A free trade agreement must be abided by both parties.
By prohibiting Chinese companies from operating on US soil, Americans aren't renouncing their values or losing the moral high ground as long as companies from other free countries are allowed to operate. The actions of the US admin are long overdue and Europe must muster up the courage (and incur the costs) of taking a similar position now.
Saying if some countries aren't allowed to freely trade on American soil then none should is a non-sequitur.
If this policy was applied across the board there would be a lot less complaining, but this is obviously targeting a company because they pissed off the president.
The united states is in no way making this a universal policy, and is clearly just doing favoritism.
It's either unregulated social networks are a threat to free and fair elections or they are not.
If you have the former position, which seems to be embraced by the majority of HN users, you can't accept to have Tik Tok, a chinese controlled social network, taking over everyone under 30 in the US.
How would this not be a major threat? As opposed to bot farms on FB/Twitter controlled by foreign actors?
Facebook and Twitter are both owned by someone, but the primary driver of what content you see is your social graph, not their magical algorithms. (though this is decreasing with both)
With TikTok, the primary determinant of what you see in your feed is what they choose to show you - and it could be from anyone in the world, with any degree of separation from you.
I think we all know that geopolitical adversaries interfere on USA domestic politics mainly using USA owned social network, in particular Facebook and Twitter.
Yep, what so sad is things have become so transparently partisan. If it were Telegram or Yandex interfering on behalf of Putin, there would be endless hours of call outs about the abuse and need for sanctions, but because it’s China (who have economic sway on a lot of corps and pols), it’s unfashionable to call them out and castigate them (by most media and pols).
> it’s unfashionable to call them out and castigate them
This is an exaggeration. Anti-China sentiment has been surprisingly uncontroversial and bipartisan. It’s actually one of the only things the American left/right can agree on right now.
Really the problem is reducing countries, China or America, to a single entity with a single will as if this was the middle ages and each was being run by a monarch.
The problem is that China has done some specific extremely bad things - Uighurs, Hong Kong; as well as some normal things (competing against US companies) and some things that may be normal but are opaque (how many social networks are beholden to US intelligence services? how many apps snoop the clipboard?). Conflating them all into "China bad" makes it harder to make specific demands that can be widely supported.
Putting kids in cages isn't as bad as the Uighurs? Separating families at the border isn't similar? C'mon... we are just as shitty in the US as other countries any more.
I don't think that's particularly obvious. Lots of people raised serious concerns about TikTok, and lots of organizations banned it, long before the President started leaning in.
Since Chinese companies are partially owned by the Chinese government, so it's not an apples to apples comparison.
Having sat in meetings with Chinese companies, in China, with their 'party member" representative directing the meeting and talking about the "desires of the state."...........
What are you even talking about? Where's the law that Chinese companies cannot freely operate in the US? They can but they have to abide by the local laws. Just like US companies in China, European companies in the US or American companies in Europe.
I really hope Europeans take a closer look at Tesla. Just force them to sell their European business to VW or Daimler or ban them from the market. The horrendous privacy laws in the US should be enough of a justification - those are completely against European values anyway. And even if they aren't, it's not like fact or proof matters anymore. Just accuse and then force them to sell. Maybe that has to happen before other Americans see how ridiculous all of this is.
>What are you even talking about? Where's the law that Chinese companies cannot freely operate in the US? They can but they have to abide by the local laws.
It's probably related to the forced technology transfers[1], or requiring that chinese operations must be a under a joint venture with a local partner controlling at least 50%
It doesn't apply to China specifically. The end result is for the rest of the world to understand that operating in the US is as risky as operating in China...
BTW if I was tik tok I would sell myself to a European entity.
FIRRMA was drafted specifically to deal with China.
> operating in the US is as risky as operating in China
False equivalence. American laws need to be debated and passed. Party decisions don't. American actions are constrained by the Constitution. Party actions are not. Et cetera.
> if I was tik tok I would sell myself to a European entity
Tik Tok are almost certainly in flagrant violation of GDPR.
> A free trade agreement must be abided by both parties.
