordered to convey.
If Western critics truly wanted to challenge China and make Chinese people wake effectively, I can give they some suggesions. They can talk about
1. unaffordable housing prices in China,
2. persistent low incomes in China, and
3. environmental cleanliness. I mean most places, excluding big cities like SF or NYC, are cleaner than places in China.
These are real problems that resonate with Chinese people rather than fabricated oppression narratives.
If you want to check my words, feel free to visit China to see the reality for themselves.
If you wanted to know about genocide in China you'd have to go to non-Chinese media. Germany and the USA do the same thing.
China’s persecution of the Uyghur people is considered by many to cross the line into genocide…
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-22278037
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Uyghurs_in_Chin...
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/china/china-guilty-genocide-cri...
https://www.ushmm.org/genocide-prevention/countries/china/ch...
People will make the wildest claims about Trumps' polices, even people who should know better. A good example is Jeffrey Sachs saying Trump's policies should would fail an economics class - but one of the people devising Trump's economic polices got a PhD from Harvard while Sachs was a professor there!
Don't pretend that the US is some paragon of virtue.
China talks big about Taiwan but actions speak louder than words. So far I see very little action from China and a lot from the US spanning a century of aggression.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_the_Peo...
I would argue with them getting stronger, they might get more active.
Their fish trawlers behave pretty agressive worldwide. And they are part of their military.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_the_Uni...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_the_Uni...
Really? A nice rational genocide or two?
But the US funding/providing weapons to Israel in the Gaza war is not a genocide?
China is an expansionist dictatorship. It would be ridiculous to suggest it is more trustworthy than the US.
Internally I’m inclined to believe that it can be hell on earth for minorities.
>But the US funding/providing weapons to Israel in the Gaza war is not a genocide?
Nowhere did the comment they replied to claim that the war in Gaza isn't a genocide.
Nowhere did the comment they replied to claim that the war in Gaza isn't a genocide.
The US has always dealt with Islam extremists with bombs and killings. China is doing it through education camps. No, the camps probably aren't pleasant. It's a hard problem that requires a hard solution. But to me, China's way seems way more humane. Viewed in another lens, perhaps China deserves a Nobel Peace prize for their camps instead of being labeled as a genocide.
Question: How many euro do you think have been paid as of today, 2nd May 2025?
[1] https://www.lexisnexis.co.uk/legal/news/meta-s-irish-appeal-...
> Probably never will, perhaps in exchange for some job creation
That bit I'd be more dubious on. Ireland's courts are very independent (sometimes to the point of comedy, for instance see the incident a decade ago where the courts found that the legal mechanism used to ban most drugs was invalid: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/10/irish-es-are-s... , leading to ecstasy, ketamine etc becoming legal for a day). It's not a US-style highly-politicised court system, and even if the government wanted to influence the eventual outcome, it doesn't really have levers to do so.
They're cranking through the process, but, like, unless the GDPR is found to be _unconstitutional_ (seems implausible, given the enormous amount of constitutional scrutiny that EU law has already had), they're probably looking at paying once the process comes to an end.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...
> The IDPC issued an administrative fine of EUR €1.2 billion as well as corrective orders requiring Meta Platforms Ireland to suspend the relevant transfers and to bring its processing operations into compliance with Chapter V GDPR by ceasing the unlawful processing, including storage, of such data in the United States. We are appealing this Final Decision and it is currently subject to an interim stay from the Irish High Court.
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1326801/000132680125...
That fine got an incredible amount of media attention.
The lack of actually paying it, not so much...
Just kidding, I know it won't happen.
But at least paying some taxes in Ireland should be possible, shouldn't it?
And additionally FB were fined 500mn last week by the same regulator.
I'm not aware of the similar arrangements being possible with China-based providers.
Why wait when it already happened? Not only are you overly pessimistic, but incorrect as well.
- https://www.euronews.com/next/2023/05/22/us-tech-giant-meta-...
- https://techcrunch.com/2023/07/03/google-analytics-sweden-gd...
- (not a fine, but told to stop transferring) https://www.pymnts.com/cpi-posts/eu-watchdog-orders-european...
Then we have this wonderful website: https://www.enforcementtracker.com/ (which currently has 2583 entries)
If you sort by largest fines, you'll see that Meta, Amazon, TikTok, LinkedIn (Microsoft), Uber, WhatsApp (Meta) and Google have all been fined.