Edit: text of the bill: https://www.congress.gov/118/bills/hr7521/BILLS-118hr7521rfs..., which references a different part of the statute for the list of countries here: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/10/4872
Please explain in layman's terms why do you believe the 14th amendment applies to the federal government rejecting a corporation owned and controlled by a totalitarian regime from operating within the US.
I believe this applies to the USA as a whole as well, not just to states (Bolling v. Sharpe (1954) according to ChatGPT). One could argue the law is unconstitutional because it applies a punishment without due process.
ByteDance Ltd. is a Chinese internet technology company headquartered in Haidian, Beijing.
> First, TikTok incorporated as a U.S. company speaking in the United States.
https://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_transcr...
The company being targeted is ByteDance, not TikTok. The US government wants ByteDance to sell it's controlling position on TikTok to someone else, or else TikTok can no longer operate in the US. ByteDance is a Chinese company that is a de-facto shell corporation of China's CCP. For the 14th amendment to apply, you would need to argue that either a Chinese corporation or China's CCP would be US citizens.
The 14th amendment applies to US citizens and persons. The law requires ByteDance to sell it's TikTok position. Who do you think is the US citizen or person in this case? China's CCP?
The court of appeals thought about it and decided it wasn't. Start on page 59 of their ruling [0].
They tried to appeal this to the supreme court, the supreme court declined to hear that part of the case. See bottom of page 34 on their petition for a writ of certiorari [1].
[0] https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cadc.40...
[1] http://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/24/24A587/335257/20241...
Reading the appeals court case, it appears that they did agree with it being a bill of attainder but decided the national security implications overruled it?
Not how I would phrase it.
A bill of attainder is two things, it targets a specific person, and it punishes them.
They decide the bill definitely targets TikTok, which is possibly close enough to a "specific person", but it doesn't punish them. Thus it doesn't satisfy the second prong and they don't have to even finish deciding the first prong and left the "possibly" in there.
National security really comes in when trying to decide it was a punishment. It's not a traditional punishment, but one of the other ways they could decide it was a punishment would be if it didn't further any purposes but punishment, and in this case the purpose it happens to further was national security. As far as I can tell this analysis would be the exact same if congress passed the bill instead because they decided TikTok was harming schools ability to keep order. It just has to be any non-punitive purpose.
There's no dispute that this bill exists specifically to target TikTok, and that it will likely result in at least a temporary shut down, permanent if they choose not to divest.
Apparently there are a bunch of prior rulings on the meaning of "bill of attainder" though which say that that isn't within the typical meaning of punishment as used to define it. To quote just a bit of the courts recitation of previous cases
> See BellSouth I, 144 F.3d at 65 (explaining that although “structural separation is hardly costless, neither does it remotely approach the disabilities that have traditionally marked forbidden attainders”); see also Kaspersky Lab, Inc., 909 F.3d at 462–63 (comparing a law requiring the Government to remove from its systems a Russia-based company’s software to the business regulations in the BellSouth cases)
I'm not really knowledgeable about bills of attainder, but I think it might be useful to understand the distinction they're making to be one between "punishing" (the bill is, it hurts) and "punishment" (it's not because that's not the purpose, it's a side effect). There also appears to be a higher standard to qualify as punishing a corporate entity than an individual, which strikes me as a bit strange, but if I'm reading this right is settled law.
Perhaps because US government wanted to do it despite TikTok not breaking any serious provisions of law this law has been made.
It feels like a sleight of hand from government to ban something that has broke no (serious) law (yet).
Did the SCOTUS go into the necessity of having this law to achieve what government wanted, if existing laws would have sufficed, provided that government met the standards of evidence/proof that those laws demanded.
If not, it is as if government wanted a 'short-cut' to a TikTok ban and SCOTUS approved it, rather than asking government to go the long way to it.
What this line argued in the Supreme Court in the oral arguments or in the opinion or in the lower court?
Obviously TT could not have brought this up, but the court could have brought it up while examining the government.
Only the appeals court (and presumably the district court below them) heard arguments about it being a bill of attainder. The supreme court chose not to. With regards to being a bill of attainder the appeals court appears to be of the opinion that it is enough that it isn't a traditional punishment, and that the justification for it was something other than punishment, without analyzing whether the government had a legitimate interest in achieving their non-punishment purpose. Of course they had already found that they did have a legitimate interest because of the first amendment analysis, but I don't believe their opinion with regards to it not being a bill of attainder relied on that.
Was it established that existing provisions of law is not sufficient to deal with the issue(perhaps not so easily as by fiat as in the new law, but requiring stricter standards of trial and evidence), necessitating this new law?
For one, it targets a class of companies operating from a collection of countries, not an individual person (and SCOTUS has never ruled on corporate personhood for the purposes of being a bill of attainder).
