China would rather see TikTok U.S. close than a forced sale | Hacker News Reader

China would rather see TikTok U.S. close than a forced sale

reuters.com

36 pointselorant69 comments

Can anyone who knows these things please tell me what good does banning an app do to a country?

India banned loads of Chinese apps, sure, "to put pressure" but is that "pressure" meaningful enough?

Will it work only if all nations decide to do so to counter China? Will that ever happen?

Are we heading towards app-diplomacy?

There’s other Chinese companies such as Tencent which aren’t banned. India has more serious border and resource disputes so they are using apps as a proxy in the fight.

I think the main concern many people in the west have against tik Tok is that is is a form of social media that is directly or indirectly under control of the Chinese government and will be used as a subtle form of information warfare.

As far as I understand it's applicable to all platforms be it chineese, western or even indian. These days these internet platforms are a lot used for spreading political propaganda. Simplest example is ones like quora, reddit etc. It's these days filled with right wing(from all nations) accounts spreading propaganda. The amount of reach they have in these platforms and the amount of control they have to suppress opinions is massive. I was astonished that there was an answer justifying european colonisations and when a comment was made how it was not great for colonised and how the colonisers as a whole benefited a lot form these actions immediately the comment was reported and removed. These platforms are all owned for spreading each other's political propoganda in the information warfare that's there. It's not exclusive to chineese but as you said since government control over companies are more there it's thousands times worse; but it's not exclusive to chineese it is for platforms from west too.

If anything, reddit is actually overrun by left wing spam accounts and I say this as a liberal leaning person myself. I had to drop that platform outside of reading nintendo and Star Trek episode discussions.

Reddit can get nasty very quickly if you venture out of the few remaining sane subs!

Yes, but how do we know that this is a good strategy? Is it working? How do we be certain that this is a good fight back mechanism?

Banning an app reduces another nation’s control over the culture and mindset of your country’s people. Whether this is a concern or not is less clear, but theoretically China could censor content that is critical of China, which India and US may not approve of. Or even more subtly it could nudge people in certain directions. Such as the claim that Russia is stoking the fires of internal strife within the US.

That last claim is not so much s claim as proven fact.

I'm pretty sure we weren't seeing Chinese culture via TikTok. Indian Tiktokers made lot of money via TikTok.

But does this work to nudge China?

Is Indian lost revenue big enough for China to change their style just because TikTok is banned?

The point isn't to get China to change, but for a country to have control over its own people instead of a different country having that control.

Is that's the case then I can understand. The way I hear it in Indian Media is that our supreme leader "taught China a lesson by banning apps"

people should all just bit bitorrent over i2p for all internet access. So everyone is anonymous at all time. No body should be known who they are unless they want to you.

> what good does banning an app do to a country

Given the context of recent India-China issues, it is fair that India will take punitive steps. But it will not make China to correct her behaviour. I look at the banning of the apps this way:

1. Sends a message to China that India can take further steps and will stand-up to the bullying of China

2. I really doubt that banning apps is the ultimate card with India. It is a just one of the cards and reserving others when things escalate

3. If banning 100+ apps results into even growth of 10 apps India-made apps, it is a good side effect.

4. Any little trust India policymakers had towards China is gone. See [1]

[1] https://theprint.in/defence/china-wanted-no-escalation-on-ho...

Note: theprint.in is not a right-wing media outlet. I could have cited a more pro-govt sources but theprint is a centrist ones.

I agree with all your points. So this is just punishing China. Whether it works is yet to be seen

Sure, few local apps growing through this will be a happy incidence.

It could be something as "simple" as shifting public opinion.

And these days, it's a lot - because it's not just Indian public opinion and Chinese public opinion, it has global reach.

It also undermines China enterprises, when a big part of tech business models is economies of scale, such actions basically cut massive slices of the global market.

Even if all of this is a nudge, it's still a nudge in a certain direction.

Because the reality is that India is struggling dealing with China, and all the help they can get in the direction of slowing down China is good for them.

You see news about the conflicts in the Himalayas for small "patches of land", but a lot of the advents in the Indian Ocean are going unnoticed - China is literally expanding their territory aggressively and India doesn't have enough navy resources to stop it.

