I'm not sure how I feel about any of this. China is a legitimate security concern. The practices of that government has always been predatory around I.P and privacy.
But the US government has been very thin on details on how serious the security concern actually is, and whether moving the infrastructure to an American owned company would actually change anything.
The US appears to regulate data protection under a number of sector specific regulatory acts. It will be difficult to restrict the flow of data between US and China without a recognition of social media as a sector that needs its own regulation without it affecting Google and Facebook.
Considering how powerful US tech companies are I can't see this sale making Americans safer through a legal framework.
> Either way, if this leads to a ban of TikTok in the US, it’s going to be interesting to see how boards of teenagers react.
Take India for example. Either of the following is happening:
Users use VPNs to bypass the ban, Influencers move to Triller, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts, or just give up altogether.
What's certain is like all social networks, the teens just find the next craze which the celebrities and influencers are. Even better if it makes them more money than before.
I won't be surprised to see the same happening in the US.
"But the US government has been very thin on details on how serious the security concern actually is"
Even assuming that there are no vulnerabilities in Android and iOS, the Tiktok app has access to video, audio and GPS. If the infrastructure would be hosted in the US and the Tiktok source code has been reviewed, there would still be the possibility that the Tiktop application has a hidden backdoor that allows a third party to execute code within the context of the app and to locate a user (at least when the app is open) and listen to any conversion she has.
Doesn't that conceptually apply to all Chinese apps? Also, all your TVs, phones, routers etc are all made in China. Isn't the real solution to the conceptual problem you're referring to to stop trading with China? That's the only way to be consistent logically.
You're right. If you have any app or device that's capable of recording audio, you need to be aware of the real possibility that the Chinese government would have the ability to hear any word you speak. Not sure how relevant it is for a 'regular' person, but as a person of interest you shouldn't have such device or app. Nor anyone who is known to be close to you.
If Oracle really acquires TikTok's US operations what will be business model of TikTok? I guess not advertising because Oracle criticized Google's adverting business model by buying billboards that said “Internet companies betrayed you”, internet companies "sold your most sensitive and personal information for $125 billion in advertising revenue last year.” [1]
Oracle is a big player in ad tech. Some of its notable acquisitions are Datalogix, Moat. TikTok has a pretty good algorithm for figuring what content you like. Unlike fb and ig you don't even need to have a account to use tiktok.
Honestly I was looking forward to seeing what Oracle does with tiktok. Such a weird unnatural combination. If oracle was smart they would leave it alone as much as possible but I suspect they wouldn't be able to help themselves.
As mentioned elsewhere it makes his donor and friend Larry Ellison get some currently-hot business. I mean there are always pretty clear reasons why business people send money directly to politicians
If Oracle is just a tech partner, then how can they be 100% sure that Bytedance is going to replace all their infrastructure with Oracle’s? Bytedance could easily send spoof data to them.
In addition, since replacing infrastructure takes a lot of time, they could easily keep on delaying things until the election to see if Biden is voted into the White House.
At this point it's just hilarious how this issue in the name of national security for TikTok is of concern but Facebook is not similar concern for other countries.
It is irrelevant whether it is the government that controls the enterprises or the enterprises that control the government when the symbiotic entanglement runs that deep as is the case in both the US and China.
I don’t ever remember anyone alleging the United States used the TAO to steal trade secrets to give to American corporations, nor do I ever recall them hacking other countries to gain advantages in trade negotiations.
If you’d like to paint them as equally entwined, please cite your sources.
It's pretty systemic, not an exception. Just of the top of my head.
"In 1999, Enercon, a German company and leading manufacturer of wind energy equipment, developed a breakthrough generator for wind turbines. After applying for a US patent, it had learned that Kenetech, an American rival, had submitted an almost identical patent application shortly before. By the statement of a former NSA employee, it was later discovered that the NSA had secretly intercepted and monitored Enercon's data communications and conference calls and passed information regarding the new generator to Kenetech. As German intelligence services are forbidden from engaging in industrial or economic espionage, German companies are frequently complaining that this leaves them defenceless against industrial espionage from the United States. According to Wolfgang Hoffmann, a former manager at Bayer, German intelligence services are aware which companies are being targeted by US intelligence agencies, but refuse to inform the companies involved."
