None of those arguments are the salient one, which is that a geopolitical adversary has control over a major influence vector on US public opinion. They could simply have divested.
"...there is now a widespread tendency to argue that one can only defend democracy by totalitarian methods. If one loves democracy, the argument runs, one must crush its enemies by no matter what means. And who are its enemies? It always appears that they are not only those who attack it openly and consciously, but those who ‘objectively’ endanger it by spreading mistaken doctrines. In other words, defending democracy involves destroying all independence of thought."
Geroge Orwell - Proposed preface to Animal Farm, first published in the Times Literary Supplement on 15 September 1972
So the alternative is to defend democracy by letting a foreign authoritarian entity take over your country in the name of (their) freedom?
I don’t get how can Americans be so insecure about themselves and have such fragile trust in what they can achieve as a country. This idea that foreign authoritarian regimes should be respected as much as their own people and system is just baffling.
Remember that Americans are already at each other's throats. Half the country is literally terrified about what will happen tomorrow. The other half of the country is ecstatic. For at least some of them, they are looking forward to doing exactly what the other half fears. The rest are relieved that they will not have to undergo the terrors and tribulations of the last four years.
The country is constantly on a knife edge. It takes only a tiny shift to cause a radical change in the power structure, and good reason to think that power structure will be used against you.
It is indeed remarkable that the country has achieved anything at all when it spends so much time cowering. Nor is that new, but modern media seem to give it more immediacy.
There was only 64% election turnout in 2024. People are not as politically radicalized and polarized as media companies say to increase engagement. Some people are, but the problem is being exaggerated for clicks and views.
> People are not as politically radicalized and polarized as media companies say to increase engagement
I disagree based purely off of my own life and experiences. The shift rightward over the past 10 years is palpable. It's not surprising historically at all - the US has always been composed of almost entirely conservative, individualistic attitudes and then little pockets of progressiveness here and there. They never last, rather the hope is just to get as much done as fast as possible in that time frame.
Certainly, policy that would be unthinkable 15 years ago is par for the course now. I think that's just undeniable, and speaks to the radicalization of the US.
I'm guessing that you live on one of the coasts and mostly associate with certain classes of people? In the real world, people are not at each others throats. They're mostly interested in talking about their kids, the price of milk, sportsball and debating the best way to prepare briquet.
My comments just went right over your head. Didn't comprehend a word I wrote. It honestly makes me sad.
Let's be specific:
In the "Gender" executive order, Sec 2(a) and Sec 3(d), the administration has set it up so that the passport, global entry, social security, or other identity document of any transgender American citizen can be scrutinized, denied in the future, or in an expansive reading, retroactively revoked.
Since all such changes require documentation, there is almost certainly a list of all such people, unless the previous administration was clever enough to destroy it.
For example, a valid document for this man https://www.uri.edu/news/wp-content/uploads/news/sites/16/20... (picked at random, a picture of an openly trans man who has stated as such on a website), can no longer list an M. A document with an M on it is subject to government scrutiny, for example at any border crossing or other ___location where identity may be verified. The government may now argue that such a document is not valid. If he has no documents with such an M marker, he can no longer obtain them. Additionally, he must use the women's room, per sec (4).
"We're all gonna be okay!" The federal government is simply subjecting trans people to increased scrutiny, limiting their freedom of speech and expression and their freedom of movement. "Nobody's gonna lose their rights."
But hey, enjoy your brisket, right? How's the price of milk doing?
I mean, descriptive information on an ID isn't used for like tying someones appearance to their name or anything, right?
So it makes sense for the news to say something like "the police are searching for a female suspect 5'9" " despite them looking similar to the person in rpearl's example.
That description will really help the public identify or be on the look out for that female, right?
People with a trans belief shouldn't be given extra privileges over everyone else, such as being allowed to record false information on government-issued ID. Changing the sex on your ID documents is like changing your date of birth. It is quite simply incorrect.
What's an ID for? Identifying someone or to list arbitrary information about a person, like political affiliation, faith, natural born citizen or immigrant?
"an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth" is solution to you?
Respect doesn't mean that you have to agree. If you believe that something is wrong, use arguments, educate, inform... It's hard to implement pathological behaviour in well informed and educated society. Fragile society, however, is easier to be manipulated with and lead to hate, violence and wars.
“Tit for that” is a solution for the USA on a great deal of topics, from reciprocal taxes to reciprocal visa requirements for travel. Why not reciprocate social media site access too? It’s just another product after all?
It doesn't actually solve anything, rather it makes the baseline lower by hurting everyone. I.e., it's an anti-solution - something that actively makes things worse, and can only make things worse, but masquerades as a solution.
An example of an anti-solution is lowering crime by making something that was illegal no longer illegal (see: public transit vs automobiles). Or, reducing the incidence of something by making it illegal while simultaneously increasing it's necessity (see: abortion). Or, solving wage inequality by protesting minimum wage increases.
agreeing with the point the question makes here; the game theory of global politics does not work with the same morals that we prescribe individual people
I agree, a "well informed" society would be wonderful but we have a long way to get there and even then, highly educated people are not immune to misinformation and propaganda. Not everything is black and white, there are always shades of grey and these are difficult to navigate.
I think imposing certain limits on various freedoms, including speech is required for a functioning democracy. I also believe that there are deeper issues if the populace of a nation no longer respect the decisions made by its highest court of law.
I'm struck by the complete lack of confidence in statements like this.
We've got the whole world wearing blue jeans and listening to our music, mostly communicating on our tech platforms. English is the default language for international business. One Chinese social media company and its game over? Have some faith in your culture.
Since the general positive sum game is breaking down all around the world, everybody should feel insecure, and you will be insecure, if you are not already.
“Fragile” trust? That trust has been beaten out of us at every turn for an entire generation. There is nothing fragile about American exceptionalism or the dream of achievement; we’ve just been shown repeatedly that we are becoming the third-world bully regime in the eyes of the world and, increasingly, in our own.
Every bad thing we’ve been taught to believe about China or Russia, it turns out we do too and often worse. So what loyalty should we have? What has democracy and capitalism done for us but bankrupt our seniors with medical debt and addict our children to iPads and amphetamines?
I’d love to be able to trust my government and the American ideal again, but don’t tell me I’m weak for second-guessing the whole con game this century is turning into.
”What has democracy and capitalism done for us...”
Radicaly increased wealth. I guess you have access to drinking water, food, place to sleep and be warm at cold sessions. It wasn't a standard few decades ago and still it is not fot most in the world.
"I’d love to be able to trust my governmen..."
Do you really believe that government solve your problems?
Over the last 40 years, China’s version of socialism with state-controlled markets have lifted more people out of poverty than ours. Democracy and capitalism have not benefited me in my lifetime. My taxes go to fund foreign wars and lining the pockets of American oligarchs.
“Radically increased wealth”, for who? Government has never solved my problems, only created more. My point is that I would have been doing better under China’s system than ours.
> My point is that I would have been doing better under China’s system than ours.
I’m not sure how you can say this with a straight face. China hit rock bottom after the cultural revolution and they had a lot of “the only place left to go is up!” going on. This is like someone saying their salary increased 5X from $10k to $50k and calling that better than someone’s salary only going up by a third from $200k to $300k. Yes, the improvements have been great, and while your life would have improved more under Chinese rule (velocity), do you really think your position would be better off? (And imagine only making $50k or $100k/year and houses still start at a million bucks!)
If you don’t like government meddling, China probably isn’t the place for you. Yes, they might not pay attention that you aren’t following some rule for awhile, but the rule exists and they will eventually hit you with non-compliance.
Do you realize that the same exact logic can apply to any US company abroad? Not just social networking, _any_ company. We are everyone else's "geopolitical adversary" too. Or is it "different" and I "don't understand"?
All "governments" are authoritarian. The USA was founded by authoritarian white slaveowners. So yes, Gen Z and TikTok users will definitely baffle all those who accept US imperialism above all else.
Let's be honest: "Democracy" in the USA is and always has been a game for the rich, especially since the 1908s when Reagan and Thatcher decided that China should be the top dog in the world order.
People just want to live happily. Simple as that. TikTok gives a lot of people a feeling, a snippet, of a little bit of freedom and connection with others. All US media makes people fearful - FOX "news" is literally just fearmongering for boomers and their children who can't afford homes of their own. CNN and MSNBC is just fear mongering against boomers who watch FOX "news". Facebook/Meta/IG/WhatsApp is an extension of these fears into the virtual world and TikTok offers something better.
Jokes on the USA though. RedNOTE is gonna close the cultural divide between America and China and Americans will realize just how far the boomer generation and those who have been elected to uphold boomer beliefs really left younger/current generations behind.
China has won technologically and now begins the cultural victory.
I can foresee, sadly, that there will be an unnecessary loss of lives in the short term however for both the USA and BRICS nations. Hopefully I wind up being wrong.
Lots of hyperbole and feelings but not much evidence.
TikTok is not some bastion of freedom, they did win with critical mass and a vastly superior algorithm. All media makes people fearful, you speak so highly of China but have you consumed mainland Chinese media before? It is like Fox on steroids, packed full with stories that paint China as the victor and America as a dangerous and silly country.
Calling a victory in technology is laughable, mainland manufacturing is incredible, one of the best in the world. Products in China have caught up and in some spaces exceeded western brands. China is still missing out on innovation in high-tech, thats why they have been caught so frequently trying to steal corporate secrets.
RedNOTE is not going to prove anything to americans except the disdain the Chinese have for Americans joining their social network and the level of censorship that exists in a mainland app.
