Live data from Hacker News

Mark Zuckerberg Stoked Washington’s Fears About TikTok

wsj.com

201–210 of 214 posts

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Stoked Washington’s Fears About TikTok

#201
post #158

Mark Zuckerberg knows that if another platform were sufficiently compelling, his users could turn on a dime (notice I didn't say customers). Zuckerberg is deathly afraid of competition and he is very aggressive about protecting Facebook's stranglehold on the social media advertising market.

> Zuckerberg is deathly afraid of competition and he is very aggressive about protecting Facebook's stranglehold on the social media advertising market. It is incredibly common behavior for large businesses to raise the barrier of entry for new competitors. Almost every established business does this. It's why patents exist. Mark Zuckerberg doesn't participate in this activity to an abnormal amount.

Anti-competitive behavior is a federal crime. These practices are common in the USA because the Dept. of Justice has more or less stopped enforcing our anti-trust laws. Patents have nothing to do with it.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Stoked Washington’s Fears About TikTok

#202
post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not like he is wholly unrelated to China, though. This is kinda similar to Davit Isak and probably numerous other people

I cannot locate anything about the person you refer to, but that doesn’t matter. “Not wholly unrelated” is a very weak justification for an abduction of a foreign citizen (especially where “not unrelated” means “wrote about some country’s politics”), and unilaterally declaring international consular relations “suspended”. “What about Y” does not mean X should be tolerated.

Sorry mate, that got misspelled. Yes, I agree with you an all those points, but to totally disregard the fact that the person is of chinese origin and a former chinese citizen is not giving the whole picture.

In the case of Isaak, people in sweden seem to think he was some kind of stockholm journalist when he was merely swabbing the floors of a swedish news agency. Not to discredit him of course, I was actually a cleaner myself at one point ... But to simply refer to him as an "abducted swedish journalist" very much leaves the full picture unpainted. More accurately he was a political refugee in sweden and oppositional activist in eritrea, and I think he wrote a newsletter there as well or some kind of newspaper.

In any case, hope they all go free soon, poor people.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Stoked Washington’s Fears About TikTok

#203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In fairness, though, the CEO of Facebook hasn't built a better product in almost two decades. Instead, his company's growth has been based on brilliant (and occasionally very shady) acquisitions.

Brilliant ruthlessness brought us one of the most destructive tools on earth, disguised as a site for peace, love, cat content and happiness. There were a million different ways to design a communications tool for people that would have respected its users. I hope we will leave this decade with a sad, distant memory of facebook and its outlets. BTW: I am sure we will see the end of facebook (and it's subsidies) in th…

>Brilliant ruthlessness brought us one of the most destructive tools on earth, disguised as a site for peace, love, cat content and happiness

Oh, good grief. Just say "Facebook didn't stop Trump from being elected!!!!1!!!1!". It would be fewer words.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Stoked Washington’s Fears About TikTok

#204
post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It requires you to have a Facebook account. This by definition makes it an inferior product. I've been buying and selling stuff on Craigslist for years, never had a problem. If you're really paranoid about getting ripped off, do the transaction in the parking lot of your local police station.

I'm moving out right now and using facebook to sell out my stuff, and let me tell you, you are missing out

There are always enough buyers and sellers on Craiglist and I never have a problem with the price. Unless FB is going to physically deliver the stuff from door to door for free, I'm not missing out on anything valuable compared to what I'd give up.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Stoked Washington’s Fears About TikTok

#205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an American business owner, in my experience reality has no concern for “fairness” but is constructed by leverage and power.

As an American business owner, do you believe in the rule of law or the rule by law? Do you think any appearance of shifting to the latter would have an impact on the business environment?

If I understand your argument correctly, my response is the same, that the "of law" or "by law" has no bearing and never has.

People/organizations/governments will do what they have the leverage and power to get away with. If you, or your organization, or your government, don't/doesn't agree with the direction, then leverage and power are your means to change the situation. Those that have the power to make/change the laws, make/change laws.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Stoked Washington’s Fears About TikTok

#206
post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

believe me they see it, a couple years back you could ask Chinese people in the street what they thought of Americans and a lot would answer that they like the fact that they are more "free" and "open minded". There's a bunch of videos like that on youtube [1][2]. Nowadays I don't think people would say the same stuff[3]. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gqXLxCU-fY [2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_E38TJpU6…

it doesn't matter. chinese citizen opinion doesn't matter to the chinese govt. Western companies lose by trying to play fair against the chinese companies. This is all in accordance with game theory. By trying to be nice, we will be wiped out. The only choice we have now is to fight dirty like them.

