Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

House passes bill to force TikTok sale from Chinese owner or ban the app

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

291–300 of 1001 posts

Re: House passes bill to force TikTok sale from Chinese owner or ban the app

#291

Post by kyleamazza »

grecy wrote: post #270
kyleamazza wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you totally missed the argument: it's not about copying anything China does, it's about reciprocating restrictions that they place on your country. If China places a tariff on US imported goods, then the US places a tariff on Chinese goods. This is and has been the case even for non-adversary countries, and is bread-and-butter foreign policy

> it's not about copying anything China does, it's about reciprocating restrictions Your justification is literally "They're doing it to us, so we should do it to them". Apply that logic to everything China does. Do you want to behave like them? Wait a few years and it will be about reciprocating other things China does.

Reciprocating tariffs has been a thing for hundreds of years before the US even existed. The justification isn't "they're doing it, so let's just copy them", it's "they're inflicting economic impact on us by reducing the profit of our exports to them, we'll put pressure on them to stop that by reducing the amount that we import for them".

It's not simple "but he hit me first" logic: it's macroeconomics with an actual strategy in mind.

Reciprocating =/= literal copying.

Re: House passes bill to force TikTok sale from Chinese owner or ban the app

#292

Post by TulliusCicero »

angio wrote: post #255
TulliusCicero wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China bans a shitton of Western websites. What's wrong with reciprocating? Free trade should go both ways, shouldn't it? I would definitely be more okay with allowing Chinese websites/apps in the US if China wasn't banning so many Western ones: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_websites_blocked_in_...

Why would you want to live in a country that bans apps like dictatorships do? I'd rather live in a free country.

That's not what I'm saying at all. I'm talking about free trade.

Re: House passes bill to force TikTok sale from Chinese owner or ban the app

#293

Post by PreachSoup »

TheLoafOfBread wrote: post #238
Leary wrote: post #234

Next up, China forces Tesla to divest its Chinese operations or face ban

They did it to all previous OEMs via forcing them into Joint Ventures. So it would be actually equal treatment for Tesla as the rest of OEMs.

Yep. Tesla is actually the outlier here where China gave them the special treatment.

Now China has their own formidable EVs now. Would China say gave us shares or f** off to Tesla?

Re: House passes bill to force TikTok sale from Chinese owner or ban the app

#294

Post by [deleted] »

kyleamazza wrote: post #276
angio wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you want to live in a country that bans apps like dictatorships do? I'd rather live in a free country.

"Free" doesn't mean no restrictions. For example, apps/websites like Myspace and Facebook and anything that's been used to spread hate, cause bullying, or threats have always been a target of regulation, albeit never an outright ban. In the case here, it's ostensibly being done with national security considerations in mind. What remains to be determined is whether or not these concerns are valid. But the idea that "f…

[deleted]

Re: House passes bill to force TikTok sale from Chinese owner or ban the app

#295

Post by falcolas »

contrarian1234 wrote: post #131
throwaway237289 wrote: post #19

Don't be fooled by talk about security or privacy. This is simple Nation State realpolitik. TikTok is a propaganda threat controlled by a non-friendly state to the US. Any other way to look at this is naive.

Is there any evidence it's been used for propaganda? I don't use TikTok a lot, but it seems very non-political (maybe it's my filter bubble). The real cesspool of hatred and madness is Facebook - but of course Congress doesn't care too much about that. As far as I remember from the previous elections the Russian bots were operating on US based platforms

Are folks using it to distribute propaganda? Yes.

Is there evidence - any evidence whatsoever - that CCP or bytedance is using tiktok to push a particular flavor of propaganda? No.

That said, TikTok's moderation is quite unfriendly to LGBTQ+ and Palestine creators (even though they find ways around it).

Re: House passes bill to force TikTok sale from Chinese owner or ban the app

#296

Post by Spivak »

wannacboatmovie wrote: post #283
Spivak wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Parler off the face of the planet, a purely political move Having a policy against hosting apps that host illegal content and taking no measures to remove it is a political move? There are plenty of active conservative communities on the internet, Parler just went the "free as in anarchy" speech route. Tumblr faced a ban on iOS for pornographic content and Reddit also has to sanitize their default experience to be…

Many mass shootings in recent memory were live streamed on Facebook and Instagram. Removing those posts after the fact is a useless gesture. The evil already happened. Meta was never punished. Selective enforcement of TOS is political and utter nonsense. If TikTok were guilty of what they are accused of (being a foreign intelligence and propaganda tool), why is Congressional action necessary? Why wouldn't have privat…

> Removing those posts after the fact is a useless gesture. The evil already happened. Meta was never punished.

I mean this sincerely and in good faith, what else can you do? We don't have the PreCrime division. The accusation isn't that Twitter/Facebook don't ever host illegal or objectionable content but that they have a procedure for addressing and removing it. Parler just said no, we don't have and will never have such a policy. If Tumblr say, despite having a moderation policy just stopped enforcing it they would find themselves staring down the banhammer again.

As to your second point the answer is in your own question, I don't think they actually buy that TikTok is either of those things. Hell, the NFL partnered with TikTok and they're basically cheerleaders for the US military.

Re: House passes bill to force TikTok sale from Chinese owner or ban the app

#297

Post by sebazzz »

Spivak wrote: post #274
wannacboatmovie wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We can make similar arguments Hey remember when Apple, Google & Amazon all colluded to ban Parler off the face of the planet within days, a purely political move, based on some shaky allegations of moderation? Meanwhile TikTok is labelled as a "must have" app in the AppStore....

> Parler off the face of the planet, a purely political move Having a policy against hosting apps that host illegal content and taking no measures to remove it is a political move? There are plenty of active conservative communities on the internet, Parler just went the "free as in anarchy" speech route. Tumblr faced a ban on iOS for pornographic content and Reddit also has to sanitize their default experience to be…

> Parler just went the "free as in anarchy" speech route.

This is no different than X nowadays. But the political landscape has shifted even further to the right, why now no action is taken nor desired [by the politics] to do anything about it.

For instance: There is only one Dutch moderator for the entire Netherlands/Flemish community.

Re: House passes bill to force TikTok sale from Chinese owner or ban the app

#298

Post by simpletone »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #115
cherryteastain wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is that the West painted itself as the defender of freedom, democracy and free markets. Going beyond, it claimed that (in the post Reagan/Thatcher era) that free markets are a prerequisite for being a rich country. Yet, the moment free markets became inconvenient, the west dropped that narrative and went full protectionist. As a result, China gets a propaganda victory in the eyes of non-Western nations. All…

> looking like hypocrites This is the paradox of tolerance [1]. It’s a worn discussion and far from hypocritical. In any case, I’d rather be right than consistent. Particularly when it comes to the survival and wellbeing of our people and allies. More pointedly when the other side is a dictatorship. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

[flagged]

Re: House passes bill to force TikTok sale from Chinese owner or ban the app

#299

Post by angryasian »

throwaway237289 wrote: post #19

Don't be fooled by talk about security or privacy. This is simple Nation State realpolitik. TikTok is a propaganda threat controlled by a non-friendly state to the US. Any other way to look at this is naive.

xenophobic nonsense.
Post reply on HN