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> Instead, I believe that it is a national security issue Are you uncomfortable adopting that belief with literally no concrete evidence that anything of the s

by zmmmmm 6y ago

> Instead, I believe that it is a national security issue Are you uncomfortable adopting that belief with literally no concrete evidence that anything of the sort is actually occurring? I don't know how you reconcile rule of law with such drastic interventions in the rights of companies without evidence of wrongdoing. If anything you can come up with in your most paranoid fantasies can be the basis of shutting down a company, pretty much anything can be done to anyone on the basis of anything, no?

oh_sigh 6y ago
National security is generally best when it is proactive, not reactive. If you think the CCP having this data could be a problem, you can't wait until they collect it all and use it in order to stop them. There is a reason laws like GDPR prevent even the mere collection of data, and don't wait until Google does something wrong with the data in order to stop them.
revnode 6y ago
> shutting down a company It's not a company. It's a division of a foreign government. That was the point being made. If it was an independent company, none of this would be happening.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- judge2020 6y ago
  https://www.bytedance.com/en/#corporate-structure https://www.bytedance.com/en/#corporate-structure ByteDance Ltd. (Cayman) -> TikTok Ltd. (Cayman) -> TikTok LLC. (US) Legally it is indeed a company and not controlled by the CCP, but exactly how much of its US operations are conducted and directed by non-US citizens on non-US soil is unknown.
  - jjulius 6y ago
    This post is going to be similar to my other two comments in this thread. First, it being incorporated in the Caymans is a technicality. ByteDance's headquarters are in Beijing[1] and they don't speak of a Cayman Islands office. In addition... > As with many Chinese companies, the company has an internal Chinese Communist Party committee serving the party members among the employees, with vice president Zhang Fuping serving as its Party Committee Secretary. It also has a strategic partnership with the Ministry of Public Security for the ministry's public relations efforts, and joint ventures with a state-run publisher in Beijing and media firm in Shanghai. ... It has garnered public attention over allegations that it worked with the Chinese Communist Party to censor and surveil content pertaining to Xinjiang re-education camps and other topics the Party deemed controversial. [2] [1] https://www.inputmag.com/culture/tiktok-weirdly-tries-to-suggest-its-not-a-chinese-company-as-it-brings-on-new-ceo/amp https://www.inputmag.com/culture/tiktok-weirdly-tries-to-sug... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ByteDance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ByteDance
    - MetalGuru 6y ago
      Why is this being downvoted?
  - p1necone 6y ago
    Technically correct, but you're almost as guilty of being dishonest as the comment you're replying to saying it's "not a company". A lot of companies are incorporated in the Cayman Islands, or in Ireland, or other tax havens, but we don't generally refer to them as Cayman companies or Irish companies.
  - IncRnd 6y ago
    Companies will regularly incorporate in low-tax jurisdictions, but that doesn't exactly make them headquartered in those areas, where they may actually do zero business. ByteDance Ltd. is a Chinese multinational internet technology company headquartered in Beijing. It was founded by Zhang Yiming in 2012. [1] TikTok's parent company ByteDance has sought permission from the Chinese government to export technology, Bloomberg reported Wednesday. ByteDance filed a request with the Beijing Municipal Commerce Bureau asking for approval to export its technology under restrictions recently implemented by the Chinese government, according to Bloomberg. [2] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ByteDance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ByteDance [2] https://www.businessinsider.com/bytedance-seeks-china-government-approval-tiktok-technology-export-us-deal-2020-9 https://www.businessinsider.com/bytedance-seeks-china-govern...
  - eru 6y ago
    Google and Facebook etc also have lots of unAmerican citizens and operations on unAmerican soil.
  - ipiz0618 6y ago
    Just because it is registered elsewhere doesn't mean it is not a Chinese company. Seriously, how can anyone think this is a valid argument? Do you think DouYin and TikTok originated from different companies?
- bduerst 6y ago
  Bytedance is not owned by the Chinese government. It's an independent company, as is TikTok.
  - jjulius 6y ago
    > As with many Chinese companies, the company has an internal Chinese Communist Party committee serving the party members among the employees, with vice president Zhang Fuping serving as its Party Committee Secretary. It also has a strategic partnership with the Ministry of Public Security for the ministry's public relations efforts, and joint ventures with a state-run publisher in Beijing and media firm in Shanghai. ... It has garnered public attention over allegations that it worked with the Chinese Communist Party to censor and surveil content pertaining to Xinjiang re-education camps and other topics the Party deemed controversial. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ByteDance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ByteDance
    - Dahoon 6y ago
      Wikipedia is not a good source one way or the other.
      - Cthulhu_ 6y ago
        You're not citing a better source either agreeing or opposing the argument made though.
    - bduerst 6y ago
      Yes, for their TaoTiao subsidiary, not TikTok. It says right there in your link that Bytedance is legally a Cayman's Islands company.
- p1necone 6y ago
  > It's not a company. It's a division of a foreign government. Can you elaborate on this? As far as I can tell this is just not the case, and none of the people saying it are clarifying what they mean.
