10 ms·
US Tech firms products are largely banned in China, closing off a market of 1bn+ - why should Chinese firms have unfettered access to the US?
by philjohn 4y ago
US Tech firms products are largely banned in China, closing off a market of 1bn+ - why should Chinese firms have unfettered access to the US?
- misnome 4y agoBecause the US isn't China?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- mrtksn 4y agoBecause China is not a good example to follow. It is a dystopian state with full control of what their citizens have access to. Why would you want to have your government to choose the apps for you?
- uoaei 4y agoThe world is composed of shades of grey.
- mrtksn 4y agoWhat shade of Pantone gray is the US government curating the AppStore?
- eternalban 4y agoThe shade that comes with shiny black boots happily goosestepping down Constitution Avenue NW.
- mardifoufs 4y agoWhat does that even mean? You think tiktok will lead to Chinese invasion? What a complete hyperbole, might as well restrict every civil liberty then since they will obviously all help our future Chinese invaders! Maybe I didn't understand your comment though.
- rootusrootus 4y agoI suspect OP was thinking it was the shiny black boots of the US Govt, not the Chinese.
- eternalban 4y ago> Maybe I didn't understand your comment though. Yes, you have misunderstood. GP asked what shade of gray goes with US gov running appstore. I responded with a fascist imagery - gray uniforms and black boots. [Those would be certain Americans wearing boots ..] I agree with GP that taking a totalitarian regime (CPC's China) as a role model is not the right choice for us, at all.
- mardifoufs 4y agoSorry about that! Completely missed the point. I agree with you fwiw.
- eternalban 4y agonp! judging by the reception /g it is possible many misread it as well.
- somrand0 4y agoyou need to pay whomever owns pantone a bunch of money to know that kind of thing this is now easier than ever through adobe cloud offerings! only 12 usd a month!
- FpUser 4y agoTo me it looks like shades of brown
- throwaway1777 4y agoHate to break it to you but lots of things are banned in the US for very good reasons.
- kube-system 4y agoWestern countries have always had trade restrictions on physical trade, why is digital trade different?
- somrand0 4y agobecause digital assets have a fundamental difference with material ones. I'm referring to how digital assets can be owned non-exclusively, i.e. we can both have the same data. In contrast material (or physical) assets are exclusive. Either I have it xOR you do, we cannot both own the same thing. Stocks (and other sophisticated goods) are interesting because they mean we each own a fraction of something, even when that object cannot actually be easily split. But notice how there's still a sense of exclusivity; the same stock cannot be owned by multiple people at the same time.
- kube-system 4y agoThat's just a general list of differences between physical and digital things. Trade restrictions on physical goods don't exist due to matters of ownership. > the same stock cannot be owned by multiple people at the same time. This may be an irrelevant tangent, but that's entirely untrue.
- somrand0 4y agoclearly I need to learn more about stock ownership; but that would require the opportunity to own stock. And I'm from a secondary/lower socioeconomic-tier from a 3rd tier (third world country). So those opportunities aren't readily available to me. regardless, the restrictions on trade of physical goods exists due to matters of ownership over government-level permissions (licenses?) for import/export, taxation, an other such kinds of things. It's ownership over whole countries; that's the ownership at play when considering digital trade restrictions.
- kube-system 4y agotrade restrictions exist for many other reasons than 'ownership': political reciprocity, agricultural security, product health and safety, national security, etc. When these types of products come through customs, it doesn't matter who owns them, they're prohibited because of the inherent qualities of the items themselves.
- jzmorganchase 4y agoif you believe China is a dystopian state why would a Chinese tech product that isn't even allowed in it's international form within China not itself "dystopian" imo the most dystopian thing about TikTok is the fact that China intentionally exports a highly addictive product that they don't allow their own people to use
- nequo 4y agoTikTok does exist in China. It is called Douyin. The reason that they have a separate service domestically is most likely not the addictiveness of it. From the introduction section of Wikipedia's article on TikTok: TikTok and Douyin have almost the same user interface but no access to each other's content. Their servers are each based in the market where the respective app is available.[11] The two products are similar, but their features are not identical. Douyin includes an in-video search feature that can search by people's faces for more videos of them and other features such as buying, booking hotels and making geo-tagged reviews.[12] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TikTok https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TikTok Edit: I see what you mean. For all intents and purposes, I stand corrected.
- jzmorganchase 4y agoThis is not true. The recent 60 minutes story specifically says the type of content is completely different because it is heavily moderated in China which is the total opposite of what we see in the US or elsewhere outside of China. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0j0xzuh-6rY&ab_channel=60Minutes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0j0xzuh-6rY&ab_channel=60Min...
