U.S. user data is mostly stored by TikTok on servers in Virginia, with backup storage in Singapore. Company officials say Chinese authorities have never attempted to gain access to Americans' information.
Not sure how much that counts. In the US, under certain warrants under the so-called "PATRIOT" Act, it's illegal to admit that government accessed user information. China likely has similar ways to compel silence upon threat of losing privileges.
A related concept is the warrant canary, which is a positive statement that the government has not accessed user information. It is current untested in court whether the PATRIOT Act can compel speech, or merely silence it, and so the idea is that if you stop making the positive statement that no government intrusion has occurred, then it implies that there has been intrusion. (The constitutionality of Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act has, to my knowledge, never been tested in court, and I firmly believe that it violates the First Amendment's protection of free speech.)
That said, they are generally ignored when they disappear. Apple and Reddit both removed their warrant canaries in 2016, to very little fanfare, despite the implications of them doing so.
Until proven otherwise. And honestly, where is the 'national security' risk? There is probably far more data available in public databases that China could gather and analyze, not to mention you can apply the same paranoia to other services US and foreign.
The backup is stored on Alibaba servers in Singapore.
I don’t know why it serves anyone well to 1) believe the company’s word at face value and 2) not believe that the Chinese gov does not have backdoor agreements with the largest Chinese tech company.
The better question to ask is what information TikTok even has on someone. It isn’t exactly an app that asks for a lot of real world identity data to signup with.
IMO their biggest thing would be their ability to use computer vision to instantly process videos and match faces with real world identity databases and then to link faces and backgrounds to locations, family members/connections, interests, etc.
In my view, this is really the more important and unfortunately often underappreciated concern here. There's a lot of talk about what personal data might be captured by these apps/services (not to minimize that either), but it seems there's overall much less discussion about the potential for the control of information/ideas over large audiences, even in subtle but impactful ways. Not only is it plausible that such interference could happen, be it to exert political or economic influence, but it's likely that it could be done surreptitiously with little to no oversight by regulators, governments and ultimately the people using these services.
That being true and meaningful are two distinct things. That is true of anything that selects information to present to a user. Netflix recommendations, Facebook feed/ads/group recommendations, LinkedIn feed, Twitter feed, Reddit rankings, or search engine results. It could not be algorithmic and it could be mandatory editorial programming in a companies that run large numbers of local news stations.
What you said describes literally any technology that makes decisions about what to present to the user.
Funny you mention this, because an effort to purchase tickets to a high-profile campaign rally for Trump (and not attend, in an effort to make his rally look poorly attended) was conceived and organized through Tik-Tok. Not a Trump supporter by any means, but given that Trump is much more hostile to China than Biden, doesn't that explicitly seem like a situation that could be considered "foreign election meddling"?
> IMO their biggest thing would be their ability to use computer vision to instantly process videos
An intelligence agency interested in that information could just scrape TikTok's entire catalog and do the processing themselves. If it were a messaging app that would be different, but since TikTok is all about posting videos for the whole world to see, they don't really have much secret information about their users.
TikTok has been outed as an app that captures massive amounts of telemetry data that could be used to identify a user after the fact. The data it collects (contact lists) absolutely could be used for targeted oppression.
What do you mean by “identify a user”? Isn’t the fact that you’re filming videos of yourself “identifying yourself” more so than whatever device data TikTok and every other app on your phone is capturing?
Tiktok doesn't require that a user film themselves. If they never appear in frame, there would still be plenty of other data captured from the device to correlate to a specific human.
Ok sure...but the main use case is filming yourself. It would seem really strange for anyone who chooses to publicly post videos on that app to be worried about TikTok being able to identify people or things in the app, or capture data associated with your phone or email you use to sign up with.
Think back to any round of recent protests. People are passionate about their positions...they post about it on their chosen social media platform being completely unaware of the technical consequences. Later on, they "disappear" (wordage chosen because that's what happens to dissidents in China).
The point is that tons of people have no idea how to protect their own privacy. We can still advocate for protections in the same way we have warning labels on harsh cleaning chemicals.
It is not just about data. It is also about asymmetry of control. China bans all of western social media and gets to censor tiktok with it is rising share of users and a bunch of others. Go write something about Tibet Taiwan or Tiananmen Square
Having a gigantic conglomerate in control of my supply chain is too risky.
I think that's how we need to look at Chinese companies. Are you willing to deal with the biggest company in the world?
Although most humans are not going to understand that the CCP owns 51% of every company. And if they do, even less are going to understand the implications.
As a result you can have networks formed out of ignorance.
It's not a bad idea to principally ban social networks that exercise government censorship on their users. I don't know if TikTok does that. Do they? The problem is also that what one country regards as political censorship another country just considers the application of reasonable laws. However, in the case of China that's such an obvious lame excuse - I mean, they literally interrupt phone calls in which people use certain terms.
I don’t to now why free speech is the issue OP chose to highlight. The bigger problem is access to the Chinese market. The West allows basically unfettered access to their markets with rules that generally are applied equally (obviously an ideal if not always the case). China is explicitly against that. To operate in the Chinese market you have to partner with a Chinese company and divulge a lot of IP to them.
I disagree with the way Trump targeted a single company but I think instituting a similar policy across the West to deal with China in similar terms wouldn’t be a bad idea to try to get them to negotiate a better status quo.
> China is explicitly against [unfettered access].
They are not "explicitly against that". They don't allow full access at the get-go, true, but it's a big overstatement to say that they are against the concept. If you look at what they've done in the past 20 years, you'll see that they're opening up to foreign business more and more.
For example, joint ventures used to be required. A couple of years ago, that requirement has been dropped. And now with RCEP, they're reducing tariffs for many Asian countries.
Walk down the street in China for 10 minutes and you'll see tons of western companies.
Western countries also don't fully adhere to the free trade principle. There are countries that blocked investment from China for political reasons, way before the "but China is unfair for not allowing access into their markets" started.
Proof? They still require joint partnerships [1] and IP transfer in high tech industries. Sure they don’t require it in others where they’ve already built up domestic competitors and obtained all the IP they need (ie manufacturing).
Granted maybe you have updated information here so open to reading about it. Claiming that “but western countries do it too” is unhelpful whataboutism. I didn’t claim Western countries don’t do crappy shit. In terms of market access and competition, that shiftiness is more about established players and regulatory capture rather than outright pseudo-fascism whereas China seems to have adopted fascism quite aggressively (ironic considering they call themselves a socialist party but I guess all authoritarian regimes end up looking very similar).
Saying “I see western logos when I walk around in China” is missing the mark when I talk about what is required of companies when they enter China (and as I said not all industries, but the ones strategically important to China somehow, especially high tech)
I've heard of Tesla owning 100% shares in China. Does that count as high tech?
>×Claiming that “but western countries do it too” is unhelpful whataboutism.
Wait a minute... Many people are saying that the west should ban China for not allowing full access. The whole premise was literally about whataboutism. Saying that we shouldn't engage in whataboutism when the whole thing was based on whataboutism in the first place, is a bit odd.
> I've heard of Tesla owning 100% shares in China. Does that count as high tech?
Yes and it was a news story when it happened 2 years ago [1]. It could be that Trump’s tariffs were sufficient. Or there could be other agreements not wifey disseminated that allowed for that. Or China made this allowance strategically because electric car manufacturing in-country is easier to infiltrate with spies to exfil the technology you need (whereas non-electric car manufacturers don’t get this because China knows how to make those and getting a cut and building up the knowledge and expertise how to run those businesses is more important than the manufacturing itself).
Re whataboutism, I should have been clearer. Saying that we should meet China’s strategic and intentional aggressiveness in kind and why it’s a problem, to me, is 100% on topic and not “what about X” where X is unrelated to addressing the problem being discussed. An example of this would be like “sure China has concentration camps but what about Americ’s death penalty” - you have shifted the conversation away from the problem of China’s concentration camps to the problem of America’s death penalty. Both are problems but bringing up the latter in the context of a discussion about the former is generally unhelpful unless you’re making some kind of specific point/analogy.
What I was proposing is that a more effective way to go after China (rather than a trade war or targeting individual products of China) was “if these are the rules China wants Western companies to follow to have access to their domestic markets, then China gets the same rules just for them in foreign markets while competitors don’t get that restriction”. That’s literally how trading should be done. It’s the same reason I’m against allowing countries with poorer worker protection access to American markets without accounting for the costs that American workers create due to the enhanced protections.
What I was suggesting was whataboutism was the parent’s reply that “well sure China does unfair things in their market but the West does other unfair things too”. That’s totally unrelated and unhelpful. A fairer analysis would realize that most things in Western markets happen organically and aren’t unique to the West as regulatory capture and crony capitalism happen in China too and appear to be (at least to me) endemic to most economic activity humans are involved in. There are exceptions but to me China is following America’s playbook in large part for how they beat Great Britain at the technology game (the parallels are just uncanny). What’s intolerable is that the US government isn’t addressing this in any way.
It is not about appearing weak, it is about a trade deficit . TikTok can make money off Americans with little effort but Facebook and Google have to make entirely new apps to get entry to the Chinese market (I can't remember if they still have live apps or if they are banned right now)
Are you suggesting that if one of our trading partners engages in protectionist measures (tariffs, dumping, subsidies, etc.) that we shouldn't retaliate?
Seriously. I'm baffled at the number of people that don't give a crap and that we should just do nothing. I hate to pick sides and perpetuate the "us vs. them" mentality, but the geopolitics of today are increasingly pushing toward it. We're on the verge of a new Cold War with China whether we like it or not. But instead of hoarding ICBMs, it's tech companies and the technologies surrounding them.
TikTok is literally a new global app for Douyin. It's not about trade deficits, it is about waning exceptionalism of silicon valley. They finally learned to debundle US culture with US tech. Something TikTok has been very agile on, making regional adaptations and complying to regional laws. Hubris is what kep facebook and google from returning to Chinese market 10 years ago.
Pretty easy to “debundle” when you just block access. If I lived in China I would take tiktok over any Silicon Valley app, and if I was looking for maximum network effects I would also use tiktok because potential market is 1.4 billion people larger
I wonder how Chinese schools work then, given that Tienanmen is part of their curriculum. Also, how does the ban work given everyone and their dog use VPNs?
My point is - the ban is trivially easy to work around by using VPN, which lot of people do. And this means the stories about Chinese being banned from accessing western media don't have much to do with reality.
What is happening is pretty much the opposite - the West doesn't have access to Chinese media (except those explicitly targeting the West), for language reasons.
I am curious of how exactly events of Tienanmen square are taught in Chinese schools. Stalin’s purges was also part of the soviets schools curriculum, they were taught as necessary toughness - mostly bad people died with some minor mistakes
I just got genuinely curious how it's being taught in Western schools. The image I remember (from Poland, but media, not schools back then) was entirely single-sided, "evil communists murdered hundreds of thousands of protesters". There was no mention whatsoever about the whole context, or _why_ people actually died. It was being portrayed almost as a kind of mass execution.
Whether they are already attempting to access that information is only one part of the question. Will they do it in future, given they could do it at any time and TikTok would have to comply?
AT&T said that the NSA was not intercepting their traffic... it was illegal at the time and Congress retroactively made it legal to get the EFF’s court case to go away.
All of this is an equal argument against Facebook and Google as well, especially for any country outside the US. And before you say China is totalitarian and the US is a democracy, that is very true, but also irrelevant because the US is already known to use this data in illegal ways through the Snowden revelations.
This is extremely important for the modern term capitalism.
Every intervention the US government does is a signal to other governments and entrepreneurs.
If you are an aspring developer, you can choose to make your program local, US centric, or worldwide.
The economics don't always work for third world countries or globally, so they are forced to make products that are US centric. Banning apps shift the risk and could encourage more local apps.
With more US centric programs, US citizens are exposed to new ideas and economic competition. These are good for the long term despite the short term disruption.
Unlike the Tiktok ban, it's not a discriminatory ban that targets US apps, for the sole reason that they're from the US. It's a ban based on non-discriminatory rules. From the article: "Most of the banned apps are Chinese"
Unfortunately transparency is a problem, as they did not state more details about the ban.
It’s an assumption that it’s not discriminatory or targeted. There’s nothing to say that it’s not just disguised to annoy the US and turn around and fool people into believing it’s not targeted.
Which part is "Chinese propaganda"? I observe that the majority of the banned apps are Chinese, and that one is western, while at the same time lots of western apps remain accessible in China. That's all I base my conclusion on. At no point did I base my conclusion on anything the Chinese government said.
To say that they are discriminatory despite the above data, is an assumption. That assumption may be right (because the data is not mathematically solid evidence). On the other hand, it may be not. But I think accepting that assumption is in line with US propaganda.
And lots of western apps aren't accessible in China. Such as Google, Wikipedia, Facebook, Twitter.
Furthermore, did you know TikTok itself is banned in mainland China? No kidding, they have an different version of the app that's Chinese-only.
I think the implication that China's being the free-market player here is faulty, to say the least. There's an argument to be made about how censorship of foreign applications conflicts with the US's values, for sure, but the one-way street argument doesn't scan.
What do you want me to say? It's banned in China. It wasn't always banned in China, but as of April 2019 all versions of Wikipedia are verboten. Here's an article from a little over a month ago describing someone's arrest for going there: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/amp/world/article-china-crac...
tl;dr in several provinces there has been a number of cases where folks got verbal warning for doing it. Given the scale (1.5 billion people), it's bit like saying "in US you can call the police to murder your annoying neighbour and they will come and shoot him on the spot".
VPN use is ubiquitous in China, it's as simple as that.
> in several provinces there has been a number of cases where folks got verbal warning for doing it.
From that same article: || But police have also issued fines, confiscated thousands of dollars earned through online activity, seized routers and ordered "the suspension of networking,” effectively cutting off users from the internet. In some cases, police have punished trading companies that were using VPN software to access the wider internet for the purposes of “international networking.” ||
> VPN use is ubiquitous in China, it's as simple as that.
|| Now, however, detailed records published online by Zhejiang province show authorities moving against the very act of accessing unapproved parts of the internet through VPNs that are not government-approved. ||
Thing is, you need to be able to evaluate the scale. How many events like that happened, in 1.5 billion country?
As for the second chunk - this alone makes the article suspicious, as, as I've mentioned, and like you'll hear from probably anyone who lives in China, VPN use is ubiquitous. (Might vary from province to province, though.)
It's the law in China. Notes regarding 'probably' selective enforcement are certainly meaningful but at no point am I led to have existential doubts regarding what is and is not the law in China. I have a hunch that if we walked over and asked China's politburo right now, they'd agree that what they wrote down was in fact not a joke and is not to be taken on an ironic basis.
The vast majority of people “who see past the US propaganda” also see past the Chinese propaganda.
The vast majority of them want to address the privacy issues raised by such apps and companies irrespective of whether it’s the US or China misappropriating our data.
China's abuse of data is far worse than United States[1]. Just as I would push for more privacy regarding how US handles personal data, I would do the same for China. In this case, a ban on TikTok is the best signal we can send to the CCP.
USA doesn't even have personal data protection laws. China does.
As for the article - this all sounds like a subset of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_government_mass_survei..., until you realize one crucial thing: in case of US, the preferred way of dealing with this kind of minorities is either AC-130, or JDAM. Any kind of surveillance and reeducation camps is better from ethics point of view.
This is incorrect. USA has laws protecting against government overreach[1]. In the case of China, the government does not need the court of law to access your data.
Except, as demonstrated by Snowden, those laws simply don't matter; the agencies can just ignore them and you can't do anything about it. Also, there are "secret courts", giving their cangaroo "secret verdicts", which, again, you can't do anything about.