The President of the US publically demanded a cut of the Byte Dance sale as a condition of it getting approved. Take it from an American, the US is not the same country it was 5 years ago.
Um, it is exactly the same, it’s just out in the open.
Remember, when JFK was doing diplomatic tours around Europe they had prostitutes ready for him at hotels. The current American president’s behavior is par for the course.
This is the privilege of being the only actual superpower in the world. Your national interest extends all over the world and other nations don't get to have a say in it.
American control of the internet is a concern for other nations, and the ones that can do something about it (China, Russia) are working hard to become independent of it. Most nations however just get to pick what bubble they want to live in - the US one, the Chinese one, to a lesser extent the Russian one.
Anyway, I question the factualality of the superpower status. The US wasn't able to impose its will on even a minor warlord such as Mohammed Farrah Aidid. He stayed, the US soldiers withdrew.
Other countries simply don't have the power to project their interests globally. For example Iran doesn't assassinate top US generals with drones. I imagine they would like to, they just can't. If it ever became apparent that other countries were on track to developing tools that the US can't control, the US would simply strike preemptively (this applies to weapons, as well as economic matters - TikTok, Huawei etc.).
> Anyway, I question the factualality of the superpower status. The US wasn't able to impose its will on even a minor warlord such as Mohammed Farrah Aidid. He stayed, the US soldiers withdrew.
I don't know the case of Aidid specifically, so I can't comment on it. I do know however that if the US is interested enough in something to happen, that thing will happen almost certainly, almost anywhere. I can only assume that Somalia was not that important for US interests.
If things go the way they've been going over the past 4 yrs, I suspect that the US will end up ruling by force more and more. I also suspect that China will be allowed to carve out a sphere of strong influence in South-East Asia; this fact in turn will likely lead to a re-militarization of Japan.
These are all really unfortunate developments and I hope that history will prove me wrong.
How is China going to carve that sphere of influence out? It's surrounded by nations that are wary of that exact thing happening (again).
> this fact in turn will likely lead to a re-militarization of Japan.
Japan already has a powerful military, with the capability of building nuclear weapons immediately. The Japanese have bad marketing, but following WWII they effectively stopped being chauvinist as a nation.
> How is China going to carve that sphere of influence out?
Among other things, my expectation is that Taiwan will go the way of HK. South Korea may at some point reunite with NK and enter the Chinese sphere of influence more strongly. South East Asian nations are already strongly influenced by China.
> Japan already has a powerful military
They still have a pacifist constitution, I think [1].
> following WWII they effectively stopped being chauvinist as a nation
The definition of chauvinism is vague and I think it would be unproductive to enter a debate about which nation is/isn't chauvinistic.
In my view a form of potential chauvinism is built into any nation state. Nation states are a relatively modern fiction that depends to a certain extent on the belief that there is a 'we' that is different and sometimes better than 'them'.
However, in my previous comment I didn't mean to imply that Japanese imperial ambitions will be reignited. Simply that Japan will feel threatened by Chinese power and, unlike other nations in the region, will be more likely to strongly oppose that power, rather than accommodate it.
Agreed. And the costs add up. The US has been eroding it’s goodwill for a very long time. I wonder how long it is until the tipping point is reached. Dollar hegemony probably means there’s a bit of runway left.
That's exactly right. Anybody who has been at a moderately successful startup knows all too well the step where a Chinese company will approach you to "partner"[0] into the Chinese market
[0] Where "partner" means - setup a local JP we control and give us your IP and you will own a "share" (but good luck with the local courts when things go wrong!)
The fact that anybody could point fingers at the US for making it difficult for China to do business here is absurd. China is one of the most hostile protectionist economies. The US has never done anything that even approaches how difficult it is for a foreign business to trade in China.
I’m quite a strong advocate for free trade. But if a country has locked you out of their market, I don’t think you should give them easy access to yours.
