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Comment by andrewstuart | Hacker News Reader

The correct way to position a ban on TikTok is by comparison with China's ban on USA websites.

Something along the lines of "unless China gives reciprocal access to all the banned websites listed here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_websites_blocked_in_ma... then we cannot permit China to have access to US web audiences".

It is unequal and unfair and anticompetitive for China to ban hundreds of US based websites and it simply cannot stand for China to have unfettered access to the US web audience.

These are some of the websites banned in China:

Google Facebook Twitte Instagram YouTube WhatsApp Dropbox The New York TimesThe Washington Post Bloomberg News ReutersThe Wall Street Journal BBC Wikipedia (English version) Twitch Vimeo SoundCloud WordPress.com Tumblr Flickr Medium The Guardian Le Monde Deutsche Welle Radio Free Asia Voice of America GitHub Slack Zoom LinkedIn Snapchat Pinterest Quora Netflix Hulu HBO Disney+ ESPN Microsoft Azure Apple iCloud Steam Reddit Imgur Dailymotion Archive.org Amnesty International Human Rights Watch Reporters Without Borders

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TikTok is just being used as an excuse to grab power, because this bill will do immeasurably more than allow the government to ban TikTok. It's quite similar to how terrorism was used as an excuse to pass the Patriot Act. The Patriot Act did little to nothing to ensure society's security, but gave the government an immense range of powers that, now more than decades later, have still not been entirely rescinded. And this bill, unlike the Patriot Act, lacks even the pretext of being temporary.

This will also set the stage for even more draconian actions. Obama passing a law allowing for indefinite detention, including of US citizens, without trial or even legal representation [1] would never, in a million years, have been accepted in more sane times. But people lose their mind when the government rallies up enough fear, which is then actively exploited to seize even more powers.

This bill will directly lead to the development of the "Great Firewall of America" as it's the only practical way to engage censorship on the scale that the bill envisages, and it also grants the Secretary endless powers to carry out such. This is a bill is one of the purest embodiments of the absolute decline of America, and everything it, and we, once stood for.

Becoming China is not how you compete against China.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indefinite_detention#United_St...

> Becoming China is not how you compete against China.

This proposal is actually substantially worse than the Great Firewall of China. The Chinese government doesn't particularly care if you use VPN's to get around the firewall, because they know that most people won't, and that's enough to meet their main goal, protecting domestic tech companies from competing with established US tech companies. The US is definitely going to be prosecuting individuals for using VPNs to read TeleSUR or whatever, though, because it's about controlling the narrative, not about protecting local industry.

> and that's enough to meet their main goal, protecting domestic tech companies from competing with established US tech companies.

You haven't experienced the GFW if you think that's the main goal. Oh, and please try telling your Chinese friends that "the govt doesn't particularly care about VPNs" and listen to what they yell at you.

Try read this 13 years old blog post on what GFW was (at that time): https://gfwrev.blogspot.com/2009/10/gfw.html#:~:text=%E6%95%...

... and revisiting it this time I realized it even recommended a tptacek publication. Didn't realize who this guy is last time I read it.

Can you show me where it allows this in the actual bill, not a news report?

Because when I read the bill, it appears that penalties only apply to covered entities and covered transactions which are fairly narrowly defined, and don't include individuals accessing content. I question whether something like that could pass constitutional muster anyway.

My read of the text of the bill [1] looks like the intent is to grant the secretary of commerce, in partnership with doj, the ability to review, inspect and prohibit equipment and technology that's used in critical infrastructure or impacts nation security (an overly broad term) which are substantially owned by a foreign adversary.

On it's face, that doesn't seem like a bad thing, but I agree that some of the language is too broad. For example, I think it should require congressional review to deem a country a foreign adversary.

There's also concerning language that exempts all of it from judicial review, which I don't understand - is this even possible?

I've been seeing a lot of reporting on this that is inconsistent with the actual text of the bill. It's hard to tease out the truth of the legislation from the partisan flag carrying.

[1] https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/senate-bill/686...

There's one really tricky clause in there that I also missed on my first pass: "The term “covered transaction” includes ANY OTHER TRANSACTION, the STRUCTURE of which is designed or intended to evade or circumvent the application of this Act, subject to regulations prescribed by the Secretary."

That clause adds a vast amount under the blanket of "covered transactions." At the minimum this would include the usage or offering of VPNs, TOR, or any sort of technology or connection that might be able to circumvent the methods the government will try to use. The "or" in the bill's clause also seems quite meaningful, as it clarifies that offering a service which CAN circumvent the restrictions is just as illegal as offering a service INTENDED to do so.

