4 ms·

I feel like they could have done this by creating a bill saying that US social media companies must be given the same access and freedoms to the Chinese market

I feel like they could have done this by creating a bill saying that US social media companies must be given the same access and freedoms to the Chinese market as TikTok has to ours. It would put the onus back on the CCP, they would never allow it and they would get TikTok banned in the US without being the ones to directly ban it. I am sure someone smarter than I can tell me why this is not a viable strategy.

somedude895 4y ago
Because market access is not the reason they're banning it. It wouldn't be very believable to now act like it's about a different issue than national security. You'd basically be saying "if you give us market access, then we'll let you spy on our citizens." In a democracy you get the types of discussions that we've been seeing about TikTok, so that door's shut now. This sort of "trickery" only really works for authoritarian countries, where the discourse is exclusively behind doors.
- bigmattystyles 4y ago
  Washington operates on fig leaves and I feel like the market access argument is an overcoat.
- hellojesus 4y ago
  It doesn't seem like they're shooting on our citizens to me. Rather it seems US citizens are voluntarily giving the CCP their data. It's no secret that apps collect data. It's how they exist! Each American with it installed has made the decision to give the app creators their data, which means that anyone that wants the data can get it from the app creators. Why are we blaming China for the deciduous of individuals?
dirtyid 4y ago
Because US/western social media has same market access to PRC... all they have to do is follow PRC regulations. Literally why FB and Google had internal projects to engineer compliant products to re-enter PRC market, but killed due to internal dissent. The narrative that PRC bans US platforms was always cope. Google pulled out because they didn't like dissidents being hacked, when operationally and eventually they should be cooperating on data sharing at PRC gov requests like in US. FB/Twitter got booted post 2009 minority riots for not complying to filtering (censorship) requirements on inciting violence that every PRC platform had built large and onerously expensive moderation teams to fulfill. Simply wasn't worth the headache for what little market share they had, and it wasn't until western platforms got hammered into improving their own moderation pipelines due to social media incited violence that they started thinking bout re-entering PRC. There's a reason Microsoft outlasted them for almost a decade until they also said fuck this to regulation and optics costs. Sure the game is rigged for domestic incumbants, it's not PRC's fault FB/Google employees killed efforts to move back into PRC, or that the SV was drunk on free speech (cheap moderation) until western society realized (but won't admit) PRC regulators were prescient. Forward to today, somehow TikTok operating in US while compliant to US laws managed outcompeted US platforms. At this point even putting the finger down on some sort of joint venture like Oracle proposal, like how icloud in PRC is under domestic management (a very PRC solution) isn't enough to tip scales back to domestic incumbents. Hence bill to ban, or divest, which to be clear, even PRC hasn't resorted to because they already had regulations to limit influence / scope of US platforms. Playing "fair" is not viable anymore because TikToks is too big, as is the associated risk, so nothing left but nuclear option because TikTok won playing fair.
- gman83 4y ago
  But China actively blocks all US social media companies, right? The social media companies aren't the ones blocking Chinese users from joining. They just don't operate any offices in China.
  - jpgvm 4y ago
    They aren't prevented from entering the market but their existing products are banned because they don't abide by PRC censorship and data sharing requirements. The post you are replying to explains this in detail. Google, Facebook, etc all either had products in China or planned products in China but all voluntarily withdrew for various reasons. I imagine low market share vs domestic services was probably the largest reason. Remember that as soon as you release a service in the West a Chinese clone will spring forth almost instantly. That clone will be much more Chinese then your eventual adaption and as such will you likely struggle to compete with it. Worse yet said clone is probably built by either Alibaba or Tencent both of which have armies of extremely smart engineers, near unlimited cash to sink into new ventures and a near duopoly on the ecosystems necessary to thrive in China. At the end of the day the Chinese market is just incredibly tough and Western companies (perhaps rightly) don't think it's worth the effort.
    - insane_dreamer 4y ago
      > Google, Facebook, etc all either had products in China or planned products in China but all voluntarily withdrew for various reasons. I imagine low market share vs domestic services was probably the largest reason. No, Google withdrew because it refused to continue censoring results (and this was back before censorship become much more pervasive, in the 2010s). It wasn't a monopoly like in the US but had a good 30% market share (which in China is a lot). FB, which started later, never even got started in China because censorship of individual posts -- even worse than censoring search results -- would have caused an uproar with FB's user base in the US/Europe.
    - HDThoreaun 4y ago
      This isn't really true though... Companies that operate in China need to be run by a chinese national. So the government forces companies to create a chinese shell even if they don't have any chinese executives they like. This is how the ARM craziness happened where a rouge executive took over the company for year.
chimeracoder 4y ago
> I feel like they could have done this by creating a bill saying that US social media companies must be given the same access and freedoms to the Chinese market as TikTok has to ours. If you read the bill, it's very transparent that it's not about market access, and that it's not specific to China. It explicitly names five other countries and also authorizes the Secretary of Commerce to include any country that they feel is an adversary to "national security" interests.
- bigmattystyles 4y ago
  Yes, that's my point, I disagree with the approach and justification they took.
agilob 4y ago
Please quantify access and freedoms.
- bigmattystyles 4y ago
  Be free to post the equivalent of `Fuck Joe Biden` but about Xi or other leaders without any fear of repercussion. Be free to critique without fear of being disappeared.
  - theaussiestew 4y ago
    This is a warped perspective of censorship in China. Many people do post things like that and they’re completely fine. No one ever got “disappeared” for criticism of the government or complaining about corruption. In fact, I don’t think disappearing is even a thing, it’s more like if you want to subvert the government then you’ll get a visit from the police telling you to pipe down. But if you’re complaining about government performance then you’ll get a free pass. You can Google protests in China and there are hundreds of videos showing mass protests over various topics. What is happening in China isn’t some caricature of Winston getting brainwashed in 1984 - these kinds of stereotypes are frankly disturbing and indicates that the opinion holder has no real relationships with anyone in China. If anything, the US is the real oligarchic dystopia. The passing of the Patriot Act and this bill would only be confirmation of that. If only people could read Chinese and browse the Chinese web, then they would see the much more mundane reality for themselves.
    - bigmattystyles 4y ago
      https://www.npr.org/2021/12/29/1068696336/hong-kong-police-raid-pro-democracy-news-outlet-arrest-6 https://www.npr.org/2021/12/29/1068696336/hong-kong-police-r...
  - agilob 4y ago
    This still isn't quantification of anything.
atlasunshrugged 4y ago
I agree, but it's not a viable strategy because Congress doesn't have jurisdiction over what China does and does not allow in their country. So you would then have no trade, but in what categories? Does it include software for vehicles, a major market for Detroit automakers? Does it include software like Oracle? It's just not that clean to have tit for tat reciprocity

