It's certainly been interesting to realize how much the world keeps turning when there's a pandemic around. I wonder if people in warzones feel the same way with the juxtaposition between a huge emergency and normal life.
Seems to be working very well too! GDP down 12%, who cares, 1/3 of the country missed mortgage payments, not a real problem. Teenagers making memes on a Chinese app, shut-it-down red alarm.
Are you talking about the thing where TikTok users got a bunch of tickets to a rally?
That's a weird message to send to the company itself but I guess it's about as logical as anything else we do. Shaking down the wrong person seems par for the course at this point.
Same deal here in India. Maybe Trump administration got inspired by the theater that happened around TikTok here in India, and the political undertones.
TikTok had some of the rad and most creative memes that splendidly ridiculed the failures of the current government (and their principles, policies [demonetization, GST, bank busts, GDP/growth/economy crash, election theater, ultra-right-religious-discourse, absolute capitulation of mainstream media and their subservience to ruling members, lies around border conflicts, failure of central and federal systems, failure of judiciary, handling of the pandemic, the whole "light lamps and bang plates to ward off virus" etc - everything!) and also their associated right wing organizations). The ban was dressed up as "ban on Chinese products". Meanwhile, the BCCI (a sports body - whose budgets rival GDP of few nations), which is now having the son of India's Home Minister as one of the top shots in management, continues their deal with a Chinese sponsor.
Now, some local app with a lot of "censoring" is what's being touted as India's answer, while it has always been control and power to shape and keep public opinion under check -as defined by Ministry of Truth here.
Many birds with one shot!
Summary: "We see you have a good business here, funny if something might happen to it! You know, bad things happen around these days a lot! But we can help, ya'see!"
Well, it supposedly has a lot of potential as a propaganda platform, and with an election coming up, at least some are worried about that. A writeup on Stratechery: https://stratechery.com/2020/the-tiktok-war/
You mean the same way his campaign uses facebook and twitter as a propaganda platform. Thats really the most important issue here. He can run political ads on both platforms and they do nothing about it. Tiktok reaches a gen z and millenials and he can't do anything about it.
On those platforms, ads are called out as ads. This would be more like viral marketing on those platforms, except that it doesn't have to pass your friends' sniff tests in this case, so it's much easier to push whatever you want into peoples' faces.
Give the thread a read for the argument for how they are related (priorities, election image, etc). If you have a differing opinion, give some details.
It’s to make people think about something positive he’s doing before the election. Sadly, the government was not drawing attention to the problems with China before him. Its one of the few legitimate problems he has been pushing against and will probably get him some votes
I doubt Trump is a psychological master, but bucketing a bunch of issues into the China bucket can help reframe the pandemic.
China bad, Uighurs, TikTok, trade deals ... Coronavirus.
Trump: I’m not bad, China is. Look at all that stuff in that bucket, need to do something about it, maybe I will, maybe I’m the only one that will.
Standard manipulation really.
Edit: I’ll add that this tactic is so effective that Biden had no choice but to parrot the rhetoric in the dem debates (said some pretty hard line stuff). Biden/Obama have had a legitimate hard line stance against China with their Asia pivot strategy, but they never used the hard-line rhetoric politically until Trump did.
Bill Clinton has similar instincts to Trump. When he campaigned for Hilary in red states, he would straight up say things along the lines of ‘I never thought Obamacare was a good idea’.
Trump is in full gear rallying the base, and he’s going to force Biden to mirror some of these views. If he does this successfully, Biden’s attacks on the pandemic handling will constantly be convoluted with the larger China-bad narrative.
Dude has an anti-China boner. Mind you, I agree that their gov spying on us through Tiktok is a problem. He'd still rather focus on an app. 150,000 dead Americans seems to have slipped his mind.
From other stuff I've read, it sounds like the objection is not just spying, but also that the owners can inject whatever content they want into any user's feed using the interest clustering they've doubtless built to feed the propaganda most effective for that person, and the potential that if they're at the mercy of the Chinese govt, that the government could control that injection. Unlike Facebook, etc, there's no expectation that what you're seeing is coming from people in your social circle.
That still isn't a reason to ban the app until there is evidence that such a thing has been done. In other words, punishing the crime before it is committed seems unjust.
Please don't post generic political comments to HN. They lead to generic political discussion, which is repetitive (and therefore tedious), and usually turns into a nasty flamewar.
Terrible move for several reasons, but the most important long-term one that it essentially validates China's approach to foreign firms. Now they finally have a case where they can point at the US and say, "you're accusing us of putting strict conditions on foreign firms to protect our national interests, that's what we've been saying all along!"
Now every foreign firm who considered the US to be a relatively safe market will calculate if they stand to become the victim of great power competition. I think it will also speed up the development of national sovereign internet spaces, given how many international institutions of the global web are located in the US and delegitimize them.
China has already validated it's approach to foreign firms. The US has realized that China isn't going to change it's approach, and is instead emulating it. If China won't let foreign firms into their country, then it's only fair that the US doesn't let Chinese firms into the US market.
I doubt this will change the US's status as a safe market (at least for countries other than China). The US and China are geopolitical rivals. The US is making no indication to do the same to Japanese, Korean, or European companies.
The fragmentation of sovereign internet spaces, too, began with China blocking a large number of foreign sites. They even coined the term "internet sovereignty" [1]. It's also being advanced by countries writing legislation that seeks to govern the conduct of foreign sites. E.g. GDPR and the subsequent rise of blocking EU IPs.
>the US is making no indication to do the same to Japanese, Korean, or European companies.
