4 ms·
Why are we even letting Chinese internet companies freely compete in US markets when US companies are de facto forbidden from operating in China? At minimum, a
by alfalfasprout 3y ago
Why are we even letting Chinese internet companies freely compete in US markets when US companies are de facto forbidden from operating in China? At minimum, a requirement of reciprocity should be in place before we even consider allowing mainland Chinese tech companies to operate here.
TikTok isn't even novel either. Before TikTok there were Vine and Musicly. Removing TikTok isn't speech suppression since other platforms can easily take their place.
- yorwba 3y agoUS citizens are allowed to access Chinese social media even though Chinese citizens are not allowed to access US social media because the Chinese government is oppressing their people and trying to prevent them from accessing foreign information sources, whereas the US government is not yet oppressing their people in the same manner (and constitutionally forbidden from doing so). It sounds unfair from the perspective of companies wanting a right to market access, but companies do not have rights, people do. People's right to freely choose where they get their information from trumps companies' non-existent right to have the government shut out their competitors.
- alfalfasprout 3y agoYou need a Chinese phone # or ID to create a Bilibili or Douyin account.
- dirtyid 3y ago>a requirement of reciprocity Reciprocity is there - follow PRC media filtering (read censorship) laws. There's a reason google and facebook both had internal projects to engineer PRC compliance to reenter PRC before internal corporate dissesnt shut it down. The only reason western platforms were booted from PRC in first place was not censoring calls for violence / terroism post 2009 minority riots because muh freedom of speech, but actually because following PRC filtering requirements = onerous moderation (read expensive) that every PRC platform had to follow (and pay for). Few years later western platforms get roasted for radicalization/violence and realized PRC was precient in social media censorship and forced to adopt their own bulk moderation systems and realize some tweaks can get them back in PRC market. Like if US wants genuine reciprocity, just do a JV like in PRC that favours US interests. Even PRC hasn't implemented something as bold as a force sale or "ban" for largely following domestic PRC laws.
- thenthenthen 3y agoPlenty of US companies and their datacenters in China (Gui’an new area, Guiyang, Guizhou province). Apple, Microsoft, IBM.
- pessimizer 3y agoUS social networks can operate in China if they follow Chinese censorship laws. Chinese social networks can operate in the US if they follow US censorship law. What the US is doing is creating special laws, or even acting extrajudicially, to attack a Chinese social network for behavior that it fails to condemn in US social networks. The punchline is that it amounts to a bill of attainder, so in order to avoid that criticism, they're going to create censorship laws for all media and simply promise to selectively enforce them.
- GamerUncle 3y agoWhile meta is quite horrible the behavior lol and what TikTok does is way way worse and specially different from what facebook twitter or Insta try to do.
- alfalfasprout 3y agoOh please. Even companies that have widely complied with Chinese laws have been pushed out quickly. The reality is it's not at all like you describe.