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US House passes bill to ban TikTok if owners won't divest

104 points by anigbrowl 3y ago

PeterHolzwarth 3y ago
Not always a popular sentiment, but I don't really mind treating a country's companies as that country treats ours. I know this TikTok issue is far more nuanced (who the backers/owners are, how data is treated etc) of course.
- Mindless2112 3y ago
  You don't even have to go that far. TikTok isn't available in China. (There's a Chinese app that's similar, but it isn't TikTok.)
  - api 3y ago
    They realize that engagement farming not-actually-social media is toxic brain rot.
    - mschuster91 3y ago
      It's more like, they don't want any place on the Internet that's a social network allowing uncensored exchange between Chinese people and the Western sphere of influence.
      - krapp 3y ago
        When they do it, it's totalitarian. But when we do it, it's merely sensible policy.
        kelnos 3y ago
        I'm really tired of arguments like this. The US (and West as a whole) are not a bunch of angels, of course. But the kind of censorship, state-mandated propaganda, and market control you see from China is not even remotely comparable to the situation in the West. Equating the two is at best uninformed, at worst disingenuous or actively malicious.
        krapp 3y ago
        Not yet, but this is an obvious step in the same direction, "banning" a social media platform to prevent exposure to foreign ideas. It's difficult not to assume the motives are similar, a need to control political narratives and manufacture consent for American policy.
        api 3y ago
        I don’t need TikTok for foreign ideas. I see them everywhere. For example while I don’t buy them I have absolutely heard the Russian arguments for Ukraine. You can find complete texts of every Putin speech online, not to mention thinkers like Alexandr Dugin. The Internet is absolutely boiling over with both pro and anti Israel arguments and propaganda too. You almost can’t even avoid it. If the powers that be don’t want me seeing arguments against US policy they are doing an awful job. The TikTok thing is about two things: trade unfairness and how it leverages addiction to push propaganda. Both points are valid, but the latter applies just as well to all modern social media.
        ajmurmann 3y ago
        To add to this: owning the platform and controlling what gets amplified is very different than posting information on someone else's platform which also is different from posting the information and disclosing your affiliation. I'm pretty sure we could easily get a strong consensus that there is zero issue in an official CCP account posting official CCP positions on Twitter or Facebook.
        seanmcdirmid 3y ago
        Isn't that just a slippery slope fallacy in its most pure form?
        krapp 3y ago
        Arguments to the effect that TikTok gives the Chinese government direct control over the minds of millions of Americans and that they plan to use it to corrupt and destroy America seem far more slippery and fallacious to me. No one cared about any of this until recently. I remember when the consensus on HN was that TikTok was a quirky platform that reminded people of the authenticity and creativity of the old web. Now all of a sudden people are talking about TikTok with the dreadful hyperbole they might use for nuclear bombs or chemical weapons. My instinct is to assume I'm being manipulated, and not by the red menace everyone tells me to fear.
      - bdjsiqoocwk 3y ago
        Very good observation, I wonder if that's exactly how they think.
    - jokethrowaway 3y ago
      I think it's the actual content. Tiktok promotes mental illness, fake influencer tricks and stupid dances, Douyin promotes heroic 3 year olds cooking eggs with chopsticks on a giant wok for their sick brothers.
      - hulitu 3y ago
        > Tiktok promotes mental illness, fake influencer tricks and stupid dances You should see Youtube. /s
- willcipriano 3y ago
  It's suspicious in this single instance to suddenly care about reciprocity, having never really had a concern in the decades prior. These people would audibly gasp if you suggested in their presence that tariffs should be equal to what China taxes US firms. Why this? Why now?
  - karaterobot 3y ago
    Say more about this. I can't figure out what this means. Are you referring to the person you're responding to, or to Congress? I don't know about the parent commenter, but trade wars and economic punishments seem to be in Congress' toolbox already!
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    > tariffs should be equal to what China taxes US firms We’ve been in a trade war with China for 6 years [1]. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/China%E2%80%93United_States_trade_war https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/China%E2%80%93United_States_...
    - willcipriano 3y ago
      "We"? that was more of a DJT thing, he was lambasted for it, the security state wanted TPP. They call stepping away from it a mistake.
      - brigadier132 3y ago
        TPP was a strategy to counter China's growing influence, it wouldn't have benefited them.
        willcipriano 3y ago
        Been a lot of high minded "strategy" like that. Hasn't really been working out. I don't think China's influence was growing, ours is just shrinking, you can only lose so many wars to farmers before people stop taking you seriously. Also, I don't how you have a TPP with a country that you don't allow to own a website.
- _akhe 3y ago
  China bans sites & apps from the West that violate their laws - the ad tracking, monitoring, censorship & influencer/fake news we have here... the funding schemes and market monopolizing that companies like Facebook do in the West is just not legal there. Can you blame them for not wanting it? Companies that don't violate Chinese laws and approach China with realistic deals are allowed to operate there - you can play WoW in China because unlike Facebook it's not involved in censorship, severe privacy violations etc. and Blizzard actually worked with China (NetEase) to bring their product to market there instead of crying and trying to stoke WW3 in the news like our social media companies are doing. Just because Facebook and Google can do whatever they want unchecked in America and its vassal the EU, doesn't mean other countries have to allow it. The West just wants to counter-block Chinese apps like TikTok in retaliation for them upholding their own rule of law.
  - peter422 3y ago
    Are you suggesting that censorship is more is an issue in the west than in China?
  - PeterHolzwarth 3y ago
    Some of those laws are "you can't buy that company of ours, even tho we own lots of yours."
  - SpaghettiCthulu 3y ago
    China recently forced Apple to remove Signal from the App Store. What reasonable Chinese law did that app violate?
    - pessimizer 3y ago
      You added the word "reasonable" because you knew it was a bad argument and you wanted to find a way to make it subjective. You prefer to argue about what you think is reasonable.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
