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Comment by bjourne | Hacker News Reader

The word "reciprocity" cannot hide the fact that two wrongs doesn't make a right. We think it is wrong of China to censor Facebook and Twitter because that is what authoritarian regimes that don't give a shit about free speech do. For exactly the same reason it is wrong of the US to ban TikTok. And this bill has nothing to do with balancing international trade. It's stated purpose is to restrict China's ability to influence American youth.

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You're muddling issues. China restricts free speech in all contexts, and also separately puts onerous requirements on or outright bans various kinds of foreign businesses.

If TikTok is banned for geopolitical reasons, reciprocity reasons or whatever you want to call it, that doesn't change anything about free speech in America. It's not the unrestricted speech that was deemed a problem with TikTok, but rather the specific geopolitical risk (or whatever).

No, you are muddling the issues. This is about speech and not about anything trade-related. Banning TikTok is not equivalent to putting import tariffs on cheap Chinese electronic bikes or solar panels. It's not about whatever profits ByteDance makes from TikTok.

It's 100% about controlling the narrative. "Young Americans are turning against Israel — and you can thank TikTok" https://forward.com/opinion/574346/freepalestine-tiktok-isra... Can't have that happening in the US. The right to brainwash kids is a right reserved to the American billionaire class, their purchased politicians and lobbyists. You can talk about "geopolitical risks", "security issues", and "reciprocity" all you want but it doesn't hide this fact.

Its funny that the debate here is whether it is:

(1) trade protectionism that is about protecting the right to profit off of manipulation of American youth to favored actors, rather than disfavored foreign actors (whether disfavored because their country doesn’t allow American firms the same power in their countries, or for other reasons) or

(2) totally not trade related, but speech related, and about reserving the right to manipulate American youth to the exact same favored actors discussed in #1.

This is the wrong argument. This legislation doesn't censor TikTok like China censors social media/the internet at large. It simply requires the ownership of Tiktok to be American in the US. This is the same thing China does (You can't operate in China without a Chinese partner to run your operation in China.)

You can debate whether or not it is reasonable or important to for the US to impose similar ownership requirements for businesses operating in the US, but couching it in argument of censorship the way China does it is a real false equivalence. Congress doesn't want to censor your speech on Tiktok (Which isn't how the 1st amendment works anyways) they want China to divest itself of US operations.

What's being censored here? The bill doesn't ban any speech at all - you can put any video tik tok allows on dozens of other video sharing platforms. This is a ban on certain foreign countries (er.. i mean "companies") doing some types of business in the US.

Chinese Communist Party is an authoritarian conquerer, not exactly a country or a company.

Demanding fairness and reciprocity is not wrong. It's a basic moral position. Furthermore, imposing restriction on totalitarian regimes is perfectly legitimate as well. Letting them do as they please as you argue is, in fact, the morally reprehensible position.

China is not a US citizen.

But Tiktok "is". At least Tiktok USA is registered in the US as a US corporation and therefore gets the same protections under US laws. Therefore constitutional protections apply.

You could say the owners of Tiktok don't necessarily get the same protections, but that's a different case. And in this case it is more similar to the Chinese Exclusion Act, but for business purposes rather than immigrational purposes, basically stating that Chinese people aren't allowed to own businesses that operate in the US, and must divest.

The constitution is explicit when it carves out exemptions for citizens and non citizens. The first amendment is not one of them.

The constitution, or the bill of rights we appear to be talking about, or all the amendments? This seems wrong on the face of it.

The only mentions of citizenship I know of are for voting, juries, and elected positions.

By your argument Citizen's United wasn't just an abomination, but barred the congress from limiting foreign political donations, because money is speech? Interesting that's never been brought up.

I mean, I'm willing to listen to the ACLU, but the argument that forcing the sale of a corporation limits free speech is fairly weak, when commercial speech is routinely limited... as it should be. Do you think there is a corporate free speech right to sell personal information? What limits to profit on commercial speech can there be? If an unprofitable social media app were forced to close down, wouldn't laws allowing collection of debts be violations of the 1st amendment?

It also doesnt carve out children at school or yelling fire. Yet state employees are absolutely allowed to censor children in and on public property.

Case law does not protect non-citizens. People have been deported for being communists.