Secondly, the law in question does not declare a corporation guilty of any crime, it just offers restrictions on foreign control of certain businesses.
Third, the law targets non-American holdings, making it less likely that it could be considered a bill of attainder, since laws directly targeting foreign countries and agents thereof have been accepted in American law.
If there is one steel monopoly and you ban being a monopoly then we can apply the same logic you have there.
To be completely fair, the “illegal part” of being a monopoly is not generally in the existence of the monopoly itself, but in the monopolistic actions the company may take. However, those actions may be a fundamental part of the function of the company, and I’d argue that country of ownership is another property that should be eligible for restriction.
Second, and _far_ more importantly, it is not clear to me that it’s unconstitutional to make a law that a foreign company can’t operate a certain type of business in America.
Restrictions are fine, but they need to apply broadly -- this law was specifically targeted at a single US entity, owned by a foreign entity. To me, who has only coarsely read up on this due to his account being cut off because I originally signed up with a US phone number when I lived in the US; it seems as though a bunch of rich people got mad that someone else in another country was getting rich.
Keep in mind that I am just now even caring about this situation, so I'm coming in with fresh eyes and limited history. In any case...
> it is not clear to me that it’s unconstitutional to make a law that a foreign company can’t operate a certain type of business in America.
Of course they can. My only issue is that they are targeting a specific entity and punishing them for being owned by someone in another country, which seems unconstitutional. If they targeted all companies, big or small, it would be different. I may not like it, but it wouldn't be questionable.
No. That is even more manipulative way to put it. No one was "loosing fundamental rights", that part is a lie. What ruling did was to make corruption legal, if you create a corporation by virtue of corporate personhood.
The actual case of Citizens United had exceptionally bad facts for the camp that thinks it's a bad ruling. The DNC should never have pushed it as far as they did, because it came right back at them like a ton of bricks.
In contrast, bringing it back to this case, communication over the internet involves many different business agreements to get internet service, rent computing, etc. Those relationships are within the US's power to regulate and legislate, especially when they cross its borders.
The EU banned Russia Today (correctly in my opinion) and that was nothing compared to TikTok. Propaganda isn't free speech.
The problem is that right now the power is yielded by the CCP, which is clearly unacceptable. The problem is not TikTok per se but how a totalitarian regime that has a long track record of actively engaging in espionage and psyops against the US is controlling that platform. Forcing the CCP to sell it's position mitigates or eliminates the impact on the remaining shareholder's interests. The fact that the CCP opts for scorched earth tactics is already telling.
A company in Hungary starts manufacturing cars. They become wildly popular in the US. Everyone and their aunt is driving one. Then the US demands a sale for national security reasons. Does that sound reasonable? Instead, you address whatever the security gap is (data privacy, scanning for backdoors, data residency, etc) and enforce compliance.
In the case of social media, that would be mandatory tagging of paid content, advertisements, political ads (or prohibition of), along with measures to slow down/limit the dissemination of information so no single person can sway public opinion with the wave of a hand (cough cough X). In many countries, influencers are now subject to advertising rules, as it should be. At some point we'll need to get a grasp on how to do the same for news/opinion pieces.
Just dropping the whole thing into 'more reliable hands' without changing any of the rules of the game accomplishes very little.
If ycombinator wants to show HN to somebody in Germany then they would have to spin off a company owned by Germans to be able to show HN there? Same for France and the other 170-200 countries in the world.
This is obviously an unreasonable way for the internet to work.
I'm pretty sure HN is accessible in Germany.
Are you trying to say there's some utilitarian principle where countries should allow companies from other countries to operate unrestricted?
I'm a fan of free trade! That's a good thing! But tolerance is not a moral precept. We don't have to allow companies that report to hostile foreign governments to operate!
Even among friendly nations, the European governments are fairly opinionated about how US tech companies are allowed to operate in Europe.
If everyone under the age of 30 was using an app run by Nazi Germany would you be okay with that?
Propaganda is a weapon and no principle says that you should let an enemy army into your country.
isn't that the codename for X these days?
I thought I was joking (admittedly a really good joke) but I was actually looking into the future.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jan/21/the-gestu...
First answer: I would ask myself why people are using a nazi-made app, first.
OTOH: the history of nazism in the US is more complicated than you think
A glimpse of it is summarized in the wikipedia page about it
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazism_in_the_Americas
After all the US arrived first to the Moon thanks to "operation paperclip" and a a former nazi scientist.
I would say I would totally be fine if the nazis made an app for kids to publish their goofy dancing videos instead of this [1], yes, absolutely yes.
You mean like all the US social networks banning or severely restricting the content on the slaughter being perpetrated in Palestina, mostly against innocent people and kids, while tik tok allowed it?