It is like you are a propaganda machine and ironic enough it reads just like a mainland Chinese news article. If there was a conflict everyone would lose out. I am surprised anyone would foreshadow it. China unlike Russia seems to still think through the lens of economic interests, I suspect nobody in the current regime would want any type of conflict. While they may have a military its entirely untested both equipment and men.
Another plausible theory is that the literal billions that have been invested into optimizing content for hyper attention have led to improvements in propaganda methods since Radio Moscow.
In summary the Us government should spend its time improving the lives of Americans, and not find better ways to lie them about the quality of their lives.
There was a classified briefing on Tiktok presented to Congress last year about why it is a threat to national security. No doubt the Intelligence Community had a good look inside Tiktok/Bytedance's network and determined it is not something we should allow to operate in this country.
That's strawman that has nothing to do with this topic. If you follow this line of thought, everything that is discussed in classified briefings is being done in bad faith, which I agree is easy to argue for, because we tend to pick and remember only bad examples, lack of trust in the system probably doesn't help much either. So even if you're right about trusting Gov in general, your argument is still wrong.
Yes I also trust the federal government unequivocally and without question. They didn’t tell me any details but I don’t need any, their word is good enough. In fact I will tell others so they are aware of the new gospel.
Why only to the Congress, does not the American people have a right to know? Why be tight-lipped about it, certainly it's not some military or nuclear technology matter.
Are you really so dense as to not understand how social media is used to influence elections, and how that is significantly different from any media format that has previously existed?
You don't believe that. So don't try and use that as justification. Alternatively if you do believe that you don't understand how power on media platforms works.
Could be - the amount of online commentary when that war broke out was all encompassing. Almost like it was a highly volatile combination of an rightfully angry/scared population and paid information campaign by US foreign adversaries.
Do you have evidence of this compared to what is known, that ByteDance China has in-office seats for the CCP? These conspiracies and what-aboutism make no sense to me.
Many American politicians, including the people leading the charge for the ban, have openly said that this is the reason.
Senator Mitt Romney put it very bluntly [0]:
> "Some wonder why there was such overwhelming support for us to shut down potentially TikTok or other entities of that nature. If you look at the postings on TikTok and the number of mentions of Palestinians, relative to other social media sites - it's overwhelmingly so among TikTok broadcasts."
Or maybe Mitt Romney is just another conspiracy theorist?
None of those 1A arguments held up and the SC decision did not use "count of Palestinians" AFAIK. I am sure some of the initial support was drummed up for reasons like what you mentioned but ultimately that is not why its being banned. But going back to your point, mentioning democratic rights for a CCP app is hilarious.
The people who formulated the ban failed a few times previously, both because they couldn't gain enough political support to push it through and because it was legally shaky. The Gaza issue was what led to overwhelming support for a ban in the US Congress and Senate (as Romney says), and the ban was intentionally formulated in such a way as to try to legally sidestep the First Amendment question (in a highly dubious manner, but the SC isn't going to overrule Congress here).
> mentioning democratic rights for a CCP app is hilarious.
It's the most popular app in the United States. Calling it a "CCP app" is just braindead. Of course banning the most popular means of expression in a country because the people are expressing themselves in ways that political leaders disapprove of is anti-democratic.
All major corporations in mainland China have direct ties to the CCP. To think otherwise is foolish, their business and government are intertwined. At the end of the day all ByteDance china had to do was divest their ownership in the company.
I sympathize with you and agree the initial support definitely utilized the conflict in Gaza but it goes beyond the conflict and centers itself around the ability for the CCP to influence how the algorithm works. To not understand how much control the CCP has over mainland entities is surprising.
This completely depends on the company. There's no evidence that TikTok has been used as a Chinese propaganda vehicle, and the issue that led to TikTok being banned in the US was TikTok's refusal to bow to pressure to toe the line on Palestine/Israel. Unlike Facebook, TikTok did not suppress pro-Palestinian content, and that led to broad Congressional support for a ban.
So have you done business in China or are you just guessing? I have and in China and other single party communist countries and absolutely all business, especially at large size have direct lines to the party. I am not sure how you can be so confidently incorrect. You can be some small time manufacturer and you are still beholden to your local governing party members with at the very least annual kickback gifts.
You keep latching on this idea of Palestinian content. You do realize this is much larger than that conflict?
I don't have much of a horse in this race, and I wouldn't consider myself pro or anti-China but I do a significant amount of business in China just shy of 9 figures annually in terms of revenue and I have never once dealt with their government in any way shape or form.
I have absolutely no direct line to them, never given them any kickbacks, and I visit the country once or twice a year.
I have no doubt that there are businesses that do have significant dealings with the CCP, I would never believe otherwise, but the idea that every company has to have a direct line to them is objectively untrue. I know many other people who also do business with China and its mostly the same story, none of us deal with the government and frankly I would be very uncomfortable if ever I had to.
> I have never once dealt with their government in any way shape or form.
It’s likely you have and didn’t know it. The “political officer” or otherwise-embedded party official often has another title or “non-official cover” as they say. Communist governments have operated this way since 1918.
I've spent plenty of time in China and know how things work there, in general. The idea that everything is run through the Communist Party is just a lazy, scaremongering generalization that's become increasingly popular in the US since 2016. There is such a thing as "Trump Derangement Syndrome," and it's the anti-China derangement that has become the bipartisan consensus since Trump took office in 2016.
The people pushing the ban say it's about Israel. Other Senators and Congresspeople say that's why they and their colleagues supported a ban. There were always some people who wanted to ban TikTok, but they were never able to get majority support in Congress until the issue of Israel came into play. Banning the most popular social media platform in the United States, a platform that more than half of Americans use, is a big deal.
You can also read that as an example of his opinion that TikTok is selectively amplifying anti-Western sentiment. You _can_ go for "it's all about Israel", but you really don't have to.
Or you could just read the statements of various politicians of our government:
Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn: "It would not be surprising that the Chinese-owned TikTok is pushing pro-Hamas content"
Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla.: "We’ve seen TikTok used to downplay the Uyghur genocide, the status of Taiwan, and now Hamas terrorism"
And of course, Romney's explicit statement as well, when in context, it's actually far worse because it seems he is very concerned about lax fact checking on TikTok (which American social media platforms announced they are doing away with): https://xcancel.com/ggreenwald/status/1880979821901332773#m
I fundamentally disagree with all of these representatives. Americans are allowed to view all sides of every geopolitical issue and make up their own minds and vote according to their own beliefs. We should never ever be "shielded" from propaganda because we are smart enough to vote for and lead democracy, so we should be trusted as smart enough to ingest any geopolitical information existing in the world.
It's one thing to be exposed to varying viewpoints, it's another thing to have a nation state wage propaganda campaigns against you on your home turf.
If 999/1000 tiktoks you see are of one particular viewpoint, you don't think the audience is going to draw specific conclusions? Our species now has mis-information tools that we couldn't have possibly imagined even just a decade ago. We're in the midst of a real struggle to work out how your average person can identify it. It's disheartening how little progress has been made in this area.
> If 999/1000 tiktoks you see are of one particular viewpoint, you don't think the audience is going to draw specific conclusions?
So what? If you watch InfoWars all day you'll also draw specific conclusions. If you watch PressTV all day you'll also draw specific conclusions. The point is that Americans can draw whatever conclusions they want, and that limiting info to only "approved" sources is authoritarian
Is it not so much the exact topics but the control of a recommendation engine that’s at the hands of a government that is a general adversary to the West?
So what? Recommendation engine is just the same thing as a newspaper editor who picks and chooses what is read by everyone in circulation and what's not. But we allow foreign adversary newspapers to circulate in the US (and did during the height of the Cold war too)
Would you give the same freedom to an opponent in a hot war? I.e. if there had been widespread TVs during WW2, would you allow NaziTV to televise their content to your population totally uncontrolled?
Would you allow an unfriendly adversary to buy up your ports, critical infrastructure, and food/water supply, or would you block certain transactions in the name of national security?
>So the alternative is to defend democracy by letting a foreign authoritarian entity take over your country in the name of (their) freedom?
People being convinced to change their countries geopolitical policies seems to me a perfectly legitimate thing to do in a democracy.
If the american people would like closer relations to china and vote accordingly that seems to me to be the whole point of democracy.
China engaging and supporting that is also a perfectly legitimate means of achieving its goals, no? Or would you prefer that instead of convincing the american people of that, they should instead bribe or coerce their politicians behind closed fdoors?
"And TikTok has special characteristics—a foreign adversary's ability to leverage its control over the platform to collect vast amounts of personal data from 170 million U. S. users—that justify this differential treatment. [S]peaker distinctions of this nature are not presumed in- valid under the First Amendment."
Unanimous decision to ban TikTok from a divided Supreme Court, 2025.
- Stasi (an abbreviation of Staatssicherheit), was the state security service and secret police of East Germany from 1950 to 1990. It was one of the most repressive police organisations in the world, infiltrating almost every aspect of life in East Germany, using torture, intimidation and a vast network of informants to crush dissent
The privacy / data protection angle on TikTok is a red herring.
There are other ways China, or anyone else, including any one of us, can get their hands on vast amounts of personal data about anybody. It just costs more than operating a profitable social media platform.
All you need to do is flash a few bucks and talk nicely to a data broker, or Meta (remember Cambridge Analytica?) and there's nothing the US Government or you can do about it, because it's entirely legal. The minimal barriers that are in place to protect the data going into "wrong" hands are trivial to bypass.
And if that doesn't work, the next level up in difficulty is hack the same organizations. China has made an industry out of that.
