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

nytimes.com

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

#921

Post by dang »

angryasian wrote: post #299
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.

You've been breaking the site guidelines a lot lately. Can you please not? I recognize that you're representing a minority point of view and I know how frustrating that can be (believe me, I know). But if you keep breaking the site guidelines, we can't suspend moderation because of that.

Also, it's not in your interest to do this because it makes your comments less persuasive and indeed gives people an easy reason to dismiss them. So if you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.

Past explanations here in case helpful: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

Also, in case it's helpful, here is a list of moderation posts I made for a user who was in a similar position a while back: https://news.ycombinator.com/chinamod. It's old(ish) now but the principles are all still the same.

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

#922

Post by gklitz »

hmm37 wrote: post #623
codekaze wrote: post #213

I think the primary argument for banning TikTok should be based on reciprocity rather than moral and/or security concerns. We can make similar arguments about the negative effects of Facebook, Instagram, and etc. even from the POVs of other countries, but the key issue here is that China heavily restricts foreign apps and services from operating in their market. If China is unwilling to allow US companies to compete…

The issue is that China has banned facebook and google, etc. because they don't censor which is the law in China. If they decided to censor and follow the laws of China they would be allowed to operate there. Google tried to reenter the Chinese market but decided not to after an uproar from its own employees who didn't want to censor. Microsoft is allowed to provide hotmail and bing, etc. services there, because they…

> Microsoft is allowed to provide hotmail and bing, etc. services there, because they decided to censor.

Sure, but in an act og completely understandable and justafiable reciprocality I guess we should soon see China passing laws to force Microsoft to divest from their American owners or be banned in China. And when that happens I’m sure the same people in this thread arguing that everything is peachy with USAs actions against TikTok will see it as perfectly acceptable and reasonable.

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

#923

Post by rf15 »

A lot of comments here assume that two countries are either "at war" or not, even though it's much more of a gradient in which military escalation is one of the last steps. In fact, you can financially support an endeavour of a country while also sanctioning them for another thing they did. Relationships are complex.

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

#924

Post by thaumasiotes »

kevinventullo wrote: post #118
thaumasiotes wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To do the second thing, you'd need some kind of statement of what the problem was.

… which can be understood and articulated by the median congressperson. A tall order indeed.

Why would that be a requirement? There's no need to understand, or state, the contents of a bill in order to pass it.

But there do have to be contents, and whatever you put in there is subject to media coverage.

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

#925

Post by number_man »

BriggyDwiggs42 wrote: post #888
amou234 wrote: post #741

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What most of the posters in this thread don't realize is that US is effectively at war with China. China is working in front of the scenes to be the major funder of Russia's war [1] against Europe, which is US's ally amongst the coalition of democratic countries. China is working behind the scenes to stop the supply of artillery shells to Ukraine. [2]. and it is increasingly and more visibly supplying Russia with mil…

Please don’t act like people who are against top down banning of apps in the usa are aligned with autocracy. That’s precisely the opposite of accurate.

They are definitely aligned with the desire of autocracies. They may not realize it, but doesn't mean it's not the case.

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

#926

Post by NicoJuicy »

MisterBastahrd wrote: post #918
NicoJuicy wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm from Europe. Since China was supporting Russia to start a war on European soil. I sure hope that China's influence is reduced to a minimum as quickly as possible. Ofc, that includes propaganda through TikTok.

If China were really THAT involved in the day to day operations at Tiktok, one would expect to see more pro-Russian propaganda with regards to the war. There's little to none that I've seen.

Not from my pov. China has nothing too gain with backing Russia so directly. It's also not how propaganda works.

China has way more benefits of taking non-western stances on anything and spreading those.

Eg. If a terrorist organization would kill and rape, support those that are not defending their country through TikTok.

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

#928

Post by jjfoooo4 »

MBCook wrote: post #774
segasaturn wrote: post #590

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The irony with your comment is that TikTok's masters in China already have the same power that SOPA was supposed to grant the US government Yes, the power of democracy. People spoke up and prevented a harmful law from being passed - why is TikTok exercising that right, in the same way as Google and Facebook, a problem? It sounds like you want the US to become like the CCP instead of vice versa.

Because TikTok is owned by one of our adversaries. They’ve been accused of pushing propaganda and they just accidentally proved how effective they can be at causing political change in the US. Exactly what their opponents were afraid they had the power to do. It looks REALLY bad. In this case it wasn’t anything sinister and they were open about it but tactically it was probably a massive mistake. Also why didn’t they…

> Exactly what their opponents were afraid they had the power to do.

They notified their users that their elected representatives were fast tracking a bill targeted at the service they were using. Negotiated in secret because those representatives knew it would be enormously unpopular with their constituents.

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

#929

Post by jjfoooo4 »

corimaith wrote: post #684

It's interesting how the bill can have such a heavily bipartisan approval yet there are so many opposing the decision in HN. That goes also with the general US anti-China consensus that has virtually no political lashback from domestic voters. So I would naturally assume from that then the plurality of the american voterbase would support this. So is this opposition really coming from the voterbase or elsewhere?

No, the majority of US voters didn’t know of this effort until a few days ago. Support is currently polling in the low 30’s

https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/tiktok-bill-ban-house-vo...

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

#930

Post by nextaccountic »

remarkEon wrote: post #894
bugglebeetle wrote: post #565

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you honestly believed this to be true, you would be arguing for a ban on all social media, as like half of Instagram is just reposts of TikTok content and is otherwise mind-numbingly equivalent to the service.

>If you honestly believed this to be true, you would be arguing for a ban on all social media Your terms are acceptable.

However, we are talking through a social media website.
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