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U.S. opens a national security review of TikTok’s acquisition of Musical.ly

reuters.com

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Re: U.S. opens a national security review of TikTok’s acquisition of Musical.ly

#191

Post by modulos »

sol_remmy2 wrote: post #177
kmonsen wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The censorship is completely different though, if you want to write "Fuck Donald Trump", or give a detailed account of his crimes on a US platform, it will not be censored. Try the same in a Chinese owned platform about f.ex. something as obvious as Tianmen. There are some things such as porn that is censored in many areas.

In America speech is censored by American private companies all the time. Racial or anti-semitic speech is often censored thanks for pressure from civil rights groups (i.e. https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/facebook-bans-white-n... ) and from lawsuits (i.e. https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-47705904 ) Twitter has even begun censoring political speech from public figures: "Twitter will now hide — but not remove…

It is not reasonable compare a company choosing not to host content that hurts marginalized people, with a company being forced not to host content critical of the most powerful people.

Re: U.S. opens a national security review of TikTok’s acquisition of Musical.ly

#192

Post by nova22033 »

fruzz wrote: post #85
nknealk wrote: post #19

I highly recommend folks listen to recent episodes of Ben Thompson’s exponent podcast where he discusses TikTok and its influence in the USA. He makes the point that US consumers become subject to Chinese censorship policies when using the platform while China outright bans or heavily restricts American companies from operating (eg google search, Facebook).

I mean, as a Canadian consumer using American social media platforms, we're subject to American censorship policies. Tumblr / Facebook / YouTube being most notable in their filtering of LGBT content and suspending accounts of LGBT users, because of the American governments stance on human sexuality. This argument of who censors makes sense for Americans, but it's more about picking your poison for people from other c…

Tumblr / Facebook / YouTube being most notable in their filtering of LGBT content and suspending accounts of LGBT users, because of the American governments stance on human sexuality.

Facebook removed LGBT pages because the American government forced them? Do you have a link?

Re: U.S. opens a national security review of TikTok’s acquisition of Musical.ly

#194

Post by adventured »

yorwba wrote: post #71

The article conveniently forgets to mention that Musical.ly was founded by Chinese founders and headquartered in Shanghai. Maybe they technically were an American company, but it's not clear the outcome would have been much different from a "national security" perspective.

That doesn't matter at all.

The US controls its domestic market - just as China controls their domestic market - and when it comes to going back and reviewing the TikTok / Musical.ly combination it can dictate terms across the app stores which are all US controlled.

The US can say: we're going to ban your combined entity from all global app stores by forcing Google and Apple to comply with our position on that merged entity (TikTok + Musical.ly).

Google and Apple resist? Say hello to national security based sanctions. They will immediately comply, no more questions asked.

The US can instantly, globally kill TikTok, for all intents and purposes. TikTok would disappear from most global app store availability within a week, from Canada to Australia. It would probably only exist in China.

It's unfair? Tell Qualcomm - NXP that. That was blocked solely out of spite by China. This is an economic conflict with China. When China lets US Internet companies have proper, full access to their market maybe the US will relent and start playing 'fair.'

Re: U.S. opens a national security review of TikTok’s acquisition of Musical.ly

#195

Post by Slartie »

stetrain wrote: post #189
Slartie wrote: post #183

So a president who basically hands victory after victory to foreign governments and who effectively reduced the toolbox of the United States to shape foreign relations to "sanctions" and "tariffs" is not considered a threat to national security. Everything's fine with that. But if just one foreign social network app manages to divert some serious attention of US teenagers from Facebook for the first time in Internet…

I mean, there's basically one primary mechanism by which the president's actions can be challenged (other than lawsuit on constitutionality), and that mechanism is currently in progress in the House of Representatives. I'm not sure I'd call that "Everything's fine"

At the moment there is definitely a majority of people sitting in the Senate who would put their signature under an "everything is fine". My hope is that this changes, but the chances are limited, if at all existent, so: yes, by all accounts I currently have to assume the powers in charge consider everything to be fine.

Re: U.S. opens a national security review of TikTok’s acquisition of Musical.ly

#196

Post by quaquaqua1 »

mustacheemperor wrote: post #184
quaquaqua1 wrote: post #169

I am an American-born man of Western European descent. My girlfriend is a Chinese passport holder here on H1B. I am an anarchist. I absolutely do not understand why there is so much hate for Chinese people, Chinese companies, or the Chinese government. Literally everything has flaws, and Western Europe and USA have plenty of them. If you are not willing to say "China does xyz but actually also my country does somethi…

This line of discussion seems a bit off the topic of the thread, but I want to respond to you. Based on your last paragraph, it seems to me like it should be pretty clear why there is so much hate for the Chinese government and the companies that act as agents for Chinese government censorship and oppression policies. There are many Chinese nationals suffering and dying in concentration camps _right now_. Am I oblige…

I do not deny any of the claims you have made about concentration camps, human rights abuses, corporate interests etc.