Beyond that, this thing's a monster of obfuscation. To even begin reading it you need to remove 'weak' OR statements. For one simple example, from Section 3 all the Secretary needs to do to justify 'imposing mitigation measures' against something is to show that it poses an "undue" risk to the "safety of United States persons." The language about national security or critical infrastructure, which you mentioned from the same section, are irrelevant as they're both subsets of 'undue risk to the safety of United States persons.'

> (a) In general.—The Secretary shall identify and refer to the President any covered holding that the Secretary determines, in consultation with the relevant executive department and agency heads, poses an undue or unacceptable risk to the national security of the United States or the security and safety of United States persons.

This means the Secretary of Commerce makes a determination about any entity that "poses an undue or unacceptable risk".

Where "covered holding" can be any non-US entity, or any entity "directed or controlled" by a non-US entity, so essentially, every entity but especially foreign entities.

> (1) IN GENERAL.—A person who willfully commits, willfully attempts to commit, or willfully conspires to commit, or aids or abets in the commission of an unlawful act described in subsection (a) shall, upon conviction, be fined not more than $1,000,000, or if a natural person, may be imprisoned for not more than 20 years, or both.

So you might think subsection (a) refers to something really terrible, but actually:

> (a) Unlawful acts.—

> (1) IN GENERAL.—It shall be unlawful for a person to violate, attempt to violate, conspire to violate, or cause a violation of any regulation, order, direction, mitigation measure, prohibition, or other authorization or directive issued under this Act, including any of the unlawful acts described in paragraph (2).

Where "paragraph (2)" goes on to describe every possible technical channel (mobile, LAN, satellite, cable, back-haul networks, etc).

This gives the Secretary of Commerce the ability to say that reading Russian or Chinese news, for example, is unlawful, because it is a risk to national security. If you use a VPN to access that news, you are guilty of this crime.

It seems pretty clear to me.

But using a VPN to do something that isn’t illegal (say, logging in to work) would not be criminalized under the bill, correct?

As long as there's 0 connection to restricted countries, that's probably the case.

But if your work involves logging into Alibaba for procurement or if you're a journalist that reads Weibo or something, you might be a felon, should the Secretary of Commerce recommend you to be.

> [1]

"The most controversial provisions to receive wide attention were contained in subsections 1021–1022 of Title X, Subtitle D, entitled "Counter-Terrorism", authorizing the indefinite military detention of persons the government suspects of involvement in terrorism, including U.S. citizens arrested on American soil.

Although the White House and Senate sponsors maintain that the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) already grants presidential authority for indefinite detention, the Act states that Congress "affirms" this authority and makes specific provisions as to the exercise of that authority."

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Defense_Authorizati...

AUMF:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authorization_for_Use_of_Mil...

From the AUMF article:

> Today, the full list of actors the U.S. military is fighting or believes itself authorized to fight under the 2001 AUMF is classified and therefore a secret unknown to the American public.

>Becoming China is not how you compete against China.

I don't disagree, but I also don't know what alternative works without weaponizing our own ideals against us. Free speech is wonderful, but, as irrational apes, it can also amplify divisiveness. I worry that the alternative at a technological scale requires a civically engaged and rationally-minded populace, and my optimism is waning. So what do you suggest as a workable alternative?

Treat people as being smarter than you give them credit for, and more able to see through BS. There's a reason scammers try to put time pressure on you - given time, lies are easy to spot.

It’s not just “other people” though; it’s all of us. I think the crux is there is abundant research that shows humans are not particularly rational, but your take seems to assume they are. How do you reconcile those two diverging viewpoints?

Humans aren't necessarily rational, but they are good at social stuff - humans are wired for living in social situations. You only need the latter to give people credit for having a "BS radar."

Do we lump social media into this "social stuff"? Because I think there's mounting evidence that we aren't particularly good at managing it rationally. As I read it, that's really what the article and the law are about: how social media can be leveraged by adversarial actors by leveraging our irrational/unhealthy relationship with it.

Or, alternatively, maybe that's the how the veiled power-grab is being framed. But we'd probably still need to undermine that claim about irrationality to offer an alternative.

I question whether a study can accurately capture rationality in a comparable/aggregateable way between multiple people. Measuring the process used rather than the end result sounds quite challenging.

I expect that what those studies really measure is how well social media users align and agree with the researchers

The alternative theory is almost certainly correct. If you actually read the bill, there is nothing in it about quality of information or misinformation. At the same time, the government has been warning about "malinformation" recently, which they define roughly as "true facts that do not fit the broader narrative." If that definition sounds like something from the soviet union, that's because it is.

The talk about controlling the flow of bad information is a naked power grab, and always has been ever since the first governments tried to do it in the ancient era. What history has taught us is that the truth always catches up eventually, and that it is better to provide people with more information than less. I honestly don't think that the social media era has changed that at all, and it would require some very strong evidence that it did (which is completely lacking).