- mindslight 3y ago
  I don't really mind that per se. What I do mind is the government letting domestic companies run roughshod over the population with surveillance/influence for the past few decades, and then when a significant enough foreign company finally does it, focusing on that foreign company while continuing to ignore the longstanding deeper problem. Rather than focusing on TikTok, how about a general solution of a US GDPR plus anti-trust enforcement (or even additional regulation) to stop this widespread bundling of client apps with publishing services? Then people would have the right to inspect/delete records TikTok keeps about them, independent clients for TikTok would have a toggle of whether to show recommendations provided by the TikTok service, and the US government would have a much stronger case to go after TikTok if they didn't comply with either general legal requirement.
  - rightbyte 3y ago
    I for one miss this type of humour. It is dead. Mailing list humour is dead. Chain mail humour is dead. The book is a 200 page rant. Like, it is beutuful that someone can care so much.
    - rightbyte 3y ago
      Ops wrong post.
  - 2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
    > how about a general solution of a US GDPR plus anti-trust enforcement I'd agree if such a solution was also being considered and would take the same amount of time. How long do you think it would take to write and pass such a bill? I think it would take so long to be essentially a useless diversion. It's an idea that people would push who never want any of these changes because it sounds like a viable alternative but it's impossible in practice.
    - mindslight 3y ago
      The best time to plant a shade tree was twenty years ago. The second best time is today. And realpolitik, I get that both parties work for and benefit from the corporations in their own ways, and aren't too keen on legislation that protects individual rights at the expense of corporate control. I just hate the blatant hypocrisy - this TikTok situation has only come about due to the past two+ decades of regulatory abdication.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- gklitz 3y ago
  I can see what you mean. Europe should force the US to divest from Facebook and have it transferred fully to European owners.
  - brigadier132 3y ago
    The US is following a tit for tat strategy. Which European companies has the US forced to divest their holdings to justify the action you're proposing?
    - mschuster91 3y ago
      I remember the Nord Stream saga, where the US (or, at least a few senators) threatened to sanction a harbor if it would not cease to provide support for pipelayer ships [1]. I mean, in hindsight the US were completely right in their position towards NS, but it's a prime example of the US being not afraid to go even against allied countries. [1] https://www.dw.com/en/us-sanctions-nord-stream-2-gas/a-54565504 https://www.dw.com/en/us-sanctions-nord-stream-2-gas/a-54565...
    - nearbuy 3y ago
      Which US companies has China forced to divest their holdings?
      - brigadier132 3y ago
        To operate in China you need to partner with local businesses and give up 50% of the local business. Also many American businesses are simply banned and were effectively forced to divest to recover funds.
      - kelnos 3y ago
        Probably none, or very few, but the reason for that is China doesn't allow local companies to be majority-owned by foreign entities in the first place. Another, somewhat equivalent answer to your question is, "all of them".
        3y ago
- maxglute 3y ago
  Reciprocity would be US mandating a joint venture JV structure like in PRC aka the TikTok Oracle proposal that fell through. Issue is US is uniquly delusional in thinking they can force a foreign company to divest. PRC isn't going around ordering local Boeing/Microsoft branch to divest from US. Or not delusional since they know PRC wouldn't let TIkTok to divest would open up forced divestitures as viable strategy. Hence these TikTok bills efforts are defacto bans. It's just like coming PRC EV ban, this isn't about reciprocity. It's about US finding out too late that of their inability to compete. PRC EV companies would love JV setup in states, where local US JV partners provide billions in various subsidies like land, tax credits, political muscling etc because they know they can still make cars cheaper. Local JV's aren't just there to rent seek they have to do serious facilitation work. Eitherway, US will do what she does, TikTok mostly foreign owned anyways, it won't hurt PRC that much. We'll just have to see which US MNC PRC will force to divest to "leave" in response. The other consideration is does TikTok get to migrate all their US data after they leave? If not, would WFOE Tesla Shanhai get to keep their capital equipment when they get kicked out.
  - kelnos 3y ago
    I don't think it's delusional, I think it's intentional. The people writing and backing this bill are fully aware that the sale is not going to happen. The sale provision is merely there so Congress can say they're being reasonable, that they're not trying to take TikTok away from the millions of people in the US that use it. That if it ends up having to be banned, that's on China for not accepting the "reasonable" alternative that was presented to them. Whether or not most TikTok users in the US will buy this bit of malarkey is another questions.
  - 2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BAE_Systems_Inc.#Corporate_governance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BAE_Systems_Inc.#Corporate_gov... > As per its Special Security Arrangement, BAE Systems Inc. operates as a semi-autonomous business unit within BAE Systems controlled at a local level by American management. In May 2006 the CEO of BAE Systems described the "firewalled" status of BAE Systems Inc: "The British members of the corporate leadership, me included, get to see the financial results; but many areas of technology, product and programme are not visible to us.... The SSA effectively allows us to operate in the US as an American company, providing the highest levels of assurance and integrity in some of the most sensitive fields of national security provision."
- kelnos 3y ago
  Yeah, I'm actually somewhat sympathetic to this move (and it surprises me somewhat that I feel this way). I think the only actual problem here is that the US government waited until a third to a half of the country was hooked on TikTok before taking action. The bigger issue is PR and optics, and weathering a backlash from those users when they can't use TikTok anymore. If TikTok was an obscure app that a few hundred thousand (or even a couple million) people used, most people wouldn't think this ban would be a problem. (Granted, if it were that small, it wouldn't've provoked all this scrutiny in the first place.) China doesn't give foreigners meaningful access to their markets (and when they do, it comes with a pile of restrictions, including on ownership structure); arguably we should not do the same. The whole "let's expose China to Western values and they'll open up and become a democracy" thing failed miserably. Still, on a fundamental level, this all feels uncomfortable.
