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U.S. looking at banning Chinese social media apps, including TikTok

reuters.com

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Re: U.S. looking at banning Chinese social media apps, including TikTok

#121

Post by realusername »

ketzu wrote: post #112
realusername wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very few countries have banned to the extent of what the CCP did, walling off completely their internet. The CCP can't complain to get a taste of their own medicine here.

> Very few countries have banned to the extent of what the CCP did That's true, but the start of "they block our apps we should block all of them" seems to weirdly be china, but the argument is usually presented as a general obvious conclusion. I am very much in favor of banning apps that violate local laws and unfortunately that's what china does. So it's more the laws I don't like, not the ban in general. But this…

> If possible, it should be clear what the requirements are so people can fulfil it. I really dislike arbitrarily enforceable laws where possibly everyone is in violation.

I do agree with that, these kind of retaliation laws have to be codified and be precised. But that's not something uncommon outside of tech, countries will implement trade sanctions if they also face trade sanctions from other markets. Banning apps owned by the CCP seems a fair approach regarding on how they behave.

Re: U.S. looking at banning Chinese social media apps, including TikTok

#122

Post by apexalpha »

chaos_a wrote: post #103
apexalpha wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's be honest: Google has been known to be in bed with the NSA and other agencies as well. It's very disingenuous to pretend Google only serves you ads but has no relations to the US national intelligence community but Chinese apps do.

the difference is that the US is using spying to stop people from doing illegal things. China is using spying to silence/monitor anyone who disagrees with it's government. Yes, both countries are definitely spying on people via social media apps. But what they're using it for is different.

Both governments use spying to stop people from doing things they made illegal in their countries.

I'm not here to argue the Chinese government is better than the US one. It's absolutely and unquestionably worse.

But from a perspective in Europe they're both foreign governments that I have no say in and that are not here for my best interest.

Re: U.S. looking at banning Chinese social media apps, including TikTok

#123

Post by caf »

cthalupa wrote: post #81
ur-whale wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because it would be the law What remains to be seen is if said law would be "legal" (as in: not in direct conflict with the constitution).

I'm not sure that a foreign company has any rights under the constitution to begin with. It's contentious whether or not it grants rights to a foreign citizen while they are outside of the US's borders, so claiming that ByteDance would have their constitutional rights violated by such a ban would be even more so. However, if this were to happen, it would almost certainly be under national security law, which has pret…

I would think it's actually Google and Apple's constitutional rights that would be at issue, since they're the ones hypothetically being restrained from publishing certain apps.

Re: U.S. looking at banning Chinese social media apps, including TikTok

#124

Post by rydre »

apexalpha wrote: post #122
chaos_a wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the difference is that the US is using spying to stop people from doing illegal things. China is using spying to silence/monitor anyone who disagrees with it's government. Yes, both countries are definitely spying on people via social media apps. But what they're using it for is different.

Both governments use spying to stop people from doing things they made illegal in their countries. I'm not here to argue the Chinese government is better than the US one. It's absolutely and unquestionably worse. But from a perspective in Europe they're both foreign governments that I have no say in and that are not here for my best interest.

If you really have European interests at heart, you would be banning both American and Chinese apps to give room for your incumbents to rise.

Re: U.S. looking at banning Chinese social media apps, including TikTok

#126

Post by apexalpha »

rydre wrote: post #124
apexalpha wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both governments use spying to stop people from doing things they made illegal in their countries. I'm not here to argue the Chinese government is better than the US one. It's absolutely and unquestionably worse. But from a perspective in Europe they're both foreign governments that I have no say in and that are not here for my best interest.

If you really have European interests at heart, you would be banning both American and Chinese apps to give room for your incumbents to rise.

I've made that argument a few hours ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23755863

Re: U.S. looking at banning Chinese social media apps, including TikTok

#127

Post by [deleted] »

eirini1 wrote: post #99
jeswin wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You might fairly ask whether or not it is equally foolish for non-US countries to use US services. I think that is also a reasonable question, and deserves reflection. It's a fair sentiment (and held by others as well on this thread), but IMHO there's no equivalence. In democracies, violence against their own people (or others) will invite opposition from their citizens - while in China people won't even know what'…

The US installed a dictatorship in my country in the 70s. China hasn't done anything of the sort, except ship me cheap stuff through aliexpress. I know who I would choose as my designated data thief if I had to choose between the US stealing my data and China stealing my data.

[deleted]

Re: U.S. looking at banning Chinese social media apps, including TikTok

#128

Post by Craighead »

kristopolous wrote: post #72

This is more of the protectionism/mercantilism/nationalism stuff. Sure, there's a B-story for it but it's all seated in revanchist nationalism and a tropish "suspicious foreigners" framing. If someone made a villainous fu manchu character people would rightly protest it as intolerable. Yet when we actually instrument official government policy based on the same sentiments that the character is based on nobody even re…

[dead]

Re: U.S. looking at banning Chinese social media apps, including TikTok

#130

Post by sushshshsh »

This is such cancer. I didn't expect that trade wars and centralized app stores would lead to this, but here we are.

Think back to 1999-- could you imagine if China had made Napster, the USA would block your access to download and use it? We would all just laugh at how easy it would be to get around it

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