Now, I have no idea whatsoever what it looks like in China, but... do you have any source? What I meant writing my previous comment was data protection laws, ie laws that control what various bodies (eg companies) can do with your personal data, and for how long.
Of course the United States is not perfect. Regardless, the vast majority of Americans will be protected because they will not run into any national security issues.
The criticism of China lays squarely at CCP and their abuse of power. My original comment is pointing out how the CCP uses data to oppress minorities. The equivalent would be Trump forcing Facebook and Google to turn over their data so he can go after Blacks and Mexicans.
I agree that companies in the US has too much power in what they can do with personal data. This needs more scrutiny.
I thought that the majority of the banned apps being Chinese, and that only one western app being banned (while leaving lots and lots of other western apps alone), should be proof enough.
But okay. Let's say it's not a mathematically solid proof. Agreed.
On the other hand, there's no mathematical proof that they are being discriminatory, either.
Why is it apologetic to not assume the worst of China at every turn?
You don't have to agree with their values. But why labeling them as evil for not following your values? Western values don't work well in China. Chinese values don't work in the west. To each their own. Why do they have to be an enemy for which evil is always assumed, regardless of evidence?
>But why labeling them as evil for not following your values?
Because they view those values as inherently good, and thus opposition to those values as inherently bad. If you view freedom of religion or speech as a fundamental human good or need, then naturally a government opposed to (or seen as greatly curtailing) those values will be seen as 'evil'.
On a more human and physical level, people see, say, the Xinjiang camps and view that as reflective of the values of that government, as evil, the same way they may see the immigrant child separation in the US as reflective of its government's values, and as evil. Actions speaking louder than words of intent.
Shouldn't those acts be labeled evil (or good) instead? I mean we don't say the US government as a whole is evil because of the child separation policy (some people do but not most).
I'm pretty anti CPP for the most part, but I feel like we're losing all nuance when we use broad stroke labels. I also don't think it's productive. As soon as we label something or someone "evil" then any avenue for dialog and improvement is gone. The only thing left is conflict and confrontation.
I'd say being the world's biggest warmonger isn't quite aligned with what most people consider the Western values. Decorating soldiers for shooting down civilian airliners, finding that there was nothing wrong whatsoever in killing peacefully protesting students, or sentencing a murderer to a fine because he happened to be famous don't look that good either.
That said, there's a sharp cultural contrast between the responses to the Kent State massacre in the US and the Tienenman Square massacre in China. In the US, you can't say Kent State wasn't popularly condemned, didn't prompt change, or isn't burned into the nation's psyche to this day. In China, you can't say much about Tienenman Square, period.
To my knowledge, it's widely known of and therefore spoken of privately, but it isn't taught in schools (beyond an acknowledgement that there were protests) and information surrounding the massacre is suppressed on a top-down basis.
I'm depending entirely on various bits and pieces on the Internet here, but, quoting https://qr.ae/pNaLCw:
"I first learned about the happening of the incident at school, in the Grade 8 “Morality and Politics” class. [..] At the chapter on constitution, our teacher briefly mentioned the "turbulence": basically, in 1989 students used to take the streets and things "ended up messy". But he didn't give much detail."
This matches other stuff I've read in the past - it's not heavily discussed, but I wouldn't call it suppressed either.
EDIT: There's another aspect to this: I have no idea how it looks like in schools in various western countries, but from what I remember from Poland, it's all about "government murdering protesters". It doesn't mention whatsoever that it was much more complicated and there victims on all sides.
I find it amazing that the conservative drum beat of markets, capitalism, deregulation, and free distribution of speech all seem to fly out the window as soon as it is time to complain about china. Now suddenly western values must be defended by banning access to software.
On a thread where we discuss the CCP's use of social media to influence public opinion in the US, it seems like the answer to this question should be apparent.
The world isn’t black and white. One can be anti China for most things and still agree with them for some things. Similarly one can be pro “west” and still disagree with the US.
I find it problematic that anything in support of China or against the US in the context of US vs China is labeled being an apologist or Chinese propaganda. It’s a good way to shut down all discussion, much like the whole “that’s heresy” from ages past.
Yeah, because they’ve already banned every U.S. app for Chinese consumers via other measures, i.e., “Great Firewall”. Your comment and perspective is either naive or disingenuous.
These apps have been re-built from the ground up in accordance with Chinese rules to work in China and the source code of these apps has been completely disclosed to the Chinese Communist apparatus.
Do you think any one of those apps is authorized to make API calls out of China?
I don't know where you're getting your information about those apps' source code from, but since you were wrong about the second part, I'm going to assume you just imagined a plausible story and claimed it as fact.
every social media app. I'm sure the Android calculator app is permitted.
Funny you bring up Skype because in China they get a special version that enables the CCP to surveil your "private" communications for dissent. I'm sure other communications apps are similar, or plain blocked. For example telegram is banned, although Signal is still allowed for now (maybe it's under the radar).
If TikTok were a flappy bird clone... we wouldn't be having this conversation. It was not being banned "for the sole reason" that it's of Chinese origin, it's the fact that the app is essentially a mass surveillance device.
china bans all us social media apps, because they want to control the content that Chinese citizens see and remove anything that is negative towards the ccp, etc. No one batters an eyelid.
US tries to ban 1 app that is being used to spread propaganda, farm user data, and is considered a national security threat. And everyone loses their shit over it.
Microsoft Teams, Skype, FaceTime all work in China, to name a few.
> because they want to control the content that Chinese citizens see and remove anything that is negative towards the ccp, etc.
This is true. But that doesn't mean they ban all US social media apps. If you follow their Internet laws (like Microsoft and Apple do) then you are allowed to operate.
> US tries to ban 1 app that is being used to spread propaganda, farm user data, and is considered a national security threat.
This is an assumption. Proof please, because I haven't seen any.
Don't get me wrong. I am not against a ban on Tiktok. I'm against a discriminatory ban, based on unproven assumptions, solely targeting the origin of an app.
What would be much more fair would be to state: all foreign apps have to go through a security audit to certify that no data reaches any foreign governments. That way you don't have to prove wrongdoing first, and you aren't being discriminatory either.
> This is an assumption. Proof please, because I haven't seen any.
If tiktok is a US app. And not a china app. Then any content negative towards china would not be removed. Which happens daily. Whole pro china and anti America content stays. That’s propaganda.
by internet law, you mean inserting backdoors for the government to surveil you? Yeah I'm not sure that counts as better than banning. The version of Skype that the free world gets to use is in fact banned in China.
>Microsoft Teams, Skype, FaceTime all work in China, to name a few.
Calling them "social media apps" is a stretch. Microsoft Teams is designed to be used within an organization, so it's closer to a corporate mail server than facebook. Skype and FaceTime are public, but they don't have the defining features of other social media sites, such as a profile, UGC, or feeds: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media
By that definition, Whatsapp (which is in functionality similar to Skype) is also a stretch of a social media app. Yet people still call it social media.
But why does the exact definition of social media matter here? Let's say that Facebook follows their Internet law and becomes allowed, would you then have a different opinion?
> Yes. If there is determined to be harm, I see no reason to protect them.
But should the US government, given the current developments, ban Twitter and/or Facebook? That is what I'm asking.
Because they are quite literally doing the same as TikTok. Now, is TikTok spying for China? Except for a few reports, there is no proof of it. In fact, the US government would not ban TikTok if they sell their business to US companies.
So either TikTok does not spy on their customers for China, or they do, and the US government wants to have control over data illegally harvested.
Either way, forcing TikTok hand is not a move made to protect US citizens.
> But should the US government, given the current developments, ban Twitter and/or Facebook?
Twitter and Facebook are blocked in China. Going from a philosophical question to a current policy question, the existing context has to be taken into account. There is no equivalent reason for banning the apps.
> Because they are quite literally doing the same as TikTok.
I think they (Facebook/Twitter) are doing very different things from Tik Tok right now. They are certainly a vector for the US states/feds to mine and use data (as has been admitted and demonstrated). In the way the data is available to a government, there is an equivalence with Tik Tok.
> Now, is TikTok spying for China?
I define spying narrowly. I don't think it's "spying" but the infrastructure of Tik Tok presents an information vulnerability to the USA, which represents a harm. This is the basis of my justification as I am making the distinction.
> Either way, forcing TikTok hand is not a move made to protect US citizens.
I think it is a move that protects US citizens. The official justification is paper thin Trump revenge tactics (not racism, imo). Given, I give no credence to most of what Trump says, I don't care about the justification anyway.
North Korea executes tens of thousands of dissidents every year. The Bush administration tries to hold one person without habeas corpus, and all of a sudden the Supreme Court's up his ass. What's the deal with that!
> US tries to ban 1 app that is being used to spread propaganda, farm user data, and is considered a national security threat. And everyone loses their shit over it.
Everyone loses their shit over it because it's a direct example of the US government potentially violating the first amendment. They may claim that the app is being used to spread propaganda, farm user data, and is a "national security threat", but they've done very little other than raise the specter of "China" to prove that. Their claims of justification have been met with significant push back and, as far as I'm aware, they haven't provided any meaningful proof of their claims.
So yes, it's well-worth it for people to get up in arms about the US government censoring and shutting down access of US customers to a phone app. That's a hugely dangerous precedent to set and one that shouldn't be done lightly.
We're supposed to lose our shit over it. That's our thing.
If a bad government does a bad thing a lot, it doesn't justify our government doing that bad thing even once.
In the long run, the asymmetry of US and Chinese citizen's access to each other's culture and products will work in our favor. Liberalism always seems to win, eventually.
It sucks for Chinese people that china is banning apps. However, I really see no connection between china doing bad things and me being ok with the US doing those same bad things. What is that argument? Like, china executes drug offenders. So, if the US proposed to do the same, but only two or three of them, am I meant to be ok with it because China does it more?
>US tries to ban 1 app that is being used to spread propaganda
Have you ever actually used tiktok? How is it being used to spread propoganda?
>farm user data
LOL. Yeah, please tell me how they are doing anything different than the other billion apps you download on your phone and sign-in through google or whatever.
Your proof is typing 'propaganda on tiktok' into google?
Have you typed 'propaganda on hackernews' or on facebook/twitter/reddit or any other social media?
Everything in the world is going to have some form of propaganda to some degree. And honestly, having used tiktok a small amount, it seems way less than most social media out here. You generally have to even work hard to find anything that is political, most of it is completely random shit that has zero agenda.
It points out that China has the executive capacity to act, in a manner that having 94 federal courts - each imposing nationwide orders - has come to hamper in the US. There's always one judge somewhere who'll disagree with a President's actions no matter who the President is and no matter what the action is, simply because there are so so many of them.
The SCOTUS noted that they may need to reign-in the scope of lower-court orders, and this just adds weight to the issue.
It's particularly important because there's a practical bias. Opponents of an executive action can district-shop, while it is difficult for the Executive to file a declaratory-judgment action in a (perceived to be) favorable jurisdiction. So we end up with nation-wide judgments which differ what what the other districts would have ruled... but the other districts never had an opportunity to rule. Then... since a ruling has been issued, they are largely blocked from ever ruling.
However, the SCOTUS is is a bit of a bind, because allowing nation-wide orders works very effectively in general civil / criminal litigation. The problem has seemed to arise mostly in politically-charged issues where the government is a party.
The media doesn't care right now because it's only Trump's orders getting baselessly delayed. After four years of Biden getting every single one of his executive orders blocked because the Republicans challenged it in the friendliest lower court they could find, I imagine there will finally be some bipartisan support for fixing this problem.
Why are so many tech professionals pro the ban of TikTok when most can see the problem in the monopolies of Facebook and Google?
To me TikTok and fair regulation of how to handle user data the hammer that finally can crack the surveilance advertisement monopolies of Facebook and Google.
Because the ban is an admission of the influence that a company with nothing but troves of data can have, and thus is a step towards actually addressing the issues of Facebook, Google and the like.
Since GDPR came out, the two companies I worked at have been more cognisant about how we stored user data for EU customers (e.g. making more fields optional, giving user deletion options). And we also undertook a review of how we stored data for California customers for CCPA.
You'll never get enough credit for that statement. It's exactly why there is a large pushback from the other data collection companies. Once the DOJ can set precedent on one "low hanging fruit", it can start tackling the rest. Sort of like when RICO was first proposed and used. It was a huge issue, but once legitimized in the courts, many organized crime families started to crumble. While org crime is still a problem as it adapted and evolved, they're arguably less influential on a national scale as they used to be pre-RICO. Faang doesn't want the same thing happen to them.
The Tiktok ban is predicated on national security concerns. I guarantee that whatever precedent that sets will be deemed to not apply to FB and Google.
They are two of America's richest and most powerful companies, and politicians tend to let those 'self-regulate' so as not be accused of interfering with market forces. It also helps that they both hand over a good amount of data to the US Government.
Because TikTok is a software asset of a foreign adversary known to engage in covert activities and which is diametrically opposed ideologically with nearly everything the U.S. (however flawed) stands for. How is this so difficult for you to understand???
At this point, after four years of unprecedented corruption and ignorance-as-official-policy, it's extremely hard to see what the US "stands for". I'm saying that with all sincerity, and it is blatantly clear during the current banana-republic actions of the administration and its enablers that the US does not represent democracy.
Find actual abuses by the application or its data and then there are credible arguments. Simply alluding to some notion of evil-by-association is a dangerous game for the US to play given PRISM, FISA warrants, etc.
And let's be real -- you're typing on your made in China computer full of components made in China, your data traversing made in china routers and relays, etc. This never had anything to do with any imagined security risk, and had to do with the corrupt manchild targeting a platform for carrying content unfavorable to him. It is just another demonstration that the US doesn't "stand for" much [1].
[1] - The only saving grace right now is effectively the so called "Deep State". The career judges and civil servants who don't twist every norm and rule and precedent because of this corrupt tinpot dictator and his pathetic army of deplorables. They may not be enough, though.
You seem to be implying that a nation has no right to make policy aimed at defending itself from foreign threats (perceived or material)... because the nation has had a buffoon for POTUS for the last 4 years...?? The number of logical fallacies that you've bundled up in that statement is impressive.
Would you feel different if TikTok were software of Russian origin? I suspect you would.
I don't know why you suspect that, I don't think that Russia is quite the American boogeyman you think it is, outside of attempts to use them to make Trump look bad/worse.
I didn't imply that whatsoever. But given that the US is awash in Chinese equipment and software, using that argument for this pernicious attempt at a ban is foolish sophistry. It is a farcical foundation for a justification.
It's telling that one of the most common, and earliest, comments to justify a TikTok ban is "well China banned/blocked XXXX". It is similar to this administration repeatedly justifying super-spreader events by citing looters. Is that really the standard you are striving towards?
"Would you feel different if TikTok were software of Russian origin?"
No, I wouldn't at all. That is absurd. Russia actually has a fairly healthy software industry, including many games and even security tools like Kaspersky.
While your argument may not necessarily wrong, the same logic is applied by China and some other countries to suppress foreign media, social or not, companies, and is viewed as suppression of free speech. A value many deemd defining to these United States.
If you understand PRISM, NSA, and CIA, how can you not understand the decision of banning TikTok. It is like the drug dealer tells you not to do drugs.
Well, you're not wrong, but to be fair, the US is known to engage in covert activities and it's foreign (and some domestic) activities are often diametrically opposed to what the US claims to stand for.
The US which in the view of the rest of the world mostly stands for financial slavery and murdering children (as long as it's abroad! Unless they're not "caucasian"). At this point in time it is fair to say not standing for "everything the U.S. stands for" is the humane option and anything else is essentially a (war) crime.
