5 ms·

Are they not allowed to sell books in the United States? How about guns? Can they release major motion pictures? Video games? We have freedom of speech in this

by gdubs 2y ago

Are they not allowed to sell books in the United States? How about guns? Can they release major motion pictures? Video games? We have freedom of speech in this country — and for the boogeyman that China was somehow weaponizing their platform, we just removed the voice of countless communities that had formed on TikTok.

forrestthewoods 2y ago
Those communities can form else where. There can be another short form video platform.
- sodality2 2y ago
  Why do they have to? And if there is, what argument is there that we should stop just at this one platform?
  - forrestthewoods 2y ago
    Because TikTok is owned and controlled by hostile foreign country of communist totalitarians. That country would rather TikTok die than be sold to an operator they don’t control. The operator doesn’t necessarily have to be American. A European operator would be sufficient. But it can’t be an overtly hostile nation. All of these arguments have been made ad nauseum. All social media companies controlled by the CCP will be banned in the US. And since all tech companies in China are controlled by the CCP that means all Chinese social media products will be banned in the US. It’s not all that complicated. It’s not even that controversial.
    - sodality2 2y ago
      None of this is strong enough to justify banning speech to me. Do you think something like the Communist Manifesto should be banned in the US? Do you think someone professing the virtues of communism on a street corner should be forced to stop?
      - pjerem 2y ago
        Freedom of speech means that you can’t be persecuted for what you said. It doesn’t mean you are entitled to be given a megaphone. You can say what you want and don’t go in prison, sure, but nobody owes you the platform.
        sodality2 2y ago
        That’s like saying “you can write whatever book you want, but the government can stop it from being sold; we aren’t obligated to sell it in bookstores”. This is a terrible argument; it conflates the government’s actions with the “bookstore”. Yes, if the app store decided to ban the app, we wouldn’t have much recourse. But the government is stepping in and saying no bookstore is allowed to sell it. That is textbook censorship (no pun intended).
        tsimionescu 2y ago
        No, freedom of [edit: accidentally wrote "from" earlier] speech also means that the government can't stop you from saying it. If US citizens wants to publish pro-Chinese, anti-US propaganda in the USA, and want to constitute a company for publishing a newspaper or a social media site to do, that is protected free speech and the government should have nothing to say about it.
      - TulliusCicero 2y ago
        You're conflating trade and speech, just like every other PRC defender here. The exact same content on TikTok could be replicated by another company coming from some other country and it would be totally fine and unbannable. Which means it's not actually about speech.
        sodality2 2y ago
        You think that a social media app is trade? Why does who runs the app matter? Stopping someone from saying something is still silencing them, even if someone else saying it would be okay. This is just setting the groundwork for the government controlling social media even more than it already does, because they know how influential it is. I'm not defending the PRC in the slightest. I fundamentally disagree with the government forcing a sale of a company due to its social media app. This is different from every other example of banning PRC-backed companies (ex: Huawei, TP-LINK, etc) because there is genuinely a plausible argument for natsec. With TikTok there just is no such argument, other than the video content being controlled by a foreign hostile entity. And I just fail to be convinced that that's enough to ban it. Do we ban Russia Today?
    - talldatethrow 2y ago
      Basically everything I buy now means my money is going to China. Somehow that's ok, but letting me choose to consume their app, that's ok.
      - forrestthewoods 2y ago
        Correct. Buying things manufactured in China is not the same as a CCP controlled a social media algorithm. They're extremely different things with extremely different impacts. Thus one can be ok and one can not. The issue isn't money going to CCP. The issue is data and CCP control of the algorithm.
      - wilg 2y ago
        yeah because the issue isn't money going to china its prc control over a major social media platform
ChadBrogramer69 2y ago
[dead]
sfRattan 2y ago
> How about guns? Imports of firearms and ammunition from China to the USA have been banned since 1994 [1]. IIRC Chinese companies were caught selling rifles and other gear to known gangs in California and that motivated the law. Firearms imports are also much more restricted generally than most other categories. More than one manufacturer has reincorporated in the United States because of the regulations. [1]: https://www.congress.gov/bill/103rd-congress/house-bill/3355/text https://www.congress.gov/bill/103rd-congress/house-bill/3355...
- gdubs 2y ago
  Fair enough — was wrong on that point, and happy to be corrected.
FranzFerdiNaN 2y ago
Freedom of speech isn’t freedom of a platform. Their speech isn’t limited.
- jakelazaroff 2y ago
  Imagine saying this if the government shut down, say, a newspaper publishing things they didn’t like. “Freedom of speech isn’t freedom of a platform; the reporters can write elsewhere.”
  - ternaryoperator 2y ago
    Freedom of the press is guaranteed in the first amendment, "freedom of the platform" is a non-existent right.
    - tsimionescu 2y ago
