Comment by echelon

Chinese engineers are knowingly surveilled by the state with no recourse. Commercial offerings of all shapes and sizes have cameras and microphones. It's just new tech.

In the US, Five Eyes, and abroad, there is at least some ceremony around calling this bad even though a similar apparatus is installed. (Supposedly with "checks and balances", but who knows?)

People in Western countries almost unanimously find corporate spying creepy. (Though ad tech has snuck in via convenience and invisibility.) We find cameras a hard line.

The TikTok and Twitch generation has different attitudes about always-on cameras, though.