> Because TikTok is a software asset of a foreign adversary known to engage in covert activities and which is diametrically opposed ideologically with nearly everything the U.S. (however flawed) stands for.
You can make the same argument to ban Facebook because of its use by the GRU, and it would be equally silly.
If China is using TikTok against the interests of US citizens (which legally is 100% a matter of foreign policy, and therefore at the executive branches sole discretion) then celebrating the demise of one "monopoly" (tech) by the hands of an agent of another (a foreign govt) isn't principled capitalism/free-trade/etc, it's traitorous/patriotic, depending on perspective.
Snowden documents clearly show the US corporations cooperate with NSA by providing backdoors. We don't know for sure if they do this because they are being forced to, bribed, or just nice to the government agencies, but the end effect is the same: they do whatever the US agencies tell them to.
It shows they turn over information it does not show they do the bidding of the US government. There is a legal process in the US that must be abided by while this isn’t true of the PRC. The line between corporation and state is a blurry one in China, to say the least.
Installing backdoors isn't "turning over information". And I'm not sure secret cangaroo courts match the typical western understanding of the term "legal process".
> which legally is 100% a matter of foreign policy, and therefore at the executive branches sole discretion
I don't think the executive branch has sole and arbitrary discretion over foreign policy? For one thing, there's the treaty clause, and the foreign commerce clause of article 1 section 8. This judge apparently agrees.
Maybe "ultimate" is a more accurate word than "sole," but in general, short of declaring War, foreign policy power eventually falls on the executive when tensions exist between branches.
The president can unilaterally leave treaties, arguably universally. SCOTUS has said that as head of State, even the recognition that other countries exist and/or are legitimate falls upon him.
Yesterday's SG argument at SCOTUS brought up many of the reasons why the judicial has historically, and should continue, to stay out of foreign policy matters.
Foreign commerce clause is a better argument, but I'd say regardless, here the President is operating within the laws and framework as Congress has legislated under that authority.
Whether the judge agrees is sort of circular logic here, not affirmation.
> Yesterday's SG argument at SCOTUS brought up many of the reasons why the judicial has historically, and should continue, to stay out of foreign policy matters.
If there is anything generically less convincing to me than a lawyer's presentation of arguments favoring their client's point of view, I can't think of it.
> Whether the judge agrees is sort of circular logic here, not affirmation.
So, I'm not clear on whether you're claiming that the president in fact does have the powers you're ascribing to them, or if you're saying they ought to, or if you're saying they have historically.
If you're saying the president does have that power, well, that's is the contested question. The most recent update we have from the entity that has the power to decide -- the judicial branch -- is that the president does not. If you're saying they ought to, well, that's just like, your opinion man. :) If you're saying they have historically, I confess some ignorance on the matter, but I'm not familiar with any recent examples of retaliatory expropriation like this in the United States.
>The most recent update we have from the entity that has the power to decide -- the judicial branch
My point is that for most foreign policy matters, the judicial branch doesn't have the constitutional power, or even any congressionally granted special jurisdiction, to decide these things. (Except for very specific exceptions spelled out by Congress, which is what yesterday's case was about.)
I brought up the SG's argument bc of the case law he cited is closely related, not because his argument was applicable to this case. They argued whether a case fell into a niche congressional explicit exception. And both sides recognized that, in general, courts don't have a role in most of these foreign policy arguments.
Import/export control on software isn't an exception, and in fact is explicitly allowed by statute.
I don't think anyone is arguing that the executive lacks the power of instituting import/export control over software that 1) is owned by a non-US entity, and might be either 2a) weaponized by a foreign adversary or 2b) used in a way that compromises national security.
They've already done it for years, including the infamous encryption export controls. Those didn't make much sense, but no one really argued the president couldn't do it.
Those decisions are political ones, not judicial ones.
And judicial precedent recognizes that, and defers to the executive, despite what this judge has ruled.
The US embassy moving to Jerusalem brought up many of the same issues, if you want to explore how this likely plays out. Even in the face of some congressional directives (I think via funding) explicitly not allowing the move.
>So, I'm not clear on whether you're claiming that the president in fact does have the powers you're ascribing to them, or if you're saying they ought to, or if you're saying they have historically.
All of the above :)
>retaliatory expropriation
Whether retaliatory or not, import/export control or tariffs aren't a constitutional taking, and so isn't expropriation any more than taxes are.
There might be some more interesting arguments to be made re:equitible treatment under the law if it were owned by an American company (and I suspect this is where your thoughts are), but it's not, and if it were, many of the underlying issues would be mooted.
If Facebook, Google, Twitter, et al are not allowed to operate in China, I see no reason why we should allow chinese social media companies to operate here. It would give Chinese companies a huge competitive advantage if they were the only ones allowed to operate in both markets. It's roughly equivalent to China enacting a 100% tariff on American goods, and the US continuing to buy Chinese goods with no tariff at all.
1. As of 2020, Facebook and Google make billions of dollars a year in China.
2. Google is allowed to operate in China. Have you forgotten project Dragonfly (It's internal effort to create a china-only service compatible with China's laws? It wasn't sunk by the CCP, but by employee activism.)
3. Many economists believe that protectionism that locks foreign competitors out is only harmful to your own people.
4. If China enacted a 100% tariff on US goods, let them. It is only robbing its own people - which is no concern of anyone who doesn't live in China.
I think you don't get how trade works. There are two parties to a transaction, and by definition of agreeing to a trade, both benefit. Ergo it's impossible that blocking a trade only hurts one side.
> There are two parties to a transaction, and by definition of agreeing to a trade, both benefit.
1. So, what you're saying is that banning imports hurts ourselves.
2. The parties who benefit from a trade are not necesarily the countries involved, but a handful of individuals in the countries involved. Foreign policy should not be set for the purpose of maximizing their comfort. It should be set for the purpose of maximizing overall welfare.
3. If China wants to export useful goods, in exchange for worthless pieces of paper that they can't buy anything with because of tariffs, that sounds very much like 'not our problem'.
Either way, this is all a complete tangent from my original point - that Google, Facebook, etc, do operate in China, and can operate in China, when they adjust their local operations to comply with local law.
The TikTok ban has nothing to do with lack of compliance with local law, and everything to do with an arbitrary executive order, not approved by congress, issued by what is now a lame-duck president. (Which is, ironically, the very same kind of capricious behavior that folks accuse the CCP of.)
You don't want foreign social media companies operating in the US? Fine. Pass a law banning that. Get ready for the world to reciprocate, though. I'm sure there are Indian, German, French, and British startups chopping at the bit, waiting for an opportunity to move into the space that banning Google/Facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn/Yelp would do in their countries.
The US has everything to lose, and nothing to gain by getting involved in this war - because it has a monopoly on exporting social media. By your logic, for example, Germany would lose nothing from banning US social media platforms, because it has no social media platforms that are being exported to the US market, and thus, a reciprocal ban would have no effect on them.
If we really want to be part of a modern world with freedom of access to information, there needs to be some way for people in the United States to communicate with people in China. If US social media companies are banned in China, that means the US needs to allow Chinese social media companies to operate in the US.
Completely removing all the ways for less-tech-savvy people in the US and China to communicate feels like setting the US back to before the global internet. It's not protecting US interests, it's breaking apart friends and families who have no other way set up to stay in contact.
The burden for allowing contact between the US and China fall on both countries. If China wants to ban all social media companies from the US, it's only fair for the US to do the same.
Isn't "If they're not willing to play fair, then _we_ must play fair" the core of of US philosophy? It certainly seems to be the standard imposed on US civil rights leaders and the central message of the big speeches in superhero movies.
The United States likes to say (or at least pretend) that it is a moral society, that it is through staying true to moral standards of truth and justice that the US will ultimately prevail, and that if the US fails to uphold those moral standards than the enemy has already won. US pop culture heroes (from X-Men to courtroom dramas and everything in between) constantly espouses this perspective.
From that perspective, the most important thing the US can do is keep an open communication channel with people in China so that they can ultimately see the error of their ways and come around to a US way of thinking, and cutting off communication with people in China is making the US more like China. It may be a self-righteous, egotistical, or even completely delusional way of looking at things, but the officially stated goals of US foreign policy frequently are.
I think the real underlying principle behind the United States is that the US says one thing and does another. Believing that the US has principles, etc. instead of just realpolitik in 2020 is naive. You have access to the all the information in the world.
then it should be argued as a trade problem, and with conditions laid on table, instead of a trade problem disguised as a security and privacy problem where its implied to be nonnegotiable.
> If Facebook, Google, Twitter, et al are not allowed to operate in China, I see no reason why we should allow chinese social media companies to operate here.
I think the Great Firewall is bad in China and would also be bad in the US. If you want to make this about actual business presence, financial transactions, etc. that would fall under trade, then sure. But how are you suggesting to "ban" a Chinese website or app, other than erecting our own Great Firewall? And would you suggest using that firewall to ban all requests from China? Or just "social media" requests?
A trade ban would be enough to dissuade them from operating in the USA. It would basically be equivalent to a narrow trade sanction w/ a tariff or tax for any leaks.
Thank you for bringing the Great Firewall into the discussion, because it is pretty important that we have that context. I think this is actually a lot more relevant to the conversation than any notion of seeking to negate a competitive advantage.
Recently, it occurred to me that the Great Firewall could be more of a tool for foreign policy, not domestic policy. If China for instance wanted to attack US's critical infrastructure, they could do so without damaging their own. Russia has recently employed such a system for their country's internet services, if I recall correctly.
It may very well be that this is what is motivating the TikTok madness here in the US. Left to their own devices, perhaps the fear is that China will weaponize TikTok against its US users, with no way to "great firewall" ourselves from those outcomes. Since we cannot use this strategy without angering the rest of the world on the "open internet" we have to resort to different measures.
There was an argument that TikTok was already weaponized for the election. The suppression of voices that are against the CCP or in the case of the US TikTok could upplay or downplay voices that it wanted heard. I.e. meddling in foreign elections.
In what way? I went through a TikTok phase a few months ago. The most salient thing I noticed was the total absence of political content, relative to Facebook/Twitter.
For one, I don’t think we should strive to be more like China. Second if we are going to ban TikTok at least make up some law they are breaking. For all it’s issues, at least there are laws the Chinese can point to for banning Facebook and google. And there are also remedies they can point to to return to China.
> If Facebook, Google, Twitter, et al are not allowed to operate in China
Isn't that because they refuse to ( or are not allowed to ) follow the rules/laws in china?
> I see no reason why we should allow chinese social media companies to operate here
But doesn't tik tok abide by our rules here?
> It would give Chinese companies a huge competitive advantage if they were the only ones allowed to operate in both markets.
They already have a huge advantage as their market is much larger than ours and will only continue to grow.
> It's roughly equivalent to China enacting a 100% tariff on American goods, and the US continuing to buy Chinese goods with no tariff at all.
No. It would be like facebook not having to abide by chinese laws while tik tok has to abide by american laws.
Essentially what you are saying is our companies should be able to do whatever they want, wherever they want. Don't think that's going to work out too well over the long run.
Chinese regulations are designed to ensure that the domestic Chinese market is dominated by Chinese-owned companies. Whether or not Facebook can follow Chinese law is irrelevant; if they could successfully compete, the rules would change to ensure that they don't.
The US, on the other hand, at least pretends to have rule-of-law that preempts attempts to use government power to determine economic winners and losers.
> Chinese regulations are designed to ensure that the domestic Chinese market is dominated by Chinese-owned companies.
All regulations around the world are designed that way. All markets are national security issues and all major powers protect their own turf. China isn't special just because you have something against them. From britain to japan to korea to india to mexico and even canada, they all cater their laws/regulations to protect their own companies.
> Whether or not Facebook can follow Chinese law is irrelevant;
It is relevant. Just because you decide something is irrelevant doesn't make it so.
> The US, on the other hand, at least pretends to have rule-of-law that preempts attempts to use government power to determine economic winners and losers.
You mean other than tik tok? Other than subsidies for boeing, etc? Other than the bailouts of car companies? And that's not even taking account of all the wars we've engaged in to further the interests of our companies. Our invasion and colonization of china for much of the 19th and 20th century doesn't count right?
Because when CCP is influential enough (through all the seemly benign companies it controls), you, as a citizen of US, will be forced to not to speak anything bad about it, an authoritarian country now and a totalitarian-Empire-to-be.
Because the surveillance by the CCP is far more extreme than that of FB or Google. FB and Google as powerful as they are at least are lead by proponents of democracy, social justice, etc, meanwhile the CCP is responsible for many human rights violations.
Personally, I'm agnostic about the issue because I don't have the necessary data to evaluate it.
If there are legitimate concerns by intelligence agencies that the CCP might use TikTok to influence users or spy on them on a large scale (which is very well possible), then I'm entirely for the ban and the question whether other intelligence agencies do the same is irrelevant. I don't think "it's okay because everybody does it" arguments are sound. However, if there is no evidence for such behavior, then I'm against the ban.
So far I haven't seen any evidence, but it's unfortunately not hard to imagine how the Chinese government would abuse a large social network for their purposes. They certainly do that domestically.
One problem is the current administration has very little credibility. To say “we have a tonne of evidence, we just can’t show you. Trust us”, just doesn’t cut it anymore because we know how much this administration lies.
This isn’t an attempt to make this political. But credibility matters and being able to claim the moral high ground matters.
Just as an example of 'not cricket', my daughter recently had very good reason to block an instagram user. Except, if that user is in any groups that you're a member of, in order to still see group messages, you must accept to still see their messages (and they yours) in those groups - or you must leave the group.
Actually being able to block other users, whether they're in a group you're in, or not, does not seem like an insurmountable technical challenge to me, so I assume it's a policy 'nudge' to discourage blocking toxic people.
I mean... it could be juicing metrics as you say. I certainly have no love for these companies. But more likely its to minimize support, confusion, and a feeling of brokenness.
Alice, Bob, and Charlie are in a group.
Alice blocks Bob.
Bob sends a message.
Charlie responds to it.
Alice says “what are you on about Charlie?” Because she didn’t see bobs message because she has him blocked.
Alice and Charlie work out via messaging back and forth in the group that bob sent a message and that Alice has him blocked. That’s awkward for everyone. And happens every time bob sends a message in the group.
I think you're equating 'blocking' with 'shadowbanning'.
I abhor that underhand practice, and can't think of any reason why it is valid. If you want to tell a user to 'go away, leave me alone', you should be able to block them without having to leave your groups - it doesn't need to be secretive.
So then what happens in the scenario I laid out? You just fumble around every time Charlie responds to Bob and Alice gets confused?
That’s reasonable for you?
I mean it’s ok if you want to just say what they’re doing sucks. But I’d find your position more compelling if you could offer a reasonable alternative.
For those that are not aware of it - all sufficiently large corporations in China are actually more akin to State-owned enterprises. Alibaba, TikTok, etc are essentially state-owned enterprises.
While I agree CPC is in ultimate control over government in China, and that China is a one-party state. I don't agree it to be a dictatorship.
I see dictatorship as monarchy in disguise. China's leadership as observed are not passed down within a singular family or families and the succession of which have not observed militarial coup. If the dictator can't have his/hers own blood-heir to take over, where is the dicatorship in this?
Then we can’t know if a country was a dictatorship ship until a ruler dies. Also, all countries with despots ousted and replaced by others, disqualifies as dictatorships.
I don’t like your definition. I’d rather look for rule of law and signs of democracy. Both of which are very scarce in China.
Sucession of power in dictatorship is what I'd think an important attribute of it, not a definition.
Many of those despots have every intent and actions that we have observed to have their heirs assume office, only that it was stopped. It's about that they have that power in their form of government where they make all the calls, not them actually achiving it.