Is there a free trade agreement that China infringes?
> Americans aren't renouncing their values or losing the moral high ground as long as companies from other free countries are allowed to operate.
If you support your "values" only on a reciprocal basis, essentially you renounce them. And you certainly lose the moral high ground when you try to get others to adopt these values.
>If you support your "values" only on a reciprocal basis, essentially you renounce them. And you certainly lose the moral high ground when you try to get others to adopt these values.
I can't agree with that at all. I hold non-violence as a value, but I'm also going to defend myself if attacked and I don't think that means I renounce my values or lose any moral high ground.
There are plenty of situations where supporting a high-minded value requires reciprocation.
Is there a free trade agreement that’s being broken?
From what I can see, China does not allow free trade. While the US did.
And because this was so “unfair”, the US decided “fuck it, we don’t want free trade either”.
It won’t gain the US much, and will drastically hurt it going forward, especially considering how much the US has benefited from its open business environment in the past.
Honestly, this is pretty much the definition of childishness. You don’t find something fair so you react to it, instead of actually considering the benefits and downsides of an action before making it.
It’s the immaturity and short sightedness of the American government’s behavior, which is the complete opposite of how the US has acted in the past as far as business is concerned, at least, is what will hurt it the most.
> And because this was so “unfair”, the US decided “fuck it, we don’t want free trade either”.
The US didn't do anything like that in fact. You're inventing that premise, broadening what's going on as though it applies to every context when it really applies specifically to China.
As one prominent example, Shopify hasn't required permission to build their $128 billion juggernaut ecommerce platform, riding the US economy like it was a native US company to do it. Neither has Spotify, Trump isn't threatening to ban them.
And you don't need permission to use eg Stripe Atlas to start some giant new tech start-up, riding the US market to great riches. You can just go do it, right now. Just like you could ten years ago. You won't have to pay bribes to anyone to be allowed into the US market, or to be allowed to stay in the US market.
I can freely access eg Baidu and Yandex from the US, despite the context with China and Russia. How does that work the other direction from inside China? Can you freely sign up for Facebook while inside of China?
You can build the next Twitter, KiK, Viber, Snapchat, WhatsApp, Reddit, Imgur, etc. - riding the very comprehensive and strong US free speech protections - without the permission of the US Government. Try that in China and you won't get very far.
The US should treat China as it treats the US, and no better.
Apple, Google, Twitter, Facebook ALL operate in China without being SOLD to the Chinese government. So, why should we enforce a ban on TikTok only...?
I know this isn't the forum for it, but I'll just put the FACT out there: Trump has been continually bullied and mocked on TikTok. Trump is an autocratic dictator wannabe sooooo. 2+2 people.
> the US move against TikTok is setting a dangerous precedent that may eventually kill the internet as a truly global network
Well no. For many years now, the internet is no longer a truly global network, considering at least how China has been treating foreign-owned properties (Great Firewall).
If you wanted to make a point in favor of a global internet, I guess you could suggest that the US should take the high road and reap the benefits of openness and competition, rather than get down to mudslinging Chinese foreign investors. Not that we should preserve something that in reality has been gone for over a decade now.
There is a reason, why India banned not only TikTok, but 58 other apps of Chinese companies, after at least 20 Indian soldiers were killed in a clash with Chinese forces this year. It's called national security.
Russia's Yandex, Mail.ru, and VKontakte have been banned in Ukraine since 2017 for the same reason[1]:
> Russia also continues to hack into individual cellphones, with Ukrainian Colonel Ivan Pavlenko saying that the Russians had gotten into his phone at least twice in 2018. He also confirmed that Russia has used its ability to tap into cellular networks to send SMS text messages to Ukranian troops.
> These are tactics that the Kremlin has also reportedly used against NATO countries, including the United States, and allows Russia's intelligence services to both scrape potentially useful personal information and possibly insert disinformation onto these devices. The texts can also be psychological warfare tools, with past reports that some were purely insulting or threatening. Using hacked personal information, those threats could include very distressing ones directed at family members or significant others.
