TikTok CEO expects to defeat US ban: 'We aren't going anywhere' | Hacker News Reader

TikTok CEO expects to defeat US ban: 'We aren't going anywhere'

reuters.com

37 pointstithe60 comments

I kind of low key look forward to this.

It's hard for me to imagine TikTok retaining even 20% of the US market share after an app store ban. But that 20% would still be a huge cultural victory for ByteDance, would be an impressive resistance.

The US would really have to turn into a monster, would have to deputize a huge amount of internet services into becoming policemen to go further, and that's a horrible thing that I don't want to see. But also, I struggle to see that deputization down without a huge stink that makes congress look like foolish jerks.

And it'll never work. No matter how many ISP types we conscript, there's just way too many VPNs and other capabilities out there to workaround a technical ban. Squeezing hard will sort of illuminate the futility of the act.

And sort of that's my hope, that the ban becomes a lesson in futility, that sort of shows ByteDance's posture here is right (albeit at a considerable loss in market position). I want the internet to have a win here, I want democratized individual choices to triumph over tight centralized control, I want nations to not have the means. Other nations attempt elaborate control and I don't want the example of control to be proven viable here in the US. There's dark dark roads Congress & the government could go down to try to enforce this ban, but I'm kind of hoping they fail fast and fail hard.

(Also reserving the right to change my mind later. I struggle to see right now how picking on one (and only one) big foreign service is justified.)

If it's banned it'll all but die out of American popular culture. People will shift to things like YouTube Shorts instead. You can't even get the average person to understand mastodon let alone buy into a VPN subscription to circumvent regional bans.

Meanwhile, China orders Apple to yank WhatsApp and Facebook apps from its app store in China, because, ya know... they can.

Who gives a shit? What's the benefit of converting the United States into China Lite?

>China orders Apple to yank WhatsApp

Welcome to 2017.

>and Facebook

Welcome to 2009.

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_websites_blocked_in_ma...>

That's kind of my point. Why is it they view social media as a weapon aimed at their citizenry and we don't?

>Why is it they view social media as a weapon aimed at their citizenry and we don't?

China views free speech as a weapon aimed at their citizenry and we don't.

Literally what else could he possibly say in this situation?

I would imagine something less confrontational to Congress than effectively "Take your best shot".

It's going to be interesting how this plays out, that's for sure.

> Literally what else could he possibly say in this situation?

The strongest move might have been business as usual. He doesn’t have public stockholders to appease. And his users aren’t going anywhere. The only case I can see for this statement is he doesn’t totally expect to win in court and needs to politicise the question as a back-up.

“We understand the concerns expressed and are committed to finding a resolution that puts the interests of our users and the American public as our top priority.”

They should sell it or spin it off or whatever and make statements commensurate with that.

He could’ve said Nothing. That he’s so hostile to something that would be so financially beneficial to him makes me even more suspicious of his motives.

Maybe this?

https://www.deloitte.com/global/en/about/press-room/deloitte...

Or this?

https://investor.visa.com/news/news-details/2022/Visa-Suspen...

Can't go wrong with IBM?

https://newsroom.ibm.com/Update-on-IBMs-Business-Operations-...

The legal environment changing to make continued business in country X untenable is hardly a supremely rare event.

Could all be a war over what datacenters get to service which customers in the end:

https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/opinions/tiktoks-futur...

Do they even have standing? The proposed "ban" is enforced on the app stores, so I could see Google or Apple have standing, if they don't want to be forced to delete an app their users like. Meanwhile tiktok.com will still work in browsers.

They almost certainly would have standing. Banning their app from the app store clearly directly affects them.

But they could instead just allow people to login on the mobile site and install it as a progressive web app, instead of forcing them to use the app so they can track people better.

My understanding is that you and tantalor are mistaken. The bill explicitly covers using TikTok as a web app.

How would that be enforced??

Don't you remember when the FBI seized pirating sites?

The text of the bill literally mentioned "ByteDance Inc" and "TikTok" by name.

(which makes it a bill of attainder, and thus unconstitutional)

I believe it's only a bill of attainder if it imposes criminal penalties; I think the TikTok ban is regulatory/civil.

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixon_v._General_Services_Admi... might also matter.)

> Finally, the Act did not violate the Bill of Attainder clause of the Constitution because this Act does not convict former President Nixon of a crime and does not expose him to prosecution.