I feel like it's important to include "the ability for China to easily [...]" since that's probably the top reason TikTok is affected by this and not others who are identically able to "easily influence on a large scale".
Yes, all domestic media has also been corrupted by various agencies that wish to psychologically manipulate the masses. Some of this manipulation is to get you to buy things, while other wants to get you to think, act or vote a certain way.
The difference is that when a foreign adversary has the ability to do the same, it becomes a matter of national security. Allowing that adversary to also control the platform itself is beyond unsafe.
The tricky thing is that the US built these tools, and opened them up for everyone to use. This libertarian position is what will ultimately be its downfall. They can't just go and block access to these tools for everyone outside the US, or heavily regulate them, as it will cause an internal uproar, but that is what they must do in order to survive this war. China is in a much better position in this conflict since the government has total control over the media its citizens consume (barring the rampant use of VPNs, which they can shut down at any point). They have no external but massive internal influence.
I feel like everyone should watch this 1985 interview of an ex-KGB agent[1]. It's more relevant today than ever before, and explains the sociopolitical state of not just the US, but of many western countries as well.
> The difference is that when a foreign adversary has the ability to do the same, it becomes a matter of national security.
Can you understand how others might disagree with this assertion? It doesn't matter if a foreign adversary has the ability to say words. They're just words. Democracies run on words. If our society is going to fall apart because the Chinese say words, it's going to fall apart anyway.
Can you understand that many of us see state steering of narratives on the Internet as a fundamentally illegitimate activity for a government to be undertaking?
> Can you understand how others might disagree with this assertion?
I can understand it, but it doesn't make it any less true.
> It doesn't matter if a foreign adversary has the ability to say words.
It matters when those words cause internal social division to the point where it starts destabilizing the nation. This is what we've been seeing in the past decade+, particularly in the US. One of the effects of information warfare is confusion in the victim, where they're not even certain if they're under attack, let alone by whom.
> They're just words.
Words are never "just" words. They're powerful and in the Information Age they can be weaponized at a massive scale thanks to the global platforms the US pioneered.
> Democracies run on words. If our society is going to fall apart because the Chinese say words, it's going to fall apart anyway.
Perhaps. But not at the rate it's falling apart as the subject of these attacks.
> Can you understand that many of us see state steering of narratives on the Internet as a fundamentally illegitimate activity for a government to be undertaking?
You can think of this however you want. But the fact of the matter is that those same freedoms you enjoy and require from your government have put you in a worse position geopolitically than countries that don't have them. Maybe it's time to rethink your priorities as a nation and sacrifice some of those personal freedoms for the greater good. Is watching silly videos really worth witnessing your country tear itself apart from the inside out?
I'm not taking sides in this matter, BTW. The US has been the perpetrator of many atrocities around the world, some of which have impacted me personally, but I think the world would be in a far worse position if other countries were policing it. I'm just pointing out that from this outsider's perspective... you're screwed.
There are no information weapons --- only narratives inconvenient for this faction or that faction. We can converge on the truth only through unrestrained discourse. The lesson of the past ten years isn't that information is dangerous. It isn't, except to censors. The lesson is that trying to centrally control information flow is misguided and wrong
> sacrifice some of those personal freedoms for the greater good
No. That's not what this country has been about and it will never be what it's about.
> We can converge on the truth only through unrestrained discourse.
Really? How has that approach worked for us so far on the open internet? Do you feel that societies have been able to converge on the truth? We can't even agree on what that means. When everyone has the ability to spew their version of "the truth" with equal reach, what you get is a cacophony of signals that makes it impossible to separate the signal from the noise. And if that wasn't enough, we're in the process of adding generative AI to this mix. Insanity... But I digress.
I'm not arguing for censorship, mind you. I'm with you in spirit in this argument, even though I don't really know what the solution might be. What I'm saying is that the utopia of an open and connected world that the internet, web, and, later, social media companies have promised us is clearly not working. Instead, it has allowed interested parties to propagate their agenda for personal, financial, political, etc. gain, playing the masses as pieces on a game board, which has only served to further drive us apart. It might be time for people to realize this, and actively reject this form of manipulation, but I'm not holding my breath for that to happen anytime soon. It just seems silly to me to fight for the freedom to consume digital content on specific platforms, without even considering the global picture of what might be at stake.
> There are no information weapons --- only narratives inconvenient for this faction or that faction.
That's a very naive perspective. If inconvenient narratives can't be censored, then counter-narratives can be just as—if not more—effective. With the ability to reach millions of eyeballs via influencers or by just running ad campaigns, anyone with enough interest and resources can shape public opinion however they want. We know how powerful this is because we know that advertising and propaganda are very effective, and we've seen how democratic processes can be corrupted by companies like Cambridge Analytica. So, yes, information can indeed be weaponized.
Information warfare is nothing new and has existed long before the web and the internet. The internet has simply become its primary delivery method, and is the most powerful weapon of its kind we've ever invented. I urge you to read up on the history and some of its modern campaigns. Wikipedia is a good start.
> No. That's not what this country has been about and it will never be what it's about.
The US government forcing spinoffs is a core tenant of antitrust enforcement.
We’ve seen similar enforcement applied to other applications like Grindr [1].
The fundamental issue is ByteDance ownership. Forced divestiture due to legitimate concern for potential abuses is perfectly acceptable whether by a financial or national security rationale.
Can you imagine implementing regulations that are not for your safety?
All data that they collect are given by user voluntary, by agreeing with their terms of use. Instead of banning, educate about how data harvesting works and why it matters. No one is learning from censorship.
The average consumer doesn't understand nor care to understand about the implications of what they are agreeing. That's why consumer protection laws exists. Because, humans are, by a large, very stupid about most things.
Note that this preface was not allowed to be published together with the book, it was censored last minute by the publishers. The public narrative about Animal Farm is almost exclusively that it is an allegory for the USSR, an attack on the false equality that they professed. The preface explaining that it's very much intended to attack the UK and more generally European and US governments' tendencies is even today not included in the vast majority of printings of Animal Farm.
I wasn't aware of this proposed preface[0]. It's a great read and is, interestingly, somewhat applicable to the TikTok situation. However, you are incorrect, the preface does not say the book is intended as an attack on the UK, European, or US governments. What it does discuss, is how, primarily, the British intelligentsia resisted the criticism of the USSR in the book because of the wartime alliance between the UK and the USSR. The preface makes it quite clear that Animal Farm is in fact an attack on the USSR specifically.
Actually, I'm not sure if this is the preface the OP was talking about, in fact it's not clear to me who the author of it is. There's another preface[0], from the Uranian edition of Animal Farm, that they might have been referring to.
While it does contain some criticism of the the UK, quite expected as Orwell was a socialist, it also doesn't claim that Animal Farm was really about UK, European, or US governments.
EDIT: I found the primary source[1] of the unpublished preface, it does list Orwell as its author.
The book gets quoted quite enough. But quotes are really bad arguments.
Here’s one that flies in the face of the Orwell’s:
Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. [...] We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant.
- Karl R. Popper
In practice we’ve seen both ways play out badly. So clearly we can’t just hope that full freedom is good, and good guys will win.
> In other words, defending democracy involves destroying all independence of thought.
Lots of respect for this guy and his writings but it’s naive to believe people are thinking independently because they can watch TikTok. It just becomes a different propaganda vehicle; the thoughts will still be dependent on the messages they see.
> the thoughts will still be dependent on the messages they see.
Sure, but even you would agree that if you have even less venues to discover said messages, it'll get more and more heterogeneous?
Maybe TikTok isn't "The last standing beacon for Freedom of Thoughts" exactly, but banning it certainly doesn't get you closer to plurality of opinions.
> but banning it certainly doesn't get you closer to plurality of opinions
I think keeping it around is worse. While we’re at it, we need to go after American social media, including entertainment news. People should commune in person and get their opinions from interacting with their community.
Completely unrelated, in the passage of the New Testament where The Devil Quotes Scripture, the aforementioned Devil quotes a Psalm to Jesus, a Psalm that Jesus presumably believed in, a Psalm perfectly applicable to his current situation, in an attempt to trick him into making the wrong decision.
It's weird to me that that idea could be such an important part of culture as to become a common saying yet have so little impact on actual discourse.
Not all of it. Just some of it. No need to see everything in such a black and white way.
Also Orwell was obviously not talking about major entities run by other countries. Do you think he would have opposed stopping newspapers directly run by Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union from operating inside Britain?
Instead of censoring. Just teach the populace critical thinking to question the validity of all propagated information. Have public debates on what is correct about what the enemy is saying and what is wrong. Also teach the populace to have the same scrutiny about their own governments lies, like WMDs and such.
That’s patently false. There are many schools and teaching methods that teach critical thinking. Attending higher education usually does the trick IF the student is actually motivated in the slightest.
Massive part of YouTube is about teaching critical thinking for those who can’t attend for many reasons.
Still doesn’t work because of the many roadblocks and mostly laziness in general.
This won't do. If we were to go 400 years into the past to Western Europe, you would see that about 15 percent of the population knew how to read. And I suspect that if you asked someone who did know how to read, say a member of the clergy, 'What percentage of the population do you think is even capable of reading?' They might say, 'Well, with a great education system, maybe 20 or 30 percent.' But if you fast forward to today, we know that that prediction would have been wildly pessimistic, that pretty close to 100 percent of the population is capable of reading.
Even if you did. It’s very likely that I or someone else wouldn’t a agree with your reasoning and argument. In fact the more time you spent developing your reasoning and arguments the more stuff there would be for us to disagree on.