I believe, that the Internet of the 2020s cannot be compared to the Internet of the 1980s. It has become a business platform, and any country has the right to ban a foreign company from operating in its territory.
Especially so, if that company is based in a foreign state that is not considered trustworthy. And trust is based on mutually shared values: which the US and China have almost none.
At least to the Communist Party of China this has been clear for decades.
it's called retaliation. Can you explain to me how a social media platform mostly used by teenagers relates to military clashes on a contested border?
And Ukraine isn't exactly the best example. The country is a political and economic basketcase with a lower per capita income than Iraq, and one of the reasons is that for eons terrible policy making has been justified by vaguely pointing at Russia.
You really can't just say the words 'national security' like some magical incantation. There better be an actual evidence-backed reason for clamping down on economic activity. Especially if the group you're clamping down on actually is one of your biggest trading partners, which happens to be the case for both US-China and Ukraine-Russia.
> it's called retaliation. Can you explain to me how a social media platform mostly used by teenagers relates to military clashes on a contested border?
That's bullshit. The US and India are not the only countries that are concerned about the TikTok's data collection practices. The investigations have also been launched by the governments of Australia, Japan, Turkey, Indonesia, Pakistan, and the EU[1].
> You really can't just say the words 'national security' like some magical incantation. There better be an actual evidence-backed reason for clamping down on economic activity. Especially if the group you're clamping down on actually is one of your biggest trading partners, which happens to be the case for both US-China and Ukraine-Russia.
Here you go[2]:
> Russia’s intervention in Ukraine expanded beyond geography and into social networks last year, when Moscow officials tried to collect personal data on Ukrainians who joined social media groups protesting the country’s pro-Russian former president.
> Pavel Durov, founder and chief executive officer of Russia’s largest social media website, VKontakte, claims he refused a demand by the Federal Security Service—the KGB’s successor agency—to turn over details on members of 39 protest groups with VKontakte pages.
The main national security threat is not through privacy but through the manipulation of public opinion. TikTok controls the feed, and so it can spread ideas to a very large number of people. They have something like 80 million users in the U.S., and they spend a substantial amount of time per day using TikTok.
If the Chinese government has any ability to control TikTok's recommender algorithm, they could drastically alter U.S. public opinion.
Trump got a taste of something like this (not suggesting that the Chinese gov did this, but it shows what's possible), when tens of thousands of people got tickets to his Tulsa rally because of TikTok videos that encouraged people to get tickets to the rally and then not go. More recently supposedly there has been a trend of ordering free Trump campaign merchandise (yard signs etc), and then making videos burning it in the backyard, etc.
Even if things like this are totally domestic and organic, TikTok merely has to amplify this signal and put these videos in 80 million people's feeds.
VKontakte is not a national security risk in other Western countries, because it's only popular in Russian-speaking world. And Ukraine is currently the only country that is actively trying to break away from it.
I would like to say that Uber was not forced to sell its Chinese business to the local corporation. At that time, Uber's throwing tons of money to compete with Didi and Kuaidi. No one knew when that would come to an end. That's why Uber exited the Chinese market.
That is what they want you to believe, as everything in China must look reasonable. Google left because it decided censoring according to law was too much for them. Really? They suddenly got tired of censoring after doing it for years? Or is it [1]?
The timing of Uber leaving China - Aug 2016 - coincided suspiciously with the Chinese government legalizing ridesharing - announced in July 2016 to kick in November 2016. Isn’t that interesting? Per HBR:
> Under the new regulations, the data collected by Uber would come under the purview of the government. There would be no more subsidies. Market prices would prevail, the regulations state, “except when municipal government officials believe it is necessary to implement government-guided pricing.” According to Xinhua, ride-hailing companies would be urged to merge with taxi companies. (Many of those also happen to be owned by the local governments.) Uber would have to get both provincial and national regulatory approval for its activities anywhere in China. Online and offline services would be regulated separately.
> Moreover, foreign companies like Uber would be subject to even more regulation than their competitors.