An eye for an eye isn’t really relevant. If a country is manipulating its markets, and denying another country access to them, then the country that is denied fair access is putting its own economy at risk. A US business cannot be expected to fairly compete with a Chinese business, and trade barriers are a perfectly reasonable response to that.
Regarding the US intelligence apparatus. It’s a threat to the liberty of US citizens. But it’s not a threat to US national security.
It's hard to tell since details are scarce in the article, but perhaps this is the same model that Oracle and TikTok are aiming for? (Oracle provides the U.S. footing for a partnership, and that relationship enables TikTok to (continue to) operate in the country)
Facebook was banned in China following the Urumqi riots in Xinjiang. Facebook was partially used to organize the protest, and then refused to cooperate with law enforcement on apprehending the organizers.
Conversely Microsoft, Uber, eBay, Tesla etc are all pretty scary competitive brands that ran fine in China because they elected to follow local laws. Uber and eBay were just not competitive because they elected to not do any amount of adaptations to localize their services. Skype could have been competitive if Microsoft cared enough to add relevant features for the local market but didn't. Tesla we'll see.
Most of these companies would kill for an opportunity to enter China.
I don't know what the latest is [0], but 5 years back following these laws meant you'd have to be a standard domestic company which a non-citizen cannot incorporate or own.
[0] China has a tendency of introducing new mechanisms giving impression of potential for more access that never pan out.
Back in the day AWS was promised unprecedented terms in a Shanghai free trade zone. Was supposed to have access to unfiltered connections. None of that has ever happened and "AWS China" is now just a cloud service operated by Chinese companies under the AWS brand.
Even YC fell for this with their China operation now being 100% China-run leeching off their brand. Though I don't know if anything was being promised to them.
Agreed. It's the same irony around the fears of Huawei's 5G, whilst the entire world IT is run on operating systems owned by US companies. I can't remember the last time China tried to assassinate a country leader in South America, or a country which has been bombed by Chinese drones, or a WikiLeaks document which proved that China is spying on the entire world. On the other hand... I genuinely can't remember a single year where the US didn't bomb a country..
Please don't take HN threads further into nationalistic flamewar. Such threads are extremely repetitive and deeply uncurious, and therefore off topic here.
I can't remember when the US built concentration camps specifically for a remote Muslim minority, or when they built islands to falsely stake territorial claims, or ...
Your arguments have been cherry-picked in a such a way, that "bad faith" comes to mind.
And many of America's own citizens criticize the US government for running it. What happens to Chinese citizens when they comment negatively on the Uighur camps?
The fact that the US does not always live up to the ideals its espouses is no knock against those ideals.
The American system, for all of its faults, at least manages to select correct at times to point closer to its ideals. Maybe I don't follow closely enough, but I generally don't see anything like that happening. Perhaps a bit of 'de-Maoification' of his personality cult at one point?
The embrace of a more market economy wasn't a good accepted for its own sake, but more for its practical benefits, so I wouldn't count that.
In some ways, that is the genius of Pax Americana. Give people the idea that they have a voice to criticize and to change policy, and forever hold the moral high ground over regimes that don't bother to make that pretense.
Then have politicians run for office promising to address that. Once they're in office, they drop it completely, blaming bureaucracy and 'lack of political will'. Then voters start all over again, with heads held high on the belief that what they want could theoretically be possible with the next candidate. Or the one after that.
The Obama administration came into office on a promise to close Guantanamo, and offer a public option on healthcare. Neither came anywhere close to fruition.
> The Obama administration came into office on a promise to close Guantanamo, and offer a public option on healthcare. Neither came anywhere close to fruition.
For the first, talk to Congress (at least partially):
It's simple. The US has amassed such immense power through violence that there are very few US citizens that can actually threaten it. But when they crop up, they do get assassinated.
I had explicitly written "remote Muslim minority" to point exactly at the Uyghurs, while avoiding connotations like Guantanamo, or the Japanese internment camps in WW2, to undermine the sloppy argumentation of the post I replied to.
