Comment by briffle 2 days ago
Still have no good answer on why its bad for a company that is supposedly under Chineese influence to collect this kind of information on us, and adjust and tweak an 'algorith' for displaying content. But its perfectly fine for a US company to do it? Wouldn't the right solution be to protect the citizens from all threats, foreign and domestic?
> If TikTok was controlled by the Russian government would we even be having this conversation?
Yandex got fragmented into EU bits and Russian bits. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/aug/23/russia-yandex-...
The head of VK is subject to sanctions https://www.theverge.com/2022/2/26/22951307/us-sanctions-rus... (but it appears that Americans are still free to use VK if they want to?)
> (Ironically most Americans are freaked out about Russia, but when it comes to global politics, China is the much greater threat to the U.S.)
American-backed forces are fighting the Russian army itself in Ukraine. Implied in all of that is a desire to not have US forces fight them directly in Poland.
> Ironically most Americans are freaked out about Russia, but when it comes to global politics, China is the much greater threat to the U.S.
China benefits greatly from the rules based order that America spends considerable effort to maintain and uphold. They would prefer a different rules based order than the one America would prefer, but they're better off with than without and recognize that.
OTOH, Russia does not. They prefer chaos.
China is definitely the stronger threat. But Russia is a greater immediate threat because they're only interested in tearing things down. It's easier to tear things down than to build them up, especially if you don't care about the consequences.
> But Russia is a greater immediate threat
I disagree; and it's the dismissal for the past 13-14 years of China as an immediate threat which is what has in part allowed China to become such a large longer-term threat.
> They would prefer a different rules based order than the one America would prefer
I would put it differently: China wants its own global hegemony instead of the U.S.' -- and that's understandable (everyone wants to rule the world). But if the U.S. doesn't want that to happen then it has to take steps to counter it.
I agree with point #1, but then this ban should also include the US controlled sites - having the main office in the US doesn't mean the data is any more secure, or that the products do less harm socially.
For point #2, this seems like you're saying "they don't have a leg to stand on, and we want to do the same thing". If we don't support the way they control the internet, we shouldn't be doing adopting the same policies. I don't think governments should have any ability to control communication on the internet, so this feels like a huge overstep regardless of the reasons given for it
Re #2 -- while there is a tit-for-tat element here, forcing a sale of TikTok or removing it from the App stores, is still worlds apart from the type of censoring of information that the Chinese government engages in. So it's not a case of "we want to do the same thing". If you've lived in China (I have) you'll know what I'm talking about.
Good clarification - I'm not saying we're adopting all the same policies, but it is a step in that direction, and I think we need to have a clear line saying we never do anything close to that. Similar to the "first they came" poem, this could be used to justify further expansion of this power, and that poem does start with "First they came for the communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a communist"
Agreed that there's always a risk that something like this sets a precedent for abuse of power to control information by the US government. And we know that the US gov is not beyond spying on its citizens (Snowden, NSA). However, there are still fairly robust safeguards in place in the US by virtual of the political structure, to make this much less likely to happen. Those same safeguards make it unlikely that while Trump and Elon would almost certainly exercise the degree of control that Xi has if they could, they are prevented from the worst by the structure in place.
The problem in China is that there weren't strong safeguards to prevent a totalitarian control (CCP is supposed to be democratic within itself in that leaders are elected, though it's all restricted to party members, of course), and when Xi came into power he was able, within a few years, to sweep aside all opposition, primarily through "anti-corruption campaigns". So he now has a degree of control and power that would be a wet dream for Trump. (And you should see the level of adulation in the newspapers there.)
Now in the US we have a separate problem, and that is we have a system where unelected people like Elon and Zuckerberg, Murdoch, etc., exercise a tremendous amount of influence over the population through their policies and who are pursuing a marriage between authoritarian politics and big business (by the way, there's a term for this, it's called "fascism"). That is a serious problem -- but it's separate from the TikTok issue and shouldn't be used to discount the dangers of the CCP having control over a highly popular social network in the US.
Those are answers to a different question.
The US companies continue to feed the same information to the Chinese, even though the Federal government has been trying to get them to stop for almost a decade (I cite sources elsewhere in this thread).
So, all of your arguments apply equally to the big US owned social media companies.
Since the ban won’t stop the Chinese from mining centralized social media databases, the important part of the question is:
> Wouldn't the right solution be to protect the citizens from all threats, foreign and domestic?
> won’t stop the Chinese from mining centralized social media databases
that's not the issue; the issue is control of the network
> Wouldn't the right solution be to protect the citizens from all threats, foreign and domestic?
No. In the US government's view, its responsibility is to counter potential foreign threats -- and not just foreign, but adversarial (this wouldn't be an issue for a social network controlled by the UK or Japan, for example) -- which would include a highly pervasive social network controlled by a foreign government that is the US' largest adversary.
As for whether social media companies in general are good or bad for American society, that's a completely separate question. (I tend to think they do more harm then good, but it's still a separate question.)
> If China allowed free access to US social media apps to its citizens then it might have a leg to stand on.
So now the US should just do everything China does? What happened to American ideals protecting themselves? If free speech really works, it shouldn't matter that TikTok exists.
The two are vastly different.
The GFW doesn't just block websites/networks/content that is controlled by adversarial foreign governments, but all websites/networks/content which the CCP is unable to censor. The GFW is about controlling the flow of information to its citizens from __any__ party not under the CCP's control.
The bill introduced by the Supreme Court doesn't just block Tiktok that is controlled by Bytedance, but all websites/networks/content which the POTUS deems "adversarial". The law is about controlling the flow of information to its citizens from __any__ party not under the government control.
Am I rephrasing this correctly?
The whole case turns on foreign adversary control of the data.
