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So… if China mistreats their citizens, reciprocity says we must mistreat ours? You don’t fight censorship with censorship. That doesn’t stand up to even the mo

So… if China mistreats their citizens, reciprocity says we must mistreat ours? You don’t fight censorship with censorship. That doesn’t stand up to even the most cursory thought. You fight censorship with openness. As soon as you find yourself arguing that you have no choice but to engage in the same behaviors you claim to dislike, you have literally become the enemy.

mavelikara 2y ago
> You don’t fight censorship with censorship. That doesn’t stand up to even the most cursory thought. You fight censorship with openness. Can you explain this better without the assumption that it is self-evident?
- brookst 2y ago
  Sure. If censorship is wrong, then it is wrong. If censorship is just fine, the n it is just fine. It is the height of hypocrisy to engage in censorship in the name of stamping out censorship. It feels like a tautology because the opposing viewpoint is a very simple hypocrisy. If you don’t like something, don’t do it.
  - RHSeeger 2y ago
    But, it's not really censorship, per se. It's "your company, which is of <this country> cannot do business in our country; because we want to give that a company in our country". And, in that light, doing the reverse (not allowing the company from that country to do business in ours) doesn't seem unreasonable. I'm not a fan of it, but I can understand the argument for it.
  - RandomThoughts3 2y ago
    It’s not a censorship issue. It’s about market access. This is a commercial dispute not a freedom of expression one. There is plenty of other platforms where you will still be able to say whatever you want.
    - Cthulhu_ 2y ago
      Not Twitter or Truth Social though.
  - binary_slinger 2y ago
    The world isn't black and white. It's very very gray.
  - lazyeye 2y ago
    Adding Chinese censorship to the mix doesnt improve freedom of speech. At some point we have to stop being naive and operating in the realm of frictionless theory.
  - kelnos 2y ago
    Your argument is predicated on the idea that banning TikTok is censorship. It's not. No speech or information is being suppressed; any speech being made on TikTok can instead be made on other platforms. This isn't like China where the government bans any services they can't control, and directs the services that they can control to suppress any information they don't want people talking about.
    - Fornax96 2y ago
      Who says the US isn't controlling the narrative on US social media?
      - corimaith 2y ago
        Sure are alot of people insinuating they are
      - throwaway290 2y ago
        Half of US social media (and more than half of Twitter) is saying US controls the narrative on US social media and something should be done about it. describe logical knots required to explain why that is the narrative if US controls the narrative? As a Russian people from the West saying how it's total censorship and totalitarianism amuse me. And I see how totalitarian and censored regimes are using of the lack of censorship with great success.
    - berdario 2y ago
      > any speech being made on TikTok can instead be made on other platforms That wholly depends on what are the other platforms. Meta's platforms for example are pretty heavy handed in their censorship: https://www.hrw.org/report/2023/12/21/metas-broken-promises/systemic-censorship-palestine-content-instagram-and https://www.hrw.org/report/2023/12/21/metas-broken-promises/... And Youtube is not that much better. To be fair, some of the same voices that get censored on US platforms are also getting censored on TikTok (though I currently cannot find the posts or articles that highlighted the issue)
    - rightbyte 2y ago
  - throwaway290 2y ago
    By that logic if you are attacked you would no nothing because violence is wrong. Then you die.
  - e-clinton 2y ago
    Your argument implies that banning was the only option… it wasn’t. They could’ve continued operating just the same had they sold the company.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - KoftaBob 2y ago
    Censorship is the suppression/prohibition of speech. Therefore, removing TikTok from app stores is not censorship, because it's the platform itself that's being targeted, not particular speech that's on it. Either you knew that already and you're making a bad faith argument, or you don't understand the concept of censorship.
  - moralestapia 2y ago
    >If censorship is wrong, then it is wrong. If censorship is just fine, the n it is just fine. This is it, and it's so laughably simple that anyone who doesn't get it should check CO levels in their home before arguing.
usui 2y ago
This way of thinking has been debated for a long time. It's not clear or self-evident doing it the way you describe is the best way to handle things. Sure, it's more self-righteous and sounds good on paper, but does it really hold? https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