I think it's a good idea for (groups of) countries to require large foreign countries to create local daughter companies to service their citizens locally. This way you can enforce your (hopefully democratic and good) laws and protect your citizens from things like spying. It's somewhat ironic that the US is raising this issue though since they do the same themselves. As far as I know their secret services are allowed to spy without restraint on anybody but American citizens. Or they are doing so anyhow.

Why not restrict it everything to be local server and have IT monitor and restrict traffic outside the country

They're already doing that with Project Texas. Oracle is the "IT".

I recall that this was the compromise they made when Trump wanted to ban TT. Did this not address the security concerns?

If the US has any credibility in the context of its constitutional sanctity, then this "ban" will be declared unconstitutional by the us supreme court.

if this were a poker game, ByteDance would have a full house. There is just no way they can lose this case, if only because the Citizens United ruling grants their corporation personhood.

USG has forced sales similar to this in previous years (Grindr), both without an act of Congress and without the lingering smell of national security concerns. This is different, yes, but different in that the legal case is more robust, not less.

You would think the free market would value national security more.

Isn't that what they call an "externality"?

They do, but it doesn't apply to the funny dance app.

SO, a threat. Of course. Just feeding into the idea that it's an adversary running the thing.

What is the threat? In the article he says, "The facts and the Constitution are on our side and we expect to prevail again."

Does he seriously think the US SCOTUS is going to override the will of 79 senators, for the sake of a company with documented ties to the Chinese Communist Party?

If I was a senator, I would consider that almost treasonous. Frankly, even if you disagree with the vote, a democracy can and should be able to make such judgement calls. At that rate, the CCP should be able to buy beachfront property in California, ship military and nuclear weapons to the property, and claim that we can’t stop them because they paid the import fees.

Isn't overriding the will of senators literally the point of the supreme court?

No. The Supreme Court exists primarily to interpret the law, reconcile laws with other laws, and address vague language or other inconsistencies. Overriding the will of senators, immediately after a bill’s passing, is very rare and threatens their perceived legitimacy. Senators can always impeach SCOTUS judges, and to do such an act begs for it.

It is... not rare.

https://constitution.congress.gov/resources/unconstitutional...

Considering Congress passes almost 500 laws per year (1229 from 2019 to 2021, 1234 [sic] from 2021 to 2023), it is a little less than 1% of cases.

But that’s just the federal branch. Your list includes states and local municipalities - which makes the real number much, much lower. Much closer, arguably, to 0.1% or less of all legislation.

The fact remains that it is entirely within the role of the court to overturn unconstitutional legislation, which the court does regularly.

The idea that the court would not give proper scrutiny to a legislative act -- one which may violate the first amendment, fifth amendment, and may amount to an illegal bill of attainder -- just because it had support from the senate, well, that's just preposterous.

> Much closer, arguably, to 0.1% or less of all legislation.

You're missing the giant flip side of that coin; that local, state, and Federal courts can all determine laws conflict with other laws or the Constitution, and do so regularly.

(For example: This never needed to go to SCOTUS. https://www.aclum.org/en/press-releases/states-highest-court...)

Things largely get to SCOTUS when there's disagreement between the courts. (https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/circuit_split / https://www.law.cornell.edu/rules/supct/rule_10)

If your town passes a "no black people allowed after 10pm" law, it'll never get to SCOTUS, but it's still unconstitutional. The first level of courts it encounters will immediately overturn it.

(Two other notes: clearly unconstitutional laws tend to be a bit rare, because they're a bit embarassing when they get readily overturned. A significant portion - as much as 20% - of those 500 average bills is naming post offices; for example, https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/203. Much of the rest are similarly void of thorny constitutional questions.)

Judicial review has been the accepted norm since Marbury v Madison.

> Frankly, even if you disagree with the vote, a democracy can and should be able to make such judgement calls

That's literally SCOTUS's job though, particularly as it relates to the US Constitution. The whole point is that unconstitutional laws "in theory" should be struck down.

> That's literally SCOTUS's job

Its job is to resolve cases and controversies. If that requires finding the Constitution supersedes a law (or a federal law supersedes a state law), so be it.

Right - so the question is: should the Senate be able to pass any law, no matter what, because it was overwhelmingly voted for? To me the "overwhelmingly voted for" criteria is not enough. Why would we even need a Supreme Court in that case? Just let the legislative branch do whatever it wants as long as most vote in favor.