Right, Congress was shown some pretty convincing evidence that execs in China pull the strings, and those execs are vulnerable to Chinese government interference.
As we’ve seen in the past couple of weeks, social media companies based in the US are also vulnerable to US government interference — but that’s the way they like it.
They have?
They released a Marty Rimm-level report citing that pro-Palestinian was mentioned more than pro-Israeli content in ratios that differed from Meta products. This was the 'smoking gun' of manipulation when it's more of a sign Meta was the one doing the manipulation.
I don't know what Congress has said but there absolutely is evidence that TikTok has been used to spy on users for political reasons. A US based engineer claims that he saw evidence that Hong Kong protestors were spied on in 2018 at the behest of a special committee representing the CCP's interests within ByteDance. This is not surprising, most major corporations within China maintain a special committee representing the government's interests to company executives
https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2023/6/7/china-spied-on-ho...
That's the way I like it for my children. Pardon the demagogue. The US, being the awful mess it is is still 100x better IMHO than the chinese government. It's the lesser evil kind of thing and honestly the reason I believe that democracy is 100% THE way to go. Things can only get US level nefarious with democracy. Far from perfect but much less evil.
The only problem with democracy is that it's so fragile and susceptible to bad non-democrat actors intervention, which is more of an awareness problem.
No, X doesn't have a corporate governance structure that requires Chinese government control, because it is a US company.
Companies in China (and especially those of prominence) have formal structures and regulations that require them to cooperate with the government, and sometimes require the companies to allow the government to intervene in operations if necessary.
It is not possible for a CCP official to show up to a board meeting at X and direct the company to take some action, because that isn't how US corporations work.
Congress members speak of space lasers and weather control... I'm not sure they're competent as a whole. Actually, it reminds me of the Russian guy that always spouts nonsense about nuking UK into oblivion, and that theory that he's just kept around to make the real evil people look sane.
Good thing Mr Zuckerberg is a shining beacon of independence from the US government.
That may be true in a legal sense (and my reading of that is the same as yours).
My interpretation of the parent’s comment is that we have pretty serious (and dubiously legal) overreach on this in a purely domestic setting as well.
As someone who has worked a lot on products very much like TikTok, I’d certainly argue that we do.
The short answer here is that directly addressing a threat from a foreign adversary formally designated by both the legislative and executive branches long before the particular controversy before the court affords the government a lot more latitude than they would have in other cases.
I’m not sure anyone is disputing that, certainly I’m not.
There is an adjacent point that many of us feel is just as important, which is that there is evidence in the public record (see Snowden disclosures among others) that there is lawbreaking or at least abuse of clearly stated constitutional liberties taking place domestically in the consumer internet space and has been for a long time.
Both things can be true, and both are squarely on topic for this debate whether on HN or in the Senate Chambers.
Meanwhile, it's perfectly fine for foreign adversaries to use American social media to interfere with American events. Anything for that GDP.
Yes, there is a distinction there. The issue is that it's a small part of the overall problem when looked at the larger scale. The overarching issues of political influence at odds with individual citizens, hostile engagement-maximizing algorithms, adversarial locked-down client apps, and selling influence to the highest bidder are all there with domestically-incorporated companies. The government's argument basically hinges on "but when these companies do something really bad we can force domestic companies to change but we can't do the same for TikTok". That's disingenuous to American individuals who have been on the receiving end of hostile influence campaigns for over a decade, disingenuous to foreign citizens not in the US or China who can't control any of this, and disingenuous to our societal principles as we're still ultimately talking about speech.
China can benefit without doing any influencing. It can simply mine the vast amount of data it gets for sentiment analysis. Say they want to be more aggressive against the Philippines. They can do an analysis to gauge the potential outrage on the part of the American people. If it's low they can go ahead.
China can show favorable political content to America and American youth.
American culture has been such an influencing force on the world due to our conduits, movies and music. TikTok is a Chinese conduit, and I do believe this is happening. Our culture can be co-opted, the Chinese had John Cena apologize to ALL of China. They can easily pay to have American influencers spin in a certain way, influencing everything.
Thank you for this concise and comprehensive summary. The DDoS threat had never occurred to me.
That can’t be it. Facebook sells the same data to foreign adversaries including China and Russia. The most famous incident involved the British company Cambridge Analytica, which used it to manipulate election outcomes in multiple countries:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook–Cambridge_Analytica...
Edit: Apparently it’s not common knowledge that this is still happening. Here’s a story about a congressional investigation from 2023:
https://www.scworld.com/analysis/developers-in-china-russia-...
And here’s a story about an executive order from Biden the next year. Apparently the White House concluded that the investigation wasn’t enough to fix the behavior:
https://www.thedailyupside.com/technology/biden-wants-to-sto...
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/02/28/politics/americans-person...
Edit 2: Here’s a detailed article from the EFF from this month explaining how the market operates: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/01/online-behavioral-ads-...
I think you would be hard pressed to come up with any evidence for your assertion. First of all the UK is not a foreign adversary (quite the opposite). Secondly Facebook didn't sell data in that case, it was collected by Cambridge Analytica via Facebook's platform APIs (as described in your own link). In general Facebook doesn't sell data, their entire business model is based on having exclusive access to data from its platforms.
And the difference is that the US government can tell them to stop doing it.
This is arguing technical definitions. As of this week, foreign intelligence agencies transfers money that eventually ends up at Facebook, and they get the data in return.
They can claim this is not a sale if they want, but it’s still a sale. Drug dealers make similar arguments about similar shell games where you hand a random dude some cash, then later some other random dude drops a bag on the ground and you pick it up.
Since Facebook was first caught doing this during the Obama administration, it’s hard to argue they are not intentionally selling the data at this point.
