Comment by legitster

This presumes that:

1) I sell to you my special and cherished resource. You may live in the fever dream of "market rules all", but a cold surprise may come that not everyone does.

2) You can afford what I sell - especially if political winds blow so that your benevolent rulers choose to impose 1000% tariffs on my good tomatoes

3) That you even _know_ there's a difference, and that tomatoes come from a farm and not the store or a can.

Only the control by a foreign adversary part is being threatened in the US, not the algorithmic opium part twisting the minds of the population. They're two different things. The US so far has no qualms with it if an American is in control of the strings. That's where China differs.

> they say it's a national security threat and vote to remove it?

From app stores and American hosting. Only if Bytedance doesn’t sell TikTok to e.g. a French or Indian or American owner. TikTok.com will still resolve (unless Bytedance blocks it).

China literally blocks information.

Any country has mechanisms to ban products the government deems as bad. I think the point is those are much more liberally used in China vs in the US, not that the US would be unable to do it

1) A single party apparatus determines something must be removed, and by fiat it is immediately removed

2) Multiple agencies investigate and make a determination that a real threat exists, the threat and measures to resolve it are debated strongly in two houses of Congress between strongly opposing parties, an passes with bi-partisan support, the law is signed by the President, then the law is upheld through multiple challenges in multiple courts and panels of judges, finally being upheld by the Supreme Court of the country. And no, this is not yet a situation where the country has fallen into autocracy so the institutions have all been corrupted to serve the executive (I.e., not like Hungary, Venezuela, Russia, etc.).

If you think these are the same... I'll just be polite and say the ignorance expressed in that post is truly stunning and wherever you got your education has deeply failed — yikes.

America uses economic sanctions and bombs.

I doesn't have anything to do with "appeasing" the US, the Chinese version is heavily filtered and tilted towards CPP prefered activities and worldview, such a platform would never work on the international market and they know it.

And it obviously is not a split if they are seperate apps from the beginning. Why do you lie so much btw?

> Was the split during the rebranding?

Musical.ly was acquired by Bytedance in 2017 and merged into TikTok in 2018 [1]. TikTok itself “was launched internationally in 2017” [2].

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20191005154207/https://beebom.co...

[2] https://chinagravy.com/what-is-douyin-an-introduction/

I'm not saying Britain didn't do something _against the will of the goverment_. I'm just questioning OP's nonsense that individuals were forced to consume Opium vs not forced to consume TikTok - in both cases, clearly nobody was forced. And in both cases, it's products made to be addictive.

Tbh, what you describe sounds nothing like forcing opium on a people. If mexico invaded and started making meth in the US, or started sending even more meth into the US than they do now by totally taking over the border, I would not begin taking meth.