The answer is still yes, instead of the holocaust I will gladly take an app with just a bit of antisemitism, that, BTW, is not lacking on the platforms we all use and originated in the USA
https://www.forbes.com/sites/petersuciu/2023/07/14/antisemit...
Now, that's not what's happening on tik tok, that's what's happening in your mind, as a thought experiment I would accept nazitok and tell my kids to not use it, instead of the holocaust and having no power to stop it in any meaningful way.
Wouldn't you?
Would you really reproduce the holocaust, just so you don't have to educate your children and explain them the right from the wrong?
that clears things up.
Since we are speculating, a modern day Germany has not perpetrated the holocaust, or it would not be allowed to exist in the European Union.
> Nazi Germany that's just as awful as the real one, and whether you would allow their funny dancing app. There's no either-or.
But what tik tok has to do with that?
If nazi Germany was still alive and kicking, it means we would all use their apps, because we would all speak German.
It would be what the USA are today.
We in fact use American apps or buy American devices even though they allow very bad content or are produced where labor protection laws are inexistent and worker are treated like slaves.
But hey, you want an answer? of course I wouldn't be onboard with whoever is committing a genocide, just like I'm not on board with Israel and I boycott them and their products, as I am not onboard with the US foreign policy of the past 80 years (CIA was responsible for more than 90s changes of regime) and if it was for me US social networks would be banished in my Country.
I don't see many differences between the modern US and the nazi germany, besides the holocaust (which is not a small feat, I know, but hey, dangerous ideas are dangerous too)
Are you perhaps not aware of this issue? https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/20/world/asia/china-genocide...
Or do you not consider it genocide?
Didn't your mum tell you that?
Secondly
> Are you perhaps not aware of this issue?
"Mike Pompeo is saying that" it's not proof.
I am talking about facts, for example
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/war-crimes-court-issues-wa...
> Or do you not consider it genocide?
It doesn't matter what I think, I am a no one, a genocide is not when USA say their adversaries are committing it but stay silent when their allies are condemned by internationally recognized courts (here, in the West).
BTW if you consider the Uyghurs issue a genocide, I got news for you: you should consider 80% of the countries of the World genocidal.
If you wanna play that game, no one should trade with the USA or use any of their apps and, god forbid, have access to their cultural (propagandist) material.
Take for example what's been happening at the Mexican border for decades
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-59019791
The US says more than 1.7 million migrants were detained along its border with Mexico in the past 12 months - the highest number ever recorded
By contrast "only" 1 million Uyghurs have been detained to date (according to our sources, that are not official sources, we don't even have real evidence, just wild guesses).
You don't know how much you don't know my friend, when I read something like this I always think: tell me you are american (or plainly ignorant, they are synonyms) without telling me.
> of course I wouldn't be onboard with whoever is committing a genocide
And asked if you were familiar with these particular atrocities. These particular atrocities are fairly different from the American/Mexican border in enough ways that your conflation is fairly bizarre (is there forced sterilization at the US Mexico border? What about forced labor? Or do you consider those to be unfounded claims that I would only believe because I'm an American?)
Tbh mostly the US and their allies seem to prefer not talking about the Uyghurs. And, I mean, what is the US supposed to do about it, anyway? (Contrast this with Israel/Palestine where the US continues to arm Israel with relatively few conditions on the usage of those weapons)
I am curious how you think the US should handle its southern border? My understanding is most European nations similarly struggle with large influxes of refugees. This is a global crisis, and you have actual data about it because the US doesn't kill journalists who research it.
I'm not saying "America shouldn't trade with China because of what's going on within their borders." (We are a huge trade partner with China. We were a huge trade partner with Russia before they invaded Ukraine)
I do think it's reasonable for America to ban TikTok.
I'm sorry, I thought we were having a conversation.
> is there forced sterilization at the US Mexico border?
check (it's still happening, we are simply not talking about it)
https://theconversation.com/forced-sterilization-policies-in...
> What about forced labor?
check
https://www.forbes.com/sites/willskipworth/2023/07/24/forced...
Now let's talk about segregation and eugenics politics that inspired the Hitler third reich and went on until the 1970s and are having a come back now with the resurgence of neo confederated ideologies and literally the KKK .
https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/the-kkk-today/
Guess where it all happens?
a place with the largest incarcerated population of the world where the police is as brutal as in some developing country where the mob and drug cartels rule and where people shoot at each other at the same rate of countries at war.
For comparison in USA there are every year 20 thousands intentional homicides, while in China they are 7 thousand, but China has almost 4 times the population of the USA.
Would you use an app coming from such a place?
> And asked if you were familiar with these particular atrocities
It's not a genocide.
> I do think it's reasonable for America to ban TikTok.
I do also think it's reasonable for China to ban US social networks and Europe should do the same thing.
The World should do the same thing.
Nazism is an 100% western creation, had many supporters in the west and in the USA, and Hitler himself was inspired by the segregation laws in the United States for his reich.