Some animals are more equal than others?

"Congress shall make no law" doesn't mean "Unless foreigners are involved"

China is not a "foreigner" it's a hostile foreign government.

What's wrong? The glorious right to investment profits? It's not even censorship.

The 1st amendment right to free speech is about US citizens. This isn't even a US corporation. No 1st amendment there so it looks legal. They probably wouldn't have done anything, if the manipulation and spying had been a bit less blatant. Even Telegram and Kaspersky still operate. This isn't even a WTO trade issue since almost every single tech or manufacturing company (except Tesla?) that wants to sell in China has to be a joint owned venture. It's classic mercantilism and there's no international obligation to buy stuff or allow it's import (see fentanyl). Even TikTok isn't allowed there, VPNs are not just banned, but considered tools of terrorism. Tit for tat is a thing, this has been coming for a decade (only slowed by corporate profits and cheap labor), and the slope isn't very slippery.

Still might not happen, if Kellyanne has anything to say to Trump about it.

> almost every single tech or manufacturing company (except Tesla?) that wants to sell in China has to be a joint owned venture

Apple, Oracle, Amazon, GE, Micron, Intel, Dell, Samsung, Kingston, LG, Seagate, Inventec ... Not a single one of these is a joint venture. They are all wholly foreign-owned enterprises (WFOEs) [1][2]

According to the Department of Commerce,

> A large majority of new foreign investments in China are WFOEs, rather than JVs. As Chinese legal entities, WFOEs experience greater independence than ROs, are allowed exclusive control over carrying out business activities while abiding by Chinese law and are granted intellectual and technological rights. (https://www.export.gov/apex/article2?id=China-Establishing-a...)

Also (https://arc-group.com/china-company-setup/):

> WFOE refers to a limited liability company that is 100% invested, owned by foreign investors, and independently operated. Almost 60% of foreign-owned companies are WFOEs, making it the most adopted business type. Famous multinational companies such as Apple, Amazon, Oracle, and General Electric are all examples of WFOEs.

[1] https://www.ydylcn.com/skwx_ydyl/competitiveReportDetail?Sit... (The link is pre-2020, when the new Foreign Investment Law abolished the category but reduced the need for JVs even more [3])

[2] https://www.uschina.org/sites/default/files/wfoe-fact-sheet-...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Investment_Law_of_the_...

This is true economically, but the unelected authoritarian Chinese Communist Party still has control over content and communications in those companies and their products.

Specifically relevant. Chinese Communist Party allows content on TikTok in US that is not allowed on TikTok in China.

That's a matter of compliance with local censorship laws. American social media companies are obligated to do that when operating abroad, not just in China. YouTube just blocked a Canadian video at the request of the Indian government, for example.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/india-fifth-estate-video-stor...

> In an email to CBC on Wednesday, YouTube said it had received an order from India's Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology to block access to the video of the story from its website.

> YouTube confirmed to CBC News Wednesday afternoon that "the content has now been blocked from view" on the India YouTube country site. While the content is restricted in India, the video is still available everywhere else on YouTube.

I find the argument "Your criticism is invalid because the law doesn't violate the First amendment!" reductive and pointless. Decisions taken by the US government can be unethical, counterproductive, immoral, hypocritical, unfair, and stupid, while still being constitutional. It's not illegal for me to treat you worse because your username starts with the letter "k". Yet, many people would find it stupid and inconsistent. Here, the US government is doing the same thing, except the letter is "C".

No, no, no. China and Russia are banning Facebook, Instagram and whatnot because they are evil dictatorships. The US is banning TikTok because China is evil dictatorship.

Nice try bro, but US symmetrically responds to the hostile actions of authoritarian governments. If those authoritarian governments wouldn't be desperately trying to destroy the free world, no one would care of their silly apps.

Facebook played its role in spreading of so called Arab spring in 2011 [0]. Now look how Middle East is doing now, more than 10 years later. That's some destruction for you.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media%27s_role_in_the_A...

Was that intentional, or a function of less censorable communication and lots of people getting online. Addressing corruption.

This too is just letting flow?

I don't know, but you may have noticed that Facebook haven't been allowing free flow of information since a long time ago. Same for pre-Elon Twitter.

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