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What Does Trump Have Against TikTok?
- loraa 6y agoDoesn't China ban a bunch of US services?
- madballster 6y agoNot sure if we should extrapolate from one White House administration as to what the US believes.
- threeseed 6y ago> During the Democrat presidential primaries, Biden called China’s President Xi Jinping, who is also the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), a “thug” for having “a million Uyghurs in ‘reconstruction camps’ [sic] meaning concentration camps. https://thediplomat.com/2020/07/team-bidens-policies-on-china-and-taiwan/ https://thediplomat.com/2020/07/team-bidens-policies-on-chin... Whoever the next President is will not be soft on China.
- Wolfenstein98k 6y agoIt's got nothing to do with "global internet", it's about a totalitarian surveillance dragnet capturing every bit of data imaginable about American children. Tik Tok is unique in the granularity and sheer scope of what it captures, and it is stored on Chinese servers that are legally compelled to make any and all data available to the CCP with no oversight or warrants or anything of the sort.
- close04 6y ago> a totalitarian surveillance dragnet capturing every bit of data imaginable about American children Are non-Chinese surveillance dragnets (Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, etc.) capturing every bit of data imaginable about every nationality's children or adults more palatable? Just like China, the US is doing whatever it can to maintain its superpower status, and its allies and enemies in check. And it's obvious these days that the US is willing to use the exact same measures that they criticized in the past when they were employed only by China.
- threeseed 6y agoYou can file a freedom of information request or launch a lawsuit to contest a policy. You can be a whistleblower and leak illegal or immoral policies to media organisations. Or as an individual you can push journalists to investigate. Or launch an online campaign to draw attention to a particular issue. You can't do any of that in China.
- pinkfoot 6y agoCan your company legally tell me how many FISA warrants and NSL letters they received in my FOIA request? Of course not.
- Wolfenstein98k 6y agoYes, there are few issues outside the typical oversight the West prides itself on. Note that opponents of it are free to criticise it, whereas you're committing a crime RIGHT NOW - wherever you are - under Chinese law if you so much as promote democracy is Hong Kong or China. You can be jailed without trial (as we know it) for this transgression. There is no comparison. Whataboutism from Useful Idiots abounds.
- threeseed 6y agoFOIA obviously doesn't apply to everything. But in the case of FISA it is overseen by an independent judiciary and all of the deliberations and controversies were widely covered by the independent press. Not to mention independent organisations like ACLU, EFF etc. who have been very vocal about trying to abolish the FISA process entirely. Again none of this would remotely happen in China. We've seen first hand what happens to the media and dissenters in HK.
- pinkfoot 6y ago> FOIA obviously doesn't apply to everything And that there is the problem from which no argument about checks and balances can recover. Which is why real democracies don't allow secret courts.
- pbhjpbhj 6y ago>every bit of data imaginable about American children // TikTok is pretty inane, what do you think they can find out that's detrimental; how do you think the data will be used that is malicious?
- meragrin_ 6y agoI'm sure it can be used to narrow down candidates for espionage. It is just more data points to figure out who and what levers need to be pull to provide the necessary incentives.
- candiodari 6y agoThey are pretty well known to go after US-based people (Chinese .. and non-Chinese citizens) by threatening friends and family still living in China, in response to various issues, or simply criticism. For espionage. To force them to return to China. To help them force other Chinese back. To force out Buddhism. And I'm sure that list has not gotten shorter. In a few cases even non-Chinese citizens whose friends became "reachable" for the Chinese government. TikTok would be an excellent source of information for this practice. Examples: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/07/fbi-chief-china-threatens-families-overseas-critics-200707204953764.html https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/07/fbi-chief-china-threa... https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-china-wray/china-coerces-hundreds-of-chinese-born-critics-in-u-s-to-return-home-fbi-chief-says-idUSKBN24825V https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-china-wray/china-coer... https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/12/you-could-end-up-in-jail-us-warns-its-citizens-in-china https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/12/you-could-end-... https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/03/21/china-government-threats-academic-freedom-abroad https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/03/21/china-government-threats...
- tremon 6y agoYes, "Chinese" and "CCP" being the operative words there. The US has shown itself to be quite enamoured with the rest of that sentence.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- c256 6y ago“TikTok is unique...” might be true, but then why is TikTok not the only company targeted by this royal edict? When 17 year olds can “own Twitter” and Facebook just budgets 9 figures for data collection compliance fines, are you sure there’s a bright line distinction in the world that’s not “let’s all agree we’re not the terrible/hated/untrustworthy other”? Is the problem that another sovereign country could coerce a company to provide a service that Facebook provides for money?