cookiengineer 2y ago
Openness? Sure, but how are you gonna enforce it? Proprietary codebases usually stay...proprietary. Even Telegrams open client doesn't prove shit when it comes to server-side decryption keys and logs. And this, from a black box systems perspective, is a hard thing to make transparent. Given the history of cryptography we can't even rely on that anymore and have to assume a compromise in the future due to how those elliptic curves (and their seeds) are created. Even just assuming that Qualcomm doesn't track you with their two GPS domains that are constantly pinged is very naive. And we've also uncovered a history of abuse in CPU backdoors (looking at you, Intel). So where does transparency have to start? My theory is that without solving capitalism as the bug of democracy we can't have transparency. As long as there is financial incentives, there will be no transparency.
_2d30 2y ago
> So… if China mistreats their citizens, reciprocity says we must mistreat ours? This is such a silly strawman. A better example would be that reciprocity would say that if China mistreated our civilians then we should mistreat theirs. Reciprocity doesn't mean "we do whatever China does". > You don’t fight censorship with censorship. That doesn’t stand up to even the most cursory thought. You fight censorship with openness. It's not censorship so this also doesn't make sense. They are being forced to be sold. TikTok can exist just fine, just not under control of ByteDance which is de facto under control of the CCP. The basic point here is that the CCP will not be allowed to control a major media arm in the US which is in turn used to spread CCP propaganda. If you want to prevent CCP from owning a major media channel which can freely spread CCP propaganda, this is a completely rational means of doing that stands up perfectly to "cursory thought". > As soon as you find yourself arguing that you have no choice but to engage in the same behaviors you claim to dislike, you have literally become the enemy. I hate violence but sometimes violence is required (see WWII). I don't think we (the US) became the enemy in WWII for engaging in violence.
- Cookingboy 2y ago
  >A better example would be that reciprocity would say that if China mistreated our civilians then we should mistreat theirs. Good example, and thank god that is unconstitutional. For example China can arrest American citizens in China without dual process. But we cannot arrest Chinese citizens, or anyone here in the U.S. and just put them to prison without dual process. Americans in China have no freedom of speech. Should we ban Chinese citizens in the U.S. from speaking freely as well? Again, that is unconstitutional. U.S. constitution protects anyone within the U.S. not just U.S. citizens. Otherwise we can just send someone with a green card to jail without trial. So your example only serves the counter-argument, which is that reciprocity is not something you should aim for when it comes to human rights. > which is in turn used to spread CCP propaganda. Since not even the U.S. government has been able to provide any such evidence, and have admitted that the threat is hypothetical, if you have any such evidence you should present it.
wiseowise 2y ago
China soft invades minds of Western people under disguise of “freedom of speech”.
- ternnoburn 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - wiseowise 2y ago
    Right. All nations have troll factories with hundred operators aimed to destabilize governments. https://www.nato.int/nato_static_fl2014/assets/pdf/2020/5/pdf/2005-deepportal2-troll-factories.pdf https://www.nato.int/nato_static_fl2014/assets/pdf/2020/5/pd...
    - jiehong 2y ago
      Three letters agencies
      - wiseowise 2y ago
        You mean KGB, or what? I’ve lived for almost 30 years in post-Soviet space and never once I saw “we’re good, they’re bad” propaganda from the West. What I did see is an order of magnitude difference in income, quality of life and rights that people have. So yeah, fuck Russia, fuck KGB and platforms that assist them with doing their dirty work.
        jm547ster 2y ago
        CIA/NSA? KGB hasn't existed for more than 30 years, no doubt the FSB will be engaged in similar pursuits
        TheOtherHobbes 2y ago
        https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-covid-propaganda/ https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-covi... For example. The big difference is that China hoovers up a lot of information from cheap security cams and online appliances in the West, and I'm fairly sure the West doesn't do that to China. As far as media management, PR, propaganda, whatever, I don't see a lot of difference between the regimes. The West profiles its own citizens for both commercial and political ends, and so does China. The US doesn't want a state propaganda outfit monopolising "entertaintment" access to its under-35s? Fine. Whatever. Meanwhile Russia hasn't had a problem buying the GOP and on-siding tech oligarchs in the US, and TikTok is a footnote compared to that.
