US to ban transactions with ByteDance and WeChat in 45 days • Hacker News Board

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

#931

Post by dumbfoundded » Fri, Aug 07, 2020, 5:53 PM UTC

tensor wrote: post #829

cwhiz wrote: post #685

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China doesn’t allow many western companies to operate in China. Why should the US allow Chinese companies to operate in the US?? This is an outrage that we should not allow. They steal our intellectual property, create state funded companies that are given monopoly access to their markets, and then unleash their stolen products on the world market. And if American or other western companies try to compete on the grou…

TikTok has only recently had any competitors from the west, and WeChat is still far and beyond any chat platform the west has offered. I have extreme doubt the western companies would at all be able to compete in China. They don't get the culture, they have inferior features and inferior user experience. In fact, if the west weren't so racist I suspect WeChat would dominate just like TikTok is dominating in the west.

That's the thing is that WeChat can exist in the US. In fact it does. It just doesn't get any traction except with Chinese Nationals communicating with their families.

It's kind of absurd to think that platforms that literally dominate every single country in the world like Google and Facebook wouldn't similarly dominate in China if they were just allowed. TikTok is the first Chinese social app that's had any success in the West. That's why we're talking about this now and never needed to discuss it with WeChat.

It's absolutely crazy that Chinese companies can compete fairly in Western markets yet the Chinese government can close their markets to Western companies. IMO, a trade war with China is long overdue. China hasn't played fairly in any sense . Trade wars suck for all involved but if you're not willing to do them, why would China not play by a double standard?

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

#932

Post by cblconfederate » Fri, Aug 07, 2020, 5:53 PM UTC

aey wrote: post #677

cblconfederate wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> US tech firms still have a harder time operating in China. It's entirely hard to believe this considering the obscene amounts of profits that US companies make by just "designing in california". Our whole era is enabled and defined by cheap chinese labor.

> It's entirely hard to believe this considering the obscene amounts of profits that US companies make by just "designing in california". Our whole era is enabled and defined by cheap chinese labor. Labor is fungible, if it wasn't in China it would be somewhere else.

Nowhere else was there a state willing to devalue their currency for decades.

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

#933

Post by amaccuish » Fri, Aug 07, 2020, 5:53 PM UTC

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.

There's douyin for china and tiktok for everywhere else.

Chinese companies go to the effort of creating separate apps to comply with the laws and cultures of other countries. Why can't American companies do the same and obey Chinese law? Yet again, "American Exceptionalism" strikes again.

Also see LinkedIn and Bing, which disproves the idea that it's all some plot masterminded by Beijing to only allow Chinese companies to succeed.

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

#934

Post by Cookingboy » Fri, Aug 07, 2020, 5:54 PM UTC

pgrote wrote: post #657

hintymad wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Now the US is banning two apps made in China. This really could be the end of the thread. For years China has banned systems and applications from other parts of the world. The fact it has taken this long to respond with action is stupefying. China would like the benefits of a…

>For years China has banned systems and applications from other parts of the world.

That statement is a lie. Not a single one of those companies are banned in China, they voluntarily choose to not operate there, mostly due to them not wanting to comply to draconian Chinese laws. In Netflix's case they simply don't want to compete against the local streaming market.

Apple, Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, Intel, AMD, Cisco, etc are just some of the big techs that's doing very well in China.

It's hard to have a genuine discussion when people are intentionally spreading misinformation.

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

#935

Post by dumbfoundded » Fri, Aug 07, 2020, 5:58 PM UTC

wonnage wrote: post #410

Sangama34 wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tomorrow this exact mumbo jumbo will be used against "California" companies and "New York" companies.

Joke's on you, all companies are Delaware companies

I think you mean Irish companies. They just have large Delaware based subsidiaries.

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

#936

Post by kazinator » Fri, Aug 07, 2020, 5:58 PM UTC

Cookingboy wrote: post #934

pgrote wrote: post #657

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 really could be the end of the thread. For years China has banned systems and applications from other parts of the world. The fact it has taken this long to respond with action is stupefying. China would like the benefits of a…

>For years China has banned systems and applications from other parts of the world. That statement is a lie. Not a single one of those companies are banned in China, they voluntarily choose to not operate there, mostly due to them not wanting to comply to draconian Chinese laws. In Netflix's case they simply don't want to compete against the local streaming market. Apple, Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, Intel, AMD, Cisco, et…

You're not banned from my house, but if you come to visit, you're required to beat my children.

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

#937

Post by Cookingboy » Fri, Aug 07, 2020, 5:58 PM UTC

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…

There are no Chinese restriction on U.S. companies. Why do you think iMessage and Skype are popular in China? If FB/Google doesn't want to operate in China because they don't want to comply to the same law that applies to everyone, then good for them. There are no explicit bans on Facebook and Google.

>It's not arbitrary to counter that benefit with a loss of access to the US.

Xiaomi and Huawei competes against Samsung and Apple within the Chinese market. Microsoft, Oracle, IBM, Cisco, etc are just some of the big tech companies that enjoy a ton of revenue from China.

>The president executes the laws

The law specifically says he cannot use it to restrict any personal communication to foreign entities. So yeah, he has no right to do this.

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

#938

Post by live_video » Fri, Aug 07, 2020, 6:00 PM UTC

Wouldn't there be some value in decentralizing social media? Surely, countries where most of their users are communicating via Facebook puts them at extreme disadvantage, especially if they need FB to comply with some sort of subpoena. We don't really have global central news networks, so why would we ever think global social media platforms would ever work? Plus decentralizing social media could possibly help with bot/hatespeech/fakenews problems, or at least localize them a bit more to reduce the speed and scale problem.

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

#939

Post by bmitc » Fri, Aug 07, 2020, 6:01 PM UTC

blisseyGo wrote: post #507

bmitc wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do wonder if there's a deeper connection than Facebook simply having this feature ready to go and releasing it early. Was there cooperation of the sorts "you ban TikTok and we'll release Instagram Reels early to help distract upset users"?

Facebook has had a Tiktok competitor called Lasso for 2 years. It failed though. They are shutting that down and simply porting the features over to their existing Instagram app. https://techcrunch.com/2020/07/01/lasso-facebook-tiktok-shut...

My comment wasn't about whether they already had it or not. It is obvious they were already working on it. No one could develop and release a feature so quickly. It is about the timing of the release, which could have very well been cooperatively timed.

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

#940

Post by pfisch » Fri, Aug 07, 2020, 6:06 PM UTC

michaelyoshika wrote: post #225

pfisch wrote: post #170

Now we should intermittently just turn off websites and services of Chinese companies in the US, randomly lose and/or return shipments, etc. They have been cheating us forever. We should do it too if that is the way they want to do business.

Totally, I've just thrown out everything made in china from my house. You should do the same!

If their government is going to aggressively intervene in their "free market" so we can't compete by doing exactly what I just said, then we are forced to reciprocate.