  - Dig1t 6y ago
    If you examine ByteDance's structure technically, you are correct that it does look like just a regular company. But just about everything runs differently in China. All major companies in China have CCP party members on their boards who not only influence corporate policy, but are actually _deferred to_ on anything remotely political.[2][3] At the end of the day the party has the final say in any matters that it cares about. There's actually a fundamental difference that many westerners don't understand about China, and it comes from an ignorance of the country's history in my opinion: there is no real rule of law, there is the current will of the party[1]. Obviously there's a ton of whataboutism that you can misdirect here about how the US or other western countries don't follow their constitutions or whatever, but it is fundamentally different, as the differences in the CCP run very deep down to the daily lives of basically every citizen ("show me a warrant" does NOT fly in China, ever). TLDR; the CCP does whatever it wants whenever it wants, and is deeply ingrained in every major corporation at the highest levels. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_People%27s... [2] https://thediplomat.com/2019/12/politics-in-the-boardroom-the-role-of-chinese-communist-party-committees/ https://thediplomat.com/2019/12/politics-in-the-boardroom-th... [3] https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3045053/china-cements-communist-partys-role-top-its-soes-should https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3045053/c...
    - La1n 6y ago
      Source 3 is literally about state-owned companies, and would not apply at all...
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
soared 6y ago
Devils advocate - there is no evidence that it isn’t already occurring in subtle ways. Russia’s strategy is sowing discord, which would be fairly easy if one government controls the algorithm deciding what media the other country’s citizens sees.
- dvtrn 6y ago
  Devils advocate - there is no evidence that it isn’t already occurring in subtle ways. This isn’t playing the “devil’s advocate” (which-the devil here does not need any advocacy) this is a request to prove a potential negative. Can we please retire the tactic of giving the devil representation in such a blatant and cavalier fashion?
  - soared 6y ago
    Language adapts to common use, common use doesn’t adapt to linguistic rules. But I see your point.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
- notatoad 6y ago
  so is just saying the words "national security" enough for you to believe that this is justified? should the US government be allowed to block any private company from doing business just by saying those magic words, with no further justification? or just any foreign-owned company? or just any chinese company - if it's china, what makes china special? there's got to be some limitation on where you draw the line on the government exercising this absolute and arbitrary power, i'm curious where exactly it is. could they shut down twitter for national security reasons? what about shopify - they're canadian, and the government is already levying tariffs against canadian imports for national security reasons, so the national security threat is already justified. should they be able to ban shopify with no concrete justification beyond claiming it's a vague threat to national security?
jtdev 6y ago
Would you feel different if Russia or North Korea controlled TikTok?
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
MattGaiser 6y ago
In a country without any constraints on government behavior or rule of law beyond whatever the CCP decrees, Chinese entities have to be treated as organs of the Chinese Communist Party. https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/05/huawei-would-have-to-give-data-to-china-government-if-asked-experts.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/05/huawei-would-have-to-give-da...
- IfOnlyYouKnew 6y ago
  "Government", "administration", and "party" are all the same thing in China. So something like: "Huawei would be forced to hand over 5G data to the Chinese government if it was asked for it, because of national security laws, experts told CNBC." ...is really no different from the US, is it? And while China has lots of problems, citing a lack of "rule of law" in this context is rather brave. Also: if you believe everything called "communist party" is "communist", you definitely have to pay the beer at the next "RePUBlican Party" meeting.
  - MattGaiser 6y ago
    > ...is really no different from the US, is it? It is enormously different in that it is judicially reviewable (if not in need of an outright warrant) and the USA is a country where there are limits on government. This post, specifically the "judge temporarily blocks" is proof that the USA is a fundamentally different country. > Also: if you believe everything called "communist party" is "communist", you definitely have to pay the beer at the next "RePUBlican Party" meeting. I have not commented on communism as a general topic at all. I am specifically talking about the entity named the Chinese Communist Party.
    - sudosysgen 6y ago
      Are there actually real limits on government in the US? If the Democrats and Republicans agreed that they wanted to do something, would anything stop them? The US government is already unconstitutionally doing what you say that judicial review prevents, and the partisan (by design) Supreme Court simply refuses to take the case. So much for judicial review. There is no check for power, only balances of power. And power in the US tends to agree on such things as much as power within the CCP.
homptydompty18 6y ago
Uh, welcome to international politics? Every country on Earth gives its executive some discretion when dealing with foreign powers. The idea that TikTok should have the same due process rights as American corporations is naive (putting it mildly).
- IfOnlyYouKnew 6y ago
