US House passes bill to ban TikTok if owners won't divest
nbcnews.com
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I know this TikTok issue is far more nuanced (who the backers/owners are, how data is treated etc) of course.
For example while I don’t buy them I have absolutely heard the Russian arguments for Ukraine. You can find complete texts of every Putin speech online, not to mention thinkers like Alexandr Dugin.
The Internet is absolutely boiling over with both pro and anti Israel arguments and propaganda too. You almost can’t even avoid it.
If the powers that be don’t want me seeing arguments against US policy they are doing an awful job.
The TikTok thing is about two things: trade unfairness and how it leverages addiction to push propaganda.
Both points are valid, but the latter applies just as well to all modern social media.
No one cared about any of this until recently. I remember when the consensus on HN was that TikTok was a quirky platform that reminded people of the authenticity and creativity of the old web. Now all of a sudden people are talking about TikTok with the dreadful hyperbole they might use for nuclear bombs or chemical weapons.
My instinct is to assume I'm being manipulated, and not by the red menace everyone tells me to fear.
While social media algorithms can (and does) lead to filter bubbles and radicalism by exposure to extremist content, that just makes TikTok no more or less dangerous than all other social media platforms in that regard, and that remains the case under American ownership. And those algorithms and that extremist content are more often than not protected by American free speech rights, as are the rights of platforms to police content as they wish (this includes the right to propagandize.)
Singling out TikTok because it's owned by China, and might do things it has every legal right to do in the US anyway, seems specious. Social media is already a hotbed of disinformation and propaganda, and TikTok's influence is a drop in the bucket compared to Twitter (which is going full Nazi and the moment) and Facebook and Google, with their deep ties to the American military and intellegence services.
Yes, that's my concern. We don't know the algorithms and IMO the risk is too high, given China's other efforts at propaganda. At least Twitter added community notes, but that's somewhat secondary given the algorithms potentially controlled by a hostile government.
In West it is not state-mandated. Just state-sponsored and state-suggested.
Tiktok promotes mental illness, fake influencer tricks and stupid dances, Douyin promotes heroic 3 year olds cooking eggs with chopsticks on a giant wok for their sick brothers.
You should see Youtube. /s
These people would audibly gasp if you suggested in their presence that tariffs should be equal to what China taxes US firms. Why this? Why now?
We’ve been in a trade war with China for 6 years [1].
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/China%E2%80%93United_States_...
Also, I don't how you have a TPP with a country that you don't allow to own a website.
It’s a miracle that the TPP went down in flames. It had great marketing as an anti-China bill but mostly served to enrich a small minority of notorious tax evaders, namely companies that revolve around state granted monopolies to Intellectual Property.
Companies that don't violate Chinese laws and approach China with realistic deals are allowed to operate there - you can play WoW in China because unlike Facebook it's not involved in censorship, severe privacy violations etc. and Blizzard actually worked with China (NetEase) to bring their product to market there instead of crying and trying to stoke WW3 in the news like our social media companies are doing. Just because Facebook and Google can do whatever they want unchecked in America and its vassal the EU, doesn't mean other countries have to allow it.
The West just wants to counter-block Chinese apps like TikTok in retaliation for them upholding their own rule of law.
China isn’t a country with the rule of law. They don’t even pretend as much. If you appease Xi, you can stay. If you don’t, you’re out.
You can find enough youtube reaction videos for it.
>* Can you blame them for not wanting it?*
No, I don't blame them at all. I applaud it, considering the fact that I find modern social media to be cancerous and dumb.
>you can play WoW in China because unlike Facebook it's not involved in censorship, severe privacy violations etc. and Blizzard actually worked with China (NetEase)
You're omitting details. Blizzard didn't "work with" NetEase, they basically gave them the IP and ability to sell the game in China as well as ownership of all servers that host Chinese players. Microsoft did the same thing with their Office suite and Azure cloud services....because they aren't allowed to independently operate in China.
