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it's a trade war response to china's long history of walling non-chinese apps off from their billion-odd-user market while happily collecting users, data, and a
by _bin_ 2y ago
it's a trade war response to china's long history of walling non-chinese apps off from their billion-odd-user market while happily collecting users, data, and ad revenue from their own apps in other countries. if china removes all limitations on US tech platforms and ceases exploiting our open-by-default policy, we can talk lifting restrictions. until then, all chinese tech services should be banned.
basically china's entire tech industry was built on the back of creating an artificially constrained market where foreign competitors with superior products were not allowed to compete. that is, everything that wasn't built off outright theft of American tech. that could have been hundreds of billions of dollars of increased market cap and returns to the investing public, hundreds of billions that china effectively stole.
- MIA_Alive 2y agojust banning isn't a good idea. Chinese companies should be forced to give technology transfers.
- 9dev 2y agoNow that was the entire point of this, remember? The offer was to sell to an American entity, or be banned. They didn’t want to sell, so here we are.
- dehrmann 2y agoSomewhere I heard that there would have been much less drama around the TikTok ban if the US had framed it as tit-for-tat punishment for not allowing US social media platforms in China.
- jchook 2y agoGoing for a tit-for-tat with China on censorship is so hypocritical for the US it undermines its entire global persona.
- TeaBrain 2y agoWhat would be the offended principle that makes going tit-for-tat with China "hypocritical"?
- surfaceofthesun 2y agoI disagree with the hypocrisy argument. The US government tried to clamp down on Covid misinformation during a pandemic, with a declared emergency and there was pushback that was adjudicated by the Supreme Court [1]. The US does plenty of sketchy shit, but it has nothing on the surveillance state imposed by the CCP, nor is it empowered to suppress information in the same manner. The CCP’s censorship is so heavy handed that others have tried to weaponize it, as discussed recently here: Tokyo University Used "Tiananmen Square" Keyword to Block Chinese Admissions [2]. ——— [1] - https://hms.harvard.edu/news/whats-stake-us-supreme-court-case-misinformation https://hms.harvard.edu/news/whats-stake-us-supreme-court-ca... [2] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42355586 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42355586
- krainboltgreene 2y agoI did a FIOA request on myself and got back data. I’m no one. The US also spread COVID antivax information.
- t-3 2y agoNobody outside NATO buys the whole "Mr Justice F. Eagle" shtick anyway though. People inside the US have been raised on anti-China for hundreds of years (yellow journalism never died) and are ready to accept anything to stop the "bad guys" from winning.
- jimkleiber 2y agoVery few countries have any power to control external influence on a social media platform. They don't have much ability to create or distribute a local solution so they have to import one. So when you say those outside NATO don't buy the whole shtick, part of that is they don't have the luxury to do so. They almost have to import such things or just not have them.
- tzs 2y agoIs there actually a ban on US social media platforms in China? Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and others were operating in China, but when China imposed more and more censorship requirements on all social media platforms in China regardless of whether or not they were domestic or foreign and required all of them to turn over user details to the government many chose not to comply, and then China blocked them. If a US social media platform were willing to implement China's censorship and disclosure requirements for its Chinese operations would they be able to go back? As far as I know we don't know because none of them have tried. Note that TikTok as we know it is itself not available in China. The original app that became TikTok is in China, but when they wanted to expand to the rest of the world they split it into two companies and the apps diverged. Both companies are owned by ByteDance. That's probably the approach a US social media company would need to take to try to get back into China.
- whimsicalism 2y agoChina does not police foreign companies and domestic companies equally - it significantly puts its thumb on the scales to favor domestic competitors. LinkedIn tried really hard to stay in, it simply is not sustainable.
- Stephen_0xFF 2y agoIn a way you have to hand it to China for this master play. Globalization really complicates economies. China became the world’s factory because it produced products for a fraction of the cost, but it didn’t let the West in to provide services and products built by white collar workers into their economy. It copied and made sure that the services and products were produced by Chinese budding middle class workers. Now you can argue they’re on even footing with the West. I agree with you. They caught up and the handicap should be removed. They want their cake and to eat it too.
- whimsicalism 2y agoin no way are they on an even footing with the US, their wealth is more similar to Mexico. there is a US-sized subset of China that is close to an even footing with the US, yes
- abvdasker 2y agoThis is almost certainly true. What I find most offensive is the total unwillingness of elected politicians of both parties to admit that protectionism is the real reason for the ban. Our politicians believe we are stupid.