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I am surprised there is such resistance here to be honest. The Chinese government has had trade restrictions for decades - including forced disclosures and forc

I am surprised there is such resistance here to be honest. The Chinese government has had trade restrictions for decades - including forced disclosures and forced local ownership for investing firms, forced disclosure of tech, been caught hacking into systems and stealing IP etc. - as well as banning multiple western companies apps under their own excuses without substantive evidence. Why should the US or any other trade partner with China therefore keep such a lopsided relationship? Seems like the US has a case here IMO, given all this history and practice. We should have been tougher on this years ago

overstay8930 3y ago
> I am surprised there is such resistance here to be honest. You’ll probably not be surprised to find out there’s a lot of anti-US sentiment courtesy of Chinese, Russian and Iranian propaganda. Plenty of younger folks fall for it, same stuff in the 70s and 80s on college campuses with supposedly well educated people talking about how the Soviet Union had higher standards of living than the US, and the “tyranny” was all just American propaganda.
- woooooo 3y ago
  Personally, I only subscribe to American propaganda.
  - throwoutway 3y ago
    How do you know? That's the whole point of propaganda.
    - woooooo 3y ago
      Easy, anything I don't like is the fault of Russians, Chinese and Iranians.
- swatcoder 3y ago
  Huh. I read most of the challenges to this ban as either explicitly championing US-colored ideals of free markets and free speech or simple personal frustration because people don't want to lose the experience of the app. I'd expect some of the messaging gets amplified and shaped by adversarial parties, but the framing is rarely/never aligned with "anti-US" rhetoric on this topic. Your concern sounds like a different thing than what applies to this discussion.
  - overstay8930 3y ago
    > the framing is rarely/never aligned with "anti-US" rhetoric on this topic. It’s attempting to push the narrative that TikTok is somehow the exception and is being treated unfairly, and that this is the big bad USA violating constitutional rights when this is just exactly how businesses with adversarial governments are treated in America. We already know Chinese controlled social media bots are amplifying to far right and far left extremists who act as useful idiots to spread this bait. The US government regularly intervenes in the free market, especially when national security is involved. It’s no different than banning Huawei from critical infrastructure, but allowing Nokia to stick around. Look at real estate, automotive industry, hell even construction has similar restrictions. My concern is strictly national security, it’s my own opinion and I definitely could be wrong, but given what I’ve seen that’s public, there’s not really a downside here. Someone will buy TikTok, and they will make a shit load of money. People will call it a conspiracy, but at the end of the day the idea of China running a social media platform just does not seem very logical no matter how you spin it. Protectionist trade policy is nothing new, and in the big picture that’s what this really is.
somenameforme 3y ago
The reason an entity chooses to behave in an ethical or moral fashion is because they believe it's the right or just way to behave, and not what happens to be the most expedient behavior in some arbitrary moment of time. And principles can cost you in the short-term, but tend to reap tremendous dividends in the long-run. One of those dividends is soft power. Hearing a relatively stoic adult Russian chess grandmaster start to choke up a bit when describing the joy he felt (as a grown man no less) when the USSR collapsed and 'Donald Duck came to Russia' was something quite unforgettable for me. As he described it, literally everybody was picking up Donald Duck stuff - as much as a symbol of the end of one era, as the beginning of another. But now? In my lifetime it feels like America's soft power has gone from the sort that could make grown men cry with joy, to basically nonexistent. And I think a big part of it is that we are no longer seen as behaving in a principled fashion. We just do whatever is convenient at the moment and then wrap it in some grandstanding and a whole lot of propaganda. Even with this silly event, I think there's an interesting nuance. The government was so concerned about the tremendous national security threat of TikTok that, just 2 months, ago Biden decided to start his very own TikTok account. [1] It went like you'd expect. But imagine it didn't. Imagine he actually managed to gain some traction. Would he, today, still be looking to sign off on a ban of it? [1] - https://www.wired.com/story/joe-biden-tiktok-campaign-comments/ https://www.wired.com/story/joe-biden-tiktok-campaign-commen...
- blackeyeblitzar 3y ago
  Love the insights. I agree the lack of principles and stability has taken away soft power.
- seanmcdirmid 3y ago
  > The government was so concerned about the tremendous national security threat of TikTok that, just 2 months, ago Biden decided to start his very own TikTok account. CCTV (Chinese central TV) has a Twitter/X/Youtube accounts even though it is banned in China. Heck, Tiktok itself is banned in China but the Chinese government doesn't mind using it to push its messages abroad. This isn't really weird from a Chinese perspective anyways.
  - 3y ago