- time_to_smile 4y agoI'm consistently surprised that many people in the tech community treat China as some unknowable country that we only get a few snippets of insight in from our media. If you work in tech, you most certainly have a few Chinese citizens as coworkers and colleagues. Talk to them about what life is like if you're curious, don't rely on "60 minutes". TikTok in China may be moderated but only to keep anything controversial from the government perspective off. I've seen this myth floating that somehow tiktok in China is much more wholesome, which is ridiculous. As far as the ill effects of social media, TikTok is arguably worse in China as it's almost entirely people trying to sell things and make a quick buck, flooded with get rich quick schemes and scams. All of the things mentioned in that 60 minutes video can be found in the US version of TikTok, there is plenty of educational content. The idea that everyone in China is watching scientific experiments on tiktok while its corrupting American youth is ridiculous.
- nell 4y agoIt then follows that you don't want a dystopian state to control the discourse of your citizens.
- AlbertCory 4y agoAh, it's the old slippery-slope argument again. I'm fine with banning all apps from countries that require their app-makers to share data with the government. If that requires an international treaty to codify when a company must share data (e.g. only with a criminal warrant), then great, let's do that. China would refuse to sign that treaty? Even better.
- vkou 4y agoSo, you will ban apps from ~all other countries.
- LarryMullins 4y agoCertainly Europe would be better off if they took this approach and banned all American apps. American techies have no respect for European privacy laws and will never faithfully follow the spirit of such laws, or even the letter.
- pjmlp 4y agoThe biggest issue with this is also needing to adopt OSes and programming languages that aren't controlled by US companies.
- LarryMullins 4y agoI think the longer they wait, the worse it will hurt. They're caught in a bramble bush and getting themselves unstuck is going to get them scratched up. But the longer they put off freeing themselves, the more the bramble grows around them. They should have done it years ago. They should do it now, before the "Trusted Computing" trap slams shut forever.
- jacooper 4y agoThey are smarter than a blanket ban, create rules that suite the EU, not just a blanket ban.
- 4y ago
- rhino369 4y agoIt's not free trade if its one way only. Banning one application (due to trade reasons) is not "full control" of what apps US citizens have access to.
- dr-detroit 4y ago
- _8j50 4y agoThis isn't following china but responding symmetrically to a hostile economic action. The government regulates commerce so just like they can ban Google from operating they can ban bytedance. If the apps you use only affected you, I wouldn't care bur China is using this information as a strategic intelligence source to influence and harm american economic and political entities.
- onlyrealcuzzo 4y agoWhen you make up 25% of the global population - it's pretty hard for companies to compete when 25% of the global market is locked out. The idea that we can allow China to ban all non-Chinese companies and then let Chinese companies "freely compete" with other global companies is insane, and I'm not sure why it's been going on for 30 years. I guess because China was starting from so far behind that it took 20+ years for any Chinese companies to get to a point they are literal threats to western companies. If we follow down this path of allowing China to gate access to 25% of the world and having our companies compete with theirs - there will mostly only be Chinese companies left... That sounds infinitely more dystopian to me.
- mensetmanusman 4y agoIt’s not following, it’s tit-for-tat in game theory which can pressure your partner to behave better.
- Aunche 4y agoEnforcing trade agreements isn't the same as censorship. Having said that, this legislation does seem like it's more about censorship than trade.
- finikytou 4y agoit makes sense. I always thought the US were the closest country to china in terms of censorship and lack of human rights
- blsapologist42 4y agoTikTok is suddenly a human right now? Someone better tell the UN.
- largepeepee 4y agoYou know it's a weak argument when it starts with "but China does it, so we can too"
- kube-system 4y agoIt's not a rationale, it's a commonly used trade strategy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reciprocity_(international_relations) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reciprocity_(international_rel...
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- lesuorac 4y agomrtksn/OP [1] is arguing that you shouldn't just do a tit-for-tat ban on China. You should figure out what part of what the Chinese apps are doing that you don't like and ban that behavior. Otherwise this year its Tik-Tok from China and next year it's Click-Clock from UAE. Instead ban a behavior and you don't have to play whack-a-mole with countries/apps. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33971695 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33971695
- FpUser 4y agoFrom what I read they basically want a blanked ban on social media apps from China, Russia etc.
- _jal 4y agoTit-for-tat with an authoritarian regime is a bad idea on several dimensions. A far better reason is that a nasty authoritarian regime is using Tiktok to gather intelligence in anticipation of doing nastier things. Just one example: one of the obvious things to do with Tiktok data would be to correlate it with the OPM hack[1]. Who knows what kind of insights into people's character you might find? I'm sure a trained handler who actually understands their capabilities can come up with far more interesting uses than that. And note that in that context, stopping US citizens from foreign exploitation is a legitimate role for government. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Personnel_Management_data_breach https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Personnel_Management...
- babypuncher 4y agoBecause we don't want to be an authoritarian hellhole?
- iancmceachern 4y agoMovies too
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- kelseyfrog 4y agoBecause it would distort the market for digital identity information even more? When it comes to commodifying online behavior and selling it in digital marketplaces we need less market interference, not more.