You said all, I never said all, I just said instead of the holocaust I prefer tik tok.
You are the one that prefers the holocaust to tik tok and has to live with it.
> where do you draw the line?
I'll gladly answer: I draw the line where illegal or seriously dangerous stuff is happening.
For example I would have banned any social network that promoted the so called "challenges".
But the tik tok case has nothing to do with that, it has to do with the fact that if the US cannot control the narrative, they do not want Americans to use it.
Which is the exact same thing the nazi did, back then.
They did not trust their people to make the right choices.
Just like how all normal people love free speech until it comes to CP and death threats (which of course should be banned).
Who decides what is propaganda and what is not? EU commissariat? And propaganda coming from EU is fine I guess?
Like most things in the EU it’s overly complicated, but I think sanctions are decided unanimously by the Council, which in this case would be assembled national ministers of foreign policy or security.
If free speech has exceptions it's not free speech. The government will keep adding exceptions.
Free speech should only stop on those trying to attack free speech. If anything, it applies in reverse here.
This. As a nice clear-cut example see the propaganda being pushed on how Haitians were somehow eating everyone's pets. Even if someone somehow ignores the extremist call for violence, the fact that this propaganda campaign was targeting perfectly legal and legitimate immigrants should be very telling.
By the way, where was this meme pushed? TikTok? X? I don't think it has much to do with who controls a particular social network.
When did the US citizens become so subservient to their government? I thought distrusting the government was American tradition?
I understand all these principled stances and I do support them ethically, but sometimes you have no choice but to choose the lesser evil.
Technically speaking, they did in 1789. As to the practicality of it, the US government expanded massively from 1900-1950, so maybe during that time period. The FCC was formed in 1972, so on the issue of permissible purveyors of brain rot, maybe then.
Or at least you're supposed to
The black box algorithms that are at the heart of TikTok and Instagram are very powerful and have the potential to be very dangerous mind control weapons, quite literally. It should all be blown up, but keeping that weapon from China is good.
Unfortunately, our Supreme Court unanimously disagrees with me about what our Constitution requires.
ByteDance is a Chinese company with it's headquarters in China. The so-called TikTok ban is a call for ByteDance to sell off it's controlling position over TikTok, otherwise TikTok can no longer operate in the US.
The fact that China is spinning this issue as a TikTok ban is telling.
Our government gets to decide the terms under which businesses operate in this country. Always has and always will. This is not a constitutional question.
This data treasure trove may be stored in US, but it isn't protected from Chinese govt access. It is the same for data by American companies, which US Patriot act lets the US govt access.
I don’t see where that’s in the constitution.
We take the global world for granted, but it is made up of sovereign states many of them have their own constitution.
If it was just about content then yes, it'd be unconstitutional.
But security/trade concerns about a geopolitical opponent are not the same thing, have never been the same thing, and it would be crazy to treat them as the same thing.
Not to mention that as a trade issue, China already bans basically all the popular American social media sites, and just a ton of popular US sites in general. Turnabout is entirely fair play and expected when it comes to trade.
The US sees China as an existential threat and TikTok is one of its key weapons. Tiktok is getting banned for the same reason Cuba can't have nukes. It's a national security concern.
I don't endorse it. But I understand it.
America blundered in the 80s by allowing technology transfer to then and still hostile foreign power. It has woken up to its stupidity 45 years too late. But better late than never.
It's not fair.....but love and war Yada yada.
Also, censorship has been allowed by courts time and time again if it's narrow focused to satisfy compelling government interest and not overly broad.
If platforms can do censorship, so can the government.
https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2019/05/16/1...
We don't allow own telephone system to be foreign owned, and those laws have been around for 90 years, and nobody is crying about free speech over that.
I dunno. I wouldn't say the EU has done an amazing job of actually twisting companies arms enough to get them to a) provide the actual fucking product, not some bastardized version that's intentionally bastardized to make people voluntarily keep using the evil version, AND b) not be evil. At the same time.
Look at apple with the payment shit. They managed to do neither a NOR b! The data privacy stuff usually has companies just opting out of serving the EU.
So, there's clearly a very hard problem here, of how do you make these entities whose sole goal is to maximize profit, who have managed to figure out a way that makes tons of profit while having the only "pollution" be the damage we do to our culture/dopamine receptors. Which is a lot harder to get people mad about compared to oil in the ocean and smog in the air.
In the meantime, I don't mind us just trying to keep things at least vaguely geopolitically aligned. Look at what russia is doing to US politics with very basic tactics (reddit comments etc). Now imagine China trying to do something actually subtle.
To underline the difference I'm referring to, just look at tiktok vs rednote. Western users immediately getting banned from rednote for posting the "wrong" kind of LGBT stuff. There are some fundamentally different cultural expectations about freedom of speech. Can you imagine how censored talking about vietnam would be if the US took the same approach as China did w.r.t. Tienanmen Square?
