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Comment by jmclnx | Hacker News Reader

My take is reciprocally. Since China bans many US Owned Social Media Companies, the US should do the same. Once the US Companies get the same access in China the US allows TikTok to have, TikTok should be banned.

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This is not a meaningful argument. China does not have any freedom of speech encoded in its foundational documents. The US does. This is like saying that we're going to get rid of trial by jury until China adds it in.

Amusingly enough from the Constitution of the People's Republic of China:

Article 35: Citizens of the People’s Republic of China shall enjoy freedom of speech, the press, assembly, association, procession and demonstration.

That's remarkable! So much of the PRC Constitution [1] seems very consistent with what liberal democracies expect in terms of rights. I guess there's a whole area of discussion as to whether the way that rights are expressed are a function of law vs. a function of culture.

That said, many of the articles contain exceptions for "order" and "public security". Two examples I found striking because they sound good until you get to the end where it basically says "you have this right, unless, you know, we don't want you to have it":

> Article 40: The freedom and privacy of correspondence of citizens of the People's Republic of China are protected by law. No organization or individual may, on any ground, infringe upon the freedom and privacy of citizens' correspondence except in cases where, to meet the needs of state security or of investigation into criminal offenses, public security or procuratorial organs are permitted to censor correspondence in accordance with procedures prescribed by law.

> Article 51: The exercise by citizens of the People's Republic of China of their freedoms and rights may not infringe upon the interests of the state, of society and of the collective, or upon the lawful freedoms and rights of other citizens.

[1] https://www.constituteproject.org/constitution/China_2018

Freedom of Speech has no protections when it comes to private business.

maybe the US shouldn’t be so cozy with countries that don’t share its foundational beliefs?

I'm surprised that reciprocity wasn't the main argument used to justify the ban because it's way more defensible than the "foreign influence" argument.

Bear in mind, that all these constitutionality arguments are, ultimately, just completely made up, judges like to maintain this veneer of credibility. SCOTUS in particular is a political institution so you will find judges routinely tying themselves into pretzels to rationalize some political position.

Here's an example that relates to commerce vs free speech: 35+ states have what are called anti-BDS laws. To be a teacher in Texas, for example, you have to sign a contract saying you will never criticize the state of Israel [1].

"How can such a thing be unconstitutional?" I hear you ask. It should not be. This is clear restraint on speech by government authority. Why isn't it? Because the courts invented the logic that this is commerce not speech and you can't prove that commerce is speech so it can be regulated in a way speech cannot.

But reciprocity is a completely defensible position, legally and politically. China doesn't allow a bunch of US tech companies to compete in China and, when they do, the deck is stacked against them such that the Chinese local equivalent always wins.

I get why China does this and take no position on it but the US would be entirely justified in doing exactly the same thing.

[1]: https://www.npr.org/2018/12/26/680129742/texas-school-employ...

US companies does have comparable access - just follow PRC laws. What proponents of reciprocity argument wants is US to have ADVANTAGED access - they want US social media to not follow PRC censorship laws that PRC companies follow at great expense. It's like wanting to sell cars in PRC without airbags. Both facebook and Google had internal programs for PRC compliance, but was axed due to internal dissent. It's not lack of PRC reciprocity but US culture wars incompetency.

On the flip side, TikTok is operating in US while following US laws that US companies do not i.e. essentially a JV with Oracle handling data and extreme level of national security oversight. That JV arrangement IS reciprocity relative to US platforms operating in PRC. Issue is TikTok still doing well while submitting any reasonable oversight short of divestment - hubris tier non-starter.

TikTok currently operating in US is tantamount to if Google still operated in PRC... because PRC gov didn't have to hack them for info, because Google cooperated with PRC law enforcement and conducted lawful interception duties, and handed over dissident info (for whoever PRC determine are dissidents). That's actual reciprocity - wholely succumbing to national security considerations.

Except PRC didn't require US to divest their companies, they're simply confident they had a onerous enough filtering regime that applies to all platforms (especially domestic) to fit their national security needs. On paper US could do the same for privacy legislation. But IMO this isn't about US privacy, this is about killing TikTok globally (not just in US), because US national security interests is not about "protecting" just Americans from TikTok, but removing TikTok as global platform with global influence outside of US reach.

I support the ban but reciprocity doesn't sound like a strong reason for me.

The fact that CCP can influence the curation algorithm is the strongest reason. This is equivalent to China having control of a national TV in US.

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