> If I was a senator, I would consider that almost treasonous.

The Constitution - in this case, probably the First Amendment - very clearly limits what the Senate can do. The entire three-branch system is built on checks and balances of this nature.

> Frankly, even if you disagree with the vote, a democracy can and should be able to make such judgement calls.

Can we vote to put redheads in extermination camps?

Determining whether to allow a business incorporated offshore to operate in our country is completely incomparable to a inherited permanent genetic trait.

I won't be intentionally obtuse, but I was under the impression that basically all large tech companies are incorporated offshore. We think of them as American certainly, but when it comes time to pay taxes, I get the feeling they don't exude patriotic enthusiasm to do so. I'm quite sure that they feel much more allegiance to shareholders wherever they might be in the world than they do for Americans as a group.

1. That's completely missing the point. The will of the Senate isn't the only thing that matters in our system, as it has concrete protections even for minority rights (for example, free speech for Nazis, as distasteful as it is to most of us) that cannot be overridden by mere legislative fiat, and thank goodness for that.

2. This bill, among other things, tells American private companies they must censor their app stores by excluding a particular application. It is, inherently, an act of censorship, and I think there's a good chance it doesn't survive court review. At the very least, it'll be years of litigation.

As a thought exercise I would argue 2A protects the right of a Chinese national owning nuclear weapons legally in the US.

Can anyone say what user data ByteDance might share with the Chinese government?

Also, how is China an adversary? I thought the USA and China were trading partners.

China no longer wants to be an underdog and wants to be a super power itself, thus forming geopolitical rivalry with USA.

so put your big boy pants on and compete!!

Don't run under grampa Biden's rocking chair and hope he doesn't glide over your tail.

Tell that to China that does not allow Facebook, Instagram and Youtube in China. They have access to 400 million americans but we can't have access to 1 billion Chinese people? China was running a long time a go

Western platforms were losing to Chinese ones in PRC before they were blocked. When hammer came down to enforce onerous human moderation on ALL platforms in PRC, western platforms chose not to comply, because adding layer of human moderation at the time wasn't worth the cost/optics. This was a time when PRC domestic platforms had 10,000s of humans in the loop and western ones had essentially none. Why do you think Facebook and Google both had internal projects to re-enter PRC market after they scaled up human moderation in west? That's what fair competition is - facebook, google et al blocking what PRC gov wants blocked and handing over info on dissident according to who PRC says are dissidents. All expensive things PRC platforms has to do. AKA "fair" competitive enironment. Thinking western platforms should compete in PRC without following PRC laws is insipid. Fair would also be the TikTok/Oracle JV where Oracle responsible for US interests, like PRC has for Microsoft. Nevermind half the reason western platforms were blocked was because they were unmoderated platforms that helped organize extremist attacks that caused 2009 minority riots. It's one thing to block TikTok if TikTok allowed 9/11 and refused to do anything about it, it's another when they do what every other US platform does, but just better.

Ah, okay, so it's a competition, and the USA thinks it might not win because the Chinese gov might see the videos Yanks view on TikTok.

Tell China to let Facebook, Instagram, Youtube in China and then it will be a fair competition.

Your whataboutism leads the USA to the bottom, which, coincidentally, the USA is winning anyway.

We are trading partners for sure but the American model and Chinese model are fundamentally opposed. For the last 10-15 years, tensions have been getting hotter because Xi has been consolidating power and flexing his strength across the region and exporting censorship. You can look at Hong Kong as an example of this. It's clear China doesn't want to live under a Western hegemony and has been trying to get more power and the US sees this. Trump instituted tariffs and we've also banned Huawei 5G equipment and it's all in the interest of national security and China hasn't liked this. So things have been going back and forth. TikTok is just seen as a scary possibility in that they could influence American minds at a scale that is unprecedented. There's a law in the US that no foreign entity can own a large share of any US broadcasting company. This is just to prevent hostile takeovers and controlling media. This is pretty similar to that in that TikTok is a media company and the US wants to exert that same control. User data is a red herring and honestly the least of the concern if you think about the soft power they control with the TikTok algorithm. Even though we have a trading relationship, things have been heating up under the surface for decades.

So many yanks downvoting rather than answering the question.

For world leaders, you sure do fail at leading.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40146536

It's just bonkers.

If the USA was really a leader, then it would lead; it wouldn't need to throw its toys out of the pram when someone does something better than it can.

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