  - maeil 3y ago
    > China doesn't give foreigners meaningful access to their markets (and when they do, it comes with a pile of restrictions, including on ownership structure); Unlimited access to any bit of IP of the company that at any point finds itself within China's borders seems like the biggest limitation.
  - rchaud 3y ago
    What ownership structures do Apple and Tesla have to abide by China?
- danielscrubs 3y ago
  Instead of US competing with TikTok they should just take it because that is what China does? Do we really want to become China? How can people trust that we are an innovative hub if this is how we operate?
  - bastawhiz 3y ago
    > they should just take it Tiktok will not become state-owned/run by the US.
    - danielscrubs 3y ago
      Force to sell it, and the owners should be in US or something like this can happen again. The state then has data access. I get what you mean but it is just splitting hairs at this point.
      - bastawhiz 3y ago
        > The state then has data access. The state already has data access, if the data is in the US. If the data isn't in the US, then why don't we have data locality laws like the EU and India? If the data is already in another country then why do we let another state have access to the data of US citizens? > How can people trust that we are an innovative hub if this is how we operate? Because it puts them on the exact same situation as every US company. You can call it splitting hairs, but they already have a US entity that's already subject to US laws and orders. The US's ability to access their data doesn't change (unless they've been storing user data in mainland China, which is kind of damning for them). Forcing divestment doesn't give the US any legal leverage. And if companies are worried they'll become worth billions of dollars and become popular with every American youth and have a bespoke act of Congress force one of their many owners to divest, frankly I think they've got their priorities in the wrong place.
- eviks 3y ago
  Censorship is always a pretty popular sentiment, as well as conflating governments with their subjects, pardon, citizens. That's one of the reasons similar measures get passed
jnovek 3y ago
I’m not comfortable with this. I understand that TikTok may represent a national security concern but it’s also a platform that younger generations use for protected speech. What’s the message that we’re sending to this group?
- Johnny555 3y ago
  I think the message is: "The government only wants your personal data harvested by American companies so they can monitor that data"
  - NickC25 3y ago
    I think the message actually is "The government only wants your personal data harvested by companies that aren't run by an enterprise operated by actors from a hostile foreign government which itself is hellbent on taking America's place in the global economic and soft power hierarchy"
    - usrnm 3y ago
      So competition is suddenly a bad thing when you're losing? Okay
      - NickC25 3y ago
        from the POV of the incumbent, yes, competition is a bad thing when you are losing. The US government doesn't want a foreign country in control of the communication platform its youth are using. The Chinese government doesn't want that, either.
      - IncreasePosts 3y ago
        If it was about competition, a lot more things from China would be banned already.
  - jkestner 3y ago
    That's the problem I have with this, that Congress is banning a company instead of the practice they're supposedly worried about. But how else is the FBI supposed to spy on us? I mean, besides the renewed and expanded FISA Section 702, and also illegally.
wnevets 3y ago
> Chew added that 60% of ByteDance is owned by global institutional investors such as the Carlyle Group, General Atlantic and Susquehanna International Group, while 20% of the firm is owned by Zhang and 20% owned by employees around the world. [1] https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/18/tech/tiktok-bytedance-china-ownership-intl-hnk/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/18/tech/tiktok-bytedance-china-o...
- dragonelite 3y ago
  I hope so much the US bans it and those big capital houses are forced to sell their stock for pennies on the dollar to Chinese shareholders. It will be epic.
Leary 3y ago
Hahaha, this won't survive even intermediate scrutiny of the First Amendment. Tiktok really lucked out that Congress is not smart enough to pass the bill Cantwell had in mind.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  > Tiktok really lucked out that Congress is not smart enough to pass the bill Cantwell had in mind This is literally the bill rewritten with Cantwell’s input.
c-smile 3y ago
Politics aside, how that in principle is different from "hostile takeover" (https://www.investopedia.com/terms/h/hostiletakeover.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/h/hostiletakeover.asp) ?
- cynicalsecurity 3y ago
  Nice try, but politics can be just put aside. Today you ignore politics, tomorrow it's banging at your door with an automatic rifle. The matters of national security have always been more important than economic freedom, everywhere in the world. Chinese authoritarian government doesn't allow American companies to freely operate in China, but they want freedom for the Chinese companies in the West? That's a little hypocritical, don't you think?
  - guntars 3y ago
    Which is also why national security (and think of the children) is used to justify whatever they feel like. Any mention of either turns off the critical thinking parts for a large fraction of the population.
  - Gormo 3y ago
    > Chinese authoritarian government doesn't allow American companies to freely operate in China, but they want freedom for the Chinese companies in the West? That's a little hypocritical, don't you think? Not really, no. Our government operates under our constitution, not China's.
elfbargpt 3y ago
I'm surprised this passed (in the house at least) at this point in the election cycle. My suspicion is that ByteDance will in fact refuse to divest, and TikTok will get banned. Which I don't think the electorate will like very much
- flappyeagle 3y ago
  My suspicion is that they will try to divest but the CCP will refuse to let them do it. Thus proving the point behind the bill.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- blowsand 3y ago
  Agreed. It is rather alienating to a demographic and large numbers of business owners that both parties desperately want to connect with. I kind of think this will churn in the courts for a long time, and achieve only ill will.
- C6JEsQeQa5fCjE 3y ago
  > I'm surprised this passed (in the house at least) at this point in the election cycle AIPAC is willing to sacrifice Biden's re-election chances for this short-term victory because the other candidate and his whole party is also going to be favourable for them, possibly even more so.
  - sgent 3y ago
    Not sure what AIPAC has to do with this. The tiktok bill was brought up as a separate measure, just voted on the same day.
