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

TikTok’s Chinese owner offers to forego stake to clinch U.S. deal – sources

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

311–320 of 723 posts

Re: TikTok’s Chinese owner offers to forego stake to clinch U.S. deal – sources

#311

Post by vladTheInhaler »

moneywoes wrote: post #168
jariel wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not 'US market forces' that will open China, and it never was. It was the opportunity to expand into global economic markets, with a certain perspective in mind, ballpark along the lines of Western Liberal Democracy and Economy. The Asian countries that followed this path after WW2 were enormously succesfull: South Korea, Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan. They are basically beacons of prosperity surrounded by…

Not sure why you're getting down voted but does anything genuinely think trade has been fair for the US, Canada and China? Would love to hear the opposing side.

The US isn't a monolith. Shareholder certainly benefited from lower manufacturing costs, but people employed in dying industries suffered enormously. Maybe in a hypothetical world where the profits were shared equitably, that would have been a good deal for the US as a whole. Seems to me like a case of moral hazard - investors are making decisions that affect the long-term health of the country without bearing any of the consequences themselves.

Re: TikTok’s Chinese owner offers to forego stake to clinch U.S. deal – sources

#312

Post by oblio »

Sivart13 wrote: post #181
volgo wrote: post #140

The interesting thing is that these platforms come and go. One year it’s Vine, another year it’s Snap, now it’s TikTok. ByteDance bought musically for $1B in 2017 and turned it into Tok. 3 years later, it’s grown like crazy because it’s the latest fad and would be smart for them to cash out before the next new thing hits The whole divestment thing is probably a godsend for ByteDance, “forcing” them to liquidate their…

I heard people say this about Facebook for years, that it was just the next Myspace and it would be gone in a year. Platforms are temporary until they're not.

The thing is, people really mistake the Wild West days of a market with the mature days. People were saying the same thing about Windows, for example, back in the 1990s. Stuff like:

"Back in the day we had Commodore and Amiga and many other platforms that slowly died, Windows will go their way. Unix will outlast it and kill it off."

30 years later and you could base a Fortune 500 company off of Windows, alone.

Same story with Facebook. People are comparing things to the pre-Facebook days without realizing that social media is a lot more mature now. They're presenting Snapchat as a failure when it's still growing (in users and revenue), Orkut as an example of a rise and fall when it was only popular in Brazil, while Tik Tok is global.

Tik Tok seems to have carved a niche in a pretty mature market. That's hard to do.

Re: TikTok’s Chinese owner offers to forego stake to clinch U.S. deal – sources

#314

Post by ascar »

reaperducer wrote: post #189
CPLX wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most successful global consumer-facing company in world history sells sugar water.

If you mean Coca Cola, you're wrong.

If anything he would mean Pepsi, which is twice as big as Coca Cola (based on revenue). However, that you immediately think about Coca-Cola speaks for their superior branding.

Re: TikTok’s Chinese owner offers to forego stake to clinch U.S. deal – sources

#315

Post by andrewPP »

fennecfoxen wrote: post #293
andrewPP wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook and Google quit China because they didn't want to obey the speech control policy which not as democratic as in the U.S. They could have continued to operate in China had they chosen to follow the rules set up by Chinese regulators. With the TikTok it is a different story. They are willing to obey all laws of US and the Trump admistration still wants to ban it without sound reason. This is ridiculous from my…

How facile to compare the situations of companies "when they follow [China's] rules" and "when they obey US laws" as if they are equivalent. America is being arbitrary, capricious, and unfair, in contradiction to the neutral and generally applicable law in America. But China's legal system has been arbitrary and capricious for decades, and is rotten to the core, consistently elevating the whims of the ruling party ov…

The problem with the Chinese government/legal system is well known for long and most Chinese people wish it can improve over time. It is weird to see that some people in the US wants to celebrate and justify the deterioration of their designed-to-be-perfect system.

