Comment by daft_pink 11 hours ago
It’s totally insane that China can ban all American social networks on security concerns and ban all kinds of just basic speech on their apps, but banning a Chinese social network is so controversial.
Sure but what would that have to do with this action here?
TikTok isn’t being banned because of free speech or not but because the usage of their algorithms allows the app to influence how Americans think about different issues. China has recognized this as a threat and as such has banned foreign adversary social media companies from operating within its borders.
Likewise the United States has recognized that this is a serious threat as well and has sought to do the same.
Both countries claim to want to defend their systems of governments so it stands to reason they are just taking reciprocal actions here.
The “free speech” angle is just Chinese propaganda. We stop businesses from operating in the United States all the time and sanction companies and stop them from doing business within our financial network all the time. TikTok is just some random company and we can stop it from doing business here. Free speech isn’t a meaningful discussion point here.
No we don't - and we stop free associations all the time. I can't call up my non-existent buddies in Russia and say hey you guys need weapons? Well I'll sell them to you. We ban NVIDIA from selling advanced chips to China or North Korea. We prohibit US citizens from bribing officials in countries like Mexico for permits.
> Moreover it seems like security theater.
Meh. At a minimum it's just an economic reciprocation. If China doesn't allow our wildly successful social media companies to operate in China, we can as a matter of trade decide to stop their wildly successful social media company from operating in our country.
> the usage of their algorithms allows the app to influence how Americans think about different issues.
Which, if true, means that the US has been influencing the rest of the world for the past 20 years through all the other social networks.
> the usage of their algorithms allows the app to influence how Americans think about different issues.
Yes, speech does that. "The algorithm" is curation but the content we are talking about is mostly Americans talking to other Americans. The goal is to control and suppress that communication.
There are perfectly valid arguments to ban TikTok. And hey, there are arguments to be made that free speech shouldn't be absolute. But that doesn't fit into the American self image, so the argument must be obscured to reduce the dissonance. Your argument in particular maps perfectly to "Some kinds of speech are dangerous and people must be protected from them."
My argument (mostly) is that TikTok is just a random company that we permitted to do business in the United States and we can revoke that permission at any time as it suits our needs and laws. TikTok sells advertisements and people talk about those advertisements. That's all it does.
Whether people share memes or communicate American to American isn't material. We know this is true because a company with the same features and products can be shut down if it's discovered that the same company engaged in other illegal activities (let's say money laundering or human trafficking to make it clear) and so someone's First Amendment rights would be abridged by the shut down of the company.
TikTok is just in the same scenario and has now found itself afoul of US laws and regulations and has to adjust by selling itself or it can exit the market.
The other thing here is that you'd have to convincingly argue that people who have never used TikTok (me for example) have now had their First Amendment rights violated, but there has been no change in my First Amendment rights. I can still use my freedom of speech as I could before.
> but because the usage of their algorithms allows the app to influence how Americans think about different issues
Is that the case or is that just assumed what the government means when they say issues of national security? I thought they meant our devices could be hacked by malicious code in TikTok apps.
> TikTok isn’t being banned because of free speech or not but because the usage of their algorithms allows the app to influence how Americans think about different issues. China has recognized this as a threat and as such has banned foreign adversary social media companies from operating within its borders.
The “personal freedom” part would be most immediately salient here.
Free speech wouldn’t apply if the app wasn’t in use already. But so many millions of Americans use the app already that it easily is about free speech as well.
I can't get over how widely accepted this paternalistic thinking is. "People might be viewing and think in the wrong things and must be stopped!" It's textbook censorship, with a bunch of legal tap dancing to attempt to justify it against the obvious unconstitutionality.
We can hardly claim to have a democracy while acting like the population at large needs to be controlled in such a way. It's contradictory.
The problem with this argument is that you are putting TikTok on a pedestal.
The US (and every country on the planet) has rules and regulations around who can do business in their country and who their citizens may do business with.