somedude895 4y ago

Because market access is not the reason they're banning it. It wouldn't be very believable to now act like it's about a different issue than national security. You'd basically be saying "if you give us market access, then we'll let you spy on our citizens." In a democracy you get the types of discussions that we've been seeing about TikTok, so that door's shut now. This sort of "trickery" only really works for authoritarian countries, where the discourse is exclusively behind doors.

bigmattystyles 4y ago
Washington operates on fig leaves and I feel like the market access argument is an overcoat.
hellojesus 4y ago
It doesn't seem like they're shooting on our citizens to me. Rather it seems US citizens are voluntarily giving the CCP their data. It's no secret that apps collect data. It's how they exist! Each American with it installed has made the decision to give the app creators their data, which means that anyone that wants the data can get it from the app creators. Why are we blaming China for the deciduous of individuals?

dirtyid 4y ago

Because US/western social media has same market access to PRC... all they have to do is follow PRC regulations. Literally why FB and Google had internal projects to engineer compliant products to re-enter PRC market, but killed due to internal dissent. The narrative that PRC bans US platforms was always cope. Google pulled out because they didn't like dissidents being hacked, when operationally and eventually they should be cooperating on data sharing at PRC gov requests like in US. FB/Twitter got booted post 2009 minority riots for not complying to filtering (censorship) requirements on inciting violence that every PRC platform had built large and onerously expensive moderation teams to fulfill. Simply wasn't worth the headache for what little market share they had, and it wasn't until western platforms got hammered into improving their own moderation pipelines due to social media incited violence that they started thinking bout re-entering PRC. There's a reason Microsoft outlasted them for almost a decade until they also said fuck this to regulation and optics costs. Sure the game is rigged for domestic incumbants, it's not PRC's fault FB/Google employees killed efforts to move back into PRC, or that the SV was drunk on free speech (cheap moderation) until western society realized (but won't admit) PRC regulators were prescient. Forward to today, somehow TikTok operating in US while compliant to US laws managed outcompeted US platforms. At this point even putting the finger down on some sort of joint venture like Oracle proposal, like how icloud in PRC is under domestic management (a very PRC solution) isn't enough to tip scales back to domestic incumbents. Hence bill to ban, or divest, which to be clear, even PRC hasn't resorted to because they already had regulations to limit influence / scope of US platforms. Playing "fair" is not viable anymore because TikToks is too big, as is the associated risk, so nothing left but nuclear option because TikTok won playing fair.