On the other hand, many of Xi's predecessors are well-alive, well, two of them, if they are/were dicators, what is Xi? There are three dictators at different times in China, with one in the office and the other two well and alive? I doubt dictatorship would be an accurate account for what's really going on.
China isn't capitalist at all. Even things like buying land are typically timed leases owned by the government, and you see behavior like the Jack Ma incident where he made a perceived insult to the central bank and was "punished". Tied into labor programs and social credit, you see patterns that wouldn't ever fly in capitalism.
Communism doesn't mean everyone gets free groceries and doesn't have to work. The CCP, for all of their faults, seriously puts a lot of time and thought into the elements of communism and how the Chinese communism compares and evolves on it as a longterm form of government. Just because someone on the internet mistakes utopianism for communism doesn't mean Mao's party isn't communist.
It's quite Capitalist. Government ownership simply means that government is the capitalist instead of it being some private Billionaire, or a collection of investors in a joint-stock company.
Communism _does_ mean - among other things - that "everyone gets free groceries", in the sense that they would not exchange money or another commodity for the groceries, but rather get them through wider collective/communal/regional/country-wide arrangements.
I don't know why this is a popular misconception. You may have ration points or communism bucks instead of dollars, but you still need a hard currency to allow interpersonal trade. You may have resources that aren't obtainable through currency (housing), but you need currency because you need to settle preference/availability/tradeoffs. You probably also even still have some taxes for consumption.
The price of all goods is not equivalent on a fundamental labor level and the preference for goods is not flat.
Every Capitalist economy is a "mix of Communism and Capitalism", in the sense that a lot of the economic activity even in highly-Capitalist state is based on non-commodified, non-commercial, non-monetary work and cooperation.
The late David Graeber expanded on this point in "Debt: The First 5,000 Years".
My understanding is that China is part owner in many enterprises, at least thats the case for foreign manufacturers. Sorry I don't have a link that explains this more clearly.
The Chinese Communist Party wants total control of China. They exercise strict control over all people, religious groups, and legal entities. Large enterprises can come to resemble small countries in their influence and so definitely fall under that umbrella. In practice the CCP does this by choosing most of the directors of the companies, who in turn are essentially puppets.
"Why" is that the ruling party of China, the CCP, desires and is able to enforce this level of control. This often ties into the related idea of "State Sponsored Capitalism", also sometimes called the "East Asian Model"[0] This is in contrast to more Western Capitalism (Europe, North America, etc). With Western Capitalism corporations are given much more freedom and leeway to operate and build capital. With State Sponsored Capitalism, the the state is influencing or actively controlling corporations for the state's (or ruling party's) benefit.
While there are substantial differences between the two varieties of capitalism, if you squint it can be a difference of degree. For example in the West, we do have "crown corporations", and countries often put their own companies' interests above that of the global capitalist market (for example, the USA defending Boeing and going after Bombardier). One important difference is that in the West, our crown corporations/state owned enterprises are never run purely for profit.
As for "how", it varies. The State may just own a controlling amount of shares, or have board seats.
To put simply, in the West, often it's considered anathema for policy makers to pick "winners and losers" in the market. The idea is the market should decide. This isn't true in China. The CCP is happy to pick winners and losers, and in doing so it guarantees its own position. They user their power to make or break a company to effectively own it and use it to reinforce their strength.
And something "too big to fail" like GM or the big banks aren't...?
As soon as the state decides to prop a failing business up, it's no longer capitalism and the state gets control of the companies decision making process.
I'm not a big fan of governments paying up to rescue big companies that made billions and in the end went bankrupt because in a free market is unfair. But that's far, very far from not being capitalism. The action itself may not be the most "capitalistic" but after that the government doesn't take control, it's not an expropriation.
If the US were pure Libertarian-esque capitalist, you'd be right.
But we're also a country with medicare and food stamps and we recognize pure capitalism isn't flawless. Had a company like GM been allowed to fail suddenly then entire major cities would have seen unemployment go up 3x or 4x, and that's a lot of people who don't have jobs in a city that just lost it's primary industry. Most of those people are not white collar professionals who can hop over to SV - there are very limited jobs building cars.
As a country where we do sometimes engage in non-capitalist behavior (FDIC insurance, jobs programs, so on) it's sometimes more efficient to prop up a bad business and let it fail slowly then to entirely take a hands off approach.
The state is not a static line of code. The senior party members behind the Ant changed their mind for whatever reason, willingly or unwillingly. The result is the haunt of the IPO.
For those are not aware of it - US is actually more akin to an enterprise-owned state.
Joke aside, what this guy wrote is completely false. If Alibaba is state-owned enterprise, it does not need to stop the Ant group IPO. Yes, the state is trying to influence enterprises with the introduction of party councils in place of unions. It is not essentially state-owned when it is essentially not state-owned.
If Ant is 'essentially' state owned, whereas its action reflects the will of the state, then its action need not to be controlled through government regulation or Chinese SEC.
Ownership is much more powerful in an enterprise than outside government regulations in any cases.
> If Ant is 'essentially' state owned, whereas its action reflects the will of the state, then its action need not to be controlled through government regulation or Chinese SEC.
No. Not really. CCP is not a big uniform entity. There are different competing entities.
Also, ownership is different from control. I am not sure how this simple fact is overlooked.
1. I'm not sure what is your point, I'm sure there are representatives/lobbyist speak for Ant financial in the government, and there are stakeholders of Ant that have political influence.
2. No one claimed ownership is the same as control, but so it happens most of the time in the business world ownership implies control.
3. Like you said, ownership is different from control. Ant is not state owned, literally.
The way GP described it is like everything is tightly controlled. If the state controls Ant group, that would mean IPO was planned by the state, and you may already know Chinese government do regular long term plans, this incident wouldn't happen, also, it won't even happen in this way. It would be Ant group withdraw its IPO application instead. I won't say any business is fully independent in any country in this age. I am also not claiming Chinese business can be as independent as in US. It is definitely not state-owned as GP suggested.
Because according to GP, Chinese government wants to 'control' everything, that's why they 'own' everything. If they don't control it, would it make any difference if a company is state owned or private owned. If I own 1000 companies, and one of them is going to do the biggest IPO, I probably will still watch this one closely.
I think I have become too political recently reading hacker news. Such a waste of time. I will not participate in any philosophy/political/ideology any more. Thanks for the reply.
EDIT: We all have a habit to use logic to understand events, but many times, we can bend events to fit our logic. It is so natural, and we don't even notice it. I don't believe the world is black and white, or labelling makes it easier to understand the world. Everywhere you go is just a bunch of humans. When we are happy we take time and try to understand differences, when we are not, we attack differences. It is how we develop and survive in the wild.
State owned enterprises is not a bad word. The idea of having state owned enterprises is easy, when there aren't much private investment in any country. State-owned enterprises can be a good choice, especially in capital-intense industry. The side effect of state-owned enterprises is that if the enterprises can lose competitiveness (or never gain), which means they are actually very weak when competing in domestic market. And normally the objective of state-owned enterprises in modern government is to support employment and economy. It is less about control. If I think about the future, when robots take over all jobs, people don't need to work for money, there will be either state-owned company distributing the profit amongst all citizens or company-owned state (i don't know how this is going to work)
It does not need to be relative to anything to be “bad”.
A state-owned company in a totalitarian empire is part of a system that suppresses freedom of speech, uses forced labour, conducts genocide, seeks to undermine democracy overseas. That’s why it’s bad.
No. What you said has nothing to do with the state-owned enterprise. Is a piece of bread in your totalitarian empire bad? A state-owned enterprise provide employment, food and shelter for employees, and also provide social and economy functions for the general public.
Actually, for sufficiently large corporations, I would say the difference between being state-owned and private-but-state-influencing is not as clear as one might assume.
(Alternatively, you could say that all sufficiently large corporations are "partially-state-owning".)
Wow! I admire American democracy, it's institutions especially courts are super functional.
In India, this is unthinkable. District courts won't go against even the state chief ministers. And the supreme court has been showing its feet of clays lately.
Dude, I don't like politics of this country (India) like every next sane person. But TikTok and related chinese app ban was done for good.
When the other country is in a conflict on the borders, these apps are essentially a national security threat, given how pervasive these are. People used shitty adware / outright malware like ShareIt and Cam Scanner pervasively. I don't know how much of them are actually available now. But at least there is awareness now.
Tik Tok is the only social media app I use (edit: well I guess also Youtube). I'd rather China have my data than the US government or US corperations.
Edit: Why should I care if China has my data? Everyone seems worried about it, but I can't think of a good reason. I can think of a lot of reasons why I would prefer my own government from having it, though. The only scenarios I can think of, is if I become rich or powerful, or if China takes over the US.
"Our server logs show that you were actively engaged with racist/sexist/transphobic video when you were 19. It would be a real shame if that got out. We could make it all disappear, if you helped us in the next round of trade talks..."
Maybe, but I don't think China has enough credibility in the US to blackmail anyone. The leader can simply claim it's Chinese propaganda and China wouldn't have a way to prove it, AFAIK.
Edit: Plus if that's all it takes to blackmail someone you can probably just bribe them with money or something just as easily.
It’s not like the headlines are going to be “China says ...”. It’ll be reported via an anonymous source, or some credible person that they also control.
Maybe I am, but if it's that easy to blackmail a person, why would that person not also just be willing to take a bribe? If they care that much about themselves over their country. It just doesn't seem that realistic to me.
Both political parties already elect people that have sexual assault allegations against them, have done racist things, sexist things, etc. I don't think anything on Tik Tok is gonna be scandalous enough to blackmail over.
Do you really want big tech and alphabet soup agencies to have the social media history (secrets, likes/dislikes, usage profile) of our future leaders?
They already do, so I don't understand the point of asking this. Why does another government (that is becoming increasingly at odds with our own by the day) also need to have this data?
Not exactly compelled to add the Chinese government into the mix on top of that. The state of privacy being internally dire already doesn't mean I'm obliged to be compromised and debased on an equal-opportunity, global basis.
China has demonstrated a willingness to extend it's pressures on individuals outside China , pressure on Uighurs in Australia.
I see no reason that they would resist the opportunity to build a social credit score of sorts for outsiders as well, and put pressure on other companies to enforce it quietly.
We've seen Zoom bans enforced globally at the behest of China because some folks got together on meetings about Tiananmen, and all Zoom had to say was "sorry had to do it".
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”
Do you feel like Assange is the same as asking folks in Australia for DNA samples and implying bad things will happen to their family in China if they don't comply?
Thanks. Still, harassing people with ties to extremist groups by asking them for their personal data isn't much worse than how the Western world handles this, which usually involves extradition and Guantanamo.
I don't see any reason to think that the situation limited to " ties to extremist groups" anymore than banning zoom users who talk about Tienanmen is considered "ties to extremist groups".
What's your opinion in China's motivation when it comes to actions like this? Sure, there's this theory that China simply hates Uighurs, but there are certain factors - such as some privileges Uighurs have, that most other Chinese don't - that make it hard to believe.
Also, I really wonder what's that Tienanmen ban thing all about, given that it's common knowledge in China and - understandably, imho - part of their school curriculum.
Lobby for Uighurs? You'd have to assume the Chinese hadn't heard of Streisand Effect.
As for Tienanmen - okay, but this would require hiring people to follow every individual discussion, to see if the subject is being followed according to the official rules or not. It doesn't seem realistic.
> okay, but this would require hiring people to follow every individual discussion
The bans happened, Zoom said the request came from the Chinese government. How the Chinese government chose to do so really doesn't matter at that point does it? Same goes for the Streisand Effect... they're doing it none the less.
The Streisand Effect scenario only applies if you assume they are doing this to silence down Uighurs. It doesn't matter if they contacted those folks due to their involvement with religious extremist groups, which also matches the problems experienced by their family members back in China.
As for the bans - we don't know why they happened. Claims it's related to discussing Tienanmen are just that - claims.
Sure you have no reason to believe the extremist thing, but then, the explanation you've proposed leads to the Streisand Effect. I find the former easier to believe.
As for "Winnie" - that's much easier, you can just grep for the phrase.
The "we don't know why" basically means we can't assume things, especially in this case, where there's a fundamental language barrier and ongoing propaganda war.
They claim US data is not stored in China, though:
> The key personnel responsible for TikTok, including its CEO, Global Chief Security Officer, and General Counsel, are all Americans based in the United States—and therefore are not subject to Chinese law. U.S. content moderation is likewise led by a U.S.-based team and operates independently from China, and, as noted above, the TikTok application stores U.S. user data on servers located in the United States and Singapore.
So the US will still have your data (potentially).
You make a joke, but this is more complicated than your quip. Tweets are sometimes legally binding :) For example, pardons they're probably 100% legal and binding.
People here keep calling for banning of Tiktok, but I don't get it. Why do people call for a discriminary approach (targeting Tiktok solely based on its origin, not giving them a chance to prove innocence), when that's totally unnecessary?
Yes, the US is allowed to have national security concerns. Yes, the US is allowed to distrust China for whatever reason. But you could draw up a law that says "ANY foreign app must go through a security audit to certify no data reaches any foreign governments". That way you don't just target China, but also targets hypothetical Russian, European, African or whatever apps that could be problematic. And Tiktok would then be able to prove innocence or fix leaks.
As a response to china's discriminatory behaviour with respect to US tech companies. Due to network effects and so on, a company that is able to operate everywhere, including china, has an unfair advantage over companies that are kept out of china. The end effect of allowing this is that you only have chinese media companies. This has a number of negative consequences, including ones for the economy, for privacy, and for national security.
Rather than having some law that can be used to force TikTok and other companies to respect user privacy and store data safety. The US has basic no laws (with teeth) and doesn't care at all when a company like Equifax or Facebook leaks tons of data which includes foreign governments. But when one company is under the thumb of the CCP, the US freaks out. Meanwhile, the activities of the NSA and FBI in using telecoms and US tech companies to spy are no different, in an abstract sense, than what China does.
Essentially, If I'm a user not in the US or China, I don't want either the US or the CCP to be able to abuse/spy on me. But it's insane for US to claim the moral high ground when the legal barrier to the government using private data is literally just they have to pay a private company to do it [1]. That's not much different than the government directly owning shares in a company. Either way money flows from the government to the company in exchange for user data.
Sure the CCP is worse in that it prevents/breaks encryption, inspects packets but the US doesn't enforce the use of good security practices and really doesn't care when companies get hacked. We freak out that the TikTok app might be tracking us but we don't even notice that 20 other American apps on our phone collect & sell data.
The only real path forward is decentralizing the platforms such that E2E encryption is mandatory.
You are forgetting one major point. You cannot equate the US and China.
I can go on TikTok and make a video making a joke about the US president and nothing will happen to me. However if I am in China and make a TikTok video about Winnie The Pooh, I am going to end up in jail.
So yeah, it is not the same for CCP to have data on me or NSA.
If we've learned nothing else the last 4 years (last few decades really, but the last 4 years really hits home), it's that so much of what we take for granted about the US being supposedly safer or having a saner, more hands-off government is based far more on norms of behavior than actual legal protections for anyone, or legal guardrails that prevent whoever's in charge from abusing their power.
So you've got a point, but nowadays it's like you're comparing the risk of crossing a street blindfolded on a highway during the day vs. a 4-lane expressway in the middle of the night. One is a lot safer than the other but let's not pretend that either one is rational or advisable.
The same act is being committed regardless of whether it's TikTok or Facebook: collecting as much information on the general population as possible. If you can stop this from happening in the first place, it doesn't matter if the CCP or the Trump Administration or the Biden Administration or a future Putin administration want to use that information (ie. for political reasons), it won't exist on company servers for them to use.
