Edit: I am an EU citizen if it matters.
People can only inhabit a finite number of social media networks, and there can eventually only be a fairly small number of big players in a position to produce massively detailed rich profiles on individuals and therefore hold most influence on them (consumer behaviour & voting behaviour)
Imagine that the USA clamps down heavily on facebook, and in 4 years some rival company from Russia or China ended up achieving the largest market share / richest per-person psych profiles. That represents a security threat even greater than the (nearly catastrophic) threat that Facebook represents today. Who wins and who loses in this race is going to make a massive difference in what the planet looks like 20, 10, even 5 years from now.
What's the threat model here? Certainly ousting LGBT people is scummy, but I'm not sure I understand how it jeopardizes the security of the nation.
You could argue that the ability to blackmail government officials compromises national security, but lots of things in that "data profile" could be used for blackmail. I don't see a reason to break this issue out separately.
Any kind of blackmail can be valuable, but one that is still illegal in many parts of the world is super valuable.
* Gay government employee travels on official business to one of the ~70 countries where homosexuality is illegal
* Chinese military operative threatens to turn them in to authorities if they don't cooperate
The US side of what? What does it mean to be on the US side?
Look up Five Eyes.
There are no absolute friends and absolute enemies. China was a good commercial partner of the US until a few years ago. Italy has been spied for decades by the CIA. The US wiretapped Germany's PM. Israel was caught installing spy mobile phone cells around the White House.
Or is threatening the economic and technological supremacy of the US by competing on the global markets already a way of not siding with the US?
Italy - Not Five Eyes
Germany - Not Five Eyes
Israel - Not Five Eyes
Notice a pattern?
Anyone new US foreign policy should also lookup the Munro Doctrine. Would have saved Maduro and the Venezuelans a great deal of suffering.
We know there is geopolitical maneuvering by different countries to improve their standing on the world stage, politically and/or economically, and that includes how they engage on business and technology. The great firewall was not for nothing. Same with fights over 5G or who can operate where, data privacy laws, etc.
OTOH, it's not clear exactly what's at stake when there's a dispute over control of tiktok. Are the worlds governments competing over data sources they could tap to make weaponizable models of societal function? Are they just competing for ownership of emerging markets to help their economies? Does all this amount to a pissing match between the worlds elites? Or are ideological differences sufficient to cause wildly different outcomes for humanity, especially the little folks, depending on who gets the upper hand?
The short list is China, Iran, Russia, N Korea, Venezuela, Cuba. There are others, but these seem to get the most attention.
Remember the Axis of Evil?
Country’s have complex relationships. At the height of the Cold War the US and USSR still had some trade. It’s really propaganda that boils things down to allies and enemies.
(it's a Soviet plane running drugs, so it's OK, and the Mujahedein involved are run by a chap who went to Oxford, and are fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan, so that's OK too)
Yes and no, there are some ways of seeing things that are not really compatible. For example, the USSR wanted to export communism internationally which meant incidentally fomenting violent coups around the world to create socialist powers they could control. If you are a target of such strategies you can't seriously be "friendly" with such powers - it's not just propaganda.
During the cold war all sorts of things were justified because they made sense from the perspective of US (governmental) interests. The Vietnam war, the Mujahideen, the toppling of free and democratic governments. In a "realist" framework, the ends justify the means. The "ends" and "means" here are considered from the point of view of the statesman.
When the world is viewed as a chessboard between competing nations, human beings outside the decision making centers suffer - we are reduced to being expendable resources, collateral damage, in the pursuit of "national" interests.
Especially in dictatorships like China and Russia, indeed.
> Viewing competing governments as competition between their countries
I don't understand this comment. So if a foreign government is opposed to you, it's OK because it does not represent its people and therefore you should not do anything about it? As far as I know the government controls the use of violence force so in the end of the day governments matter over people when it comes to foreign relations.
> During the cold war all sorts of things were justified because they made sense from the perspective of US (governmental) interests. The Vietnam war, the Mujahideen, the toppling of free and democratic governments.
This hardly happened in a vacuum. In case you missed an episode the whole of Europe and several parts of Asia were threatened to be taken over by communist rule, in a violent fashion - the US acted as a counter power to that.
And Stalin repeatedly instructed revolutionary communists to stand down in order to avoid provoking Western powers (e.g, in Greece, Italy, France, Yugoslavia, and even China). The USSR provided little to no assistance to revolutionaries in Central and South America, believing that socialism needed to develop there naturally.
So I guess Cuba does not count? Sending missiles right at the doorstep of the US and constant financial aid seems to counter your point.
> The US has fomented violent coups and interfered with legitimate elections all around the world in service of exporting capitalism and free market imperialism (e.g., in Italy, Indonesia, Iran, any number of countries in Central and South America).
Every major power does that, but they are not all equal. The British empire was in comparison a lot more violent that the US has ever been. And people who lived under Soviet Rule (even outside of Russia) also know very well it was far from a peace-loving, people-respecting regime.
