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Because China is a rival geopolitical power and the US is... us. It's a national security concern. I get that there's a lot of conversation and debate to be ha

Because China is a rival geopolitical power and the US is... us. It's a national security concern. I get that there's a lot of conversation and debate to be had on the topic but the answer here is very straightforward and I don't understand why people are so obtuse about it.

bushbaba 2y ago
Not everyone on HN is a U.S. national. Many are Chinese nationals. So the discussion here has conflict of interest depending on one’s allegiance
- alex_young 2y ago
  So a US court should make decisions not in the US interest because people in other countries use some software?
  - bushbaba 2y ago
    No. The U.S. court should make decisions in the U.S. interest. But this HN thread represents people from around the world who may not share the U.S. interest at a personal level. Leading to remarks which are trying to sway US opinion. In a way, this thread could very well be monitored and commented on by a non US nation state
- afavour 2y ago
  > no good answer on why its bad for a company that is supposedly under Chineese influence to collect this kind of information on us, In the context of a discussion on a US-specific ban on TikTok I'm taking the "us" in OP's post to mean people in the US. If you aren't in the US the ban doesn't apply to you so the discussion is irrelevant.
- gkbrk 2y ago
  HN is literally banned in China [1][2]. And since VPNs are also illegal in China, they're breaking the law if they are here. I doubt they'd break the law if they had such a strong allegiance to China. [1]: https://www.chinafirewalltest.com/?siteurl=news.ycombinator.com https://www.chinafirewalltest.com/?siteurl=news.ycombinator.... [2]: https://en.greatfire.org/news.ycombinator.com https://en.greatfire.org/news.ycombinator.com
  - Xeronate 2y ago
    and no chinese nationals work in the US. oh wait yes they do. and in my experience the majority plan to return to china after making enough money.
  - corimaith 2y ago
    This has never been a significant barrier for savvy Chinese to post outside the Great Firewall. International Steam is also banned in China yet we curiously see the majority of users nowadays use simplified Chinese.
ep103 2y ago
Right, its because a law should be passed regulating this sort of data for the good of all citizens, but our congress can't / won't pass that, so they only stepped in when it became an obvious national security concern. It'll come back as an issue in a less obvious manner next time, and every time until they pass such a law. Which, imho, won't happen while our overall political environment remains conservatively dominant.
boredpeter 2y ago
[dead]
bryant 2y ago
Yeah it's not even a point of view that requires nuance; it's pretty clearly a matter of US interests v. adversarial interests. Anecdotally, a lot of people that struggle to understand this are also squarely in the camp of assuming that the US is doing data collection solely for nefarious purposes. Except: • the US performs these activities (data collection, algorithm manipulation allegedly, etc) for US interests, which may not always align with the interests of individuals in the US, whereas • adversarial foreign governments perform these activities for their own interests, which a US person would be wise to assume does not align with US interests and thus very likely doesn't align with the interests of US persons. If a person's main concern is living in a better United States, start with ensuring that the United States is sticking around for the long run first. Then we can work on improving it.
- ianmcgowan 2y ago
  It seems like two different arguments if you s/US/multi-national-corporations/g in that sentence. I don't have that much faith that multi-national-corporations interests align with US (or China for that matter).
  - bryant 2y ago
    They're headquartered in the US with substantial US ownership, which is the same logic applied to Tiktok. Zuckerberg's pretty heavily rooted in the US with no obvious inclination to leave, and you can see the effect that the change in administrations is having on his steering of Meta as a whole.
bunderbunder 2y ago
The thing is, doing it domestically is also a national security concern. We know that data leaks and breaches don't only happen, they are commonplace. Banning TikTok but continuing to allow domestic social media companies to amass hoards of the same kind of data without any real oversight is like saying, "Sorry, you can't have this on a golden platter, the best we can do is silver."
- swatcoder 2y ago
  It's not leaks and breaches that are the immanent concern here. The concern is deep, adversarial manipulation of public sentiment -- a psyops asset that gives a competing nation significant leverage as they pursue ends that challenge established US interests in the Pacific. You don't have to agree that protecting those interests is worth the disruption to the global market, free speech ideology, etc. But to engage in the debate, you need to recognize that this is the core concern.
  - philosopher1234 2y ago
    But it’s cool for Elon Musk to do it to get Trump elected, or zuck to do it for who knows what aims (but certainly expanding his own influence and power)
  - jjulius 2y ago
    >The concern is deep, adversarial manipulation of public sentiment -- a psyops asset that gives a competing nation significant leverage as they pursue ends that challenge established US interests in the Pacific. I share the exact same concern about "deep, adversarial manipulation of public sentiment" from US-based corporations running algorithmically-generated designed to addict consumers, and also believe that everyone needs to recognize that core concern as well. ALL of it needs to die.
    - kasey_junk 2y ago
      Great. Get that law passed. The question of constitutionality doesn’t preclude _expansion_ of the ban.
ryandrake 2y ago
I'm still not sure I understand the national security concerns around 17-year old nobodies publishing videos of themselves doing silly dances. Or the "metadata" those 17 year olds produce. Are people sharing nuclear secrets on TikTok or something (and not doing the same on US services)?
- philipbjorge 2y ago
  I haven't followed this closely, but I assumed it was related to a foreign entity having the ability to hyper-target content towards said 17 year olds (and the entire userbase in general) -- A modern form of psychological warfare.
  - miah_ 2y ago
    Like Cambridge Analytica (who used Facebook to do exactly this for the 2016 election).
- owlbite 2y ago
  The concern is they won't be 17 forever. 5/10/20/30 years down the line some small portion of these kids are going to hold important jobs, and some of them will have worthwhile blackmail material in their tiktok history.