China is proud of TikTok being a Chinese company - in their eyes it's their turn to have the next big social media platform.

It represents strength, progress of China and CCP, and maybe a glimpse of change for the perception of China being the global tech powerhouse. Probably Chinese people are proud of it as well.

So it really doesn't impress me to see their intentions to burn it down and keep their pride/save face, instead of turning the the public perception of "losing to the US"/"being the underdog" once again.

It's also a precedent. Now it would be TikTok, which company would be next? Especially since the border between state and company is less clear in China, I could see why China would not allow this to happen and strengthen the US economy with a loss on their side.

It's still a probability between no deal and unfavorable deal. Any country would do the same when confronted with this situation.

I really hope Internet Archive (or someone similar) is furiously downloading all the videos and comments it can.

I don't see how tiktok is worth billions.

USA could perhaps play China's game; ban tiktok, and support a 'local champion' to create an identical US version, let's call it, toktik - it at least sounds more like the poison it is.

Then again, we need to find ways to stop China gaming the world open trade system, forcing the rest of the world to follow Chinese values and become more like China - ie less free.

The network effect is a billion dollar value.

I guess if the Chinese gov sold their stakes in Chinese tech companies to politically connected businessmen then the censorship would be ok because free speech doesn’t apply to “private” companies with ties to US intelligence like Cisco and Microsoft?

The US is the one going out of its way to attack countries that don't bend the knee like Iraq and Venezuela. China pays its partners in Africa for their resources. US overthrows governments to steal them and “spread democracy”. Why does US spread democracy to Iraq but not Saudi Arabia, a literal monarchy? (Because US only care about power) The projection of US sins onto China is unreal and lays bare US meddling and hypocrisy.

USA is certainly no saint, eg Banana Republics, not to mention war crimes in the middle-east.

But IMHO a world 'under' USA's insistence on openness, human-rights, democracy, (and free-flowing oil, etc, of course), is preferable to China's opaque mercantilism and spiteful sensitivity.

My point is that USA is aping those attributes.

We need to stop being dragged into a less-free world.

But the US doesn't promote openness, human rights, or democracy. It promotes its own mercantilism and spiteful sensitivity while accusing others of doing so. How many human rights do Palestinians have in USA’s greatest ally, Israel? (40% are denied citizenship) How much market openness is Tiktok seeing in US? Why is US #2 mid east ally a monarchy? These are all baldfaced lies and only uninformed Americans living in the US media bubble believe them. The people in charge of the US are hell bent on destroying those things when they come into conflict with their own power. Therefore they should have no role in enforcing any international orders.

Of course, that’s the whole point. It’s of no use to the CCP if they can’t control it.

If China required Apple sell itself to Huawei to continue selling iPhones, US government would outright forbid the sale, even if China payed a fair price.

People, including Chinese, buy iPhones because they're from Apple. No one, including Chinese, would buy Huawei "iPhones" because a) everyone would know that they're not from Apple, and b) if they wanted to buy a Huawei phone, they'd buy a Huawei phone.

Sounds plausible. That’s completely irrelevant to my point however.

Not at all. It's my way of saying that the US government would not bother forbidding the transaction.

Further, did the US protest when China ordered Google out of the country in 2008? (And Facebook, but it wasn't nearly as large then.) No.

Ok I see what you mean now. Google left voluntarily because China refused to let Google be a backdoor for US propaganda and surveillance. (exactly what tiktoc is accused of) and yes, the US protested loudly at the time.

Another possibility is that a forced sale could uncover links to Chinese government surveillance in technical assets, and that's a risk they don't want to take.

Do you think they have API calls to the communist party's surveillance backoffice?

Lots of cheap Android smartphones do, why wouldn't TikTok? I just don't think they get anything material out of the integration due to the unbelievably low signal to noise ratio.

I’d venture to say it’s filtered to knowing who influences culture. Then pinpointing what those accounts respond to. Then designing content to shift said culture through this channel.

Who knows. People being people, the backdoors that are likely there might be easily visible from the source code. And they may be identical to backdoors used elsewhere. Devs do not like to reinvent the wheel.