You could argue that the treatment of Native Indians is just as bad if not worse - hundreds of thousands have been killed directly, and their descendants suffer because US has nearly entirely eradicated their culture and identity. And sure, there are no concentration camps, but putting an entire ethnic group inside a reservation without means to support themselves is not exactly great either.
And US didn't build islands, sure - it just gets CIA to overthrow governments and replace them with ones much friendlier to their business.
Of course, no one is saying that the countries are equivalent. Just that superpowers are going to do evil superpower shit.
Native Americans are still suffering as an ethnicity in the US - while they are free to leave the reservations and won't be punished for doing so, many don't have the means to do so because those means have been taken from them and their ancestors in the past. They suffer from much higher drug use percentage, huge unemployment, and increased crime rates where they live, and that's something that was and is forced upon them.
So no, maybe Native Americans aren't being actively prosecuted for who they are - but they definitely haven't been made whole by the American people.
Again, it's apples Vs oranges. Native American reservations aren't as bad as Uighur concentration camps, but just because it's in the past it shouldn't be ignored. Germany pays wartime reparations to this day, even though they could easily say that Nazi crimes are in the past now.
> I can't remember when the US built concentration camps specifically for a remote Muslim minority
I think the internment of Japanese in America during WWII is similar in concept. [0]
You could cherry-pick situations for nearly any country to suggest they are good or evil. Reality is that most countries have done a lot of good and a lot of bad. I’m not sure that we’ll reach a conclusion to the discussion topic “is China worse than America” just by giving examples of how they are each bad!
> US built concentration camps specifically for a remote Muslim minority
Thought experiment: place a teleporter from Xinjiang to just south of the US border. Suddenly it's possible for the oppressed Uighurs to escape and cross the border into the US. What happens to them?
I suspect they'd simply end up in a different internment camp.
What's wrong with them claiming asylum in Mexico? International law requires asylum seekers to request it at the first available country. It doesn't let them "shop around".
I believe the link you shared contradicts your previous statement that "International law requires asylum seekers to request it at the first available country." From the linked article:
"""Neither the 1951 Refugee Convention nor EU law requires a refugee to claim asylum in one country rather than another.
There is no rule requiring refugees to claim in the first safe country in which they arrive."""
Regarding "This isn't the US's responsibility..."
There are two answers to the "This isn't the US's responsibility" assertion.
One is that it's everybody's responsibility, and the US has the resources to shoulder a disproportionate burden (to say nothing of a bit of causal history creating the need to shoulder a burden in the first place; the US has intervened in South American politics for decades, sometimes with the express goal of disrupting the will of the people and local governance). Where others say "Why?" we should instead say "Why not?"
The other is that the country that has a statue in one of its largest harbors declaring "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!" ... has declared it their responsibility quite openly.
Your argument is also cherry picked. You care about Muslims? Name me the Top 5 countries which are responsible for Muslim deaths in the last 10 years. Spoiler alert, China is not on that list, guess who is though.
My point was that the parent (to which I replied) was some serious cherry picking, and I replied to show one could reverse the argument by applying the same argumentation.
BTW, holding the US responsible for "muslim deaths" in Iraq and Afghanistan is a bit weird. In 2016, US-led forces were responsible for 1200 deaths (the peak over the last decade), while the ISIL accounted for almost 9000. Check iraqbodycount.org.
Did you see any proof showing there is concentration camp in Xinjiang? Or you just read it from news and have you doubted whether the news is fake or not?
Thousands? Pretty much every article that I have read about concentration camps, I have tracked down to unreliable sources like CIA-funded propaganda organizations.
I don't see articles from amnesty international going viral in western media. The last big China bad news story in HN was [1], which was literally funded and assisted by a CIA-funded organization. An article which uses a few blank spots in a map to make up just crazy conclusions?? And people in HN just seem to buy it without any of the usual skepticism you see HN show about the most boring science articles showing the most obvious results. It's like that in pretty much any western social media site. Makes you think you're living in some alternate reality.