It takes a lot of time to open political eyes, break through lobby barriers, and get sufficient awareness on the deep issues. Then it takes an age - in business terms - for governmental action and regulation to follow. But if that is ramping up inertia builds and prolonged policy follows, hopefully as unstoppable tide. Other than some decent government regulation and old-fashioned unfair competition protection there's talk talk talk and not much that restrains Big Tech and the maddened billionaire class.
Really this is about not allowing China to do things and then not retaliating in kind. This is what China does to American companies and so no American company can really survive long term in China. It creates an imbalance and will eventually lead to China’s complete domination in most key industries. America is finally catching on.
Having a direct adversary control what young people consume for hours a day with a black-box algorithm is very dangerous.
Also note that TikTok has been banned in Hong Kong for years now.
I also think it's dangerous for domestic companies to do this, but obviously the US gov't is going to prioritize China because politicians can take bribes (in the form of lobbying) domestically.
This is a reductive and misleading analysis. The US has already prohibited foreign entities from holding broadcast/common carrier licenses, or from owning significant chunks of equity in holders of those licenses [1]. It should be kind of obvious why a country would not want their biggest media providers to be foreign-owned.
You could argue that if the US wants to update the 1934 telecommunications act for the 21st century, it should do so more thoughtfully and comprehensively (I would agree). But the TikTok ban, however poorly written or haphazardly targeted, is fairly in line with a legal doctrine that has been commonly known and accepted for 90 years.
[1]: https://www.fcc.gov/general/foreign-ownership-rules-and-poli...
And yet many countries have no objection with letting their citizens use US FAANG services?
In your view:
a) what is a megacorp (criteria), and
b) why do you think they should be destroyed?
For reference, the largest 15 companies in the world, by:
- Market cap are: Apple, NVIDIA, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, Saudi Aramco, Meta, Tesla, Broadcom, TSMC, Berkshire Hathaway, Walmart, JPMorgan, Eli Lilly, Visa
- by # of employees: Walmart, Amazon, Foxconn, Accenture, VW, Tata, DHL, BYD, Compass, Jingdong, UPS, Gazprom, Home Depot, JD Logistics, Agricultural Bank of China.
- by earnings: Saudi Aramco, Berkshire Hathaway, Apple, Alphabet, Microsoft, NVIDIA, JP Morgan Chase, Meta, Amazon, ICBC, China Construction Bank, China Pacific Insurance, Exxon Mobil, Agricultural Bank of China, Toyota
E.g. back to Meta, etc: they scraped everything, everywhere for a long time, and it was a big factor that lead to their rise. Now they seek to control all the data in their fiefdom, and use the power of the legal system to enforce EULAs to prevent others from doing the same.
Why? Because economic entities with market power underproduce, overcharge, and fail to innovate and meet their customers' needs. They cause deadweight losses through their inefficiencies. And an excess of concentrated power is just plain scary, whether an individual, a corporation, or a government wields it.
Of course, reducing some of the edge of market power at scale will result in a smaller maximum company size.
B)
- Small business should be the driving force in the economy. They are the wellspring of competition and the bastion of the middle class.
- Megacorporations seek to destroy the ability for small businesses to compete with them, leaving buyout or vassalage as their only possible endgame. This shuts down true competitive threats to the megacorporations' dominance. They are trying to pull up the ladder behind them.
- A company should not be so large it can afford to ignore its customers.
- A company should not be so large that it can treat regulatory fines as merely a cost of doing business.
- A company should not be so large that it gets to write the laws and regulations.
- The Monopoly standard is not strict enough. Cartel-like oligopolies cooperate on the important political issues while maintaining a facade of competition.
- Our political systems are not equipped to handle the centralization of such large amounts of wealth. While the economy may not be a zero-sum game, power is, and power follows money.
- ADDED: A company must not be too big to fail.
- ANOTHER: A company should not be so large it can use loss-leaders to bully its way into other markets.
Europe may be an exception, but that is what you get when the US is your suzerain.
Hopefully the next 4 years help change that.
This was a bill only against China, North Korea, Russia, and Iran. None of whom allow particularly free access to the internet.
For example the Facebook article on "Censorship of Facebook" lists all of those countries as well as Myanmar, Turkmenistan, and Uganda as the only countries that "continually ban access" to facebook.
It’s not always a slippery slope. And China's use of soft power via strict governmental control of its corporations isn’t an imaginary boogeyman.
