Comment by wrsh07 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by wrsh07 | Hacker News Reader

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The easiest real example I'm aware of is that there was a scandal around the Houston rockets and China (years ago) and you could not find their content or content related to them on TikTok. (You could for every other NBA team)

In this example: who cares? But the problem is how implicit everything is.

Imagine that a major US ally (like Israel) were attacked by a globally recognized terrorist organization. Imagine if, for some reason, a high percentage of people on TikTok ended up being opposed to the US government's support of their ally. Imagine if there were protests across college campuses. And counter protests.

Would we know whether TikTok was behind the scenes, sowing discord? This is the kind of thing - weakening our alliances - that china would love to do. If china can reduce our willingness to defend our allies (think the Philippines in the south china sea, or Taiwan which.... there's explicitly a project 2027 in China to be ready to invade Taiwan)

Do we want the Chinese government to have the ability to do this?

Citation for the real example: https://stratechery.com/2019/the-china-cultural-clash/

Ben Thompson's 2020 piece about banning TikTok: https://stratechery.com/2020/the-tiktok-war/

Note it's not a plan to invade, just a plan to be ready: https://www.defensenews.com/pentagon/2024/05/07/how-dc-becam...

The American voter shouldn't be treated like a mere link in a strategic chain of cause and effect. They're the legitimate authority in the US.

Sorry I'm confused by your comment. The American voter voted for Congress. A bipartisan majority passed this bill easily. The executive branch signed it. The judiciary branch confirmed it.

Where is the American voter being sidelined?

Congress has a "strained" relationship with the voter. On one hand, the voter put them in that position. On the other hand, the voter is a greater danger to the individual in Congress than any foreign adversary. As a result, politicians try to control the voter, the way an employee would try to manage their manager.

This is done in a number of ways. For example, because the media has a great influence on the voter, politicians seek to influence the media. Journalists who publish unfavorable information are denied valuable interviews, incentivizing them to stay close to the administration. Lobbyists with connections to major advertisers, which have a great influence on the media, are attended to with high priority.

Another method is to close off the voter's access to information that originates outside a politician's sphere of influence. This can be done by encouraging nationalist jingoism and a distrust of outside influence, by outright bans on foreign press, or in this case, by either banning or causing a transfer of ownership of a social media platform that had proven unhelpful to a past administration's intent for the media landscape. For TikTok, this was hosting middle east peace activism.

The American voter is sidelined the second their elected official is sworn in, and immediately reneges on everything they said they stood for in favor of their moneyed interests. 90% of politicians have no intent whatsoever of fixing problems, after all those problems are what got them elected.

It's obviously fine to be this cynical, but I think the particular shape your cynicism takes is incorrect^ and I also tend to think people who are overly cynical willingly reduce their ability to affect change

^ the description of campaign promises feels very 90s to me. We tend to have a lot of information about how our elected officials act. I think most of them believe more of what they're saying or advocating for (although the reasons why they believe those things are fairly widely varied)

Some people think Elizabeth Warren is pure evil incarnate, and I think she considers herself as a policy wonk who loves nuance and is trying to protect citizens from ruthless capitalist entities.

The same is more or less true on the other side (I'm not sure who the analog is exactly, but a republican Elizabeth Warren would imagine she is protecting companies and citizens from government overreach)

> Do we want the Chinese government to have the ability to do this?

yes. If too many people started reading aljazeera should we ban that too? Do we want the US government to have the ability to do this?

Those are very different things!

I agree they're different, but IMO they're on the same spectrum - "a difference in degree, not in kind". Where would you draw the line?

Bad - quietly manipulating social media recommendations for millions of Americans ... - a chinese company launches a Netflix competitor in the US. They don't create content but they can choose which shows and movies are "recommended" - a Chinese TV show series becomes popular in the US. They know it's popular in the US and not China. It slowly and subtly starts injecting plot points that are pro-China ... OK - foreign news sources

This specific law draws the line at social media. That seems reasonable!

As a rough heuristic, compare advertising on social media vs on traditional tv. Note: we've actually (intentionally) reduced the effectiveness of online advertising (you can no longer target as narrowly)

Imagine being able to make sure that a very specific person receives a very specific type of propaganda. These are power tools. It is not in the United States' interest to allow foreign adversaries (countries that specifically view the relationship as adversarial) to wield them

You can be cynical. You should say the power tools shouldn't exist. But given that they do exist and given that we have a very limited amount of agreement in the US, is it better to ban TikTok? Or not? We do not get to say "don't do it because there are better approaches." This is the approach we have. It's the first time in four years the political will had almost enabled something that was genuinely better for America.

It seems that [the executive branches of] both parties are happy throwing that away though

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