Remember that before Facebook, news/gossip junkies were subscribing to papers and tabloids of varying quality. We have just eliminated the dead trees. The content was just as bad, emotionally-charged, and false, and there were so many of these papers that you could create a Facebook-style information bubble.

I’ll be more blunt: how do you then undermine the claim that such a bill is necessary due to the irrationality of humans which can be more easily leveraged in the age of social media for bad outcomes?

It seems like you either need to make the case that:

1) humans aren’t irrational or

2) the risk of such irrationality at scale is not really a major risk or

3) social media isn’t uniquely poised to capitalize on that risk or

4) we already have tools capable of mitigating that risk

It sounds like you’re debating 3) but there seems to be some evidence that social media tends to spread “bad” information faster and farther than “good” information by hijacking innate human psychological traits more easily.

I'm suggesting primarily that 3 is true, and we (as individuals in a society which is and has always been full of misinformation) have developed pretty good BS detectors to compensate. Bad information has always been faster to spread than good information. The only difference today is that all information is faster.

Also, to some degree, 1 is fairly true. You see this in economics, for example, where individuals are generally irrational about their choices, but modeling populations as a whole by treating them as 100% rational individuals gives pretty similar results to real life.

>only difference today is that all information is faster.

This is exactly the point being made (although I’m not sure I am completely convinced). The analogy could be “people have always killed each other. Nuclear weapons just make it faster to kill lots of people. Hence there no need to ban nuclear weapons.” The idea being there is a tipping point where the scalability of technology outpaces our biologically evolved innate sense to control it.

I agree with #1 but only in some domains. You can see it with guessing the weight of a bull at a fair or the number of jelly beans in a jar. But there’s other examples where it breaks down. In economics we have bubbles that are destructive when corrected. I’m not sure we want that short term extreme volatility in something like governance.

The alternative to that short-term volatility is long-term tyranny. No thank you. I'll take the volatility.

I think that’s a false dichotomy and not particularly helpful. The question is more about what level of volatility can be tolerate while still maintaining a stable society.

> given time, lies are easy to spot.

Really? Maybe small lies. But not bigger ones.

"The election was rigged" is a binary statement that should be resolvable. In 2022[1], when asked about the 2020 US election, more than 25% of US citizens polled thought it was rigged. More than 55% thought it was not. (Some were unsure). Certainly it's not "easy to spot" lies in that basic example.

[1] https://www.surveymonkey.com/curiosity/axios-january-6-revis...

25% is not a majority opinion. In fact it's a minority opinion.

So the majority of people seemly are able to discern lies by that data.

Which is a good thing for free speech and democracy.

"Good thing for freedom and democracy" is a bit optimistic.

Suppose 40% of voters think social security should be eliminated, 35% of voters think social security should be saved, and 25% voters vote to save social security because they think lepricons are poisoning babies, and only the social security save party is willing to do something about it.

This would show that social security's future is now now determined by who tells the best lies about lepricons.

Whatever this thing is, I don't think "good" is the right work to describe it.

I believe it to be fair to say all societies rely on some form of trust in others and the institutions setup within to function.

Regardless if it is in a Democracy, Republic, Monarchy, etc.

Regardless of it's means of resource distribution such as capitalism, communism, socialism, etc.

America for example, despite at times in the past having slavery being legal, committing genocide, segregation, the stealing of land, etc.

Despite being majority one religion.

Still expanded the vote. Expanded freedoms. Expanded access to education. And has shown an ability to let people that were previously expected to hide to live out in the open and freely.

If we are going to really take one survey result at one moment in time as gospel to say that American voters can't be trusted seems counter to the examples of the past where despite majority of Americans voters feeling one way, opinions were changed and progress was made. Slowly. Painfully. Yet still some positive direction.

Thanks for reading my rant and I'll leave with one last thing:

The public trust is sadly a fragile thing. When that trust is abused and poisoned by the very elected officials that have sworn to protect it the voters faith in the system becomes erroded. It unfortunately then takes longer and more work to rebuild that trust again. To move back to a society where arguments were made in good faith; not to just to troll or wage culture wars.

It’s a good rant. But apropos to the article, what should a society do if an adversarial actor deliberately uses a tool to erode that trust?

Trust is an important word there. In general I think people tend to overestimate the ability of any given entity, let alone individual, to unilaterally influence society. When "revolutionary" action is taken it often tends to be a result of little more than already preexisting sentiment finally reaching a climax. This [1] is a poll of public trust in government, which is a proxy for much of this. The "Trump years" literally don't even cause a notable shift in the trend.

