Why should the US or any other trade partner with China therefore keep such a lopsided relationship? Seems like the US has a case here IMO, given all this history and practice. We should have been tougher on this years ago
You’ll probably not be surprised to find out there’s a lot of anti-US sentiment courtesy of Chinese, Russian and Iranian propaganda.
Plenty of younger folks fall for it, same stuff in the 70s and 80s on college campuses with supposedly well educated people talking about how the Soviet Union had higher standards of living than the US, and the “tyranny” was all just American propaganda.
I read most of the challenges to this ban as either explicitly championing US-colored ideals of free markets and free speech or simple personal frustration because people don't want to lose the experience of the app.
I'd expect some of the messaging gets amplified and shaped by adversarial parties, but the framing is rarely/never aligned with "anti-US" rhetoric on this topic.
Your concern sounds like a different thing than what applies to this discussion.
It’s attempting to push the narrative that TikTok is somehow the exception and is being treated unfairly, and that this is the big bad USA violating constitutional rights when this is just exactly how businesses with adversarial governments are treated in America. We already know Chinese controlled social media bots are amplifying to far right and far left extremists who act as useful idiots to spread this bait.
The US government regularly intervenes in the free market, especially when national security is involved. It’s no different than banning Huawei from critical infrastructure, but allowing Nokia to stick around. Look at real estate, automotive industry, hell even construction has similar restrictions.
My concern is strictly national security, it’s my own opinion and I definitely could be wrong, but given what I’ve seen that’s public, there’s not really a downside here. Someone will buy TikTok, and they will make a shit load of money. People will call it a conspiracy, but at the end of the day the idea of China running a social media platform just does not seem very logical no matter how you spin it.
Protectionist trade policy is nothing new, and in the big picture that’s what this really is.
But now? In my lifetime it feels like America's soft power has gone from the sort that could make grown men cry with joy, to basically nonexistent. And I think a big part of it is that we are no longer seen as behaving in a principled fashion. We just do whatever is convenient at the moment and then wrap it in some grandstanding and a whole lot of propaganda. Even with this silly event, I think there's an interesting nuance. The government was so concerned about the tremendous national security threat of TikTok that, just 2 months, ago Biden decided to start his very own TikTok account. [1] It went like you'd expect. But imagine it didn't. Imagine he actually managed to gain some traction. Would he, today, still be looking to sign off on a ban of it?
[1] - https://www.wired.com/story/joe-biden-tiktok-campaign-commen...
CCTV (Chinese central TV) has a Twitter/X/Youtube accounts even though it is banned in China. Heck, Tiktok itself is banned in China but the Chinese government doesn't mind using it to push its messages abroad. This isn't really weird from a Chinese perspective anyways.
China bans whatever they feel like for whatever reason they want. Another example was banning social media imagery or references to Winnie the Pooh on social media because of it being used to mock Xi Jinping in a domain they couldn't directly control otherwise. [2] Of course they were happy to still allow it in domains where they could control the messaging and use, like in books or parks. And this is, of course, one of the many reasons Chinese society isn't particularly well regarded. And this is the exact route we're going down, with the exact same outcomes.
[1] - http://www.npc.gov.cn/zgrdw/englishnpc/Constitution/2007-11/...
[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_of_Winnie-the-Pooh_...
They’re hardly unique to that end, no? I’m with you that this is dumb but mostly because I don’t see ByteDance holding even half its value for another decade.
Microsoft and Google must be absolutely salivating right now, imagine being able to buy your way into operating a major social network in 2024, and not only do the Feds not come after you for antitrust, they actually mandate the sale and greenlight it in advance!
That said, how is this different from Chinas long standing economic policies that have effectively banned many western companies from doing business there and longstanding practices of stealing trade secrets[0][1][2]?
Or how about forcing companies to transfer technology and business operations to local Chinese firms[3] under threat of being banned in the Chinese market?
[0]: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-64206950
[1]: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/28/1-in-5-companies-say-china-s...
[2]: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/06/technology/china-generati...
[3]: https://www.axios.com/2021/12/21/why-us-giants-keep-caving-t...
In an ideal world, TikTok would be prevented from doing business in the US, but everyone would continue to download the TikTok client and act like nothing happened. Just like with Napster and BitTorrent.
Actually, without something like a GFW, the USA can't do more than "ban" app stores from carrying the app in the US market, they can't even really prevent you from switching markets and using an overseas credit card. But they can definitely ban American based tiktokers from getting paid, or American based advertisers from using the platform commercially, which will probably hurt more than anything.
If for some reason TikTok actually disappears, Meta's apps are still there and there will be plenty of money flowing into a new competitor with similar UX.