To be honest I feel more comfortable with China having my data than the US. For one thing I’m a non citizen living in the US. I have no idea what data the US government has on me or how they’ll use it against me. We’ve also all seen the hostility the US has shown towards immigrants lately. Where as China has very limited ability to impact my life. Maybe US citizens has more protection than I do, but from what we’ve all seen last decade or so I wouldn’t feel very comfortable even if I was a citizen.
> The search warrant was authorized as investigators tried to learn who sent a chat message to a planning group on an emergency alert platform, urging people to speak out publicly about Florida's coronavirus strategies.
> The message stated, "it's time to speak up before another 17,000 people are dead," according to member station WFSU, citing the probable cause affidavit.
> As the agents enter, one points their weapon upstairs. Jones says the agents pointed a gun at her and at her children.
It's hard to convince me that we're the "good guys" when we're pointing guns at children because their mother spoke out against the official government position.
I'm sure she'll get off without a conviction after draining her life's savings to defend herself. Hopefully it launches her career, if there's still a democracy left. At least they didn't execute her.
>However if I am in China and make a TikTok video about Winnie The Pooh, I am going to end up in jail.
you don't actually, people shitpost on the Chinese intranet like crazy. Some social media company might try to filter what you post but we're not in Mao's era.
Also it's kind of circular and meaningless to elevate the US above China simply by holding up American values. Someone in China could say the same, "hey look over there they can openly mock the president and spread conspiracies on the internet, they've turned into idiots, you can't equate China with the US!"
yeah if you're one of the richest people in China don't bait the CCP and financial regulators before doing the largest IPO in the nation. That's different from someone posting memes on the internet.
Well, you do have to give China’s financial regulators credit here.
Jack Ma’s Ant Financial was doing some really shady business practices.
Like keeping essentially 0% money on their books for collateral.
And they filed to go public, in 2 months. Which is incredibly fast, that nobody had the time to review what their business was all about.
And even when they got approval at the lower levels, the higher levels didn’t get to think it through yet. So they decided to pause Ant’s IPO at the last minute. With the requirement that they have 30% of the money held back as collateral.
The Ant business model had a serious possibility of destabilizing the entire financial system of China, and possibly the world.
Nobody really cared when Ant was private. Make all the money you want. But being a public company is a whole different ball game.
I think China dodged a bullet here. It’s better to be safe, than sorry.
"The Ant business model had a serious possibility of destabilizing the entire financial system of China, and possibly the world.
Nobody really cared when Ant was private. Make all the money you want. But being a public company is a whole different ball game."
Can you elaborate why its ok for a private company to destabilize the the entire financial system of China, and possibly the world? Why is it bad when its a public company?
Look at the insane leverage in Ant's personal loan services.
Jack Ma is not punished because of his speech. His speech is a reflection of his perceived punishment of "innovation" which is really just a amplified version of the financial insanity already happened in US.
And Jack Ma actually can challenge the main stream rhetoric, can you say that 911 at least in part was a result of US foreign policy?
I kinda feel that we forget the real reason of the whole mess. The Trump administration wants to shake down China, and they find all excuses to do so. The US is in an economic war with China.
The law would really just be to get American/western companies all on the same ground with regards to data security. At least with that we can object to China's practices with a straight face and Western countries would have a united front.
In reality the CCP would be incapable of adhering to the law since it conflicts with their own laws about being able to review and monitor communications. But the difference is our objection would material and apply broadly rather than the case by case depending on the mood of the Executive branch.
If the law existed, the sale of Musical.ly would have never happened at least in the same manner. Most likely it would have been strong armed into Reddit/Tencent arrangement where it's only an exchange of capital & equity.
China doesn't and can't abide US law as a country.
TikTok, however, like every other private entity operating in the US does need to abide by laws for the protection it afforded under the law or should they face consequences.
No, I mean more like, if what the US Govt is alleging is true - that TikTok is siphoning data to Chinese military/security agencies (hence “national security threat”) that would definitely still be possible even if there were data protection laws - after all, the point of spying is that it’s generally illegal.
> TikTok is siphoning data to Chinese military/security agencies (hence “national security threat”) that would definitely still be possible even if there were data protection laws
Think it rationally, if there is any slight hint of that happening, you think Trump would not release it and amplify the claim 10x?...
The idea that tiktok is spaying is pure nonsense with very little evidence. What tiktok is collecting is not more than what Google or Facebook is collecting and that information is not more valuable to China. The Chinese government is less likely to harm you than your own government with that data.
The move to ban tiktok is a signal to US investors to not invest in Chinese tech companies which are making good progress. Sadly, this strategy may not work unless USA is able to bring the entire democratic world with them. I do not see that happening either.
>The Chinese government is less likely to harm you than your own government with that data.
Why are you so sure of that? The CCP has whole military divisions dedicated to pinging every server on the planet for any possibility on getting access to them.
> The idea that tiktok is spaying is pure nonsense with very little evidence. What tiktok is collecting is not more than what Google or Facebook is collecting and that information is not more valuable to China. The Chinese government is less likely to harm you than your own government with that data.
Then why was it caught spying on clipboard data? Remember the shenanigans that ensued just before this controversy blew up?
But then it turns out it's a common practice used by a lot of social media apps. The argument isn't that TikTok doesn't collect data, it's that it's not doing anything different / special compared to the other accepted apps.
Most of the apps in your home screen did it when the beta came out from NYTimes to Google News to Chrome to AccuWeather etc.
TikTok shows a pop-up preview of the TikTok link you have in your clipboard when you open TikTok. It might be that, it might be more. But it's certainly not more special than other apps.
What TikTok does reveal is social trends and sentiment, this can easily be exploited by propaganda campaigns. Just knowing what’s trending without Twitter’s firehouse is extremely valuable. Akin to a trojan horse.
I think this falls into the trap of assuming the TikTok ban is part of an intelligible plan.
There are a lot of people in the Whitehouse who are looking for ways to pick a fight with China for their own reasons plus TikTok's young users were often mocking the President. I don't think there's much more to it than that.
It may have been just a cover for banning WeChat which is a more credible threat. Everybody is up in arms over TikTok and the media says nothing about WeChat so the plan seems to have worked.
TikTok is the most successful China-owned app outside China.
Blocking TikTok places a dent to the aspirations of Chinese companies to expand outside China.
Let's assume that's true for a minute. Who does that benefit?
The wealthy in the US don't care, because they can and do invest in chinese tech companies.
The US government doesn't gain anything by banning TikTok. China can get most of the same data by scraping from other sources. I'm sure the US government can also get the data from Chinese companies if they want.
US tech competitors don't benefit from the TikTok ban because it shakes confidence in the laissez-faire attitude the US has had toward tech.
US citizens don't care because their interests are currently being represented by Facebook. I think I'd rather have China own my data than Facebook.
There is no pro-US or pro-democracy policy making happening. This is really just trying to graft meaning onto the actions of a childish narcissist with a lot of power.
I agree there's no grand plan here, but from another perspective, the rise of TikTok/WeChat/DiDi/Alibaba (e.g. was surprised to see that I can use AliPay at CVS in my area in the US), shows that China doesn't need US companies and will go ahead with its own internet, it's own tech industry, etc. Also see initiatives like this: https://www.cnet.com/news/china-has-big-ideas-for-the-intern...
US influence in China will wane because the US can't really compete the way that US companies have done in other markets; hence, what can the US do but try to blunt/dent/hurt the growth of Chinese companies e.g. by interfering with TikTok (since we're not going to out-compete them or win out in the marketplace)? These are flea bites, not fatal blows, but it's all that the US can muster for now from a "policy" perspective. And keep in mind, the US may not have a grand strategy here, but China certainly does.
Or, to condense it into a thought experiment, think about what it would take in some alternate future timeline (which may not be so far-fetched), that would make it more likely for Alibaba to one day acquire Amazon, then for Amazon to acquire Alibaba... We may already be headed to that future.
Alipay is one the most interesting pieces of technology to come from China.
People in the West ridicule it, because they already have their own credit card systems.
But think about it. With just a picture of a QR code, anyone can transfer money to you, via their smartphone.
No more need for a fancy credit card swipe terminal. No more credit card insecurity. No need to use the credit card chip which often doesn’t work.
No more worrying that some company got hacked, and your credit card number is floating around out there, just waiting to be harvested, and your identity stolen.
Since it was you, that authorized the purchase with your smartphone. And you get immediate confirmation of the transaction.
The processing technology of Alipay got offloaded to your smartphone, and the internet, specifically 4G cellular technology.
And plus, the credit card companies, Visa and MasterCard, are just leaches anyways. They get to charge an insane 20% APR, which is far higher than mobsters can charge, and the credit card companies are legally allowed to do so. If the mafia was smart, then they should just start a credit card company, instead of breaking some poor schmuck’s arm for repayment.
Credit Card companies are the epitome of a debt trap. Once you get stuck, you forever fall into their quicksand, with fees, late fees, over draft fees, etc. And here is the screwed up thing: all of it is legal. It’s absurd that Congress allows these credit card companies to exist. Oh wait, who am I kidding. The bozos in Congress own stocks in these credit card companies, that’s why they allow this highway robbery to exist legally.
The fact that credit card companies charge 3%, just means that everything is 3% higher.
The cash spenders are subsidizing the credit card swipers. And the cash back rewards programs are a complete gimmick. Since you’re totally paying for the rewards itself just from the increased 3% fee on everything.
Anyways, the sooner that something else comes along to eliminate these dinosaur credit card companies, the better off the world will be. But who am I kidding? That’ll never happen.
Indeed. 2020 has never made https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor more relevant. People want to see conspiracies and patterns in everything. There's probably some truth to some of it, but I'd bet a lot of money most of it is just the result of people bumbling around and trying to cover their own asses.
It's a conspiracy that the U.S. government spies on its citizens via technology companies? And that there is a clear national security interest in preventing foreign adversaries from doing the same??
It's as if we learned absolutely nothing from Snowden.
> I'm a user not in the US or China, I don't want either the US or the CCP to be able to abuse/spy on me. But it's insane for US to claim the moral high ground when the legal barrier to the government using private data is literally just they have to pay a private company to do it [1].
Ah liberals, the undisputed champions of whataboutism.
I still haven't seen a compelling reason as to why I should care that the CCP has access to my TikTok data, provided they actually do. It's an entertainment app. Sure, I search for medical conditions and other bizarre things from time to time. I do the same on Netflix and Google, and hey, torrent sites too. Big deal.
The problem with data and storage is that it has an extremely long memory. I think these groups are nefarious and China having my data will never end in my favor.
Imagine my disdain for China is a crime and 10 years from now I go to Beijing for work and face prison. No thank you
The ban was a national security move. Psychological warfare is a well known military doctrine, if you want to see the sciences behind it, use the filetype:pdf tag on google with the terms psychoacoustics, psychographics, psychovisuals. They teach these techniques when going for marketing degree's and there are well documented studies on how the use of these techniques have ridiculosuly boosted profits e.g. supermarkets playing calm music and building their store like a maze to force customers to listen to calming music for a sufficiently long enough period of time to cause the autonomic and limbic nervous systems to relax thus increasing susceptability to other signals and triggers on packaging. This specific technique has been linked to a 30-50% increase in revenue.
There is a strong argument these adversaries have built domestic terrorist cells who have been running around in gangs threatening people, razing buildings, and engaging in nonsensical political discussions about disposing with government services, and they are using a social media company owned by a foreign state with stated military objectives to organize. Whether you want to view Antifa or Trump supporters as the terrorists, or TikTok, Twitter or Facebook as domesitic or foreign companies is a matter of perspective.
The fact is weapons of psychologcial warfare do not differentiate between targets and may yet proove to be as deadly as any WMD.
The reason Section 230 is under attack by the current regime is that astroturfing exercises on boards like this one to force perspective change and create sounding boards for corporate political policies has become a well documented business model as the recent deposition of FB and Twitter's CEO infront of congress showed.
The real insanity is that any CEO would ever think messing with people's brain chemistry without knowing what you are doing in order to make a buck was ever a good idea.
> The paradox of tolerance states that if a society is tolerant without limit, its ability to be tolerant is eventually seized or destroyed by the intolerant. Karl Popper described it as the seemingly paradoxical idea that "In order to maintain a tolerant society, the society must be intolerant of intolerance." Popper expands upon this, writing, "I do not imply for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would be most unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force..."
No action on jobs, no progress on IP infringement or tech transfer, no action on currency manipulation or subsidies, trade deficit remains huge.
And that's without mentioning the TPP or South China Seas or treatment of minorities or Hong Kong and Democracy or basic human rights or Covid.
China is a huge issue. The huge issue of the next decade. Its the only thing I agree with Trumps manifesto about. But on all these fronts, trump has at best achieved nothing and at worse looked weak, weakened the Web of alliances that made China hesitate and make the US look weak and ineffective.
He rolled over on trade, the deficit jobs and ip in his failed little "trade war". He rolled over when he supported Xi over protestors. He's been too busy making hay and fucking up to properly question why zoonotic viruses keep coming out of China so he's rolled over on that too.
Failing to ban tiktok is yet another example of how poorly he's done.
Seriously, reasonable people on all sides agree that China is an issue. No one can say trump has made any progress on China.
It is a trade issue as so far only china (and ccp) can send in app but USA cannot send in apps to china. At least the key one. And tiktok can trace yours. But we hat on overseas chinese. But not USA in china.
Not sure the legal or presidential order is the best approach. But unless handle this USA might lose in the cyberspace... and humanity might suffer from ccp.
This entire comment thread is an example of information asymmetry. Lot of people here, especially Americans that should care about their country's sovereignty and safety, would actually agree to the ban if they knew that Tiktok is a propaganda tool that is influencing your children and is also a data mining paradise that can be weaponized to enhance data collection for targeting dissidents or other nefarious purposes. The fact is, not enough people in this country understand that China is an adversary, not a friend to the US. In fact, "adversary" is putting it lightly. This is not a partisan issue and it is not a "Trump hates China" issue.
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[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 57.8 ms ] threadThat said, they are generally ignored when they disappear. Apple and Reddit both removed their warrant canaries in 2016, to very little fanfare, despite the implications of them doing so.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warrant_canary
I don’t know why it serves anyone well to 1) believe the company’s word at face value and 2) not believe that the Chinese gov does not have backdoor agreements with the largest Chinese tech company.
The better question to ask is what information TikTok even has on someone. It isn’t exactly an app that asks for a lot of real world identity data to signup with.
IMO their biggest thing would be their ability to use computer vision to instantly process videos and match faces with real world identity databases and then to link faces and backgrounds to locations, family members/connections, interests, etc.
What you said describes literally any technology that makes decisions about what to present to the user.
Funny you mention this, because an effort to purchase tickets to a high-profile campaign rally for Trump (and not attend, in an effort to make his rally look poorly attended) was conceived and organized through Tik-Tok. Not a Trump supporter by any means, but given that Trump is much more hostile to China than Biden, doesn't that explicitly seem like a situation that could be considered "foreign election meddling"?
An intelligence agency interested in that information could just scrape TikTok's entire catalog and do the processing themselves. If it were a messaging app that would be different, but since TikTok is all about posting videos for the whole world to see, they don't really have much secret information about their users.
The point is that tons of people have no idea how to protect their own privacy. We can still advocate for protections in the same way we have warning labels on harsh cleaning chemicals.
Having a gigantic conglomerate in control of my supply chain is too risky.
I think that's how we need to look at Chinese companies. Are you willing to deal with the biggest company in the world?
Although most humans are not going to understand that the CCP owns 51% of every company. And if they do, even less are going to understand the implications.
