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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 nuance

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

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