> (d) The Secretary of Commerce shall evaluate on a continuing basis trans- actions involving connected software applications that may pose an undue risk of sabotage or subversion of the design, integrity, manufacturing, produc- tion, distribution, installation, operation, or maintenance of information and communications technology or services in the United States; pose an undue risk of catastrophic effects on the security or resiliency of the critical infra- structure or digital economy of the United States; or otherwise pose an unacceptable risk to the national security of the United States or the security and safety of United States persons. Based on the evaluation, the Secretary of Commerce shall take appropriate action in accordance with Executive Order 13873 and its implementing regulations.
You're talking out of ignorance. The European Commission has been putting together initiatives to allow European cloud providers to emerge as credible alternatives to the FANGs in terms of providing infrastructure.
https://european-alternatives.eu/category/cloud-computing-pl...
But you don't need a license to put something on the internet. And Americans don't want everything on the Internet to be regulated and censored the way TV and radio are.
It IS wrong for them to determine what we can and can't be influenced by. By saying bad countries "influencing" us is bad for democracy, they are saying democracy isn't really up to us, the voters, it's up to them. And I'll never accept that.
The end result of your line of thought isn't the return of TikTok, it's the creation of an internet hosting licensing scheme in the US.
Whether you _should_ need a license to distribute a media app in the US under certain conditions, and whether “Americans” (which ones?) really do want no limits on who controls their media, is the correct debate to be having. The person I was responding to believed the issue to be “US demands local ownership of TikTok just because it's successful and valuable” which is clearly wrong.
Digital borders should only be open and allow free traffic between allies.
edit: since it won't let me reply to posters under here. What I mean is in stopping foreign propaganda and interference. Elon Musk can't spend hundreds of millions to influence e.g. the Chinese people in ways that benefit the US.
I don't think many people separate out the "incoming" and "outgoing" aspects of firewalls, and conflate firewalls with censorship. Most of the countries that employ firewalls do both, censor as well as protect. But it's not a requirement that you must censor your own people in order to stop foreign agents interfering in your society.
This is quite literally what banning TikTok is about. Suddenly the US has decided that they don't like it when other countries do to them what the US routinely does to others.
US owns most of the social networks, video streaming platforms and most of the classic media (tv,...).
The diffrence is, that countries like US (and many EU countries) point a finger at china/russia and accuse them of censorship, claim themselves to be free, and then do the same censorship that russia/china do.
Oh, how far we have fallen.
> Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather.
By extension focussing on the negative impact on an individual is very small, but the overall impact on society and culture is massive (which in turn impacts individuals).
Taking that a step further I think you can argue there is some tragedy of the commons occurring which indicates govt. regulation should exist. Govt regulating media is tough, but as the US showing here, a rule getting rid of foreign actors might be a good idea for many countries.
Maybe its time to go back to a simpler MySpace or FriendsReunited style setup for actual social media. The problem is theres not much money in that, nor are people likely to visit as regularly.
0. The neo-Nazis in question are the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD). The AfD has many high-ranking members with neo-Nazi pasts, such as the leader of the party in the state of Thüringen, Björn Höcke, who used to write for a neo-Nazi publication under a pseudonym, "Landolf Ladig" (remind you of any other name?). This guy now runs the AfD in the state of Thüringen, the state where the AfD performs the best, electorally (33%, making them the largest party in the state). There are many other high-ranking AfD members with similar neo-Nazi pasts and affiliations. Then there are those who merely go on and on about immigrants, foreigners, minorities, but who are smart enough not to have explicitly associated themselves with open neo-Nazis. Needless to say, the fact that this sort of party is reaching 33% in some parts of the country is hugely concerning in Germany.
The next round of regulations, NIS2 for example, is starting to get up steam. This year we also have the Digital Services Act. Time will tell if US media platforms continue to develop EU-versions, and in what forms, or if they give up.
In term of national security I would be a bit more afraid of Microsoft 365 than Meta.
Tt's obvious why the state would not want it. It's not obvious why "country" would not want it.
"Eleven EU countries took 5G security measures to ban Huawei, ZTE "
https://www.euronews.com/next/2024/08/12/eleven-eu-countries...
To me this makes more sense since a back door in network infrastructure allowing governement communications to be intercepted is far more serious than some kid using TikTok.
The US is not banning TikTok. The US is forcing ByteDance to sell it's controlling position on TikTok or else the company is no longer able to operate within the US.
How come the critical bit is repeatedly left out?
ByteDance instead opted to shut the company down in retaliation, because it found it was desirable to just crash the whole company than to have anyone else control it, and in the process is fooling useful idiots into believing this has nothing to do with China's interference.
Saying "It is not a ban because if they give it to us then we won't ban it, but if they don't we will ban it but it still won't be a ban because they had a choice in the first place" sounds so ridiculous to me that I don't even know how to argue here.
On that note, I wonder if the same approach should apply to Elon Musk's Twitter takeover.
"Twitter cannot be Chinese (or NK etc) owned."
OK, done.