The point I make here is that the issues are more fundamental than e.g. China or Trump or whatever else. We're like flagellants of the ancient times looking to the Heavens for the cause of the plague, while the answer lay somewhat more mundanely on the rats scurrying about their feet. So what IS causing the massive declines in trust? It's no more complex than those fleas, it's the government behaving in an untrustworthy way. The decline started shortly after everything around the assassination of JFK ended up being shrouded in secrecy and lies, which was just the start of a never-ending series of deceitful-looking, if not plainly deceitful, actions.

And now? The en vogue "solution is supposed to be censorship, even more authoritarian levels of social control, and a borderline obsession with making sure people can only access the "right" message, which is little more than a euphemism for propaganda kept at arm's length. Do you genuinely think these sort of things will help improve trust? Look to the countless countries which were able to execute such mechanisms in times of far less externa influence, like the USSR. The government had complete control not only over absolutely all messaging, but even if who could enter or leave the country. And resulted not only in extreme distrust, but a system that predictably collapsed [long] before even reaching its centennial.

Quite simply, if the government wants to regain trust, the best way to do that is to start acting in a transparent and trustworthy fashion. Yet we're going in the exact opposite direction, hard.

[1] - https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2022/06/06/public-trust...

This is a very good post, but I think it misses part of the point. You talk exclusively about the erosion of trust between the people and the government. And I agree with your point. But I think the real distinction (and current issue regarding social media) isn’t erosion between the populace and the government, but between the populace and itself. The “othering” and divisive nature of social media, which erodes the “united” in United States.

This bill is only about the external, and a general framework for the establishment of a national firewall. If the government wants to ban all social media, more power to them. It would never pass the 1st amendment, but if it could I'd even support it! But that's tangential, as this bill isn't that.

As for what's causing divides, the one thing I'd observe is that if it were the internet then we'd expect to see divides of a similar magnitude throughout the world, and that is not the case. Some Western democracies, such as Norway, are even becoming less divided. They have no censorship whatsoever besides a handful of file-sharing sites being blocked, and universal access to the internet. Beyond this there are so many possible, and completely viable, explanations for the divisions in America that I think it turns into a Rorschach test. It's like trying to explain the fall of Rome.

You're right; the bill is aimed at adversarial threats to national security. Social media isn't the end, just the means in this case.

>we'd expect to see divides of a similar magnitude throughout the world, and that is not the case.

I'm not sure if this premise holds. For one, I think it's missing the nuance about the size and heterogeneity of the U.S. Take, for example, the thesis that the country is more accurately comprised of multiple different dominant sub-cultures.[1] I think when you expand the other Western democracies similarly, we see analagous divisions (see: Brexit).

[1] https://www.npr.org/2013/11/11/244527860/forget-the-50-state...

That wasn't the result of informed opinion but cult-like affiliation. Some politicians work hard to radicalize their voters so that they become almost religiously attached to given ideologies. The principle is that an idea can be changed, but a faith cannot, so once they're hooked they'll fight on behalf of their "god", and call any evidence against as fabricated.

Surely, TikTok's or other Social Media company algorithms could be tricked into provoking cult-like affiliations, even if they didn't actively promote it. And SM actively promoting informed opinions over cult-like affiliations is probably not their goal

That’s central to my point. “well-informed and rational” is beginning to seem like too high of a bar to expect, especially when people deliberately take advantage of that aspect of human nature.

What does rigged mean?

Does gerrymandering count as rigged?

I think there is enough evidence of attempts to rig every single US election in my lifetime (between gerrymandering, voting machine malfunctions (hanging chads), unconstitutional election law changes in some states, organized smear campaigns, burying harmful news stories, etc.) that it's reasonable to say that any of those elections was rigged. I also think that there's no evidence that any of those rigging attempts changed the outcome, so it's reasonable to say that any of those elections were not rigged.

As far as I can tell, the only unreasonable position is that US elections are always completely and perfectly clean. People commit fraud to win county clerk elections - every more significant position almost certainly has some dirty games.

In this case, the specific question was "Joe Biden as having legitimately won the 2020 election".

Gerrymandering has no impact on presidential elections, so it does not count for this survey.

We’ve all learned that is not the case, unfortunately.

>"So what do you suggest as a workable alternative?"

Do not ever limit freedoms of your own citizens under false pretense of "saving the children". As George Carlin said on this particular subject - fuck the children. Rights supposed to be increasing if you are healthy society.

If you do not like China you can kick them out. You already have enough laws an discretions to do so. There will of course be consequences but that's the price.

I'm inclined to personally agree, but we need to at least acknowledge the counterpoint. That being, in a cliched phrase, that "the Constitution isn't a suicide pact."

Or, in the words of Jefferson, "The laws of necessity, of self-preservation, of saving our country when in danger, are of higher obligation."

That's the claim being made by lawmakers: that certain trade constitutes a threat to national security. I'm not really seeing much debate about that claim.

If I understand your point correctly, you're instead saying we already have the tools to ban TikTok (presumably under commerce laws) and we don't need any other means.

