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“Can we ban iPhone in retaliation?” Chinese internet reacts to TikTok hearing

thechinaproject.com

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Re: “Can we ban iPhone in retaliation?” Chinese internet reacts to TikTok hearing

#51

Post by RobotToaster »

freerangebat wrote: post #46
RobotToaster wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really, they either pulled out or got banned because they wouldn't remove content that broke Chinese law, any Chinese company who did the same would also be banned. Tiktok hasn't broken any American laws that result in more than fine.

No. 1. China's constitution protects free speech. Rendering many 'laws' unconstitutional. This may be too philosophical, so there is 2. Many 'laws' are intentionally vague so their application can be as arbitrary as possible: anything can 'disturb public order' or 'violate social morale'. Who's to decide? Of course it's the Party, not the law. 3. If you look carefully, even those catch-all regulations aren't there in…

>China's constitution protects free speech. Rendering many 'laws' unconstitutional.

China's constitution is interesting, as it grants both rights and obligations on citizens, such as the obligation to observe public order and respect social morality.

http://www.npc.gov.cn/englishnpc/constitution2019/201911/1f6...

Re: “Can we ban iPhone in retaliation?” Chinese internet reacts to TikTok hearing

#52

Post by meltyness »

throwaway4good wrote: post #37
meltyness wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

6 hours of testimony that, at most, 2-3% of the country even glanced at is a spectacle in your eyes? This looks like splitting, or you're deliberately failing to understand how lawmaking works and the importance of making informed decisions at the federal level, in the long term. Congress constantly grills CEOs, the elite, and victims because it is understood that they reshape society, sometimes for the worse, not al…

Did you watch those hearings? Spectacle is a very generous word.

I haven't watched the TikTok hearing, but I have watched the 4-5 preceding Big Tech-focused hearings basically since "The Encryption Tightrope."

You can't generalize the whole thing as spectacle just because a few of the congressmen choose to grandstand / push an agenda / be generally tonedeaf, I can almost guess that in 6 hours at least some of the concerns are legitimate and merit public discourse even if they are nuanced, possibly quite boring, and have more to do with how OS maintainers and parents should behave.

Everything is in the crosshairs and nothing material is sacred, and it has been that way for as long as I can remember[0]. That's why we hire these people.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhwM3ZMTCR0

Re: “Can we ban iPhone in retaliation?” Chinese internet reacts to TikTok hearing

#53

Post by Overtonwindow »

ashwagary wrote: post #47
Overtonwindow wrote: post #16

Funny, but they won't. TikTok isn't going anywhere. There's too much money involved, not to mention constitutional rights and law. China won't ban the iPhone because they love it too much and they can't make something better. All of this is a complete waste of time.

>China won't ban the iPhone because they love it too much and they can't make something better. Incorrect, there are many iPhone substitutes.

The iPhone is the best selling smart phone in the world. There may be other phones, but Chinese people are buying iPhones over their own domestic brands.

Re: “Can we ban iPhone in retaliation?” Chinese internet reacts to TikTok hearing

#54

Post by schuke »

EE84M3i wrote: post #49
schuke wrote: post #22

Hasn't China been preemptively retaliating since 2000? Among FAANG only Apple still works. And FANG is actually the surname of the father of the Great Firewall. (Fang Binxing)

> Among FAANG only Apple still works. Hmm, is this true? Amazon has amazon.cn still running as far as I know, and supports china regions in the aws-cn partition via separate companies that "operate" the regions for them. As far as I know, meta and Google don't operate their normal services in china, but I thought they still had offices there, which presumably do something.

The business that Amazon, Facebook, Google have in China is tiny relative to their size. Amazon has a few machine-translated pages that relay their US, UK, DE, JP sites' goods to China. Kindle's shut down. FB & Google sell some ads to local exporters.

Re: “Can we ban iPhone in retaliation?” Chinese internet reacts to TikTok hearing

#55

Post by DiogenesKynikos »

Overtonwindow wrote: post #16

Funny, but they won't. TikTok isn't going anywhere. There's too much money involved, not to mention constitutional rights and law. China won't ban the iPhone because they love it too much and they can't make something better. All of this is a complete waste of time.

> they can't make something better.

Before the US sanctioned Huawei, Huawei's flagship phones were better than the iPhone (assuming you can tolerate Android).

Sanctions dealt a heavy blow to Huawei, but there are other Chinese smartphone manufacturers that make very good flagships now.

Re: “Can we ban iPhone in retaliation?” Chinese internet reacts to TikTok hearing

#56

Post by DiogenesKynikos »

eutropia wrote: post #24
favaq wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course they do. It's got another name (抖音) but it's basically the same exact product.

it’s the same product but they only allow educational content and stuff that promotes Chinese hegemony. They let the rest of the world have nyquil chicken.

> they only allow educational content

Douyin is full of trashy/silly content.

It never ceases to amaze me how blatantly false, easily disproven claims about China, such as, "Douyin is all math and science videos" become common wisdom in the US. Nobody bothers to check for themselves. Someone makes something up, and everyone else just runs with it.

The best example of this is the social credit score myth, which somehow refuses to die, despite the fact that it's untrue and completely absurd.

Re: “Can we ban iPhone in retaliation?” Chinese internet reacts to TikTok hearing

#58

Post by ashwagary »

Overtonwindow wrote: post #53
ashwagary wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>China won't ban the iPhone because they love it too much and they can't make something better. Incorrect, there are many iPhone substitutes.

The iPhone is the best selling smart phone in the world. There may be other phones, but Chinese people are buying iPhones over their own domestic brands.

>Chinese people are buying iPhones over their own domestic brands.

What percentage of Chinese people own an iPhone vs an Android?

Re: “Can we ban iPhone in retaliation?” Chinese internet reacts to TikTok hearing

#59

Post by ethbr0 »

WastingMyTime89 wrote: post #19
John23832 wrote: post #13

Wouldn’t that be a tacit admission of the closeness, or importance, of TikTok to China… something TikTok/Bytedance is explicit trying not to do? They’re trying to up play the distance.

That would just be tit-for-tat market restrictions. From a third party point of view, the whole situation is hilarious. Especially seeing the USA trying to argue Chinese products are a significant risk regarding spying after Snowden.

This gets tossed out, but didn't Snowden literally prove they weren't the same?

In that the NSA had to tap backhaul links because they couldn't simply order Google to turn over Gmail data.

And was trawling internet traffic flows because it couldn't get the data it wanted from the providers themselves.

If you have an easy button... you use it. You don't accomplish secret and expensive engineering miracles just for the hell of it. Especially not with government budgets.

Re: “Can we ban iPhone in retaliation?” Chinese internet reacts to TikTok hearing

#60

Post by ethbr0 »

throwaway4good wrote: post #35
xyzzy123 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't all those things already blocked/banned in China? (since 2009). (I feel like a joke might be wooshing over my head here).

Google and Facebook had the option of operating in China under conditions somewhat similar to TikTok’s project Texas: servers in China, operating under local laws, supporting authorities in surveillance and censorship. Apple and Microsoft operate services under those conditions in China.

Equating US and Chinese court protections is wrong by orders of magnitude.

The US has its failures, but it has a much stricter and more oppositional judiciary than China.

Ergo, Google and Facebook in China would not be like TikTok Project Texas.

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