This has always been the MO of Chinese government: blackmail though selective enforcement of broad-stroke laws. They tell you to leave without having to mouth it.
Didi has always been the target of local law enforcement to this day because local government collect taxes from taxi but not with Didi, as Didi pays tax to the city it's registered in. This shouldn't affects the national government because it collects taxes either way. This is similar to the issue with online sales tax.
Censorship laws became onerous after 2009 riots. FB/Twitter/Google didn't want to comply either due to politics or cost or combination. If they did, China wouldn't need Aurora to hack dissent gmail accounts, Google would just hand it over legally. Incidentally, after west started ML / mass human moderation Google and Facebook considered returning to Chinese market because it was now cost effective. Oh both companies kept ad sales open and were selling billions per year - they were free to operate in domains where they comply to local laws.
Uber was sponsored by Baidu in China. Baidu is much more resources than any competition / incumbents at the time. Your article suggest regulations killed the industry for everyone, i.e not biased against Uber (and Baidu).
>The country’s first nationwide regulation of the industry was truly bad news for Uber and, if followed to the letter, bad news for the entire industry.
...
>In selling its China business to Didi Chuxing, Uber is getting out of its China operations at the right time and at a reasonable price.
This would be a good deal for FAANGs. It would only be a matter of time before Euro bureaucracy, regulations and statism render them almost entirely sclerotic and useless (not to mention an important source of revenue). The EuFAANGs would survive for a few years, but I imagine most European customers would get tired of a lack of innovation or new feature coupled with higher prices. Even European firms still want to make a profit, and many would figure out how to use FAANGs again.
I'm sensing some sarcasm, but would this not earnestly be a good development for everybody except current FANNG shareholders? Bringing internet firms operating in the EU into a position where they could be more effectively regulated by the EU seems like it would be a huge win for the EU.
National security. Why would the EU let some foreign country have access to all their citizens' private and work email, social media profiles and e-commerce purchases? Especially when it has been proved that that country's intelligence agencies have access to all of FANNG's data on EU citizens through various intelligence programs.
I agree, national security and privacy are both great reasons for the EU to take action against American megatech corps. Honestly I see little downside at all and I even think Americans citizens would also benefit from having these corporations knocked down a peg or three.
Of course shareholders would squeal like stuck pigs about efficiency, economies of scale, etc... but that's to be expected and, depending on your perspective, might even be part of the fun.
I think the wider point is that national security is not just about guns, it can also be about media ownership, social media platforms, and electoral laws about communications and funding.
It depends whether you expect the split off EU interests to be as robust from a consumer perspective as the unified companies were. I’d expect privacy to get better but I suspect other things might fall behind (e.g. Amazon’s logistics or AWS/Google Cloud offerings).
>Yeah, I must be crazy to think something SIGINT-wise is afoot.
How is it useful to the NSA? I get how tiktok would be useful for propaganda purposes, but it doesn't seem useful for actual intelligence gathering. Are terrorists going to upload short video clips of themselves planning a bombing? Do criminals do their business transactions over tiktok?
Sure, but at the same time you can understand why the US government is cool with the US government spying while not being cool with the Chinese government spying.
I think a pretty large number of apps read the clipboard to do things like content detection. For example, most map apps will tell you if you have an address copied to your clipboard, which would trigger that message every time you open the app. Though I understand the suspicion, these kinds of features are so common that I’m not a big fan of reading into it very much. That is, unless you are specifically a malicious developer. I honestly doubt that the majority of these features are malicious. You never know for sure, though.
> Soon, every big country is likely to use “national security” as a pretext to fracture international tech companies. And ironically, it’s the US companies like Facebook or Google that are likely to lose the most from the fallout.
He is 200% right: this isn't an isolated event, it is the end of an era.
There was a time, starting in the Clinton administration when conservatives and liberals all over the world wanted open borders markets (with lots of trade agreements and China entering the WTO), democracy (in Latin America, Eastern Europe and Asia), migrants and open internet across borders.