BTW as much as you think it's a private company, NetEase is an arm of the Chinese government.
>The West just wants to counter-block Chinese apps like TikTok in retaliation for them upholding their own rule of law.
Not quite. China is extremely protectionist of their own homegrown companies. They don't allow foreign competition. This creates an uneven playing field. The west simply wants to play by those rules, too.
My dear bro, this is called "working with".
> Microsoft did the same thing with their Office suite and Azure cloud services... because they aren't allowed to independently operate in China.
You're the one actually being manipulative with words here: Microsoft is allowed to sell products in China and they do, by independently operate you might mean "ignore Chinese laws" some of which include the fact that Microsoft is required to share data with our government on a regular basis. Beyond ethics and ad tracking, why would another government allow US-based companies to effectively spy on them?
> They don't allow foreign competition. This creates an uneven playing field.
Again not true, you just have to follow the laws of whatever country you're operating in.
Without the deal with Oracle they would have to form an American company for their American operations like every international company has done since the 80s.
To use an example from back then, Sony Computer Entertainment started out in Tokyo but expanded to the US. They had to form an American company - Sony Computer Entertainment America. Imagine not doing it this way, every payment in a foreign currency, handling lawsuits, employees, etc.
Speaking of employees, given many of them are equity shareholders, if you ban ownership based on nationality, what does that mean for companies with employees all over the world? Simplified example: Remote culture, no office, the 2 co-founders are in China and NY respectively, they own equal shares of the company, it's registered in China and incorporated in the US, there are employees in both places, following all laws of each. Is that a "Chinese company"?
Under this law, would the Chinese founder have to sell his share to the American founder in order to continue operating in NY?
I guess you don’t know about the “F word and SH word” incident with the blizzard GM and the pro player getting banned from overwatch 2 for swearing and appeal rejected despite the words being filtered by a profanity filter that defaults to enabled.
https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/overwatch/t/blizzard-confi...
Moderator abuse is a problem too, but tiny in comparison and not actually illegal if you agree to their terms.
More specifically Blizzard is able to bring their product to everywhere else in the world. The fact that they choose to “work” with a local partner in China to get access to that market reads more to me like a government run racket / forced rent seeking than anything else.
> approach China with realistic deals are allowed to operate there
On a more hyperbolic note, I’m sure many people in the past paid off mobsters for the privilege of doing business in certain areas with the rationale they were being “realistic”.
To that end if the US wants to start treating Chinese backed companies a similar way (laws that distort the market) I’m not surprised. China has no moral high ground here. Or more simply your point cuts both ways.
> doesn't mean other countries have to allow it.
Not true: https://www.wowhead.com/news/over-two-million-players-sign-u...
Their services are literally live right now if they are taking signups.
That's a more fair claim, but both goes without saying (because it's what we're talking about) and is still misleading, because and I'll quote the wowhead-
"World of Warcraft has always been popular in China"
Anyone familiar knows WoW has been available in China for many years (they even have a Blizzard China HQ) and Blizzard has been working with with NetEase for years to service that market.
That's true for a lot of other companies, everything from McDonalds to Ford. It's just social media companies whining.
> just found it amusing that the example you used
Intentionally so but could have easily mentioned GM, Microsoft, Boeing, Nike, KFC, Coke, Procter & Gamble, Intel, or Starbucks with their 7000 stores in China alone. Are you seriously claiming that American companies can't operate there? Do basic research and stop watching the news - some of you really can't be helped.
Calling the truth misleading feels pretty 1984 to me but ignoring that for a moment. The truth is that Netease & Blizzard had some sort of disagreement resulting in all Blizzard games being yanked from China. It didn’t matter that Blizzard had a HQ there (which netease live-streamed the destruction of 1) or that they had nearly 2 decades of history of the “good” behavior you mention. At the end of the day Blizzard was forced out as soon as the partnership with the local Chinese company ended. Or in keeping with my hyperbolic scenario as soon as the local “mobsters” stopped getting their cut.