You may be surprised to find out how much Chinese citizen opinions matter to the Chinese Govt. State-sponsored censorship (like the one in RPC) exists to meddle with public opinions. Denial of access to information is a mean, not an end. Artificial consents are being manufactured via the media on both sides. Just done differently, largely because one way is more cost-efficient and cost-effective than the other in terms of the place’s GPD per capital.

$10,262 [65th in the world] vs $65,111 [7th] (IMF, 2019)

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Stoked Washington’s Fears About TikTok

#207
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dunno, I was just doing this math and thinking that seems pretty awesome. You only get $35,000 but the hardware you need is in your pocket. Of course, you need to be cool and be good at marketing- but still!

I have this exact problem. In my niche, I am the best. Most people post their opinions, but I collect data and do math. It makes the content better than competitors. However I don't have a marketing team, and I'm not a hip hot girl. Don't get me wrong, the website is popular and I've been on BBC, but I can tell my lower quality competitors are doing better.

> However I don't have a marketing team, and I'm not a hip hot girl.

Why not hire a marketing team?

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Stoked Washington’s Fears About TikTok

#208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have this exact problem. In my niche, I am the best. Most people post their opinions, but I collect data and do math. It makes the content better than competitors. However I don't have a marketing team, and I'm not a hip hot girl. Don't get me wrong, the website is popular and I've been on BBC, but I can tell my lower quality competitors are doing better.

> However I don't have a marketing team, and I'm not a hip hot girl. Why not hire a marketing team?

I tried 3 companies and they sucked, but I spent lots of money.

I think I don't have the cool factor.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Stoked Washington’s Fears About TikTok

#209
post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I cannot locate anything about the person you refer to, but that doesn’t matter. “Not wholly unrelated” is a very weak justification for an abduction of a foreign citizen (especially where “not unrelated” means “wrote about some country’s politics”), and unilaterally declaring international consular relations “suspended”. “What about Y” does not mean X should be tolerated.

Sorry mate, that got misspelled. Yes, I agree with you an all those points, but to totally disregard the fact that the person is of chinese origin and a former chinese citizen is not giving the whole picture. In the case of Isaak, people in sweden seem to think he was some kind of stockholm journalist when he was merely swabbing the floors of a swedish news agency. Not to discredit him of course, I was actually a cle…

Abducted and prosecuted a Swedish citizen. The “journalist” part is not important is it?

A big difference between China and Eritrea is that one of those is a nuclear power, and it has just unilaterally declared consular relations as suspended when Sweden demanded access to its citizen. This is insane.

Global discourse about China mainland politics must be bias-corrected in a way that people with strong opinions and actual knowledge of how things work there will likely self-censor, unless they align with CCP.

If no one writes about some damning thing X in the US, there is a high likelihood that X doesn’t happen. If no one writes about damning thing Z in China, this tells us nothing. They could just fear for their lives—and it doesn’t matter where that person lives, which country’s citizen they are, whether they have been granted asylum, etc.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Stoked Washington’s Fears About TikTok

#210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are completely mistaken if you think simply complying with local laws will allow you to succeed in the Chinese market.

I don't think that, nor do I think that is true anywhere on this planet.

mate, I appreciate your comments personally as I've done business in 3 continents over last 15+ years and I can agree where you are going with this.

But you're not going to convince anyone on a western forum about this. Obviously I'm generalising but the process people have is loosely:

failure to understand how other people (ie 1.4 billion) operate -> their laws don't work like ours -> their laws are unfair and therefore must be corrupt

Of course they don't abstract the principles upwards ie that an important part of modern sense of liberty is letting people run the system they want. They feel there's no contradiction with that and trying to impose their system on others and using their own system as the only yardstick because they're saving these heathens from eternal damnation.

Alao a lot of those arguments I see in this thread could be applied to many other countries, but everyone just wants to blame China.

Post reply on HN