    - tharmas 3y ago
      Tiktok has videos of the effects of the war in Gaza. Young people watch these videos. Hence young people don't support Israel.
tharmas 3y ago
[flagged]
dumdumdumdum 3y ago
chad-xi-do-nothing-win.jpg
1vuio0pswjnm7 3y ago
Just ban it outright.
jacooper 3y ago
If it was actually about privacy, they should've passed a privacy bill, but nah, it's just about making sure only U.S. companies can spy on their users, not others, also killing the only competition for Meta.
mancerayder 3y ago
It's an interesting experiment for the government. Is there another large (forget massive) social platform, heavily geared towards the young, that was banned and the users trickled into another platform? I can't think of an instance of this. I don't see how it won't succeed, if they cut off monetizing the posts.. I guess, what happens if someone's wearing a sponsor's t-shirt and makes a plug in the middle of their rant about someone who put their feet on the back of their airline seat?
- BlueTemplar 3y ago
  Tumblr's ban of adult content ? (And let's not kid ourselves, teenagers were using it too.)
  - Der_Einzige 3y ago
    Tumblr was the home for fujoshi girls, a demographic which is most highly represented in the high school anime club.
kgdiem 3y ago
This is really difficult for me. I have an app that is available in every country except for China because it isn’t allowed to be published there. In that vein it seems fair and probably doesn’t go far enough — Chinese citizens are free to publish whatever they want in the US while we’re severely restricted on conducting trade in China. On the other hand, I’d love access to that market and would prefer trade negotiations rather than tit for tat disputes like this that won’t further the interests of American businesses (outside of Meta and Snapchat) The app https://dailydao.app https://dailydao.app
- CBarkleyU 3y ago
  The West was greedy and saw a trillion dollar opportunity in welcoming China into the WTO in 2000 and gave China massive leeway (this is my opinion, and probably not a majority opinion). In my opinion (only speaking for Germany, as I follow mostly the politics here) nobody was very keen on asking questions and making demand when the Chinese were producing our shit for pennies on the dollar but buying our premium Mercedes Benz S Classes Long Lines (and similar high technology products) by the millions. Who would've thunk that the turntables would've, well turned... I'm not blaming China for this btw, they played their hand very well
  - mrjin 3y ago
    There would no problems at all if China continues to make shirts, shoes etc... But China started to make some high end stuff, such as Computers, and it did those so well that it could probably render US competitors irrelevant in the next a couple of decades. So all drama started.
    - _chu1 3y ago
      No, it hasn't. Never seen anything relatively nice from a Chinese company, even when it's another one of their piles of manure with a different name like OnePlus.
      - chaos_emergent 3y ago
staticman2 3y ago
Why are the Hacker News comments on this so different than when this topic came up a few years ago? I feel like a few years ago this site was inundated with posts arguing largely "Anyone anywhere on earth should be able to do business in the U.S. and own U.S. subsidary companies, no exceptions." These seem largely absent today.
- pcdoodle 3y ago
  As HN garners eyeballs and also being an election year, I would suppose PR elements would bleed through the comments. I started coming here about 5-8 years ago because of the comments section usually having insider or wicked smart people and their viewpoints. You did the right thing by asking this question. It might be downvoted but we can all see something and say something.
- Am4TIfIsER0ppos 3y ago
  Who was president a few years ago? Who was banning it a few years ago?
  - Jensson 3y ago
    Yeah, political opinions change so much just by having a different person doing them.
- filoleg 3y ago
  > These seem largely absent today. I still hold the same stance today, but I am just tired of arguing for it on HN. I noticed the same thing with the prevailing opinion on the issue changing on HN as well. However, it wasnt because there are better arguments for the ban now or some new relevant info got discovered that would affect it. Nope, it literally devolved into tit-for-tat arguments only, except this pretty much makes the US lose any high ground here. For people who dont see how maintaining the high ground in this specific scenario[0] is very advantageous and cheap for the US, I don’t have much to add that wasnt already discussed to death in all the previous HN threads on this. P.S. It sucks I even feel the need to say this, but no, I dont support the chinese government and have zero affiliation with it whatsoever (at least none that I am aware of lol). I do have a lot of respect for the country itself and their people. However, my respect for the country and their people is not relevant to my opinions on absolutely anything related to policymaking. 0. No, I dont believe in this approach for every scenario ever involving the US and China. Of course, I do believe in reciprocal trade sanctions and tarrifs. I dont believe in those nearly as much when it comes to the digital realm, and especially not when it is something like TikTok.
jarjar2_ 3y ago
This is a good thing. What nations and governments, along with individuals have been to do with OSINT is pretty stunning. https://www.wired.com/story/strava-heat-map-military-bases-fitness-trackers-privacy/ https://www.wired.com/story/strava-heat-map-military-bases-f... That was just data Strava was releasing publicly. The raw data collection from TikTok contains much more than that. Think in terms of all branches of military and government messaging each other perfectly blackmailable things and then automating analysis of that. Byte Dance says that China doesn't have access to the data and that it hasn't been accessed, but from what I've read they have a party office at the company in China. I simply don't trust a foreign adversary with the amount of data that one of these social platforms generates. Neither does China which is why a large number of services operated in China are hosted on Chinese servers run by local subsidiaries, with vastly different and far more permissive laws when it comes to government/intelligence/law enforcement (all one and the same there) accessing that data. Hopefully that critical thinking can transfer to what's being done by American companies and intelligence agencies with user data and we can get some actual data privacy legislation at some point and enshrine a law preventing from inserting backdoors in everything that moves.
sarimkx 3y ago
The real reason is here folks https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/04/02/younger-americans-stand-out-in-their-views-of-the-israel-hamas-war/ https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/04/02/younger-a... All independent journalists have said this is ONLY because of Gaza. Trying to suppress young people's opinions i.e. Free speech.