The problem with your logic is you are comparing US to "the world" and China as small resourceless player. The case here is more akin to China blocking US products and US blocking china's product. If US consistently blocks without reason, let's say Germany's cars, then I think Germany have ethical ground in blocking US's cars.
China has far greater internal issues of oppression and authoritarianism. It also meddles in foreign affairs around the world but you probably don't hear about it. See Africa and the belt-and-road initiative for some details on the damage done.
You're not wrong, but the US/UK get the blame when client nations use weapons sold to them (see: Saudi Arabia). The Chinese shouldn't get a free pass for selling weapons into the Middle East with scant regard for how they're used either.
Also, from the Graun link in my parent post:
> the US remains unwilling to allow countries in the conflict-torn Middle East to buy its Reaper drones.
This is not unsubstantiative. It's called reframing the person's point in a new light, and it's valid debating technique, although indeed it often points out stupid parts in the other persons view points.
"As part of the Great Firewall, beginning in 2003 China started the Golden Shield Project, a massive surveillance and censoring system, the hardware for which was provided by mostly U.S. companies, including Cisco Systems. "
The CCP has an agency within about 85% of Chinese firms, (soon 100%) to ensure companies adhere to the CCP agenda - they actively monitor, censor and promote state propaganda as well as track every citizen for potential wrong doing. Not only, the CCP will use these companies and all the information gathered for whatever use it sees fit i.e. theft, spycraft etc..
Xi can do whatever he wants, when he wants, to whomever, without any material oversight.
Imagine if Trump could dig into the social media records of anyone in America - and a few billion around the world, willy nilly, at will, and do whatever he wants with that information? Obviously China faces repercussions for serious and obvious 'breaches' but they can avoid most of that if it's hidden.
In the US, you generally have to commit some kind of crime or do something noteworthy to attract the ire of the authorities, after which a warrant must be issued for said person's information to be looked at - which is reasonable.
There is somewhat of a problem in that the US doesn't care that much about the privacy of non-citizens, in which case, a photo of you smoking pot could get you barred from entry into the US without much oversight.
This should be updated and regulated for sure - and non-American countries should either require 'foreign storage of data' or for reciprocity in terms of the information that can be looked at.
I don't like Trump, but his push on TT has merit. What he should do is enact legislation that applies universally so that it's not directed in a politicized manner at a single company wherein there is a conflict of interest (TT users ganged together to help ruin his GOP convention - I don't think CCP had anything to do with it, but surely he's angry and wants personal revenge).
It's hugely hypocritical that the EU is so keen on user privacy and allows TT to exist within it's borders. They can't allow data to be stored by any systematic authority that by definition will use that data against the person and state of EU.
It is a concern but until Trump the school of thought was that the right of free enterprise should be preserved and free markets will take care of it eventually, so other US friendly countries(EU especially) introduced data protection regulations instead of outright banning of having a country's communications pass through other country systems.
Now that the USA is no longer pushing for global open markets but champions protectionism, you can be sure that other countries are itching to ban US companies.
If the TikTok ban materialises, you can be sure that all other countries will follow and an era of global US internet companies will come to an end. Maybe giants like FB or Google will be able to set up local versions and keep their markets but there will be no longer companies that were started by few young people that grew to be global products because due to "national security" they will have to set up legal entities in each country and have their business&tech tuned for each markets regulations. Some will require you to keep certain data and give it to the government or else... others will prefer to have their cronies run this and will make sure that you won't succeed in that market.
You thought GDPR is too restrictive? That was actually an attempt to keep global free market alive when fixing the associated national security risks but since USA seems to be choosing the Chinese approach of banning companies instead of regulating them, you can expect that GDPR will loose relevance as EU & others will also look into banning foreign internet companies.
The annoying cookie pop-up might not made internet businesses change their behaviour but it definitely built an awareness that companies are tracking you. Now it will be quite easy to convince the population that for national security reasons FB/Google and others should be banned, and look even the USA is not allowing foreigners why should we? If the USA is banning apps and websites, obviously we can do it too without becoming totalitarian dictatorships like China, Russia, Cuba or DPRK.
I am baffled why the USA choose to trash its global leader position here.
