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

Biden signs TikTok bill into law, starting clock for ByteDance to divest

theverge.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

451–460 of 1001 posts

Re: Biden signs TikTok bill into law, starting clock for ByteDance to divest

#451

Post by groggo »

temporarely wrote: post #322
Aloisius wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The law doesn't ban them from having Chinese owners. It bans American companies from providing services that distribute, maintain or update any sufficiently popular apps substantially owned or controlled by foreign adversaries. TikTok could host APKs from CCP headquarters if they want to.

Is this just a distribution ban or will US actually block the app at net/protocol? I have never used the thingie but this ban business motivated me to download it the other day.

Give it a try. It's weird, fun, educational, stupid. It's whatever you make of it. Is it also whatever China wants you to make of it? Maybe. But they could do the same thing with news, TV, or movies.

Re: Biden signs TikTok bill into law, starting clock for ByteDance to divest

#452

Post by insane_dreamer »

icar wrote: post #348

Given the recent law in the US to give the NSA full access to user data without court order, forcing Tiktok to be owned by a US company makes more sense.

it doesn't have to be owned by a US company; it just can't be owned by a Chinese company (or another country deemed adversarial to the US).

Re: Biden signs TikTok bill into law, starting clock for ByteDance to divest

#453

Post by nashashmi »

ddp26 wrote: post #425

I looked into this, and here's what I think will happen [copied from another thread where I posted this]: - ByteDance will challenge the ruling in court (>95%), but they will lose (80%) - They then will succeed in selling TikTok US to a US company, despite what ByteDance execs and China are saying (75%) - The sale will be for $30-50B (CI 50%), it won't include important ByteDance IP that will have to be recreated by…

it will have to be bought by a US company. The US company will have to be connected to the govt. The gears are already turning to make sure it happens just like they planned. Why else is Steve interested??

Re: Biden signs TikTok bill into law, starting clock for ByteDance to divest

#454

Post by luyu_wu »

The thing that ticks me off is that there hasn't been conclusive evidence that actually justifies this ban. I'd be perfectly happy if the CIA came out with documents of how the data goes to China, but all I've seen is evidence to the contrary (e.g. servers in US, headquarters in SG etc). If I'm wrong, I'd gladly look at some linked articles of course.

Re: Biden signs TikTok bill into law, starting clock for ByteDance to divest

#455

Post by ein0p »

warbaker wrote: post #424
ein0p wrote: post #414

Reciprocity is a thing. I’m sure it won’t be difficult to suggest that certain US businesses operating in China “need to have Chinese owners” too. So I predict this will badly backfire. But on the whole I’m in favor of any and all laws undermining the mind cancer that is “social media”, irrespective of who controls it, worldwide.

Forcing the sale of TikTok _is_ reciprocity. Facebook, Google, etc. are already banned in China. This is the CCP's policies backfiring.

I mean reciprocity not just on the de-facto government propaganda outlets like US-controlled social media and search engines, but on the more tangible things related to all sorts of manufacturing and access to the vast and still growing Chinese markets.

Re: Biden signs TikTok bill into law, starting clock for ByteDance to divest

#456

Post by lostlogin »

insane_dreamer wrote: post #413
ThinkBeat wrote: post #372

I hope this will show the severity of threats countries face from social media and that things are no longer business as usual. Every European country /and/or EU/ECC as a block, as well as every other nation or block, should follow this up as soon as permitted to have all social media apps operated by a foreign country be subject to the same legislation. TikTok will have to sel to the US, Netherlands, France, Germany…

Ironically, this sort of internet sovereignty is exactly what China has been preaching for years (though its so-called World Internet Conference), and of course has the most advanced state of the art implementation (aka Great Firewall) to ensure it. It likely didn't envision that this philosophy might one day come back to bite one of their own :)

> Great Firewall

This is what sovereignty looks like to you? It looks like totalitarianism to me.

Re: Biden signs TikTok bill into law, starting clock for ByteDance to divest

#457

Post by RIMR »

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #224
nickthegreek wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I get the point... if the EU said Facebook could not be available in the Country unless the company divested from US interest, would we not call it a ban?

I think it matters whether it really is a ban or just called a ban, because the whole First Amendment argument hinges on this question. If TikTok was banned in the sense that it had to shut down then the First Amendment argument could work. But if it's just a forced sale then it has no bearing on the freedom of speech of TokTok users.

"Forced sale" is interesting, because it assumes that a Chinese company would allow itself to be forced to sell. If TikTok refuses, the government either has to admit that they have no power to force a sale or actually ban access to the service, or they have to start demanding that app stores remove the app, and DNS providers stop resolving the website, and that ISPs start blocking the IPs. This would become a complete shitshow pretty much instantly.

Re: Biden signs TikTok bill into law, starting clock for ByteDance to divest

#458

Post by groggo »

jquery wrote: post #367
mullingitover wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The law doesn't ban TikTok. Rather, it bans TikTok from having Chinese owners. My prediction: China would absolutely throw away a few billion to enjoy the chaos that results from the country that preaches free speech painting itself into a corner and banning it. Enacting a ban on the most popular app among Gen Z would cause a huge uproar. It would be like taking away terrestrial radio from boomers. It's that popula…

Yeah. This is really a generational thing. That's why the ban was bipartisan... nobody in Congress is of the age that uses TikTok. However, the youth in this country are going to be enraged, far more than I think a lot of people expect. I don't use TikTok but the people I know who use it are extremely passionate about the app.

I'm not genz but I use tiktok. You need to give it a try. All of the comments on here from people who don't use it are bizarre.

We can be skeptical, but not afraid of foreign owned media.

Re: Biden signs TikTok bill into law, starting clock for ByteDance to divest

#459

Post by whyenot »

US lawmakers are deeply concerned that TikTok might exploit some of the data they collect on their users,

...yet they turn a blind eye to the fact that GM not only collected driving data on their users, apparently in some cases without consent, but they sold it to others, including auto insurers, who used the information to increase the insurance rates of those who were spied on.

Re: Biden signs TikTok bill into law, starting clock for ByteDance to divest

#460

Post by ein0p »

insane_dreamer wrote: post #426
ein0p wrote: post #414

Reciprocity is a thing. I’m sure it won’t be difficult to suggest that certain US businesses operating in China “need to have Chinese owners” too. So I predict this will badly backfire. But on the whole I’m in favor of any and all laws undermining the mind cancer that is “social media”, irrespective of who controls it, worldwide.

They already do, for the most part, require a JV that is majority owned by Chinese. That has been around for a long time. (This is if you as a foreign business are operating locally and selling to Chinese consumers. If you're just doing your manufacturing in China and exporting abroad, you're in a different category.) Plus, foreign social media are blocked altogether unless they submit to Chinese government censorshi…

>> So there's not much that can backfire

Why does this sound like “famous last words”?

Post reply on HN