104 points by anigbrowl 3y ago

Not always a popular sentiment, but I don't really mind treating a country's companies as that country treats ours. I know this TikTok issue is far more nuanced (who the backers/owners are, how data is treated etc) of course.

Mindless2112 3y ago
You don't even have to go that far. TikTok isn't available in China. (There's a Chinese app that's similar, but it isn't TikTok.)
- api 3y ago
  They realize that engagement farming not-actually-social media is toxic brain rot.
  - mschuster91 3y ago
    It's more like, they don't want any place on the Internet that's a social network allowing uncensored exchange between Chinese people and the Western sphere of influence.
    - krapp 3y ago
      When they do it, it's totalitarian. But when we do it, it's merely sensible policy.
      - kelnos 3y ago
        I'm really tired of arguments like this. The US (and West as a whole) are not a bunch of angels, of course. But the kind of censorship, state-mandated propaganda, and market control you see from China is not even remotely comparable to the situation in the West. Equating the two is at best uninformed, at worst disingenuous or actively malicious.
        krapp 3y ago
        Not yet, but this is an obvious step in the same direction, "banning" a social media platform to prevent exposure to foreign ideas. It's difficult not to assume the motives are similar, a need to control political narratives and manufacture consent for American policy.
        api 3y ago
        I don’t need TikTok for foreign ideas. I see them everywhere. For example while I don’t buy them I have absolutely heard the Russian arguments for Ukraine. You can find complete texts of every Putin speech online, not to mention thinkers like Alexandr Dugin. The Internet is absolutely boiling over with both pro and anti Israel arguments and propaganda too. You almost can’t even avoid it. If the powers that be don’t want me seeing arguments against US policy they are doing an awful job. The TikTok thing is about two things: trade unfairness and how it leverages addiction to push propaganda. Both points are valid, but the latter applies just as well to all modern social media.
        ajmurmann 3y ago
        To add to this: owning the platform and controlling what gets amplified is very different than posting information on someone else's platform which also is different from posting the information and disclosing your affiliation. I'm pretty sure we could easily get a strong consensus that there is zero issue in an official CCP account posting official CCP positions on Twitter or Facebook.
        seanmcdirmid 3y ago
        Isn't that just a slippery slope fallacy in its most pure form?
        krapp 3y ago
        Arguments to the effect that TikTok gives the Chinese government direct control over the minds of millions of Americans and that they plan to use it to corrupt and destroy America seem far more slippery and fallacious to me. No one cared about any of this until recently. I remember when the consensus on HN was that TikTok was a quirky platform that reminded people of the authenticity and creativity of the old web. Now all of a sudden people are talking about TikTok with the dreadful hyperbole they might use for nuclear bombs or chemical weapons. My instinct is to assume I'm being manipulated, and not by the red menace everyone tells me to fear.
    - bdjsiqoocwk 3y ago
      Very good observation, I wonder if that's exactly how they think.
  - jokethrowaway 3y ago
    I think it's the actual content. Tiktok promotes mental illness, fake influencer tricks and stupid dances, Douyin promotes heroic 3 year olds cooking eggs with chopsticks on a giant wok for their sick brothers.
    - hulitu 3y ago
      > Tiktok promotes mental illness, fake influencer tricks and stupid dances You should see Youtube. /s
willcipriano 3y ago
It's suspicious in this single instance to suddenly care about reciprocity, having never really had a concern in the decades prior. These people would audibly gasp if you suggested in their presence that tariffs should be equal to what China taxes US firms. Why this? Why now?
- karaterobot 3y ago
  Say more about this. I can't figure out what this means. Are you referring to the person you're responding to, or to Congress? I don't know about the parent commenter, but trade wars and economic punishments seem to be in Congress' toolbox already!
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  > tariffs should be equal to what China taxes US firms We’ve been in a trade war with China for 6 years [1]. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/China%E2%80%93United_States_trade_war https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/China%E2%80%93United_States_...
  - willcipriano 3y ago
    "We"? that was more of a DJT thing, he was lambasted for it, the security state wanted TPP. They call stepping away from it a mistake.
    - brigadier132 3y ago
      TPP was a strategy to counter China's growing influence, it wouldn't have benefited them.
      - willcipriano 3y ago
        Been a lot of high minded "strategy" like that. Hasn't really been working out. I don't think China's influence was growing, ours is just shrinking, you can only lose so many wars to farmers before people stop taking you seriously. Also, I don't how you have a TPP with a country that you don't allow to own a website.
_akhe 3y ago
China bans sites & apps from the West that violate their laws - the ad tracking, monitoring, censorship & influencer/fake news we have here... the funding schemes and market monopolizing that companies like Facebook do in the West is just not legal there. Can you blame them for not wanting it? Companies that don't violate Chinese laws and approach China with realistic deals are allowed to operate there - you can play WoW in China because unlike Facebook it's not involved in censorship, severe privacy violations etc. and Blizzard actually worked with China (NetEase) to bring their product to market there instead of crying and trying to stoke WW3 in the news like our social media companies are doing. Just because Facebook and Google can do whatever they want unchecked in America and its vassal the EU, doesn't mean other countries have to allow it. The West just wants to counter-block Chinese apps like TikTok in retaliation for them upholding their own rule of law.
- peter422 3y ago
  Are you suggesting that censorship is more is an issue in the west than in China?
- PeterHolzwarth 3y ago
  Some of those laws are "you can't buy that company of ours, even tho we own lots of yours."
- SpaghettiCthulu 3y ago
  China recently forced Apple to remove Signal from the App Store. What reasonable Chinese law did that app violate?
  - pessimizer 3y ago
    You added the word "reasonable" because you knew it was a bad argument and you wanted to find a way to make it subjective. You prefer to argue about what you think is reasonable.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
mindslight 3y ago
I don't really mind that per se. What I do mind is the government letting domestic companies run roughshod over the population with surveillance/influence for the past few decades, and then when a significant enough foreign company finally does it, focusing on that foreign company while continuing to ignore the longstanding deeper problem. Rather than focusing on TikTok, how about a general solution of a US GDPR plus anti-trust enforcement (or even additional regulation) to stop this widespread bundling of client apps with publishing services? Then people would have the right to inspect/delete records TikTok keeps about them, independent clients for TikTok would have a toggle of whether to show recommendations provided by the TikTok service, and the US government would have a much stronger case to go after TikTok if they didn't comply with either general legal requirement.
- rightbyte 3y ago
  I for one miss this type of humour. It is dead. Mailing list humour is dead. Chain mail humour is dead. The book is a 200 page rant. Like, it is beutuful that someone can care so much.
  - rightbyte 3y ago
    Ops wrong post.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