> That can’t be it. Facebook sells the same data to foreign adversaries including China and Russia.
I'm not sure they do that anymore, not in the current geopolitical climate and not with the DC ghouls having taken over the most sensitive parts of Meta the company (there were many posts on this web-forum about former CIA people and not only working at the highest levels inside of Meta).
This whole Cambridge Analytica thing is such a nothing burger - I have yet to be given a concise reason how it was anything other than targeted advertising. Something that happens day-in, day-out a billion times over on all our "western" platforms in the form of ads. And no, the fact that this data wasn't "consented to" doesn't mean anything other than being a technicality. If anything, I'd chalk the whole thing up to anti-Trump hysteria that happened around that time.
It's still completely legal for Meta to sell that user data to Chinese owned companies. So no security is provided by this change. I see it as theatre.
I thought this too, but I think there's a new law for this as well: "In a bipartisan measure, the House of Representatives unanimously pass a bill designed to protect the private information of all Americans by prohibiting data brokers from transferring that information to foreign adversaries such as China" https://allen.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=...
It seems pretty bold to assume that Google, Facebook, Amazon, X, etc aren't adversaries. Foreign or otherwise.
The case turns on the fact that China is formally designated a foreign adversary. The statute doesn't allow the government to simply make up who its adversaries are on the fly, or derive them from some fixed set of first principles. There's a list, and it long predates this case.
Your mistake is assuming I'm thinking about any sort of legal definition. Adversarial nature doesn't require or government to declare it for it to exist.
1) You can not protect users from being influenced by the media they consume-- that is basically the very nature of the thing.
2) This is not about protecting users of the app, this is about preventing a foreign state from having direct influence on public opinion.
It is obvious to me why this is necessary. If you allow significant foreign influence on public opinion, then this can be leveraged. Just imagine Russia being in control of a lot of US media in 2022. Or 1940's Japan. That is a very serious problem, because it can easily lead to outcomes that are against the interests of ALL US citizens in the longer term...
It's not a top down broadcast and the SCOTUS has a hard time wrapping their head around 250 individual people receiving individualized content with no oversight or necessity for accuracy.
It’s bad because China has different interests than the US. Imagine if a war breaks out in Taiwan and they send targeted propaganda to members of the US military.
> yet Russian apps are in our app stores
Major social media apps? Chinese apps are still in our app stores, just not TikTok (as of Sunday).
The only Russian app I'm aware of is Telegram. What other Russian apps might people be unwittingly running?
No servers in Russia. Given Pavel's prior history it seems unlikely that he would cooperate with Russian government. Plenty of other criticism of telegram is warranted but it's probably not a tool of the Russian government.
Edit: related https://hate.tg/
I would argue that Telegram is a much, much larger security threat to the average individual American than Tiktok. Except they comply with government search warrants and don't enable E2E encryption by default so they are useful to the American National Security Establishment and get to stay.
>a treaty partner who gave up their nukes in exchange for a security alliance with the US
If it wasn't ratified by the senate then we didn't enter into a treaty, I really don't understand why this is so hard for people to understand.
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but everyone has different interests from everyone else. That's not a sufficient reason.
You are free to have that our opinion but our elected government disagrees with you. It’s not the job of the court to adjust laws based on personal preference of HN commenters.
Sorry, While I understand that there are degrees of interest misalignment, I'm not sure what Hitler's interests refers to in this context. Hitler is deceased so it's unlikely his interests are relevant in a discussion about TikTok.
> Meta could still turnaround and sell this information to Chinese companies
Let them collect and ban this. Difference between Meta and TikTok is you can prosecute the former’s top leadership.
My preference would be a law that bans some specific activity (i.e. the collection of some set of data that should remain "private"). From there it would be straightforward to establish when an application (like TikTok or Instagram) was collecting this data and they could be prosecuted or their application banned at that point.
This banning of TikTok because of "national security" leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Might the next application banned on these ground be domestic? It's unsettling, in my opinion, to see this precedent set.
That's funny. How big of a check did Zuck just write to the Trump inauguration?
> China has different interests than the US
Define the US here. Is it the government, the people, the business interests of the private sector?
Each one of those has different interests, often competing ones.
In any functional nation the people's interests should prevail, and it seems to me that any information capable of swaying the public's opinion is informing them that their interests are being harmed in favor of other ones.
Your question is irrelevant because none of the parties you've listed have interests that are aligned with the CCP, assuming you're referring to the people as a whole. Obviously there are specific individuals whose interests are aligned with China's government but laws in a democracy aren't meant to make everyone happy, they're meant to meet the interests of the majority of people
> none of the parties you've listed have interests that are aligned with the CCP
The interest of the people is to have a peaceful coexistence and cooperation with China, while the interest of the military-industrial complex is to keep the tension high at all times so that more and more money is spent on armaments.
Who do you think the US government will favor in the end?
Who has more power to determine the result of the next elections, considering that to run a presidential campaign you need more than a billion dollars?
No citizen gains from war except the few that sell weapons and want to exploit other countries.
Crazy take, More likely the US or it's allies goes to war and they try to play up sympathy with the target.
Nobody wants China to take Taiwan, that's not something its possible to convince people of
> Nobody wants China to take Taiwan, that's not something its possible to convince people of
It's not about convincing them to want it but rather about sowing doubt and confusion at the critical moment.
David French's NYT column last week starts with what one might call a "just-plausible-enough" scenario: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/09/opinion/tiktok-supreme-co... (gift link, yw).
Im not so confident about that. Attenuating isolationist policy in the face of Taiwan is the easiest, but I can see anti-ROC propaganda in the mix.
They would be within their rights to do that. But then they would have to compete with other participants in the discussion. On TikTok they can ensure there is no such competition.