If you want to argue that the U.S. shouldn't be able to prohibit its citizens from doing business with TikTok you should spend some time generalizing that argument and figuring out a good reason we shouldn't be able to prohibit Americans from selling weapons to Russia, or allowing Russian companies to set up manufacturing facilities in the United States to build weapons to send back to Russia. (or any other scenario you want to make up)
"Free speech" is not a good argument here. TikTok isn't a "free speech" platform. It's just a random company selling products and services in the United States.
"tit for tat" is a rational act after getting burned for cooperating. You start open and cooperative, expect reciprocity, and when you don't get it you finally retaliate. A bad faith actor might even accuse you of not living up to your core values in order to persuade you into continuing to play the losing strategy.
The youngest tiktokers weren't even born yet or were just infants/toddlers when Google first got banned there. They may not understand what's going on here because by the time they came of age nearly all major western social media sites were already blocked there and for them it's status quo now. From their point of view the US is being the censor. They are at prime age to go on red book out of spite, but I hope they'll eventually understand.
The law regulates TikTok as a business, not their speech.
And America doesn't claim to uphold the rights of non-americans.
If this was a ban on an American company it would be a different story.
This is a trade issue.
If Country A bans imports from Country B, it's entirely reasonable to respond in kind.
As with trade issue so with this. If Country B bans imports they are actually hurting Country B not Country A.
China infringing on the inalienable rights of Chinese citizens is not a source of strength. It's weakness. It hurts China.
Responding in kind is me responding to my neighbors fire by dousing the living room with gasoline and lighting a match.
Tit for Tat. Mercantalism is quite effective in a world of Free Trade, but if everyone turns Mercantalistic it becomes unsustainable and burns out. Once the most Mercantalistic actors are wiped out and EVERYONE understands why such policies were bad, we can return to the principles of Free Trade.
Right now the issue is that the US mostly doesn't. The US market is far more open to China than the reverse, everyone knows this.
Free trade should also be fair trade.
Personally I wouldn't really give a shit about TikTok if the Chinese market was actually at all open to US companies for this area (and if there were reasonable protections about personal data in the US overall).
China’s constitution definitely guarantees both, it even says without exception.
It's freedom of speech until you say bad stuff about Americas 51st state in the middle east that's killing on average 5 children every day with our tax money.
That was not the freedom of speech your supposed to hear on social media. That's why it's a threat. Be like Twitter and ban those accounts instead.
China banned things for entirely different reasons. They want to control the information they don't like. TikTok is banned so that Chinese government can't do the same thing here and influence a very large percentage of the US population. Not saying they're doing it now, but in general I agree that the potential threat is there. You can already see how big is the social media influence on people, on their political views etc.
> You can already see how big is the social media influence on people, on their political views etc.
If that is the reason for the ban, namely that American citizens cannot discern propaganda from factual information themselves and as a result must have their information shaped for them to achieve or avoid certain political outcomes, then that is quite literally the same reason China has for controlling the information space
No offense but you did basically just say the same thing twice, just with a bit of a patriot-act touch up. China doesn't just ban things they "don't like". What they don't like is exactly what you just lined out
Arguing for individual humans to have freedom of speech to express their views is one thing, arguing for mega-corporations (look at the valuation estimates for Tiktok) to have freedom of speech for profit is quite another.
They do have freedom of speech—Citizen's United.
The more significant issue is that this is a bill of attainder. The fact that this was prima facia rejected by the courts is an indication that the NatSec state has corroded every branch of government, and we have a zombie government.
So if China would pay $100 a month to every teacher in the US to teach some subversive topic, would that also be ok?
The issue here isn't free speech, but control over what content is promoted, unless you think the CCP has the right to free speech in the US.
I dunno, it feels pretty normal to be upset when a government which ostensibly represents me does something that I feel is actively against my interests.
I don't think that you have to decry every horrible thing in the world to be upset when folks do things that you don't like to you.
If you brag with freedoms and free speech, you can't really use what china is doing as an excuse to do the same.
"It's insane that China can engage in genocide but engaging in genocide ourselves is so controversial"
This isn't really a good argument. Someone else being horrible isn't grounds to be horrible yourself. There are better arguments for banning TikTok, like protecting the youth from having their brains rotted out.
China doesn't claim that free speech and personal freedom are part of their core values