The counter-argument is that China's protectionism hasn't hurt them. They have several major brands doing just fine, reaching into plenty of other countries that haven't blocked them. Also it's not as if most other countries have domestic alternatives that can easily take the place of the major US companies.
>Also it's not as if most other countries have domestic alternatives that can easily take the place of the major US corps.
It doesn't take huge technical skills that exist only in SV to build alternatives to US internet companies. The reason why China and Russia have their own alternatives but the EU and UK don't is because they let US steamroll into their markets. FB and other US companies were early or had better funding and got the lead, network effect kicked in and they dominated. When a country blocks you off, your funding and network effect is no more.
In other words, the moat of the US internet companies is not their tech but their network and that network can be made anaemic by countries who want to have their local alternatives, as seen with Russia and China.
Even in places where that tech expertise doesn't exists someone will build white label solutions and sell them.
> "The reason why China and Russia have their own alternatives but the EU and UK don't is because they let US steamroll into their markets."
Why do you say "steamroll"? They came in because they were allowed in. Are you now making the case that protectionism is good and EU/UK should prefer their own while blocking foreign companies? If it was that easy then why wouldn't they just do it to encourage domestic activity?
It's a description of what happened. If you are curious about my opinion, I would prefer having a global market with safeguards like the GDPR in place. I am not a fan of the direction where the would is headed and I am not looking forward for the partitioned internet in an isolationist world. It's also disheartening losing the USA as a force of ideals for social and economic freedoms, despite its faults it was a huge enabler for people with ambitions in less free countries.
Why would the entire world be affected? It's the US applying specific protections against China, which has already isolated itself. Nothing changes for the rest of the world.
The world has the exactly the same concerns towards the USA based companies. What changes is that from now on it is acceptable to block apps and websites but blocking them was considered a free speech issue and Up until now blocking apps and websites was something that that only dictators would do, not anymore.
Blocking foreign companies is not a free speech issue. Also free speech isn't a law, and the 1st Amendment has nothing to do with some social network provided by a private foreign corporation that must still follow US regulations to operate here.
The rest of the world is not going to change just because we start to treat China the same way they treat everyone else. Perhaps you should read up on how India and other countries are also defending against China.
You understand that not everyone is US citizen, right? In fact, only about %5 of the world is, therefore %95 of the world is not bound by amendments in the US constitution and by foreign corporation they mean US corporations.
How do you think US corporations were able to grow to global scale without registering legal entities in the %95 of the world? Because due to the US pressure and advocacy for free speech not letting Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and others to operate was considered a matter of free speech in the pro western world. Russia and China did not played that game and had homegrown versions.
US is not going to win China and is about to lose the non-US wester countrieds by blocking TikTok. After the TikTok case no political activist will have credibility when the next dictator or would be dictator blocks Twitter. In places like UK/EU where local companies aspire to compete with the US ones you can expect much more hostile environment for the next US startup because no longer the issue would be a matter of freedom but national security.
You understand that not every company is a social network, right? There are thousands of multinational corporations that operate in several countries, and every country enforces various regulations against these foreign (as in the opposite of domestic) companies.
US companies are welcomed because they provide investment, jobs, resources and opportunities that weren't otherwise available or developed domestically. This has absolutely nothing to do with free speech (which again isn't a law and isn't even the same in other countries).
China specifically acts against free trade and is now being treated the same way (after decades of being unfairly tolerant to them). This is no different than tariffs and sanctions against other troublesome nations. Nobody is going to start blocking US companies because of this.
obviously we are talking about companies that do their business over the internet(not only social networks, pretty much anything that can scale fast). There’s nothing new for those who need physical local presence or sell goods that go through regular customs. If US App&website banning becomes a thing you can expect to be able to continue selling wine to France as before but loose access to the French Ad market without properly incorporating In France(making it illegal to Buy ads or run ads from companies that don’t meet a set of regulations that only a local company can meet ).
