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TikTok Inc. vs. U.S. Department of Commerce
- abc-xyz 6y ago> ByteDance has had a party committee since 2017 and is headed by CCP secretary and company editor-in-chief Zhang Fuping (張輔評), reported Human Rights Watch. Members of the committee hold regular gatherings at which they study speeches by Chinese Chairman Xi Jinping (習近平) and "pledge to follow the party in technological innovation." > In addition, ByteDance on April 25, 2019, signed a strategic cooperation agreement with the Ministry of Public Security's Press and Publicity Bureau (公安部新聞宣傳局) in Beijing. The agreement was billed as "aiming to give full play to the professional technology and platform advantages of Toutiao and Tiktok in big data analysis," strengthen the creation and production of "public security new media works," boost "network influence and online discourse power," and enhance "public security propaganda, guidance, influence, and credibility," among other aspects.
- lxe 6y agoWhat's the source? I can't find these quotes in the complaint document.
- weego 6y agoIt appears to be from here. I have nowhere near enough knowledge to have an opinion on its credibility though https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/3982027 https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/3982027
- boogies 6y agoPiping the text into DuckDuckGo brings up https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/3982027 https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/3982027 as the only result. GP seems to be the last two paragraphs.
- stuqqq 6y agohttp://politics.people.com.cn/n1/2018/0615/c1001-30062480.html http://politics.people.com.cn/n1/2018/0615/c1001-30062480.ht...
- stuqqq 6y agohttp://news.cpd.com.cn/n3559/201904/t20190425_836599.html http://news.cpd.com.cn/n3559/201904/t20190425_836599.html
- RubberShoes 6y agoSomeone worked hard through the weekend
- SexyNightWatch 6y agoWelcome to the life of a lawyer. Oh wait, they don't have one.
- Hydraulix989 6y agoThe person who wrote this over the weekend very likely makes 7 figures. That's the life they chose.
- vorpalhex 6y agoI have yet to meet a law clerk or paralegal making 7 figures.
- traek 6y agoThe partners aren’t the ones working nights to draft these documents.
- z2 6y agoFor the associates at the firm, while not making 7 figures [1], their salary is probably OK to justify working weekends, compared to other similar-paying industries (investment banking comes to mind). 1: https://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=covington&job=&city=&year=2020 https://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=covington&job=&city=&year=...
- Hydraulix989 6y agoI'm assuming the person writing this critical document was a partner and not an associate? TikTok wouldn't have it any other way.
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- Hydraulix989 6y agoWhy would any American court side not be partial to the US here? They're literally suing the US in its own courthouse.
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- godzillabrennus 6y agoThe US Government is not a monolithic organization. Different parts fight with other parts. Happens all the time here. If it’s done right we call this checks and balances. If it’s done wrong we have lots of other names for it.
- Hydraulix989 6y agoThe US Government isn't fighting with any part of the US though -- in this case -- they are fighting a foreign actor (that is quite possibly an adversary).
- teknopaul 6y agoIts technically possible that a court of law is not corrupt. Even in the US.
- Scarbutt 6y agoIt's not corruption that is the problem in this case but fear.
- itsbits 6y agoWeird how US laws are made. App was banned in some non-cyber laws countries like India, still Tiktok unable to challenge them. But US here is getting rebuted.
- tanilama 6y agoThis gives people a chance even if it is the government who is going after them, to turn the tide around. I would say this is not weird by any means, it is by intentions, and is indeed how most things go about in US. I will be more surprise to see Trump's EO go without challenges.
- skybrian 6y agoYou can sue about anything. The more interesting question is whether they have a case.
- afterburner 6y agoHow popular was TikTok in India? How much money could TikTok stand to make by being popular in India?
- rudiv 6y agoTikTok was incredibly popular in India. If I recall correctly it was their largest market outside of China. Edit: According to the company themselves, it was their largest overseas market with a userbase of 200 million.