kwanbix 2y ago
The reciprocity is between you and me. If you do something bad to me, I can do something bad to you. Is not that if you do something bad to yourself I need to do something bad for myself.
kelnos 2y ago
"Mistreat" is a bit unnecessarily dramatic. People in the US were fine (possibly even better off) before TikTok, and they'll be just fine if it goes away. China's level of internet control and censorship does seem to rise to the level of mistreatment (in that they control and shape access to information, in ways that further the interests of state propaganda), but denying Chinese companies (and the Chinese government) market access to American consumers in some spheres seems fine. It's never been a two-way street with China, and I think we should be engaging in a bit of protectionism when it comes to allowing or not allowing Chinese companies to operate here. If the US government were suppressing particular views or discussion of some topics (as the Chinese government does to their own citizens), then I would be alarmed. But that's not what's happening here; if the TikTok ban goes through, US citizens' free speech rights will not be meaningfully impacted, as there are other platforms that can and will carry the same content. Banning a foreign company from doing business in your country isn't automatically censorship. There's nuance. (And beyond all this, I do worry about the Chinese government using TikTok as a platform to influence Western citizens' thought, culture, and politics, for their own purposes. If they're not doing it already, I'd be astonished.)
- jingyibo123 2y ago
  > If the US government were suppressing particular views or discussion of some topics (as the Chinese government does to their own citizens), then I would be alarmed. As someone mentioned above, several officials openly admittted the "ban" is related to palestine-related matirials on TikTok's platform, as opposed to some other platforms.
- vasac 2y ago
  How the mighty have fallen. I remember the Arab Spring and all the excitement about media being in people's hands, safe from censorship... So finally, non-Arab people got the same opportunity too. And now, apparently, there's nuance.
  - mrguyorama 2y ago
    Or, you know, the Arab Spring was actually a monumental failure in the vast majority of cases? And it turned out that yes, nascent technologies can be used by people to coordinate, at least until government fingers are thoroughly grown into the new system. All that optimism was wrong. How many popular revolutions happened during Arab spring that long term lead to more democratic societies? Saudi Arabia learned to just get government employees hired to moderate twitter, and then had their wealth fund help Musk buy it outright. There's been a lot of change since 2012 in fact.
baud147258 2y ago
> You fight censorship with openness. because TikTok is the epitome of openness? Has never censored any opinion?
whoitwas 2y ago
I don't understand this position. It's not censorship, it's security. It's protecting USA from China. Why should we allow China to have access to all contacts, media, location, etc for half of all Americans? Would you agree on a limited ban for military or government employees?
- curiousgal 2y ago
  If I had to pick between sharing my data with the Chinese government or US corporations I would pick China every single time.
  - whoitwas 2y ago
    As an American or someone who is interested in US security, this is illogical. China bans US software to protect itself and we should do the same. We should also ban most computer hardware as it's not possible to regulate. As Israel has shown with the pagers, supply chain attacks are pretty serious.
corimaith 2y ago
>You don’t fight censorship with censorship. That doesn’t stand up to even the most cursory thought. You fight censorship with openness. There is literally no basis for this belief. Do you have a realistic solution to the gish gallop? Have internet comments proven to follow the most well reasoned with it's own uncertainties or the most rhetorically convincing?
mschuster91 2y ago
> So… if China mistreats their citizens, reciprocity says we must mistreat ours? Reciprocity means that we are not required to allow Chinese propaganda into our children's bedrooms. We are at war with China and Russia, and we are fighting it with both hands tied behind our backs.
tester756 2y ago
Censorship... zzzZZZzz They're banning app/news delivery app managed by enemy government It is not like they're blocking internet, wikipedia they're banning stupid, memes/brainrot app
- lxgr 2y ago
  If that were the reason for this legislation, Meta (Instagram Reels) and Google (Youtube Shorts) should be very concerned. It’s the same content.
  - tester756 2y ago
    Content is similar, but the control is in the hands of US, so not the "enemy gov".