  You're just making that up. "Rule of law" means you need to have a specific rule to govern government's action. The use of the catch-all "national security" justification here is in itself proof that nothing better exists in US law, or they would cite that. Among the free countries, I'm most familiar with the EU's laws: there are some provisions limiting, for example, acquisitions of land, mergers, and military technology to countries like China. But there's no "we don't like them" power. Those powers belong to a king, not a president. EU companies have explicit guarantees against discrimination in other EU countries, and most every trade agreement contains similar provision. I believe even WTO rules, which both China and the US are theoretically bound by, would exclude arbitrary bans.
- arcticbull 6y ago
  Nobody's saying the Americans can't do it. What I'm saying is it's largely hypocritical -- telling China they need to open up their markets to foreign businesses from America just the way Americans do for foreign entities, and then once a Chinese company becomes successful enough to garner the slightest bit of attention forcing a sale to an American company. It's exactly the thing America has been accusing China of doing for mandatory joint ventures. They can do it, by all means, however it further erodes the brand value of America on the world stage as "open for business."
  - rtx 6y ago
    >open for business With those who are open for business.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
devwastaken 6y ago
Any business with china is a national security issue. There's plenty of evidence to the level of dictatorship in China. It's your responsibility to look at its history and make reasonable conclusions from it. If you want some sort of smoking gun evidence you're not going to find it, unless you somehow have a security clearance in China good enough to gain knowledge about their operations. It's a Chinese company, they have privledges, not rights.
- yibg 6y ago
  Let’s not pretend this is anything other than just plain old geopolitics with TikTok caught in the middle. Going by “national security” reasons most countries should ban Facebook and google, not to mention amazon, Microsoft, oracle, Cisco etc. since the us government has already shown willingness and ability to spy on anything they can get their hands on, including foreign heads of state. Allowing US controlled social media and other tech companies is a huge risk. Of course power doesn’t balance that way so they don’t.
  - Retric 6y ago
    Many countries including China do block US companies on national security grounds. National security is very much a double edged sword.
    - yibg 6y ago
      Of course the US isn’t the only country that plays this game. The government also needs to justify it some how, and I don’t even blame them for that. But at least here we can stop pretending there is some sort of objective, consistently applied standard at play.
    - howlgarnish 6y ago
      US companies operating in China need to follow Chinese laws, including those on censorship. Google etc are blocked because they are hosted outside China, and are not willing to cooperate in China. What I find bizarre about the Tiktok ban is that they are being banned essentially on executive whim: as far as I can tell, there are no concrete allegations, much less evidence, that they're violating any US laws.
jahaja 6y ago
This whole shift to China as the new "enemy" is fascinating. Even though Trump is more or less mental, and is recognised as such, he has somehow managed to whip up this new cold war frenzy even among his opponents in the media. I can barely remember any focus on China before Trump. Not saying that there shouldn't be any but it's still interesting how this can spread to the entire country even if the author is an untrustworthy demagogue.
- MattGaiser 6y ago
  > I can barely remember any focus on China before Trump. Maybe not in the mass media, but the new cold war preceded Trump as an issue. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Asian_foreign_policy_of_the_Barack_Obama_administration#The_pivot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Asian_foreign_policy_of_t...
  - jahaja 6y ago
    Sure, but now it's at a level where arbitrarily banning Chinese products barely meet resistence from the opposition and media.
- pessimizer 6y ago
  Russia, Iran, and North Korea will be rotated back in again. The important thing is to maintain public support for increased defense expenditures.
  - fastball 6y ago
    Are you trying to imply that those countries aren't real enemies of the US and it's all just a war with Oceania? You should probably break the news to them, given their continued behavior I'm not sure they're aware it's all a front.
  - 082349872349872 6y ago
    For some value of "defense". Back when the US DOD was called Department of War, it had (at various times) flagged boots on the ground in china[1], north korea, and russia[2]. Iran, on the other hand, was a brit show up until Ajax (1953) or so: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran–United_Kingdom_relations#Pahlavi_era https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran–United_Kingdom_relations#... The US would not formally take the baton before ending Suez (1957). [1] In the lost opportunities department, General Wedemeyer on "who lost china?" (emphasis mine): > "If Uncle Sugar, Russia, and Britain united strongly in their endeavor to bring about a coalition of these two political parties [the Kuomintang and the Chinese Communist Party] in China by coercing both sides to make realistic concessions, serious post-war disturbance may be averted and timely effective military employment of all Chinese may be obtained against the Japanese. I use the term coercion advisedly because it is my conviction that continued appeals to both sides couched in polite diplomatic terms will not accomplish unification." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Coady_Wedemeyer#China-Burma-India_Command https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Coady_Wedemeyer#China-B... [2] thanks to burnaway's excellent search fu: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24490540 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24490540 I learned US propaganda in 1914-1918 had not only been officially going to russia, but also the then-white entities (where American Expeditionary Forces were operating) archangel and siberia.
