
The US declared war on TikTok because it can’t handle the truth - woldemariam
https://www.theverge.com/21355465/tiktok-us-china-information-nationalism-online-propaganda
======
throwaway0a5e
TikTok is just the straw that broke the camel's back.

The US was never going to perpetually entertain a lop side trade relationship
with a wealthy country that had the kind of human rights and foreign policy
situation the west traditionally only ignores if you're poor.

It just so happens that the current administration is not run by political
professionals so it comes across like a toddler throwing a tantrum and
obviously many people take significant issue with the specific policies
presented (i.e. this whole TikTok debacle).

Make no mistake, regardless of who's in the oval office next February we are
in for cooler trade relations with China. This has been a long time coming and
there's bipartisan support. The left is no fan of off-shoring industry to
places with more lax worker and environmental protections. The right is no fan
of doing business with a bunch of reds who hate religious freedom. Neither
side is a fan of either of those things coming at the expense of working class
Americans.

~~~
mabbo
> a lop side trade relationship with a wealthy country that had the kind of
> human rights and foreign policy situation the west traditionally only
> ignores if you're poor

I have a hard time believing the US _actually_ cares about human rights abuses
in other countries, when they are the beneficiaries. They won't put their
money where their mouth is when it comes to ethics and trade.

I think the only way you can influence China to change is to reinvent how
trade works. Rather than trade deals, the US could simply have a set of rules
that cause increases in tariffs. Forced labor? +80% to all goods. Won't let
international observers monitor your elections? +20%. No elections? +50%. And
then enforce these rules strongly, and make no exceptions. That would put
ethics into the equations of trade, and reduce trade with countries who are
not ethical.

But that's a pipe dream that will never, ever happen.

~~~
drewg123
I've often thought we should introduce tariffs based on wages paid in the
source country. The goal would be to prevent goods from being artificially
cheap due to exploitative labor practices..

~~~
Arnt
And then some big low-wage country answers with tariffs based on, say, the
number of people employed and paid above the poverty line, and argues that
it's bad to produce goods using just a few obscenely well paid people and a
lot of robots, and that this badness should be counteracted using tariffs.

~~~
tarboreus
The US is the country with the big consumer market, though. Who cares if small
country X has high tariffs?

~~~
Arnt
Well... I expect farmers do, and Harley Davidson employees, and Boeing
employees, and, well, really anyone with a job that involves selling goods or
services abroad.

------
shrewduser
censorship and spying by the CCP is an important issue, but i don't understand
why anyone should let chinese apps operate in their market when china doesn't
reciprocate.

the trade issue alone is enough for me to support banning it the rest is just
noise.

~~~
breakfastduck
I'm no fan or Trump or general US foreign policy, but how these stories are
being spun as the US being the bogeyman and a censor when China literally
filters the foreign internet and dictates which apps are available for use in
the country.

It's absurd we should allow apps with deep CCP interests on our networks and
devices when they veraciously block & censor any access to their people.

~~~
njharman
The point is we do allow apps with deep USA interests.

USA propaganda, censorship, and surveilence is not "good".

There is universal, unalienable, human rights. Governments do not own their
citizens. They do not have absolute control over them. Govs "rights" end where
ours start.

Routinely forgotten when people get fear mongered or try hard waving the flag.

------
simion314
As a person outside US I think the truth is more simpler, the China economic
war is the topic Trump uses to win the election, is the exact thing with the
immigrants and the wall.

TikTok is just the next step, I am expecting that all the bad things and Trump
failures(no wall, COVID) will be blamed on China and after Trump will make
China pay it will rain with money.

~~~
xtracto
As someone also outside US and China I have found this saga really
entertaining. As stated in the article, TikTok doesn't capture more info than
Facebook, whatsapp or many other American companies. And as shown by Snowden,
those companies happily share that data with the US government.

The only reason why there is so much ruckus is because it is another
government doing it.

But this type of censoring is equivalent to what the China is doing with the
great-firewall. All in the name of national security and preserving g the
country values.

As an outsider user of technology, one has to accept that most applications
are going to share whatever you put out there. And when you really want to
share things privately, you should use encryption methods or meet I real life.