- t0bia_s 2y ago
  - they're banning stupid, memes/brainrot app Imagine same rhetoric by CCP adressing Facebook or YouTube.
  - corimaith 2y ago
    Is 4chan banned here?
  - xanderlewis 2y ago
    You can imagine it. But they'd be wrong. Facebook and YouTube aren't directly controlled by an enemy government, and likely aren't intending as part of their raison d'être to sow discord and chaos in China.
    - t0bia_s 2y ago
      So it's about ownership? Just a business? There is no issues with censorship or data harvesting?
    - hnfong 2y ago
      > likely aren't intending as part of their raison d'être to sow discord and chaos in China. This is so revisionist that it's funny. I vividly recall Facebook management celebrating their role in toppling regimes around the world for example the "Arab Spring": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media%27s_role_in_the_Arab_Spring https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media%27s_role_in_the_A... https://www.thewrap.com/facebooks-sheryl-sandberg-finding-jobs-spurring-arab-spring-31054/ https://www.thewrap.com/facebooks-sheryl-sandberg-finding-jo... I dare you find direct evidence of such quality that Tiktok is trying to do the same in the US.
Keyframe 2y ago
censorship schmensorship. This is more banal than that. China bans US companies from doing business in China. This is quid pro quo. Chinese companies, of the same industry, are getting banned in US.
- tw1984 2y ago
  Microsoft, Apple, Tesla are doing extremely well in China making hundreds of billions. Tesla even got free land and loans, aka Chinese government subsides. Name a few Chinese tech companies doing the same in the US? Maybe you are suggesting that Chinese should ban Tesla, Apple and Microsoft as well?
  - Keyframe 2y ago
    Think often-mentioned tarifs. It's per sector. In this case, facebook, google, twitter/x are banned, thus tiktok gets banned too. That's how gvt operates; steel for steel, cars for cars, social media for social media... Aside examples of how its actually to own and operate a business in china vastly different than US (local partner with a significant share, board control, oversight..).
  - Cthulhu_ 2y ago
    Yes, but under China's strict rules about doing business there; government oversight, Chinese senior management, party representative, etc. I mean if Tiktok did the same thing in the US there probably would be less of an issue, but they are unwilling to allow the same restrictions / oversight as the US companies are subjecting themselves to in China.
    - tw1984 2y ago
      probably because China is a larger market? for example, how many cars are sold in the US? it is a relatively small market compared to the Chinese market.
- shlant 2y ago
  > This is quid pro quo do you mean "tit for tat" or something similar?
Shorel 2y ago
This is a case of China mistreating western citizens with misinformation. Targeted addictive misinformation. Blocking that source of misinformation is the only logical response.
dkd903 2y ago
[dead]
kypro 2y ago
I think a ban that prohibits the distribution of a product is fine. My understanding is that private citizens are still legally allowed to use TikTok if they want, but TikTok isn't allowed to market their product directly to US consumers via App stores. That seems pretty reasonable given China's position on US internet products. Free trade and openness only works if all parties agree on the rules. If one party is open while the other exploits that openness by selectively opening up only when it benefits them then undermines the principles you believe in. If we want China to be more open we have to ensure they're playing by the rules and they're not going to do that if we continue to allow them to exploit us.
Cthulhu_ 2y ago
That's a straw man argument and kind of a different thing entirely (moral / ethics / human rights vs corporations / entertainment) though. Anyway while I do agree with your statement about censorship vs openness, I do think in the broader sense things need to be done about social media - that is, Tiktok is specifically singled out for being Chinese, but its target audience, addictiveness, usefulness as a propaganda tool, is very much not unique on the market. It was only after Zuckerberg and presumably the SV tech lobbyists raised the issue of Tiktok with Trump and the government that they pulled on the brakes. But this is where the reciprocity argument comes in; US based services in China are under strict regulations and requirements, to the point where at best they can have a subsidiary in China under Chinese management. But while it's not trivial as a foreign entity to have a presence in the US either (e.g. you need to have or be a US company to be able to sell your software there), it seems more accessible and less restrictive than operating in China; in a sense this move levels the playing field.
CrispyKerosene 2y ago
I would argue they already do mistreat their citizens...

