4 ms·

I get that China is dangerous and TikTok is terrible for society, but this sets a dangerous precedent that the government can just ban any social media site it

by brink 2y ago

I get that China is dangerous and TikTok is terrible for society, but this sets a dangerous precedent that the government can just ban any social media site it considers a threat now.

echelon 2y ago
China bans our tech companies. You could think of this as simply retaliation for their protectionism. But having non-democratic, adversarial nations controlling the algorithm that programs us is quite scary. At large scale, that does something.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- rahimnathwani 2y ago
  China has laws that many foreign companies are unwilling to follow. That's not the same as having different standards for domestic and foreign companies.
  - gretch 2y ago
    No, it's not just following their laws. You literally have to operate through a Chinese owned joint venture company.
    - rahimnathwani 2y ago
      "You literally have to operate through a Chinese owned joint venture company." Are you saying 100% of foreign-owned tech companies in China are operated via joint ventures?
      - gretch 2y ago
        I can't speak for 100%. Maybe there's some small fish that flies under the radar (which is not the context of what tiktok is doing in the US). If you look at what Google was doing with project dragonfly (before it was shut down), they opened a JV to operate it: https://theintercept.com/2018/09/21/google-suppresses-memo-revealing-plans-to-closely-track-search-users-in-china/ https://theintercept.com/2018/09/21/google-suppresses-memo-r... This is generally true as well, though I do not have a source for the general law. But it obviously applies to Google
  - throwaway2990 2y ago
    [dead]
    - slowmovintarget 2y ago
      Because FB is too dangerous. It allows access to sway opinions of the people. Zuckerberg may have been in it for the advertising money, but Xi looks at social media platforms as weapons first, and commercial exercises second.
  - slowmovintarget 2y ago
    They don't allow foreign companies to operate in China at all. You must form a 51% / 49% partnership where the 51% is a Chinese-owned company. Worse, they do have different standards for domestic and foreign products. TikTok, for example, is banned in China. The approved social media app carries state crafted propaganda. A year or so ago you'd see employment information for women on WeChat. Now you see advice for staying home and raising children, because the state decided that's what women should do in China. Chinese companies are Chinese government entities. The government there fully understands that tools like WeChat and TikTok can be used to move public opinion or distract, degrade, and erode and they use them to do exactly that.
    - rahimnathwani 2y ago
      They don't allow foreign companies to operate in China at all. You must form a 51% / 49% partnership where the 51% is a Chinese-owned company. The 51% can be a Chinese individual, and IIRC that's the most common way that VIE arrangements are set up. In practice, the foreign company still exerts control (via contract with the 51% owner) and keeps the profits (via contract with the JV entity). Worse, they do have different standards for domestic and foreign products. I'm curious to know what you mean by this. Do you mean: A) Different standards based on the location of the provider? B) Different standards based on the location of the consumer? If you mean (A), then I'm not sure your example supports it, unless you consider Douyin to be a foreign supplier. If you mean (B), then that's what I'm trying to say: China requires certain things of all companies (irrespective of the location of their controllers or beneficial owners).
- iorrus 2y ago
  In some ways I wish the EU would ban US tech companies, EU basically has no indigenous tech landscape compared to Russia and China who have suppressed US tech.
  - throwaway2990 2y ago
    [dead]
    - iorrus 2y ago
      There is this false idea that setting up an AWS or Google or Facebook competitor is in some way difficult. It’s not, if Meta, AWS, Google were banned in the EU perfectly functional European equivalents would pop up very rapidly similar to Russia and China.
      - wenc 2y ago
        > There is this false idea that setting up an AWS or Google or Facebook competitor is in some way difficult. I personally think it is difficult due to scale and economics. That is not to say Europeans can't grow a competitor in cloud, search or social media -- of course they can. There's a deep talent pool in Europe. But there's a lot of friction to doing tech at scale in EU. Large amounts of capital is much harder to raise, and varied regulatory environments/languages add cost to scaling. Plus you have to treat the UK and non-EU European countries as a separate markets. The difference between EU vs China (and to some extent Russia) is the latter have similar abilities to scale as the U.S. Also competitive advantages can be difficult to beat. AWS had a 8 year lead over Azure and while Azure is a lot better these days, it's still not all the way there. GCP, even though it is backed by one of the greatest and most highly capitalized large-scale engineering orgs on the planet, struggles to get appreciable marketshare.
    - npteljes 2y ago
      Which, I think, would be a good thing on mid and longer term. Because the vacuum would create positions to be filled. And Europe does have tech, and especially would have tech, if it were given some room.
theferalrobot 2y ago
The government has always held a high degree of power over international commerce, especially wrt adversarial nations. I get that this seems different because of the scale of tiktok but in principle it really seems to me to be extremely typical. There is no 'right' to participate in the international market. We banned Huawei from communications infrastructure. Cuban and Iranian companies are basically not allowed to participate in the US economy, this is business as usual for any country.
asadotzler 2y ago
You think the US lets foreign companies do whatever kind of business they want with US children and there should be no rules around that? That this is some kind of novel precedent? Seriously? That's gotta be a joke. Of course the US can ban any foreign business it wants and it has and it does, and it can ban any US company from doing business with any foreign country it wants and it has and it does and it will. That's the whole damn meaning of sovereignty. Are you not familiar with that concept?

