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Comment by hypeatei | Hacker News Reader

Yes, I know the law doesn't name TikTok/ByteDance specifically to be banned outright, that is just the effect.

> let adversarial countries own and control communications infrastructure

This is an exaggeration that a social media platform for short form content is communications infrastructure, akin to a cell tower or fiber optic line. I'd the say the same for your mention of ITAR in a thread about, again, a social media platform.

If we were serious, there would be regulations for all social media, not just forcing of U.S. ownership then saying "all good, this can't be bad since Americans own it"

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At the same time, foreign companies are only allowed to operate in China through partnerships with Chinese companies. Why should we play fair if they don't?

By this logic, the US should start imprisoning people who aren't vocal enough about being anti-China, right? Why should the US play fair if China isn't?

China is a totalitarian dictatorship with complete surveillance over the domestic internet. Not really comparable.

And you think America is not ?

The difference is communists spying on Americans vs Americans spying on Americans.

yeah and we don't want them having a surveillance tool over a huge part of our domestic internet

That's not actually true. JV requirements are limited to a small (and constantly shrinking) number of economic sectors. Many, many large US companies own their own operations in China.

it is not an exaggeration at all. it's a different layer of infrastructure, but it's still infrastructure. the mention of ITAR is an analogy, which I know you understand.

if "we were serious" about what? the issue of foreign control is not relevant to domestic companies. we could have some other regulations too, sure, but this one is reasonable.

Serious, meaning we wouldn't play whack-a-mole and instead place rules on all of them then let the free market decide. I'll repeat, disclosures could be added for foreign controlled apps. I take issue with the fact that we're making a Chinese app the boogeyman but foreign influence campaigns can happen on any platform as seen in recent U.S. elections on Facebook et. al

I think people should be able to decide which social media apps they want to use. They're not even close to reaching the levels of the "infrastructure" box you're forcing them into to justify this decision.

i dont want to argue about the definition of infrastructure. concretely, tiktok crosses the threshold of influence and risk where it is reasonable to require them to divest or close. no brainer.

>it's a different layer of infrastructure, but it's still infrastructure.

TikTok isn't "infrastructure", TikTok is software. TikTok exploits the infrastructure of the internet across the world, it is not infrastructure itself. The servers TikTok runs on is technically "infrastrucutre", but those same servers could run anything else, the hardware is not "TikTok". I could run "TikTok" the software on any hardware, even if it isn't connected to the public internet, and that would not qualify it as "infrastructure", at least not in the sense that it's servicing any population.

Actually they are specifically named in the law lol, i wasnt expecting that but it very clearly up front states it.

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