mavelikara 2y ago

> You don’t fight censorship with censorship. That doesn’t stand up to even the most cursory thought. You fight censorship with openness. Can you explain this better without the assumption that it is self-evident?

brookst 2y ago
Sure. If censorship is wrong, then it is wrong. If censorship is just fine, the n it is just fine. It is the height of hypocrisy to engage in censorship in the name of stamping out censorship. It feels like a tautology because the opposing viewpoint is a very simple hypocrisy. If you don’t like something, don’t do it.
- RHSeeger 2y ago
  But, it's not really censorship, per se. It's "your company, which is of <this country> cannot do business in our country; because we want to give that a company in our country". And, in that light, doing the reverse (not allowing the company from that country to do business in ours) doesn't seem unreasonable. I'm not a fan of it, but I can understand the argument for it.
- RandomThoughts3 2y ago
  It’s not a censorship issue. It’s about market access. This is a commercial dispute not a freedom of expression one. There is plenty of other platforms where you will still be able to say whatever you want.
  - Cthulhu_ 2y ago
    Not Twitter or Truth Social though.
- binary_slinger 2y ago
  The world isn't black and white. It's very very gray.
- lazyeye 2y ago
  Adding Chinese censorship to the mix doesnt improve freedom of speech. At some point we have to stop being naive and operating in the realm of frictionless theory.
- kelnos 2y ago
  Your argument is predicated on the idea that banning TikTok is censorship. It's not. No speech or information is being suppressed; any speech being made on TikTok can instead be made on other platforms. This isn't like China where the government bans any services they can't control, and directs the services that they can control to suppress any information they don't want people talking about.
  - Fornax96 2y ago
    Who says the US isn't controlling the narrative on US social media?
    - corimaith 2y ago
      Sure are alot of people insinuating they are
    - throwaway290 2y ago
      Half of US social media (and more than half of Twitter) is saying US controls the narrative on US social media and something should be done about it. describe logical knots required to explain why that is the narrative if US controls the narrative? As a Russian people from the West saying how it's total censorship and totalitarianism amuse me. And I see how totalitarian and censored regimes are using of the lack of censorship with great success.
  - berdario 2y ago
    > any speech being made on TikTok can instead be made on other platforms That wholly depends on what are the other platforms. Meta's platforms for example are pretty heavy handed in their censorship: https://www.hrw.org/report/2023/12/21/metas-broken-promises/systemic-censorship-palestine-content-instagram-and https://www.hrw.org/report/2023/12/21/metas-broken-promises/... And Youtube is not that much better. To be fair, some of the same voices that get censored on US platforms are also getting censored on TikTok (though I currently cannot find the posts or articles that highlighted the issue)
  - rightbyte 2y ago
- throwaway290 2y ago
  By that logic if you are attacked you would no nothing because violence is wrong. Then you die.
- e-clinton 2y ago
  Your argument implies that banning was the only option… it wasn’t. They could’ve continued operating just the same had they sold the company.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- KoftaBob 2y ago
  Censorship is the suppression/prohibition of speech. Therefore, removing TikTok from app stores is not censorship, because it's the platform itself that's being targeted, not particular speech that's on it. Either you knew that already and you're making a bad faith argument, or you don't understand the concept of censorship.
- moralestapia 2y ago
  >If censorship is wrong, then it is wrong. If censorship is just fine, the n it is just fine. This is it, and it's so laughably simple that anyone who doesn't get it should check CO levels in their home before arguing.

usui 2y ago

This way of thinking has been debated for a long time. It's not clear or self-evident doing it the way you describe is the best way to handle things. Sure, it's more self-righteous and sounds good on paper, but does it really hold? https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

cookiengineer 2y ago

Openness? Sure, but how are you gonna enforce it? Proprietary codebases usually stay...proprietary. Even Telegrams open client doesn't prove shit when it comes to server-side decryption keys and logs. And this, from a black box systems perspective, is a hard thing to make transparent. Given the history of cryptography we can't even rely on that anymore and have to assume a compromise in the future due to how those elliptic curves (and their seeds) are created. Even just assuming that Qualcomm doesn't track you with their two GPS domains that are constantly pinged is very naive. And we've also uncovered a history of abuse in CPU backdoors (looking at you, Intel). So where does transparency have to start? My theory is that without solving capitalism as the bug of democracy we can't have transparency. As long as there is financial incentives, there will be no transparency.