As a result you can have networks formed out of ignorance.
False
Only state-owned corps have the 51% rule.
Proof is Elon's plant in Shanghai.
I guess also ignore China then pointing to the US and saying "our behaviour is fine, even the US does it."
I disagree with the way Trump targeted a single company but I think instituting a similar policy across the West to deal with China in similar terms wouldn’t be a bad idea to try to get them to negotiate a better status quo.
They are not "explicitly against that". They don't allow full access at the get-go, true, but it's a big overstatement to say that they are against the concept. If you look at what they've done in the past 20 years, you'll see that they're opening up to foreign business more and more.
For example, joint ventures used to be required. A couple of years ago, that requirement has been dropped. And now with RCEP, they're reducing tariffs for many Asian countries.
Walk down the street in China for 10 minutes and you'll see tons of western companies.
Western countries also don't fully adhere to the free trade principle. There are countries that blocked investment from China for political reasons, way before the "but China is unfair for not allowing access into their markets" started.
Granted maybe you have updated information here so open to reading about it. Claiming that “but western countries do it too” is unhelpful whataboutism. I didn’t claim Western countries don’t do crappy shit. In terms of market access and competition, that shiftiness is more about established players and regulatory capture rather than outright pseudo-fascism whereas China seems to have adopted fascism quite aggressively (ironic considering they call themselves a socialist party but I guess all authoritarian regimes end up looking very similar).
Saying “I see western logos when I walk around in China” is missing the mark when I talk about what is required of companies when they enter China (and as I said not all industries, but the ones strategically important to China somehow, especially high tech)
[1] http://voxchina.org/show-3-115.html
>×Claiming that “but western countries do it too” is unhelpful whataboutism.
Wait a minute... Many people are saying that the west should ban China for not allowing full access. The whole premise was literally about whataboutism. Saying that we shouldn't engage in whataboutism when the whole thing was based on whataboutism in the first place, is a bit odd.
Yes and it was a news story when it happened 2 years ago [1]. It could be that Trump’s tariffs were sufficient. Or there could be other agreements not wifey disseminated that allowed for that. Or China made this allowance strategically because electric car manufacturing in-country is easier to infiltrate with spies to exfil the technology you need (whereas non-electric car manufacturers don’t get this because China knows how to make those and getting a cut and building up the knowledge and expertise how to run those businesses is more important than the manufacturing itself).
Re whataboutism, I should have been clearer. Saying that we should meet China’s strategic and intentional aggressiveness in kind and why it’s a problem, to me, is 100% on topic and not “what about X” where X is unrelated to addressing the problem being discussed. An example of this would be like “sure China has concentration camps but what about Americ’s death penalty” - you have shifted the conversation away from the problem of China’s concentration camps to the problem of America’s death penalty. Both are problems but bringing up the latter in the context of a discussion about the former is generally unhelpful unless you’re making some kind of specific point/analogy.
What I was proposing is that a more effective way to go after China (rather than a trade war or targeting individual products of China) was “if these are the rules China wants Western companies to follow to have access to their domestic markets, then China gets the same rules just for them in foreign markets while competitors don’t get that restriction”. That’s literally how trading should be done. It’s the same reason I’m against allowing countries with poorer worker protection access to American markets without accounting for the costs that American workers create due to the enhanced protections.
What I was suggesting was whataboutism was the parent’s reply that “well sure China does unfair things in their market but the West does other unfair things too”. That’s totally unrelated and unhelpful. A fairer analysis would realize that most things in Western markets happen organically and aren’t unique to the West as regulatory capture and crony capitalism happen in China too and appear to be (at least to me) endemic to most economic activity humans are involved in. There are exceptions but to me China is following America’s playbook in large part for how they beat Great Britain at the technology game (the parallels are just uncanny). What’s intolerable is that the US government isn’t addressing this in any way.
[1] https://money.cnn.com/2018/07/10/news/companies/tesla-china-...
Using VPNs isn't even illegal. Providing VPN service without a license, is. A license can be given for e.g. business use.
What is happening is pretty much the opposite - the West doesn't have access to Chinese media (except those explicitly targeting the West), for language reasons.
Many western social apps work in China. Microsoft Teams, Skype, Facetime, to name a few.
Apps are banned in China for not complying to Internet laws, not for being western.
Whether we agree with those laws is a separate discussion. Bans from anyone should not be discriminatory and should not target the origin.
How is that so?
Tiktok is a us Corp. Legally they are subject to China laws.
Politically they can be hurt by influence from the parent's domestic operations.
I suppose latter is what you meant?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A
I don’t think this argument is particularly strong.
Every intervention the US government does is a signal to other governments and entrepreneurs.
If you are an aspring developer, you can choose to make your program local, US centric, or worldwide.
The economics don't always work for third world countries or globally, so they are forced to make products that are US centric. Banning apps shift the risk and could encourage more local apps.
With more US centric programs, US citizens are exposed to new ideas and economic competition. These are good for the long term despite the short term disruption.
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-55230654
Unfortunately transparency is a problem, as they did not state more details about the ban.
I donno why there’s so many apologists on HN. :/
To say that they are discriminatory despite the above data, is an assumption. That assumption may be right (because the data is not mathematically solid evidence). On the other hand, it may be not. But I think accepting that assumption is in line with US propaganda.
And lots of western apps aren't accessible in China. Such as Google, Wikipedia, Facebook, Twitter.
Furthermore, did you know TikTok itself is banned in mainland China? No kidding, they have an different version of the app that's Chinese-only.
I think the implication that China's being the free-market player here is faulty, to say the least. There's an argument to be made about how censorship of foreign applications conflicts with the US's values, for sure, but the one-way street argument doesn't scan.
VPN use is ubiquitous in China, it's as simple as that.
From that same article: || But police have also issued fines, confiscated thousands of dollars earned through online activity, seized routers and ordered "the suspension of networking,” effectively cutting off users from the internet. In some cases, police have punished trading companies that were using VPN software to access the wider internet for the purposes of “international networking.” ||
> VPN use is ubiquitous in China, it's as simple as that.
|| Now, however, detailed records published online by Zhejiang province show authorities moving against the very act of accessing unapproved parts of the internet through VPNs that are not government-approved. ||
As for the second chunk - this alone makes the article suspicious, as, as I've mentioned, and like you'll hear from probably anyone who lives in China, VPN use is ubiquitous. (Might vary from province to province, though.)
The vast majority of them want to address the privacy issues raised by such apps and companies irrespective of whether it’s the US or China misappropriating our data.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/22/world/asia/china-surveill...
As for the article - this all sounds like a subset of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_government_mass_survei..., until you realize one crucial thing: in case of US, the preferred way of dealing with this kind of minorities is either AC-130, or JDAM. Any kind of surveillance and reeducation camps is better from ethics point of view.
[1] https://www.justice.gov/archives/jm/criminal-resource-manual...
Now, I have no idea whatsoever what it looks like in China, but... do you have any source? What I meant writing my previous comment was data protection laws, ie laws that control what various bodies (eg companies) can do with your personal data, and for how long.
The criticism of China lays squarely at CCP and their abuse of power. My original comment is pointing out how the CCP uses data to oppress minorities. The equivalent would be Trump forcing Facebook and Google to turn over their data so he can go after Blacks and Mexicans.
I agree that companies in the US has too much power in what they can do with personal data. This needs more scrutiny.
But okay. Let's say it's not a mathematically solid proof. Agreed.
On the other hand, there's no mathematical proof that they are being discriminatory, either.
Why is it apologetic to not assume the worst of China at every turn?
FYI, I'm Chinese.
Because they view those values as inherently good, and thus opposition to those values as inherently bad. If you view freedom of religion or speech as a fundamental human good or need, then naturally a government opposed to (or seen as greatly curtailing) those values will be seen as 'evil'.
On a more human and physical level, people see, say, the Xinjiang camps and view that as reflective of the values of that government, as evil, the same way they may see the immigrant child separation in the US as reflective of its government's values, and as evil. Actions speaking louder than words of intent.
I'm pretty anti CPP for the most part, but I feel like we're losing all nuance when we use broad stroke labels. I also don't think it's productive. As soon as we label something or someone "evil" then any avenue for dialog and improvement is gone. The only thing left is conflict and confrontation.
That said, there's a sharp cultural contrast between the responses to the Kent State massacre in the US and the Tienenman Square massacre in China. In the US, you can't say Kent State wasn't popularly condemned, didn't prompt change, or isn't burned into the nation's psyche to this day. In China, you can't say much about Tienenman Square, period.
"I first learned about the happening of the incident at school, in the Grade 8 “Morality and Politics” class. [..] At the chapter on constitution, our teacher briefly mentioned the "turbulence": basically, in 1989 students used to take the streets and things "ended up messy". But he didn't give much detail."
This matches other stuff I've read in the past - it's not heavily discussed, but I wouldn't call it suppressed either.
EDIT: There's another aspect to this: I have no idea how it looks like in schools in various western countries, but from what I remember from Poland, it's all about "government murdering protesters". It doesn't mention whatsoever that it was much more complicated and there victims on all sides.
I find it problematic that anything in support of China or against the US in the context of US vs China is labeled being an apologist or Chinese propaganda. It’s a good way to shut down all discussion, much like the whole “that’s heresy” from ages past.
Do you think any one of those apps is authorized to make API calls out of China?
API calls, not phone calls yorwba
I don't know where you're getting your information about those apps' source code from, but since you were wrong about the second part, I'm going to assume you just imagined a plausible story and claimed it as fact.
Regarding the source code thing: you’re either not paying attention or you’re a CCP propagandist.
https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/telecom/security/chinas-...
> The rules only apply to companies selling computer products to Chinese banks
Your original comment didn't read like you were talking about auditing in the financial sector.
Funny you bring up Skype because in China they get a special version that enables the CCP to surveil your "private" communications for dissent. I'm sure other communications apps are similar, or plain blocked. For example telegram is banned, although Signal is still allowed for now (maybe it's under the radar).
US tries to ban 1 app that is being used to spread propaganda, farm user data, and is considered a national security threat. And everyone loses their shit over it.
Microsoft Teams, Skype, FaceTime all work in China, to name a few.
> because they want to control the content that Chinese citizens see and remove anything that is negative towards the ccp, etc.
This is true. But that doesn't mean they ban all US social media apps. If you follow their Internet laws (like Microsoft and Apple do) then you are allowed to operate.
> US tries to ban 1 app that is being used to spread propaganda, farm user data, and is considered a national security threat.
This is an assumption. Proof please, because I haven't seen any.
Don't get me wrong. I am not against a ban on Tiktok. I'm against a discriminatory ban, based on unproven assumptions, solely targeting the origin of an app.
What would be much more fair would be to state: all foreign apps have to go through a security audit to certify that no data reaches any foreign governments. That way you don't have to prove wrongdoing first, and you aren't being discriminatory either.
If tiktok is a US app. And not a china app. Then any content negative towards china would not be removed. Which happens daily. Whole pro china and anti America content stays. That’s propaganda.
https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2020/11/09/tiktok-censors-a...
There's also plenty of anti-China content on TikTok.
https://www.tiktok.com/tag/freehongkong
https://www.tiktok.com/tag/chinazi
https://www.tiktok.com/tag/fuckccp
Maybe that's your intention.
>Microsoft Teams, Skype, FaceTime all work in China, to name a few.
Calling them "social media apps" is a stretch. Microsoft Teams is designed to be used within an organization, so it's closer to a corporate mail server than facebook. Skype and FaceTime are public, but they don't have the defining features of other social media sites, such as a profile, UGC, or feeds: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media
But why does the exact definition of social media matter here? Let's say that Facebook follows their Internet law and becomes allowed, would you then have a different opinion?
In fact, would you want the US to be more like China?
Yes. If there is determined to be harm, I see no reason to protect them.
> Would you want the US to be more like China?
Governments fulfill similar roles across time and space. It's unavoidable that there is overlap. Please clarify what you are trying to imply.
But should the US government, given the current developments, ban Twitter and/or Facebook? That is what I'm asking.
Because they are quite literally doing the same as TikTok. Now, is TikTok spying for China? Except for a few reports, there is no proof of it. In fact, the US government would not ban TikTok if they sell their business to US companies.
So either TikTok does not spy on their customers for China, or they do, and the US government wants to have control over data illegally harvested.
Either way, forcing TikTok hand is not a move made to protect US citizens.
Twitter and Facebook are blocked in China. Going from a philosophical question to a current policy question, the existing context has to be taken into account. There is no equivalent reason for banning the apps.
> Because they are quite literally doing the same as TikTok.
I think they (Facebook/Twitter) are doing very different things from Tik Tok right now. They are certainly a vector for the US states/feds to mine and use data (as has been admitted and demonstrated). In the way the data is available to a government, there is an equivalence with Tik Tok.
> Now, is TikTok spying for China?
I define spying narrowly. I don't think it's "spying" but the infrastructure of Tik Tok presents an information vulnerability to the USA, which represents a harm. This is the basis of my justification as I am making the distinction.
> Either way, forcing TikTok hand is not a move made to protect US citizens.
I think it is a move that protects US citizens. The official justification is paper thin Trump revenge tactics (not racism, imo). Given, I give no credence to most of what Trump says, I don't care about the justification anyway.
America has the image built. China doesn't. It's behind. China will open when their culture is at a similar standing to the US.
Of course the image built is breaking down now, but it's still ahead of the Chinese one.
Everyone loses their shit over it because it's a direct example of the US government potentially violating the first amendment. They may claim that the app is being used to spread propaganda, farm user data, and is a "national security threat", but they've done very little other than raise the specter of "China" to prove that. Their claims of justification have been met with significant push back and, as far as I'm aware, they haven't provided any meaningful proof of their claims.
So yes, it's well-worth it for people to get up in arms about the US government censoring and shutting down access of US customers to a phone app. That's a hugely dangerous precedent to set and one that shouldn't be done lightly.
If a bad government does a bad thing a lot, it doesn't justify our government doing that bad thing even once.
In the long run, the asymmetry of US and Chinese citizen's access to each other's culture and products will work in our favor. Liberalism always seems to win, eventually.
Have you ever actually used tiktok? How is it being used to spread propoganda?
>farm user data
LOL. Yeah, please tell me how they are doing anything different than the other billion apps you download on your phone and sign-in through google or whatever.
>and is considered a national security threat
Because of... why?
https://www.businessinsider.com/tiktok-parent-company-byteda...
That's from last year...
Have you typed 'propaganda on hackernews' or on facebook/twitter/reddit or any other social media?
Everything in the world is going to have some form of propaganda to some degree. And honestly, having used tiktok a small amount, it seems way less than most social media out here. You generally have to even work hard to find anything that is political, most of it is completely random shit that has zero agenda.
The SCOTUS noted that they may need to reign-in the scope of lower-court orders, and this just adds weight to the issue.
It's particularly important because there's a practical bias. Opponents of an executive action can district-shop, while it is difficult for the Executive to file a declaratory-judgment action in a (perceived to be) favorable jurisdiction. So we end up with nation-wide judgments which differ what what the other districts would have ruled... but the other districts never had an opportunity to rule. Then... since a ruling has been issued, they are largely blocked from ever ruling.
However, the SCOTUS is is a bit of a bind, because allowing nation-wide orders works very effectively in general civil / criminal litigation. The problem has seemed to arise mostly in politically-charged issues where the government is a party.
I thought it was 105 foreign or US apps that got banned.
This is still a ticking time bomb, even if today they are only using it against malware (and apps that aid the Hong Kong protesters).
It's only a matter of time before they are forced to censor apps elsewhere, too.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/22/world/asia/china-surveill...