“Everybody does imperialism” is not the glimmering rebuttal you think it is.
> It's a big business. Look, what happened with China with this virus, what they've done to this country and to the entire world is disgraceful.
The trade war is obviously a major factor as well, but Trump thinks that bashing China helps his reelection chances and helps deflect away from his administration's incompetent response to the virus.
1. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-07-07/tiktok-to....
FB and Twitter didn't have people on them embarrass Trump by tanking one of his rallies:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/21/style/tiktok-trump-rally-...
This could be fixed in many , many ways - like not allowing political ads, or not allowing targeted political ads, or labeling clearly what is paid political propaganda or the exteme solution , limited electoral budget (why should the guy with more money is more equal then the rest?? it is are torical question I know constitution in US allows this )
E.g. people have had all the data for car accidents for decades, and yet we don't have a large, concerted movement to ban or "reinvent" cars/roads/driving/driver's licenses even though it could save tens of thousands of lives. Likewise, we've had police and crime statistics for decades as well but only recently had a "big movement" mobilize around addressing some of it. Additionally, we have all the data to "call in to question" some of the hard narratives of said movement, yet people are doubling-down on it. At some point we have to agree that it's not about data anymore. It's about mind-share, and feelings/emotions and other intangible things that are causing shifts that we should all be worried about.
With that in mind, it's absolutely clear to me that we should be taking a close look and scrutinize the platforms that can cause such societal shifts. TikTok, Twitter, Facebook, Google Search, etc. They can all explicitly or at the very-least subtly manipulate and drive societal movements/impressions on issues. At least let's agree that they promote certain types of viral topics/movements that have criteria that make them more "virable".
Here's one way you could interfere with US elections without showing political ads BTW: show "vote" reminders only to people who you infer from data to be democrats. At a first approximation, to people in urban centers in swing states. Not an "ad" per se, but you can still swing the election quite easily - in swing states elections are close by definition. As far as I'm aware there exists no law prohibiting such interference.
This is how FB and Twitter are going to do it if the DNC doesn't like the final polls.
Let's assume you block all applications that are suspected of relations with CCP (no proof, no trial) this won't stop CCP just buying this data from shady american (or foreign) companies so it would be smart to fix the root of the problem(data collection and brainwashing)
In the US we have rule of law, we have rights. There is no rule of law in china only rule of the party. FB and Twitter er scrutinized, this would never happen in China.
That's the very very very big difference here.
Or at least they didn't, until this happened.
They would care about Tencent or Alibaba, but ByteDance isn't big or important enough for the party to care.
That's the problem.
See for example: https://www.ft.com/content/0c42dc7c-b927-477a-90b7-a202bbe4b...
Or also this: https://www.ft.com/content/61988d2d-4c95-4a35-8273-d6980af04...
I love FT and I subscribe to the paper but I see more anti-trump sentiment than an actual argument there.
I'm very sceptical of US intelligence justifications in general (and have been since 2003) but even more so under the current administration.
"I love FT and I subscribe to the paper but I see more anti-trump sentiment than an actual argument there. "
I really don't see any anti-Trump sentiment there, can you clarify what you mean?
The easiest answer is: because ByteDance said so.
ByteDance has a internal board staffed by the CCP, and their CEO Zhang Yiming has even:
> promised that the firm would in the future “Further deepen cooperation with authoritative [official party] media, elevating distribution of authoritative media content, ensuring that authoritative [official party] media voices are broadcast to strength.” [0]
> If "brainwashing" on social media exists then all should be made illegal not only the a small subset.
The US, like almost every other country, regulates international commerce differently than domestic commerce. The US intentionally makes it harder to regulate domestic matters in order to protect the rights of the people the government is tasked with protecting. They even go so far as having separate agencies responsible for domestic matters vs foreign matters.
[0]: https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/01/16/bytedance-cant-outrun-b...
Less cynical answer: wider action would require congress to be involved and congress is permanently gridlocked
Of course, we're now deep into my opinions :)
The current administration has no intention of doing any of that. Attemping to rule by decree is easier and makes for immediate headlines. By the time the executive order gets thrown out in court, plenty of political hay has been made among the party faithful.
And when the order does get thrown out in court, the administration blames 'activist judges' instead of the merits of their own case.
Either way, the CCP will continue (or even intensify) it's activities, Trump will rally the faithful and someone will probably make a few billion for nothing more than already having a few billion and being in the right place at the right time.
Chinese tech companies can (and often are) required to work directly in conjunction with the Chinese military to further their goals and operations.
Also, the US has separate agencies and requirements for setting domestic policy vs foreign policy. The authorities that oversee what Facebook does is entirely different from the authorities that oversee what TikTok does -- so this is not a matter of a single group 'choosing' between the two. The laws of the US intentionally have more rigor for domestic issues.