_2d30 2y ago

> So… if China mistreats their citizens, reciprocity says we must mistreat ours? This is such a silly strawman. A better example would be that reciprocity would say that if China mistreated our civilians then we should mistreat theirs. Reciprocity doesn't mean "we do whatever China does". > You don’t fight censorship with censorship. That doesn’t stand up to even the most cursory thought. You fight censorship with openness. It's not censorship so this also doesn't make sense. They are being forced to be sold. TikTok can exist just fine, just not under control of ByteDance which is de facto under control of the CCP. The basic point here is that the CCP will not be allowed to control a major media arm in the US which is in turn used to spread CCP propaganda. If you want to prevent CCP from owning a major media channel which can freely spread CCP propaganda, this is a completely rational means of doing that stands up perfectly to "cursory thought". > As soon as you find yourself arguing that you have no choice but to engage in the same behaviors you claim to dislike, you have literally become the enemy. I hate violence but sometimes violence is required (see WWII). I don't think we (the US) became the enemy in WWII for engaging in violence.

Cookingboy 2y ago
>A better example would be that reciprocity would say that if China mistreated our civilians then we should mistreat theirs. Good example, and thank god that is unconstitutional. For example China can arrest American citizens in China without dual process. But we cannot arrest Chinese citizens, or anyone here in the U.S. and just put them to prison without dual process. Americans in China have no freedom of speech. Should we ban Chinese citizens in the U.S. from speaking freely as well? Again, that is unconstitutional. U.S. constitution protects anyone within the U.S. not just U.S. citizens. Otherwise we can just send someone with a green card to jail without trial. So your example only serves the counter-argument, which is that reciprocity is not something you should aim for when it comes to human rights. > which is in turn used to spread CCP propaganda. Since not even the U.S. government has been able to provide any such evidence, and have admitted that the threat is hypothetical, if you have any such evidence you should present it.

wiseowise 2y ago

China soft invades minds of Western people under disguise of “freedom of speech”.

ternnoburn 2y ago
[flagged]
- wiseowise 2y ago
  Right. All nations have troll factories with hundred operators aimed to destabilize governments. https://www.nato.int/nato_static_fl2014/assets/pdf/2020/5/pdf/2005-deepportal2-troll-factories.pdf https://www.nato.int/nato_static_fl2014/assets/pdf/2020/5/pd...
  - jiehong 2y ago
    Three letters agencies
    - wiseowise 2y ago
      You mean KGB, or what? I’ve lived for almost 30 years in post-Soviet space and never once I saw “we’re good, they’re bad” propaganda from the West. What I did see is an order of magnitude difference in income, quality of life and rights that people have. So yeah, fuck Russia, fuck KGB and platforms that assist them with doing their dirty work.
      - jm547ster 2y ago
        CIA/NSA? KGB hasn't existed for more than 30 years, no doubt the FSB will be engaged in similar pursuits
      - TheOtherHobbes 2y ago
        https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-covid-propaganda/ https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-covi... For example. The big difference is that China hoovers up a lot of information from cheap security cams and online appliances in the West, and I'm fairly sure the West doesn't do that to China. As far as media management, PR, propaganda, whatever, I don't see a lot of difference between the regimes. The West profiles its own citizens for both commercial and political ends, and so does China. The US doesn't want a state propaganda outfit monopolising "entertaintment" access to its under-35s? Fine. Whatever. Meanwhile Russia hasn't had a problem buying the GOP and on-siding tech oligarchs in the US, and TikTok is a footnote compared to that.

