> But in the reverse direction, America has been almost as impenetrable to Chinese companies because of what might be though of as America’s cultural firewall

> But in the reverse direction, America has been almost as impenetrable to Chinese companies because of what might be though of as America’s cultural firewall Why would they even try? You've got a nice big domestic tech ecosystem which would not have existed without protectionism. Most of these products aren't competitive at all. Nothing to do with culture, same reason Canada, UK etc aren't known for big tech successes. Musical.ly is unusual in that they did actually work on an original idea and decided to launch the product in America where it took off first. Ended up not playing the China game early on. > With it, a massive team made up mostly by people who’ve never left China, and many who never will, grabbed massive marketshare in cultures and markets they’d never experienced firsthand. To a cultural determinist like myself, that feels like black magic. Pretty much every big American tech company does that. Nothing notable about this. > I don’t think the Chinese product teams I’ve met in recent years in China are much further ahead than the ones I met in 2011 when it comes to understanding foreign cultures like America. But what the Bytedance algorithm did was it abstracted that problem away. Understanding in what way? You work on a product and you optimize it for your users. If you work in a 100% domestically focused ecosystem obviously you'll design your products a little differently. What happened here is a Chinese company was for a change actually working on a product with a global userbase and they had to make them happy. The whole thing is borderline insulting to the founders.