> That's true for a lot of other companies, everything from McDonalds to Ford. It's just social media companies whining.
> Do basic research and stop watching the news
Well let’s see using the first company you listed as an example McDonald’s is a minority partner in their China business 2.
“Last month, the U.S.-based burger maker cut a deal to repurchase the 28% stake in its China business Carlyle Group took in 2017, giving it a 48% share…. One advantage for McDonald’s: its majority partner in the China business, CITIC, provides top-level political cover, … Having a very powerful Chinese state-owned conglomerate as a partner means they are not going to be at the forefront of the geopolitical situation; that is quite important," Yu said.”
> Are you seriously claiming that American companies can't operate there?
That is straw-man & no I’m not.
I suppose at a high level my point is a) Blizzard was allowed there because they paid via the Joint Venutre not because of any “moral” behavior and b) China requires Joint Ventures or other similar arrangements for companies to get access to the China market. For one reason or another China views this as being in China’s best interest. Ok so be it but one shouldn’t be surprised that eventually another country would enact similar laws that it believes are in its own best interest. It just so happens that America is first with Tik Tok being the concern that forced the issue. So now the “reasonable”/legal deal for Tik Tok (& soon others I expect) will be different. As I said before there is no moral high ground here, just basic game theory.
> some of you really can't be helped
While this is probably not over the line. It’s best to try and refrain from personal attacks or anything approaching it. We just happen to have differing opinions on this topic and that’s ok. In fact we may learn something by discussing, otherwise what’s the point of commenting?
Sources 1: https://gamerant.com/netease-livestreams-destruction-chinese... 2: https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/lovin-it-mc...
What I do mind is the government letting domestic companies run roughshod over the population with surveillance/influence for the past few decades, and then when a significant enough foreign company finally does it, focusing on that foreign company while continuing to ignore the longstanding deeper problem.
Rather than focusing on TikTok, how about a general solution of a US GDPR plus anti-trust enforcement (or even additional regulation) to stop this widespread bundling of client apps with publishing services? Then people would have the right to inspect/delete records TikTok keeps about them, independent clients for TikTok would have a toggle of whether to show recommendations provided by the TikTok service, and the US government would have a much stronger case to go after TikTok if they didn't comply with either general legal requirement.
I'd agree if such a solution was also being considered and would take the same amount of time. How long do you think it would take to write and pass such a bill? I think it would take so long to be essentially a useless diversion. It's an idea that people would push who never want any of these changes because it sounds like a viable alternative but it's impossible in practice.
And realpolitik, I get that both parties work for and benefit from the corporations in their own ways, and aren't too keen on legislation that protects individual rights at the expense of corporate control. I just hate the blatant hypocrisy - this TikTok situation has only come about due to the past two+ decades of regulatory abdication.
The way I see it, going down this path cements continuing centralized control from corporate and government authoritarian synergy - for example the actual mechanism of this bill is targeting the Apple/Google corporate app repositories, because telling individual users that it's illegal to communicate with TikTok is a straightforward first amendment violation.
There isn’t public support for this. Remember the warrant requirement for FISA? Virtually nobody called their electeds in support (see my other comment [1]). Unless someone can show a general privacy bill isn’t a similar boondoggle, it’s not worth policians’ time.
But the overall comment thread isn't just taking the development as a forgone conclusion and talking about technical mitigations, but rather still judging it on what ought to be. As such, I think it's worthwhile to point out that there is another straightforward approach that preserves individual liberty rather than undermining it. And back in the cynical context, this approach seemingly not being on the table is another data point supporting the cynicism.
The book is a 200 page rant. Like, it is beutuful that someone can care so much.
I mean, in hindsight the US were completely right in their position towards NS, but it's a prime example of the US being not afraid to go even against allied countries.
[1] https://www.dw.com/en/us-sanctions-nord-stream-2-gas/a-54565...
Another, somewhat equivalent answer to your question is, "all of them".