Because the current situation is already quid pro quo. The rule now is US companies can operate in China if they obey the same rules in China that Chinese companies have to obey in China, and Chinese companies can operate in the US if they obey the same rules in the US that US companies have to obey.
FB is not in China because China requires social media companies to turn over the identities of posters that post things the Chinese government does not like. FB does not want to do that and so FB is not allowed in China.
Everything that people speculate that TikTok might do or be used for has already happened and continues to happen on Facebook. The quid pro quo approach would be for the US to regulate or ban those things on all social media apps in that operate in the US.
China practices the maxim of "we don't have a rule book, but don't do anything that makes us angry" to enforce a maximum of self censorship on its operators. Heck, Chinese services are actually required to break rules in ways that would violate America's FCPA laws (it is impossible to operate in China and not break either American or Chinese laws).
> FB is not in China because China requires social media companies to turn over the identities of posters that post things the Chinese government does not like.
FB would probably setup a JV in a heart beat if the Chinese government would let them (letting the JV handle the data and interaction with Chinese regulators, and keeping it completely separated from Facebook in the rest of the world). The issue is that China wants to know the identities of people outside of China, like in Taiwan or Hong Kong, and Facebook would be breaking Chinese law not revealing them, but would be breaking other country laws revealing them. Again, it is simply impossible for Facebook to operate in China without breaking either Chinese or other country laws. So they pick the rest of the world.
I think ByteDance actually did the right thing with TikTok. It would be impossible to have a service that legally works both in China and outside of China, because Chinese rules would require breaking other country rules, so they did two services instead. But unfortunately, I guess the Americans don't think they are organizationally separate enough, and that the Chinese government can still exert pressure on ByteDance to reveal TikTok data, not just Douyin data.
No it hasn't.
Facebook isn't sending information on US journalists to our foreign adversaries.
Thats the difference. Helping out a geopolical enemy that very likely could be at war with the US or its allies, is a big deal.
> all social media apps in that operate in the US.
All social media apps of that size are equally not going to be controllable by our foreign adversaries. That is already what the law does.
And Tiktok will be perfectly able to equally follow the law, once they sell to a non foreign adversary.
You forgot to mention that China hacks companies operating in China.
from https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/new-approach-to-chin...
> Like many other well-known organizations, we face cyber attacks of varying degrees on a regular basis. In mid-December, we detected a highly sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure originating from China that resulted in the theft of intellectual property from Google. However, it soon became clear that what at first appeared to be solely a security incident--albeit a significant one--was something quite different.
> First, this attack was not just on Google. As part of our investigation we have discovered that at least twenty other large companies from a wide range of businesses--including the Internet, finance, technology, media and chemical sectors--have been similarly targeted. We are currently in the process of notifying those companies, and we are also working with the relevant U.S. authorities.
Sure, China tries to hack companies. But do they only hack foreign companies or do they also hack domestic companies?
[1] https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/new-approach-to-chin...
> TikTok has (allegedly) shared US customer data overseas.
When discussing a law let's not discuss alleged things, be precise and talk about facts, was it done or not?
> And they’re effectively controlled by an adversarial state.
Do you think everything in this world should be controlled by the USA?
> And that state doesn’t reciprocate by letting US companies freely operate social media services there. So ban it.
Can you please remind me the USA is a democracy? if it is a democracy, then it should not compare itself to other forms of governments and how they operate. Every country has its laws, companies should abide by them, and the USA as far as I am aware was a proponent of free trade, capitalism and democracy
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/tiktok-pledged-to-prot...
You know full well that it’s not possible to monitor or examine what these companies do, because we don’t have total transparency.
> So much bias in your comment.
The bias isn’t with me, but with you. Obviously you could have taken one second to do a search and find numerous articles on this, such as this one, where TikTok ADMITTED to storing US data in China, which means they lied under oath. That’s why a divestment is not enough to trust them: https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexandralevine/2023/06/21/tikt...
> Do you think everything in this world should be controlled by the USA?
I think the CCP is a corrupt authoritarian regime that used violent revolution and force to come into power and stay there. Most people don’t trust such regimes to control anything. It’s not about the US, or even Chinese people, but about Chinese leadership.
> Every country has its laws, companies should abide by them, and the USA as far as I am aware was a proponent of free trade, capitalism and democracy
I’m not sure what point you’re making. Banning TikTok worldwide would be consistent with all three.
It is perfectly okay to be biased against China, they are biased against my rights as a human.
They do not deserve the benefit of the doubt, they don’t give those who “disappear” for speaking out against their government the benefit of the doubt either.
> Do you think everything in this world should be controlled by the USA?
I think that things that pump directly into the minds of the American public should not be controlled by adversaries of America. That is different from what you said, and the difference matters.
Its clear TikTok has not done the legwork and deployed significant spend on PAC and lobbying.