causality0 6y ago
Read the replies from Chinese nationals on HN defending TikTok. Even they don't pretend you can say anything you want there. Their argument is "How much time would you really spend discussing Tiananmen or criticizing the CCP? Is it really worth losing contact with your friends or colleagues who use TikTok and WeChat?" In my opinion, absolutely. Stop it now before it gets too powerful to ban. WeChat already has 19 million US users.
- pessimizer 6y ago
  Are you pretending you can say anything you want on US owned social media? I still remember when Facebook censored an anti-wingsuit post. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12419313 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12419313
  - mondoshawan 6y ago
    There is a world of difference to the consequences here. One is content being taken down. The other is possible arrest, gulag, or dissapearance if you ever go to China.
- dvdkon 6y ago
  Maybe if freedom of speech on social media platforms is an issue (it is, in my opinion), there should be laws regulating it that would apply to any businesses operating in the US, not just ad-hoc executive orders of dubious objectiveness.
  - gabaix 6y ago
    That’s an excellent idea. The issue is there is also soft censorship through algorithm tweaking. A law like this should require third party auditing of the companies.
  - causality0 6y ago
    Personally I believe there should be a public alternative to most private internet services. An internet post office whose only rules are the laws of the United States. It's not going to happen, though. Google is too powerful.
onetimemanytime 6y ago
>>Are you uncomfortable adopting that belief with literally no concrete evidence that anything of the sort is actually occurring? OK, I'll assume that you are right. That will change the minute China decides to, and no Chinese court can intervene.
fastball 6y ago
You think there isn't evidence that China is already participating in information warfare at an unprecedented scale? US OpSec is terrible and it's still obvious.
sbmthakur 6y ago
There is evidence of WeChat being involved in building up PRC's censorship framework[1]. Comments from American citizens were used for this without their consent. It's not improbable that they are carrying out similar exercises on TikTok's data. 1. https://citizenlab.ca/2020/05/we-chat-they-watch/ https://citizenlab.ca/2020/05/we-chat-they-watch/
didibus 6y ago
> I don't know how you reconcile rule of law with such drastic interventions in the rights of companies without evidence of wrongdoing How far reaching does the rule of law go? Like the US is governed by rule of law, but when you bring in international elements, can all parties operate under rule of law ? It seems almost in this case that the argument made by the US is actually that TikTok is not governed under an agreed upon rule of laws. Such as it needing to share information with the CCP or having to comply to any other of their wishes. Also, rule of laws just means the laws define the regulations which apply equally to everyone (which means everyone that bought into the society which honors those laws). So the question here is, do the laws give the president the ability to block a foreign company in such situation? If not, then this should be blocked, though laws could be made to block the company as well, just not exclusively enacted by the president.
- sjy 6y ago
  > do the laws give the president the ability to block a foreign company in such situation? Yes, Congress has given the President the power to “regulate, direct and compel, nullify, void, prevent or prohibit, any acquisition, holding, withholding, use, transfer, withdrawal, transportation, importation or exportation of, or dealing in, or exercising any right, power, or privilege with respect to, or transactions involving, any property in which any foreign country or a national thereof has any interest by any person, or with respect to any property, subject to the jurisdiction of the United States” [1], “to deal with any unusual and extraordinary threat, which has its source in whole or substantial part outside the United States, to the national security, foreign policy, or economy of the United States, if the President declares a national emergency with respect to such threat” [2]. This is the power that Trump is purporting to exercise. [1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/50/1702 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/50/1702 [2] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/50/1701 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/50/1701
  - didibus 6y ago
    Do you know then on what grounds the judge enacted this block for now? The article is low on details.
DyslexicAtheist 6y ago
> with literally no concrete evidence we don't need the evidence for TikTok's case when we already have the evidence of what Facebook is capable of (think about their A/B testing people without ethical considerations to whether they can be made depressed by showing them certain posts ... or the many other ways US social media giants are now critical to shaping the political discourse outside of the US from the UK to Myanmar to Hungary ...) this isn't about hacking or 0days or even spying on Americans but about whether we allow them to control a machine that allows continuous manipulation of billions of people outside China. Letting a non-ally control a social media platform and what content billions of people around the world are fed (or NOT fed) is too much of a risk for the US. Ofc the US does it too but their logic is that they're the "good guys".
Invictus0 6y ago
Why does the government need to provide you with evidence? The government has access to intelligence that citizens do not have, and elected representatives must be trusted to manage that intelligence properly.

