good riddance
I’m not sure I’d call getting rid of our first amendment rights a “good riddance.”
It’s an app that China created to spy on and promote degeneracy in other countries
Trump says he will ban TikTok through executive action
501–510 of 694 posts
Re: Trump says he will ban TikTok through executive action
#502Not even getting into the CCP ties, it's always struck me as unfair that Western social media companies are banned in China, while Chinese ones have been able to compete Worldwide. In a way this gives Chinese apps an immediate advantage (as some are indirectly calling out in this comment section). If you want to reach out to someone in China, you have to use a Chinese company's app. Since social media is mostly a win…
I agree it's unfair, but when you defend something for moral reasons or claim to have a moral high ground, you should stick with it even if it's unfair, right? The West has always said that the Chinese bans to Western social media and tech companies were authoritarian and antidemocratic. How is this less so?
This gets right to the heart of the paradox of tolerance. When your country is tolerant of other countries' companies operating locally, but they aren't tolerant of the same, then you're going to eventually be overrun. You cannot defeat the intolerant through blanket tolerance; consequences and retaliation are necessary. To make it even simpler, tit-for-tat is a good strategy for iterated prisoner's dilemma; always cooperate isn't.
Re: Trump says he will ban TikTok through executive action
#503Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is less so because they ban anything that isn't controlled by the authoritarian and antidemocratic regime. This ban is against something that's controlled by it. Bans per se aren't antidemocratic, we already have plenty of banned stuff. The only thing that can be antidemocratic is their purpose.
> This is less so because they ban anything that isn't controlled by the authoritarian and antidemocratic regime. Really? So why are there Apple stores in China? It seems like a rationalization to always see ourselves as the "good guys" no matter what. Every empire ever did. Playing devil's advocate, I can see the Chinese rationalizing their bans as defending their sovereignty against Western dominance since we have…
Or maybe exposing the Chinese population to to a tiny bit of critical thinking or anything not in line with CCP’s propaganda is what is feared, not necessarily bullying, don’t you think?
Re: Trump says he will ban TikTok through executive action
#504Earlier quoted context omitted.
After reading many books on China I learned China values social stability over everything. In its 4,000 year history they have seen the dangers of social instability. We are a very young country and haven't seen what real chaos can look like. (These ideas are from Henry Kissinger's on China, Destined for War by Graham T. Allison and The China Dream by Liu Mingfu)
Do you know who else has a 4,000 year history of instability, even greater instability? Europe. The height of centralized political stability in Europe was the Roman Empire, or maybe Napoleon. Yet you don't hear many Europeans saying "We need to bring back the Roman Empire", or "We need to bring back Napoleon". China values social stability because they have a dictatorship for whom social stability is a convenient id…
Comparing the Roman Empire to Napoleon who lived fifty years and only invaded then briefly ruled neighboring European countries under heavy turmoil is quite a stretch.
Re: Trump says he will ban TikTok through executive action
#505Earlier quoted context omitted.
Stonehenge is also between 4 and 5 thousand years old but it's not going to tell you anything about the mystical traditions of the people of the British Isles.
The difference between the West and China is that China has been able to maintain its civilization state and it has a continuous history. The West's history is discontinuous
There have been plenty of rises and falls of civilization in China in the intervening thousands of years. It's way reductionist to claim that this is all the same one unflagging continuous empire.
In a way, you're doing Chinese history a huge disservice by making it a lot less interesting than it actually is when you claim that it's all just one empire persisting steadily through time.
And anyway, "the west" has a continuous history going all the way back through the ancient Greeks. That's at least two and a half millennia. It's not been the same people or the same empire since then, obviously (same for China), but the continuous written history easily goes back at least that far.
Re: Trump says he will ban TikTok through executive action
#506My conspiracy theory: Silicon Valley (Facebook) couldn’t compete with TikTok so they leaned on Trump to kill it. The fact that TikTok is a massive hotbed of anti-Trump memes the way Facebook is pro-Trump/anti-Biden is also curious. The national security angle is laughable because we have no such controls over the data held by US companies. Would be trivial for a spy to pipe data out of FAANG to the country they serve…
My conspiracy theory is that Trump is mad about TikTok kids pranking his Tulsa COVID-19 Death Rally.
Re: Trump says he will ban TikTok through executive action
#507Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why give China access to our domestic market when they refuse to give us access theirs? What do you propose then?
Why restrict what American customers can do just because China restricts what Chinese customers can do? Do you also suppose that it would be a good idea for you to hit your head repeatedly against a wall, if I start doing so?
> Do you also suppose that it would be a good idea for you to hit your head repeatedly against a wall, if I start doing so?
This is a bad analogy and proves nothing. There's no connection between two people banging their head against the wall.
However, there is a connection between one actor performing a bad action and then facing punitive action from another actor because of it. It makes them less likely to perform similar actions in the future, and could cause them to reverse the previous bad actions that are still in effect.
Whereas if you're banging your head against the wall, me doing the same does nothing to stop you. Hence why it's a meaningless analogy.
Re: Trump says he will ban TikTok through executive action
#508Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree it's unfair, but when you defend something for moral reasons or claim to have a moral high ground, you should stick with it even if it's unfair, right? The West has always said that the Chinese bans to Western social media and tech companies were authoritarian and antidemocratic. How is this less so?
We're allowed to take a little more of the broader context into account - China is banning things because ideas might be spread that they don't like. People might spread fake news stories, like a genocide in Xianjiang. The US will read all your messages; but you can say what you like in them. The ban isn't for authoritarian reasons; it is a fairly pure economic/geopolitical play. You can say whatever crazy stuff you…
Until you can't.
Re: Trump says he will ban TikTok through executive action
#509Not even getting into the CCP ties, it's always struck me as unfair that Western social media companies are banned in China, while Chinese ones have been able to compete Worldwide. In a way this gives Chinese apps an immediate advantage (as some are indirectly calling out in this comment section). If you want to reach out to someone in China, you have to use a Chinese company's app. Since social media is mostly a win…
I agree it's unfair, but when you defend something for moral reasons or claim to have a moral high ground, you should stick with it even if it's unfair, right? The West has always said that the Chinese bans to Western social media and tech companies were authoritarian and antidemocratic. How is this less so?
The world isn’t black and white. Just different shades of grey. Some darker than others. You will find inconsistencies everywhere.
Re: Trump says he will ban TikTok through executive action
#510Not even getting into the CCP ties, it's always struck me as unfair that Western social media companies are banned in China, while Chinese ones have been able to compete Worldwide. In a way this gives Chinese apps an immediate advantage (as some are indirectly calling out in this comment section). If you want to reach out to someone in China, you have to use a Chinese company's app. Since social media is mostly a win…
I agree it's unfair, but when you defend something for moral reasons or claim to have a moral high ground, you should stick with it even if it's unfair, right? The West has always said that the Chinese bans to Western social media and tech companies were authoritarian and antidemocratic. How is this less so?
As far as that scoreboard is concerned, the US has yet to be caught using applications to spy on its own people for the express purpose of automating who should receive “free” re-education.