kwanbix 2y ago

The reciprocity is between you and me. If you do something bad to me, I can do something bad to you. Is not that if you do something bad to yourself I need to do something bad for myself.

kelnos 2y ago

"Mistreat" is a bit unnecessarily dramatic. People in the US were fine (possibly even better off) before TikTok, and they'll be just fine if it goes away. China's level of internet control and censorship does seem to rise to the level of mistreatment (in that they control and shape access to information, in ways that further the interests of state propaganda), but denying Chinese companies (and the Chinese government) market access to American consumers in some spheres seems fine. It's never been a two-way street with China, and I think we should be engaging in a bit of protectionism when it comes to allowing or not allowing Chinese companies to operate here. If the US government were suppressing particular views or discussion of some topics (as the Chinese government does to their own citizens), then I would be alarmed. But that's not what's happening here; if the TikTok ban goes through, US citizens' free speech rights will not be meaningfully impacted, as there are other platforms that can and will carry the same content. Banning a foreign company from doing business in your country isn't automatically censorship. There's nuance. (And beyond all this, I do worry about the Chinese government using TikTok as a platform to influence Western citizens' thought, culture, and politics, for their own purposes. If they're not doing it already, I'd be astonished.)

jingyibo123 2y ago
> If the US government were suppressing particular views or discussion of some topics (as the Chinese government does to their own citizens), then I would be alarmed. As someone mentioned above, several officials openly admittted the "ban" is related to palestine-related matirials on TikTok's platform, as opposed to some other platforms.
vasac 2y ago
How the mighty have fallen. I remember the Arab Spring and all the excitement about media being in people's hands, safe from censorship... So finally, non-Arab people got the same opportunity too. And now, apparently, there's nuance.
- mrguyorama 2y ago
  Or, you know, the Arab Spring was actually a monumental failure in the vast majority of cases? And it turned out that yes, nascent technologies can be used by people to coordinate, at least until government fingers are thoroughly grown into the new system. All that optimism was wrong. How many popular revolutions happened during Arab spring that long term lead to more democratic societies? Saudi Arabia learned to just get government employees hired to moderate twitter, and then had their wealth fund help Musk buy it outright. There's been a lot of change since 2012 in fact.

baud147258 2y ago

> You fight censorship with openness. because TikTok is the epitome of openness? Has never censored any opinion?

whoitwas 2y ago

I don't understand this position. It's not censorship, it's security. It's protecting USA from China. Why should we allow China to have access to all contacts, media, location, etc for half of all Americans? Would you agree on a limited ban for military or government employees?

curiousgal 2y ago
If I had to pick between sharing my data with the Chinese government or US corporations I would pick China every single time.
- whoitwas 2y ago
  As an American or someone who is interested in US security, this is illogical. China bans US software to protect itself and we should do the same. We should also ban most computer hardware as it's not possible to regulate. As Israel has shown with the pagers, supply chain attacks are pretty serious.

corimaith 2y ago

>You don’t fight censorship with censorship. That doesn’t stand up to even the most cursory thought. You fight censorship with openness. There is literally no basis for this belief. Do you have a realistic solution to the gish gallop? Have internet comments proven to follow the most well reasoned with it's own uncertainties or the most rhetorically convincing?

mschuster91 2y ago

> So… if China mistreats their citizens, reciprocity says we must mistreat ours? Reciprocity means that we are not required to allow Chinese propaganda into our children's bedrooms. We are at war with China and Russia, and we are fighting it with both hands tied behind our backs.