- monkeypizza 6y agoThe way CCP influence works is through a legal requirement for firms to allow or establish internal CCP units inside their company, which are then officially recognized and connected to the CCP. Since this is an alternate method for the company to interact with officials, through their own party member staff, it can become basically your company's representative with the CCP. The thing is though, the unit members are also still your employees with access to internal information. Since they serve two masters, the company can be tempted to elevate their status internally to improve how they represent the CCP on the other side. And the opposite can happen - employees can be hired with high CCP ranks so that when they join the unit their influence for the company will be stronger. "One senior executive whose company was represented at the meeting told Reuters some companies were under “political pressure” to revise the terms of their joint ventures with state-owned partners to allow the party final say over business operations and investment decisions." Information on how this actually works is scarce since relative to the US there is much weaker rule of law/discovery, and fewer independent journalists, considering how tightly China controls and polices which journalists are allowed in and what they write about. "Companies in China, including foreign firms, are required by law to establish a party organization, a rule that had long been regarded by many executives as more symbolic than anything to worry about." https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-congress-companies-idUSKCN1B40JU https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-congress-companies-...
- pphysch 6y agoIs this supposed to be surprising? Virtually every large corporation is going to have some synergy with its host country(s). For oversight, compliance, etc. Of course, this relationship is obfuscated in the US, but there is a well-known "revolving door" between Corporate HQs and Washington D.C. For example, Jigsaw is GOOG's geopolitical "think/do tank". Jigsaw CEO Jared Cohen is a Bush-era State Dept alum and current Council on Foreign Relations senior fellow. Jigsaw Director of Policy Scott Carpenter is currently on the board of the infamous National Endowment for Democracy. The NED in turn uses federal resources to back regime-change efforts in foreign countries, primarily through public media campaigns. These are but two "Wikipedia-tier" examples and should be deeply concerning to those who purport to care about this issue from a libertarian values perspective as opposed to one of vindictive geopolitical poop-flinging.
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- moneywoes 6y agoIs it not ironic that Facebook is unable to sue the Chinese government behind their ban?
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- crdrost 6y agoI mean I don’t personally experience the emotion of irony in relation to that state-of-affairs. Like, if one were to tell a tale of some non-mainstream Christian commune which gave free healthcare to neighboring cities and then one day one of the commune members went to a hospital in a neighboring city and they charged that member a massive hospital bill, that would similarly not generate that feeling of irony. I don’t mean to say that the US is a tremendous beacon of light in all respects, but we do have this principle that everyone can have their day in court and in some respects that is one wavelength of light which we are a beacon of, and it is not terribly surprising that we cast this light out to a world which does not cast it back to us. (As you might see, in other respects I think that ‘beacon’ is quite problematic. None of my Dutch relatives are looking over at the US and saying ‘you know what the Netherlands needs? More lawsuits!’ But it does give a certain access to structures of power which in China one is often impotent to actually access.)
- pphysch 6y agoFacebook willingly pulled out of China because it was not willing to comply with Chinese laws surrounding disinformation and hate speech. It is not even a remotely similar situation.
- usaar333 6y agoDisinformation being defined as "disagreeing with official government statements"
- pphysch 6y agoChina blocked Facebook following the deadly 2009 Ürümqi terrorist attacks because Facebook was negligently allowing ETIM-backed groups to spread disinformation and hatred via their platform. Facebook subsequently refused to filter such content and the ban continues to this day. Control over the Xinjiang/Uyghur narrative is paramount in the "New Cold War" declared against China by Pompeo this July, so Facebook's actions are not surprising.
- diebeforei485 6y agoYesterday the Wall Street Journal reported that Mark Zuckerberg was spreading FUD in Washington about TikTok: https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-ceo-mark-zuckerberg-stoked-washingtons-fears-about-tiktok-11598223133 https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-ceo-mark-zuckerberg-st... (soft paywall) TikTok is an excellent app with great content and an algorithm that works like magic based on your revealed (not stated) preferences. I hope the Microsoft deal comes through without the government demanding a cut.
