I'm not defending them here, but the laws in China prevent a sale, so technically they have a duty to uphold China's laws first before upholding their fiduciary responsibility. Same with any American company and following American laws.
First I've heard of this.
The conflicting legal obligations remind me of the Microsoft "safe harbour" case, which is becoming a lot more relevant and still isn't really adequately resolved.
Ironically this would be enforcing the very same law that exists in China, where all companies have to be majority Chinese owned.
Subtler manipulation still works great, and the opacity of algorithmic content recommendation makes that an ideal instrument. Nobody outside ByteDance knows to what extent the CCP is putting its thumb on that scale already, but they certainly have the power to.
https://newsroom.tiktok.com/en-us/an-update-on-recent-conten...
A different account operated by the same user was banned for something relating to an image of bin Laden in a different video. I've been unable to locate that video. I haven't found any reference stating that she praised him. She described her use of that image as satirical, and TikTok itself seems to recognize that (but stands by that ban):
> *While we recognize that this video may have been intended as satire, our policies on this front are currently strict.
In any case, the video in question is the Uighur one. TikTok quickly stated that one was a "human moderation error" and reversed it. My point is irrespective of whether their rules were morally correct or correctly applied, though--whatever those merits, they clearly drew more attention to the topic by censoring here, not less. So it's not surprising they don't apply blunt Chinese-style censorship outside China, since it's counterproductive without Chinese-style control of all major media.
One day test prep schools are illegal and immediately shut down. Tech CEOs suddenly became pariahs and started getting carted off to re-education camps. Etc.
You never know what could happen to an executive, company, or sector.
It's like saying the Pope isn't Christian. It's really a hidden statement about gatekeeping.
Edit: I think the distinction is important because the US has a tendency to label things communist before it goes to war with them, whether cold or hot.
To give an example for comparison, a lot of people want to say socialism is about workers controlling the means of production. But that doesn't come close to covering all of the things that were called socialism that existed before someone proposed that definition.
With communism it's similar but at least I'm not aware of any one jingle that people are pushing as the one true definition.
But there are definitely lots of people who want to say they understand Marx better than everyone else and the Soviet Union doesn't count as communist because of x. China doesn't count as communist because of y. Etc etc. it's a way to preserve an identity as a communist without having to admit there are any downsides.
For what it's worth I'd argue that capitalism is even less well defined and I've heard it used to describe every economic system that's ever existed including all communist countries.
That’s not what I did, and I’m not a communist. I’m specifically talking about China because people use the label, deeply incorrectly, to portray them as a threatening other, as though they work in a super different way to us and threaten our way of life.
> But there are definitely lots of people who want to say they understand Marx better than everyone else and the Soviet Union doesn't count as communist because of x. China doesn't count as communist because of y. Etc etc.
Im no scholar, but I’m pretty damn certain you can’t have a strong free market, alongside the consequent wealthy capitalists, under communism. Words have meanings, and that’s not what anyone or their mother would think of as communism.
See, names are meaningless.
So functionally maybe a little like Albertson's is the only legal party, but if you prefer your region can have a subsidiary of Albertson's like Safeway or Shaw's.
If you read Marx, communism isn't possible to achieve until after capitalism has run its course, so the way things are in China ATM are perfectly at harmony with that.