gman83 4y ago
But China actively blocks all US social media companies, right? The social media companies aren't the ones blocking Chinese users from joining. They just don't operate any offices in China.
- jpgvm 4y ago
  They aren't prevented from entering the market but their existing products are banned because they don't abide by PRC censorship and data sharing requirements. The post you are replying to explains this in detail. Google, Facebook, etc all either had products in China or planned products in China but all voluntarily withdrew for various reasons. I imagine low market share vs domestic services was probably the largest reason. Remember that as soon as you release a service in the West a Chinese clone will spring forth almost instantly. That clone will be much more Chinese then your eventual adaption and as such will you likely struggle to compete with it. Worse yet said clone is probably built by either Alibaba or Tencent both of which have armies of extremely smart engineers, near unlimited cash to sink into new ventures and a near duopoly on the ecosystems necessary to thrive in China. At the end of the day the Chinese market is just incredibly tough and Western companies (perhaps rightly) don't think it's worth the effort.
  - insane_dreamer 4y ago
    > Google, Facebook, etc all either had products in China or planned products in China but all voluntarily withdrew for various reasons. I imagine low market share vs domestic services was probably the largest reason. No, Google withdrew because it refused to continue censoring results (and this was back before censorship become much more pervasive, in the 2010s). It wasn't a monopoly like in the US but had a good 30% market share (which in China is a lot). FB, which started later, never even got started in China because censorship of individual posts -- even worse than censoring search results -- would have caused an uproar with FB's user base in the US/Europe.
  - HDThoreaun 4y ago
    This isn't really true though... Companies that operate in China need to be run by a chinese national. So the government forces companies to create a chinese shell even if they don't have any chinese executives they like. This is how the ARM craziness happened where a rouge executive took over the company for year.

chimeracoder 4y ago

> I feel like they could have done this by creating a bill saying that US social media companies must be given the same access and freedoms to the Chinese market as TikTok has to ours. If you read the bill, it's very transparent that it's not about market access, and that it's not specific to China. It explicitly names five other countries and also authorizes the Secretary of Commerce to include any country that they feel is an adversary to "national security" interests.

bigmattystyles 4y ago
Yes, that's my point, I disagree with the approach and justification they took.

agilob 4y ago

Please quantify access and freedoms.

bigmattystyles 4y ago
Be free to post the equivalent of `Fuck Joe Biden` but about Xi or other leaders without any fear of repercussion. Be free to critique without fear of being disappeared.
- theaussiestew 4y ago
  This is a warped perspective of censorship in China. Many people do post things like that and they’re completely fine. No one ever got “disappeared” for criticism of the government or complaining about corruption. In fact, I don’t think disappearing is even a thing, it’s more like if you want to subvert the government then you’ll get a visit from the police telling you to pipe down. But if you’re complaining about government performance then you’ll get a free pass. You can Google protests in China and there are hundreds of videos showing mass protests over various topics. What is happening in China isn’t some caricature of Winston getting brainwashed in 1984 - these kinds of stereotypes are frankly disturbing and indicates that the opinion holder has no real relationships with anyone in China. If anything, the US is the real oligarchic dystopia. The passing of the Patriot Act and this bill would only be confirmation of that. If only people could read Chinese and browse the Chinese web, then they would see the much more mundane reality for themselves.
  - bigmattystyles 4y ago
    https://www.npr.org/2021/12/29/1068696336/hong-kong-police-raid-pro-democracy-news-outlet-arrest-6 https://www.npr.org/2021/12/29/1068696336/hong-kong-police-r...
- agilob 4y ago
  This still isn't quantification of anything.

atlasunshrugged 4y ago

I agree, but it's not a viable strategy because Congress doesn't have jurisdiction over what China does and does not allow in their country. So you would then have no trade, but in what categories? Does it include software for vehicles, a major market for Detroit automakers? Does it include software like Oracle? It's just not that clean to have tit for tat reciprocity