Yes we already have tools to ban TikTok if this is what we need. Instead they want a law which would allow them more and more ways to criminalize our own people. Message to them - GFY.

>"the Constitution isn't a suicide pact."

Acknowledged long time ago - do not yell fire in a cinema example.

The same bill but without criminalizing the use of VPNs to access foreign networks that are deemed "bad" by random politicians

100% agree. Power can only be paraded, until it ends up in the wrong hands. Recent examples serve enough where an entire election was sought to be overturned that even simple sources of truth were crucial

So what if China blocks apps. Our freedoms are what make us different from them and the first amendment is the most important of those freedoms.

If US persons are truly helping TikTok engage in espionage then arrest them, it’s already illegal.

> Our freedoms are what make us different from them

Don't the US gov already have the power to arbitrarily sanction and restrict trade with foreign countries? e.g. You cannot sell to nor buy from people in North Korea. Banning all social media platforms from China seem like a vary minor extension of that power.

Many people already think that power is mis-used and/or abused and would want to see it pared back rather than extended, myself included.

There's an argument that foreign policy should override domestic politics when dealing with adversarial powers we elect our officials to stand up against. It's not a popular view, because few Americans pay attention to or care about foreign affairs. Under the condition where a foreign power has broadly infiltrated our social systems with a Trojan horse, I think there are rational ways to preserve the First Amendment while targeting the offending social/information virus. This law isn't that, but it probably won't pass and large parts of it would definitely would be struck down by the courts if it did.

Whatever "many people already think," though, it's the responsibility of our government to defend the country from adversaries. That should be done in a way thay doesn't undermine the rights of Americans... but it has to be done or those rights would cease to exist.

TikTok harvesting data and manipulating opinion from a foreign throne is incompatible with having a populace free and unencumbered to make wise and rational decisions to self-govern. Without which all other speech disappears.

Controlling information, speech, access to knowledge is much different than banning the import of North Korean beanie baby knock offs.

That's a weird line to draw though. That stance is basically saying physical products are OK to sanction, but digital products aren't. (Genshin Impact is a lot closer to Beanie Babies than most people would care to admit)

And it's doubly-ironic because TikTok isn't getting banned because of Chinese messaging (that's already allowed everywhere, in all mediums). TikTok is under ban-threat in the US because Americans are using it for American messaging.

It's not meaningfully different than say, Turkey banning Twitter back in 2014 and such.

Except controlling communications, thought, and expression is different. The medium isn’t important. It’s what is being controlled.

I agree, it’s not different than an oppressive regime controlling means of communication. It’s in fact precisely the same.

The medium is important if it is artificially inserting itself to push narratives directed for malicious intent. They aren't banning phone calls from China, or preventing Chinese citizens from posting on American websites. They are banning a specific filter.

What filter is that?

What they are doing is establishing the platform for a great firewall of America. What’s the difference between this and oppressive regimes blocking western sites? Who decides what’s next? You’re honestly comfortable with filtering the internet?

I think TikTok users would disagree it’s equivalent to making a phone call, or other sites. It has a specific form that fosters their desired mode of communication. I’ve not seen a specific criminal charge leveled against TikTok, so I assume they’re not doing anything illegal. So, I don’t see how this isn’t suppressing the communications of TikTok users based only on the nationality of their parent company. If they did something illegal, then use the justice system to get redress. Use existing regulatory bodies. Etc. I don’t see the need for a broad based framework for censorship. Even if you won’t agree that this isn’t that this time, it’s most certainly the foundation for it next time. Once you give up freedom of expression on the internet for any reason, you give it up for all reasons.

This isn’t just about speech. It’s about access to markets, stealing technology/IP as a matter of public policy, and Chinese companies functioning as de facto branches of the CCP.

If US social media companies are banned there, their companies should be banned here, etc.

Freedom is merited to those who play "by the rules"

There's a line between extending freedom to parties that don't play fair and being a chump

If you GFW off TikTok from the USA — never mind ByteDance's rights: you're violating Americans' rights to view and interact with speech hosted on TikTok. "To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the right of the hearer as well as those of the speaker."

So you don't, you simply ban every single corporation in the United States from doing business with them, and if you want to keep viewing it, you can.

I get what you're saying, but it's ironic that the social media companies argue against free speech on their "private" platforms when they ban or moderate users.

A business doesn't have the obligation of a government.

Viewing tic toc is not an expression of free speech and I don’t get why you’re implying it is.

To the article's point, I think the discussion centers around a good definition of "the rules." The case the article makes is that the law uses a deliberately vague definition to wield against any "foreign adversary" (China, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Russia, and Venezuela.)

I'm not personally against some sort of action in this regard, but would prefer stricter definitions to be applied to avoid abuse of power.