Re: TikTok’s Chinese owner offers to forego stake to clinch U.S. deal – sources

#316

Post by polartx »

DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #294
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not that it justifies our behavior, but I can’t help but cringe a bit when considering how China locks American companies out of its market but expects better access for Chinese companies in the American market. America-Chinese relations started going downhill in 2009 when China thought it prudent to start blocking most Americans services, America just took a decade to follow up with similar bad behavior.

> China locks American companies out of its market This is something that is often claimed, but it doesn't reflect reality. China does not generally lock American companies out of its market. In fact, American companies have a far greater presence in the Chinese market than vice versa. For example, take a look at the 2017 China sales figures for a few American companies: [1] * Apple: $44.7 billion * Intel: $14.8 bill…

I worked for a company that provides web and app tracking (kinda like google analytics, but more granular data and user metrics). Any Chinese prospect that engaged with us had to use a myriad of proxies because the Chinese govt blocked our American servers. Also no Chinese prospect ever paid a dime. They would beg for extended trials and bring engineers in to ask questions about the software, requesting server side code, all the while they attempted rip off our product, after a year I became ‘too engaged’ with other projects to pursue opportunities with Chinese companies.

Re: TikTok’s Chinese owner offers to forego stake to clinch U.S. deal – sources

#317

Post by gmantg »

cjsawyer wrote: post #272
aledalgrande wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The interesting thing is that US has bigger problems than TikTok right now.

I see that as the point in Trump’s timing. What other story is being ignoring by focusing on this?

An attempt to delay elections?

Re: TikTok’s Chinese owner offers to forego stake to clinch U.S. deal – sources

#318

Post by seanmcdirmid »

DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #294
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not that it justifies our behavior, but I can’t help but cringe a bit when considering how China locks American companies out of its market but expects better access for Chinese companies in the American market. America-Chinese relations started going downhill in 2009 when China thought it prudent to start blocking most Americans services, America just took a decade to follow up with similar bad behavior.

> China locks American companies out of its market This is something that is often claimed, but it doesn't reflect reality. China does not generally lock American companies out of its market. In fact, American companies have a far greater presence in the Chinese market than vice versa. For example, take a look at the 2017 China sales figures for a few American companies: [1] * Apple: $44.7 billion * Intel: $14.8 bill…

McDonald’s China is now wholly owned by Chinese investors. Starbucks has been trying to get rid of their state mandated JV partners for more than 15 years now.

Re: TikTok’s Chinese owner offers to forego stake to clinch U.S. deal – sources

#319

Post by ergocoder »

rfoo wrote: post #246
ergocoder wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Right now the public opinion in China (not mine) is that India and America are hypocritical bullies and abusing the "national security" excuse, while China "never banned" any foreign web services, those "simply refused to comply with Chinese laws regarding terrorism" and their "inaccessibility" totally justified. This is definitely not a public opinion. Public opinion in US is splited like it always is in every sin…

> This is definitely not a public opinion. OP means this is the public opinion in China, not in US. Or at least that's the public opinion that CCP wants to install. And unfortunately most of the people surrounding me agree this. And I can't argue with them without convincing them the "sometimes misguided censorship" is deliberate and people should not accept censorship in the first place (if most of them do China wou…

Ah yes I misread it.

Public opinion in China is going to be almost always anti-US. That's just regular propaganda for decades.

It's not safe to have differing view in China regarding nationalism.

Not sure why this is news though.

Re: TikTok’s Chinese owner offers to forego stake to clinch U.S. deal – sources

#320

Post by meddlepal »

volgo wrote: post #140

The interesting thing is that these platforms come and go. One year it’s Vine, another year it’s Snap, now it’s TikTok. ByteDance bought musically for $1B in 2017 and turned it into Tok. 3 years later, it’s grown like crazy because it’s the latest fad and would be smart for them to cash out before the next new thing hits The whole divestment thing is probably a godsend for ByteDance, “forcing” them to liquidate their…

> an overhyped app that’s easy to copy

If only I could have a nickel every time someone on HN says something like this.

This site sometimes... smh

Post reply on HN