I ve learned to avoid any expectation of privacy online.

~~~
Yetanfou
As yet another person outside of the USA I see the apps as being basically the
same, all based on psychological research related to attention and how to get
and keep it. I don't use any of them and block a number of them on my network
at home so as to keep my daughters from becoming hooked.

I do see a difference between the way these companies interface with their
respective governments, as far as I know there is no USA equivalent of the
Chinese version of the Soviet Nomenklatura. Especially since Xi Jinping came
to power the CCP has been taking strides to reinforce its control over
business [1], backed by a number of laws which mandate companies to assist the
state when it so demands.

So what do I do? I blocked TikTok a while ago, I blocked Facebook more or less
forever. Instagram and Twitter are unblocked for now, the first because my
15yo daughter uses it, the second because nobody here uses it personally nor
has any inclination of doing so while it is often used by others as a news
distribution channel. We don't use Google directly but get search results
through a local Searx instance which includes - among others - Google Search.
We don't use Google Maps [2] , that task is relegated to ~OsmAnd (for
navigation and mapping) and some local mapping sites. No Gmail, I run my own
mail server. No Zoom, again using our own video conferencing (Jitsi Meet) and
chat (Nextcloud talk) servers. No Google Docs, Libreoffice Online in Nextcloud
works fine. In short we use no external services when we can avoid them,
keeping nearly everything in-house and under our own control. A private VPN
makes sure our data stays ours even when using public Wifi. While this may
sound elaborate and in some ways probably _is_ elaborate it makes it possible
to reap the benefits of the 'net without ending up being milked dry by all
those data herders out there, whether they're driven by profit maximisation or
intended as tool in geopolitical power plays.

[1] [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/25/china-
business...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/25/china-business-xi-
jinping-communist-party-state-private-enterprise-huawei)

[2] ...which has the added benefit of not having to suffer through bouts of
stupidity like Google's latest regressive piece of systemic racism where they
start marking the skin colour of business owners when they're sufficiently
pigmented:
[https://twitter.com/googlemaps/status/1288850928632832000](https://twitter.com/googlemaps/status/1288850928632832000)

------
giarc
In my opinion, Trump is doing this so that on September 16th (or whatever the
date is now) he can proclaim how good of a business man he is, how he is such
a deal maker and can bring companies to the USA. He won on that moniker the
first time, he realizes he isn't going to win on the "best economy ever".

------
rbecker
It is worth noting the article author may be motivated by prejudice:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Sarah_Jeong#Actual_langua...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Sarah_Jeong#Actual_language_from_her_tweets)

~~~
learc83
They listed these quotes as coming from the author:

\- "Oh man, it’s kind of sick how much joy I get out of being cruel to old
white men.” - "Caucasians were “only fit to live underground like groveling
goblins.”" \- "Dumbass fucking white people" \- "#CancelWhitePeople"

Is there a context for those that explains them?

~~~
rbecker
"Counter-trolling", supposedly: [https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-
canada-45052534](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-45052534)

Helpfully the tweets have since been deleted, so it's all speculation and
hearsay, unless someone saved them.

------
afrojack123
More like TikTok declared war on America.

------
bassman9000
_Sarah Jeong_

Dropped. There's no way this article is not extremely biased and purposefully
deceiving.

------
082349872349872
I watched _Enchanted_ several years ago with a child who was disappointed that
it didn't follow the clear-cut good triumphs over evil happily-ever-after
fairy tale tropes.

I bet that no-longer-a-child would rebel if they, at the age they are now,
were forced to consume fairy tale fare instead of more plausible plots.

(Bonus clip: Cinderella meets a handyman prince
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQYNUwYHV1c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQYNUwYHV1c)

What do you think of that invention, Elon Musk?)

------
ericmay
> The executive order is instead better understood as an attempt to bully
> companies into regulating speech according to the government’s tastes.

Hmm. But what if the Chinese use Tik Tok or other social media companies to
spread anti-American or pro-Chinese dystopia propaganda? We've seen how
susceptible people are to disinformation, so should we trust an opponent
(let's not pretend China isn't since we already tried to work with them) with
social media applications in the US or west at large?

That's aside from, well, if you're going to ban and restrict US companies from
spreading free speech then I just don't see why we should let China use our
strength against us. Idk why people think that anybody (Americans included)
will just always "choose Democracy" or w/e - we're clearly susceptible to mind
infections and herd mentality toward really dumb ideas. China can use free
speech in the US against us. We do need to protect against that.

At a minimum we need to make Chinese companies store their data about
Americans within the US and it needs to be routinely audited.

~~~
jaybeeayyy
>China can use free speech in the US against us. We do need to protect against
that.

It's a bit bizarre how frequently I read comments like this about the whole
issue. This is a big part of China's reasoning for not allowing "western
imperialist propaganda" in their country.

I am curious about you and other people that have this opinion if you're all
aware of that...? They believe their people are susceptible to western
dystopic "democracy" propaganda and to protect them they regulate content. I
just didn't think people thought the US needed to be protected from outside
propaganda in the same way.

~~~
ericmay
I think protect against it is different than banning it. Think about it like
this, a protection would be having a source label that the content comes
directly from the Chinese Communist Party. In that case you still have access
to the content, but you know who it is coming from.

I think it's also been clearly shown that disinformation campaigns (which can
include ideological disinformation - capitalism bad, Chinese communism good)
have a real effect.

To your more broad point about China I think the issue that is at the heart of
so many complaints is that the Chinese Communist Party doesn't engage in
competition with free ideas. In a sense, they are saying, Western ideals can't
compete here, but we will export ideas to the West and see how many we can win
over.

I'm willing to bet that (and this was the whole point of us opening up to
China in the first place) if China didn't censor or block Western companies,
then we wouldn't have this same issue. If the Chinese were exposed to "Western
propaganda" and Americans were subsequently exposed to "Chinese Communist
Party" propaganda due to free-flowing of ideas then what's there really to
complain about? Most Americans would surely see this as a fair exchange.

I think it boils down to this:

"They get to do stuff to us, and we can't do stuff to them, so let's make it
so they don't get to do stuff to us unless we can do stuff to them".