      And what makes TikTok different from a newspaper, fundamentally? Both are publishing stories written by others (reporters for the newspaper, subscribers for TikTok), and taking decisions on which stories to publish (through direct editorial control for the newspaper, through the algorithm + some direct editorial control for TikTok).
      - Veen 2y ago
        Newspapers are not platforms; they are publications. They have editors who set editorial policy. They are selctive about the content they publish and who writes it. And they are accountable for what gets published.
        tsimionescu 2y ago
        TikTok is mainly accused exactly of having an editorial policy, via boosting certain content that its owners prefer and de-prioritizing content that they don't. So this is a non-sequitur. And even when talking about false information, newspapers face 0 legal risks for publishing false information, unless it is defamatory (and even then, it's a civil action, no state prosecutor will investigate a paper for publishing false and defamatory information).
EagnaIonat 2y ago
> we just removed the voice of countless communities that had formed on TikTok. They just move to new place. Loads of online communities have died/migrated for various different reasons over the years. > We have freedom of speech in this country This doesn't impose on your freedom of speech at all. Just because you have the right to say anything, doesn't give you the right to say it where you want.
- tsimionescu 2y ago
  > This doesn't impose on your freedom of speech at all. By this logic, the US government should be able to ban any newspaper that is publishing articles that they don't like: it doesn't encroach on the freedom of speech of the reporters of that newspaper, they can just speak somewhere else. They don't have the right to say anything at that particular newspaper, just in general. Of course, in reality, banning a publication (TikToK) because you think they may publish stories that you won't like (propaganda for Chinese interests) is an obvious violation of the first ammendment and a form of government censorship.
  - wilg 2y ago
    tiktok isn't a publication and the ease with which people can post on other platforms as well as their relationship to the platform is relevant
    - tsimionescu 2y ago
      I agree that there are differences between a publication and a platform, but they are relatively subtle. And as long as the argument is "China through TikTok can influence which content is popular or allowed to be published at all", then that is leaning into the publisher-like aspects of TikTok, not the platform-like ones: and it is precisely these rights that are protected. Just to give an example of what would be concerns of the platform aspect of TikTok, that would be concerns about the ability for the app to deploy malicious code to users' phones, or the amount of data that it siphons off legally. But those are de-emphasised in favor of their control on content, which is precisely what's supposed to be protected by the Constitution.
sterlind 2y ago
China doesn't allow foreign corporations to operate within their borders. why should we? there is no First Amendment right for Chinese companies to operate within our market. there is no First Amendment right for RT to be carried on US cable networks. if TikTok were a website, it'd be different. it'd be one thing if the US were blackholing tiktok.com. but TikTok is an app that sells ads, and they're not entitled to sell ads to US businesses or publish on US app stores.
- suraci 2y ago
  > China doesn't allow foreign corporations to operate within their borders It's not true, just to clarify it. Many foreign corporations operating in China, only if they: 1. Keep all user data within the border. 2. Cooperate with censorship TikTok meets the first condition in the U.S., and I think the issue lies with the second condition.
  - sterlind 2y ago
    I could be wrong, but I thought you have to operate a subsidiary in China, which is majority Chinese-owned. for example, Azure China is operated by 21Vianet, who also owns all the infrastructure.
    - suraci 2y ago
      Yeah, that's the part 1, all data must be within the border so Azure in China can only be ran by a Chinese entity If you look at it from the other side, it's like Tiktok must be hosted by Microsoft/Amazon but not datacenters in China
- logicchains 2y ago
  >China doesn't allow foreign corporations to operate within their borders. why should we? China is a dictatorship where people have no rights. America was built on the principle that the government shouldn't have the power to tell the common people what to do.
  - 2y ago
beau_g 2y ago
I think those comparisons are poor - TikTok is service that could be used to send instantaneous information to 170 million users in the US. It's potential to cause a problem if it's controllers choose to do so is many orders of magnitude broader and faster than those examples.
lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 2y ago
> Are they not allowed to sell books in the United States? They would not be allowed to own the publishing company. > How about guns? This doesn’t have anything to do with media. > Can they release major motion pictures? They would not be allowed to own the publishing company. > Video games? They would not be allowed to own the publishing company. The people in these communities still have a right to assemble and say things to each other. It’s more difficult to do so on TikTok after the US distribution ban but it’s ByteDance who made it impossible with this play; this service shutdown is not a requirement of the law.
TulliusCicero 2y ago
Trade and speech are not the same thing, and this sort of conflation is really tiresome. If we banned China from importing video games into the US, that would be a trade issue. It's very ironic you bring this up though, since China is famously very strict about what foreign media it allows in, and really about how foreign businesses in general are allowed to operate there.