To me TikTok and fair regulation of how to handle user data the hammer that finally can crack the surveilance advertisement monopolies of Facebook and Google.
But what we really need is a US version of GDPR
They are two of America's richest and most powerful companies, and politicians tend to let those 'self-regulate' so as not be accused of interfering with market forces. It also helps that they both hand over a good amount of data to the US Government.
Find actual abuses by the application or its data and then there are credible arguments. Simply alluding to some notion of evil-by-association is a dangerous game for the US to play given PRISM, FISA warrants, etc.
And let's be real -- you're typing on your made in China computer full of components made in China, your data traversing made in china routers and relays, etc. This never had anything to do with any imagined security risk, and had to do with the corrupt manchild targeting a platform for carrying content unfavorable to him. It is just another demonstration that the US doesn't "stand for" much [1].
[1] - The only saving grace right now is effectively the so called "Deep State". The career judges and civil servants who don't twist every norm and rule and precedent because of this corrupt tinpot dictator and his pathetic army of deplorables. They may not be enough, though.
Would you feel different if TikTok were software of Russian origin? I suspect you would.
It's telling that one of the most common, and earliest, comments to justify a TikTok ban is "well China banned/blocked XXXX". It is similar to this administration repeatedly justifying super-spreader events by citing looters. Is that really the standard you are striving towards?
"Would you feel different if TikTok were software of Russian origin?"
No, I wouldn't at all. That is absurd. Russia actually has a fairly healthy software industry, including many games and even security tools like Kaspersky.
You can make the same argument to ban Facebook because of its use by the GRU, and it would be equally silly.
FB is a American owned an operated, but clearly if state actors have access (as they did at Twitter [0]) it hardly matters.
[0]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/former-twit...
If China is using TikTok against the interests of US citizens (which legally is 100% a matter of foreign policy, and therefore at the executive branches sole discretion) then celebrating the demise of one "monopoly" (tech) by the hands of an agent of another (a foreign govt) isn't principled capitalism/free-trade/etc, it's traitorous/patriotic, depending on perspective.
Evidence other than Donald, the Mr.Credible’s claim?
By definition it falls upon his discretion, not evidence or a trial verdict. This isn't "innocent until proven guilty" TV drama.
But shouldn’t the leader of the free world make “policy judgment calls” based on evidence?
I don't think the executive branch has sole and arbitrary discretion over foreign policy? For one thing, there's the treaty clause, and the foreign commerce clause of article 1 section 8. This judge apparently agrees.
The president can unilaterally leave treaties, arguably universally. SCOTUS has said that as head of State, even the recognition that other countries exist and/or are legitimate falls upon him.
Yesterday's SG argument at SCOTUS brought up many of the reasons why the judicial has historically, and should continue, to stay out of foreign policy matters.
Foreign commerce clause is a better argument, but I'd say regardless, here the President is operating within the laws and framework as Congress has legislated under that authority.
Whether the judge agrees is sort of circular logic here, not affirmation.
If there is anything generically less convincing to me than a lawyer's presentation of arguments favoring their client's point of view, I can't think of it.
> Whether the judge agrees is sort of circular logic here, not affirmation.
So, I'm not clear on whether you're claiming that the president in fact does have the powers you're ascribing to them, or if you're saying they ought to, or if you're saying they have historically.
If you're saying the president does have that power, well, that's is the contested question. The most recent update we have from the entity that has the power to decide -- the judicial branch -- is that the president does not. If you're saying they ought to, well, that's just like, your opinion man. :) If you're saying they have historically, I confess some ignorance on the matter, but I'm not familiar with any recent examples of retaliatory expropriation like this in the United States.
My point is that for most foreign policy matters, the judicial branch doesn't have the constitutional power, or even any congressionally granted special jurisdiction, to decide these things. (Except for very specific exceptions spelled out by Congress, which is what yesterday's case was about.)
I brought up the SG's argument bc of the case law he cited is closely related, not because his argument was applicable to this case. They argued whether a case fell into a niche congressional explicit exception. And both sides recognized that, in general, courts don't have a role in most of these foreign policy arguments.
Import/export control on software isn't an exception, and in fact is explicitly allowed by statute.
I don't think anyone is arguing that the executive lacks the power of instituting import/export control over software that 1) is owned by a non-US entity, and might be either 2a) weaponized by a foreign adversary or 2b) used in a way that compromises national security.
They've already done it for years, including the infamous encryption export controls. Those didn't make much sense, but no one really argued the president couldn't do it.
Those decisions are political ones, not judicial ones.
And judicial precedent recognizes that, and defers to the executive, despite what this judge has ruled.
The US embassy moving to Jerusalem brought up many of the same issues, if you want to explore how this likely plays out. Even in the face of some congressional directives (I think via funding) explicitly not allowing the move.
>So, I'm not clear on whether you're claiming that the president in fact does have the powers you're ascribing to them, or if you're saying they ought to, or if you're saying they have historically.
All of the above :)
>retaliatory expropriation
Whether retaliatory or not, import/export control or tariffs aren't a constitutional taking, and so isn't expropriation any more than taxes are.
There might be some more interesting arguments to be made re:equitible treatment under the law if it were owned by an American company (and I suspect this is where your thoughts are), but it's not, and if it were, many of the underlying issues would be mooted.
2. Google is allowed to operate in China. Have you forgotten project Dragonfly (It's internal effort to create a china-only service compatible with China's laws? It wasn't sunk by the CCP, but by employee activism.)
3. Many economists believe that protectionism that locks foreign competitors out is only harmful to your own people.
4. If China enacted a 100% tariff on US goods, let them. It is only robbing its own people - which is no concern of anyone who doesn't live in China.
1. So, what you're saying is that banning imports hurts ourselves.
2. The parties who benefit from a trade are not necesarily the countries involved, but a handful of individuals in the countries involved. Foreign policy should not be set for the purpose of maximizing their comfort. It should be set for the purpose of maximizing overall welfare.
3. If China wants to export useful goods, in exchange for worthless pieces of paper that they can't buy anything with because of tariffs, that sounds very much like 'not our problem'.
Either way, this is all a complete tangent from my original point - that Google, Facebook, etc, do operate in China, and can operate in China, when they adjust their local operations to comply with local law.
The TikTok ban has nothing to do with lack of compliance with local law, and everything to do with an arbitrary executive order, not approved by congress, issued by what is now a lame-duck president. (Which is, ironically, the very same kind of capricious behavior that folks accuse the CCP of.)
You don't want foreign social media companies operating in the US? Fine. Pass a law banning that. Get ready for the world to reciprocate, though. I'm sure there are Indian, German, French, and British startups chopping at the bit, waiting for an opportunity to move into the space that banning Google/Facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn/Yelp would do in their countries.
The US has everything to lose, and nothing to gain by getting involved in this war - because it has a monopoly on exporting social media. By your logic, for example, Germany would lose nothing from banning US social media platforms, because it has no social media platforms that are being exported to the US market, and thus, a reciprocal ban would have no effect on them.
Completely removing all the ways for less-tech-savvy people in the US and China to communicate feels like setting the US back to before the global internet. It's not protecting US interests, it's breaking apart friends and families who have no other way set up to stay in contact.
I think messenger apps work as well.
Actually lol'd at this. "If they're not willing to play fair, then _we_ must play fair."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
I'm saying that it makes no sense to lose on purpose just to say you "played fair".
From that perspective, the most important thing the US can do is keep an open communication channel with people in China so that they can ultimately see the error of their ways and come around to a US way of thinking, and cutting off communication with people in China is making the US more like China. It may be a self-righteous, egotistical, or even completely delusional way of looking at things, but the officially stated goals of US foreign policy frequently are.
I think the Great Firewall is bad in China and would also be bad in the US. If you want to make this about actual business presence, financial transactions, etc. that would fall under trade, then sure. But how are you suggesting to "ban" a Chinese website or app, other than erecting our own Great Firewall? And would you suggest using that firewall to ban all requests from China? Or just "social media" requests?
Recently, it occurred to me that the Great Firewall could be more of a tool for foreign policy, not domestic policy. If China for instance wanted to attack US's critical infrastructure, they could do so without damaging their own. Russia has recently employed such a system for their country's internet services, if I recall correctly.
It may very well be that this is what is motivating the TikTok madness here in the US. Left to their own devices, perhaps the fear is that China will weaponize TikTok against its US users, with no way to "great firewall" ourselves from those outcomes. Since we cannot use this strategy without angering the rest of the world on the "open internet" we have to resort to different measures.
Something to be said about an eye-for-an-eye leaving the whole world blind.
Isn't that because they refuse to ( or are not allowed to ) follow the rules/laws in china?
> I see no reason why we should allow chinese social media companies to operate here
But doesn't tik tok abide by our rules here?
> It would give Chinese companies a huge competitive advantage if they were the only ones allowed to operate in both markets.
They already have a huge advantage as their market is much larger than ours and will only continue to grow.
> It's roughly equivalent to China enacting a 100% tariff on American goods, and the US continuing to buy Chinese goods with no tariff at all.
No. It would be like facebook not having to abide by chinese laws while tik tok has to abide by american laws.
Essentially what you are saying is our companies should be able to do whatever they want, wherever they want. Don't think that's going to work out too well over the long run.
The US, on the other hand, at least pretends to have rule-of-law that preempts attempts to use government power to determine economic winners and losers.
All regulations around the world are designed that way. All markets are national security issues and all major powers protect their own turf. China isn't special just because you have something against them. From britain to japan to korea to india to mexico and even canada, they all cater their laws/regulations to protect their own companies.
> Whether or not Facebook can follow Chinese law is irrelevant;
It is relevant. Just because you decide something is irrelevant doesn't make it so.
> The US, on the other hand, at least pretends to have rule-of-law that preempts attempts to use government power to determine economic winners and losers.
You mean other than tik tok? Other than subsidies for boeing, etc? Other than the bailouts of car companies? And that's not even taking account of all the wars we've engaged in to further the interests of our companies. Our invasion and colonization of china for much of the 19th and 20th century doesn't count right?
If there are legitimate concerns by intelligence agencies that the CCP might use TikTok to influence users or spy on them on a large scale (which is very well possible), then I'm entirely for the ban and the question whether other intelligence agencies do the same is irrelevant. I don't think "it's okay because everybody does it" arguments are sound. However, if there is no evidence for such behavior, then I'm against the ban.
So far I haven't seen any evidence, but it's unfortunately not hard to imagine how the Chinese government would abuse a large social network for their purposes. They certainly do that domestically.
This isn’t an attempt to make this political. But credibility matters and being able to claim the moral high ground matters.
Just as an example of 'not cricket', my daughter recently had very good reason to block an instagram user. Except, if that user is in any groups that you're a member of, in order to still see group messages, you must accept to still see their messages (and they yours) in those groups - or you must leave the group.
Actually being able to block other users, whether they're in a group you're in, or not, does not seem like an insurmountable technical challenge to me, so I assume it's a policy 'nudge' to discourage blocking toxic people.
Alice, Bob, and Charlie are in a group. Alice blocks Bob. Bob sends a message. Charlie responds to it. Alice says “what are you on about Charlie?” Because she didn’t see bobs message because she has him blocked.
Alice and Charlie work out via messaging back and forth in the group that bob sent a message and that Alice has him blocked. That’s awkward for everyone. And happens every time bob sends a message in the group.
How would you deal with that?
I abhor that underhand practice, and can't think of any reason why it is valid. If you want to tell a user to 'go away, leave me alone', you should be able to block them without having to leave your groups - it doesn't need to be secretive.
That’s reasonable for you?
I mean it’s ok if you want to just say what they’re doing sucks. But I’d find your position more compelling if you could offer a reasonable alternative.
Or with threaded conversations, you prune Bobs messages and all replies.
It might be slightly confusing, but it's better than having to leave a group entirely, or see their abusive messages, when someone is harassing you.
I see dictatorship as monarchy in disguise. China's leadership as observed are not passed down within a singular family or families and the succession of which have not observed militarial coup. If the dictator can't have his/hers own blood-heir to take over, where is the dicatorship in this?
Then we can’t know if a country was a dictatorship ship until a ruler dies. Also, all countries with despots ousted and replaced by others, disqualifies as dictatorships.
I don’t like your definition. I’d rather look for rule of law and signs of democracy. Both of which are very scarce in China.
Many of those despots have every intent and actions that we have observed to have their heirs assume office, only that it was stopped. It's about that they have that power in their form of government where they make all the calls, not them actually achiving it.
On the other hand, many of Xi's predecessors are well-alive, well, two of them, if they are/were dicators, what is Xi? There are three dictators at different times in China, with one in the office and the other two well and alive? I doubt dictatorship would be an accurate account for what's really going on.
Communism doesn't mean everyone gets free groceries and doesn't have to work. The CCP, for all of their faults, seriously puts a lot of time and thought into the elements of communism and how the Chinese communism compares and evolves on it as a longterm form of government. Just because someone on the internet mistakes utopianism for communism doesn't mean Mao's party isn't communist.
Communism _does_ mean - among other things - that "everyone gets free groceries", in the sense that they would not exchange money or another commodity for the groceries, but rather get them through wider collective/communal/regional/country-wide arrangements.
I don't know why this is a popular misconception. You may have ration points or communism bucks instead of dollars, but you still need a hard currency to allow interpersonal trade. You may have resources that aren't obtainable through currency (housing), but you need currency because you need to settle preference/availability/tradeoffs. You probably also even still have some taxes for consumption.
The price of all goods is not equivalent on a fundamental labor level and the preference for goods is not flat.
The late David Graeber expanded on this point in "Debt: The First 5,000 Years".
While there are substantial differences between the two varieties of capitalism, if you squint it can be a difference of degree. For example in the West, we do have "crown corporations", and countries often put their own companies' interests above that of the global capitalist market (for example, the USA defending Boeing and going after Bombardier). One important difference is that in the West, our crown corporations/state owned enterprises are never run purely for profit.
As for "how", it varies. The State may just own a controlling amount of shares, or have board seats.
To put simply, in the West, often it's considered anathema for policy makers to pick "winners and losers" in the market. The idea is the market should decide. This isn't true in China. The CCP is happy to pick winners and losers, and in doing so it guarantees its own position. They user their power to make or break a company to effectively own it and use it to reinforce their strength.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Asian_model
As soon as the state decides to prop a failing business up, it's no longer capitalism and the state gets control of the companies decision making process.
I'm not a big fan of governments paying up to rescue big companies that made billions and in the end went bankrupt because in a free market is unfair. But that's far, very far from not being capitalism. The action itself may not be the most "capitalistic" but after that the government doesn't take control, it's not an expropriation.
Not exactly a 'free market' then if they're not free to fail.
But we're also a country with medicare and food stamps and we recognize pure capitalism isn't flawless. Had a company like GM been allowed to fail suddenly then entire major cities would have seen unemployment go up 3x or 4x, and that's a lot of people who don't have jobs in a city that just lost it's primary industry. Most of those people are not white collar professionals who can hop over to SV - there are very limited jobs building cars.
As a country where we do sometimes engage in non-capitalist behavior (FDIC insurance, jobs programs, so on) it's sometimes more efficient to prop up a bad business and let it fail slowly then to entirely take a hands off approach.
Joke aside, what this guy wrote is completely false. If Alibaba is state-owned enterprise, it does not need to stop the Ant group IPO. Yes, the state is trying to influence enterprises with the introduction of party councils in place of unions. It is not essentially state-owned when it is essentially not state-owned.
EDIT: typo
TikTok may be independent as a US company or more but the IPO stopping is not proof of it.
Ownership is much more powerful in an enterprise than outside government regulations in any cases.