And scrubbing them out without trace prior to ownership transfer is not easy. One forgotten backup copy of the Git database is enough to leak the info.

Yes? It's neither technically impossible nor beyond a totalitarian state to do so. So why would you presume otherwise?

This is probably true for all billion dollar tech companies.

Imagine how much dirt Facebook, Apple and Microsoft has.

Let’s assume for a second that TikTok really is a surveillance app designed by the PLA cyber command as some in the Trump administration allege. How, then, is a forced sale not a form of aggression or even warfare?

Definition of war has changed since nukes and the cold war.

Isn't this similar to other trade rules that China has already?

Who can do business as far as social media is concerned is already a situation where the government picks and chooses.

So in your scenario, kicking out a spy and confiscating their US based property is a form of warfare?

Because dismantling other countries surveillance apparatus operating in your own soil is not aggression. It's just like breaking up spy rings, and destroying bugs.

It's certainly an aggressive posture, but it's not really aggression.

Yes,right, every country other than US should ban Facebook

China literally did ban Facebook.

Seriously? Shutting down foreign spy ware is called national self defense.

If they weren't so big they would have just been shut down.

Executing spies isn't an act of war, it's an act of law enforcement.

Swap China with USA and Tiktok with Google and see how insane it is. I hope China doesn't back down to US aggression. This is like a child throwing a tantrum. It needs to be put in its place by a grown-up.

The problem is: it’s China. No matter your argument, it’s very easy to respond with “but China.” Simply put: “the US doesn’t commit genocide, therefore, we’re better.” It’s a ridiculous argument IMHO, but it’s one that I’ve heard (even here) many times.

How is it ridiculous? Is taking action against a country actively committing genocide ridiculous?

It’s not. But saying we’re better than China when we do many bad things comes off as virtue signaling. Just because we don’t do what they do doesn’t mean we’re better if we do things that are similar or even worse than they do.

Abducting protestors off the street in unmarked vans is very reminiscent of what’s happening in Hong Kong. Many people actively support the riots in Hong Kong, but demonize them when they happen here. The NSA spies on everyone, but we care more about when China does it. We have roughly a Social Credit system in the form of your Credit Report and algorithms that determine if you’ll jump bail.[0] Heck, we have a President who has suggested he won’t leave office if he loses in November and a very large chunk of the population supports it (I’ve seen some die-hard Republicans say he should run for a third term in 2024 if he wins 2020). The list goes on and on.

Basically, we may be better than China in some ways, but to say we’re overall better is debatable. I would even go as far as saying it’s disingenuous. We can’t be better if we don’t recognize our own shortcomings.

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24425797

You dismiss my pointing out of genocide with whataboutism[0]. Nothing the US does comes close to ethnic cleansing on the “bad guy” scale.

0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism

Propping up China vis a vis the Soviet Union and Japan was a smart move. The State Department should have dropped them like a hot potato after the Japanese economy stalled in the 80s and the Soviet Union collapsed.

Not committing genocide is a good way to be better than a country committing genocide, jmho.

The US doesn't need to commit genocide because it grooms foreign military officers and paramilitaries to do it for them.

quote:

Saturday marks the 20th anniversary of arguably the worst congressional vote in this century.

On that day in 2000, the Senate approved Permanent Normal Trade Relations (PNTR) with the People’s Republic of China by a vote of 83-15. President Bill Clinton signed the legislation into law, declaring: “China will open its markets to American products from wheat to cars to consulting services, and our companies will be far more able to sell goods without moving factories or investments there.”

Republican Rep. Bill Archer of Texas, the lead sponsor of the bill, remarked, “The American people support this agreement because they know it’s good for jobs in America and good for human rights and the development of democracy in China.”

quote.end

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/sep/11/normalizing...

Call me cycnical but review above quotes, multiply by N over 3 decades, and we have a general sense of the type of smoke blown in our face by the representatives of Big Money and Big Business (and possibly some Globalist ideologues) that were elected by "us" to represent "us".