by brink 2y ago

I get that China is dangerous and TikTok is terrible for society, but this sets a dangerous precedent that the government can just ban any social media site it considers a threat now.

echelon 2y ago

China bans our tech companies. You could think of this as simply retaliation for their protectionism. But having non-democratic, adversarial nations controlling the algorithm that programs us is quite scary. At large scale, that does something.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
rahimnathwani 2y ago
China has laws that many foreign companies are unwilling to follow. That's not the same as having different standards for domestic and foreign companies.
- gretch 2y ago
  No, it's not just following their laws. You literally have to operate through a Chinese owned joint venture company.
  - rahimnathwani 2y ago
    "You literally have to operate through a Chinese owned joint venture company." Are you saying 100% of foreign-owned tech companies in China are operated via joint ventures?
    - gretch 2y ago
      I can't speak for 100%. Maybe there's some small fish that flies under the radar (which is not the context of what tiktok is doing in the US). If you look at what Google was doing with project dragonfly (before it was shut down), they opened a JV to operate it: https://theintercept.com/2018/09/21/google-suppresses-memo-revealing-plans-to-closely-track-search-users-in-china/ https://theintercept.com/2018/09/21/google-suppresses-memo-r... This is generally true as well, though I do not have a source for the general law. But it obviously applies to Google
- throwaway2990 2y ago
  [dead]
  - slowmovintarget 2y ago
    Because FB is too dangerous. It allows access to sway opinions of the people. Zuckerberg may have been in it for the advertising money, but Xi looks at social media platforms as weapons first, and commercial exercises second.
- slowmovintarget 2y ago
  They don't allow foreign companies to operate in China at all. You must form a 51% / 49% partnership where the 51% is a Chinese-owned company. Worse, they do have different standards for domestic and foreign products. TikTok, for example, is banned in China. The approved social media app carries state crafted propaganda. A year or so ago you'd see employment information for women on WeChat. Now you see advice for staying home and raising children, because the state decided that's what women should do in China. Chinese companies are Chinese government entities. The government there fully understands that tools like WeChat and TikTok can be used to move public opinion or distract, degrade, and erode and they use them to do exactly that.
  - rahimnathwani 2y ago
    They don't allow foreign companies to operate in China at all. You must form a 51% / 49% partnership where the 51% is a Chinese-owned company. The 51% can be a Chinese individual, and IIRC that's the most common way that VIE arrangements are set up. In practice, the foreign company still exerts control (via contract with the 51% owner) and keeps the profits (via contract with the JV entity). Worse, they do have different standards for domestic and foreign products. I'm curious to know what you mean by this. Do you mean: A) Different standards based on the location of the provider? B) Different standards based on the location of the consumer? If you mean (A), then I'm not sure your example supports it, unless you consider Douyin to be a foreign supplier. If you mean (B), then that's what I'm trying to say: China requires certain things of all companies (irrespective of the location of their controllers or beneficial owners).
iorrus 2y ago
In some ways I wish the EU would ban US tech companies, EU basically has no indigenous tech landscape compared to Russia and China who have suppressed US tech.
- throwaway2990 2y ago
  [dead]
  - iorrus 2y ago
    There is this false idea that setting up an AWS or Google or Facebook competitor is in some way difficult. It’s not, if Meta, AWS, Google were banned in the EU perfectly functional European equivalents would pop up very rapidly similar to Russia and China.
    - wenc 2y ago
      > There is this false idea that setting up an AWS or Google or Facebook competitor is in some way difficult. I personally think it is difficult due to scale and economics. That is not to say Europeans can't grow a competitor in cloud, search or social media -- of course they can. There's a deep talent pool in Europe. But there's a lot of friction to doing tech at scale in EU. Large amounts of capital is much harder to raise, and varied regulatory environments/languages add cost to scaling. Plus you have to treat the UK and non-EU European countries as a separate markets. The difference between EU vs China (and to some extent Russia) is the latter have similar abilities to scale as the U.S. Also competitive advantages can be difficult to beat. AWS had a 8 year lead over Azure and while Azure is a lot better these days, it's still not all the way there. GCP, even though it is backed by one of the greatest and most highly capitalized large-scale engineering orgs on the planet, struggles to get appreciable marketshare.
  - npteljes 2y ago
    Which, I think, would be a good thing on mid and longer term. Because the vacuum would create positions to be filled. And Europe does have tech, and especially would have tech, if it were given some room.

theferalrobot 2y ago

The government has always held a high degree of power over international commerce, especially wrt adversarial nations. I get that this seems different because of the scale of tiktok but in principle it really seems to me to be extremely typical. There is no 'right' to participate in the international market. We banned Huawei from communications infrastructure. Cuban and Iranian companies are basically not allowed to participate in the US economy, this is business as usual for any country.

asadotzler 2y ago

You think the US lets foreign companies do whatever kind of business they want with US children and there should be no rules around that? That this is some kind of novel precedent? Seriously? That's gotta be a joke. Of course the US can ban any foreign business it wants and it has and it does, and it can ban any US company from doing business with any foreign country it wants and it has and it does and it will. That's the whole damn meaning of sovereignty. Are you not familiar with that concept?