Then, little by little people soured on all of that openness and globalization. Now many of the places that sought democracy are returning to authoritarian rulers (e.g: Hungary, Turkey, Russia, Brazil, China). Protectionism and closed borders are on the rise (Trump's wall, tariffs and withdraw from Trans Pacific Partnership, Brexit, EU crackdown on immigrants and staled new trade deals).
Tech will be the next victim. All over the world governments will begin restricting foreign companies, for economic, ethical, military or authoritarian reasons. China, Russia, Turkey and Iran always did it. Now the EU is getting sour on Google, Apple and Amazon. Trump is in full war against Huawei and now takes on TikTok.
Businesses will need to find ways to navigate these hostilities. Those that aren't cautious will pay an heavy price.
How do businesses handle that? I see two ways. Microsoft and IBM are two veterans on navigating regulations. Their secret has been a careful mix of compliance and heavy and expensive lobbying. Google seems to be learning this lesson. It seems to work. Huawei will need to learn it with them.
Another way would be to make tech that is immune to regulation either by design (Bitcoin, Signal) or by it's scale and how deeply is supported by local communities (WhatsApp). I don't believe this is effective in the long run. China, Russia and Turkey have shown that they can simply block these technologies when they become a nuisance.
Wielding entity list against Huawei, IC industry talking about "deamericanizing", Barr lowkey suggesting getting US company to acquire controlling share in SE or Nokia to compete in 5G (Cisco said no), TSMC coerced into US plant, Google + Apple controlling contact tracing standards during a pandemic while rebuffing nation state request for more fine grain collection, an now forced sale of TikTok. Nvidia / ARM purchase in conjunction with reshoring IC production and containing Chinese IC industry smells like Barr too. Every line that could have been crossed has already been crossed. US done everything it accused China would do, which China has yet to. Even prior, many countries were moving towards data sovereignty and local warehousing laws. Not
Now that is a very well thought-out post about the whole ordeal. I don't know why, but from what I've read here and in other sites, people tend to veer off to the extremes when discussing anything these days. This issue being no exception. So it's good to read something that does not attempt to play with your emotions or treat things as black and white.
But yeah, the situation is sad to say at least. I wholly understand US blocking Chinese social media company to reciprocate how China (and others) have done in their markets. Yet the current US administration has not necessarily framed it in such light, rather just claimed ambiguous spying claims which are a bit of blanket statement.
Is it actually the case here or is it just a distraction or a negotiation tactic, hard to say. Certainly democratic countries should not stand idle when authoritarian governments attempt to extend their influence and spying capabilities especially within their own borders, even when it happens indirectly through companies. Sometimes playing nice and keeping status quo won't get you anywhere. But in this case the play seems rather dirty coming from a nation as devout of a believer in the free trade as US.
I guess at the core of this whole matter, is the imbalance in how the profits from internet, possibly the greatest invention since electricity and combustion engine, are distributed to the world. The way it's happening now shares some similarities to the imperialism age, where there were those who only produced goods (now consumers of internet services) to the richer countries without getting much in return. Similarly Google and Facebook might control the whole search and social media market in a country with local competitors having no chance of competing, without paying any taxes on the profits or contributing employment.
So by not wanting to become just another colony of the foreign technology companies, I guess authoritarian government can exploit that to legitimize their banning of Google and Facebook to help establish their own. But which in reality serves a bigger purpose as part of their security apparatus to spy and censorship their own people.
Of course I'm now completely omitting the angle that Google and Facebook could also be considered as part of US's spying apparatus, but I'll assume some good will here.
Did the USG force TikTok to sell to a US based company? Or did TikTok choose to sell under pressure? I know it's a matter of degree's here, but TikTok still has a very real choice.
While the executive ban would have forced TikTok out of the US market, how effective would that have actually been?
What if TikTok had just called the bluff on the executive ban?
> What if TikTok had just called the bluff on the executive ban?
I’ve wondered this, too. I think TikTok has a strong argument for why the Administration shouldn’t/can’t be doing what they’re doing in forcing a sale.
But, of course, TikTok’s whole argument kind of falls apart if they’ve actually done what the President has accused them of doing. Purely speculation but I suspect they might have a pretty strong incentive not to take this to a judge.