  > how about a general solution of a US GDPR plus anti-trust enforcement I'd agree if such a solution was also being considered and would take the same amount of time. How long do you think it would take to write and pass such a bill? I think it would take so long to be essentially a useless diversion. It's an idea that people would push who never want any of these changes because it sounds like a viable alternative but it's impossible in practice.
  - mindslight 3y ago
    The best time to plant a shade tree was twenty years ago. The second best time is today. And realpolitik, I get that both parties work for and benefit from the corporations in their own ways, and aren't too keen on legislation that protects individual rights at the expense of corporate control. I just hate the blatant hypocrisy - this TikTok situation has only come about due to the past two+ decades of regulatory abdication.
deleted 3y ago
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gklitz 3y ago
I can see what you mean. Europe should force the US to divest from Facebook and have it transferred fully to European owners.
- brigadier132 3y ago
  The US is following a tit for tat strategy. Which European companies has the US forced to divest their holdings to justify the action you're proposing?
  - mschuster91 3y ago
    I remember the Nord Stream saga, where the US (or, at least a few senators) threatened to sanction a harbor if it would not cease to provide support for pipelayer ships [1]. I mean, in hindsight the US were completely right in their position towards NS, but it's a prime example of the US being not afraid to go even against allied countries. [1] https://www.dw.com/en/us-sanctions-nord-stream-2-gas/a-54565504 https://www.dw.com/en/us-sanctions-nord-stream-2-gas/a-54565...
  - nearbuy 3y ago
    Which US companies has China forced to divest their holdings?
    - brigadier132 3y ago
      To operate in China you need to partner with local businesses and give up 50% of the local business. Also many American businesses are simply banned and were effectively forced to divest to recover funds.
    - kelnos 3y ago
      Probably none, or very few, but the reason for that is China doesn't allow local companies to be majority-owned by foreign entities in the first place. Another, somewhat equivalent answer to your question is, "all of them".
      - 3y ago
maxglute 3y ago
Reciprocity would be US mandating a joint venture JV structure like in PRC aka the TikTok Oracle proposal that fell through. Issue is US is uniquly delusional in thinking they can force a foreign company to divest. PRC isn't going around ordering local Boeing/Microsoft branch to divest from US. Or not delusional since they know PRC wouldn't let TIkTok to divest would open up forced divestitures as viable strategy. Hence these TikTok bills efforts are defacto bans. It's just like coming PRC EV ban, this isn't about reciprocity. It's about US finding out too late that of their inability to compete. PRC EV companies would love JV setup in states, where local US JV partners provide billions in various subsidies like land, tax credits, political muscling etc because they know they can still make cars cheaper. Local JV's aren't just there to rent seek they have to do serious facilitation work. Eitherway, US will do what she does, TikTok mostly foreign owned anyways, it won't hurt PRC that much. We'll just have to see which US MNC PRC will force to divest to "leave" in response. The other consideration is does TikTok get to migrate all their US data after they leave? If not, would WFOE Tesla Shanhai get to keep their capital equipment when they get kicked out.
- kelnos 3y ago
  I don't think it's delusional, I think it's intentional. The people writing and backing this bill are fully aware that the sale is not going to happen. The sale provision is merely there so Congress can say they're being reasonable, that they're not trying to take TikTok away from the millions of people in the US that use it. That if it ends up having to be banned, that's on China for not accepting the "reasonable" alternative that was presented to them. Whether or not most TikTok users in the US will buy this bit of malarkey is another questions.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BAE_Systems_Inc.#Corporate_governance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BAE_Systems_Inc.#Corporate_gov... > As per its Special Security Arrangement, BAE Systems Inc. operates as a semi-autonomous business unit within BAE Systems controlled at a local level by American management. In May 2006 the CEO of BAE Systems described the "firewalled" status of BAE Systems Inc: "The British members of the corporate leadership, me included, get to see the financial results; but many areas of technology, product and programme are not visible to us.... The SSA effectively allows us to operate in the US as an American company, providing the highest levels of assurance and integrity in some of the most sensitive fields of national security provision."
kelnos 3y ago
Yeah, I'm actually somewhat sympathetic to this move (and it surprises me somewhat that I feel this way). I think the only actual problem here is that the US government waited until a third to a half of the country was hooked on TikTok before taking action. The bigger issue is PR and optics, and weathering a backlash from those users when they can't use TikTok anymore. If TikTok was an obscure app that a few hundred thousand (or even a couple million) people used, most people wouldn't think this ban would be a problem. (Granted, if it were that small, it wouldn't've provoked all this scrutiny in the first place.) China doesn't give foreigners meaningful access to their markets (and when they do, it comes with a pile of restrictions, including on ownership structure); arguably we should not do the same. The whole "let's expose China to Western values and they'll open up and become a democracy" thing failed miserably. Still, on a fundamental level, this all feels uncomfortable.
- maeil 3y ago
  > China doesn't give foreigners meaningful access to their markets (and when they do, it comes with a pile of restrictions, including on ownership structure); Unlimited access to any bit of IP of the company that at any point finds itself within China's borders seems like the biggest limitation.
- rchaud 3y ago
  What ownership structures do Apple and Tesla have to abide by China?
danielscrubs 3y ago
Instead of US competing with TikTok they should just take it because that is what China does? Do we really want to become China? How can people trust that we are an innovative hub if this is how we operate?
- bastawhiz 3y ago
  > they should just take it Tiktok will not become state-owned/run by the US.
  - danielscrubs 3y ago
    Force to sell it, and the owners should be in US or something like this can happen again. The state then has data access. I get what you mean but it is just splitting hairs at this point.
    - bastawhiz 3y ago
      > The state then has data access. The state already has data access, if the data is in the US. If the data isn't in the US, then why don't we have data locality laws like the EU and India? If the data is already in another country then why do we let another state have access to the data of US citizens? > How can people trust that we are an innovative hub if this is how we operate? Because it puts them on the exact same situation as every US company. You can call it splitting hairs, but they already have a US entity that's already subject to US laws and orders. The US's ability to access their data doesn't change (unless they've been storing user data in mainland China, which is kind of damning for them). Forcing divestment doesn't give the US any legal leverage. And if companies are worried they'll become worth billions of dollars and become popular with every American youth and have a bespoke act of Congress force one of their many owners to divest, frankly I think they've got their priorities in the wrong place.
eviks 3y ago
Censorship is always a pretty popular sentiment, as well as conflating governments with their subjects, pardon, citizens. That's one of the reasons similar measures get passed