by zmmmmm 6y ago

oh_sigh 6y ago

National security is generally best when it is proactive, not reactive. If you think the CCP having this data could be a problem, you can't wait until they collect it all and use it in order to stop them. There is a reason laws like GDPR prevent even the mere collection of data, and don't wait until Google does something wrong with the data in order to stop them.

revnode 6y ago

> shutting down a company It's not a company. It's a division of a foreign government. That was the point being made. If it was an independent company, none of this would be happening.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
judge2020 6y ago
https://www.bytedance.com/en/#corporate-structure https://www.bytedance.com/en/#corporate-structure ByteDance Ltd. (Cayman) -> TikTok Ltd. (Cayman) -> TikTok LLC. (US) Legally it is indeed a company and not controlled by the CCP, but exactly how much of its US operations are conducted and directed by non-US citizens on non-US soil is unknown.
- jjulius 6y ago
  This post is going to be similar to my other two comments in this thread. First, it being incorporated in the Caymans is a technicality. ByteDance's headquarters are in Beijing[1] and they don't speak of a Cayman Islands office. In addition... > As with many Chinese companies, the company has an internal Chinese Communist Party committee serving the party members among the employees, with vice president Zhang Fuping serving as its Party Committee Secretary. It also has a strategic partnership with the Ministry of Public Security for the ministry's public relations efforts, and joint ventures with a state-run publisher in Beijing and media firm in Shanghai. ... It has garnered public attention over allegations that it worked with the Chinese Communist Party to censor and surveil content pertaining to Xinjiang re-education camps and other topics the Party deemed controversial. [2] [1] https://www.inputmag.com/culture/tiktok-weirdly-tries-to-suggest-its-not-a-chinese-company-as-it-brings-on-new-ceo/amp https://www.inputmag.com/culture/tiktok-weirdly-tries-to-sug... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ByteDance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ByteDance
  - MetalGuru 6y ago
    Why is this being downvoted?
- p1necone 6y ago
  Technically correct, but you're almost as guilty of being dishonest as the comment you're replying to saying it's "not a company". A lot of companies are incorporated in the Cayman Islands, or in Ireland, or other tax havens, but we don't generally refer to them as Cayman companies or Irish companies.
- IncRnd 6y ago
  Companies will regularly incorporate in low-tax jurisdictions, but that doesn't exactly make them headquartered in those areas, where they may actually do zero business. ByteDance Ltd. is a Chinese multinational internet technology company headquartered in Beijing. It was founded by Zhang Yiming in 2012. [1] TikTok's parent company ByteDance has sought permission from the Chinese government to export technology, Bloomberg reported Wednesday. ByteDance filed a request with the Beijing Municipal Commerce Bureau asking for approval to export its technology under restrictions recently implemented by the Chinese government, according to Bloomberg. [2] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ByteDance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ByteDance [2] https://www.businessinsider.com/bytedance-seeks-china-government-approval-tiktok-technology-export-us-deal-2020-9 https://www.businessinsider.com/bytedance-seeks-china-govern...
- eru 6y ago
  Google and Facebook etc also have lots of unAmerican citizens and operations on unAmerican soil.
- ipiz0618 6y ago
  Just because it is registered elsewhere doesn't mean it is not a Chinese company. Seriously, how can anyone think this is a valid argument? Do you think DouYin and TikTok originated from different companies?
bduerst 6y ago
Bytedance is not owned by the Chinese government. It's an independent company, as is TikTok.
- jjulius 6y ago
  > As with many Chinese companies, the company has an internal Chinese Communist Party committee serving the party members among the employees, with vice president Zhang Fuping serving as its Party Committee Secretary. It also has a strategic partnership with the Ministry of Public Security for the ministry's public relations efforts, and joint ventures with a state-run publisher in Beijing and media firm in Shanghai. ... It has garnered public attention over allegations that it worked with the Chinese Communist Party to censor and surveil content pertaining to Xinjiang re-education camps and other topics the Party deemed controversial. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ByteDance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ByteDance
  - Dahoon 6y ago
    Wikipedia is not a good source one way or the other.
    - Cthulhu_ 6y ago
      You're not citing a better source either agreeing or opposing the argument made though.
  - bduerst 6y ago
    Yes, for their TaoTiao subsidiary, not TikTok. It says right there in your link that Bytedance is legally a Cayman's Islands company.
p1necone 6y ago
> It's not a company. It's a division of a foreign government. Can you elaborate on this? As far as I can tell this is just not the case, and none of the people saying it are clarifying what they mean.
- Dig1t 6y ago
  If you examine ByteDance's structure technically, you are correct that it does look like just a regular company. But just about everything runs differently in China. All major companies in China have CCP party members on their boards who not only influence corporate policy, but are actually _deferred to_ on anything remotely political.[2][3] At the end of the day the party has the final say in any matters that it cares about. There's actually a fundamental difference that many westerners don't understand about China, and it comes from an ignorance of the country's history in my opinion: there is no real rule of law, there is the current will of the party[1]. Obviously there's a ton of whataboutism that you can misdirect here about how the US or other western countries don't follow their constitutions or whatever, but it is fundamentally different, as the differences in the CCP run very deep down to the daily lives of basically every citizen ("show me a warrant" does NOT fly in China, ever). TLDR; the CCP does whatever it wants whenever it wants, and is deeply ingrained in every major corporation at the highest levels. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_People%27s... [2] https://thediplomat.com/2019/12/politics-in-the-boardroom-the-role-of-chinese-communist-party-committees/ https://thediplomat.com/2019/12/politics-in-the-boardroom-th... [3] https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3045053/china-cements-communist-partys-role-top-its-soes-should https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3045053/c...
  - La1n 6y ago
    Source 3 is literally about state-owned companies, and would not apply at all...
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]