by gdubs 2y ago

forrestthewoods 2y ago

Those communities can form else where. There can be another short form video platform.

sodality2 2y ago
Why do they have to? And if there is, what argument is there that we should stop just at this one platform?
- forrestthewoods 2y ago
  Because TikTok is owned and controlled by hostile foreign country of communist totalitarians. That country would rather TikTok die than be sold to an operator they don’t control. The operator doesn’t necessarily have to be American. A European operator would be sufficient. But it can’t be an overtly hostile nation. All of these arguments have been made ad nauseum. All social media companies controlled by the CCP will be banned in the US. And since all tech companies in China are controlled by the CCP that means all Chinese social media products will be banned in the US. It’s not all that complicated. It’s not even that controversial.
  - sodality2 2y ago
    None of this is strong enough to justify banning speech to me. Do you think something like the Communist Manifesto should be banned in the US? Do you think someone professing the virtues of communism on a street corner should be forced to stop?
    - pjerem 2y ago
      Freedom of speech means that you can’t be persecuted for what you said. It doesn’t mean you are entitled to be given a megaphone. You can say what you want and don’t go in prison, sure, but nobody owes you the platform.
      - sodality2 2y ago
        That’s like saying “you can write whatever book you want, but the government can stop it from being sold; we aren’t obligated to sell it in bookstores”. This is a terrible argument; it conflates the government’s actions with the “bookstore”. Yes, if the app store decided to ban the app, we wouldn’t have much recourse. But the government is stepping in and saying no bookstore is allowed to sell it. That is textbook censorship (no pun intended).
      - tsimionescu 2y ago
        No, freedom of [edit: accidentally wrote "from" earlier] speech also means that the government can't stop you from saying it. If US citizens wants to publish pro-Chinese, anti-US propaganda in the USA, and want to constitute a company for publishing a newspaper or a social media site to do, that is protected free speech and the government should have nothing to say about it.
    - TulliusCicero 2y ago
      You're conflating trade and speech, just like every other PRC defender here. The exact same content on TikTok could be replicated by another company coming from some other country and it would be totally fine and unbannable. Which means it's not actually about speech.
      - sodality2 2y ago
        You think that a social media app is trade? Why does who runs the app matter? Stopping someone from saying something is still silencing them, even if someone else saying it would be okay. This is just setting the groundwork for the government controlling social media even more than it already does, because they know how influential it is. I'm not defending the PRC in the slightest. I fundamentally disagree with the government forcing a sale of a company due to its social media app. This is different from every other example of banning PRC-backed companies (ex: Huawei, TP-LINK, etc) because there is genuinely a plausible argument for natsec. With TikTok there just is no such argument, other than the video content being controlled by a foreign hostile entity. And I just fail to be convinced that that's enough to ban it. Do we ban Russia Today?
  - talldatethrow 2y ago
    Basically everything I buy now means my money is going to China. Somehow that's ok, but letting me choose to consume their app, that's ok.
    - forrestthewoods 2y ago
      Correct. Buying things manufactured in China is not the same as a CCP controlled a social media algorithm. They're extremely different things with extremely different impacts. Thus one can be ok and one can not. The issue isn't money going to CCP. The issue is data and CCP control of the algorithm.
    - wilg 2y ago
      yeah because the issue isn't money going to china its prc control over a major social media platform

ChadBrogramer69 2y ago

[dead]

sfRattan 2y ago

> How about guns? Imports of firearms and ammunition from China to the USA have been banned since 1994 [1]. IIRC Chinese companies were caught selling rifles and other gear to known gangs in California and that motivated the law. Firearms imports are also much more restricted generally than most other categories. More than one manufacturer has reincorporated in the United States because of the regulations. [1]: https://www.congress.gov/bill/103rd-congress/house-bill/3355/text https://www.congress.gov/bill/103rd-congress/house-bill/3355...

gdubs 2y ago
Fair enough — was wrong on that point, and happy to be corrected.