Exactly. For example, imagine if Texas decided it would no longer allow people who have out of state driver’s licenses to drive in the state. All the other states will quickly ban Texas drivers from driving in their states as well. And we are the same country.

In fact, I’d say a ban is at least a decade overdue and our Congress is to blame as usual.

Edit: I mean a ban on social media networks controlled by China PR, not a ban on Texas drivers!

And not just long overdue for the internet. It’s long overdue in trade.

Ban trade?

Why ban trade between consenting adults?

Unidirectional free trade isn't free trade.

What do you mean by unidirectional trade? Someone giving you stuff for free and getting nothing in return?

I'd take that offer any day!

Drivers on I-10 in Louisiana would like to ban Texas drivers.

bzzzt look at concealed carry reciprocity, there is no precedent in the US for laws in one state to impact another, and in fact this is a cornerstone of Federalism

I am sorry, but this is written into the Constitution of the United States of America:

Article IV, Section 1:

Full Faith and Credit shall be given in each State to the public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State. And the Congress may by general Laws prescribe the Manner in which such Acts, Records and Proceedings shall be proved, and the Effect thereof.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/article-4/sec...

It is not even an amendment. It was there from the start.

Tons of laws from the different states affect each other.

...only when Federal law overrides State law (this should be obvious)

so in my example, there is no Federal carry reciprocity law, so states can clobber each other at will

likewise, there is no Federal Drivers License, so you get some states that share license info with each other, some that don't...and they aren't compelled

Congress gets to decide what reciprocity states must have. Driver's Licenses are one of those. Every US state must accept every other US state's licenses.

Congress did not decide that concealed carry had reciprocity.

The entire "legalizing gay marriage" argument was if states had to be forced to accept same-sex marriages from other states where it was legal.

Just because China does something to their citizens (denies them access to foreign tech products that they'd otherwise enjoy), doesn't mean its rational for the US to do the same same thing to its own citizens.

Consumers benefit from having access to a globally competitive array of products. Including tech products. I wish Chinese consumers could as well, but just because they don't doesn't mean that US consumers should also suffer.

Netflix, Hulu, HBO website can be accessed in China, but they just don't provide any content by geo-blocking. They need a license to hosting shows.

Azure defintely operates in China https://www.microsoft.com/china/azure/index-en.html

Twitch works from time to time depends on which unfortunate AWS IP address it streams on.

Zoom isolating China as a standalone market

Apple iCloud has the local version

For Steam, there's a HUGE Chinese player base, but steamcommunity.com is blocked

Some of the websites you mentioned were "collateral damange" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collateral_freedom

Just as a nitpik - there are Azure regions in China. But it's complicated.

    Microsoft Azure operated by 21Vianet (Azure China) is a physically separated instance of cloud services located in China. It's independently operated and transacted by Shanghai Blue Cloud Technology Co., Ltd. ("21Vianet"), a wholly owned subsidiary of Beijing 21Vianet Broadband Data Center Co., Ltd..

Every cloud provider is like that. No matter CN ones or US ones.

In fact every book, game, movie is like that. There's always a special standalone CN version.

The real Azure and AWS is accessible in China, too. In fact, that's the easiest reliable way to bootstrap from "I'm in China and have no censorship-circumvent tools" to accessing the real Internet.

Just go to Azure or AWS and get a VM.

The New Azure

This is just leveraging animosity towards China for access to user communication that would otherwise be protested. This is about access to user information and everything else is of little relevance.

> Something along the lines of "unless China gives reciprocal access to all the banned websites listed here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_websites_blocked_in_ma... then we cannot permit China to have access to US web audiences".

This is the issue with China. One-way trade doesn't work.

Our freedom is worth more than money. We don’t need to engage in censorship to be just as bad as the other oppressive regimes to stick a thumb in their eye for reducing our revenue from their citizens. Don’t forget, this isn’t banning unsafe toys or imposing tariffs on stress balls, this is banning information and deciding what thought is acceptable based on the nationality of the provider of information.

Do we want to erect the Great Wall in the United States? How technically would we achieve this without enabling broad scale censorship? The law isn’t specific about TikTok - which means it opens the door to broad censorship based on political interest if there controlling party. Is sticking a thumb in chinas eye for reducing Google’s EPS by $0.01/share worth that?

This is not censorship. Deciding what content was allowed on tic tok would be censorship, banning is not that. People are free to view and express themselves on a myriad of other platforms not owned by a horrid adversary currently attacking us from all directions.

Tic Tok has to go, I don’t want people near me using it so China can have a working graph of Americans at all time. They’re already famous for using 0-days in apps. This is just a common sense move I can’t believe any honest tech person would disagree with.