The magnitude of the attack is not comparable. One thing is being a bad actor in a network owned by someone else where you can get monitored, caught and banned. Versus owning the network completely and amplifying messages with ease at scale. The effort needed and effectiveness of the attack is extremely different.
Domestic based social media platforms can be pressured to comply with demands such as the DOJ's investigation into Russia's 2016 disinformation campaign on Facebook. Likewise social media platforms based in a foreign adversary would be pressured to comply with demands of that foreign adversary.
This is a common criticism in these kinds of discussions, but no, protecting oneself from foreign influence and threats does not require a moral high-ground, just as locking your front door doesn't.
> countries that started the most wars and invasions in the last 150 years and which one tops it easily
What is the list? Does WWII count as one war, or do we could belligerents individually?
There is no good, just bad and kill-it-with-fire kind of evil. You choose bad you get a bad life. You choose the other you get literally hell. One government harvests and sells the organs of its healthy population[0][1][2] and the other makes some people feel sad.
Ironically, the "good" guys here allow you to talk shit on the internet about them while the "bad" guys would catch and harvest my organs someday for writing this comment.
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ_harvesting_from_Falun_... [1] https://chinatribunal.com/ [2] https://theowp.org/reports/china-is-forcibly-harvesting-orga...
The USA has more prisoners than China and far more per capita https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarce...
And funnily enough, just had a state try to pass a law making prisoners get to "choose" to donate organs for a reduced sentence https://apnews.com/article/organ-donation-massachusetts-stat...
But point is, no love for the CCP but this sort of jingoistic take sucks. China is not "literally hell"
Indeed - if the US is this afraid of a popular social network under foreign control then every country outside the US should be petrified.
And domestically in the US - citizens should be demanding the dismantling of the big powerful players - which ironically the US government is against because of it's usefulness abroad..... ( let's assume for one moment, despite evidence to the contrary, that the US government doesn't use these tools of persuasion on it's own population ).
I have no horses in the race but if you justify a Tiktok ban in the US because of a foreign influence, you also do justify a Facebook ban in the EU on the same arguments.
Thus why Facebook is blocked in China, but not in the EU, since we have a much less adversarial relationship with them.
I'm not sure how long it will last with Zukerberg and Musk openly threatening the EU.
Interestingly, just saw this in my RSS feed: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/01/european-union-o...
Check out the scandal in Romania, some guy that had less than 5% in polls got 30% because of tiktok. Other candidates had tiktok campaigns too but probably didn't use bots.
Social media is a legitimate threat to any countries democracy if used wisely. It is dangerous to have one of the biggest ones in the hands of your enemy when they can influence your own countries narrative to such an extent.
For me the biggest scandal in Romania is that they threw the people's choice to the trash just because he didn't show up in polls... a few months after banning another candidate, Sosoaca, for, and I cite textually, "calling for the removal of fundamental state values and choices, namely EU and NATO membership".
Note that from the little I know about both Sosaca and Georgescu, they both look like dangerous nutjobs that should not rule, but if I were a Romanian I would be more worried about a democracy that removes candidates it doesn't like for purely political reasons (not for having commited a felony or anything like that) than about them.
I'm no lawyer and can't be arsed to do the proper research but for Georgescu to be able to declare he had 0 campaign spending while everyone knows that the tiktok campaign cost 20-50 million euros is insane to me.
If they aren't already prosecuting him on this I guess technically it's legal but such a weird loophole in the law. Any spending towards promoting a candidate should be public knowledge imo. EDIT: he was claiming bullshit like GOD chose him and that's how he got that good of a result. I guess his God is the people in the shadows that made his tiktok campaign lol
> For me the biggest scandal in Romania is that they threw the people's choice to the trash just because he didn't show up in polls
I think they did it for many reasons but not because he didn't show up in polls.
Top ones are:
- PSD didn't advance in the second round and they had the leverage to pull it off
- Georgescu was clearly anti-NATO so maybe the US pulled strings
- Danger of having a president with Russian sympathies
- He was claiming that he didn't spend a single dime on the election while everyone in the know knows that his tiktok campaign cost sever million euros
I mean that the only evidence that his votes came from the TikTok campaign is that he didn't show up in polls and unexpectedly obtained a great result. So they automatically assume the delta between expected and obtained votes are people manipulated by the TikTok campaign (which apparently are assumed to have become some kind of zombies whose opinion doesn't count).
Out of the fourth reasons you list at the end, only the fourth is not pure authoritarianism (why wouldn't people in a democracy be free to elect a president that dislikes NATO or likes Russia if that is their will?). Campaign funding fraud has happened in many Western countries but typically it's handling by imposing fines, maybe some jail time, but definitely not cancelling the result of an entire election.
Specifically, US citizens can see what's happening in Palestine
If the reality of things, the simple truth, is able to "influence" Americans does it really matter who brought that truth up?
Do you prefer Americans to be ignorant about certain topics, or to be informed even if that comes at the cost of reduced approval for the government?
What if, and hear me out, China didn't limit its propaganda to the truth?
This is being positioned as a national security issue that a foreign government has so much influence over the US public (and data on people if they want, like geolocation, interests, your contacts, etc).
Note: I'm not saying I either agree or disagree ... just pointing out the dynamics in the case being made.
> The nation’s highest court said in the opinion that while “data collection and analysis is a common practice in this digital age,” the sheer size of TikTok and its “susceptibility to foreign adversary control, together with the vast swaths of sensitive data the platform collects” poses a National Security Concern.
FTA
SCOTUS doesn't really get to decide whether that is good justification or even correct
They do, and they did. From the ruling:
The Act’s prohibitions and divestiture requirement are designed to prevent China—a designated foreign adver- sary—from leveraging its control over ByteDance Ltd. to capture the personal data of U. S. TikTok users. This ob- jective qualifies as an important Government interest un- der intermediate scrutiny.
