
Tech Monopolies Are the Reason the US Now Has a TikTok Problem - ohmyblock
https://promarket.org/2020/08/07/tech-monopolies-are-the-reason-the-us-now-has-a-tiktok-problem/
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A4ET8a8uTh0
Huh? I completely disagree with the premise of the article.

I will start by saying that monopolies are bad and we could do away with them.
That said, current actions have little to do with their legal and market
position, but rather geopolitical place US is in today.

There is a clear indication that US executive branch decided to go after
China. And if history is an any kind of teacher, the rest of the government
will eventually fall in line ( especially since it is hard to argue that China
is a benevolent dictatorship ).

US does not have a TikTok problem, because of tech monopolies. Monopolies just
may end up benefiting from US foreign policy.

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adventured
> There is a clear indication that US executive branch decided to go after
> China.

No.

The US executive branch didn't decide that. The machine decided that, during
the Obama Administration (not Obama's decision either), and they have been
thinking about - plotting about - this confrontation as far back as the early
1990s at least. Four-star general Wesley Clark talked publicly about that the
Pentagon has been expecting to have to confront China for ~25+ years.

There are countless article you can dig up on this, through much of the Obama
Administration years. Here is a good one:

FAS (Federation of American Scientists) 2012:

"Pivot to the Pacific? The Obama Administration’s “Rebalancing” Toward Asia"

[https://fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/R42448.pdf](https://fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/R42448.pdf)

"In the fall of 2011, the Obama Administration issued a series of
announcements indicating that the United States would be expanding and
intensifying its already significant role in the Asia-Pacific, particularly in
the southern part of the region. The fundamental goal underpinning the shift
is to devote more effort to influencing the development of the Asia-Pacific’s
norms and rules, particularly as China emerges as an ever-more influential
regional power."

Pivot aka confront China.

Read the section called "Areas of Continuity" where they discuss how Obama's
pivot was actually just furthering policies began during the prior Bush
Administration. It's a system in action, spanning administrations.

They're doing it in a gradual multi-part rotation. They called it the "pivot
to Asia" during the Obama years. That pivot was about dealing with the rising
China. Each cycle gets more aggressive and with more resources devoted toward
it. With Trump it's called the confrontation with China. They're escalating as
they go. The media, as part of the machine, also does its propaganda part as
they get their marching orders in part from the military industrial complex:
during the Obama years the media called the strategy the pivot to Asia; during
the Trump years, they like to use "confrontation" in their news titles;
they're providing the cultural atmosphere for what the machine is trying to
steer us toward.

The machine, as I'm half-jokingly calling it, is the system of government and
power that exists administration to administration and sets continuity policy.
It includes structures of power like the Pentagon. That's how the Cold War was
operated for example, they didn't entirely flip flop every administration with
how the USSR was broadly handled. Most of the government continues from one
administration to the next. There are occasionally large, animating ideas that
propel the US superpower into action, challenging the USSR was one of those,
and China today is another. Nearly the whole of the US system has recognized
it can't co-exist with China as previously hoped, most of those pieces that
make up the multi-headed power of the US are in agreement to confront China
now, spanning from the FBI to the intel community to the US military to the
executive branch to almost all of Congress (mostly only varying by degree
now).

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A4ET8a8uTh0
I think you are conflating various parties and ignore the simple fact that we
are explicitly not in Obama administration ( the "machine" comment
notwithstanding ). If there is one thing, one should have learned from the
past three years, that executive powers has been largely consolidated in the
hands of one person.

Now, I do think you have a point about entrenched bureaucracy and China
'planners' ( but the same is true for Iran, Venezuela, Cuba and a number of
other advisors trying to push their pet agenda ); they may be a part of the
branch, but the president, for better or worse, is its head ).

In a sense, US has gotten really 'lucky' with Covid. Here is a good propaganda
reason to get people and the world against China. And yet, notice how varied
the reaction was to the president's approach ( also for varying reasons ).

To say it is all part of a long term strategy is to ignore how chaotic it has
been thus far.

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jonathannat
I think you meant to say clearly that the current US administration has a
chaotic approach to China. Which is true.

But keep in mind, a revolution is chaotic. And it is a revolution because this
administration was the first in US and world to stand up visibily against
China. Via tariffs. Via bans. Via sanctions. Via communique. Until the rest of
the world recognized the danger and followed.

So I would cut this administration some slack. Just like you would for a
startup that's trying to change the status quo.

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x87678r
What exactly is the problem? AFAICS its just a potential problem - there is a
social media platform that is not controlled by an American company. Now you
know how the rest of the world feels.

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filleduchaos
> Now you know how the rest of the world feels.

A lot of Americans have a tendency to think of their country as naturally
owning the internet. I personally find it quite alarming.

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Nasrudith
Depends on what you mean by owning it. I personally accept it as depending on
locality and trying to legislate outside your borders just makes you look like
inssne, an unironic King Canute telling the tides to go back.

I do acknowledge that the US throws its weight around diplomatically and tries
to impose its laws as an international standard.

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filleduchaos
Hmmm. It is difficult to put what I've observed into words but as an example:
look at the way people are reacting to TikTok _hypothetically_ enforcing
Chinese norms and laws on the rest of the globe. Then look at the way people
pretty much just shrug and make excuses when it comes to US companies
_actually_ enforcing US norms and laws on everybody else (e.g. Github banning
people that are from countries the US doesn't like without pretty much no
warning, or that time that Tumblr was blocking LGBT content from showing up in
search because of the SESTA/FOSTA thing).

On a pervasive level, it's in the way a lot of Americans on social media tend
to assume that all content is necessarily intended for or addressed to them
somehow. For instance many people I know have had an American hate train jump
on their tweets that were talking about one issue or the other from a local
lens - as though we should be constantly filtering ourselves and our language
to cater to America's sensibilities. I've never seen quite that level of
arrogance from anyone else.

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ohmyblock
I find very interesting the fact that Facebook had no problem crushing Vine
while massively selling Tiktok ads in exchange for potential business in
China.

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balola
You probably don't know that Google and FB's ads businesses in China are kinda
huge, they never left despite the ban, in fact you can still access a special
version of Google Maps, their Analytics and Ads both are fine in China.

Chinese apps, games and e-commerce have always been their customers.

As for Tiktok, it was spending like crazy on big platforms at the time, and
the product didn't seem popular back then, so why not take that sweet money as
much as you can.

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yomly
I remember about 1.5 years ago I think 90+% of my youtube ads were TikTok. I
thought it was my user demographics as my youtube viewing habits probably
skewed towards a low-ish age. But maybe Tiktok were just buying a lot of
youtube ads.

Probably both

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balola
I was closely monitoring Twitter reactions to the product at the time, your
are not alone, there were plenty of people puzzled by why they were seeing
those weird ads everywhere and repeatedly.

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luckylion
> But their history shows tech giants are structurally unable to defend
> American interests and should never be trusted with that task.

That sounds suspiciously like the tech giants are private enterprises in name
(and profit) only, and are essentially part of the state, tasked with
advancing the country's/state's interests on the digital front. It's rarely
explicitly laid out by a proponent (who's just disappointed that it allegedly
didn't work). It's usually marxists criticizing it as stamocap while everyone
else says that it's completely baseless, private enterprises etc etc.