tester756 2y ago

Censorship... zzzZZZzz They're banning app/news delivery app managed by enemy government It is not like they're blocking internet, wikipedia they're banning stupid, memes/brainrot app

lxgr 2y ago
If that were the reason for this legislation, Meta (Instagram Reels) and Google (Youtube Shorts) should be very concerned. It’s the same content.
- tester756 2y ago
  Content is similar, but the control is in the hands of US, so not the "enemy gov".
t0bia_s 2y ago
- they're banning stupid, memes/brainrot app Imagine same rhetoric by CCP adressing Facebook or YouTube.
- corimaith 2y ago
  Is 4chan banned here?
- xanderlewis 2y ago
  You can imagine it. But they'd be wrong. Facebook and YouTube aren't directly controlled by an enemy government, and likely aren't intending as part of their raison d'être to sow discord and chaos in China.
  - t0bia_s 2y ago
    So it's about ownership? Just a business? There is no issues with censorship or data harvesting?
  - hnfong 2y ago
    > likely aren't intending as part of their raison d'être to sow discord and chaos in China. This is so revisionist that it's funny. I vividly recall Facebook management celebrating their role in toppling regimes around the world for example the "Arab Spring": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media%27s_role_in_the_Arab_Spring https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media%27s_role_in_the_A... https://www.thewrap.com/facebooks-sheryl-sandberg-finding-jobs-spurring-arab-spring-31054/ https://www.thewrap.com/facebooks-sheryl-sandberg-finding-jo... I dare you find direct evidence of such quality that Tiktok is trying to do the same in the US.

Keyframe 2y ago

censorship schmensorship. This is more banal than that. China bans US companies from doing business in China. This is quid pro quo. Chinese companies, of the same industry, are getting banned in US.

tw1984 2y ago
Microsoft, Apple, Tesla are doing extremely well in China making hundreds of billions. Tesla even got free land and loans, aka Chinese government subsides. Name a few Chinese tech companies doing the same in the US? Maybe you are suggesting that Chinese should ban Tesla, Apple and Microsoft as well?
- Keyframe 2y ago
  Think often-mentioned tarifs. It's per sector. In this case, facebook, google, twitter/x are banned, thus tiktok gets banned too. That's how gvt operates; steel for steel, cars for cars, social media for social media... Aside examples of how its actually to own and operate a business in china vastly different than US (local partner with a significant share, board control, oversight..).
- Cthulhu_ 2y ago
  Yes, but under China's strict rules about doing business there; government oversight, Chinese senior management, party representative, etc. I mean if Tiktok did the same thing in the US there probably would be less of an issue, but they are unwilling to allow the same restrictions / oversight as the US companies are subjecting themselves to in China.
  - tw1984 2y ago
    probably because China is a larger market? for example, how many cars are sold in the US? it is a relatively small market compared to the Chinese market.
shlant 2y ago
> This is quid pro quo do you mean "tit for tat" or something similar?

Shorel 2y ago

This is a case of China mistreating western citizens with misinformation. Targeted addictive misinformation. Blocking that source of misinformation is the only logical response.

dkd903 2y ago

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kypro 2y ago

I think a ban that prohibits the distribution of a product is fine. My understanding is that private citizens are still legally allowed to use TikTok if they want, but TikTok isn't allowed to market their product directly to US consumers via App stores. That seems pretty reasonable given China's position on US internet products. Free trade and openness only works if all parties agree on the rules. If one party is open while the other exploits that openness by selectively opening up only when it benefits them then undermines the principles you believe in. If we want China to be more open we have to ensure they're playing by the rules and they're not going to do that if we continue to allow them to exploit us.

Cthulhu_ 2y ago

That's a straw man argument and kind of a different thing entirely (moral / ethics / human rights vs corporations / entertainment) though. Anyway while I do agree with your statement about censorship vs openness, I do think in the broader sense things need to be done about social media - that is, Tiktok is specifically singled out for being Chinese, but its target audience, addictiveness, usefulness as a propaganda tool, is very much not unique on the market. It was only after Zuckerberg and presumably the SV tech lobbyists raised the issue of Tiktok with Trump and the government that they pulled on the brakes. But this is where the reciprocity argument comes in; US based services in China are under strict regulations and requirements, to the point where at best they can have a subsidiary in China under Chinese management. But while it's not trivial as a foreign entity to have a presence in the US either (e.g. you need to have or be a US company to be able to sell your software there), it seems more accessible and less restrictive than operating in China; in a sense this move levels the playing field.

CrispyKerosene 2y ago

I would argue they already do mistreat their citizens...