My point was that SCOTUS didn't review whether there was a compelling national security interest or not – they didn't review any of the classified material, etc. SCOTUS didn't consider whether or not it was good or meaningful policy, they simply accepted the national security argument which more-or-less required them to uphold the DC court's application of intermediate scrutiny.
The concern isn't broadly that "social media companies have data". The concern is the governing environment that those companies operate in, which can be coopted for competing national security purposes.
This isn't a consumer data privacy protection.
The concerns here are obvious: For example, it would be trivial for the Chinese military to use TikTok data to find US service members, and serve them propaganda. Or track their locations, etc.
Two extremely obvious reasons:
First, it's a national security issue for a company controlled by the CCP to have intimate data access for hundreds of millions of US citizens. Not only can they glean a great deal of sensitive information, but they have the ability to control the algorithm in ways that benefit the CCP.
Second, China does not reciprocate this level of vulnerability. US companies do not have the same access or control over Chinese users. If you want to allow nation states to diddle around with your citizens, then it ought to be a reciprocal arrangement and then it all averages out.
Back in the early stage of social media, US companies had the choice to operate in China as long as they comply with the censorship and local laws. Had they chosen not to quit China market at the point, they would have been probably huge in China holding major access over Chinese users too. (How would Chinese government react to that is something we never get to see now...)
I keep seeing argument regarding "China bans social medias from other countries". It's not an outright ban saying that "Facebook cannot operate in China", but more like "Comply with the censorship rules or you cannot operate in China". It's not targeting "ownership" or "nation states". e.g. Google chose to leave, while Microsoft continues to operate Bing in China.
Of course not. He's already winning the war and "The People" have no voice in that matter.
In addition:
• US data brokers can still sell data to foreign companies (out of control of US and thus indirectly to Chinese companies).
• Chinese companies can buy US companies (thereby obtaining lots of data).
If we killed user-tracking, then that would solve a LOT of problems.
> US data brokers can still sell data to foreign companies (out of control of US and thus indirectly to Chinese companies).
This is false. It was made illegal in April, 2024: https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/7520
Yeah it could be broader for sure, would prefer it to be an allowlist rather than a blocklist, but the presence of a workaround doesn't make banning something pointless, and as the SC pointed out in their decision, a law does not need to solve all problems in one fell swoop in order for it to be valid.
Because US is not really a free country.
It is obviously way better on this matter than China, but in principle, liberties are selectively granted in US and in China.
The TikTok ban topic has been stale for long time before it became the main harbor for Pro-Palestine content after it became under censorship by US social media thus depriving anti-Palestine from controling the narrative, effectively becoming a major concern for AIPAC et al.
Data collection is more of a plausible pretext at this point.
> But its perfectly fine for a US company to do it?
China blocks facebook/twitter/instagram/pinterest/gmail/wikipedia/twitch and even US newspapers.
So clearly they don't think it's okay for a US-company to do it (and are at least an order magnitude stricter about it)...
If US wants to imitate China, they should imitate its industry not its restrictions to freedoms.
The ideal world order isn't the one where Chinese can't find out what happened on Tiananmen square and Americans can't find out what happened in Gaza. That's a very shitty arrangement and I am shocked that the Americans are picking that as their future.
> The ideal world order isn't the one where Chinese can't find out what happened on Tiananmen square and Americans can't find out what happened in Gaza.
I don't see how this law banning a social media site brings us at all closer to a world where Americans cannot get access to accurate information about major global conflicts. This is so far down the imagined "slippery slope" as to be absurd. In fact, I'd strongly argue that this law would achieve the opposite. If you're relying on Tik Tok for accurate information like this, then you are opening yourself to echo chambers, biased takes, and outright propaganda. There are many excellent sources out there in America freely available and easily accessible.
If your concern is editorial preference, then wouldn't a social media application explicitly controlled by a State apparatus be a concern?
I fail to see how anything going on at Twitter is relevant to what I mentioned. Does Twitter shifting its content priorities somehow make the plethora of excellence sources unavailable?
Luckily nobody needs TikTok to find out what happened in Gaza.
very true, everything started on the seventh and ended thanks to the strength of the new American president and now it’s all fine again as it was before the seventh. no need for political movements or anything, lets concentrate on the more positive things as Musk said.
FWIW facebook was blocked in 2009, after ETIM (East Turkistan Islamic Movement) (allegedly) used it to organise the July Urumqi riots, and facebook refused to follow Chinese law and cooperate with the police to identify the perpetrators.
Whatever you think of the law of the PRC, they applied it consistently, Facebook was blocked for doing something that would get any Chinese company shut down.
Tiktok is getting blocked in America for doing what American companies do.
> Whatever you think of the law of the PRC, they applied it consistently
Chinese courts are explicitly subservient to the party.
China doesn't have a constitution like America's.
Edit:
Obviously, China has a constitution, but the freedoms enumerated there are not the same as those in America's. And those that are enumerated are pointless (like North Korea's constitution).
My point is that there's an inherent hypocrisy in saying we're more free than them, but then doing a tit-for-tat retaliatory measure. How can we be more free when we're doing the same things the other side is?
China has a constitution mostly like America’s, freedom of speech, religion, press are enshrined even more strongly than in the American constitution. What China lacks is judicial review and an independent judiciary, so the constitution has no enforcement mechanism, and so is meaningless. The Chinese government as formed has no interest in rule of law.
Not exactly.
The Chinese constitution, in addition to endowing rights, also endows obligations.
So while you have things like: > Article 35 Citizens of the People’s Republic of China shall enjoy freedom of speech, the press, assembly, association, procession and demonstration.