The anti-Tiktok focus might be more about the fact the CIA and FBI don't have control like they do with Facebook or YouTube.
Notice they also want to shut down X since Musk bought it probably for a similar reason.
Odd mix. Do you have a source for this?
https://www.wired.com/2012/11/azure-goes-to-china/
It gets a bit confusing:
https://learn.microsoft.com/bs-latn-ba/azure/china/overview-...
So from what I heard at the time was that this was spinning out of a Shanghai water utility, but ownership gets mixed up a bit, Shanghai blue cloud is owned by Beijing based 21vianet, but I’m pretty sure there was some deal that involved the Shanghai municipal government. Ah here we go:
https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/21vianet-teams-wi...
When do European governments get private data about US citizens like the US get per CloudAct?
China does not have this problem.
The issue is as old as the Cold War. Europe is dependent on the US' continued spending on its military machine to prop up NATO. For a deal that good, they're mostly OK with the trade-off of giving their privacy away to American tech companies.
The US does not operate in the interest if the EU. It will always be "America First" and if that means fucking over a European country or all of Europe, they will. I don't blame them for this as it is in essence their job to protect them selves but Europe needs to realize that even Article 5 in NATO will not protect them if the US doesn't want to.
The US operates on this planet only in their final interest and if that means ignoring international laws and signed treaties so be it. In fact the US has recently claimed that UN Security Council resolutions are non-binding to the outrage of most UN members. [2]
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jul/08/nsa-tapped-g...
[2] https://english.elpais.com/usa/2024-03-29/us-sparks-controve...
Allies spy on each other THE MOST. Where do you get this idea that they don't? That's how they stay allies: by knowing each other, they can actually trust their interests are aligned.
Literally EVERY embassy is used as a post to station spies from the guest nation in the host. It's an open secret, and spying is tolerated between allies up to some point - and that point is necessarily secret.
You are applying a very human-centric idea of morality to large, stable countries. If they were people, they'd be perfect sociopaths - hyperrational and emotionless, driven only by shared interests and never "friendliness."
> The US does not operate in the interest if the EU.
The United States operates in the interest of the EU all the time - but only because as powerful liberal democracies, their interests (seeing a peaceful world with freedom of trade and ever-tightening global economic integration) are aligned.
A world where the US reneges on Article 5 of NATO is a world where Europe was already pretty screwed, because that would imply that one or both of these two ceased to be liberal democracies.
> In fact the US has recently claimed that UN Security Council resolutions are non-binding to the outrage of most UN members. [2]
UNSC resolutions are non-binding for permanent members because each permanent member has a veto. There is no way to pass a resolution without the consent of the permanent members, and the US made it very clear that its abstention was only because the resolution was a moral point and had no concrete requirements (peacekeeping forces, sanctions, etc.). The US has vetoed all the attempts with CONCRETE requirements outright.
Any "legal experts" who say it's binding are dodging the point: this is a moral resolution and the US doesn't give a damn about saving Israel in the court of public opinion anymore, since Netanyahu has stopped even pretending that he's trying to minimize damage. This resolution does not compel the US or Israel to do anything since there's no mechanism to enforce their compliance.
It's just like coming PRC EV ban, this isn't about reciprocity. It's about US finding out too late that of their inability to compete. PRC EV companies would love JV setup in states, where local US JV partners provide billions in various subsidies like land, tax credits, political muscling etc because they know they can still make cars cheaper. Local JV's aren't just there to rent seek they have to do serious facilitation work.
Eitherway, US will do what she does, TikTok mostly foreign owned anyways, it won't hurt PRC that much. We'll just have to see which US MNC PRC will force to divest to "leave" in response. The other consideration is does TikTok get to migrate all their US data after they leave? If not, would WFOE Tesla Shanhai get to keep their capital equipment when they get kicked out.
Whether or not most TikTok users in the US will buy this bit of malarkey is another questions.