That is not the reason at all. I highly doubt if it was made in Europe, it would be banned.
China would never allow a TikTok equivalent to operate in China, which is smart. We should do the same.
The US government should just go ahead and say it like it is: they'd like to hold as much power as the Chinese government does, and they're taking the steps to do so.
The American oligarchy feels threatened because the empire is crumbling under their feet, so they're finally taking their masks off.
What are you talking about? No US corporation can operate in China without granting China control over your data. I mean, anyone with a cursory understanding of the topic can tell you how China effectively forces internet companies to design their China presence as completely siloed operations with very tight requirements in what personally identifiable information they store.
Playing fair is fine, so rather ask for level playing fields. Where there aren’t, apply pressure. Compared to arming other countries this is barely worth a big argument.
That’s a thoroughly disingenuous spin on the reasoning.
There is no movement to prevent foreign companies from having popular apps in general. The law is narrowly targeted. TikTok could continue to be foreign-held as long as they separated from the government of a specific foreign country.
I’m amazed at how many commenters are twisting themselves into pretzels to try to make this some generic imperialist move or use whataboutism to downplay the reasoning behind this move.
A decade ago it was common knowledge on the internet that China heavily controlled and shaped internet discourse within their reach, to push government agendas in an extreme way. There is no parallel to their cultural control in the US. Did everyone suddenly forget this, or are they just ignoring it for the sake of argument?
Whether you agree with the move or not, the storylines being pushed in hundreds of comments here don’t even reflect the reality of the law, let alone the reasoning behind it.
It’s also ironic to read all of the commenters that don’t realize that China already controls social media use within their own country to a degree far more strict than this. The amount of control that China exerts over everything from Facebook to Google within their country was a well known topic for years online. Here on HN people were disgusted that FB and others were giving in to government censorship in those countries. Now it all seems to be forgotten? It’s weird to me to see all of the narratives in this comment section being built on top of imagined realities with no regard for how other countries have been operating for decades.
> The free market is great, but only if we hold all the cards.
I think that's the actual reasoning. Be mindful that USA is our ally but they'll always prefer their own interest and that's normal.
I don't think I'd support a ban if ByteDance was a European company or Indian or South Korean or Japanese. China is a unique threat given the totalitarian turn they've taken over the past decade combined with the fact that no Chinese company is truly private in its day-to-day operations. All Chinese companies must have CCP influence as a matter of Chinese policy. It would be like if T-Mobile (the US mobile division of Deutsche Telekom) was required to have the influence of the German government including the monitoring and reporting of phone calls to senior party officials.
Look at Germany and Europe in general , they pay money to arm their aggressive neighbor, still not able to shield themselves from China. And asking US to protect Europe .
I don’t think Europe , giving the situation is in position to suggest about national interest protection. It’s like drug addict talk about healthy lifestyle
To protect Europe from who...
Let's look at where we are with cold eyes (I'm European). Russian direct energy supplies to the EU have been cut, raising energy costs, all EU industries are affected, making it more difficult to compete with China and the US. Energy, which now comes also in part through expensive ships from the US, whom -surprise- is now able to threat to cut it off, increasing influence over EU politics, energy that it is now also paid with dollar currency, at the same time EU economic resources -that should be used for the internal development- are being asked to be diverged to buy US weapons through NATO.
So I would suggest to avoid the "US saving heroes" discourse. The reality sounds more like the US elite has benefited from the war (a big industry for them), so much that should be included within the suspicious list.
What pockets planned and backed up the Maidan rise that removed the Kremlin's puppet from power? Who aimed and intended such country to join NATO along years before this event?
Because can be guessed this aimed the psychopathic Putin to increase the violence of his mafia things, maybe someones expected this violence in invasion form, or another form that would drag Europe into the same position it is in now.
> Still not able to shield themselves from China
It would be interesting to read how one country has protected itself from China's dumping, among other things, considering the massive industrial companies and seaports the Chinese government already bought around the world, including the US.
So the EU should have been more careful not to be too dependent on Russia? Maybe Germany should have avoided shutting down their nuclear reactors.
The idea that US should cut of our allies in Europe is stupid and insane but at the same time Europe made a lot of mistakes that it should learn from
> What pockets planned and backed up the Maidan rise that removed the Kremlin's puppet from power? Who aimed and intended such country to join NATO along years before this event?
No "one" planned it. It was a spontaneous grassroots movement that blew up when the authoritarian president tried to violently crack down on it.
https://snyder.substack.com/p/ukraines-maidan-revolution
> The consolation prize Yanukovych dangled before a liberal intelligentsia that hated him was the distant prospect of European integration. For a young generation in particular, “Europe” was the object of the greatest desire. In November 2013 Ukraine was expected to sign a long-anticipated association agreement with the European Union. At the eleventh hour, on 21 November 2013, Yanukovych refused.