jnovek 3y ago

I’m not comfortable with this. I understand that TikTok may represent a national security concern but it’s also a platform that younger generations use for protected speech. What’s the message that we’re sending to this group?

Johnny555 3y ago
I think the message is: "The government only wants your personal data harvested by American companies so they can monitor that data"
- NickC25 3y ago
  I think the message actually is "The government only wants your personal data harvested by companies that aren't run by an enterprise operated by actors from a hostile foreign government which itself is hellbent on taking America's place in the global economic and soft power hierarchy"
  - usrnm 3y ago
    So competition is suddenly a bad thing when you're losing? Okay
    - NickC25 3y ago
      from the POV of the incumbent, yes, competition is a bad thing when you are losing. The US government doesn't want a foreign country in control of the communication platform its youth are using. The Chinese government doesn't want that, either.
    - IncreasePosts 3y ago
      If it was about competition, a lot more things from China would be banned already.
- jkestner 3y ago
  That's the problem I have with this, that Congress is banning a company instead of the practice they're supposedly worried about. But how else is the FBI supposed to spy on us? I mean, besides the renewed and expanded FISA Section 702, and also illegally.

wnevets 3y ago

> Chew added that 60% of ByteDance is owned by global institutional investors such as the Carlyle Group, General Atlantic and Susquehanna International Group, while 20% of the firm is owned by Zhang and 20% owned by employees around the world. [1] https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/18/tech/tiktok-bytedance-china-ownership-intl-hnk/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/18/tech/tiktok-bytedance-china-o...

dragonelite 3y ago
I hope so much the US bans it and those big capital houses are forced to sell their stock for pennies on the dollar to Chinese shareholders. It will be epic.

Leary 3y ago

Hahaha, this won't survive even intermediate scrutiny of the First Amendment. Tiktok really lucked out that Congress is not smart enough to pass the bill Cantwell had in mind.

JumpCrisscross 3y ago
> Tiktok really lucked out that Congress is not smart enough to pass the bill Cantwell had in mind This is literally the bill rewritten with Cantwell’s input.

c-smile 3y ago

Politics aside, how that in principle is different from "hostile takeover" (https://www.investopedia.com/terms/h/hostiletakeover.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/h/hostiletakeover.asp) ?

cynicalsecurity 3y ago
Nice try, but politics can be just put aside. Today you ignore politics, tomorrow it's banging at your door with an automatic rifle. The matters of national security have always been more important than economic freedom, everywhere in the world. Chinese authoritarian government doesn't allow American companies to freely operate in China, but they want freedom for the Chinese companies in the West? That's a little hypocritical, don't you think?
- guntars 3y ago
  Which is also why national security (and think of the children) is used to justify whatever they feel like. Any mention of either turns off the critical thinking parts for a large fraction of the population.
- Gormo 3y ago
  > Chinese authoritarian government doesn't allow American companies to freely operate in China, but they want freedom for the Chinese companies in the West? That's a little hypocritical, don't you think? Not really, no. Our government operates under our constitution, not China's.

elfbargpt 3y ago

I'm surprised this passed (in the house at least) at this point in the election cycle. My suspicion is that ByteDance will in fact refuse to divest, and TikTok will get banned. Which I don't think the electorate will like very much

flappyeagle 3y ago
My suspicion is that they will try to divest but the CCP will refuse to let them do it. Thus proving the point behind the bill.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
blowsand 3y ago
Agreed. It is rather alienating to a demographic and large numbers of business owners that both parties desperately want to connect with. I kind of think this will churn in the courts for a long time, and achieve only ill will.
C6JEsQeQa5fCjE 3y ago
> I'm surprised this passed (in the house at least) at this point in the election cycle AIPAC is willing to sacrifice Biden's re-election chances for this short-term victory because the other candidate and his whole party is also going to be favourable for them, possibly even more so.
- sgent 3y ago
  Not sure what AIPAC has to do with this. The tiktok bill was brought up as a separate measure, just voted on the same day.
  - tharmas 3y ago
    Tiktok has videos of the effects of the war in Gaza. Young people watch these videos. Hence young people don't support Israel.