  - ryandrake 2y ago
    OK, wild. It's farfetched, but at least the "blackmail" angle makes a little bit of sense. Still strangely targeted. There are a lot of other apps where people are making "potential blackmail" material.
- startupsfail 2y ago
  Blackmail. Information. They could be kids of someone with access/high clearance or get it themselves in a few years.
- echoangle 2y ago
  You can still push a particular group of those 17-year olds pushing specific views to influence elections. As long as some proportion of the electorate watches stuff on TikTok.
enos_feedler 2y ago
I don’t understand why people are so obtuse about national security being an excuse. Do we really believe the Chinese are going to infiltrate by way of tiktok when they can hack into our telecom networks or any significant figures individual machines? This is about neutering our biggest global economic threat.
- echoangle 2y ago
  National security doesn't have to mean they use the app to take over the devices it is installed on. It can also be used to spread misinformation or blackmail people.
  - enos_feedler 2y ago
    Oh. Like what our domestic social media company let happen with Cambridge Analytica? Glad our government is so focused on this one. Great work.
    - deaddodo 2y ago
      This is the argument that a group of toddlers make when one of them gets caught with their hand in the cookie jar. "Yeah...yah....but Mrs. Spangler, I saw Sally steal a cookie last week". OK, cool....your friend is stealing one now and currently has their hand in the cookie jar.
      - enos_feedler 2y ago
        Terrible comparison. China hasn’t been caught doing anything nefarious with Tiktok whereas Facebook was caught red handed. The problem is a tiktok ban is based on speculation and playing on the fears of the american people. The irony is the story is pitched as China using tiktok to program a bunch of american monkeys, meanwhile our own government is programming us with “china is the adversary” Sally stole a cookie from the cookie jar and now the teacher is pointing at the fat kid and not letting him be in the classroom alone with the cookie jar. Just bc he is fat.
dv_dt 2y ago
Because US social media companies have sold data to foreign adversaries when then used it to attempt to influence domestic matters
JAlexoid 2y ago
This law is dumb, because in no way does it prevent the exact same data to be collected, processed by a US entity and then transferred to China. I suspect that it's not about data being transferred, but the fact that TikTok can shape opinions of Americans... which US companies do a lot, without any oversight.
- tmnvdb 2y ago
  You suspect that? It is the literal stated reason for it.
- mplanchard 2y ago
  It is a separate law from the one passed in April, 2024, which makes what you're talking about illegal: https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/7520 https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/7520
jjfoooo4 2y ago
Because personal data about US citizens is up for sale to more or less whoever wants it, and the US government doesn’t seem to have a problem with this otherwise. Which makes it seem far more plausible that the real national security capability that is being defended is that of the US gov to influence narratives on social media. And while even that might be constitutional, it’s a lot less compelling.
- mplanchard 2y ago
  Laws don't have to solve all of the potential problems that may exist in order to be valid (this is one of the things they talk about in the decision). However, there is another law that made sale of data to foreign adversaries illegal, passed in April 2024: https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/7520 https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/7520
BlarfMcFlarf 2y ago
X or Facebook isn’t “us”. If we had any reason to believe there were or were even likely to be strong effective democratic controls over their ability to manipulate public sentiment it might be different. But as it stands, it feels more like local oligarchs kicking out competitors in their market: “the US population is our population to manipulate, go back to your own”.
Eextra953 2y ago
Because it's not clear what the national security concern is. With weapons or infrastructure, it's easy to understand how they can be used against the U.S., but with a social media platform, it's harder to see the threat. The concern really seems to lie with the users of TikTok. So what's the issue? That people living in the U.S. and using TikTok might be influenced to act differently than how the powers that be want us to act?
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
miah_ 2y ago
Surely China can just buy all the data that's being collected by US companies and sold. So whats the difference here?
yibg 2y ago
I think one of the issues is the details of the national security risk hasn't been articulated well. I haven't followed this in detail, but from what I've seen in summaries, news articles etc is just a vague notion of a theoretical risk from an adversary, with no details on exactly what the risk is, or if there is an actual issue here (vs just a theoretical issue that can happen at some point).
kasey_junk 2y ago
Not only is it straight forward it has long precedent. We’ve long limited broadcast licenses for instance.
_trampeltier 2y ago
But US companys sale all info about users anyway to anyone (just see today GM) and you accept in between often to over 800 cookies on websites. If thats ok, whats the difference. Why is it ok a website does include over 800 cokies?
_Algernon_ 2y ago
Foreign propaganda bots are just as present on US social media, and US social media amplify them just as much. So where exactly is the meaningful difference here? I don't see it. The actual difference is that US does not see the money from Tiktok, and blocking tiktok is a convenient excuse to give their propaganda platforms a competetive edge. Actually doing something about the fundamental problem of foreign influence through the internet would basically destroy sillicon valley, and no politician wants to be responsible for that.
pc86 2y ago
Because they're trying to ignore the national security aspect to talk about tracking generically. Which is a valid argument and a good discussion to be had, but it's irrelevant in this context. If the US was going to get into a legitimate hot "soldiers shooting at soldiers" type of war with any country, China is extremely high on that list. Maybe even #1. Pumping data on tens of millions of Americans directly into the CCP is bad. Putting a CCP-controlled algorithm in front of those tens of millions of Americans is so pants-on-head-retarded in that context it seems crazy to even try to talk about anything more general than that.

