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US to ban transactions with ByteDance and WeChat in 45 days

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Re: US to ban transactions with ByteDance and WeChat in 45 days

#601

Post by hn_check »

hintymad wrote: post #381
tannhaeuser wrote: post #324

I don't get it. It's US companies standing to loose their stronghold (near monopoly) on social, advertisement, and other forms of monetizing the web if the US creates a precedent for "national security" in this way, as in "we're welcoming social networks and free speech as long as it benefits the US and can be searched without warrant." Quite predictably, governments all over the world will be pressurized to question…

Isn't this just reciprocity? China banned a long list of media companies: FB, Google, YouTube, Twitter, Netflix, and every traditional media. Now the US is banning two apps made in China.

This "we'll be like the worst examples in the rest of the world" is not a winning strategy. It is simply remarkable that anyone in the US, much less anyone learned, could cheer this nonsense on.

Further Trump didn't just say they had to be sold, but instead they have to be sold specifically to a US buyer. That is...incredible. He is effectively engaged in technology piracy. Then again he just announced new tariffs on Canadian aluminum -- leaving Russian and Chinese aluminum untouched, and just after the ratification of the revised NAFTA -- under the guise of "national security", so it's into serious parody territory now.

The US is currently a corrupt banana republic.

Regardless, China has an enormous number of US targets they can and likely will retaliate against. And when they do, be sure to thank Trump.

Re: US to ban transactions with ByteDance and WeChat in 45 days

#602

Post by unishark »

api wrote: post #550
yorwba wrote: post #538

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's only reciprocity if you divide the world into two tribes, the "China tribe" and the "US tribe". Someone from the "China tribe" did something bad to the "US tribe", so now we're going to grab a random member of the "China tribe" and punish them for it, even if they're not the one responsible. I used to think the Western world had abandoned that kind of collective punishment, but apparently not. It ceases to be re…

> But having the president order arbitrary punishment without proof of guilt (what happened to presumption of innocence?) looks like a dictatorship to me. It is. There's a faction in the US that believes the US has to have a dictatorship to compete with China. We've been here before. The USSR looked like an unstoppable juggernaut until the late 1960s / early 1970s. Like China they started from a state of relative bac…

> During the Cold War there were always factions in the USA and Western Europe who argued that we must become more like the USSR. The right pushed for more militarization and executive power, while the left pushed for more central management and central planning. They were really pushing for "right" and "left" variants of the same thing: a vertically integrated totalitarian system like the Soviet state.

Even without consciously intending to become like them, this is what inevitably happens when you focus on a competitor. Racing on beating them at whatever they are good at means you take on whatever aspects make them good at such pursuits. E.g. the space race meant centrally dumping tons into research funding, a system which of course never went away after the race was won because governments mostly only prefer to take power, they rarely give it up.

Re: US to ban transactions with ByteDance and WeChat in 45 days

#603

Post by ghostwriter »

chrischen wrote: post #568
ejanus wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But if Chinese social media firms are freely operating in the USA why can't the likes of FB and Twitter be allowed same free access in their market. Let's not see this as harming anybody but this is one of the ways to force China to open up and allow foreign businesses(social media) to spread in their domain. Imagine being forced to open a WeChat account just to chat with someone in China. If this kind of business mo…

This is nonsensical. Even if China bans American social media apps for no reason, that's no reason for us to copy their authoritarian, speech-suppressing tactics. That being said, China levies rules on foreign companies that are levied across all companies, and some foreign companies don't want to play by those rules. That's totally different from an outright ban based on "national security." Just think about it, how…

> Even if China bans American social media apps for no reason, that's no reason for us to copy their authoritarian, speech-suppressing tactics.

There absolutely is a valid reason to be authoritarian towards authoritarians. They get what they preach and deserve. It is the same principle of morality of an action of self-defense, when a physical force is applied on those who initiated a physical force in the first place.

Re: US to ban transactions with ByteDance and WeChat in 45 days

#604

Post by boringg »

sfifs wrote: post #567
api wrote: post #550

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But having the president order arbitrary punishment without proof of guilt (what happened to presumption of innocence?) looks like a dictatorship to me. It is. There's a faction in the US that believes the US has to have a dictatorship to compete with China. We've been here before. The USSR looked like an unstoppable juggernaut until the late 1960s / early 1970s. Like China they started from a state of relative bac…

> The real answer is to encourage and protect our ability to innovate while waiting for China to run out of things to copy. When did you last visit China? That train has long left the station :-) Advanced materials research, Aerospace and Chip Fabs are pretty much the only areas where technological areas where I currently see US having a lead

Did you see the spaceship launch from China (https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/13/21256484/china-rocket-deb...)? The debris pathway fell right across two major cities and landed near a village in Africa. I still think there is a lot of areas China needs to catch up. edit:spelling + added African village

Re: US to ban transactions with ByteDance and WeChat in 45 days

#605

Post by treis »

_lsq wrote: post #539
learnstats2 wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It feels unequal after this was called censorship and anti-democratic, being used as a basis for propaganda against China, for years?