Once you get out of the SV tech industry bubble it's painfully clear that pretty much every other industry has taken a hit thanks to Chinese IP theft. Sure, the American people probably receive a net benefit from being able to buy Harbor Freight tools for razor thin margins but when you start talking industries like ship yards and other more specialized "higher up the industrial food chain" type stuff it becomes harder to justify as a net positive.
Part of the role of government is to fix negative externalities caused by free markets. The environment for example, worker protections, etc.
I’d argue that this is an example of the US making the playing field more fair and competitive. TikTok has free reign in both the US and China. US social media companies don’t. If the US banned Airbus from selling planes in the US, do you think France and the EU would just say “well, the free market will win out!” And stick to that principle and not subsequently ban Boeing?
I’m also a bit baffled at the overreaction here. I’m paraphrasing but comments that imply that the US does this wantonly and regularly are quite confusing, as are ones implying that the US is losing it’s free market leadership or something. Factually this is incorrect as it’s well known that other countries have more free and fair markets (Nordics for example), and I think similar comments imply some sort of international agreement that views US actions here as bad, when that’s unlikely to be the case and certainly hasn’t been proven.
> you can expect that GDPR will loose relevance as EU & others will also look into banning foreign internet companies.
I don’t see any credible evidence of this. It would be very bad for the EU as well and I don’t think Europe really has this desire. But you can also look at proposed taxes that don’t specifically target but mostly only affect large US Internet companies to see the protectionism that the EU is engaging in as well.
>Part of the role of government is to fix negative externalities caused by free markets
Sure but it is about how you fix them. Suddenly it is becoming acceptable for governments to control the access to services of their citizens - much like the way China & Russa used to do since ever. These things have far reaching implications beyond business, it's not like putting high tax on imports.
China employs child labor, should USA start using child labour too to compete with China?
If it's not obvious already, I am not fan of China's way of doing things and what I am advocating is that the west should be tackling the issues without becoming China. Yes, I get it, china blocks Facebook but the answer to that should't be blocking TikTok because this means that China got it right and the way forward is being like China.
Well I think what it means is when it comes to Chinese companies they would be treated as China has treated western countries, whereas nobody is forcing Spotify to be sold to a US company. You can tackle these issues globally and then treat China specifically since it’s clear that 20+ years of being a good actor resulted in not the outcome the west wanted.
Is blocking foreign competitors the same as child labor? If you want a reasoned and nuanced solution then you must start with a reasoned and nuanced argument.
If we have learned anything in the last decade, it is that globalization has just let us externalize the costs of western behavior and focus those costs in Asia (temporarily) until it comes back to bite us.
I.e. short term thinking out of wall st/washington
It makes sense. Since FB is already huge, they can handle having a separate unit in every country they operate and will no longer have to worry of a start-ups eating their launch thank to high barrier of entry. They can foster relationships with the local governments and kill off any competition.
What you call the "global free market" was not really a free market at all, it was a one sided exchange with the US on the wrong end of the deal as our political leaders for decades have catered to special interests and large corporations to sign Trade Agreements that were good for the companies but bad for the People
It's not the US that is engaged in wars with all of it's neighbors over capturing territory. China is. For all those countries like Japan, Taiwan, India, etc, US is not a concern. China is the immediate threat. And China will not shy away from using all of it's assets in this case. The mandatory Party Commissar in every organization will ensure that the assets comply.
Not sure why you’d think Facebook isn’t a national security concern for other countries. I mean in China they outright banned Facebook, and EU have ordered Facebook (and others) to restrict data sent from EU to US.
The only thing unique about this case is the fact that USA might ban the app, which is fair considering China does the same to US tech companies.
What's unique about this is the US government is telling them to sell it to a US company. It would have been normal to just outright ban it for security reasons the sell it or get ban part is the scary part.
> What's unique about this is the US government is telling them to sell it to a US company
This is exactly what China does to foreign companies who wish to operate in China. The US is simply pursuing a model of reciprocal trade protections and tariffs.
the chinese government forces them to "sell" (i.e. "partner" where the partner is given significant concessions that would never happen without the chinese government's protection, including ownership over IP).
honestly, if one views the US in a trade war with china, then there is a concept of "national security" (in a wide view of the term, I'd agree not the traditional view in the US, but probably closer to how china views the term) to allowing chinese companies access to the US market that are not reciprocated in China.
heck, the fact that they want to "partner" is probably indicative of how the chinese view the issue. i.e. US companies have to have a chinese "partner" to enter china, so to do the same in the US, they seek out a US partner.