bushbaba 2y ago

Not everyone on HN is a U.S. national. Many are Chinese nationals. So the discussion here has conflict of interest depending on one’s allegiance

alex_young 2y ago
So a US court should make decisions not in the US interest because people in other countries use some software?
- bushbaba 2y ago
  No. The U.S. court should make decisions in the U.S. interest. But this HN thread represents people from around the world who may not share the U.S. interest at a personal level. Leading to remarks which are trying to sway US opinion. In a way, this thread could very well be monitored and commented on by a non US nation state
afavour 2y ago
> no good answer on why its bad for a company that is supposedly under Chineese influence to collect this kind of information on us, In the context of a discussion on a US-specific ban on TikTok I'm taking the "us" in OP's post to mean people in the US. If you aren't in the US the ban doesn't apply to you so the discussion is irrelevant.
gkbrk 2y ago
HN is literally banned in China [1][2]. And since VPNs are also illegal in China, they're breaking the law if they are here. I doubt they'd break the law if they had such a strong allegiance to China. [1]: https://www.chinafirewalltest.com/?siteurl=news.ycombinator.com https://www.chinafirewalltest.com/?siteurl=news.ycombinator.... [2]: https://en.greatfire.org/news.ycombinator.com https://en.greatfire.org/news.ycombinator.com
- Xeronate 2y ago
  and no chinese nationals work in the US. oh wait yes they do. and in my experience the majority plan to return to china after making enough money.
- corimaith 2y ago
  This has never been a significant barrier for savvy Chinese to post outside the Great Firewall. International Steam is also banned in China yet we curiously see the majority of users nowadays use simplified Chinese.

ep103 2y ago

Right, its because a law should be passed regulating this sort of data for the good of all citizens, but our congress can't / won't pass that, so they only stepped in when it became an obvious national security concern. It'll come back as an issue in a less obvious manner next time, and every time until they pass such a law. Which, imho, won't happen while our overall political environment remains conservatively dominant.