You also have things like: > Article 54 Citizens of the People’s Republic of China shall have the obligation to safeguard the security, honor and interests of the motherland; they must not behave in any way that endangers the motherland’s security, honor or interests.
It doesn't matter because the law is completely at the mercy of officials to interpret and enforce. A Chinese court was once asked to clarify contradicting interpretation from officials, and they got seriously beat down for it because it isn't the job of the judiciary to tell the officials how to interpret law. The only way an officials ruling is overturned is if their boss (or someone up the hierarchy) disagrees.
Compare this to the Supreme court, which is supposedly in Trump's hands, ruling against Trump twice on this tiktok ban alone (the first to kill his executive order, and the second to not pause the law to wait for him to take office).
It does, actually https://english.www.gov.cn/archive/lawsregulations/201911/20...
So what? If you believe in liberal values (with a small l), like freedom of speech, you lead by example.
> If you believe in liberal values (with a small l), like freedom of speech, you lead by example
America is ridiculously pro free speech. That doesn’t mean we must then tolerate libel, slander, fraud, false advertising, breach of contract, et cetera because someone screams free speech.
The Bill of Rights exists in balances, and the First Amendment is balanced, among other the things, with the nation’s requirement to exist. That doesn’t mean the Congress can ban speech. But it can certainly regulate media properties, including by mandating maximum foreign ownership fractions.
Are you aware of this Wikipedia page? [0] I think you should motivate why you believe that what is described in that page should not be called "constitution". Or articulate why you believe that thing does not exist. Or at least motivate your statement. Where does it come from?
I agree with this sentiment. tit-for-tat, also anyone who slams into our infrastructure should pay up for the repairs and the inconvenience.
Why do we need a good answer? Does US need to be a good guy on some made up rules? Post Soviet collapse, US could have just taken over a bunch of territories. We don’t alway need to be some faithful country when the rest of the world is always messing up asking for millions of Americans to spill blood. I think RoW take US goodwill for granted. We don’t need to play nice. That’s not how competition works.
There is a rule of law issue here.
Say, for example, congress passes and the president signs a law that says that product sponsorships in videos need to be disclosed. If a US company (or a European, Australian, Japanese, etc) country violates that law, we're pretty sure that a judgement against them can change that behavior.
China? Not so much, given their history.
It sounds like you have ignored all the answers and then you're saying there's no good answers?
If you want to convince someone they're not good answers you would have to at least engage with them and show how they fail to be correct/moral/legal or something. Pretending they don't exist does nothing.
Yes, all of them should be stopped from doing it. And end Third Party Doctrine. I 100% agree.
Why would you want an outside nation to have an outsized influence America's social fabric? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQXsPU25B60 Chomsky laid out manufacturing consent decades ago and while his thesis revolves around traditional media heavily influencing thought-in-America, the influencing now happens from algorithmic based feeds. Tik Tok controls the feed for many young American minds.
While I agree with you about domestic policy, I'm not sure why it's inconsistent or hypocritical to deal with an external threat posed from those who want to destroy or harm you.
The details specific to China and TikTok are kind of moot when talking about broad principles. And there is a valid discussion to be had regarding whether or not it does pose a legitimate national security threat. You would be absolutely correct in pointing out all of the trade that happens between China and the USA as a rebuttal to what I'm about to offer.
To put where I'm coming from into perspective, I'm one of those whacko Ayn Rand loving objectivists who wants a complete separation between state and economy just like we have been state and church and for the same reasons. This means that I want nothing shy of absolute laissez-faire capitalism.
But that actually doesn't mean that blockades, sanctions and trade prohibitions are necessarily inconsistent with this world view. It depends on the context.
An ideal trade is one in which both parties to that trade benefit. The idea being that both are better off than they were before the trade.
This means that it is a really stupid idea to trade anything at all at any level with those who want to either destroy or harm you.
National security is one of the proper roles of government.
And I don't think you necessarily disagree with me, because you're saying "we should also be protected our citizens from spying and intrusions into our privacy" and yes! Yes we absolutely should be!
But that's a different role than protecting the nation from external threats. You can do your job with respects to one, and fail at your job with respects to the other, and then it is certainly appropriate to call out that one of the important jobs is not being fulfilled. Does that make it hypocritical? Does it suddenly make it acceptable for enemy states to start spying?
By all means criticize your government always. That's healthy. But one wrong does not excuse another. We can, and should, debate whether TikTok really represents a national security threat, or whether we should be trading with China at all (my opinion is we shouldn't be). It's just that the answer to "why its bad when China does it but it's right when it's done domestically" is "it's wrong in both cases and each can be dealt with independently from the other without contradiction"
optimistically, this is the first step towards banning or at least forcing more transparency for all algorithmic feeds. there's absolutely similar concerns about the leadership of American companies being able to sway public opinion in whatever direction they choose via promotion or demotion of viewpoints. but it's only been possible to convince those with the power to stop them of the danger from China, because while probably none of the companies have "America's best interests" at heart when tuning their algorithms, it's much clearer that China has reason to actively work against American national interests (even just demoting honest critique of China is something to be wary of)
It's about psychological manipulation of Americans. TikTok is a completely different experience in China. Social media influences us in negative ways. And the Chinese government can and does take advantage of that.
Where in that CNBC article does it say that it's fine for US companies to do that? I don't see that anywhere, yet that's the point you're claiming is being made.
It is, and if this a stepping stone to that conversation, that’s a good thing. Great even. If you expect to have everything at once, you’ll make no progress.
The comparison isn't even close. TikTok's relationship with the Chinese government is well-documented, not "supposed". They are legally required to share data under China's National Intelligence Law. The Chinese government has also a track record of pushing disinformation and find any way to destabilize Western democracies.