- nxc18 6y agoI wish people would take some time to actually learn about China as it exists today and not how the West imagined it in 2003. The discourse here and in other places (like Reddit) has been of absolute garbage quality. Even in this thread there have been calls for the US to ignore the rule of law and have kangaroo courts that always side with the government, complete misunderstanding of why India banned TikTok (retaliatory blow in a border dispute), and claims that it is ironic that Facebook/Google is banned in China. That last one represents shockingly poor understanding of recent events. For example, western companies choose not to operate in the Chinese market: https://theintercept.com/collections/google-dragonfly-china/ https://theintercept.com/collections/google-dragonfly-china/ Citizens in a democracy have rights, but they also have a responsibility to try to understand their system of government and the evil forces they contend with. If the US wants to ban TikTok (maybe it is in fact in our interest to do so, although I personally disagree), there is a due process. Just like Trump has the legal right to end DACA, the courts have upheld that there is a proper way to do that, and it doesn’t involve being capricious: https://www.npr.org/2020/06/18/829858289/supreme-court-upholds-daca-in-blow-to-trump-administration https://www.npr.org/2020/06/18/829858289/supreme-court-uphol... There is lots of good coverage of China available in the West, and for folks who are interested, here’s a recent article to start with: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwicrOjIwrTrAhX0On0KHcKCB84QFjAAegQIAhAB&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.economist.com%2Fbriefing%2F2020%2F08%2F15%2Fxi-jinping-is-trying-to-remake-the-chinese-economy&usg=AOvVaw1bH7Oc_dKecAWrbNI3lqPP https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwic...
- vorpalhex 6y agoAnd this is actually the due process way of banning TikTok and this is within presidential authority - even if you don't like it. If you have an issue with this being the process, it is fully and entirely with congress who deferred this power to the executive. Legal Eagle has a good explainer on this: [video warning] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnjhHPU-uRw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnjhHPU-uRw
- nxc18 6y agoThanks for that video. Still, I don’t know if wild threats out of the blue after a 2 year CFIUS investigation counts as due process. Just because power is delegated to the executive doesn’t mean the executive can wield that power with impunity, see recent Supreme Court decisions. The legal eagle video does raise additional concerns that aren’t being covered here, like first amendment issues. The timing makes it seem like concerns about TikTok are more about anti-Trump content than actual national security concern. The Legal Eagle video is also very clear that the IEEPA explicitly restricts power over telecommunications platforms, which clearly seems to apply to TikTok. (17 minutes in) Watching that video makes me think TikTok has an even stronger case than is being widely reported.
- pastaking 6y agoDoes anyone know when we will likely hear the result of this trial?
- cletus 6y agoSo two things should be absolutely clear here: 1. Chinese companies are extensions of the state in a way not analagous to anything in the developed world. This creates a valid national security interest in giving Chinese companies access to telecoms (Huawai), personal information (TikTok) and many other areas; and 2. There is no huge market opportunity in China for Western companies so these companies should stop pressuring politicians to look the other way on China (and, arguably in some cases, to kowtow to beijing). The Chinese government will ensure no Western company "wins" against homegrown companies, all the while dangling that carrot of 1B customers and handout out enough crumbs to keep interest. As for this lawsuit, I'm no lawyer so can't speak to its merit but consider this: trade agreements (WTO/GATT) call for reciprocity. In trade terms, I'd say the US is well within its right to deny access to the US market to Chinese companies in the same way US companies are denied access to the Chinese market. Enforcement of censorship in China is painted as just obeying local laws. Ok, but what's to stop the US arguing that they require companies operating within its borders not to enable spying on citizens, religious persecution and other human rights violations?
- nxc18 6y agoSo much ignorance here. 1) China is very developed and developing fast. US companies are also extensions of the state, especially when things like National Security Letters come into play. There’s no transparency or oversight (or constitutional rights) when NSLs are involved. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_security_letter https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_security_letter Note: there are rules, but rule violations (that we know about) numbered in the thousands a decade ago. 2) Apple is going to lose _a lot_ of current and future customers in China if the WeChat/Tencent ban moved forward, to name just one $2 trillion example. You’re right about one thing: if we want to go after China, we should be using a principled approach on trade.
- horsemessiah 6y agoCould the U.S. govt not subpoena a U.S. company for information, giving them the same power people are worried about China having?
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