Which is the problem. You can’t just impose your understanding of “critical thinking” (based on your personal context, experience, ethical/moral/social views, prejudices and biases) on everyone and expect it to solve anything. In fact if you did it would likely lead to something truly terrible..
This is because you assume I mean something else than teaching the population to be critical of all propagated information. I'm not claiming to have privy too truth.
No. I assume exactly that. There is no objective and unbiased definition of “critical thinking” (unless you think it can be “taught” to someone in less than 60 minutes) let alone of specific teaching methods
yes very brave and original to quote 1984 but actually its not totalitarian in any way. the means here are extremely reasonable and there's no free speech issue.
There are a very large number of posts which follow the format of the parent post, each clearly aiming to make TikTok appear equivalent to US-owned social media platforms, while ignoring the actual issue that TikTok is an active propaganda arm of the CCP.
The pressing need to ban it on security grounds likely extends further into non-public knowledge - Let us not forget that in the current political landscape it's pretty hard to get both major parties to agree on anything, then to actually also vote that way: but that's what happened with regard to TikTok.
Thank you! I can't believe how much defense I see of TikTok on here. Is this website being specifically targeted for astroturfing, or has TikTok been that effective in spreading its propaganda? (And which one is scarier?)
It is not defense of TikTok to point out that all platforms are practically identical: centralized, closed source networks that collect ridiculously detailed data about millions of people, and are in a position to process that data for all kinds of fun stuff like surveilling people's physical movement, creating recommendation algorithms, performing sentiment analysis, and using those tools to try to manipulate populations, influence public thought, and sway elections.
There is no behavior that TikTok exhibits that isn't equally applicable to every major social media.
I don't particularly care whether right now, the CCP happens to use that manipulative potential for its own ends more than the US does. It shouldn't be hard to take a principled stand against dystopian surveillance.
I don't understand people who correctly point out that TikTok is a "vector for influence of public opinion", but somehow think that's only a bad thing if it's controlled by a "geopolitical adversary".
Baby steps! Let's do both. Let's rid ourselves of a foreign adversaries influence, then let's ALSO get more competition and reduce big techs influence. Why not both?
> I don't understand people who correctly point out that TikTok is a "vector for influence of public opinion", but somehow think that's only a bad thing if it's controlled by a "geopolitical adversary".
By your implied logic, the US should allow Chinese police to function on US soil as the US already had US police on US soil.
As I read more and more comments like GP’s
In this thread, I keep getting this vision of a man in France in 1940 welcoming nazi tanks to his town because “well, we have a military too, how is this any different, they’re just a geopolitical adversary” and “well, we had a corrupt politician once last year so our government is just as bad”.
Maybe! Hard to tell. Personally I don't think big tech should own this space, I'd love to see a variety of companies and lots of startups. I'll leave it to the reader to decide if I'm astroturfing.
I'm a US citizen, not being paid by China, and I've never used TikTok, but I think this ban is bad. I believe Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk are bigger threats to the people that live in the US than China is. This ban gives them more power by eliminating one of their largest competitors. That's bad.
The solution is not to allow TikTok but to reduce the influence of social media in the first place.
As exposed by whistleblower Frances Haugen, Facebook's algorithms favored content that generated anger and division, which in turn increased user engagement. Facebook now wants to return to that algorithm.
Agreed. I would be all in favor of a law that applied to Tiktok, Facebook, X, and all others equally. Singling out Tiktok is just a transparent handout to the US's tech oligarchs, which is worse than doing nothing.
I've seen this TikTok thing turn staunch leftists into libertarians overnight.
I think a lot of normal and applicable arguments aren't entirely valid when the company in question is more or less an entity of a political adversary.
Exactly! The China and Russia supporters are crying and trying all sorts of deflection and false equivalence. never mind that
1.) It's pointless, TikTok is officially banned in US. Even if trump decides to find a US buyer for it, it will go under strict ownership investigation. So there's no way Chinese government has any influence anymore.
2.) This means that any future Chinese apps that get popular will get banned, and no need to go through any court challenges since there's precedent and law
3.) The traffic from the original TikTok will just keep getting split and syphoned, until the magnificent seven claims most of it
except this is not what's happening, the opposite is true: the "manga" (make american nato...) supporters are screaming that China and Russia are finally defeated in the propaganda war, while China and Russia do not care about the tik tok ban.
It's already a victory when the enemy castrate itself and goes against the sentiment of their population, especially the young ones, out of fear that something might happen, but there's no evidence it has happened yet not that it is going to happen anytime soon.
When you think that tik tok is so dangerous that your democracy could fall because of it, well, you got bigger problems on your hands.
I see Russia not caring, but to say China doesn’t care in the slightest doesn’t make sense. Especially with a company at that scale. There wouldn’t be a push to the Red Book if that was the case.
> goes against the sentiment of their population
If you read this thread you’ll see that it’s pretty divided. I for one don’t care that it’s gone and even welcome the ban. I dislike that China has a firewall for American companies, but will gladly enter our market.
When is manipulating the feed sufficient reason to shut down a service, though? It's also known that Twitter selectively amplifies speech based on owner whims, and it's not guaranteed that this amplification is not to the detriment of the USA / enrichment of foreign governments. The idea that we should trust an American owner to manipulate vs. a foreign government seems...well, just stupid. It seems like the manipulation should be disallowed across the board.
I'm not convinced this accurately reflects the capabilities of law enforcement or the enforcement of laws on international entities. GDPR, for example, is a regulation that applies to non-EU companies when they operate in the EU. I don't believe it's accurate, then, to say that it's impossible for a country to apply regulation to foreign entities running web services.
Additionally, I'm not convinced that the US is actively investigating such things, at least formally, on domestic social networks anyway. Twitter's algorithm at some point was tweaked to amplify Musk's posts. Was there a formal investigation or certification process, or were any controls put in place, to ensure that nothing Musk Tweeted would ever be subject to foreign influence, and thus enable amplification of foreign propaganda or ideology? I quite doubt it.
I didn't think Twitter was even required to inform the government that his Tweets were being boosted. Researchers discovered it. (And I think there were some leaks from Twitter developers, via journalists.)
It just seems weird that we seem to put very minimal effort into verifying that domestic networks aren't pushing foreign propaganda, but then our logic was excluding foreign social networks is that they might push propaganda. We don't even know that the American ones aren't, and we don't even seem to care very much.
It's amazing to me that people don't recognize the influence that this kind of platform has. I know it goes against the prevailing idea that American corporations are evil, but American companies are interested in making money while China is interested in the disruption of western society. They are not the same level of risk.
I'm not sure about that. The US and China sort of need each other, at least from an economic perspective. If one faces disruption, the effect on the other is guaranteed. I'm not saying they like each other, but the relationship is symbiotic in many ways.
Anything that tips the scale in favor of one tips it against the other. Why are Americans arguing for the US to have less leverage in this relationship? It's downright illogical.
to me this is the only important one. Not only can they subtely influence the entire us culture, if they were to get in trouble for it, then what? the US doesnt have any influence over them we would just ban them and at that point its too late. realistically it already is too late. a huge point imo aswell is we ARENT at war right now, but if we are at war the amount of information china can both push and obtain through tiktok would be large enough to change the tides of a war
China already wages asymmetrical warfare of all kinds - cyberattacks, IP theft, espionage, encroaching on other country’s territory, literally ramming ships in the South China Sea - subtly influencing other countries is a bridge they crossed a long time ago probably. It’s why Douyin has time limits and strict guidelines on content to make it more productive and educational, but TikTok doesn’t.
The PLA took huge lessons from the first Gulf War that the way to fight the US was to fight everywhere but the traditional battlefield.
Their means and methods have been absolutely brilliant.
The most brilliant thing to me is to fight on a time frame that is so long, that even the idea the PLA is at war with the US sounds ridiculous to most Americans.
If this is true, Douyin will never divest of Tiktok in the US. They would rather it just shutdown in the US. They won't let the US dissect an information weapon from the inside. The company valuation can't include the information weapon value so the offer price is always going to be a joke from the Douyin side.
> Not only can they subtely influence the entire us culture
Not the entire U.S. population is on TikTok. Even if a significant percentage are, your argument is that they cannot think for themselves? It is widely known that TT is Chinese owned/controlled yet Americans still used it. Even a regulation requiring disclosure of that fact each time you open it would be fine. But an outright ban on the app itself? This is a huge "feel good" moment which will not improve any aspects of the social media environment in the U.S.
they didn't ban the app. they said china couldn't own it. but china would rather not sell it.
we don't let any foreign citizens work on missiles and stuff (ITAR), we shouldn't let adversarial countries own and control communications infrastructure
> they didn't ban the app. they said china couldn't own it. but china would rather not sell it.
this doesn't get enough attention. ByteDance could have easily partitioned off the US environment and made bank selling it. but the influence potential was too juicy for CCP to let ByteDance sell it. even if the CCP wasn't manipulating the algorithm to sway US public opinion - I don't know whether they were or not - having that option open was far too valuable to part with it.
and I think they were playing a game of chicken, honestly. they bargained for the US government being too dysfunctional - and TikTok too popular - for the ban to happen.
>this doesn't get enough attention. ByteDance could have easily partitioned off the US environment and made bank selling it. but the influence potential was too juicy for CCP to let ByteDance sell it.
I think that's kind of trivializing the position they were in. Would you take the same tone if it were an American startup that were forced to sell a big chunk of itself pre-IPO? Would you roll your eyes at them for "being greedy" at any indication of pushback against such a requirement?