Douyin (The Chinese Tiktok version) limits users under 14 to 40 minutes per day and primarily serves educational content, while TikTok's algorithm outside China optimizes for maximum engagement regardless of content quality or user wellbeing.
US tech companies pursuing profit at the expense of user wellbeing is concerning and deserves its own topic. However, there is a fundamental difference between a profit driven company operating under US legal constraints and oversight, versus a platform forced to serve the strategic interests of a foreign government that keeps acting in bad faith.
> Douyin (The Chinese Tiktok version) limits users under 14 to 40 minutes per day and primarily serves educational content, while TikTok's algorithm outside China optimizes for maximum engagement regardless of content quality or user wellbeing.
This isn't true, at least not for adults' accounts. I've watched my girlfriend use it and the content was exactly what she watched on TikTok, mostly dumb skits, singing, dancing, just all in Chinese instead of half in Chinese. It also never kicked her off for watching too long.
I was told a similar story about Xiaohongshu, where it was supposedly an app for Chinese citizens to read Mao's quotations (through the lens of Xi Jinping Thought) to prove their loyalty. Then I saw it for real and it's literally Chinese Instagram.
It's perfectly fine for a South African immigrant to do it, I really don't understand the problem either.
I do, but there is no data or evidence supporting said non-resident corporation is under control of an adversary, so why should I believe anything the government claims? If you're going to talk about security, just stop, nearly every component in your phone is produced in China, and you still use that everyday.
At the very least they have an export ban on the "algorithms" which is why they won't sell, and chinese control, especially under Xi, is well documented, so I don't know what kind of smoking gun you'd expect. It'd be more unusual if there was a laissez faire position by the government.
Regardless, assembly of an iPhone with Taiwanese, Korean, and Japanese components in China is not the same as mass surveillance as a service.
I asked for evidence or even some data, show me something that can verify anything you're saying beyond a reasonable doubt. You can't, you're basically regurgitating talking points on topics neither of us really know anything about. I'm not saying I'm against a ban, but "China evil" shouldn't be good enough for a semi intelligent society.
In terms of algorithms, most US companies refer to that as intellectual property. Google doesn't sell their search algorithm to other search engines so I don't think your point makes any sense. Companies keep their IP secret for a reason, they don't want competition digging into their profits. What US company isn't engaging in the same completely legal behaviors?
My point about the phones is that China like America can target any electronic like the US was doing 20 years via interdiction. If we look at the NSA ANT catalog, specifically DIETYBOUNCE, everything they accuse China of is stuff we practically invented.
edit: Also I just purchased a M4 Mac mini, shipped directly from China.
same reason China forbids or controls US companies operating in China. This is just tit-for-tat.
This isn't true, US companies are allowed to operate in China. They just eventually choose not to because complying with Chinese censorship laws is too much trouble, but in that sense they are not too different from Chinese companies. Facebook for example operated in China for many years until they decline to comply with a ruling on Xinjiang (which may have been the moral decision).
> Wouldn't the right solution be to protect the citizens from all threats, foreign and domestic?
Maybe. But there is a huge constitutional distinction between foreign and domestic threats. And the supreme court was pretty clear that the decision would be different if it didn't reside with a "foreign adversary".
The rational for why TikTok should be banned in the United States is precisely the same rational why Xitter, Facebook, Instagram, et al, should be banned in other countries.
Meta, Musk, and others have no right or grant to operate in the EU, Canada or elsewhere. They should be banned.
US benefits from Tiktok ban. US benefits from its social media not being banned in other countries. The calculation is pretty clear to me.
I don't think any big business sees protection of its users as a solution to anything.
Not only that, but there's no evidence at all that Tik Tok's been feeding China any data. None.
Whereas we have proof and evidence that US agencies can access data about citizens from anywhere else in the world without even needing a court order.
Everybody forgot already US spying on Merkel's phone?
But that's okay, because America is not bound to any rules I guess. Disgusting foreign policy with a disgusting exceptionalism mentality.
> there's no evidence at all that Tik Tok's been feeding China any data.
Because China's political system applies absolutely no pressure for transparency.
> Whereas we have proof and evidence that US agencies can access data about citizens from anywhere else in the world without even needing a court order.
Something we know about because the US political system has levers that can be pulled to apply pressure for transparency.
You'd have to be very naive not to think that the Chinese government has an interest in controlling what US users of TikTok see. Whether they actually have or not is a somewhat useless question because we'll never know definitively, and even if they haven't today there's nothing saying they won't tomorrow.
We can say that they have both the motive and capability to do so.
> You'd have to be very naive not to think that the Chinese government has an interest in controlling what US users of TikTok see.
Just because something has been repeated in the news 20000 times, it doesn't make it true without evidence. Speculation is just it: speculation.
As far as I've seen, it's not Chinese company spying on me, it's US ones, it's not Chinese companies hacking Wifis in all major airports to track regular citizens, it's US ones, it's not Chinese intelligence spying on European politicians, it's US ones, it's not Chinese diplomacy drawing the line between rebels/protesters, good or bad geopolitically, it's always Washington, it's not Chinese intelligence we know of hacking major European infrastructure and bypassing SCADA, it's US one.
The elephant in the room is US' fixation for exceptionalism and being self authorized to do whatever it pleases while at the same time making up geopolitical enemies and forcing everybody to follow.
I don't buy it, I'm sorry. I don't particularly like the Chinese system, I don't particularly love their censorship, and I don't particularly like their socials on our ground when our ones are unable to operate there (unless they abide to Chinese laws, which are restricting and demand user data non stop, something they are very willing to do in US though).
My beef is with American's exceptionalism and with the average American Joe who cannot see the dangers posed by the foreign policy of its own country. The US should set the example and then pretend the same, instead it does worse than everybody and cries that only it can. It's dangerous.