> As per its Special Security Arrangement, BAE Systems Inc. operates as a semi-autonomous business unit within BAE Systems controlled at a local level by American management. In May 2006 the CEO of BAE Systems described the "firewalled" status of BAE Systems Inc: "The British members of the corporate leadership, me included, get to see the financial results; but many areas of technology, product and programme are not visible to us.... The SSA effectively allows us to operate in the US as an American company, providing the highest levels of assurance and integrity in some of the most sensitive fields of national security provision."
They can't force the company to divest, but they can prevent them from operating in America if they don't.
If TikTok was an obscure app that a few hundred thousand (or even a couple million) people used, most people wouldn't think this ban would be a problem. (Granted, if it were that small, it wouldn't've provoked all this scrutiny in the first place.)
China doesn't give foreigners meaningful access to their markets (and when they do, it comes with a pile of restrictions, including on ownership structure); arguably we should not do the same. The whole "let's expose China to Western values and they'll open up and become a democracy" thing failed miserably.
Still, on a fundamental level, this all feels uncomfortable.
Unlimited access to any bit of IP of the company that at any point finds itself within China's borders seems like the biggest limitation.
How can people trust that we are an innovative hub if this is how we operate?
Tiktok will not become state-owned/run by the US.
I get what you mean but it is just splitting hairs at this point.
The state already has data access, if the data is in the US. If the data isn't in the US, then why don't we have data locality laws like the EU and India? If the data is already in another country then why do we let another state have access to the data of US citizens?
> How can people trust that we are an innovative hub if this is how we operate?
Because it puts them on the exact same situation as every US company. You can call it splitting hairs, but they already have a US entity that's already subject to US laws and orders. The US's ability to access their data doesn't change (unless they've been storing user data in mainland China, which is kind of damning for them). Forcing divestment doesn't give the US any legal leverage.
And if companies are worried they'll become worth billions of dollars and become popular with every American youth and have a bespoke act of Congress force one of their many owners to divest, frankly I think they've got their priorities in the wrong place.
I feel like a few years ago this site was inundated with posts arguing largely "Anyone anywhere on earth should be able to do business in the U.S. and own U.S. subsidary companies, no exceptions."
These seem largely absent today.
I started coming here about 5-8 years ago because of the comments section usually having insider or wicked smart people and their viewpoints.
You did the right thing by asking this question. It might be downvoted but we can all see something and say something.
I still hold the same stance today, but I am just tired of arguing for it on HN.
I noticed the same thing with the prevailing opinion on the issue changing on HN as well. However, it wasnt because there are better arguments for the ban now or some new relevant info got discovered that would affect it.
Nope, it literally devolved into tit-for-tat arguments only, except this pretty much makes the US lose any high ground here. For people who dont see how maintaining the high ground in this specific scenario[0] is very advantageous and cheap for the US, I don’t have much to add that wasnt already discussed to death in all the previous HN threads on this.
P.S. It sucks I even feel the need to say this, but no, I dont support the chinese government and have zero affiliation with it whatsoever (at least none that I am aware of lol). I do have a lot of respect for the country itself and their people. However, my respect for the country and their people is not relevant to my opinions on absolutely anything related to policymaking.
0. No, I dont believe in this approach for every scenario ever involving the US and China. Of course, I do believe in reciprocal trade sanctions and tarrifs. I dont believe in those nearly as much when it comes to the digital realm, and especially not when it is something like TikTok.
However, under realistic conditions, where many agents are predisposed to cooperate but some do not that's where a tit for tat strategy can work incredibly well.
That people are predisposed to cooperate is an assumption you have to make, it cannot be derived from the rules of the game itself.
As for a broader change in opinion, I'd say that since 2022, American businesses have been happy to rally around protectionist policies in general (especially after the end of ZIRP) and that attitude feeds through to HN'ers that put a disproportionate amount of stock in things that people like Musk say.
For example, here's Musk admitting that Chinese EVs will dominate global market share without trade barriers:
https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/tesla-...