overstay8930 3y ago

> I am surprised there is such resistance here to be honest. You’ll probably not be surprised to find out there’s a lot of anti-US sentiment courtesy of Chinese, Russian and Iranian propaganda. Plenty of younger folks fall for it, same stuff in the 70s and 80s on college campuses with supposedly well educated people talking about how the Soviet Union had higher standards of living than the US, and the “tyranny” was all just American propaganda.

woooooo 3y ago
Personally, I only subscribe to American propaganda.
- throwoutway 3y ago
  How do you know? That's the whole point of propaganda.
  - woooooo 3y ago
    Easy, anything I don't like is the fault of Russians, Chinese and Iranians.
swatcoder 3y ago
Huh. I read most of the challenges to this ban as either explicitly championing US-colored ideals of free markets and free speech or simple personal frustration because people don't want to lose the experience of the app. I'd expect some of the messaging gets amplified and shaped by adversarial parties, but the framing is rarely/never aligned with "anti-US" rhetoric on this topic. Your concern sounds like a different thing than what applies to this discussion.
- overstay8930 3y ago
  > the framing is rarely/never aligned with "anti-US" rhetoric on this topic. It’s attempting to push the narrative that TikTok is somehow the exception and is being treated unfairly, and that this is the big bad USA violating constitutional rights when this is just exactly how businesses with adversarial governments are treated in America. We already know Chinese controlled social media bots are amplifying to far right and far left extremists who act as useful idiots to spread this bait. The US government regularly intervenes in the free market, especially when national security is involved. It’s no different than banning Huawei from critical infrastructure, but allowing Nokia to stick around. Look at real estate, automotive industry, hell even construction has similar restrictions. My concern is strictly national security, it’s my own opinion and I definitely could be wrong, but given what I’ve seen that’s public, there’s not really a downside here. Someone will buy TikTok, and they will make a shit load of money. People will call it a conspiracy, but at the end of the day the idea of China running a social media platform just does not seem very logical no matter how you spin it. Protectionist trade policy is nothing new, and in the big picture that’s what this really is.

somenameforme 3y ago

The reason an entity chooses to behave in an ethical or moral fashion is because they believe it's the right or just way to behave, and not what happens to be the most expedient behavior in some arbitrary moment of time. And principles can cost you in the short-term, but tend to reap tremendous dividends in the long-run. One of those dividends is soft power. Hearing a relatively stoic adult Russian chess grandmaster start to choke up a bit when describing the joy he felt (as a grown man no less) when the USSR collapsed and 'Donald Duck came to Russia' was something quite unforgettable for me. As he described it, literally everybody was picking up Donald Duck stuff - as much as a symbol of the end of one era, as the beginning of another. But now? In my lifetime it feels like America's soft power has gone from the sort that could make grown men cry with joy, to basically nonexistent. And I think a big part of it is that we are no longer seen as behaving in a principled fashion. We just do whatever is convenient at the moment and then wrap it in some grandstanding and a whole lot of propaganda. Even with this silly event, I think there's an interesting nuance. The government was so concerned about the tremendous national security threat of TikTok that, just 2 months, ago Biden decided to start his very own TikTok account. [1] It went like you'd expect. But imagine it didn't. Imagine he actually managed to gain some traction. Would he, today, still be looking to sign off on a ban of it? [1] - https://www.wired.com/story/joe-biden-tiktok-campaign-comments/ https://www.wired.com/story/joe-biden-tiktok-campaign-commen...

blackeyeblitzar 3y ago
Love the insights. I agree the lack of principles and stability has taken away soft power.
seanmcdirmid 3y ago
> The government was so concerned about the tremendous national security threat of TikTok that, just 2 months, ago Biden decided to start his very own TikTok account. CCTV (Chinese central TV) has a Twitter/X/Youtube accounts even though it is banned in China. Heck, Tiktok itself is banned in China but the Chinese government doesn't mind using it to push its messages abroad. This isn't really weird from a Chinese perspective anyways.
- 3y ago