- villgax 6y agoHaving a fool at the helm often yields such outcomes.
- raverbashing 6y agoOr maybe it believes that those who don't believe in a global internet shouldn't benefit from it. The first thing China did was putting up the Great Firewall. Reciprocity is overdue and important.
- loraa 6y agoStop making sense. These young lads with Trump Derangement Syndrome might try to smash your windows.
- forgot_user1234 6y agoOr US believes in trade reciprocity
- makomk 6y agoForget TikTok and the US for a moment - just given the actions of China, the EU, and India, is there even such a thing as a global internet anymore?
- PedroBatista 6y agoWhy didn't you start with the actions of the US and US companies? Did you forgot about the many FB and Google scandals over the years? or you just don't care because they are your team? The Internet never was "Global", it was always soft and sometimes hard controlled by the US. Now that other countries are applying the same recipe and "winning" all of a sudden that's a problem. And it really is a problem, but it was a problem since the very beginning of the Internet, or do I need to mention the RSA backdoor, the Windows kernel backdoor, the amazing health of the ECHELON project even decades after the cold war ended?
- meragrin_ 6y agoAside from the recent targeting of Chinese companies, what policies has the US put into place which specifically targets internet companies only and makes it difficult for foreign companies to have US customers?
- arbuge 6y agoNo. Banning TikTok at most suggests that the current US administration no longer believes in a global internet. That administration might be out of office as soon as January 2021. Edit: Comment submitted before title was changed. Title was originally: "Banning TikTok suggests that the US no longer believes in a global internet."
- chrisan 6y agoYa, let's not lump in all of the US as anti-global-internet with the orange man in the oval office's mission vs China. The US should continue to be part of the global group of countries with the idea of an open internet vs copying China's great firewall practice. I realize this is hard externally with Trump and perhaps internally with Pai but they do not represent the majority
- threeseed 6y agoData protection and privacy is far more important than a global internet. And you need a country with a strong and independent judiciary and press in order for that to happen. China has neither. And people who think this is exclusive a Trump, right-wing position are seriously misguided. It's bi-partisan and will definitely continue under a Biden presidency as well.
- pbhjpbhj 6y ago>strong and independent judiciary and press // Are you suggesting USA has that?
- Solstinox 6y agoIs it true that we (not HN, but US as a geopolitical entity) have ever believed in a global internet? Seems naive. We’ve believed in the American internet purveyed by America to the world. Countries like China deployed their firewalls precisely because it is largely an American internet out there. Banning TikTok as delivered by a frenemy that sees us as its key rival for the next two hundred years makes more sense with that context.
- CyberRabbi 6y agoBelief has nothing to do with it. This is a response to geopolitical realities. There is no virtue in believing in a fiction, even if it sounds nice. Edit: this post was originally titled “Banning TikTok suggests that the US no longer believes in a global internet” and that is still the main idea of the article
- cletus 6y agoIt should be clear to all but the most biased that: 1. Chinese companies are extensions of the state. This is not true to the same degree for US or European companies; and 2. China deliberately restricts access to the Chinese market so no foreign company will "win" there. It will always be a Chinese company. This is why companies kowtowing the China is so pointless. Trade is about reciprocity. Separation from the state is a national security issue. China is not playing by the same rules as everyone else is. The only shocking thing about this is that it's taken what is otherwise the worst president in America's history (and someone who, with his family, should probably all be in jail for various reasons) to demand reciprocity and to point out the obvious. Yet the carrot of the Chinese market remains for Western companies and those companies have pressured (if not outright bought) their governments to play along in a completely rigged game they cannot win.
- spanhandler 6y agoThis is pretty much exactly my take on this, down to the assessment that shaking up Chinese trade policy is just about the only halfway sensible thing Trump has done. Are we crazy or has most of the rest of HN somehow missing the point of all this? The discussions about this here have been perplexing.
- Wolfenstein98k 6y agoMost people still fall for the line that Trump only rags on China because he's racist, and think that China's govt is basically the same as other govts.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- unangst 6y agoTrump’s fallen for one of the two classic blunders! The first being never put self above the American people but only slightly lesser known: never go in against the TikTok hive mind when RE-ELECTION is on the line!
- loopz 6y agoMaybe his ML strategists see a way without winning the election?
- codyswann 6y agoTikTok trolled his Tulsa rally
- Simulacra 6y agoI disagree with the authors conclusions. All Chinese companies are owned by the Chinese government. China is a horrible regime that murders it's own people, not to mention half the nation is starving while the Politburo lives in fancy houses chauffeured in fancy cars. It is not a great leap to conclude that a nation like that which owns a very popular social media app would not attempt to use it for subversive means.