Q1: Is it ok for China to control what Americans watch?
Q2: Should companies have free association?
Q1 and Q2 determine the same decision, but express different values and ultimately different responses. You have to be honest that the framing begs a particular response. That's the part that's not unbiased.
Association and allegiance aren't synonyms.
Personally I support the authoritarian measure against TikTok from a “general” standpoint since I firmly believe the nature of warfare lately has shifted to a more cultural front and thus is a matter of national security; Everything about this would be perfect if not for the glaring issue that is clear favoritism, and not addressing the root problem.
Social media and its corresponding ad-tech at large is a publicly available propaganda engine that can be wielded by the highest state backed bidder via direct ads, or the highest spending intelligence actor via artificial accounts and discourse.
LLM tech has only exacerbated this threat and in a perfect world this legislation would be the first of many steps to curtail the threat before it undermines the country any further.
Now that I’ve said my controversial bits I would love to hear what your thoughts on the matter(s) are!
Fifteen year old me was right on this one. It's better to burn it down than pick the lesser of two evils. We always reserve the right to create our own options if what's presented to us isn't honest.
The American government is more likely to produce propaganda that promotes an increase in GDP. The increase being won by sacrificing individual autonomy or quality of life is something that is at least in your control (emigrating, voting, lobbying, etc) which makes it the lesser of two evils.
As to burning it down and picking a third option… I agree in principle but recent history rarely supports that path; modern technology and weaponry renders any kind of organized revolution a nonstarter, while other means of subverting the status quo (economically, culturally, etc) have been set up to incentivize those capable of doing so to be completely apathetic in the face of obscene wealth tied directly to upholding said status quo.
Put simply we are in a social construct that is resilient to any significant change in course (or destruction) while still under threat from a foreign social construct that wishes to subvert our society to the benefit of its own.
C’est la vie I guess
Edit: And in non American countries where US influence is a national security issue they are already adding similar laws or putting in similar pressure to ensure USA can't influence their people as much.
Nothing should happen, limitations are deliberate
Meta aside we're already here, by the way. The military and VA do this to themselves.
Recruitment strategy is commercials and Call of Duty games, while we see what really happens through our families. Half-ass postings on the Internet aren't even close to the problem.
Tldr: Don't like the news, fix it/make your own. Pray we don't have to rely on the draft.
Why should TikTok not be investigated similarly?
What Congress is proposing is banning an app without first providing any evidence that the app conducts activities that are illegal under US law.
FTC v Facebook: https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2019/07/...
DOJ v Binance: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/binance-and-ceo-plead-guilty-...
So, for the same reason that you can't find someone guilty of a crime that you believe they will commit in the future, the DOJ and FTC don't really have any standing here to press charges or levy fines.
My perspective is that if one truly cares about these ideals of freedom or such, would they be better fulfilled through keeping US Congress in line or a dominant CCP? If the CCP "wins", if they establish economic hegemony, just like we see with the censorship with Taiwan, whatever talk about defending freedoms right now against ourselves would be irrelevant at that point to an external adversary.
* Tiktok competes with FAANGM (MMANGA?) type companies, which happen to be heavily represented here, and those people may have pointed thoughts
* apropos of FAANGMs, China recently banned or set strict rules for FAANGM companies in China. If they're not going to play nice + make dubious demands, why shouldn't the US behave similarly?
* GPT is a thing... and was then, too. all available bot power may be focused on elections / Trump trials / Israel / Ukraine / etc., when it wasn't before, and rapid changes to viewpoints may reflect that; the 50 Cent Party has bigger fights to pick, etc.
* sort of a corollary to the above, it's an election year, a big one in several ways, and that drives the (real, human) commenters out in droves
For most people it takes some time to burn off all the good faith for certain things before reality set in.
In that vein it seems fair and probably doesn’t go far enough — Chinese citizens are free to publish whatever they want in the US while we’re severely restricted on conducting trade in China.
