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Comment by muffinman26 | Hacker News Reader

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.

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> 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.

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

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.

I'm not sure I completely understand your point, sorry.

I'm saying that it makes no sense to lose on purpose just to say you "played fair".

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.

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.

I’ll be honest, I don’t use tiktok. Do you know if that’s actually the case? Is US made tictok content available in China?

Phones work. Email works.

I think messenger apps work as well.

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