8 ms·
The US gov's intention was not at all to shut down TikTok. It was to force ByteDance to sell it. The fact that ByteDance is opting for a shutdown instead is a
by cvoss 2y ago
The US gov's intention was not at all to shut down TikTok. It was to force ByteDance to sell it.
The fact that ByteDance is opting for a shutdown instead is a huge PR stunt, and their unwillingness to sell under the circumstances kinda proves their whole First Amendment claims are made in bad faith. Something deeper is going on, and it's not about your social security number.
- whimsicalism 2y agoi think there are obvious reasons why bytedance would not want to spawn a US-based competitor and why a US only social media network would be ineffective. this is exactly the same as what China does with their gfw, they allow american apps to divest and be owned by a chinese company.
- suraci 2y agoWrong 1. China asked American SNS companys to 'obey Chinese laws', which mostly refer to content control and data ownership, these companys refused, China didn'tforced them to sell 2. Are you sure to play the 'same as what China does'? hey, we are a totalitarian, authoritarian, dictatorial regime, are we same? think twice
- whimsicalism 2y ago1. Yes, China forced the sale of Uber China to Didi - this is well documented. 2. Did I say that? No. I am opposed to the tiktok ban
- suraci 2y agoChina forced the sale of Uber China to Didi - this is well documented really? > https://www.bbc.com/news/36938812 https://www.bbc.com/news/36938812 > https://www.heritage.org/international-economies/commentary/uber-forced-out-china https://www.heritage.org/international-economies/commentary/... Let me tell you a cruel fact - Uber is completely unable to compete with Didi. You have no idea how fierce the competition in this industry in China is. Uber died before it grew up in China
- whimsicalism 2y agoUber got 33%+ market share. From your article: > If Uber had become a commercial success in China, Chinese authorities ultimately would have clamped down to protect their domestic competitors. > firms that do occasionally find success often face headwinds from Chinese regulators who limit their access to the domestic market. > Didi naturally had state-backed funding, receiving a significant cash infusion from China's large sovereign-wealth fund. > "Uber China" sought local investors. The hope was that, with local investors, the Chinese operation would be spared some of the hamstringing restrictions typically imposed on foreign businesses. China is well-known to have intense domestic favoritism. Not sure where the profit is in denying that, given your own sources seem to clearly state it and even name a number of channels through which the state puts their thumb on the scale, not just regulatory but also through financing.
- suraci 2y agoYou can ignore my following comments if this will make you feel better... > *If* Uber had become a commercial success in China, Chinese authorities ultimately *would* have clamped down to protect their domestic competitors. classic demonizing and loser's execuse > firms that do occasionally find success often face headwinds from Chinese regulators who limit their access to the domestic market. every other demestic companys face headwinds from Chinese regulators, just like I mentioned above, and Apple, Tesla, Google, Microsoft, they all in same situation, some of them couldn't handle this so they leaved, some stays Also, DiDi once were banned more than 2 years by authorities, it survived > Didi naturally had state-backed funding, receiving a significant cash infusion from China's large sovereign-wealth fund The 'STATE-BACKED' is a typical word used by certain people, it's just some kind of gov investment funds, there're dozens and invested thousands private companys, it's a Socialism country, it's called socialism, what do you expect? Didi is not even a state-owned enterprise. And is this equals to "force to sell"? > some of the hamstringing restrictions typically imposed on foreign businesses. Bruh > China is well-known to have intense domestic favoritism. That's true, and? many Chinese people also have intense domestic favoritism BTW, Apple is losing market share in China. However, take it easy, I don't think Apple will be sold to Huawei. Moreover, Apple is produced by Chinese and Indian, why bothered?
- kube-system 2y agoHeck, China forced Apple to divest iCloud to the government of Guizhou.
- suraci 2y agoit's about data ownership, part of data compliance, citizen data can not be pass to abroad, of course, it's also about content censorship Microsoft and Tesla accepted the same rule You can understand it as the US gov requiring TikTok's data must be hosted by Microsoft in the US
- lenerdenator 2y agoIf we played the same as China does, we'd be hacking Baidu through a vulnerability in a Microsoft web browser until they withdrew completely from the American market.