On the other hand, I’d love access to that market and would prefer trade negotiations rather than tit for tat disputes like this that won’t further the interests of American businesses (outside of Meta and Snapchat)
The app https://dailydao.app
In my opinion (only speaking for Germany, as I follow mostly the politics here) nobody was very keen on asking questions and making demand when the Chinese were producing our shit for pennies on the dollar but buying our premium Mercedes Benz S Classes Long Lines (and similar high technology products) by the millions.
Who would've thunk that the turntables would've, well turned...
I'm not blaming China for this btw, they played their hand very well
But China started to make some high end stuff, such as Computers, and it did those so well that it could probably render US competitors irrelevant in the next a couple of decades. So all drama started.
In consumer 3D printers, Bambu has revolutionized the market.
Of course Western companies have made a lot of money off China with cheap labor and massive marketplace, so it wasn't entirely an altruistic endeavour.
No, the kid gloves are off because "they are not democratic." It's like being nice to the weird kid in school and the weird kid steals your lunch. No more being nice to the weird kid.
Also, consider if they were democratic, we might not be having the grievances we are currently having.
Unless you’re trying to argue that the rapid economic growth happened because they are not democratic, the idea that democracy has any relevance on US relations is laughable propaganda.
If the countries were really school kids, then I might accommodate for the idea that the school bully actually believes that he’s no longer nice to the weird kid because he’s weird. But even if some US citizens are childish, countries are not school kids.
>I think the hopes were that China, once prospering in the global marketplace as a big player, would turn democratic. Over the last decade or two, we've come to realize the opposite has happened and the Western powers are adjusting.
Which part of that do you disagree with?
There's certainly research on the subject.
https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/economic-integration-and-tran...
Exploiting improvements in air, relative to sea, transportation that occurred since the 1960s, and combining survey data with country level measures of democracy from 1960 to 2015, the authors document that trade with democracies increases both citizens’ support for democracy and countries’ democracy scores. Trade with non-democracies has no impact on either attitudes or institutions.
According to our results, doubling trade with democracies (a change in exposure equivalent to the inter-quartile range in our sample) increases an individual’s support for democracy by 0.58 points on a 1 to 4 scale. This is similar to the difference in attitudes towards democracy between Mexico and Norway, or that between Philippines and Italy. At the country level, our estimates imply that increasing trade with democratic partners by 80% (or its inter-quartile range) raises the democracy score by around 4 points (on a scale from -10 to +10). This is equivalent to the gap between Malaysia and Canada in 2010, or that between Turkey and Senegal in 2015.
>Trade with non-democracies has no impact on either attitudes or institutions.
And actually it’s good that there’s research about it. Different correlations between economic and political attitudes are interesting, I believe that the relation is from the political to the economic side, not otherwise yet, my biggest gripe is, that the idea that markets would result into democracy is a big assertion with shaky foundations.
And I mean, is not like we don’t have history of countries trying to open other’s markets, sometimes even forcefully. I saw the same, now dressed with modern ideologies.
Citizens are very satisfied of their government, despite some of its excesses, unlike so called western democratic governments.
Their material condititons are as good as in Europe, at least for most folks.
Just because you do not directly elect the president of your government doesn't make you less democratic. Switzerland doesn't elect its government by universal suffrage, neither does the UK, or the EU. Their democratic model is just different.
The ban on tiktok didn't come when everyone was criticizing the negative impact it had on children and teenager's mental health, it only came now when lots of its users started publicly criticizing a certain country more openly than is allowed on other platforms... So its censorship/ban will be to comply with western censorship rules,thus making us no better than China in this regard.
That isn’t when that conflict started, but it also isn’t when the push to ban TikTok started.
Really showing their hand with the NatSec claims in my opinion.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/19/technology/trump-oracle-a...
Ever wondered how all those fancy action movies got their tanks just like that?
Cuz they had to beg the US gov for them; they are pretty much free to use under the condition that you do not critize the government's foreign policy or the army itself.