Simple: regulating all businesses even closely to European standards would impact many big corporations that are, coincidentally or not, big donors to both political parties.
Only going after "politically suitable" companies (in the case of the Republicans, TikTok + anything connected to Jeff Bezos, Big Tech for Democrats) is way more effective for the parties.
And it isn't about privacy of the citizenry. Its about sticking it to China. The US executive hasn't and doesn't care about what happens to the citizens, just about reelection.
Right, so, lots of stakeholders, very difficult to please. Add to that the fact that the house is elected every 2 years (so 50% of the time it's election year), so is the senate (although only 1/3rd of the seats, so it's impossible to swing the senate quickly), and the president every 4 years. And since the incumbent president's party always suffers in mid-term elections, and since the senate can't swing quickly, a single party has only had complete control of government for 14 years out of the last 50 years.
So basically, the President generally gets 2 years after being elected during which they might have the actual power to draft, and pass legislation. Most of which gets spent on 1 single piece of legislation - for Obama is was Healthcare, for Trump is was repealing Healthcare (failed in the Senate) and Tax cuts.
I wouldn’t want to live under a system that can make drastic changes on a whim. The USA is a very multicultural place with many different people with different priorities. We need to find common ground before certain types of things change. This is good even if frustrating at times.
Oops.
Everyone being so occupied with national law is driving us crazy. Time to give more power to states and use a weakened federal government for some general oversight, monetary policy, and foreign affairs.
Decriminalized marijuana has been a good experiment in allowing states to make their own choice based on the cultural and financial needs that are unique to each state.
I feel like in today’s climate that both sides would find common ground in this as you often here republicans wanting less federal authority and democrats complaining their states pay most of the taxes that get redistributed to generally republican states.
Congress passed the PATRIOT ACT, multiple resolutions to invade foreign countries , almost passed SOPA until some people woke up, passed disaster debt ceiling increases routinely which will bankrupt this nation, passed increased regulation of healthcare markets with forces people to buy lamborgini coverage when a simple kia may do.
And in return the only positive i can say is we get some tax deductions which do not apply to heavily taxed, large urbanized states like CA, NY, IL.
No. Gridlock is good. Its the only thing putting a check on Congress from completely ruining this country.
See counter case: Switzerland. Complete gridlock. Massive check on congress via direct democracy. People argue about the zaniest litttle things. Yet people are freer here than in most other countries in the world
The 17th amendment changed this.
The issue at hand is not invasion of privacy, but rather the state's monopoly thereof versus its foreign adversaries.
Why is our politics/legislation in this space derivative of the US? Isn't the point of the EU to get a large enough regulatory block to be effective at (among other things) regulating multinationals?
So far all I've seen is minor bureaucratic layers (eg gdpr) and rulings (eg the adwords antitrust case) that change nothing meaningful. I don't even know who to complain to.
* Actually 55% of the countries, but they must have 65% of the population which means that France and Germany are enough to block everything proposed by all the others even they all get together.
That might become a problem, or be a problem in places... but it's not the problem.
The primary problems (IMO) are:
(1) Influence of multinational interest. Regulation could literally half FB's EU revenue without being very radical, for example.
(2) Lack of polity. The EU parliament is a clown house and becoming worse. There is no political public discourse around it. It doesn't have power. Voters use it for experimental/protest voting. Political parties use it as a proving ground for nationally oriented politicians, and for jobs. The whole thing is dysfunctional.
(3) EU politics plays almost no role in national politics.. parliaments or governments. There's no public discourse here either.
(4) The "executive" is totally closed doors. Legislation is a part of governance, but not all of it.
(5) They don't really know what to do, and they're timid.
Blaming insufficient power, in politics, is a copout most of the time. It absolves everyone. This should be a political faux pax. Use the powers you have more effectively. Maybe then you can have more power.
I know that Daily Mail and the like love to hate Brussels but Brussels is only what it is let to be.
That's trite, and insulting.
Calling the EP "clown house" is also insulting and calling the EU bureaucracy outright incompetent is tabloid style simplification and I'm not sure what else I can compare it to.
Yes, it is easy to say: "they are not strong leaders", but they can't be strong leaders, but how they could be when they are dependent and have limited mandate?
More like 33%.
The matter is whether "is is ok to do business with a company from a communist country for as long as you are not dealing with the state itself" vs. "it is ok to do business with a communist country in general, just not with their dangerous businesses"
Given the context of the issue, one whats to ask why now the later is fine, and the prior is not?
It also does sound, and look completely schizophrenic when the same part of political establishment vouches for both at the same time.
It feels the establishment is still very, very eager to keep doing business with China, just as much as they are eager to keep insane profits that come from the trade with China, and they will immediately run back to Beijing to bargain for concessions right after the elections.
Remember, the establishment has collectively sank legislations barring companies from dealing with labour rights abusing contractors abroad.