No it's not. The Chinese government sets their (extremely authoritarian) rules on censorship for companies to legally operate in China but the rules apply to everyone equally. Chinese companies of course have to comply, but foreign companies have the choice to comply or not. Google chose to comply initially but decided to pull out later on. Microsoft/Apple choose to comply and are still operating in significant ways…

>. In other words, Chinese companies are "born a crime" to the US in the current climate, without the need to show what rules are violated or evidence of wrongdoing.

The problem isn't that their Chinese. It's that they have implicit and explicit support from the Chinese government that give them a leg up on non-Chinese companies.

Re: US to ban transactions with ByteDance and WeChat in 45 days

#607

Post by Barrin92 »

hintymad wrote: post #381
tannhaeuser wrote: post #324

I don't get it. It's US companies standing to loose their stronghold (near monopoly) on social, advertisement, and other forms of monetizing the web if the US creates a precedent for "national security" in this way, as in "we're welcoming social networks and free speech as long as it benefits the US and can be searched without warrant." Quite predictably, governments all over the world will be pressurized to question…

Isn't this just reciprocity? China banned a long list of media companies: FB, Google, YouTube, Twitter, Netflix, and every traditional media. Now the US is banning two apps made in China.

>Isn't this just reciprocity? China banned a long list of media companies: FB, Google, YouTube, Twitter, Netflix, and every traditional media.

Yes, which is bad for China, because it robs the Chinese people of choice. As Milton Friedman said when speaking on tariffs, "why do to yourself what you do to an enemy at war?"

China engages in censorship and limits the freedom of their people, so we're going to do the same to stick it to them? Excuse me if I don't see the logic

Re: US to ban transactions with ByteDance and WeChat in 45 days

#608

Post by woopwoop »

unishark wrote: post #593
yorwba wrote: post #538

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's only reciprocity if you divide the world into two tribes, the "China tribe" and the "US tribe". Someone from the "China tribe" did something bad to the "US tribe", so now we're going to grab a random member of the "China tribe" and punish them for it, even if they're not the one responsible. I used to think the Western world had abandoned that kind of collective punishment, but apparently not. It ceases to be re…

> It ceases to be reciprocal if you distinguish groups at an only slightly higher resolution: Chinese businesses like TikTok and WeChat and American businesses like Google and Facebook in addition to the Chinese and American governments. This is pretty much exactly how reciprocity works in other areas like travel and immigration. We treat their nationals as they treat ours. You can see examples worldwide right now wi…

> This is pretty much exactly how reciprocity works in other areas like travel and immigration. We treat their nationals as they treat ours.

What? Which part of our immigration system is reciprocal?

Re: US to ban transactions with ByteDance and WeChat in 45 days

#609

Post by xvector »

varjag wrote: post #393
xvector wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those companies are free to operate in China if the comply with Chinese law. The US hasn’t issued any legal barriers for TikTok to jump over, they just straight out banned it.

A ban is a legal barrier.

Ridiculous argument. You know what I meant.

Re: US to ban transactions with ByteDance and WeChat in 45 days

#610

Post by free_rms »

api wrote: post #550
yorwba wrote: post #538

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's only reciprocity if you divide the world into two tribes, the "China tribe" and the "US tribe". Someone from the "China tribe" did something bad to the "US tribe", so now we're going to grab a random member of the "China tribe" and punish them for it, even if they're not the one responsible. I used to think the Western world had abandoned that kind of collective punishment, but apparently not. It ceases to be re…

> But having the president order arbitrary punishment without proof of guilt (what happened to presumption of innocence?) looks like a dictatorship to me. It is. There's a faction in the US that believes the US has to have a dictatorship to compete with China. We've been here before. The USSR looked like an unstoppable juggernaut until the late 1960s / early 1970s. Like China they started from a state of relative bac…

I see this pattern of comparisons to the USSR again and again. The USSR collapsed a long time ago, and China saw it happen. Why would they go the same way?

I'd say it's Americans, moreso than anyone else, who took the wrong lesson from that collapse. History isn't on anyone's 'side' and destiny doesn't exist. We take too much for granted.

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