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Comment by vsnf | Hacker News Reader

I don't think TikTok is itself any worse than our own domestic brain liquefying apps like Twitter, and thus the ban's surface reasoning is specious at best, but I'm fully onboard with reciprocity. If China won't let US companies operate in China, the US shouldn't let Chinese companies operate in the US.

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It is interesting how this creates a market for an overarching market-state whose sole function is to protect free trade that would otherwise be blocked by national-level government. Think of the Common Economic Protocol from Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age - or, for that matter, how modern states arose out of what were essentially protection rackets that would prevent bandits from interfering with free trade between villages.

Many empires were either founded or strongly assisted by unifying trade. It’s a straightforward way of capturing value accruing from comparative advantage.

I'd prefer if China would allow American social media to operate in China to subvert the CCP regime and eventually free China but if they're not going to then I agree that Chinese social media companies should be banned from the US.

There is nothing TikTok can do that any other app on Apple or google can do.

They could solve a lot of this in an instant; no one will propose limiting collection at the OS level.

The US is fine with SV domestic spying, and not OK with China collecting this amount of information and having a massive “suggestive” social media platform.

Sure, limit TikTok, whatever. I can see who really cares about what.

There's no "limiting collection". The valuable data is knowing what you watch. You can't stop the app from collecting that.

I think there is a lot more valuable data than just what you watch on social media platforms for different actors. If I am a burglar for instance, I want to collect what you post. Etc.

Collecting data isn’t so much the issue as having central control over the millions of information bubbles that people live in. Though that’s a power that Facebook, Xitter, and Instagram also have at their disposal

> The US is fine with SV domestic spying, and not OK with China collecting this amount of information

Yeah because at the end of the day SV is literally inside of the US and if e.g. a war started, we know what side they are going to be on.

It's really not that hard to figure out.

When the war starts, do we think Zuck and Tim Cook and the Google trio are going to defect to china?

Not China, New Zeeland... If rumors of wealthy people building doomsday bunkers there are true.

Which is equally useless as NZ is aligned with the US and so will not avoid the consequence in case of a conflit with the 'axis of "evil" countries'.

New Zealand is also pretty keen on not pissing off China which makes this an appalling place to hide from both perspectives.

It's impossible to limit data collection at the OS level without making apps unusable.

> They could solve a lot of this in an instant; no one will propose limiting collection at the OS level.

How could this possibly be solved at an OS level, let alone in an instant?

> I don't think TikTok is itself any worse than our own domestic brain liquefying apps like Twitter

Do you honestly believe that a disinformation source whose parent organization granted a board seat to a political apparatus that will jail you for holding up a blank sheet of paper during a protest is the same as Twitter?

Because I find that difficult to believe.

I suppose if Twitter integrated a serving senior White House official into whatever shit-sandwich is its current leadership structure, and it was the policy of the current administration to jail persons for holding up blank sheets of paper at a protest, I could understand.

People, and websites, are allowed to be terrible. You can't really stop that. Terrible people and websites under the control of despotic regimes that will jail you for holding up a blank sheet of paper during a protest are a different matter altogether.

Except that the US operations for TikTok USDS are under the control and review of both a separate business unit, incorporated and independently run in the US, -and- Oracle. Oracle is signing their name to the data protections and controls and code reviews - all spelled out in the project Texas and USDS docs. I still pretty firmly believe this to be political theater, but it’s confusing given that it’s now alienating a large young but voter-age demographic and the thousands of small businesses that are built on TikTok. And it’s probably pissing off some 16 year olds too.

"If China won't let US companies operate in China, the US shouldn't let Chinese companies operate in the US." Sounds like some middle school arguments, not some serious thoughts

Yes, actually, one only needs to be as developed as an adolescent human to understand the basic concept of reciprocity.

Reciprocity is one of the fundamental pillars of trust in society.

International diplomacy is as much about not being a doormat as anything.

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