What makes you think this is the only source of that information and that Google and others who also collect this information aren’t providing it to whomever discreetly pays for it? Why is TikTok different than say Zoom? What do you think “China” is going to do with the location of every 13 year old girl? Send targeted kill bots to do something a bomb can do better? Or does it just creep you out that someone other than Google, Facebook, Palantir, and their customers from around the world has such information? Maybe the problem is pervasive spying by anyone?

If TikTok were doing anything criminal I would agree. They aren’t. And if they are there’s already methods of dealing with it. The content and medium of communication and forum of TikTok isn’t available anywhere else. I see this as no different than oppressive regimes everywhere banning Wikipedia, FB, etc. I’m shocked any honest tech person can’t see this is establishing a Great Wall in the US.

US companies are allowed to operate social media services in China if they store data locally and follow Chinese law.

Apple and Microsoft does this.

Not even close to accurate. Not at all. Wikimedia has been trying to get China to allow a stripped down version of wikipedia in china for close to a decade now. It would be hosted in china and stripped of all political content deemed inappropriate by the CCP, still no.

China does require physical servers in China to operate user-generated-content websites and need staff oncall to censor content 24x7. I don't think wikimedia can do any of that.

Yes it's a stupid totalitarian law but there's that.

China already operate a mirror of wikipedia content, minus anything they decided to censor. As far as I could tell they have a reverse proxy that fetches, censors and serves wikipedia inside the great firewall.

> US companies are allowed to operate social media services in China if they store data locally and follow Chinese law.

I guess the fair approach would be for the US to require Chinese companies' products to be actively and and preemptively censored by the US government. E.g. require the Global Times to publish editorials praising the US if it wants those editorials to be read in the country. Maybe the US should also pass laws to make forced tech transfers from Chinese companies the norm (I guess arguably that is what the whole "sell Tiktok" is really). Seems fair and reciprocal.

That would not be fair and reciprocal unless the US also required US companies to praise the US.

It's not unfair for a company from country X to not be able to operate in country Y because the X company does not want to obey the laws that apply to generally all Y companies.

For example it is not unfair that some foreign financial companies cannot operate in the US because they aren't willing to obey US KYC and tax reporting requirements. It's fair because those KYC and tax reporting requirements also apply to US companies.

It's not unfair that some foreign child car seat manufacturers cannot sell in the US because they have not went through the testing required for regulatory approval. US car seat manufacturers have to go through the same approval process.

A fair and reciprocal move US can do is to require .edu and arxiv.org-likes websites to block China, and deny academic conferences to Chinese nationals.

How would that be fair?

Wouldn't giving American consumers access to what they want be the fairest of all?

Just because there's a wrong in China with their censorship, doesn't mean that adding another wrong in the US make a right.

> How would that be fair?

I'm not sure how you could argue it wouldn't be fair. The US would only be treating Chinese companies like China treats US companies.

> Wouldn't giving American consumers access to what they want be the fairest of all?

No? Not unless China did likewise. What is your definition of fairness?

> Just because there's a wrong in China with their censorship, doesn't mean that adding another wrong in the US make a right.

How is "wrong" for the US to treat Chinese companies the way US companies are treated in China? These are simply trade agreements. Besides if you think what China is doing is wrong, then I hope you'd understand that the US ignoring it _enables_ that wrong.

By your logic, the US shouldn't ban products produced by slave labor. Do you mean to make that argument? If not, what would be different there?

> By your logic, the US shouldn't ban products produced by slave labor. Do you mean to make that argument? If not, what would be different there?

I'm not quite sure that's the same? As long as the US bans products produced by slave labour regardless of country of origin, there's no problem here.

But in any case: yes, I can bite the bullet on that one, the US doesn't necessarily need to ban products produced by slave labour.

I'd rather they just be banned than the United States government getting involved in the game of censorship.

Speech should flow freely, and in order to do so the platforms on which we speak must not be controlled by hostile foreign governments.

But if the global times wants to publish a pro china article in the United States, but they should be more than welcome to.

I'm not really a fan of direct open censorship of the US like this so I wouldn't personally support that over a ban either. My main point is just the US can simply act under the principle of trade reciprocity by saying if you don't allow our corporations (including news) operate within your country without undue interference, your corporations don't get to operate in ours. "Undue interference" would be defined by the US (or jointly by the US and China through some negotiation), but it wouldn't be just China that decides since well this is US legislation we're talking about that.

Nothing there would go against the principles of free trade or even free speech really. China would be free to open up if they want to engage in those activities. But if China didn't want that, then it wouldn't mean that the US is somehow acting rashly or wrong by reciprocating economically.

> the US can simply act under the principle of trade reciprocity by saying

This is basically a ban, because there is no world that China agrees to let their firewall down.

Or it's effectively nothing if China argues "they just have to follow our rules".

And then you have to implement the actual ban, which will lead to this exact situation all over again.