But I would really like to understand why there is a double standard in the minds of "my fellow Westerners".

Boeing, Raytheon, Booz Allen Hamilton, Halliburton, Lockheed, and the whole Washington aparatus in general have been (in)directly responsible for the deaths of millions of innocent people in the Middle East, yet I am still happy to use Instagram and Whatsapp and Youtube.

Similarly I will use TikTok concurrently while understanding that the Chinese government has locked 1 million Uighurs in a concentration camp. Surely, not every Chinese citizen voted for this idea. So we shouldn't make assumptions about what "Chinese people" are like

Re: U.S. opens a national security review of TikTok’s acquisition of Musical.ly

#197

Post by TheMinorityGuy »

nknealk wrote: post #19

I highly recommend folks listen to recent episodes of Ben Thompson’s exponent podcast where he discusses TikTok and its influence in the USA. He makes the point that US consumers become subject to Chinese censorship policies when using the platform while China outright bans or heavily restricts American companies from operating (eg google search, Facebook).

People need to be more skeptical about governments (both murican and chinese) and have more faith in fellow human beings. Why is it that US government gets it panties wet at the thought of Tiktok having influence in USA but somehow is proud of he fact that Google or Facebook are global companies ? What is that Tiktok would do to american that Google or Facebook won't do to Indians ?

Google and Facebook not being in China is not necessarily a bad thing. Both the companies are massively popular in India but make no profits off Indians yet. On other than their popularity has made Indians value these companies a lot as employers and every third Google/Facebook engineer in Mountain View is an Indian person. Google or Facebooks adventures in India (and China) if at all are nothing but a huge subsidy being delivered to these upcoming markets at the expense of American consumers.

Say China opens up its markets for Google and Facebook like tomorrow would you be fine with that ? Both Google and Facebook are then going to borrow money from american to build massive data center networks in China spending billions of dollars which may or may not be recovered in near future.

Xenophobia and divergence from free market principles in USA have made other countries better potential successors to Silicon Valley. In near future we will see more and more companies coming up from China. What USA has done with Tiktok is essentially a child like tantrum to scare other investors and chinese companies but very likely US government will end up with an egg on its face.

Re: U.S. opens a national security review of TikTok’s acquisition of Musical.ly

#198

Post by uncletaco »

lonelappde wrote: post #119
uncletaco wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Both sides" have anti-globalists, and both have globalists, and despite an interesting few years globalism is still the establishment norm for most mainline parties in liberal democracies.

"globalism" isn't one thing. Both communism (international workers movement) and libertarianism (free markets) have globalist aspects. You can believe in geographical borders while also having foreign relations.

I was not trying to imply globalism was one thing. I also pointed out that it is the norm for "liberal democracies", as a way to not paint with too broad of a brush. I very much agree with you.

Re: U.S. opens a national security review of TikTok’s acquisition of Musical.ly

#199

Post by quaquaqua1 »

CharlesColeman wrote: post #187
quaquaqua1 wrote: post #169

I am an American-born man of Western European descent. My girlfriend is a Chinese passport holder here on H1B. I am an anarchist. I absolutely do not understand why there is so much hate for Chinese people, Chinese companies, or the Chinese government. Literally everything has flaws, and Western Europe and USA have plenty of them. If you are not willing to say "China does xyz but actually also my country does somethi…

> I absolutely do not understand why there is so much hate for Chinese people, Chinese companies, or the Chinese government. > please do not act as if your statements about Chinese nationals I think it's misleading to bring up the Chinese people in this way: the "hate," if it can even be called that, is for the Chinese government and the CCP . The real or imagined influence of the CCP over Chinese companies is causin…

I agree that the Chinese people are victims of their government. Why then is there no outrage that Americans are the victim of their own government as well?

If TikTok is banned by the US because of the actions of the Chinese government, then we are no better than the Chinese government who have banned countless "American" apps, as if apps should even have a nationality in the first place.

Re: U.S. opens a national security review of TikTok’s acquisition of Musical.ly

#200

Post by avanti »

nknealk wrote: post #19

I highly recommend folks listen to recent episodes of Ben Thompson’s exponent podcast where he discusses TikTok and its influence in the USA. He makes the point that US consumers become subject to Chinese censorship policies when using the platform while China outright bans or heavily restricts American companies from operating (eg google search, Facebook).

China doesn't ban or restrict heavily only to American companies. All companies are subject to the same laws. It's whether to comply or not.

It must be hard for Americans to understand the need for censorship and thus feel angry when they are subject to such policies. But there are deep historical reasons. And I think ByteDance doesn't really care about whether or not censoring their product in the US. My guess is that it's easy for them to just manage one content review team than multiple.

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