> The disappointment was especially crushing for students, who felt as if their future had vanished; Europe would be closed to them. That evening a thirty-two-year-old Ukrainian journalist from Kabul named Mustafa Nayyem wrote in Russian on his Facebook page: “Come on, let’s get serious. Who is ready to go out to the Maidan by midnight tonight? ‘Likes’ don’t count.”
> That night Ukrainians—overwhelming students—came to the Maidan—and stayed. They held hands and shouted, “Ukraine is Europe!” At 4 am on 30 November 2013 Yanukovych sent his riot police to the Maidan to beat the students. The violence against peaceful protestors was a shock. Yanukovych, it seems, was counting on the shock to shake parents into pulling their kids off the streets. That was when something remarkable happened: instead of pulling their kids off the streets, the parents joined them there. It was a historic Aufhebung of Oedipal rebellion. Now there were close to a million people on the streets of Kyiv, and they were shouting, “We will not permit you to beat our children!”
These sorts of bad faith comments are so tiresome to read.
We all know that if the foreign country in question was Japan or France then nobody would really give a shit. Even a more neutral country like India or Brazil would likely be completely fine. It's specifically an issue because China is a geopolitical opponent of the US that we're engaged in a sort of new cold war with.
Not to mention, China blocks basically every popular social media site from the US already, and a bunch of other websites and apps besides. Tit-for-tat is very common in trade, you can't expect other countries to leave your foreign ventures untouched if you heavily restrict theirs.
> Not to mention, China blocks basically every popular social media site from the US already
And the US is usually pretty good at criticising that. But apparently not so good at accepting when other criticise the US for doing the same.
Personally I'd love for the US to ban or restrict more things from China. Not because that's the end state I want, but maybe it'd get China to loosen restrictions so that we'd get closer to parity.
If Huawei smartphones are a national security threat that justifies a ban, then Xiaomi smartphones are as well. But those are not banned. Why? Because the ban is more for protectionism than for security reasons. Just own it, that's fine.
Agreed, it's a trade issue. And anyone who's been paying even a hint of attention to trade knows that China is WAY more protectionist about foreign companies than the US is.
Reciprocity is or should be part of trade. There is nothing hypocritical about responding to trade restrictions with trade restrictions, any more than responding to an invasion with your own military force is "hypocritical".
That's right, but that's not what I said. I keep having to explain it so I'll do it again: what feels hypocritical is that the US don't call those bans trade issues. They call them "national security". If you keep saying "we're the land of the free, China is bad because of their protectionism" and then you do protectionism and say "no no no, we are not doing protectionism, it's national security", then it is hypocritical.
Did you notice something similar about those companies, of which TikTok is included?
Social media is not normal capitalism - it’s defense industry psychological warfare tooling. We’re seeing this play out big time in the Israeli and Ukrainian conflicts right now and it’s time to take a wartime approach to the issue.
1. https://www.businessinsider.com/jd-vance-nato-support-eu-reg...
Can you even own a company in China? Not to mention anything uncensored?
If Zuckerberg, or Musk (X), or Reddit, or Snap, or HN, or any Western platform would want to operate in China, they'd have to hand over control to a Chinese company. Instead, they simply don't operate there.
> "The free market is great, but only if we hold all the cards".
It's been blatantly obvious since the beginning of time that the free market isn't a thing.
Foreign ownership of massive media platforms has been awful. The other way around as well. Would be fantastic if the EU banned Meta, for one. Instead they're suddenly scared of continuing to fine them for their continuous illegal data harvesting and gatekeeping to cozy up to Trump.
Just consider Rupert Murdoch. Every country he's been active in would have been better off if he'd been straight up banned from owning local media companies.
China, BTW, is censoring or blocking all Western social media platforms and online publications. Why should we accept their online services when they are blocking ours?
Say what you will of USA, but they are allies and Europe needs to grow the f* up and stop being so tolerant of despotic countries, because our money and resources are fuelling their wars.
I understand that you're afraid of the US yielding so much power online, but then propose a European alternative, not a Chinese one. Let's innovate instead of complaining about US's tech hegemony, as right now all I'm seeing are complaints and regulations for tech we aren't building.
I mean it has always been like this anyway, just with some gloves. There is no law above the states(elites).
International courts should settle disputes based on law
Actually, why do you pay tax if you don't have to and there is no IRS or whatever agency chasing you?
Imperialism is a part of life-- whether it's mold in a petri dish, prides of lions or chimpanzees raiding neighbors.
We live in the wild where strength conquers. It's just that we forget that when we're insulated from reality by convenience, comfort, concrete, and naivete.
No one should be ashamed for conquering or for exercising their own strength to their own benefit. Only those unable to do so are the ones to complain. And the complaints are futile-- Resource Competition is a fact of life and it is not going away.