boredpeter 2y ago

[dead]

bryant 2y ago

Yeah it's not even a point of view that requires nuance; it's pretty clearly a matter of US interests v. adversarial interests. Anecdotally, a lot of people that struggle to understand this are also squarely in the camp of assuming that the US is doing data collection solely for nefarious purposes. Except: • the US performs these activities (data collection, algorithm manipulation allegedly, etc) for US interests, which may not always align with the interests of individuals in the US, whereas • adversarial foreign governments perform these activities for their own interests, which a US person would be wise to assume does not align with US interests and thus very likely doesn't align with the interests of US persons. If a person's main concern is living in a better United States, start with ensuring that the United States is sticking around for the long run first. Then we can work on improving it.

ianmcgowan 2y ago
It seems like two different arguments if you s/US/multi-national-corporations/g in that sentence. I don't have that much faith that multi-national-corporations interests align with US (or China for that matter).
- bryant 2y ago
  They're headquartered in the US with substantial US ownership, which is the same logic applied to Tiktok. Zuckerberg's pretty heavily rooted in the US with no obvious inclination to leave, and you can see the effect that the change in administrations is having on his steering of Meta as a whole.

bunderbunder 2y ago

The thing is, doing it domestically is also a national security concern. We know that data leaks and breaches don't only happen, they are commonplace. Banning TikTok but continuing to allow domestic social media companies to amass hoards of the same kind of data without any real oversight is like saying, "Sorry, you can't have this on a golden platter, the best we can do is silver."

swatcoder 2y ago
It's not leaks and breaches that are the immanent concern here. The concern is deep, adversarial manipulation of public sentiment -- a psyops asset that gives a competing nation significant leverage as they pursue ends that challenge established US interests in the Pacific. You don't have to agree that protecting those interests is worth the disruption to the global market, free speech ideology, etc. But to engage in the debate, you need to recognize that this is the core concern.
- philosopher1234 2y ago
  But it’s cool for Elon Musk to do it to get Trump elected, or zuck to do it for who knows what aims (but certainly expanding his own influence and power)
- jjulius 2y ago
  >The concern is deep, adversarial manipulation of public sentiment -- a psyops asset that gives a competing nation significant leverage as they pursue ends that challenge established US interests in the Pacific. I share the exact same concern about "deep, adversarial manipulation of public sentiment" from US-based corporations running algorithmically-generated designed to addict consumers, and also believe that everyone needs to recognize that core concern as well. ALL of it needs to die.
  - kasey_junk 2y ago
    Great. Get that law passed. The question of constitutionality doesn’t preclude _expansion_ of the ban.

ryandrake 2y ago

I'm still not sure I understand the national security concerns around 17-year old nobodies publishing videos of themselves doing silly dances. Or the "metadata" those 17 year olds produce. Are people sharing nuclear secrets on TikTok or something (and not doing the same on US services)?

philipbjorge 2y ago
I haven't followed this closely, but I assumed it was related to a foreign entity having the ability to hyper-target content towards said 17 year olds (and the entire userbase in general) -- A modern form of psychological warfare.
- miah_ 2y ago
  Like Cambridge Analytica (who used Facebook to do exactly this for the 2016 election).
owlbite 2y ago
The concern is they won't be 17 forever. 5/10/20/30 years down the line some small portion of these kids are going to hold important jobs, and some of them will have worthwhile blackmail material in their tiktok history.
- ryandrake 2y ago
  OK, wild. It's farfetched, but at least the "blackmail" angle makes a little bit of sense. Still strangely targeted. There are a lot of other apps where people are making "potential blackmail" material.
startupsfail 2y ago
Blackmail. Information. They could be kids of someone with access/high clearance or get it themselves in a few years.
echoangle 2y ago
You can still push a particular group of those 17-year olds pushing specific views to influence elections. As long as some proportion of the electorate watches stuff on TikTok.

enos_feedler 2y ago

I don’t understand why people are so obtuse about national security being an excuse. Do we really believe the Chinese are going to infiltrate by way of tiktok when they can hack into our telecom networks or any significant figures individual machines? This is about neutering our biggest global economic threat.