Note this is the second paranoid Durov's message in a week (first was a pretty PR-ish rant about Apple store fees and in-app purchases a week ago - looks like this prevents him from launching of some grey token project). If anything, this tells much more about the financial state of Telegram.
The fragmentation of the internet will lead to separate technology stacks instead of the monolithic "vertical integration" of a handful of US companies that we have nowadays, and will be a good thing for overall technological innovation. Of course it will come with a lot of conflicts.
If economic protectionism is the concern here, the US could forbid Chinese companies from doing business in the US, but not censor their platforms, apps, websites in the US just because it has no influence over those platforms to do censorship, propaganda and spying on.
But of course they are not really concerned about Chinese protectionism, they do it too just as much, only a bit differently. Control over mass communications platforms popular in the country is what it's all about, just as it is for China, Russia and other openly authoritarian countries, because this is what they deem important to protect power.
I believe the focus on US precedent-setting here is a bit misplaced: India was in fact the first non-authoritarian regime to ban TikTok, and this set a precedent which may have influenced the US's own decision.
This isn't about free trade, tiktok is seen as an arm of a hostile foreign government. The ban wouldn't have taken place if tiktok was based in Japan for example.
Main reason most US company are not operating in China, is not because they are banned, but because they don't want to comply with the China rules regarding total surveillance. Apple has no problem to operate in China and providing its services there.
However I have to say that I totally support the position of all the companies that refuse to operate in China because they don't want to comply with these rules.
Yes just like China whose apps are getting banned all around the world. US has more to lose though if Amazon, FB start getting banned because of extortion laws.
>US has more to lose though if Amazon, FB start getting banned because of extortion laws.
That's probably not going to be an issue unless US starts banning apps for no apparent reason (eg. forcing spotify to sell their American operations). For now the administration (regardless of their actual motives) can plausibly say that it was done in retaliation, which makes it look more acceptable to third parties.
Banning might be fair. But extortion? Come on. That is mafia level.
If you owned a coffee chain across the country and some counties police took extortion money to "protect" your assets or forced you to "sell" your operations to local goons, would any other business observing this ever open more businesses in those mafioso counties?
No. The point is bread and circus and doing a solid for pal Zuckerberg.
TikTok is pretty mild as a propaganda/influence delivery mechanism when you have fully operating mills like RT and OAN operating the US with impunity.
If someone cared about "Chinese Communist Party controlled businesses", action would be taken to address the craven and obvious money laundering of commercial real estate. That's a far more subtle and dangerous threat, as people who control valuable real estate have more leverage to influence government on all levels.
The thing is, the whole world knows what Trump and the GOP are. From a German perspective, until the 'rona hit it was like watching a clown show on TV - you'd laugh your butt off but know that by a certain time the show ends and sanity resumes again.
Basically everyone is waiting for November. If Trump goes off, stuff will normalize again, and if the GOP gets flattened long-term confidence will rise. The really interesting scenario is Trump either winning outright, delaying the vote or refusing to leave office. At that point it's game over for the US on a global stage.
> Basically everyone is waiting for November. If Trump goes off, stuff will normalize again, and if the GOP gets flattened long-term confidence will rise. The really interesting scenario is Trump either winning outright, delaying the vote or refusing to leave office. At that point it's game over for the US on a global stage.
This is my biggest concern. I'm not sure this country can ever be a leader in anything with 4 more years of this low IQ leadership.
All the corruption news that we used to hear about third world countries are all prefixed with US now.
TikTok sale has nothing to do with economics, it's all about internal politics, not even foreign.
TikTok hosts many groups hostile to Trump that were successful at ruining his rally in Tulsa, and could have some more tricks in their arsenal with elections in sight, so he desperately needs to take control of the platform and the users, and the only way to do that is for a US company to acquire it. Before elections of course.
It's a win-win scenario for both Microsoft and Trump: Microsoft gets a big user base and Trump their personal data.
