Hacker News Reader

Comment by dehrmann | Hacker News Reader

Somewhere I heard that there would have been much less drama around the TikTok ban if the US had framed it as tit-for-tat punishment for not allowing US social media platforms in China.

View on HN

Going for a tit-for-tat with China on censorship is so hypocritical for the US it undermines its entire global persona.

Nobody outside NATO buys the whole "Mr Justice F. Eagle" shtick anyway though. People inside the US have been raised on anti-China for hundreds of years (yellow journalism never died) and are ready to accept anything to stop the "bad guys" from winning.

Hundreds of years! A feat for a nation only 250 years old. Particularly considering the panic about Chinese immigration - the first real anti-China event in US history - dates to the latter half of the 1800s.

Also, the “yellow” in “yellow journalism” != the slur “yellow” as in “yellow peril.”

And finally, your conclusion - “[Americans] are ready to accept anything to stop the ‘bad guys’” - would still be a parochial ignorance, as well as ironically biased, even were it not so shakily premised.

Very few countries have any power to control external influence on a social media platform. They don't have much ability to create or distribute a local solution so they have to import one. So when you say those outside NATO don't buy the whole shtick, part of that is they don't have the luxury to do so. They almost have to import such things or just not have them.

People don't buy the shtick because they've been getting their resources stolen, their people bombed, and their governments couped over and over and over again, not because they don't have their own home-grown social media (pretty much everywhere does, it's just not as popular and doesn't make as much money). Pretty hard to believe in the pure heart and good intentions of Uncle Sam by looking at his behavior during the Cold War era or the unipolar moment (ie. within living memory).

I think it's actually harder to believe in bad intentions of people than good intentions. The former makes me miserable, the latter makes me grateful.

So yes, the US government has done a lot that has hurt other people, it has also done a lot that has helped other people. I think we choose whether we want to believe people care about us or don't. I choose to believe they do.

not really true, the china bad all-out propagandizing is actually pretty recent

What would be the offended principle that makes going tit-for-tat with China "hypocritical"?

I disagree with the hypocrisy argument. The US government tried to clamp down on Covid misinformation during a pandemic, with a declared emergency and there was pushback that was adjudicated by the Supreme Court [1].

The US does plenty of sketchy shit, but it has nothing on the surveillance state imposed by the CCP, nor is it empowered to suppress information in the same manner.

The CCP’s censorship is so heavy handed that others have tried to weaponize it, as discussed recently here:

Tokyo University Used "Tiananmen Square" Keyword to Block Chinese Admissions [2].

———

[1] - https://hms.harvard.edu/news/whats-stake-us-supreme-court-ca...

[2] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42355586

I did a FIOA request on myself and got back data. I’m no one.

The US also spread COVID antivax information.

Is there actually a ban on US social media platforms in China?

Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and others were operating in China, but when China imposed more and more censorship requirements on all social media platforms in China regardless of whether or not they were domestic or foreign and required all of them to turn over user details to the government many chose not to comply, and then China blocked them.

If a US social media platform were willing to implement China's censorship and disclosure requirements for its Chinese operations would they be able to go back? As far as I know we don't know because none of them have tried.

Note that TikTok as we know it is itself not available in China. The original app that became TikTok is in China, but when they wanted to expand to the rest of the world they split it into two companies and the apps diverged. Both companies are owned by ByteDance.

That's probably the approach a US social media company would need to take to try to get back into China.

China does not police foreign companies and domestic companies equally - it significantly puts its thumb on the scales to favor domestic competitors.

LinkedIn tried really hard to stay in, it simply is not sustainable.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com