soared 6y ago

Devils advocate - there is no evidence that it isn’t already occurring in subtle ways. Russia’s strategy is sowing discord, which would be fairly easy if one government controls the algorithm deciding what media the other country’s citizens sees.

dvtrn 6y ago
Devils advocate - there is no evidence that it isn’t already occurring in subtle ways. This isn’t playing the “devil’s advocate” (which-the devil here does not need any advocacy) this is a request to prove a potential negative. Can we please retire the tactic of giving the devil representation in such a blatant and cavalier fashion?
- soared 6y ago
  Language adapts to common use, common use doesn’t adapt to linguistic rules. But I see your point.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
notatoad 6y ago
so is just saying the words "national security" enough for you to believe that this is justified? should the US government be allowed to block any private company from doing business just by saying those magic words, with no further justification? or just any foreign-owned company? or just any chinese company - if it's china, what makes china special? there's got to be some limitation on where you draw the line on the government exercising this absolute and arbitrary power, i'm curious where exactly it is. could they shut down twitter for national security reasons? what about shopify - they're canadian, and the government is already levying tariffs against canadian imports for national security reasons, so the national security threat is already justified. should they be able to ban shopify with no concrete justification beyond claiming it's a vague threat to national security?

jtdev 6y ago

Would you feel different if Russia or North Korea controlled TikTok?

deleted 6y ago

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MattGaiser 6y ago

In a country without any constraints on government behavior or rule of law beyond whatever the CCP decrees, Chinese entities have to be treated as organs of the Chinese Communist Party. https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/05/huawei-would-have-to-give-data-to-china-government-if-asked-experts.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/05/huawei-would-have-to-give-da...

IfOnlyYouKnew 6y ago
"Government", "administration", and "party" are all the same thing in China. So something like: "Huawei would be forced to hand over 5G data to the Chinese government if it was asked for it, because of national security laws, experts told CNBC." ...is really no different from the US, is it? And while China has lots of problems, citing a lack of "rule of law" in this context is rather brave. Also: if you believe everything called "communist party" is "communist", you definitely have to pay the beer at the next "RePUBlican Party" meeting.
- MattGaiser 6y ago
  > ...is really no different from the US, is it? It is enormously different in that it is judicially reviewable (if not in need of an outright warrant) and the USA is a country where there are limits on government. This post, specifically the "judge temporarily blocks" is proof that the USA is a fundamentally different country. > Also: if you believe everything called "communist party" is "communist", you definitely have to pay the beer at the next "RePUBlican Party" meeting. I have not commented on communism as a general topic at all. I am specifically talking about the entity named the Chinese Communist Party.
  - sudosysgen 6y ago
    Are there actually real limits on government in the US? If the Democrats and Republicans agreed that they wanted to do something, would anything stop them? The US government is already unconstitutionally doing what you say that judicial review prevents, and the partisan (by design) Supreme Court simply refuses to take the case. So much for judicial review. There is no check for power, only balances of power. And power in the US tends to agree on such things as much as power within the CCP.

homptydompty18 6y ago

Uh, welcome to international politics? Every country on Earth gives its executive some discretion when dealing with foreign powers. The idea that TikTok should have the same due process rights as American corporations is naive (putting it mildly).