Durov is right but what's even more hilarious was Trump's mention of 'key money' yesterday, implying that the US government is supposed to collect a sort of finders fee after the US government forces tiktok to sell their operations to another private company.
Not only is that ridiculous on its face because it's the government that's forcing the sale in the first place, it's also a fairly shady real estate practise, so we know where he got the idea. Imagine thinking ten years ago that the US government would force a private company to sell all their assets and then pay the government for that 'privilege'.
Trump's threat to ban TikTok is likely decreasing the sale price as the sale is forced. Who should benefit from that decrease? The US government which made the decrease possible? Or the Microsoft shareholders?
Also note that Trump is a TV personality, he wants to look like he's running the US like a business like he promised on the campaign trail. So he's making a lot of noise about the key money thing. He could just have done it silently but he wants people to admire how tough he is, and reelect him.
Nobody obviously because if the government gets a monetary incentive to ban foreign companies and sell them to the US government you encourage the government to act like some sort of mafia landlord, destroying the rule of law.
That I'm being downvoted for this simply fact shows how far gone people even here are, Jesus Christ.
Companies in this new era have the potential to get to the largest top 10 in 10 years. They can influence the world's economy. And displace lots of old laggards (20+ years and not innovating is old).
I am absolutely supportive of all actions taken to promote US companies, particularly against countries (including China) who have taken repeated drastic steps to promote home grown companies.
I have issues on how it is being handled by President Trump.
"free trade and free speech" post-communism were about US trade and speech, of which the US had more than plenty to export. A multipolar world forces both parties to take off their masks and be more honest.
The comments here would be funny if they weren't so sad. So much thinly veiled nationalist glee about finally doing something "against China".
It's like the run up to the Iraq war all over again.
Seriously, people, you can't justify something by pointing out how other people have also done something wrong. You can't justify something by positing a principle that never existed before.
This whole story sounds like out of some dystopian bizarro fiction novel. So lip syncing teen girls are a national security risk now? What are you going to do when something real happens then?
The risk here, if I'm not mistaken, is far from being teens lip syncing, it's the ability for a foreign actor to control the algorithm of what Tik Tok users end up seeing in their feed days after days.
This could potentially be used to stir the political discourse of a country towards one outcome or create unrest by putting groups of citizen against each others, etc. All done by controlling what users see.
I understand that, and that's exactly what I meant to call out in an admittedly slightly polemic way.
This is the argument for banning Hollywood movies in every country that isn't the US, because it gives "illegitimate influence to foreign actors" or something along these lines.
The downvotes without counterargument are frankly chilling given what I'm saying. But I am actually interested in dialog, so let me expand a little:
American (online or not) media, advertising and tech companies have been vastly successful all over the world, and that has - rightfully, to a large degree - been attributed to the quality of their products.
Now there's a successful tech company from China, and you're saying that means they must be banned or expropriated because they could influence public opinion? That's peak hypocrisy.
Yes, China has done similar things. But that's an unfree, communist country! Stooping to their lows makes you wrong, not right.
The other comments here pointing to how the EU could act similarly towards FAANG or Tesla are spot on. It definitely shouldn't in my opinion, but if it did I guarantee you you'd hear the same gleeful "good for you" rhetoric from this side of the Atlantic.
It would make a few people feel all fuzzy and energized for a while, but in the long term it would simply destroy the free, open exchange of goods, people and ideas that has done so much for us and that's dear to so many of us. Thankfully, EU leaders aren't (yet) that unwise apparently.
What do you expect from a predominantly American website? Most humans have a hard time putting their values ahead of their in-group loyalties. Just look at the immigration debates here, where people who profess to oppose discrimination against people based on circumstances of their birth like race and sexuality are happy to discriminate based on people's country of birth.
By prohibiting Chinese companies from operating on US soil, Americans aren't renouncing their values or losing the moral high ground as long as companies from other free countries are allowed to operate. The actions of the US admin are long overdue and Europe must muster up the courage (and incur the costs) of taking a similar position now.
Saying if some countries aren't allowed to freely trade on American soil then none should is a non-sequitur.