FranzFerdiNaN 2y ago

Freedom of speech isn’t freedom of a platform. Their speech isn’t limited.

jakelazaroff 2y ago
Imagine saying this if the government shut down, say, a newspaper publishing things they didn’t like. “Freedom of speech isn’t freedom of a platform; the reporters can write elsewhere.”
- ternaryoperator 2y ago
  Freedom of the press is guaranteed in the first amendment, "freedom of the platform" is a non-existent right.
  - tsimionescu 2y ago
    And what makes TikTok different from a newspaper, fundamentally? Both are publishing stories written by others (reporters for the newspaper, subscribers for TikTok), and taking decisions on which stories to publish (through direct editorial control for the newspaper, through the algorithm + some direct editorial control for TikTok).
    - Veen 2y ago
      Newspapers are not platforms; they are publications. They have editors who set editorial policy. They are selctive about the content they publish and who writes it. And they are accountable for what gets published.
      - tsimionescu 2y ago
        TikTok is mainly accused exactly of having an editorial policy, via boosting certain content that its owners prefer and de-prioritizing content that they don't. So this is a non-sequitur. And even when talking about false information, newspapers face 0 legal risks for publishing false information, unless it is defamatory (and even then, it's a civil action, no state prosecutor will investigate a paper for publishing false and defamatory information).

EagnaIonat 2y ago

> we just removed the voice of countless communities that had formed on TikTok. They just move to new place. Loads of online communities have died/migrated for various different reasons over the years. > We have freedom of speech in this country This doesn't impose on your freedom of speech at all. Just because you have the right to say anything, doesn't give you the right to say it where you want.

tsimionescu 2y ago
> This doesn't impose on your freedom of speech at all. By this logic, the US government should be able to ban any newspaper that is publishing articles that they don't like: it doesn't encroach on the freedom of speech of the reporters of that newspaper, they can just speak somewhere else. They don't have the right to say anything at that particular newspaper, just in general. Of course, in reality, banning a publication (TikToK) because you think they may publish stories that you won't like (propaganda for Chinese interests) is an obvious violation of the first ammendment and a form of government censorship.
- wilg 2y ago
  tiktok isn't a publication and the ease with which people can post on other platforms as well as their relationship to the platform is relevant
  - tsimionescu 2y ago
    I agree that there are differences between a publication and a platform, but they are relatively subtle. And as long as the argument is "China through TikTok can influence which content is popular or allowed to be published at all", then that is leaning into the publisher-like aspects of TikTok, not the platform-like ones: and it is precisely these rights that are protected. Just to give an example of what would be concerns of the platform aspect of TikTok, that would be concerns about the ability for the app to deploy malicious code to users' phones, or the amount of data that it siphons off legally. But those are de-emphasised in favor of their control on content, which is precisely what's supposed to be protected by the Constitution.

sterlind 2y ago

China doesn't allow foreign corporations to operate within their borders. why should we? there is no First Amendment right for Chinese companies to operate within our market. there is no First Amendment right for RT to be carried on US cable networks. if TikTok were a website, it'd be different. it'd be one thing if the US were blackholing tiktok.com. but TikTok is an app that sells ads, and they're not entitled to sell ads to US businesses or publish on US app stores.

suraci 2y ago
> China doesn't allow foreign corporations to operate within their borders It's not true, just to clarify it. Many foreign corporations operating in China, only if they: 1. Keep all user data within the border. 2. Cooperate with censorship TikTok meets the first condition in the U.S., and I think the issue lies with the second condition.
- sterlind 2y ago
  I could be wrong, but I thought you have to operate a subsidiary in China, which is majority Chinese-owned. for example, Azure China is operated by 21Vianet, who also owns all the infrastructure.
  - suraci 2y ago
    Yeah, that's the part 1, all data must be within the border so Azure in China can only be ran by a Chinese entity If you look at it from the other side, it's like Tiktok must be hosted by Microsoft/Amazon but not datacenters in China
logicchains 2y ago
>China doesn't allow foreign corporations to operate within their borders. why should we? China is a dictatorship where people have no rights. America was built on the principle that the government shouldn't have the power to tell the common people what to do.
- 2y ago

beau_g 2y ago

I think those comparisons are poor - TikTok is service that could be used to send instantaneous information to 170 million users in the US. It's potential to cause a problem if it's controllers choose to do so is many orders of magnitude broader and faster than those examples.

lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 2y ago

> Are they not allowed to sell books in the United States? They would not be allowed to own the publishing company. > How about guns? This doesn’t have anything to do with media. > Can they release major motion pictures? They would not be allowed to own the publishing company. > Video games? They would not be allowed to own the publishing company. The people in these communities still have a right to assemble and say things to each other. It’s more difficult to do so on TikTok after the US distribution ban but it’s ByteDance who made it impossible with this play; this service shutdown is not a requirement of the law.

TulliusCicero 2y ago

Trade and speech are not the same thing, and this sort of conflation is really tiresome. If we banned China from importing video games into the US, that would be a trade issue. It's very ironic you bring this up though, since China is famously very strict about what foreign media it allows in, and really about how foreign businesses in general are allowed to operate there.