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Comment by wojcikstefan | Hacker News Reader

This flips the typical narrative of "Chinese companies copy our products and their government lets them" on its head. I understand why this is a valid business move, but I think that the sense of moral superiority over China that is so pervasive in conversations with Americans is even less credible now.

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I think the criticism tends to be more focused on corporate espionage which this is decidedly not. I wouldn't say this is flipping any narrative on its head. I can't even tell the major differences between vine, tiktok, stories, snapchat, and now reels.

That’s a fair point.

Realistically, a lot of companies copy each other's products and features, within the American tech scene. The cure - software patents - is worse than the disease; remember Amazon's one click patent?

How many team chat apps appeared after Slack, for example?

Slack may have discovered a marketing niche, but team chats existed for decades.

> The cure - software patents - is worse than the disease

Might that not also apply to preventing Chinese companies copying American hardware products or manufacturing processes?

Maybe? Intellectual property is a huge sprawling topic that arguably needs different treatment for different kinds of thing. Do you have specific allegations in mind?

Because companies that do business here aren’t required to turn over IP in order to do business here and aren’t required to have a local partner? You’re comparing exceptions in one place with everyday requirements in another.

You could easily make the case that Facebook is copying Twitter (Vine), an American tech company that TikTok copied.

But let’s be real, there’s nothing impressive or innovative about making an Instagram clone with short video clips rather than pictures. All this talk about its magic algorithm is ridiculous. What would be impressive is if they were profitable, which they as far as I know are not. Their scalability is also overrated since other companies are doing all the heavy lifting, and they’re spending hundreds of millions on attracting users to their free video sharing app.

I do think the rhetoric goes a bit overboard, but people are not wrong about the problem your comment addresses. That problem is orthogonal to this Instagram product. Imitation != theft.

Isn't TikTok just a Vine clone? Social networks have always been derivative and iterative.

Tbh Tiktok wasn't the first service to offer short videos. Douyin copied (and eventually bought) Musical.ly and before all of that was Vine.

Pod Save America interviews Kara Swisher at the end of the most recent episode [1] And at the very end of that they discuss TikTok and China.

Swisher is no fan of Facebook, but she also sort of casually describes China as have different “values” than the United States with the implication that the values are not as good and that it is not good for a Chinese-owned TikTok to have so much data on US citizens.

It struck me because the comment went unchallenged by the host. I have my own biases against Chinese “values” due to what I’ve seen in my security work and also from what’s happening with the Uighurs in China now.

Is there contemporary moral superiority of the United States over China? I think most Americans would say yes without a lot of detailed reasons why.

I’d compare it to whether Craigslist has moral Superiority over eBay. Seems possibly obvious but the truth is more nuanced.

However, all historical context is set aside to make this statement. United States’ current and past moral failings are not really held up for discussion.

[1] https://podcast.app/youve-got-no-mail-e109788978/?utm_source...

This fixation on "US moral failings" as a stopping point for the conversation is not especially useful.

Both countries have done and are doing great things. Both countries have done and are doing reprehensible things, and they deny it as best they can.

One country codifies individual liberty as a guiding principle (however imperfectly fulfilled).

The other eschews liberty as a distraction from the national interest, indeed it views the spread of democratic government as a threat.

US values do not require the world to become less free. Can one say the same of China?

s/copy our products/steal protected IP/g

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