tharmas 3y ago

[flagged]

dumdumdumdum 3y ago

chad-xi-do-nothing-win.jpg

1vuio0pswjnm7 3y ago

Just ban it outright.

jacooper 3y ago

If it was actually about privacy, they should've passed a privacy bill, but nah, it's just about making sure only U.S. companies can spy on their users, not others, also killing the only competition for Meta.

mancerayder 3y ago

It's an interesting experiment for the government. Is there another large (forget massive) social platform, heavily geared towards the young, that was banned and the users trickled into another platform? I can't think of an instance of this. I don't see how it won't succeed, if they cut off monetizing the posts.. I guess, what happens if someone's wearing a sponsor's t-shirt and makes a plug in the middle of their rant about someone who put their feet on the back of their airline seat?

BlueTemplar 3y ago
Tumblr's ban of adult content ? (And let's not kid ourselves, teenagers were using it too.)
- Der_Einzige 3y ago
  Tumblr was the home for fujoshi girls, a demographic which is most highly represented in the high school anime club.

kgdiem 3y ago

This is really difficult for me. I have an app that is available in every country except for China because it isn’t allowed to be published there. In that vein it seems fair and probably doesn’t go far enough — Chinese citizens are free to publish whatever they want in the US while we’re severely restricted on conducting trade in China. On the other hand, I’d love access to that market and would prefer trade negotiations rather than tit for tat disputes like this that won’t further the interests of American businesses (outside of Meta and Snapchat) The app https://dailydao.app https://dailydao.app

CBarkleyU 3y ago
The West was greedy and saw a trillion dollar opportunity in welcoming China into the WTO in 2000 and gave China massive leeway (this is my opinion, and probably not a majority opinion). In my opinion (only speaking for Germany, as I follow mostly the politics here) nobody was very keen on asking questions and making demand when the Chinese were producing our shit for pennies on the dollar but buying our premium Mercedes Benz S Classes Long Lines (and similar high technology products) by the millions. Who would've thunk that the turntables would've, well turned... I'm not blaming China for this btw, they played their hand very well
- mrjin 3y ago
  There would no problems at all if China continues to make shirts, shoes etc... But China started to make some high end stuff, such as Computers, and it did those so well that it could probably render US competitors irrelevant in the next a couple of decades. So all drama started.
  - _chu1 3y ago
    No, it hasn't. Never seen anything relatively nice from a Chinese company, even when it's another one of their piles of manure with a different name like OnePlus.
    - chaos_emergent 3y ago

staticman2 3y ago

Why are the Hacker News comments on this so different than when this topic came up a few years ago? I feel like a few years ago this site was inundated with posts arguing largely "Anyone anywhere on earth should be able to do business in the U.S. and own U.S. subsidary companies, no exceptions." These seem largely absent today.

pcdoodle 3y ago
As HN garners eyeballs and also being an election year, I would suppose PR elements would bleed through the comments. I started coming here about 5-8 years ago because of the comments section usually having insider or wicked smart people and their viewpoints. You did the right thing by asking this question. It might be downvoted but we can all see something and say something.
Am4TIfIsER0ppos 3y ago
Who was president a few years ago? Who was banning it a few years ago?
- Jensson 3y ago
  Yeah, political opinions change so much just by having a different person doing them.
filoleg 3y ago
> These seem largely absent today. I still hold the same stance today, but I am just tired of arguing for it on HN. I noticed the same thing with the prevailing opinion on the issue changing on HN as well. However, it wasnt because there are better arguments for the ban now or some new relevant info got discovered that would affect it. Nope, it literally devolved into tit-for-tat arguments only, except this pretty much makes the US lose any high ground here. For people who dont see how maintaining the high ground in this specific scenario[0] is very advantageous and cheap for the US, I don’t have much to add that wasnt already discussed to death in all the previous HN threads on this. P.S. It sucks I even feel the need to say this, but no, I dont support the chinese government and have zero affiliation with it whatsoever (at least none that I am aware of lol). I do have a lot of respect for the country itself and their people. However, my respect for the country and their people is not relevant to my opinions on absolutely anything related to policymaking. 0. No, I dont believe in this approach for every scenario ever involving the US and China. Of course, I do believe in reciprocal trade sanctions and tarrifs. I dont believe in those nearly as much when it comes to the digital realm, and especially not when it is something like TikTok.

jarjar2_ 3y ago

This is a good thing. What nations and governments, along with individuals have been to do with OSINT is pretty stunning. https://www.wired.com/story/strava-heat-map-military-bases-fitness-trackers-privacy/ https://www.wired.com/story/strava-heat-map-military-bases-f... That was just data Strava was releasing publicly. The raw data collection from TikTok contains much more than that. Think in terms of all branches of military and government messaging each other perfectly blackmailable things and then automating analysis of that. Byte Dance says that China doesn't have access to the data and that it hasn't been accessed, but from what I've read they have a party office at the company in China. I simply don't trust a foreign adversary with the amount of data that one of these social platforms generates. Neither does China which is why a large number of services operated in China are hosted on Chinese servers run by local subsidiaries, with vastly different and far more permissive laws when it comes to government/intelligence/law enforcement (all one and the same there) accessing that data. Hopefully that critical thinking can transfer to what's being done by American companies and intelligence agencies with user data and we can get some actual data privacy legislation at some point and enshrine a law preventing from inserting backdoors in everything that moves.

sarimkx 3y ago

The real reason is here folks https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/04/02/younger-americans-stand-out-in-their-views-of-the-israel-hamas-war/ https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/04/02/younger-a... All independent journalists have said this is ONLY because of Gaza. Trying to suppress young people's opinions i.e. Free speech.