echoangle 2y ago
National security doesn't have to mean they use the app to take over the devices it is installed on. It can also be used to spread misinformation or blackmail people.
- enos_feedler 2y ago
  Oh. Like what our domestic social media company let happen with Cambridge Analytica? Glad our government is so focused on this one. Great work.
  - deaddodo 2y ago
    This is the argument that a group of toddlers make when one of them gets caught with their hand in the cookie jar. "Yeah...yah....but Mrs. Spangler, I saw Sally steal a cookie last week". OK, cool....your friend is stealing one now and currently has their hand in the cookie jar.
    - enos_feedler 2y ago
      Terrible comparison. China hasn’t been caught doing anything nefarious with Tiktok whereas Facebook was caught red handed. The problem is a tiktok ban is based on speculation and playing on the fears of the american people. The irony is the story is pitched as China using tiktok to program a bunch of american monkeys, meanwhile our own government is programming us with “china is the adversary” Sally stole a cookie from the cookie jar and now the teacher is pointing at the fat kid and not letting him be in the classroom alone with the cookie jar. Just bc he is fat.

dv_dt 2y ago

Because US social media companies have sold data to foreign adversaries when then used it to attempt to influence domestic matters

JAlexoid 2y ago

This law is dumb, because in no way does it prevent the exact same data to be collected, processed by a US entity and then transferred to China. I suspect that it's not about data being transferred, but the fact that TikTok can shape opinions of Americans... which US companies do a lot, without any oversight.

tmnvdb 2y ago
You suspect that? It is the literal stated reason for it.
mplanchard 2y ago
It is a separate law from the one passed in April, 2024, which makes what you're talking about illegal: https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/7520 https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/7520

jjfoooo4 2y ago

Because personal data about US citizens is up for sale to more or less whoever wants it, and the US government doesn’t seem to have a problem with this otherwise. Which makes it seem far more plausible that the real national security capability that is being defended is that of the US gov to influence narratives on social media. And while even that might be constitutional, it’s a lot less compelling.

mplanchard 2y ago
Laws don't have to solve all of the potential problems that may exist in order to be valid (this is one of the things they talk about in the decision). However, there is another law that made sale of data to foreign adversaries illegal, passed in April 2024: https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/7520 https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/7520

BlarfMcFlarf 2y ago

X or Facebook isn’t “us”. If we had any reason to believe there were or were even likely to be strong effective democratic controls over their ability to manipulate public sentiment it might be different. But as it stands, it feels more like local oligarchs kicking out competitors in their market: “the US population is our population to manipulate, go back to your own”.

Eextra953 2y ago

Because it's not clear what the national security concern is. With weapons or infrastructure, it's easy to understand how they can be used against the U.S., but with a social media platform, it's harder to see the threat. The concern really seems to lie with the users of TikTok. So what's the issue? That people living in the U.S. and using TikTok might be influenced to act differently than how the powers that be want us to act?

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

miah_ 2y ago

Surely China can just buy all the data that's being collected by US companies and sold. So whats the difference here?

yibg 2y ago

I think one of the issues is the details of the national security risk hasn't been articulated well. I haven't followed this in detail, but from what I've seen in summaries, news articles etc is just a vague notion of a theoretical risk from an adversary, with no details on exactly what the risk is, or if there is an actual issue here (vs just a theoretical issue that can happen at some point).

kasey_junk 2y ago

Not only is it straight forward it has long precedent. We’ve long limited broadcast licenses for instance.

_trampeltier 2y ago

But US companys sale all info about users anyway to anyone (just see today GM) and you accept in between often to over 800 cookies on websites. If thats ok, whats the difference. Why is it ok a website does include over 800 cokies?

_Algernon_ 2y ago

Foreign propaganda bots are just as present on US social media, and US social media amplify them just as much. So where exactly is the meaningful difference here? I don't see it. The actual difference is that US does not see the money from Tiktok, and blocking tiktok is a convenient excuse to give their propaganda platforms a competetive edge. Actually doing something about the fundamental problem of foreign influence through the internet would basically destroy sillicon valley, and no politician wants to be responsible for that.

pc86 2y ago

Because they're trying to ignore the national security aspect to talk about tracking generically. Which is a valid argument and a good discussion to be had, but it's irrelevant in this context. If the US was going to get into a legitimate hot "soldiers shooting at soldiers" type of war with any country, China is extremely high on that list. Maybe even #1. Pumping data on tens of millions of Americans directly into the CCP is bad. Putting a CCP-controlled algorithm in front of those tens of millions of Americans is so pants-on-head-retarded in that context it seems crazy to even try to talk about anything more general than that.