- nova22033 4y agoChina banning US social media is bad for Chinese citizens. US banning any social media is bad for US citizens. TBH, I'm more worried about the rights of US citizens.
- mnw21cam 4y ago> US banning any social media is bad for US citizens [Citation needed]
- LarryMullins 4y ago> China banning US social media is bad for Chinese citizens. "China banning US opium is bad for Chinese citizens"
- dirtyid 4y agoUltimately US tech firms didn't make effort to follow PRC regulations while PRC tech firms tries to follow US regulations. If goal is to kick PRC platforms out of US i.e. when current rules doesn't generate desired outcome, change the rules to at least uphold the pretense that US cares about "rules based order". It's an optics issue. If US wants to ban tiktok, better to proceed via a less authoritarian lawfare route, because unilateral sanctions (which even PRC hasn't done on US platforms) are more likely to invite blowback down the line when other countries want to curtail US platforms in the future. But short term it's the optics, US going HAM on sanctions/export controls, especially ones that affect rest of world - which I'm guessing longterm goal is to get TikTok off Android/iOS - makes US behaviour much worse than PRC in terms of extraterritorial shenanigans.
- aeyes 4y agoIs that really true? I am pretty sure that as long as the data is in China and your tech doesn't connect to other countries you are free to use US tech to do business in China. I think this is how Google and Uber did it when they operated in China, they used the same code but had different infra. Which is why this seems quite strange to me because TikTok China content doesn't show up on the western TikTok because they are completely separate.
- standardUser 4y agoKeeping our markets open is the American way and it's how the US became the preeminent trading nation and the cornerstone and chief architect of the global economic system. The US always pushes hard for other nations to open their markets as well (for better or worse), but it also leads by example.
- cma 4y agoA different take: https://www.amazon.com/Kicking-Away-Ladder-Development-Perspective/dp/1843310279 https://www.amazon.com/Kicking-Away-Ladder-Development-Persp...
- chaostheory 4y agoIt’s a bad argument when China has blocked most foreign companies from entering its domestic market. Why can’t we block their companies from operating in our market?
- standardUser 4y agoI don't think that is a totally different take. I don't buy the narrative that there was some conspiracy, I just think that business and political leaders in Western nations truly thought what they were doing was right, both for themselves and for developing nations. No conspiracy necessary when self-interest and arrogance explain it sufficiently. Haven't read the book though, so I don't know how conspiratorial their take actually is. The nations that best bucked the trend were the Eastern Asian nations that engaged in protectionist policies despite the desires of the West. Much like China continues to do today.
- LarryMullins 4y ago"America" in the abstract has benefited immensely from free trade, but the average American has not. Wealth inequality has never been worse.
- bitshiftfaced 4y agoIncome and wealth inequality, but some studies have shown that consumption inequality hasn't changed much, and that the trend is the opposite when you look at leisure time inequality.
- UltraViolence 4y ago
- KMag 4y ago> Zuckerberg even married an ethnic Chinese woman in order to get a leg up on accessing the Chinese market. Do you have a credible citation for this, or are you making an assumption that there would be no more compelling reasons for Zuck to marry someone who's ethnically Chinese? (Asking for my ethnically 3/4 Chinese wife, my cousin's ethnically Chinese husband, and plenty of other European/Chinese mixed ancestry marriages in my social circle.)
- LarryMullins 4y agoI think that claim is probably not true; they met in college many years before business in China was realistically on Zuckerberg's radar. However it is certainly true that Zuckerberg has sucked up to the CCP, going so far ask to ask Xi Jinping to name his unborn child. Nauseating servility on a personal level. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/china-s-president-xi-jinping-turns-down-mark-zuckerberg-s-request-to-name-his-unborn-child-at-white-house-dinner-a6679156.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/china-s-president-...
- KMag 4y agoIn addition, ethnicity wouldn't gain him any measurable leverage. His wife or his in-laws would need to be senior party members in order for a political marriage to have any advantage. As a gweilo who lived 10 years in Hong Kong, roughly half the time single and half the time married, my perception is that speaking Canto/Mandarin is a much better leg up than marrying someone who looks local. (Funny, though, conversations with strangers would generally start with Canto being spoken to my wife, who would give a blank look and point to me, and I'd reply in Mandarin, followed by the stranger speaking Mandarin at my wife while I replied in Mandarin and occasionally dropped English bread crumbs for my wife. So many people just found it too awkward to speak Mandarin with a gweilo and preferred to speak Mandarin at my obviously-non-comprehending wife. That being said, I have a deep affection for Hong Kong and its residents, and it's pretty easy to get around just speaking English.)
- RobotToaster 4y agoThey were mostly banned because they refused to follow Chinese law, what US law has TikTok refused to follow? Apple for instance follows Chinese law, and does a lot of business there. America loves to talk about the "rule of law", but will just ban anything that competes with it's MIC controlled platforms.
- blsapologist42 4y agoWhat other platforms has the US banned exactly? Apple is not a social media company so it's not a good comparison.