The EU is already starting to formulate its own version of internet sovereignty, the recent invalidation of Privacy Shield by the EU is giving an indication of what's to come, as were the threats by the US over the taxation of internet giants in Europe. It's not as loud as the China-US conflict but it's going to happen.
I think it's also important that this chilling effect doesn't need to be overt. If the US is willing to emulate China's tactics in reaction to China, there is no guarantee whatsoever, that it will not leverage it against other countries. On trade this was already stated at several points during this administration, directly targeting Europe, Korea, and so on.
This is why the US in the past has generally avoided taking overtly partisan stances on the international stage. As soon as the US moves from being the maintainer of global order to national player, everyone will start to make calculations if the US can still be relied upon. For that reason this is a huge win for China in my opinion.
By engaging China in a tit-for-tat manner the US makes itself a huge deal smaller than it needs to be.
There's something really strange this situation. Arguably the most powerful person in the world (POTUS) decides to devote his time on deciding the fate of an app for teenage boys and girls.
I think bullying TikTok would be more likely to earn the ire of those who use it (non-voting teenagers), and the appreciation of non-users (the parents of those teenagers.)
I don't really think that's what's going on here though.
42 comments
[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 94.6 ms ] threadOne life to live. Time is always ticking.
And we all have individual levels of risk that we're willing to assume. Even when confronted with the same data.
That's a weird message to send to the company itself but I guess it's about as logical as anything else we do. Shaking down the wrong person seems par for the course at this point.
TikTok had some of the rad and most creative memes that splendidly ridiculed the failures of the current government (and their principles, policies [demonetization, GST, bank busts, GDP/growth/economy crash, election theater, ultra-right-religious-discourse, absolute capitulation of mainstream media and their subservience to ruling members, lies around border conflicts, failure of central and federal systems, failure of judiciary, handling of the pandemic, the whole "light lamps and bang plates to ward off virus" etc - everything!) and also their associated right wing organizations). The ban was dressed up as "ban on Chinese products". Meanwhile, the BCCI (a sports body - whose budgets rival GDP of few nations), which is now having the son of India's Home Minister as one of the top shots in management, continues their deal with a Chinese sponsor.
Now, some local app with a lot of "censoring" is what's being touted as India's answer, while it has always been control and power to shape and keep public opinion under check -as defined by Ministry of Truth here.
Many birds with one shot!
Summary: "We see you have a good business here, funny if something might happen to it! You know, bad things happen around these days a lot! But we can help, ya'see!"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jay_Shah
https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/services/retai...
China bad, Uighurs, TikTok, trade deals ... Coronavirus.
Trump: I’m not bad, China is. Look at all that stuff in that bucket, need to do something about it, maybe I will, maybe I’m the only one that will.
Standard manipulation really.
Edit: I’ll add that this tactic is so effective that Biden had no choice but to parrot the rhetoric in the dem debates (said some pretty hard line stuff). Biden/Obama have had a legitimate hard line stance against China with their Asia pivot strategy, but they never used the hard-line rhetoric politically until Trump did.
Bill Clinton has similar instincts to Trump. When he campaigned for Hilary in red states, he would straight up say things along the lines of ‘I never thought Obamacare was a good idea’.
Trump is in full gear rallying the base, and he’s going to force Biden to mirror some of these views. If he does this successfully, Biden’s attacks on the pandemic handling will constantly be convoluted with the larger China-bad narrative.
I don't appreciate the current administration's responses to the pandemic, but that doesn't mean I expect them to solely focus on the pandemic.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
tiananmen square迫害 侵略 掠奪 破壞 拷問 屠殺 活摘器官 誘拐 買賣人口 遊進 走私 毒品 賣淫 春畫 賭博 六合彩 天安門 天安门 法輪功 李洪志 Winnie the Pooh 劉曉波动态网自由门
even when people agree with him they have to find some avenue of attack
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Now every foreign firm who considered the US to be a relatively safe market will calculate if they stand to become the victim of great power competition. I think it will also speed up the development of national sovereign internet spaces, given how many international institutions of the global web are located in the US and delegitimize them.
I doubt this will change the US's status as a safe market (at least for countries other than China). The US and China are geopolitical rivals. The US is making no indication to do the same to Japanese, Korean, or European companies.
The fragmentation of sovereign internet spaces, too, began with China blocking a large number of foreign sites. They even coined the term "internet sovereignty" [1]. It's also being advanced by countries writing legislation that seeks to govern the conduct of foreign sites. E.g. GDPR and the subsequent rise of blocking EU IPs.
1. https://thediplomat.com/2014/06/chinas-sovereign-internet/
The EU is already starting to formulate its own version of internet sovereignty, the recent invalidation of Privacy Shield by the EU is giving an indication of what's to come, as were the threats by the US over the taxation of internet giants in Europe. It's not as loud as the China-US conflict but it's going to happen.
I think it's also important that this chilling effect doesn't need to be overt. If the US is willing to emulate China's tactics in reaction to China, there is no guarantee whatsoever, that it will not leverage it against other countries. On trade this was already stated at several points during this administration, directly targeting Europe, Korea, and so on.
This is why the US in the past has generally avoided taking overtly partisan stances on the international stage. As soon as the US moves from being the maintainer of global order to national player, everyone will start to make calculations if the US can still be relied upon. For that reason this is a huge win for China in my opinion.
By engaging China in a tit-for-tat manner the US makes itself a huge deal smaller than it needs to be.
I don't really think that's what's going on here though.
This makes him look tough -- standing up to China! -- and able to sell that to the rube demographic.