I don't think the law is necessarily bad, considering the national security implications, but it's a cop-out to dismiss the burden of being forced to sell a major part of an enterprise as no big deal and the owner as just stubborn.
> Would you take the same tone if it were an American startup that were forced to sell a big chunk of itself pre-IPO? Would you roll your eyes at them for "being greedy" at any indication of pushback against such a requirement?
to be clear, I don't think ByteDance was greedy. I suspect ByteDance would have been happy to cash out. but it wasn't up to them, they needed approval from the CCP.
if a US social media startup somehow got extremely popular in China, I'd understand and even empathize with China requiring it be sold. they'd be right to mistrust us.
No, we've seen this happen before in China, where some US company becomes popular, e.g. millions of people in China have bought iPhones.
Then China requires the company's operations in China to be more than 50% owned by China. The TikTok thing is very much "what's good for the goose", but it's also the US acting more like China the authoritarian country.
China had a longstanding requirement that companies operating there under certain conditions had to have majority domestic ownership. It appears they've relaxed it somewhat in recent years and now I'm not sure if it applied to Apple China or not.
But the distinction is somewhat redundant with their government structure anyway. If they want to force you to do something there, how much does it matter if they say "you have to because we have majority control of this company" or "you have to because we have a one-party system and control the law"?
If the US government e.g. orders a US company to censor criticism of the US, the company can sue them and plausibly win. If you can't do the same in China, you don't control that company, they do.
The question was whether you would roll your eyes at the startup and have no sympathy for that startup because of the "big chunk of change" they could have gotten selling it.
You can both believe that the requirement is justified and that it comes at a big cost for the org that would have to sell. They aren't mutually exclusive.
Yes, I know the law doesn't name TikTok/ByteDance specifically to be banned outright, that is just the effect.
> let adversarial countries own and control communications infrastructure
This is an exaggeration that a social media platform for short form content is communications infrastructure, akin to a cell tower or fiber optic line. I'd the say the same for your mention of ITAR in a thread about, again, a social media platform.
If we were serious, there would be regulations for all social media, not just forcing of U.S. ownership then saying "all good, this can't be bad since Americans own it"
At the same time, foreign companies are only allowed to operate in China through partnerships with Chinese companies. Why should we play fair if they don't?
By this logic, the US should start imprisoning people who aren't vocal enough about being anti-China, right? Why should the US play fair if China isn't?
That's not actually true. JV requirements are limited to a small (and constantly shrinking) number of economic sectors. Many, many large US companies own their own operations in China.
it is not an exaggeration at all. it's a different layer of infrastructure, but it's still infrastructure. the mention of ITAR is an analogy, which I know you understand.
if "we were serious" about what? the issue of foreign control is not relevant to domestic companies. we could have some other regulations too, sure, but this one is reasonable.
Serious, meaning we wouldn't play whack-a-mole and instead place rules on all of them then let the free market decide. I'll repeat, disclosures could be added for foreign controlled apps. I take issue with the fact that we're making a Chinese app the boogeyman but foreign influence campaigns can happen on any platform as seen in recent U.S. elections on Facebook et. al
I think people should be able to decide which social media apps they want to use. They're not even close to reaching the levels of the "infrastructure" box you're forcing them into to justify this decision.
i dont want to argue about the definition of infrastructure. concretely, tiktok crosses the threshold of influence and risk where it is reasonable to require them to divest or close. no brainer.
>it's a different layer of infrastructure, but it's still infrastructure.
TikTok isn't "infrastructure", TikTok is software. TikTok exploits the infrastructure of the internet across the world, it is not infrastructure itself. The servers TikTok runs on is technically "infrastrucutre", but those same servers could run anything else, the hardware is not "TikTok". I could run "TikTok" the software on any hardware, even if it isn't connected to the public internet, and that would not qualify it as "infrastructure", at least not in the sense that it's servicing any population.
Of course they are against selling it, like the US government of course is against Google selling to the Chinese.
But that speaks volumes on the sad state of our democracies, they are so brittle that students protesting against the slaughter of Palestinian kids can trigger a cold war and the revanche of the authoritarian doctrines of a not so distant past.
> to me this is the only important one. Not only can they subtely influence the entire us culture, if they were to get in trouble for it, then what?
Suppose that is true. Then why are you ok with Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, or any other American oligarch wielding even more influence on US culture? When it comes down to it, it's just jingoism, isn't it? China man bad, America man good.
I'm not a yank (Serbian but I live in NL), but I'd rather neither. However, since we live in reality land and not make-believe land, that's not an option, so I'd go for the oiligarch from my own country rather than, say, a Russian or Chinese one having influence over the people in my country.
Not wanting authoritarian shitholes to have influence on people isn't really all that crazy of a stance, IMO, even if the world isn't perfect and shitheads like Zucc have similar influence.
The point is that justice is blind, i.e., just. You can't have a law that says if your name is "bjourne" you get to do X, but if your name is "sensanaty" that is forbidden. So if the law privilege the oligarch living in your country over the foreign oligarch, justice is not blind, justice is jingoistic. That path leads to fascism. You might be fine with that because it doesn't affect you, for now, but sooner or later, unless stopped, the fascists will fuck you too.
That's like saying the notion of "citizenship" (which serves to discriminate between in-group and out-group) is the "path" to fascism. That's literally how ever nation-state in this world works, we live in a world of sovereign states where the applicability of law only exists in the context of each individual sovereign. Non-Citizens are not afforded the same rights as Citizens. And Citizens pledge allegiance to solely their Sovereigns against other Sovereigns.
If you don't like this, you are free to forgoe your citizenship and the benefits of the protection of the state to live statelessly.
Since corporations are not "citizens" the issue has nothing to do with citizenship. It makes sense that laws sometimes discriminate between citizens and non-citizens, just like they discriminate between adults and children. For example, when it comes to immigration and freedom of movement. But that is not an argument for arbitrarily discriminatory laws. A foreigner and a citizen convicted of murder gets the same punishment. A Chinese oligarch owning TikTok is no more of a threat to "American democracy" (or whatever, not like there's much left of it) than Elon Musk owning Twitter is.
>But that is not an argument for arbitrarily discriminatory laws. A Chinese oligarch owning TikTok is no more of a threat to "American democracy" (or whatever, not like there's much left of it) than Elon Musk owning Twitter is.
It's not arbitrarily discriminatory. It is intentionally discriminatory. As a citizen of USA, Elon Musk has sworn total allegiance to the United States and abjures any loyalty to any previous sovereign. Now whether you agree or not on his interpretation that he is acting within the interests of the USA and it's constitution is the function of the political process, of which his allegiance is the prerequisite to participate in, and his acquisence to the monopoly on violence by the US Gov.
A Chinese oligarch living in China has not sworn his allegiance to the United States, his allegiance explicitly lies in total loyalty to the Sovereign of China, and by extension, the CCP. If the interests of China and USA were to be opposed, by definition the Chinese Oligarch will support the interests of China over the USA. And right now, the CCP and USA are very much in strategic competition. Nor does the USA have any ability to enforce on it's laws on someone living in China as opposed to USA.
Elon Musk has three citizenships, American, Canadian, and South African. Your assertion that he somehow would be more trustworthy because he is an American is ludicrous.
Ever since the Code of Hammurabi justice has been based on the principle of equal treatment. That is, if you commit a crime the punishment should be metered out based on the crime and not your identity. The TikTok ban violates this principle because it discriminates based on identity. It makes no sense that it would be a greater crime for a Chinese businessman to own a social media network than it is for an American businessman.
In fact, if we look at the evidence, Musk has leveraged his control over Twitter to bolster neo-Nazi propaganda, silence his critics, and promote European right-wing parties. No such evidence exist for TikTok. If you are willing to overlook this evidence because "China man bad" then that indeed does make you a racist.
Elon Musk is currently using his massive platform to promote neo-Nazis in Germany and far-right political parties throughout Europe. Twitter is a far greater danger to Europe than TikTok is.
And that should be stopped too, but we also just had a bout of Russian campaigns that almost got a cultist Neo-Nazi elected in Romania thanks to tiktok.
Ban 'em both for all I care, my whole point is that pretending as if the west is being evil or whatever for banning these obvious propaganda channels is absurd to me
> almost got a cultist Neo-Nazi elected in Romania thanks to tiktok.
please stop spreading lies.
The Romanian supreme court presented no evidence and instead cancelled the election results while the election were still going on (citizen living abroad were still voting)
It was just an excuse to stop something NATO did not like from happening and I am saying it as a very left leaning person, anti-fascist and anti-Putin.
What happened in Romania is a pure and simple coup d'etat with no military intervention.
Besides: if tik tok could really win elections in EU, it means our democracies aren't remotely as strong as we like to believe.
And if that's true, imagine what the US can do, having by far the largest budget for these kinds of operations in the entire World.
TikTok made a difference in Romania because Romania is the poster child for countries that should not be using "top 2 advance to the next round" voting.
They had 10 parties and 4 independents that split the vote. In that particular election there were 6 right wing parties that collectively got 47% of the vote. The top 3 of those got 19.18%, 13.86%, and 8.79% of the vote.
The highest non-right party got 19.15% of the vote.
Georgescu's TikTok campaign just needed to get more than 19.15% of the vote to get to the top 2 round. He got 22.94%.
With the number of parties they have and the lack of any parties that come anywhere near majority support they really need to be using ranked choice voting or something similar.
replace Tik Tok with any other social network, that serve much more people, have much more penetration in Europe and have much larger budgets at their disposal and you will see how Tik Tok is a red herring in Romania.
It's just that democracy is good only when the "right" candidate wins.
