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Comment by troll_v_bridge | Hacker News Reader

As long as US social media is banned in China, they don’t have much legal ground, as it can be seen as a tit for tat trade embargo / national security

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I'm not finding a game theory exception to the first amendment.

A Chinese company, you just found one.

"Amendment I

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

Not seeing exceptions for a tit for tat trade embargo or a Chinese company here.

Huawei is an example. Foreign companies don’t have the same rights, in large part because of national security concerns. For example is the concern is that a China is trying to infringe on American rights, such as using algorithms, then it’s a moot argument to say TikTok is protected by us law.

> China is trying to infringe on American rights, such as using algorithms

There is no constitutionally protected right for American citizens to not be subjected to propaganda. In fact, it's quite the opposite, since propaganda has been specifically identified as a form of speech protected by the first amendment.

> Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

> Not seeing exceptions for a tit for tat trade embargo or a Chinese company here.

It's not that simple. I don't see any exceptions for laws against defamation, child porn either, or limits on foreign ownership of TV stations, yet they're there.

You may not mean this, but this comment really comes off as racist to me. It takes conscious effort to read it through any other lens. I’ll consider that this could be a me-problem.

> You may not mean this, but this comment really comes off as racist to me. It takes conscious effort to read it through any other lens. I’ll consider that this could be a me-problem.

I think that's a you problem. I read "Chinese" as "foreign adversary company," and not as anything to do with race.

I’m married to an ethnic Chinese, I was referring to the CCP, which most people colloquially call “Chinese”. But agree that people will confuse this colloquial term for the Chinese government the CCP for the ethnicity. Most Chinese people outside of china despise the CCP.

Applying constitutional rights to entities you don't have the monopoly on violence on strikes me as suicidal.

Am I misreading this or did you just say 'cause government can always apply violence to you if they don't like your speech'.

IIUC, and I may be wrong, but the Meta/Google/et.al. aren't under a trade embargo in China, they can't do business there because they were unwilling or unable to follow all of the laws required to do business there.

Heck, Google's still trying to arrange the appropriate censorship and filters so they can do business in China.

Can’t reply to your other comment, too nested.

> There is no constitutionally protected right for American citizens to not be subjected to propaganda. In fact, it's quite the opposite, since propaganda has been specifically identified as a form of speech protected by the first amendment.

I would say almost anything can be classified as a national threat, and to consider an algorithms or technology that are limiting free speech or us liberties as propaganda would be a gross misclassification. The cia most likely killed a president under the name of national security, I don’t think a Chinese company has more rights than a us president.

Technically that's exactly the same thing happening here, and under very similar requirements.

Apple played ball, and iCloud in China was handed over to a Chinese state corporation to run.

Believe Facebook was banned for a specific national reason in 2009. Hard to do business with a country that doesn’t have something similar to the bill of rights. All Chinese companies are the same as government, meaning their companies don’t have to respect human rights either.

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