- amrocha 2y agoHave you heard of the NSA
- lenerdenator 2y agoI'm not saying we don't hack them. I'm saying we don't hack them with the goal of driving them out of the American market, which is what happened to Google's PRC operations.
- protimewaster 2y agoWe hacked Huawei and drove them out, but those were separate incidents. I'm not convinced it puts the US in a morally superior position, though.
- scotty79 2y ago> If we played the same as China does, we'd be hacking Baidu through a vulnerability in a Microsoft web browser We don't?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- lenerdenator 2y agoWith the goal of driving them out of the US? I just typed https://www.baidu.com https://www.baidu.com into my browser bar, hit enter, and their page loaded.
- scotty79 2y agoWhy throw out something hackable? Apparently they couldn't hack TikTok so they thrown them out.
- RestlessMind 2y ago2. The game can be slightly different. "hey, we are open by default. but if an authoritarian regimes wants to exploit our openness by marketing their apps while at the same time banning our apps from their market, then we will strike back". paradox of intolerance and all that..
- lelandfe 2y agoIf you feel that the national security angle is a farce, do you similarly feel that the DoD banning TikTok on government systems was just for show? https://defensescoop.com/2023/06/02/pentagon-proposes-rule-to-ban-tiktok-on-all-dod-connected-devices-including-for-contractors/ https://defensescoop.com/2023/06/02/pentagon-proposes-rule-t...
- kome 2y agowell, probably yes
- mmmpetrichor 2y agoThe DoD banning an app on their network is a lot different than banning it competely in the US. I would think DoD should ban most apps connecting to their networks that aren't work related. I feel this whole effort is either in bad faith or isn't being transparently communicated to the public.
- kjkjadksj 2y agoThey famously failed to ban strava and some military assets were unintentionally disclosed on the strava heatmap by soldiers logging their cardio jogs through facility hallways.
- IncreasePosts 2y agoExcept there was never a discussion of banning TikTok the app. Which is why a sale of the app was always an option.
- RestlessMind 2y agoNatSec should not even be needed. A simpler reason could be that China bans foreign social media apps from operating in China, so Chinese apps should be treated as such.
- bb123 2y agoReciprocity is not a good idea. Why would we want to copy every bad foreign law?
- s1artibartfast 2y agoSocial media is the front line of an ongoing cyber war. It is a matter of propaganda and social engineering. Imagine if Japan owned all the newspapers in the run-up to WWII. That's not to say China is the only one with propaganda.
- crystal_revenge 2y agoIt's unfortunate that this comment is buried so deep and that generally this topic is under discussed. Media has always been a force for controlling popular opinion, but in the age of social media it's going to new extremes. There are forces that try to control how you see the world on all social media platforms and do so to attempt to shape your opinions of the world and modify your actions. You can visibly see Reddit has been completely taken over by bot, shills, and other controlled accounts. There is no sincere, real human opinion posted on the front page. Even HN is not immune. "Bad news" has long been forbidden here, and there is a range of topics that, even when heavily upvoted by the community, tend to disappear within minutes.
- ByThyGrace 2y ago> there is a range of topics that, even when heavily upvoted by the community, tend to disappear within minutes. Such as? Disappear as in getting flagged?
- whycome 2y agoLuigi
- s1artibartfast 2y agoMassively controversial on HN, leading to lots of flagged posts (due to a mix of legitimate flame bait and emotional kneejerk).
- myvoiceismypass 2y agoLarge portions of the things posted to the Oakland subreddit get flagged and removed. Almost anything mentioning the city in a negative light gets flagged. Crime reports / trends, anything. Sarcastically chuckling about the state of the city as a long time resident gets the ban hammer. It is really quite something.
- crimsoneer 2y agoI mean, the Chinese government was never going to let the US just take their company at bargain basement prices.
- redactd 2y agoDo you think that ByteDance is primarily concerned with the economic considerations for TikTok, or do you think that it is something else? Do you think that there is a price at which they would be willing to sell it?