No. Not really. CCP is not a big uniform entity. There are different competing entities.
Also, ownership is different from control. I am not sure how this simple fact is overlooked.
2. No one claimed ownership is the same as control, but so it happens most of the time in the business world ownership implies control.
3. Like you said, ownership is different from control. Ant is not state owned, literally.
Please, how do you go from "State-owned" to "everything is tightly controlled." I am genuinely curious.
I think I have become too political recently reading hacker news. Such a waste of time. I will not participate in any philosophy/political/ideology any more. Thanks for the reply.
EDIT: We all have a habit to use logic to understand events, but many times, we can bend events to fit our logic. It is so natural, and we don't even notice it. I don't believe the world is black and white, or labelling makes it easier to understand the world. Everywhere you go is just a bunch of humans. When we are happy we take time and try to understand differences, when we are not, we attack differences. It is how we develop and survive in the wild.
A state-owned company in a totalitarian empire is part of a system that suppresses freedom of speech, uses forced labour, conducts genocide, seeks to undermine democracy overseas. That’s why it’s bad.
(Alternatively, you could say that all sufficiently large corporations are "partially-state-owning".)
In India, this is unthinkable. District courts won't go against even the state chief ministers. And the supreme court has been showing its feet of clays lately.
When the other country is in a conflict on the borders, these apps are essentially a national security threat, given how pervasive these are. People used shitty adware / outright malware like ShareIt and Cam Scanner pervasively. I don't know how much of them are actually available now. But at least there is awareness now.
Edit: Why should I care if China has my data? Everyone seems worried about it, but I can't think of a good reason. I can think of a lot of reasons why I would prefer my own government from having it, though. The only scenarios I can think of, is if I become rich or powerful, or if China takes over the US.
Edit: Plus if that's all it takes to blackmail someone you can probably just bribe them with money or something just as easily.
Both political parties already elect people that have sexual assault allegations against them, have done racist things, sexist things, etc. I don't think anything on Tik Tok is gonna be scandalous enough to blackmail over.
Also, what kind of credibility could anyone attach to it?
Hey TikTok claims that Person A liked video B on date C. And what proof do they have? They could already just create a bunch of fake logs like this.
I hate to break it to you, but a site like reddit is 1000000x more incriminating for anyone than tiktok is.
I see no reason that they would resist the opportunity to build a social credit score of sorts for outsiders as well, and put pressure on other companies to enforce it quietly.
We've seen Zoom bans enforced globally at the behest of China because some folks got together on meetings about Tiananmen, and all Zoom had to say was "sorry had to do it".
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”
-MLK Jr.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-03-31/chinese-government-ac...
Also, I really wonder what's that Tienanmen ban thing all about, given that it's common knowledge in China and - understandably, imho - part of their school curriculum.
"I really wonder what's that Tienanmen ban thing all about, given that it's common knowledge in China "
China's control on what is discussed and how internally is no mystery, their desire to do that outside their borders should be no surprise.
As for Tienanmen - okay, but this would require hiring people to follow every individual discussion, to see if the subject is being followed according to the official rules or not. It doesn't seem realistic.
The bans happened, Zoom said the request came from the Chinese government. How the Chinese government chose to do so really doesn't matter at that point does it? Same goes for the Streisand Effect... they're doing it none the less.
As for the bans - we don't know why they happened. Claims it's related to discussing Tienanmen are just that - claims.
You keep saying this, I've no reason to assume that's the reason they contacted them.
"we don't know why they happened."
Would that apply to winnie the poo and similar things?
I'm don't get this hand waving around 'we don't' really know why'.... is that supposed to make it ok?
As for "Winnie" - that's much easier, you can just grep for the phrase.
The "we don't know why" basically means we can't assume things, especially in this case, where there's a fundamental language barrier and ongoing propaganda war.
> The key personnel responsible for TikTok, including its CEO, Global Chief Security Officer, and General Counsel, are all Americans based in the United States—and therefore are not subject to Chinese law. U.S. content moderation is likewise led by a U.S.-based team and operates independently from China, and, as noted above, the TikTok application stores U.S. user data on servers located in the United States and Singapore.
So the US will still have your data (potentially).
Pardons have been issued on napkins.
Yes, the US is allowed to have national security concerns. Yes, the US is allowed to distrust China for whatever reason. But you could draw up a law that says "ANY foreign app must go through a security audit to certify no data reaches any foreign governments". That way you don't just target China, but also targets hypothetical Russian, European, African or whatever apps that could be problematic. And Tiktok would then be able to prove innocence or fix leaks.
TikTok is just short videos. It's not like Facebook or Twitter which are more likely to be used by someone who is an adult.
"Roughly 50% of TikTok’s global audience is under the age of 34 with 26% between 18 and 24."
https://www.omnicoreagency.com/tiktok-statistics/
As a response to china's discriminatory behaviour with respect to US tech companies. Due to network effects and so on, a company that is able to operate everywhere, including china, has an unfair advantage over companies that are kept out of china. The end effect of allowing this is that you only have chinese media companies. This has a number of negative consequences, including ones for the economy, for privacy, and for national security.
Rather than having some law that can be used to force TikTok and other companies to respect user privacy and store data safety. The US has basic no laws (with teeth) and doesn't care at all when a company like Equifax or Facebook leaks tons of data which includes foreign governments. But when one company is under the thumb of the CCP, the US freaks out. Meanwhile, the activities of the NSA and FBI in using telecoms and US tech companies to spy are no different, in an abstract sense, than what China does.
Essentially, If I'm a user not in the US or China, I don't want either the US or the CCP to be able to abuse/spy on me. But it's insane for US to claim the moral high ground when the legal barrier to the government using private data is literally just they have to pay a private company to do it [1]. That's not much different than the government directly owning shares in a company. Either way money flows from the government to the company in exchange for user data.
Sure the CCP is worse in that it prevents/breaks encryption, inspects packets but the US doesn't enforce the use of good security practices and really doesn't care when companies get hacked. We freak out that the TikTok app might be tracking us but we don't even notice that 20 other American apps on our phone collect & sell data.
The only real path forward is decentralizing the platforms such that E2E encryption is mandatory.
[1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/federal-agencies-use-cellphone-...
So yeah, it is not the same for CCP to have data on me or NSA.
So you've got a point, but nowadays it's like you're comparing the risk of crossing a street blindfolded on a highway during the day vs. a 4-lane expressway in the middle of the night. One is a lot safer than the other but let's not pretend that either one is rational or advisable.
And of course there's HN favorite wikileaks...
> The message stated, "it's time to speak up before another 17,000 people are dead," according to member station WFSU, citing the probable cause affidavit.
> As the agents enter, one points their weapon upstairs. Jones says the agents pointed a gun at her and at her children.
It's hard to convince me that we're the "good guys" when we're pointing guns at children because their mother spoke out against the official government position.
I'm sure she'll get off without a conviction after draining her life's savings to defend herself. Hopefully it launches her career, if there's still a democracy left. At least they didn't execute her.
you don't actually, people shitpost on the Chinese intranet like crazy. Some social media company might try to filter what you post but we're not in Mao's era.
Also it's kind of circular and meaningless to elevate the US above China simply by holding up American values. Someone in China could say the same, "hey look over there they can openly mock the president and spread conspiracies on the internet, they've turned into idiots, you can't equate China with the US!"
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/06/technology/china-ant-grou...
Jack Ma’s Ant Financial was doing some really shady business practices.
Like keeping essentially 0% money on their books for collateral.
And they filed to go public, in 2 months. Which is incredibly fast, that nobody had the time to review what their business was all about.
And even when they got approval at the lower levels, the higher levels didn’t get to think it through yet. So they decided to pause Ant’s IPO at the last minute. With the requirement that they have 30% of the money held back as collateral.
The Ant business model had a serious possibility of destabilizing the entire financial system of China, and possibly the world.
Nobody really cared when Ant was private. Make all the money you want. But being a public company is a whole different ball game.
I think China dodged a bullet here. It’s better to be safe, than sorry.
Nobody really cared when Ant was private. Make all the money you want. But being a public company is a whole different ball game."
Can you elaborate why its ok for a private company to destabilize the the entire financial system of China, and possibly the world? Why is it bad when its a public company?
Jack Ma is not punished because of his speech. His speech is a reflection of his perceived punishment of "innovation" which is really just a amplified version of the financial insanity already happened in US.
And Jack Ma actually can challenge the main stream rhetoric, can you say that 911 at least in part was a result of US foreign policy?
What makes you think TikTok / China would abide by such a law, if there was one?
If there are no laws in place at all, what’s the punishment for.
In reality the CCP would be incapable of adhering to the law since it conflicts with their own laws about being able to review and monitor communications. But the difference is our objection would material and apply broadly rather than the case by case depending on the mood of the Executive branch.
If the law existed, the sale of Musical.ly would have never happened at least in the same manner. Most likely it would have been strong armed into Reddit/Tencent arrangement where it's only an exchange of capital & equity.
TikTok, however, like every other private entity operating in the US does need to abide by laws for the protection it afforded under the law or should they face consequences.
Think it rationally, if there is any slight hint of that happening, you think Trump would not release it and amplify the claim 10x?...
The move to ban tiktok is a signal to US investors to not invest in Chinese tech companies which are making good progress. Sadly, this strategy may not work unless USA is able to bring the entire democratic world with them. I do not see that happening either.
Why are you so sure of that? The CCP has whole military divisions dedicated to pinging every server on the planet for any possibility on getting access to them.
Then why was it caught spying on clipboard data? Remember the shenanigans that ensued just before this controversy blew up?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRSWdtoUAjo
Most of the apps in your home screen did it when the beta came out from NYTimes to Google News to Chrome to AccuWeather etc.
TikTok shows a pop-up preview of the TikTok link you have in your clipboard when you open TikTok. It might be that, it might be more. But it's certainly not more special than other apps.
There are a lot of people in the Whitehouse who are looking for ways to pick a fight with China for their own reasons plus TikTok's young users were often mocking the President. I don't think there's much more to it than that.
Same with WeChat.
The wealthy in the US don't care, because they can and do invest in chinese tech companies.
The US government doesn't gain anything by banning TikTok. China can get most of the same data by scraping from other sources. I'm sure the US government can also get the data from Chinese companies if they want.
US tech competitors don't benefit from the TikTok ban because it shakes confidence in the laissez-faire attitude the US has had toward tech.
US citizens don't care because their interests are currently being represented by Facebook. I think I'd rather have China own my data than Facebook.
It all seems very confusing, until you recall that the TikTok ban happened because a bunch of kids organized on it to mess with the pre-registration for a Trump rally. https://www.stanforddaily.com/2020/08/03/tiktok-ban-trump-is...
There is no pro-US or pro-democracy policy making happening. This is really just trying to graft meaning onto the actions of a childish narcissist with a lot of power.
US influence in China will wane because the US can't really compete the way that US companies have done in other markets; hence, what can the US do but try to blunt/dent/hurt the growth of Chinese companies e.g. by interfering with TikTok (since we're not going to out-compete them or win out in the marketplace)? These are flea bites, not fatal blows, but it's all that the US can muster for now from a "policy" perspective. And keep in mind, the US may not have a grand strategy here, but China certainly does.
Or, to condense it into a thought experiment, think about what it would take in some alternate future timeline (which may not be so far-fetched), that would make it more likely for Alibaba to one day acquire Amazon, then for Amazon to acquire Alibaba... We may already be headed to that future.
People in the West ridicule it, because they already have their own credit card systems.
But think about it. With just a picture of a QR code, anyone can transfer money to you, via their smartphone.
No more need for a fancy credit card swipe terminal. No more credit card insecurity. No need to use the credit card chip which often doesn’t work.
No more worrying that some company got hacked, and your credit card number is floating around out there, just waiting to be harvested, and your identity stolen.
Since it was you, that authorized the purchase with your smartphone. And you get immediate confirmation of the transaction.
The processing technology of Alipay got offloaded to your smartphone, and the internet, specifically 4G cellular technology.
And plus, the credit card companies, Visa and MasterCard, are just leaches anyways. They get to charge an insane 20% APR, which is far higher than mobsters can charge, and the credit card companies are legally allowed to do so. If the mafia was smart, then they should just start a credit card company, instead of breaking some poor schmuck’s arm for repayment.
Credit Card companies are the epitome of a debt trap. Once you get stuck, you forever fall into their quicksand, with fees, late fees, over draft fees, etc. And here is the screwed up thing: all of it is legal. It’s absurd that Congress allows these credit card companies to exist. Oh wait, who am I kidding. The bozos in Congress own stocks in these credit card companies, that’s why they allow this highway robbery to exist legally.
The fact that credit card companies charge 3%, just means that everything is 3% higher.
The cash spenders are subsidizing the credit card swipers. And the cash back rewards programs are a complete gimmick. Since you’re totally paying for the rewards itself just from the increased 3% fee on everything.
Anyways, the sooner that something else comes along to eliminate these dinosaur credit card companies, the better off the world will be. But who am I kidding? That’ll never happen.
It's as if we learned absolutely nothing from Snowden.
> America's goal is not to protect Americans' privacy. It is to protect its own monopoly on violations of Americans' privacy.
Is a gross overstatement, though.
Ah liberals, the undisputed champions of whataboutism.
Imagine my disdain for China is a crime and 10 years from now I go to Beijing for work and face prison. No thank you
There is a strong argument these adversaries have built domestic terrorist cells who have been running around in gangs threatening people, razing buildings, and engaging in nonsensical political discussions about disposing with government services, and they are using a social media company owned by a foreign state with stated military objectives to organize. Whether you want to view Antifa or Trump supporters as the terrorists, or TikTok, Twitter or Facebook as domesitic or foreign companies is a matter of perspective.
The fact is weapons of psychologcial warfare do not differentiate between targets and may yet proove to be as deadly as any WMD.
The reason Section 230 is under attack by the current regime is that astroturfing exercises on boards like this one to force perspective change and create sounding boards for corporate political policies has become a well documented business model as the recent deposition of FB and Twitter's CEO infront of congress showed.
The real insanity is that any CEO would ever think messing with people's brain chemistry without knowing what you are doing in order to make a buck was ever a good idea.
E2E solves none of the above.
Welcome to 2020.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
* let trump claim headlines about being tough on China while rolling over for China.
* got trump cheap attention while distracting from real issues he can't be bothered to solve
* created some volatility and maybe let a donor snap up a deal on a growing tech company.
* was basically meaningless to 99% of his supporters who don't use tiktok or understand what it is and so wouldn't be upset or ask any questions
It achieved all of these and more, whether it worked or not.
can you clarify this? in what ways did he roll over for china?
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-10-29/trump-s-c...
No action on jobs, no progress on IP infringement or tech transfer, no action on currency manipulation or subsidies, trade deficit remains huge.
And that's without mentioning the TPP or South China Seas or treatment of minorities or Hong Kong and Democracy or basic human rights or Covid.
China is a huge issue. The huge issue of the next decade. Its the only thing I agree with Trumps manifesto about. But on all these fronts, trump has at best achieved nothing and at worse looked weak, weakened the Web of alliances that made China hesitate and make the US look weak and ineffective.
He rolled over on trade, the deficit jobs and ip in his failed little "trade war". He rolled over when he supported Xi over protestors. He's been too busy making hay and fucking up to properly question why zoonotic viruses keep coming out of China so he's rolled over on that too.
Failing to ban tiktok is yet another example of how poorly he's done.
Seriously, reasonable people on all sides agree that China is an issue. No one can say trump has made any progress on China.
Not sure the legal or presidential order is the best approach. But unless handle this USA might lose in the cyberspace... and humanity might suffer from ccp.