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Comment by Spivak | Hacker News Reader

Yeah! We like our organized disinformation campaigns to be made in the USA instead.

It's frankly an embarrassing look for the US if we go through with this on these grounds because we're basically saying we can't weather targeted disinformation and propaganda while simultaneously deploying them in our own house.

You can't make people in the US believe anything. We had the full force of US government pulling every lever they had access to get people to get vaccinated and wear a mask and it still didn't work. Even when (arguably) they had the truth on their side. There's no way we're admitting China outclassed us.

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> We had the full force of US government pulling every lever they had access to get people to get vaccinated and wear a mask and it still didn't work.

Well, did they try a disinformation campaign on TikTok?

Disinformation is bad from any source, but it is much worse if it comes from a foreign adversary govt.

Also, the US acts against misinformation from with US too.

https://www.npr.org/2024/06/26/nx-s1-5003970/supreme-court-s...

Honestly, I never understood arguments like this. What next?

1. Why should only the US govt tax Americans, we should also let CCP tax Americans.

2. Why should only the US govt police Americans, we should also let CCP police Americans.

> You can't make people in the US believe anything. We had the full force of US government pulling every lever they had access to get people to get vaccinated and wear a mask and it still didn't work. Even when (arguably) they had the truth on their side. There's no way we're admitting China outclassed us.

You are conflating many things.

CCP doesn't have to sway the average American. It only has to sway fringe groups at critical moments/places. That is much more easy.

When you make strawmen like "Lets let the CCP tax Americans" I can't take you seriously.

To accept the strawman rebuttal I have to be able to figure out what differentiates your actual position from the strawman, which I can't. You implicitly claim that the Chinese government should be able to do to US citizens everything that the US government can do to US citizens. To which two counter-examples were provided.

1. Yeah, that's not my argument. My main argument is that there is a false equivalence drawn between US and CCP govts. That's not what a straw man.

2. Apparently, you take the original argument US and CCP are equivalent seriously. If so, I can't your argument seriously and it needs to mocked with equivalences like what I was going for. That was the argument I was responding to.

> Honestly, I never understood arguments like this. What next?

> 1. Why should only the US govt tax Americans, we should also let CCP tax Americans.

Well. Much to the frustration of authoritarians everywhere, we have the first amendment to the US Constitution. We also have a lot of precedent saying that Constitutional protections don't only extend to US citizens.

Tiktok, Ltd is a company operating in the US, with a solid, real US presence. Either the conduct of the company violates local, state, or federal law and the company should be prosecuted accordingly, or it doesn't and they should be left alone.

The actual argument being made is not "We should let the CCP police Americans." but rather "Multinational companies with a real US presence have the same free speech protections as any strictly-domestic US-based company. Why is TikTok, Ltd being treated differently?".

> Tiktok, Ltd is a company operating in the US, with a solid, real US presence. Either the conduct of the company violates local, state, or federal law and the company should be prosecuted accordingly, or it doesn't and they should be left alone.

This is not violating the first amendment rights of TikTok.

This is just asking Bytedance/CCP to divest from TikTok.

Last I heard, CCP is not subject to US laws (maybe CCP thinks otherwise?). Bytedance is a Chinese entity and US first amendment and equivalent don't apply to it.

Bytedance - CCP link

> In 2014, ByteDance established an internal Chinese Communist Party (CCP) committee.[51] The company's vice president, Zhang Fuping, serves as the company's CCP Committee Secretary.[52][53] According to a report submitted to the Australian Parliament, Zhang Fuping stated that ByteDance should "transmit the correct political direction, public opinion guidance and value orientation into every business and product line."[54][55]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ByteDance

If CCP wants American first amendment protections for itself, it should also be subject to all other US laws then.

> CCP is not subject to US laws

The Communist Party of China is, in fact, subject to those US laws with extraterritorial application (with the limitations and exceptions the US has chosen to include in those laws), or when it acts within US territory. For instance, see the litigation over Missouri’s claims against the the People’s Republic of China, Communist Party of China, National Health Commission of the People’s Republic of China, Ministry of Emergency Management of the People’s Republic of China, Ministry of Civil Affairs of the People’s Republic of China, People’s Government of the Hubei Province, People’s Government of Wuhan City, Wuhan Institute of Virology, and the Chinese Academy of Sciences under US law over COVID-19 related actions. [0][1]

> Bytedance is a Chinese entity and US first amendment and equivalent don’t apply to it.

The First Amendment is applicable based on the US government being the actor, not based on who is acted against.

[0] https://tlblog.org/missouris-covid-suit-against-china-revive...

[1] https://lettersblogatory.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/2224... [PDF]

In addition to what dragonwriter said about the Chinese government being subject to and having the protection of US laws under specific situations:

> This is not violating the first amendment rights of TikTok. This is just asking Bytedance/CCP to divest from TikTok.

As an aside; did you know that foreign companies can own or otherwise have a controlling interest in US defense contractors that do Top Secret / SCI work for the DoD and other US military customers? It's true!

Anyway. China is currently subject to a very limited trade embargo. It is otherwise a country that has "permanent normal trade relations" with the US.

Please cite previous Federal precedent that permits FedGov to force countries that we have PNTR with to relinquish their controlling interest in US companies that provide data transfer services [0], or provide publishing services, or operate a newspaper, television or radio station. Make sure to link to actual, official communications, rather than some blogger writing about how the world SHOULD be.

> If CCP wants American first amendment protections for itself, it should also be subject to all other US laws then.

You're conflating the Chinese government and TikTok.

[0] Huawei provides hardware for companies providing data transfer services; the distinction is important.

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