- cg5280 2y agoDidn't something similar happen with Grindr? It was Chinese owned and sold without nearly as much excitement. Given the inevitable bidding war from multiple interested parties I would be surprised if they couldn't get a fair price for TikTok
- kridsdale1 2y agoChina didn’t need to fight to keep Grindr because all the value from the acquisition was realized as soon as they ran a database query to compile a list of closeted Republican senators. No need to hold on once you got the spy treasure.
- moduspol 2y agoIt wouldn't have been at a bargain basement price if they started trying to sell it when the law passed. It could have been the highest market price they could get from the US's largest buyers. Obviously they don't have the same leverage when they're otherwise going to be shut off in a few days.
- wyldberry 2y agoThis isn't rocket science. What's going on is having the keys to the kingdom with regards to serving videos to influence the mind of a user with extremely precise targeting. China doesn't want USA doing that, and banned their social media. USA doesn't want China doing it because they've been doing it all over the world to everybody since Radio Free Europe, and likely before. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Radio-Free-Europe https://www.britannica.com/topic/Radio-Free-Europe
- drawkward 2y ago...except that the "extremely precise targeting" is a new thing.
- kranke155 2y agomicrotargeting specific to individual psychological metrics is indeed a new thing.
- georgeecollins 2y agoLots of countries have made it illegal to listen things like Radio Free Europe. I'm guessing you can't in North Korea. On the other hand, a US citizen that wants to get the Chinese perspective on anything has lots of ways to legally find that and repeat it. I am not saying a lot of people in the US are interested in a foreign point of view, or that the US doesn't have tons of propaganda. But I don't think you can convince anyone that the two countries treat speech the same way.
- somenameforme 2y agoI don't see how people don't see what is their most likely rationale - the ban will be temporary. Trump's already come out against it and is going to work to reverse it once in office. If it can't be done directly, it'll be done like usual - as an addon to some must-pass bill. I think they would probably refuse to sell in a situation where they had reason to expect the ban to persist (for different reasons), but in this case they probably didn't even consider selling when there's a high probability they'll be back legally operating in the US within a year.
- TeaBrain 2y agoActs of congress can only be blocked by the supreme court's power of judicial review. The supreme court held a 2.5 hour hearing this past week and the only two justices who voiced skepticism of the law were Gorsuch and Thomas.
- somenameforme 2y agoOr another act of Congress! But given that the Supreme Court is waiting to the last second to issue their ruling, I don't think it's all quite as clear behind doors as you seem to believe it was in front of them. The nuance of claiming that constitutional rights do not apply to a company legally operating within the country, because of its nationality, has extremely broad implications as a precedent - well beyond corporations alone, even for a judge who might be more than okay with the ban in and of itself. Beyond this, there's the matter of enforcement and implementation. The former is discretionary and the latter is not specified by the bill. An effective ban would effectively require the creation of a Great Firewall of China type mechanism to effectively implement (which is what I thought this law was always a sort of 'trojan horse' for). Otherwise the "ban" will be trivially sidestepped by using a web app, downloading an APK from their site/mirrors instead of the marketplace, etc. Let alone things like VPNs! As Chinese companies are increasingly banned from the US, we're likely to see more adversarial setups where these companies will make no effort to prevent US customers no matter how much the US government madly gesticulates, though again with the current administration said gesticulation will not even happen in the first place.
- the_gipsy 2y agoWhat, they should just shut up and sell? They're getting extorted.
- hbosch 2y ago>The fact that ByteDance is opting for a shutdown instead is a huge PR stunt Um, what? There is zero chance that ByteDance could get a fair price for TikTok. VC calculations can be disregarded, TikTok as a platform is more valuable than Facebook. How much money would it take for Zuckerberg to sell FB to a Chinese company?
- patmcc 2y agoI think this is untrue. The government wanted to shut down TikTok, but it can't just outright ban it because that's a clear violation of the first amendment, so it came up with a way to ban it indirectly. That was their intention all along.
- esafak 2y agoIt reminds me of Google's decision to pull out of China instead of censor their results.
- barfingclouds 2y agoYeah it’s about that algorithms could radicalize the population or turn them against each other