IfOnlyYouKnew 6y ago
You're just making that up. "Rule of law" means you need to have a specific rule to govern government's action. The use of the catch-all "national security" justification here is in itself proof that nothing better exists in US law, or they would cite that. Among the free countries, I'm most familiar with the EU's laws: there are some provisions limiting, for example, acquisitions of land, mergers, and military technology to countries like China. But there's no "we don't like them" power. Those powers belong to a king, not a president. EU companies have explicit guarantees against discrimination in other EU countries, and most every trade agreement contains similar provision. I believe even WTO rules, which both China and the US are theoretically bound by, would exclude arbitrary bans.
arcticbull 6y ago
Nobody's saying the Americans can't do it. What I'm saying is it's largely hypocritical -- telling China they need to open up their markets to foreign businesses from America just the way Americans do for foreign entities, and then once a Chinese company becomes successful enough to garner the slightest bit of attention forcing a sale to an American company. It's exactly the thing America has been accusing China of doing for mandatory joint ventures. They can do it, by all means, however it further erodes the brand value of America on the world stage as "open for business."
- rtx 6y ago
  >open for business With those who are open for business.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]

devwastaken 6y ago

Any business with china is a national security issue. There's plenty of evidence to the level of dictatorship in China. It's your responsibility to look at its history and make reasonable conclusions from it. If you want some sort of smoking gun evidence you're not going to find it, unless you somehow have a security clearance in China good enough to gain knowledge about their operations. It's a Chinese company, they have privledges, not rights.

yibg 6y ago
Let’s not pretend this is anything other than just plain old geopolitics with TikTok caught in the middle. Going by “national security” reasons most countries should ban Facebook and google, not to mention amazon, Microsoft, oracle, Cisco etc. since the us government has already shown willingness and ability to spy on anything they can get their hands on, including foreign heads of state. Allowing US controlled social media and other tech companies is a huge risk. Of course power doesn’t balance that way so they don’t.
- Retric 6y ago
  Many countries including China do block US companies on national security grounds. National security is very much a double edged sword.
  - yibg 6y ago
    Of course the US isn’t the only country that plays this game. The government also needs to justify it some how, and I don’t even blame them for that. But at least here we can stop pretending there is some sort of objective, consistently applied standard at play.
  - howlgarnish 6y ago
    US companies operating in China need to follow Chinese laws, including those on censorship. Google etc are blocked because they are hosted outside China, and are not willing to cooperate in China. What I find bizarre about the Tiktok ban is that they are being banned essentially on executive whim: as far as I can tell, there are no concrete allegations, much less evidence, that they're violating any US laws.

jahaja 6y ago

This whole shift to China as the new "enemy" is fascinating. Even though Trump is more or less mental, and is recognised as such, he has somehow managed to whip up this new cold war frenzy even among his opponents in the media. I can barely remember any focus on China before Trump. Not saying that there shouldn't be any but it's still interesting how this can spread to the entire country even if the author is an untrustworthy demagogue.

MattGaiser 6y ago
> I can barely remember any focus on China before Trump. Maybe not in the mass media, but the new cold war preceded Trump as an issue. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Asian_foreign_policy_of_the_Barack_Obama_administration#The_pivot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Asian_foreign_policy_of_t...
- jahaja 6y ago
  Sure, but now it's at a level where arbitrarily banning Chinese products barely meet resistence from the opposition and media.
pessimizer 6y ago
Russia, Iran, and North Korea will be rotated back in again. The important thing is to maintain public support for increased defense expenditures.
- fastball 6y ago
  Are you trying to imply that those countries aren't real enemies of the US and it's all just a war with Oceania? You should probably break the news to them, given their continued behavior I'm not sure they're aware it's all a front.
- 082349872349872 6y ago
  For some value of "defense". Back when the US DOD was called Department of War, it had (at various times) flagged boots on the ground in china[1], north korea, and russia[2]. Iran, on the other hand, was a brit show up until Ajax (1953) or so: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran–United_Kingdom_relations#Pahlavi_era https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran–United_Kingdom_relations#... The US would not formally take the baton before ending Suez (1957). [1] In the lost opportunities department, General Wedemeyer on "who lost china?" (emphasis mine): > "If Uncle Sugar, Russia, and Britain united strongly in their endeavor to bring about a coalition of these two political parties [the Kuomintang and the Chinese Communist Party] in China by coercing both sides to make realistic concessions, serious post-war disturbance may be averted and timely effective military employment of all Chinese may be obtained against the Japanese. I use the term coercion advisedly because it is my conviction that continued appeals to both sides couched in polite diplomatic terms will not accomplish unification." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Coady_Wedemeyer#China-Burma-India_Command https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Coady_Wedemeyer#China-B... [2] thanks to burnaway's excellent search fu: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24490540 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24490540 I learned US propaganda in 1914-1918 had not only been officially going to russia, but also the then-white entities (where American Expeditionary Forces were operating) archangel and siberia.

