"The First Opium War was fought from 1839 to 1842 between China and Britain. It was triggered by the Chinese government's campaign to enforce its prohibition of opium, which included destroying opium stocks owned by British merchants and the British East India Company. The British government responded by sending a naval expedition to force the Chinese government to pay reparations and allow the opium trade.[1] The Second Opium War was waged by Britain and France against China from 1856 to 1860, and consequently resulted in China being forced to legalise opium."

Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_Wars

[–] GarbageShoot@hexbear.net 6 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Social media addiction is not quite the same thing as opium addiction

[–] caveman@lemmy.ml 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Of course not, but can also make people unproductive and by guiding the content you can make the whole population acquire stupid behaviours

[–] GarbageShoot@hexbear.net 6 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I think you're really misevaluating the (non)equivalence between how you're crippled as an organism by opium addiction vs just having your attention fucked up by tiktok

[–] caveman@lemmy.ml 3 points 8 months ago

Yes, of course.

In this case, what UK+France did to China at that time is much worse than what China is doing to the US now.

So it would be much more hypocritical if UK followed suit

[–] baseless_discourse@mander.xyz 6 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Excuse me, but I have a hard time seeing how is these two events are related?

[–] caveman@lemmy.ml 4 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Hi, UK forced China to get their country destroyed, and no an UK-derived country is complaining that China is destroy them.

[–] baseless_discourse@mander.xyz 5 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

So in your analogy then Britain is the now China, and now U.S. is the then China? And TikTok is the opium released by China? Hence TikTok should be banned, if U.S. have the power to do so?

[–] caveman@lemmy.ml 4 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Apart from "should be banned", you got my analogy right.

I mean if they ban it they are being hypocrites

[–] baseless_discourse@mander.xyz 4 points 8 months ago

fair, thanks for explaining.

[–] NorthCountryHermit@lemm.ee 3 points 8 months ago

Unless they're implying that Chinese software will fail and bow down to "western software", I'm not seeing a link either.