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Comment by sp527 | Hacker News Reader

A perfectly reasonable argument would be that China doesn't allow American companies to freely compete in their country and we should therefore maintain duly reciprocal treatment.

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Exactly. This sentiment is the general problem with China. They expect the world to bend over backwards to accommodate them and their economic goals while allowing none of the same reciprocal treatment with other countries. They want all of the upsides of being a larger player on the global stage while accepting none of the downsides. You can't have it both ways.

That's true across a broad set of economically more significant domains than social media. But there is no moral panic over (shoddy) Chinese trains on the Orange Line.

Yes, absolutely. We should be getting those trains manufactured elsewhere. And, in fact, geopolitical tension is prompting American companies to shift their manufacturing base out of China.

That's a different issue from the information security aspect.

Chinese spying on US isn't mitigated by US getting a chance to spy on Chinese.

The concern is that the market deals in materials too dangerous to be allowed to be run by foreign adversaries.

Yes, that's a good argument for Americans. For non-Chinese, non-Americans, TikTok is not different from any other social media app.

As an American, I believe you've hit the nail on the head. Facebook is as bad as TikTok if you live in Taiwan, for example. Both companies will (if they haven't already) give your data to their respective governments in a heartbeat.

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