So if you want to make a war movie that is critical of the government, good luck.
And thats just one example; there is much more regarding all the "experts" send on television to talk about this or that country that happens to be at odd with the Washington dictatorship.
I'm sure this legislation will be almost immediately overturned by the courts. It has severe first amendment and fifth amendment problems, along with possibly being an illegal bill of attainder.
It’s not that TikTok can’t exist; they’ve been trying to force a sale AFAIK. Whether it’s a NatSec issue or a censorship issue seems to be in the eye of the beholder.
I understand that TikTok may represent a national security concern but it’s also a platform that younger generations use for protected speech. What’s the message that we’re sending to this group?
"The government only wants your personal data harvested by companies that aren't run by an enterprise operated by actors from a hostile foreign government which itself is hellbent on taking America's place in the global economic and soft power hierarchy"
The US government doesn't want a foreign country in control of the communication platform its youth are using. The Chinese government doesn't want that, either.
It gets banned if it refuses to divest. If China is unwilling to let go of TikTok, even at the cost of tens of billions of dollars, that sort of tells you it has non-economic value.
They want US citizens to communicate on US platforms where they do have influence and control so they can censor speech and continue the capitalist forever wars.
No different to any other country. China does the same, as does Russia, Korea and Japan.
AFAIK, there has never been any evidence or reason to suspect TikTok of sharing private data from Americans with the Chinese government. It seems like simply being from China is the crime the US government wants to ban TikTok for.
https://fortune.com/2024/04/15/tiktok-china-data-sharing-byt...
If you're going to argue that sending data to Bytedance in Beijing isn't sending it to the Chinese government, you're free to believe that but it would not be supported by the available evidence.
That is why Huawei gear is not allowed in US telcos.
American crusade against Huawei happened the same year Huawei broke the record for most phones sold, surpassing Apple.
If anything, I’d expect this to bring more oversight to how TikTok algorithmically chooses and presents the feed.
The timing of this move is also suspect. TikTok is the probably the #1 platform currently where users and creators are outspoken in opposition to U.S. foreign policy in Israel/Palestine. And now the government is forcing them to sell to new owners.
[1] https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/18/tech/tiktok-bytedance-china-o...
AIPAC is willing to sacrifice Biden's re-election chances for this short-term victory because the other candidate and his whole party is also going to be favourable for them, possibly even more so.
ByteDance will sue, and the court case will likely go to the Supreme Court. If they left the USA without any legal contest, then they would be walking away from a huge amount of money.
Chinese authoritarian government doesn't allow American companies to freely operate in China, but they want freedom for the Chinese companies in the West? That's a little hypocritical, don't you think?
Not really, no. Our government operates under our constitution, not China's.
https://www.wired.com/story/strava-heat-map-military-bases-f...
That was just data Strava was releasing publicly.
The raw data collection from TikTok contains much more than that. Think in terms of all branches of military and government messaging each other perfectly blackmailable things and then automating analysis of that.
Byte Dance says that China doesn't have access to the data and that it hasn't been accessed, but from what I've read they have a party office at the company in China. I simply don't trust a foreign adversary with the amount of data that one of these social platforms generates. Neither does China which is why a large number of services operated in China are hosted on Chinese servers run by local subsidiaries, with vastly different and far more permissive laws when it comes to government/intelligence/law enforcement (all one and the same there) accessing that data.
Hopefully that critical thinking can transfer to what's being done by American companies and intelligence agencies with user data and we can get some actual data privacy legislation at some point and enshrine a law preventing from inserting backdoors in everything that moves.
I can't think of an instance of this. I don't see how it won't succeed, if they cut off monetizing the posts..
I guess, what happens if someone's wearing a sponsor's t-shirt and makes a plug in the middle of their rant about someone who put their feet on the back of their airline seat?
All independent journalists have said this is ONLY because of Gaza. Trying to suppress young people's opinions i.e. Free speech.
This is literally the bill rewritten with Cantwell’s input.