In my Country the USA have controlled the results of the elections for 50 years, often relying on blackops, infiltrated intelligence, fabricated propaganda, reactionary movements, funding terrorism and in the process killing hundreds of innocent people.
> it's not the job of the supreme court to present evidence
I think you meant to say that it is not the job of any supreme court to cancel free elections without evidence.
I dare you to quote the documents that link the win of Georgescu to Russian propaganda.
I am not saying Georgescu wasn't helped by Russia, I am saying there is absolutely no evidence, and if an election can be bought with a couple hundred thousands dollars spent on tik tok, are you implying I could win the elections in Romania?
It is that weak the state of democracy there?
Imagine what the US could do there, having tens of billions at their disposal.
On 2 December, following a court-ordered recount of nearly nine million ballots, the Court validated the results of the first round of elections, certifying Călin Georgescu and Elena-Valerica Lasconi as the candidates for the second round.
The Court emphasized that annulment under Article 52(1) of Law No. 370/2004 requires clear evidence of fraud or irregularities capable of altering the assignment of mandates or candidate rankings, a threshold not met in this case
---
The votes were already re-counted and validate, moreover the court said there are no evidence of large frauds, not enough to justify an annulment, the same court that few days later actually annulled them. Isn't it suspicious to you?
And again: you're trying to move the goalpost here, the court doesn't have to provide evidence, they have to evaluate the evidence, and, by their words, *there is no evidence* of fraud.
In other news, Trump broke elections laws too (allegedly), are the US elections irregular?
In my country at every election turn there are accusations of breaking the election laws, and some irregularities are effectively happening, that does not invalidate the elections.
The will of the people is paramount and the supreme court is a servant of the people, it's not an absolute emperor nor it's their dad.
no, it's reasonable for countries to want mass media their citizens use to be subject to their own government, especially when the country in question is an adversary, not a democracy, and not a particular beacon of free speech or human richts
That makes little sense. Why would a country be equally afraid of the influence of its citizens compared to a foreign, authoritarian regime with opposing interest? Given the choice, naturally you’ll be on the side of your own people rather than the others.
I would chose China, which is on the other side of the globe, has no military bases in my country (USA have 3! two of them with nuclear capabilities) and probably what they gather from me make little or no sense to them and can't really influence me the same way (not even close to it) content in my language, repeated day and night from the top government bodies to the least popular piece of media that then spread from mouth to mouth and becomes a discussion topic at family gatherings, can.
No way tik tok remotely has that power, no way China could really do anything like that, they can at most insinuate through the cracks already present in our contemporary societies hoping it will work, but banning tik tok will only widen them.
It's one of those situation where having a common enemy should reunite people with opposing views, but it's not evil aliens trying to conquer earth we are fighting, it's social content (mostly entertainment) that this time will take people with opposing views even more apart.
And that’s where you’re dead wrong. TikTok is a vessel for any kind of content, with no visibility into the reason why a specific kind of information is displayed to whom. Just think of Field Manual 30-31B if you doubt this capability could be put to good use in a propaganda campaign, if necessary.
Sometimes, public opinion can be swayed very easily, by igniting the first spark with something outrageous; this is especially fruitful in times where the president of the United States openly opposes journalism, spreads lies, and generally fosters distrust and doubt. Lots of people are more inclined to believe a random TikTok than a professional journalist with decades of experience; what do you think were to happen if the Chinese government sees immediate value in the US government making a specific decision to their benefit, and one of the tools in their toolbox is playing a flurry of short videos to millions of American citizens, made to influence their understanding of an issue?
Most people will follow a reasonable opinion if it's the first time they're confronted with a complex situation. TiktTok is the perfect tool to exploit this, by delivering this opinion to absurdly narrow target groups, in a matter of seconds. Just because you don't notice this right now does neither mean the capability doesn't exist nor that it isn't already happening—which may be one of the reasons there is a bipartisan effort to pull through.
That China is a totalitarian regime, and the USA (at least for now) is a democracy.
With all due criticism, there are still checks and balances in place in the US that make it a very different place. We're not talking about an objectively "correct" decision here, but what is in the best interest of the USA and its allies, and that certainly makes a difference when it comes to foreign influence on the own populace.
All that being said: American Tech companies are dangerous in their own right, and nothing in my post was defending these either. But that doesn't make TikTok less of a threat.
> That China is a totalitarian regime, and the USA (at least for now) is a democracy.
This is actually false.
The USA are a Republic, not a democracy. By constitution.
> there are still checks and balances in place in the US
If you are rich, maybe it's true.
I give you that.
> but what is in the best interest of the USA and its allies
The US has no allies. My Country is a vassal of the US, we cannot decide anything geopolitically relevant on our own.
Can we for example exit NATO? Of course we can't! They got military bases here, with atomic missiles, recently updated.
We can't even negotiate the release of one of our own independently without the US giving the thumb up/down.
So, please, before saying that what they do it's in our best interest, please, ask us.
It's usually not, BTW.
> But that doesn't make TikTok less of a threat
My point: same threat should result in the same response to the threat.
We should ban any non European propaganda machine on our soil.
One simple example: we all know what went down with Cambridge Analytica and yet if you look for it, you won't find any reference to trials or convictions, because there was none! it had a massive influence on shifting political view of the people in UK and in the US, but you'll only find vague scolds to bad apples that unilaterally abused of one - with a clear conscience - social network, unknowingly to the management. Despite a ton of evidence of the contrary.
We're talking past each other. You're neither a citizen of the USA nor China, and since China has even less connection to your home country, you'd rather accept their influence than the US's—which is probably fair (even though I wouldn't assume that China is thinking of you any less dispensable).
But that is not the talking point here. The current situation is the USA effectively banning TikTok in the USA to ensure national security.
The particular interests of other foreign countries are not being considered here, and I honestly don't quite understand why you think they should be? It's not like the USA is forcing this decision on everyone else.
> How can you explain that?
Now look; I'm not an American myself. I'm also appalled at what Meta and X are doing; it's all awful. But this particular decision? It's just not about us, and yet I can still try to understand why it was taken, and how I think it is the correct one, from the perspective of the USA.
> and since China has even less connection to your home country, you'd rather accept their influence than the US's—which is probably fair
the best oppressor is the one who's far.
That's why the US dominion over Europe seems better than the ones before, the USA are on the other side of an Ocean.
In my case, China influence is not an influence, I've studied China, I come from a long tradition of socialism and in particular "the Chinese way to socialism", I see them as a field of study but I think their way it's the new way of the World, capitalism the way it is implemented right now, especially in the US, it's not working anymore for the 99% (it's a meme, I know, but it's a fitting metaphor) and yet I don't buy their propaganda, because I despise propaganda, wherever it comes from.
OTOH the interest of China in me is minimal at best, they have bigger fishes to fry, while the declination of the various American social networks in each different western country (including mine) have a strong interest to sell me something, so they can make more money through ads. I am very much a good target for them and that bothers me much more.
> The current situation is the USA effectively banning TikTok in the USA to ensure national security.
And yet the POTUS himself promised to relieve the ban.
He didn't like tik tok, until he did.
And I know, you know, we all know, but don't say it, it's a move to piss of the democrats and the previous administration "with me, things will change" regardless if tik tok really is or it is not a threat to national security.
What does that say about the US actual political situation?
Is tik tok even banned in your country? Since your perspective is choosing between two foreign powers controlling social media, sounds like an entirely different thing than in the US.
No, then you didn't read it properly. I argue for "I trust my people more than my enemy", which doesn't sound quite as dumb and is something most people would probably agree with.
Yes, I did read it properly, just like the above comment. You claim Chinese people as your enemy because your rulers told you so. That is very much jingoism and very much on the path to fascism. Sorry that you can't think for yourself.
I do not claim anyone my enemy, for I am not an American at all. I do, however, see the situation for what it is; the USA and China are political superpowers with opposing interest. Pretending like the world is a peaceful place is just a fantasy. Hence, you can’t just ignore a communication tool used by half the population in your strategic considerations. That is not racism, it’s not fascism, its pragmatism in the face of something very powerful that could well be abused.
While I agree with your argument partially, I still find it ironic.
It assumes that we must prevent public from accessing some thoughts/propoganda as they may not be able to make right decision themselves. This is rhyming with 1930s Germany or other authoritative regimes since then.
yes exactly but not on any of tiktok's users to say what they want, which is 1000x more important than the rights of the PRC to tweak the algorithm and moderation however they like
IMO the right to use TikTok in the US is actually way more important than the “right” of users to post whatever they want on it. In the same way that FB can ban you for violating content policy, and the app store can ban you for whatever reason. These are all okay because they’re all the ___domain of that company/entity to police. The problem is when the government steps in and forces it. I don’t think what website I can use is the ___domain of the government.
Even more ironic is that we have a government programming us with fears (just fears!) about what China _could_ do to justify some action they are taking. Literally running the playbook of entity they are trying to make us afraid of. Fucked up.
Please don't make your points in a flamey/provocative way, especially on divisive topics. I would have thought it was obvious that your GP comment was doing that.
You've unfortunately been breaking the site guidelines in other places too: for example https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42754148, which was really abusive and the kind of thing we end up having to ban accounts for.
If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it. Note this one: "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."
We've already had to ask you this kind of thing more than once in the past.
Personally I think Twitter is a great example of why tik tok should be banned.
It’s a clear example of how leadership can skew the algorithm to try to influence things.
Now, in twitters case they are wildly obvious about it and everyone is starting to think they’re a joke.