> Not only that, but there's no evidence at all that Tik Tok's been feeding China any data. None.
Yes there has been. TikTok admitted to it. They were tracking journalists.
This is not a mere accusation. Instead the company admitted to it.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/dec/22/tiktok-by...
Because it's not the TWEAKING of the content tho tis the problem. It's the ability to manipulate individuals using fake or altered content.
Not sure why this is a hard one to understand but with the ability to individualized media, you can easily feed people propaganda and they'd never know. Add in AI and deep fakes, and you have the ability to manipulate the entire discourse in a matter of minutes.
How do you think Trump was elected? Do you really think the average 20 something would vote for a Republican, let alone a 78 year old charlatan? They were manipulated into the vote. And that is the most innocuous possible use of such a tech.
Why do you care if a chinese company is banned from business in the US? All sorts of american companies are banned from doing business in China
If we banned all Chinese business with America, America would hurt a lot more than China. Our plutocracy made sure of that fact decades ago.
I care becsuse I hate hypocrisy. Simple as that. They'll sweep Russian activity under the rug as long as it's done in an American website. This mindset clearly isn't results oriented.
Where were you for the last 10+ years when China was blocking all social media from the US but the US wasn’t blocking it? Or does hypocrisy just apply to the USA? It seems like you have some kind of agenda unrelated to the pure concept of hypocrisy.
Why do you care if your car gets stolen when people in China get their cars stolen every day? Well because they are taking something away from me
I don't have Chinese friends or use TikTok personally, I was just addressing the stupid question
Because we're looking at the Big Picture and seeing how they're figuring out how to dismantle our First Amendment rights.
First Amendment rights do not extend to corporations under foreign (adversarial) government control. Simple as.
This amendment to the constitution was rewritten a few times, each time more clearly stating that it applies to “the people”.
From: https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/amdt1-7-1/ALD...
The People chose to use TikTok as their free press. The US government has banned a tool The People were using for speech. The government utilized a specious argument of "security" in denying The People to their free press comprised of TikTok. The government provided zero evidence of national security being compromised. If anything, the US government has called into question how they are using data from US-based social media companies such that we may now expect reprisals from all around the world - maybe that's what they wanted?
To me it seems like it could be a first amendment violation against Americans who want to speak via tiktok.
This is a very weakly held opinion, and I don’t know if the opinion addresses this.
First Amendment Right is only for American citizens, no? If you're a visitor to the US for example, you don't get the First Amendment protection against anything, you're a guest. Why doesn't the same principle apply to a foreign company? I don't see how banning tik tok affects your first amendment rights or first amendment rights of American companies - maybe you can explain?
The constitution applies to everyone within the borders of the country, not just citizens. Tourists still get due process, can say what they want, cannot be forced to house american soldiers in their hotel, etc.
No idea if this applies to companies, but foreign visitors do get protections.
The Constitution binds the activity of the government, individuals are irrelevant. Congress is forbidden from passing a law that violates the inalienable rights of humans, freedom of speech and association being one that is conveniently enumerated in the first amendment.
You will not find anywhere in the text that limits this to citizenship (with the sparse examples of the concept of citizenship coming up being things like eligibility for presidential office). The purpose of the Constitution is to spell out the abilities of the government, and one of the things it is expressly forbidden from doing is passing laws that curtail peoples' ability to communicate or associate.
Also, the oligarchs just want us to use their crappy social media sites. This sets the stage for making competition illegal in some ways.
Ridiculous statement. You must believe they should have political speech then? Maybe they should be able to donate to elections or even vote too? Why stop at corporations?
If they want speech, they should reside in the US, not just own a piece of a company that does.
The rights enforced inside the US are very generous compared to most countries and many apply to both legal and illegal residents, but restricting some rights, especially political ones, is crucial to have a sovereign state
I think you have no good answer to this, you should do some soul searching.
Because the Chinese are openly hostile towards the United States and its interests, whereas American companies have a vested interest in the U.S. and are beholden to its laws.
I don't know why realpolitik is so hard for technologists to understand, perhaps too much utopian fantasy scifi?
I've honestly never seen so many stupid people making stupid arguments on HN before.
Nothing but lazy disingenuous arguments who's only purpose is to bait conversations for replying with even lazier whataboutisms.
Either the brainrot has really set in for these people or we are being flooded with ai/bots.
The problem is framing information access as a threat. It is not and that's fundamentally not a First Amendment positive stance. If I want to gorge myself on Chinese propaganda it's my right as an American.
> Wouldn't the right solution be to protect the citizens from all threats, foreign and domestic?
Indeed, but at the point we are in history the steps to get that done - aka, copy the EU GDPR and roll it out federally - would take far too long, all while China has a direct path to the brains of our children.
But it's fine for Russia as long as it's through an American corporation.
Plenty of good answers have already been put forward. But in case you're asking in good faith, here are the two main ones:
1- It's in the interest of the US government to protect its interests and citizens from governments that are considered adversarial, which China is. And unlike other countries, the Chinese government exercises a great deal of direct control over major companies (like ByteDance). If TikTok was controlled by the Russian government would we even be having this conversation? (Ironically most Americans are freaked out about Russia, but when it comes to global politics, China is the much greater threat to the U.S.)
I think social media in general - including by US companies - does more harm than good to society and concentrates too much power and influence in the hands of a few (Musk, Zuck, etc.) So this isn't to say that "US social media is good". But from a national security standpoint, Congress' decision makes sense.
2- If China allowed free access to US social media apps to its citizens then it might have a leg to stand on. But those are blocked (along with much of the Western internet) or heavily filtered/censored. TikTok itself is banned in China. So there's a strong tit-for-tat element here, which also is reasonable.