At least you know the rules to play before joining their game, TikTok got famous and eating into their rivals like instagram and snapchat ad revenues and the rules got changed. It's like letting foreigners invest into your market and picking the winners and forcing them to give up their work.
All countries behave this way as long as the decision maker can survive politically. I am just surprise about the US doing it in a blatant way and its not even technology they are going after, just a niche social app. US did bomb Libya to submission when it nationalized its oil industry, I guess politics in the US is really just controlled by the business donors.
For a different (and more stupid) reason though. It's not like CCP banned Facebook for sending home data, they banned Facebook for not being able to comply to censorship requirements.
The point being made is that government intervention is a given in China at every level.
You can argue either way on if it’s “right” for the US to be doing it too, but it’s a bit rich to make a song and dance about how unfair it is under the circumstances.
I’m 100% happy to agree governments in general, should keep out of this stuff, but that’s not the world we live in, or have lived in, for a very long time...
/shrug
It sucks, but it’s kind of hard to be sympathetic, honestly.
> and decided to pursue a partnership with Oracle in hopes of avoiding a U.S. ban while appeasing the Chinese government
This makes more sense if you replace "Oracle" with "company run by a Trump ally". I'd argue this makes Trump's "hard on China" start to look pretty fishy, but I suspect anyone who cares made up their mind about who to vote for a long time ago.
Yes, Bloomberg is corrupt. He tried to outright purchase the Democratic nomination, and subsequently dangled all sorts of promises of political spending in further attempts to buy influence.
Bloomberg is corrupt. In addition to his attempt at purchasing a nomination, his publication stopped writing about Xi’s family wealth in order to sell more terminals in China.
Yes, perhaps. Perhaps also the Pacific Ocean has some water and perhaps the sky is above the land and perhaps the Sun rises is the East.
Does anyone not think Bloomberg is corrupt?
> You can also see how using 'guilt by association' here makes no sense with Oracle if we keep thinking that 'Bloomberg LP is supporting Biden.'
But the argument here wasn't guilt by association—that some one was bad because they were associated with someone else that is bad.
It was that an action was taken to appeal to Trump by dealing with a firm known to be associated with and presumed to be favored by him. No one is guilty by association in that presentation.
Would it be fair to say 'Twitter and Facebook are associated with the Democrats given the censorship and bias against right-leaning accounts?' It wouldn't.
This is how silly this guilt by association fallacy is when you associate one's views with the entire views of the company because the chairman is a 'Trump supporter'.
Now you have another so called 'report' directly contradicting the entire matter of selling to Oracle. [0] An official statement only confirms or denies these 'reports'.
We only know of Microsoft's official statement and not Oracle's or Bytedance's so spreading such 'rumours' or so called 'direct sources' tells us that we should wait for official statements rather than jumping into ultimate conclusions.
> Investors in TikTok’s parent company are reportedly pushing for Trump-friendly Oracle to acquire the viral-video app
The investors, which include Sequoia Capital and General Atlantic, see Oracle’s bid as their best bet to get “a piece of the action” in TikTok, and recognize the advantages of the company’s political ties to the Trump administration, according to The Journal.
Actually, I wonder how 80 million active users would take it if one day their app stopped working, because Trump wanted it, a few days or weeks before the elections. It might not skew votes too much, but 80 million is a lot of people.
But the US government has been very thin on details on how serious the security concern actually is, and whether moving the infrastructure to an American owned company would actually change anything.
The US appears to regulate data protection under a number of sector specific regulatory acts. It will be difficult to restrict the flow of data between US and China without a recognition of social media as a sector that needs its own regulation without it affecting Google and Facebook.
Considering how powerful US tech companies are I can't see this sale making Americans safer through a legal framework.