Tik tok isn’t run by a buffoon so anything they do would be far more subtle
Twitter is also showing why these type of companies need far more regulation applied. But that doesn’t mean it’s bad to take other actions in the meantime.
Because that’s the way the law is written? And you were the one that added the South African qualifier?
I’m not making a point about the usefulness of the law, only the _definition_ of it. In the context of the ban Musks American-ness is more important than his South African-ness and both are more important than his wealth.
its a horrible crutch that suggests america is already dead and gone.
america and americans should be able to view any media and still come to the best conclusions. banning media is a lack of trust in americans ability to formulate opinions. what the point in having media and democracy if you dont think people can make good decisions based on it?
I think this perfectly communicates why it feels so wrong that the government has banned tt. Its an implicit acknowledgement that our leaders feel that foreign influence will resonate with the public in a way that doesn't benefit the status quo.
So many people focus only on TikTok instead of their fellow citizens' rights that are being trampled upon. Even NYT writers happily insinuate that all will be forgotten in no time. Cutting people's social links is not benign. An American may be happily watching Italian content, and when you cut her link it doesn't follow that the Italian creators will move their content to some other platform accessible to that American. Same for Americans with foreign followers. Americans may also have trouble reconnecting with American creators. It boggles the mind that these losses are given so little thought.
> america and americans should be able to view any media and still come to the best conclusions
I’m rather confused how do you think that is somehow connected with:
> horrible crutch that suggests america is already dead and gone
If you believe that then surely you must also believe that it was never “alive” in the first place?
Americans certainly didn’t have unrestricted access to any type of media in ta past. In fact it was heavily centralized and controlled by a small number of entities. One might argue that the decentralization starting with cable television/etc. and then internet led us to where we are.
Everyone used to be watching the same handful of television channels (which were relatively “apolitical” anyway) and a small number of available newspapers. It’s rather obvious why it was much easier to reach societal consensus on most issues compared to these days…
Half of the people are sub-100 IQ. It's very naive to understate the stupidity of some people and their capability to do harm if mislead. Especially when it comes to weaponized social media content from a main geopolitical adversary. Letting Tiktok continue will do far more harm to democracy than banning it.
This entire thread could be removed and only this comment should be kept. Unfortunately people have bought into this idea that all players in this game are following the rules. The US government is an extremely complex system and there is no way they would have reached a bipartisan conclusion on this if there wasn’t strong (confidential) evidence to support it.
> The US government is an extremely complex system and there is no way they would have reached a bipartisan conclusion on this if there wasn’t strong (confidential) evidence to support it.
I'm sorry, but this is not a good assumption. It has not been the case historically.
It is the salient point. A domestic adversary has control over a major influence vector on US public opinion. In the form of Instagram/Twitter/Facebook/etc.
Do they? Do they actually? I'm not sure the U.S. has control sufficient to exercise meaningful jurisdiction, even if it exists on paper. Big companies have too much influence in Congress and with politicians to be meaningfully reigned in in practice.
You think he changed because he was worried about either admin? I think he changed because he sees the outcome of an election as an endorsement of his beliefs by the populace.
I think it's a stretch to say "PRC-controlled". I think the government has influence in working with ByteDance's board, not unlike in the US. This is the propaganda that has infected the American psyche. To think every single organization in China is an arm of the big bad communists. It's quite uninformed and ahistorical and political propaganda.
China's rule of law is generally very weak. "Ultimately, no matter what the laws say, it would be difficult for any Chinese citizen or company to meaningfully resist a direct request from security forces or law enforcement, and the courts cannot be relied on to provide a remedy."
https://www.chinalawtranslate.com/en/what-the-national-intel...
This is particularly obvious with the number of senior executives of key Chinese companies who have simply disappeared, at least temporarily, when they displeased the government. Again, nothing comparable in the USA (yet).
I’d rather have both data privacy protection through both laws and technological security AND a popular platform run by an adversary, than have neither privacy protections and only platforms that conceal their beneficiaries.
the latter might be your debatable characterization of the situation right now, but the former was not on the table and the only reason to couple them together is to make your point
Are they not allowed to sell books in the United States? How about guns? Can they release major motion pictures? Video games?
We have freedom of speech in this country — and for the boogeyman that China was somehow weaponizing their platform, we just removed the voice of countless communities that had formed on TikTok.
Imports of firearms and ammunition from China to the USA have been banned since 1994 [1]. IIRC Chinese companies were caught selling rifles and other gear to known gangs in California and that motivated the law.
Firearms imports are also much more restricted generally than most other categories. More than one manufacturer has reincorporated in the United States because of the regulations.
China doesn't allow foreign corporations to operate within their borders. why should we?
there is no First Amendment right for Chinese companies to operate within our market. there is no First Amendment right for RT to be carried on US cable networks.
if TikTok were a website, it'd be different. it'd be one thing if the US were blackholing tiktok.com. but TikTok is an app that sells ads, and they're not entitled to sell ads to US businesses or publish on US app stores.
> there is no First Amendment right for RT to be carried on US cable networks.
There might be, but it would be the cable network's first amendment right to carry them, not RT's right to be carried.
The argument in court was kind of backwards, nobody violated TikTok's rights by taking them off the app store, but you could fairly easily argue that Apple and Google's rights were violated by telling them that they can't carry it. That would, presumably, require either Apple or Google to bring a lawsuit though, and they seem to want to play nice with the incoming administration.
I could be wrong, but I thought you have to operate a subsidiary in China, which is majority Chinese-owned. for example, Azure China is operated by 21Vianet, who also owns all the infrastructure.
>China doesn't allow foreign corporations to operate within their borders. why should we?
China is a dictatorship where people have no rights. America was built on the principle that the government shouldn't have the power to tell the common people what to do.
The idea that the US government doesn't have the power to regulate trade, especially with geopolitical adversaries, has never been some bedrock principle of America.
> This doesn't impose on your freedom of speech at all.
By this logic, the US government should be able to ban any newspaper that is publishing articles that they don't like: it doesn't encroach on the freedom of speech of the reporters of that newspaper, they can just speak somewhere else. They don't have the right to say anything at that particular newspaper, just in general.
Of course, in reality, banning a publication (TikToK) because you think they may publish stories that you won't like (propaganda for Chinese interests) is an obvious violation of the first ammendment and a form of government censorship.
> By this logic, the US government should be able to ban any newspaper that is publishing articles that they don't like:
Freedom of speech is that an American person cannot be blocked by the government saying what they want.
There is nothing in the first amendment that protects you from where you can say what you want, nor is anyone entitled to give you a platform.
That's why the US has "freedom of speech zones" which are basically cages far away from where they should be protesting.
TikTok was banned because it's owned by a foreign government, not freedom of speech. If the Chinese government had removed their connection to it, it would not have been banned.
No, because the ban is based on TikTok coming from a geopolitical adversary, rather than being based on actual content (which is why the Supreme Court declined to stop the implementation of the law).
Huawei is also controlled, even more directly, by a geopolitical adversary, and is not banned for regular consumers in the USA.
The reason TikTok being owned by China is considered a problem is because it could allow China to control what American citizens see on their timelines - the content.
The US passes many laws about traffic safety, and yet much of US road design is actually deeply unsafe. Inconsistent sure, but that doesn't mean they were lying about the unsafe things they did ban.
> The reason TikTok being owned by China is considered a problem is because it could allow China to control what American citizens see on their timelines - the content.
It's the PRC control part that's the key here though. There's nothing banning even blatantly pro-PRC content on other platforms. You can find plenty of tankies praising China over the US to high heaven on places like Reddit.
> It's the PRC control part that's the key here though. There's nothing banning even blatantly pro-PRC content on other platforms. You can find plenty of tankies praising China over the US to high heaven on places like Reddit.
Then it's just virtue signaling. If the message is not a problem, then who says that message is irrelevant.
Note: to be clear, I'm neither a tankie nor in any other way supportive of PRC policies. They're a horrible genocidal dictatorial regime with imperialist tendencies who are propping up other similarly horrible regimes like Russia or North Korea.
I agree that there are differences between a publication and a platform, but they are relatively subtle. And as long as the argument is "China through TikTok can influence which content is popular or allowed to be published at all", then that is leaning into the publisher-like aspects of TikTok, not the platform-like ones: and it is precisely these rights that are protected.
Just to give an example of what would be concerns of the platform aspect of TikTok, that would be concerns about the ability for the app to deploy malicious code to users' phones, or the amount of data that it siphons off legally. But those are de-emphasised in favor of their control on content, which is precisely what's supposed to be protected by the Constitution.
I think those comparisons are poor - TikTok is service that could be used to send instantaneous information to 170 million users in the US. It's potential to cause a problem if it's controllers choose to do so is many orders of magnitude broader and faster than those examples.
Trade and speech are not the same thing, and this sort of conflation is really tiresome.
If we banned China from importing video games into the US, that would be a trade issue.
It's very ironic you bring this up though, since China is famously very strict about what foreign media it allows in, and really about how foreign businesses in general are allowed to operate there.
> Are they not allowed to sell books in the United States?
They would not be allowed to own the publishing company.
> How about guns?
This doesn’t have anything to do with media.
> Can they release major motion pictures?
They would not be allowed to own the publishing company.
> Video games?
They would not be allowed to own the publishing company.
The people in these communities still have a right to assemble and say things to each other. It’s more difficult to do so on TikTok after the US distribution ban but it’s ByteDance who made it impossible with this play; this service shutdown is not a requirement of the law.
Imagine saying this if the government shut down, say, a newspaper publishing things they didn’t like. “Freedom of speech isn’t freedom of a platform; the reporters can write elsewhere.”