> This is basically a ban, because there is no world that China agrees to let their firewall down.

Whether it's a ban or not is up to China. If they don't want to change policy that's their prerogative.

> And then you have to implement the actual ban, which will lead to this exact situation all over again.

So? Sounds like in that situation it _should_ be banned.

As far as I'm seeing here you're describing the same end result. I'm not going to disagree with you because at the end of the day I only care about that end result.

However I also think this plan will prove way more unwieldy and easy to abuse than a more direct and honest ban that makes it clear China has none of our trust and is recognized as a proper hostile state.

I'm not sure why you're being so argumentative. You and I are largely saying the same thing. I don't think it would be unreasonable for the US to ban the certain Chinese companies (e.g. Tiktok) _until_ China changes its laws and trade practices.

It may be effectively a ban, but it's not free speech violations, so it's morally okay.

Restriction of a platform like TikTok isn't a free speech violation at all. They're a company, firstly, and an arm of a foreign government.

Free speech is a right of citizens and individuals. Denying China's right to control what Americans say increases freedom of speech.

The symmetry is that with this act US effectively becomes China from the point of view of internet enabled citizens of US.

20 years in prison for accessing restricted website.

Yes attack the great firewall with another great firewall.

Worked great for nuclear nonproliferation...

> It is unequal and unfair and anticompetitive for China to ban hundreds of US based websites

I keep seeing this claim posted, and I feel the need to add in some relevant history about why most of the companies on that list aren't doing business in China (tldr; Americans don't want to allow American companies to comply with Chinese laws).

Between the mid and late aughts Google, Facebook, and Twitter were all operating in China. Around this time the Chinese government got very serious about content filtering and imposed new restrictions on what could be shown/uploaded. There was a very strong backlash from the US side that American companies might be helping to build the Great Firewall. Many Americans were outraged and US politicians warned the companies not to build infrastructure that could be used for censorship. So the American companies acquiesced and either left the market or were banned (Twitter).

Reciprocity in trade is important, but it has to be viewed within the context of national laws. American companies had their hands tied and couldn't comply with Chinese law which is why they don't operate anymore. TikTok has so far complied with American laws and spent something on the order of $1 billion USD for a data center in Texas whose only buinsess value was to placate the American government. If enough Americans and lawmakers decide that it's ok for Facebook to build content filters and take down speech critical of the government then there might still be a future for Facebook in China.

I don't think Biden thinks he needs any excuse/positioning as far as the Chinese are concerned. The real issue is here at home in the US - TikTok is insanely popular, and additionally there's a massive amount of overreach in this bill - they want to be able to ban VPN usage etc as well. Biden is not very popular to begin with, and doesn't need to shoot himself in the foot like this. Unfortunately he seems to have talked himself into a bit of a corner.

I was all gung ho with the idea of banning tiktok, I think the national security concern is legit. I really didn't want the PRC to have a finger on the recommendation algorithm for an app that is super popular and is all about getting fed a steady stream of whatever.

But this act is not that. I don't support this.

GitHub is not blocked in China. It was once, very briefly, but the Chinese software industry needs it so the ban didn't stick.

This reads like 'I will only stop hitting my head against a wall, if you also stop hitting your head against a wall.'

Unilateral free trade is optimal already. Even without reciprocation.

(Reciprocation is great. But not necessary.)

>Unilateral free trade is optimal already

Can you elaborate on your definition of 'optimal', especially in the context of the law in the article that is trying to address trade that 'poses an unacceptable risk to national security'?

We get cheap electronics? Works well for commodities and physical items.

Software/services are different - especially services where the real asset is user profile data.

I think both takes levy artificial constraints on what gets considered. I.e., it’s only an economically “optimal” and may not be a “societal” optimal

What is 'societal'?

“Relating to society or social relations”

For example, you probably don’t pick your spouse or decide to have kids based solely on their economic contributions to your life, but are rather trying to optimize across more dimensions, including social considerations.

Economics doesn't mind what preferences you have. Doesn't have to be about money.

But maximizing economics does. That’s my point, we shouldn’t create a utility function based on just economics. We often do because it's easy and we're lazy.

All of these sites can be accessed from China using a VPN, and using a VPN in China to access these sites won't result in 20 years of jail time and up to 1000000$ fine

> China to have unfettered access to the US web audience.

This is a really backwards way of putting it.

How many of those sites are willing to comply with the same requirements and restrictions that China places on domestic sites (such as heavy censorship, giving the government access to nearly all data they have on their uses, giving the government access to their technology)?

This is not about Tiktok at all. Focusing on it is missing the point

You left out Marxists.org (on that list), which contains the writings of Marx, Lenin and Mao. It was blocked for years and even had DoS attacks on it coming from the PRC.

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