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US House passes bill to ban TikTok if owners won't divest

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Re: US House passes bill to ban TikTok if owners won't divest

#71

Post by kelnos »

krapp wrote: post #62
mschuster91 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's more like, they don't want any place on the Internet that's a social network allowing uncensored exchange between Chinese people and the Western sphere of influence.

When they do it, it's totalitarian. But when we do it, it's merely sensible policy.

I'm really tired of arguments like this. The US (and West as a whole) are not a bunch of angels, of course. But the kind of censorship, state-mandated propaganda, and market control you see from China is not even remotely comparable to the situation in the West. Equating the two is at best uninformed, at worst disingenuous or actively malicious.

Re: US House passes bill to ban TikTok if owners won't divest

#72

Post by kelnos »

maxglute wrote: post #67
PeterHolzwarth wrote: post #2

Not always a popular sentiment, but I don't really mind treating a country's companies as that country treats ours. I know this TikTok issue is far more nuanced (who the backers/owners are, how data is treated etc) of course.

Reciprocity would be US mandating a joint venture JV structure like in PRC aka the TikTok Oracle proposal that fell through. Issue is US is uniquly delusional in thinking they can force a foreign company to divest. PRC isn't going around ordering local Boeing/Microsoft branch to divest from US. Or not delusional since they know PRC wouldn't let TIkTok to divest would open up forced divestitures as viable strategy. He…

I don't think it's delusional, I think it's intentional. The people writing and backing this bill are fully aware that the sale is not going to happen. The sale provision is merely there so Congress can say they're being reasonable, that they're not trying to take TikTok away from the millions of people in the US that use it. That if it ends up having to be banned, that's on China for not accepting the "reasonable" alternative that was presented to them.

Whether or not most TikTok users in the US will buy this bit of malarkey is another questions.

Re: US House passes bill to ban TikTok if owners won't divest

#73

Post by kelnos »

nearbuy wrote: post #60
brigadier132 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US is following a tit for tat strategy. Which European companies has the US forced to divest their holdings to justify the action you're proposing?

Which US companies has China forced to divest their holdings?

Probably none, or very few, but the reason for that is China doesn't allow local companies to be majority-owned by foreign entities in the first place.

Another, somewhat equivalent answer to your question is, "all of them".

Re: US House passes bill to ban TikTok if owners won't divest

#74

Post by wnevets »

kelnos wrote: post #73
nearbuy wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which US companies has China forced to divest their holdings?

Probably none, or very few, but the reason for that is China doesn't allow local companies to be majority-owned by foreign entities in the first place. Another, somewhat equivalent answer to your question is, "all of them".

doesn't that mean any company that does business in China should share the same security concerns if not worse than TikTok? I would be much more concerned about hardware that is being made and/or assembled by Chinse companies in China that a smartphone app

Re: US House passes bill to ban TikTok if owners won't divest

#75

Post by kelnos »

PeterHolzwarth wrote: post #2

Not always a popular sentiment, but I don't really mind treating a country's companies as that country treats ours. I know this TikTok issue is far more nuanced (who the backers/owners are, how data is treated etc) of course.

Yeah, I'm actually somewhat sympathetic to this move (and it surprises me somewhat that I feel this way). I think the only actual problem here is that the US government waited until a third to a half of the country was hooked on TikTok before taking action. The bigger issue is PR and optics, and weathering a backlash from those users when they can't use TikTok anymore.

If TikTok was an obscure app that a few hundred thousand (or even a couple million) people used, most people wouldn't think this ban would be a problem. (Granted, if it were that small, it wouldn't've provoked all this scrutiny in the first place.)

China doesn't give foreigners meaningful access to their markets (and when they do, it comes with a pile of restrictions, including on ownership structure); arguably we should not do the same. The whole "let's expose China to Western values and they'll open up and become a democracy" thing failed miserably.

Still, on a fundamental level, this all feels uncomfortable.

Re: US House passes bill to ban TikTok if owners won't divest

#77

Post by C6JEsQeQa5fCjE »

elfbargpt wrote: post #47

I'm surprised this passed (in the house at least) at this point in the election cycle. My suspicion is that ByteDance will in fact refuse to divest, and TikTok will get banned. Which I don't think the electorate will like very much

> I'm surprised this passed (in the house at least) at this point in the election cycle

AIPAC is willing to sacrifice Biden's re-election chances for this short-term victory because the other candidate and his whole party is also going to be favourable for them, possibly even more so.

Re: US House passes bill to ban TikTok if owners won't divest

#78

Post by krapp »

kelnos wrote: post #71
krapp wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When they do it, it's totalitarian. But when we do it, it's merely sensible policy.

I'm really tired of arguments like this. The US (and West as a whole) are not a bunch of angels, of course. But the kind of censorship, state-mandated propaganda, and market control you see from China is not even remotely comparable to the situation in the West. Equating the two is at best uninformed, at worst disingenuous or actively malicious.

Not yet, but this is an obvious step in the same direction, "banning" a social media platform to prevent exposure to foreign ideas. It's difficult not to assume the motives are similar, a need to control political narratives and manufacture consent for American policy.

Re: US House passes bill to ban TikTok if owners won't divest

#79

Post by 2OEH8eoCRo0 »

gklitz wrote: post #38
PeterHolzwarth wrote: post #2

Not always a popular sentiment, but I don't really mind treating a country's companies as that country treats ours. I know this TikTok issue is far more nuanced (who the backers/owners are, how data is treated etc) of course.

I can see what you mean. Europe should force the US to divest from Facebook and have it transferred fully to European owners.

Why haven't they? Think hard.

Re: US House passes bill to ban TikTok if owners won't divest

#80

Post by brigadier132 »

_akhe wrote: post #61
NickC25 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disclaimer: I worked for, and helped start, a company that contracted with Tsinghua University. The list of demands they had was....well, enormous. We couldn't even say that we were our own company, whenever we faced a client within Tsinghua, we had to tell them that we were an operation owned and run by Tsinghua. Why? Because we weren't Chinese. >* Can you blame them for not wanting it?* No, I don't blame them at al…

> Blizzard didn't "work with" NetEase, they basically gave them the IP and ability to sell the game in China as well as ownership of all servers that host Chinese players. My dear bro, this is called "working with". > Microsoft did the same thing with their Office suite and Azure cloud services... because they aren't allowed to independently operate in China. You're the one actually being manipulative with words here…

And the law of the US is that tiktok can't be owned by a Chinese company. Easy, they should just operate under that rule.
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