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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

#131

Post by sschueller »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #79
gklitz wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Because the US can break Europe by removing our ability to use the dollar. We are completely attached to it like with swift or visa etc. Until we decouple from the dollar which will probably never happen as the US will prevent it, we will always be under the reign of the United States.

China does not have this problem.

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

#132

Post by fragmede »

nearbuy wrote: post #54
jnovek wrote: post #6

I’m not comfortable with this. I understand that TikTok may represent a national security concern but it’s also a platform that younger generations use for protected speech. What’s the message that we’re sending to this group?

Is it a security concern compared to everything else we get from China, or are we just holding TikTok specifically to an unattainably high standard? We get so many products from China that could potentially be used for spying that we've never tried to ban due to security concerns. Who can say the ESP32 Wifi module doesn't have a hardware or software backdoor hidden in it? AFAIK, there has never been any evidence or r…

> Who can say the ESP32 Wifi module doesn't have a hardware or software backdoor hidden in it?

That is why Huawei gear is not allowed in US telcos.

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

#133

Post by bastawhiz »

danielscrubs wrote: post #110
bastawhiz wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they should just take it Tiktok will not become state-owned/run by the US.

Force to sell it, and the owners should be in US or something like this can happen again. The state then has data access. I get what you mean but it is just splitting hairs at this point.

> The state then has data access.

The state already has data access, if the data is in the US. If the data isn't in the US, then why don't we have data locality laws like the EU and India? If the data is already in another country then why do we let another state have access to the data of US citizens?

> How can people trust that we are an innovative hub if this is how we operate?

Because it puts them on the exact same situation as every US company. You can call it splitting hairs, but they already have a US entity that's already subject to US laws and orders. The US's ability to access their data doesn't change (unless they've been storing user data in mainland China, which is kind of damning for them). Forcing divestment doesn't give the US any legal leverage.

And if companies are worried they'll become worth billions of dollars and become popular with every American youth and have a bespoke act of Congress force one of their many owners to divest, frankly I think they've got their priorities in the wrong place.

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

#134

Post by croes »

brigadier132 wrote: post #42
gklitz wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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?

Tit for tat?

When do European governments get private data about US citizens like the US get per CloudAct?

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

#135

Post by BlueTemplar »

SkyPuncher wrote: post #114
jnovek wrote: post #6

I’m not comfortable with this. I understand that TikTok may represent a national security concern but it’s also a platform that younger generations use for protected speech. What’s the message that we’re sending to this group?

There are other platforms. Further, I don’t see how this fundamentally changes young people’s access to protected speech. If anything, I’d expect this to bring more oversight to how TikTok algorithmically chooses and presents the feed.

Speaking of other platforms, will the US ban Discord or force Tencent to divest from it ?

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

#136

Post by mrjin »

CBarkleyU wrote: post #127
kgdiem wrote: post #124

This is really difficult for me. I have an app that is available in every country except for China because it isn’t allowed to be published there. In that vein it seems fair and probably doesn’t go far enough — Chinese citizens are free to publish whatever they want in the US while we’re severely restricted on conducting trade in China. On the other hand, I’d love access to that market and would prefer trade negotiat…

The West was greedy and saw a trillion dollar opportunity in welcoming China into the WTO in 2000 and gave China massive leeway (this is my opinion, and probably not a majority opinion). In my opinion (only speaking for Germany, as I follow mostly the politics here) nobody was very keen on asking questions and making demand when the Chinese were producing our shit for pennies on the dollar but buying our premium Merc…

There would no problems at all if China continues to make shirts, shoes etc...

But China started to make some high end stuff, such as Computers, and it did those so well that it could probably render US competitors irrelevant in the next a couple of decades. So all drama started.

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

#137

Post by BlueTemplar »

mancerayder wrote: post #109

It's an interesting experiment for the government. Is there another large (forget massive) social platform, heavily geared towards the young, that was banned and the users trickled into another platform? I can't think of an instance of this. I don't see how it won't succeed, if they cut off monetizing the posts.. I guess, what happens if someone's wearing a sponsor's t-shirt and makes a plug in the middle of their ra…

Tumblr's ban of adult content ? (And let's not kid ourselves, teenagers were using it too.)

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

#138

Post by skyyler »

chaosbolt wrote: post #129
kgdiem wrote: post #124

This is really difficult for me. I have an app that is available in every country except for China because it isn’t allowed to be published there. In that vein it seems fair and probably doesn’t go far enough — Chinese citizens are free to publish whatever they want in the US while we’re severely restricted on conducting trade in China. On the other hand, I’d love access to that market and would prefer trade negotiat…

But then we have different values than China, and we claim to have more freedom (whatever it means today). The ban on tiktok didn't come when everyone was criticizing the negative impact it had on children and teenager's mental health, it only came now when lots of its users started publicly criticizing a certain country more openly than is allowed on other platforms... So its censorship/ban will be to comply with we…

People were discussing banning TikTok before Oct. 7th.

That isn’t when that conflict started, but it also isn’t when the push to ban TikTok started.

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

#139

Post by staticman2 »

Why are the Hacker News comments on this so different than when this topic came up a few years ago?

I feel like a few years ago this site was inundated with posts arguing largely "Anyone anywhere on earth should be able to do business in the U.S. and own U.S. subsidary companies, no exceptions."

These seem largely absent today.

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

#140

Post by Clubber »

CBarkleyU wrote: post #127
kgdiem wrote: post #124

This is really difficult for me. I have an app that is available in every country except for China because it isn’t allowed to be published there. In that vein it seems fair and probably doesn’t go far enough — Chinese citizens are free to publish whatever they want in the US while we’re severely restricted on conducting trade in China. On the other hand, I’d love access to that market and would prefer trade negotiat…

The West was greedy and saw a trillion dollar opportunity in welcoming China into the WTO in 2000 and gave China massive leeway (this is my opinion, and probably not a majority opinion). In my opinion (only speaking for Germany, as I follow mostly the politics here) nobody was very keen on asking questions and making demand when the Chinese were producing our shit for pennies on the dollar but buying our premium Merc…

I think the hopes were that China, once prospering in the global marketplace as a big player, would turn democratic. Over the last decade or two, we've come to realize the opposite has happened and the Western powers are adjusting.

Of course Western companies have made a lot of money off China with cheap labor and massive marketplace, so it wasn't entirely an altruistic endeavour.

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