causality0 6y ago

Read the replies from Chinese nationals on HN defending TikTok. Even they don't pretend you can say anything you want there. Their argument is "How much time would you really spend discussing Tiananmen or criticizing the CCP? Is it really worth losing contact with your friends or colleagues who use TikTok and WeChat?" In my opinion, absolutely. Stop it now before it gets too powerful to ban. WeChat already has 19 million US users.

pessimizer 6y ago
Are you pretending you can say anything you want on US owned social media? I still remember when Facebook censored an anti-wingsuit post. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12419313 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12419313
- mondoshawan 6y ago
  There is a world of difference to the consequences here. One is content being taken down. The other is possible arrest, gulag, or dissapearance if you ever go to China.
dvdkon 6y ago
Maybe if freedom of speech on social media platforms is an issue (it is, in my opinion), there should be laws regulating it that would apply to any businesses operating in the US, not just ad-hoc executive orders of dubious objectiveness.
- gabaix 6y ago
  That’s an excellent idea. The issue is there is also soft censorship through algorithm tweaking. A law like this should require third party auditing of the companies.
- causality0 6y ago
  Personally I believe there should be a public alternative to most private internet services. An internet post office whose only rules are the laws of the United States. It's not going to happen, though. Google is too powerful.

onetimemanytime 6y ago

>>Are you uncomfortable adopting that belief with literally no concrete evidence that anything of the sort is actually occurring? OK, I'll assume that you are right. That will change the minute China decides to, and no Chinese court can intervene.

fastball 6y ago

You think there isn't evidence that China is already participating in information warfare at an unprecedented scale? US OpSec is terrible and it's still obvious.

sbmthakur 6y ago

There is evidence of WeChat being involved in building up PRC's censorship framework[1]. Comments from American citizens were used for this without their consent. It's not improbable that they are carrying out similar exercises on TikTok's data. 1. https://citizenlab.ca/2020/05/we-chat-they-watch/ https://citizenlab.ca/2020/05/we-chat-they-watch/

didibus 6y ago

> I don't know how you reconcile rule of law with such drastic interventions in the rights of companies without evidence of wrongdoing How far reaching does the rule of law go? Like the US is governed by rule of law, but when you bring in international elements, can all parties operate under rule of law ? It seems almost in this case that the argument made by the US is actually that TikTok is not governed under an agreed upon rule of laws. Such as it needing to share information with the CCP or having to comply to any other of their wishes. Also, rule of laws just means the laws define the regulations which apply equally to everyone (which means everyone that bought into the society which honors those laws). So the question here is, do the laws give the president the ability to block a foreign company in such situation? If not, then this should be blocked, though laws could be made to block the company as well, just not exclusively enacted by the president.

sjy 6y ago
> do the laws give the president the ability to block a foreign company in such situation? Yes, Congress has given the President the power to “regulate, direct and compel, nullify, void, prevent or prohibit, any acquisition, holding, withholding, use, transfer, withdrawal, transportation, importation or exportation of, or dealing in, or exercising any right, power, or privilege with respect to, or transactions involving, any property in which any foreign country or a national thereof has any interest by any person, or with respect to any property, subject to the jurisdiction of the United States” [1], “to deal with any unusual and extraordinary threat, which has its source in whole or substantial part outside the United States, to the national security, foreign policy, or economy of the United States, if the President declares a national emergency with respect to such threat” [2]. This is the power that Trump is purporting to exercise. [1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/50/1702 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/50/1702 [2] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/50/1701 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/50/1701
- didibus 6y ago
  Do you know then on what grounds the judge enacted this block for now? The article is low on details.

DyslexicAtheist 6y ago

> with literally no concrete evidence we don't need the evidence for TikTok's case when we already have the evidence of what Facebook is capable of (think about their A/B testing people without ethical considerations to whether they can be made depressed by showing them certain posts ... or the many other ways US social media giants are now critical to shaping the political discourse outside of the US from the UK to Myanmar to Hungary ...) this isn't about hacking or 0days or even spying on Americans but about whether we allow them to control a machine that allows continuous manipulation of billions of people outside China. Letting a non-ally control a social media platform and what content billions of people around the world are fed (or NOT fed) is too much of a risk for the US. Ofc the US does it too but their logic is that they're the "good guys".

Invictus0 6y ago

Why does the government need to provide you with evidence? The government has access to intelligence that citizens do not have, and elected representatives must be trusted to manage that intelligence properly.