Two possibilities, based on a working memory of what was said and when, regarding China and more broadly "free trade" and Globalism, here and abroad:

option 1: "The West" (which c.f. above regarding "our" representatives) assumed that Chinese greed will exceed Chinese ideological zeal/control, and CCP would ultimately lose its grip over the Chinese nation.

option 2: No such thoughts "clouded" "our" decision makers' decisions. The idea was always and in essence contrary to option 1 - how to evolve from sole Superpower order to a global elite order. China was deemed as large enough, significant enough, and strategic enough to be used as the instrument to evolve post WWII order to a global governance model, as the platform to dethrone USA from its superpower perch. Recently, it appears a sub-set of the US capitalist class has rediscovered a love of homeland or something like that, while another sub-set (with the better sort of propanda organs) is vehemently opposing them. I think the former didn't get the original memo. Sucks not to be in the uber-in circle.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_websites_blocked_in_ma...

The Chinese government and the people they control is really putting doublethink to use. Just look at the huge list of websites not accessible in China, and movies, and news, and books...the list goes on. When nations start doing the same to Chinese infiltration, it's suddenly unfair.

I really don't understand the panic about Chinese surveillance with TikTok when we have Facebook, which is far worse in the depth of what they collect. This just erodes the confidence in American rule of law for no particular reason.

The difference is that China is an enemy of democracy. Whether you hate or love the US, I’m sure you’d rather live in a free world.

John Adams and George Washington believed a two-party system was also an enemy of democracy. It's not really so black and white. Free vs. non-free.

Both sides really do have mass surveillance, China's being a bit further along and a bit more omniscient.

I don't think TikTok, a collection of six-second clips of teens messing around represents a real, material, meaningful threat to freedom and democracy. Even if they collected all the footage and ran it all through their national security apparatus. The signal to noise ratio on this content is incomprehensibly low.

This is grandstanding and showmanship on the part of two strongmen leaders, one totalitarian overlord and one wannabe, and really, I don't think there's a clear right side and wrong side here.

Or we could ve underestimating how much influence these social media apps exert especially on the younger crowd(where Tiktok currently reigns) and our IC is looking to limit this soft power from others. It's easier to control the 'world narrative' when you own the channels.

>> I don't think TikTok, a collection of six-second clips of teens messing around represents a real, material, meaningful threat to freedom and democracy

I guess this is where we agree to disagree. I do think a foreign power with direct and absolute editorial control over the #1 content delivery network of an entire generation of our population is cause for concern.

I'm not discounting your skepticism that there is grandstanding involved, but from your comment I see a dramatic difference between a wanna-be totalitarian in a free democracy and an unequivocal one in a single party state. Let's not let perfect be the enemy of better; while domestic surveillance is unacceptable it is most definitely better than the current situation.

That's fair.

Please stop with this false equivalence nonsense. In 2020, the USA (for all its many faults) is not running concentration camps to imprison and "re-educate" millions of citizens for having the wrong religion or ethnicity. It's not trying to carry out a slow-motion genocide.

I don't love the NSA, or Trump, or the US military-industrial complex, but parroting this "both sides" garbage just makes you sound like a useful idiot for the CCP.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-sh/China_hidden_cam...

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/meghara/china-new-inter...

I didn't say they were equivalent, I'm limiting the scope of my commentary to TikTok alone, and not the broader environment. It is my opinion that TikTok in isolation does not pose a national security threat or a threat to democracy, and therefore, this is likely to be grandstanding.

Sure, US is a free world where people are free to loot, burn down buildings, spread qanon conspiracies; and subvert other governments, make false baseless accusations against other countries because they refuse to be the puppets of the US.

The real concern is propaganda, surveillance is a safe and easy to understand cover story to sell to the public.

I don't encounter too much political propaganda on TikTok (lots of BLM stuff though), but the potency of the platform is obvious, and the userbase is overwhelmingly young people who may be more impressionable, idealistic, etc.

Just one example of propaganda: https://www.tiktok.com/@jperkinsauthor

Of course, this exists on other sites as well, but bundling ideas/memes into 30 second bite-sized morsels with video seems like a fantastic design for quick propogation throughout a network of human minds.

USA would rather see Google China close than a forced sale

Reply on news.ycombinator.com