And what makes TikTok different from a newspaper, fundamentally?
Both are publishing stories written by others (reporters for the newspaper, subscribers for TikTok), and taking decisions on which stories to publish (through direct editorial control for the newspaper, through the algorithm + some direct editorial control for TikTok).
Newspapers are not platforms; they are publications. They have editors who set editorial policy. They are selctive about the content they publish and who writes it. And they are accountable for what gets published.
TikTok is mainly accused exactly of having an editorial policy, via boosting certain content that its owners prefer and de-prioritizing content that they don't. So this is a non-sequitur. And even when talking about false information, newspapers face 0 legal risks for publishing false information, unless it is defamatory (and even then, it's a civil action, no state prosecutor will investigate a paper for publishing false and defamatory information).
No one is talking about “freedom of the platform”. The literal text of the First Amendment with regard to these things is “Congress shall make no law …abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press”. If the government shuts down a venue because they don’t like what people are saying there, they are abridging those people’s speech.
Because TikTok is owned and controlled by hostile foreign country of communist totalitarians. That country would rather TikTok die than be sold to an operator they don’t control.
The operator doesn’t necessarily have to be American. A European operator would be sufficient. But it can’t be an overtly hostile nation.
All of these arguments have been made ad nauseum.
All social media companies controlled by the CCP will be banned in the US. And since all tech companies in China are controlled by the CCP that means all Chinese social media products will be banned in the US.
It’s not all that complicated. It’s not even that controversial.
Correct. Buying things manufactured in China is not the same as a CCP controlled a social media algorithm. They're extremely different things with extremely different impacts. Thus one can be ok and one can not.
The issue isn't money going to CCP. The issue is data and CCP control of the algorithm.
None of this is strong enough to justify banning speech to me. Do you think something like the Communist Manifesto should be banned in the US? Do you think someone professing the virtues of communism on a street corner should be forced to stop?
That’s like saying “you can write whatever book you want, but the government can stop it from being sold; we aren’t obligated to sell it in bookstores”. This is a terrible argument; it conflates the government’s actions with the “bookstore”. Yes, if the app store decided to ban the app, we wouldn’t have much recourse. But the government is stepping in and saying no bookstore is allowed to sell it. That is textbook censorship (no pun intended).
No, freedom of [edit: accidentally wrote "from" earlier] speech also means that the government can't stop you from saying it. If US citizens wants to publish pro-Chinese, anti-US propaganda in the USA, and want to constitute a company for publishing a newspaper or a social media site to do, that is protected free speech and the government should have nothing to say about it.
You're conflating trade and speech, just like every other PRC defender here.
The exact same content on TikTok could be replicated by another company coming from some other country and it would be totally fine and unbannable. Which means it's not actually about speech.
Why does who runs the app matter? Stopping someone from saying something is still silencing them, even if someone else saying it would be okay.
This is just setting the groundwork for the government controlling social media even more than it already does, because they know how influential it is.
I'm not defending the PRC in the slightest. I fundamentally disagree with the government forcing a sale of a company due to its social media app. This is different from every other example of banning PRC-backed companies (ex: Huawei, TP-LINK, etc) because there is genuinely a plausible argument for natsec. With TikTok there just is no such argument, other than the video content being controlled by a foreign hostile entity. And I just fail to be convinced that that's enough to ban it. Do we ban Russia Today?
When it crosses international borders? I'm sorry, but duh?
Do you think websites and apps somehow aren't trade? I'd love to hear your reasons for internationally used online services not counting as trade somehow, that's gonna be fascinating.
I think that considering TikTok's shop feature, it would be, but to me the dictionary definition of "the business of buying and selling commodities, products, or services; commerce" wouldn't apply to a free social media app otherwise. It lacks the critical transactional nature.
I guess it would be a form of countertrade of attention for content. Nonetheless I don't think a "trade" of social media content and ads should be something that is within the government's scope to ban. If TikTok was made ad-free, would that change your argument?
That you don't consider it trade is irrelevant. It is trade, and trade has always been within the scope of the government -- every government, really -- to regulate.
> If TikTok was made ad-free, would that change your argument?
I think as long as TikTok is generating revenue -- or even plans to in the future, as sometimes happens for startups -- it'd count as trade yeah.
Not sure why you say "simply". There is nothing simple about it: there are issues of forced technology transfers; there is the problem that TikTok is a global platform and revenue generation is across the border. These are just things that immediately come to mind and I am sure there are more.
Foreign countries are free to mandate US companies sell or leave their market. Of course, they will not like the results of that process, but they are free and able to copy the US if they like.
>USA has showed it is perfectly okay with this daylight robbery and piracy.
Why? They didn't steal TikTok, they forbade it from operating in the US with the current ownership.
The rest of your comment has so many falsehoods in it I don't really know where to start.
That might make policy sense in a world where those same adversaries couldn't just pay a western social media company to exert the same control. But since they can, it smells much more like protecting a monopoly than anything to do with preventing control.
I would love to make advertising illegal but it doesn't seem likely to happen.
The place to protect against this kind of threat is in English class, and by regulating in favor of transparency (re: the algorithm), not by censorship.
The latter will just create a fight for control over the censorship infrastructure, and given our cyber security track record and habit of letting companies do whatever they want, that's not a fight I think we can win without becoming all of the things about China that we find objectionable.
I see this thought posted frequently. It makes no sense to me... what power could China exert here that wouldn't also be a bad power for anyone to exert? Surely, if they started exerting power on their platform in ways people didn't like, people would leave, right? And also, what's the path to pressure bytedance by the ccp?
It all just smacks of protectionism and isolationism to me.
those countries are not our geopolitical adversaries, but if the people of those countries want them to be considered as such, it would be reasonable to pass a similar law
Is Trump still going to force Mexico to build that wall he promised in his first term? Dude says all sorts of things, he probably doesn't mean or remember 80% of it.
I mean, we could be getting closer to that point. According to a recent survey, 26% of Canadians now consider the US to be a “threat” to Canada and 6% consider the US to be an “enemy”. Those numbers is up from 6% and 1% two years ago.
Not even that, every country on the planet is now greenlighted to force USA companies to sell themselves or banned. Every country on the planet can take control of Apple, Tesla, Intel, Qualcomn, Amazon, Nvidia, Microsoft, Google, Meta's entire company, all assets, branding, IPs, technology, code, patents, cash in accounts. Everything is up for grabs. Countries can use it to help their citizens by so much, they can end hunger, end poverty, end homelessness, enable free health care, free education, balance currency and trade, elevate tax revenues, end deficits. Protection of inventor's idea, work and assets is not important. Protection of private asset is not important. Supposed communist China only does 50% JVs, and allow foreign owners control of brands, technology, IPs, revenue and profits. The supposed capitalist USA is 100%.
Was that happening or was it just something we were worried about? Maybe we could have just banned it when there was evidence it was actually occuring?
I do not use TikTok so maybe I do not understand, but how does TikTok influence its users? I thought content comes from other users. Does TikTok decide which content to promote? And if so, what exactly are they promoting that is threatening to the United States?
Surely the risk is others respond, would X/FB not be at risk of same sorts of responses from geopolitical adversaries, which given recent events might be more of the world than it was a decade ago?
Twitter and Facebook are already banned in just about every one of the U.S.’s adversaries. China, Russia, Iran, North Korea etc etc all ban them.
Your comment makes me quite alarmed, to be honest. Are people really this clueless about what goes on in the world? Do they not already know that American platforms are already banned in countries that are adversarial to the US?
The white house statement said that TikTok “should remain available to Americans, but simply under American ownership”. If other regions, such as Europe, applied that logic the outcome would be messy. Imagine applying that to X (Musk is part of government) in Europe.
The actual law says what countries cannot run a social media site in America. It doesn’t say it has to be American owned. Just not a country that we’re in a quasi-cold war with (China, Russia, Iran, NK, are the usual suspects.)
If America were a hostile nation to a European country, then said country probably would (and should, heck) ban an enemy nation from running a social media company in their borders. As it is, America is on friendly terms with “Europe” and so the worry isn’t really there.
This is why it’s important for nations to not get to the point where relations are this bad in the first place. It results in isolationism and distrust, which is a slippery slope that results in zero-sum outcomes that are worse than if we had open trade. But that ship has sailed long ago. China has openly declared itself to be in utter opposition to the US and has been engaged in grey zone warfare with us for a decade or more. The next Cold War has already begun.
You mention Europe, which is ironic: China is allied with Russia and is openly funding its invasion of Ukraine. Something the EU hasn’t really done anything to help with, because of a complete lack of resources spent on an independent military from the US’s which they have always counted on to defend them. The idea of EU states souring US relations so much that they welcome China, the very country that is funding the invasion of their continent, is utterly insane. If Germany/UK/France/etc had any kind of sense they’d ban TikTok too out of solidarity.
America's adversaries have already banned Meta/Twitter, what's your point?
The word "Adversary" is literally the most important word of GP's sentence. They're a country that we're in a cyber cold war with, and they have god mode control over our public opinion.
It would make about as much sense to let Moscow buy spectrum in the 1950s and broadcast TV directly to every American's home. In what universe does that make even the slightest bit of sense?
Edit: from your comment history it looks like you’re from turkey. It wouldn’t surprise me in the least if turkey banned instagram/fb/X. In fact I’m kind of surprised they haven’t already.
What an odd thing to say. Why should a company that started the biggest social media app in a decade "divest" it to US oligarchic interests when it's a global application? It makes no sense.
This is the largest affront to American freedom since the patriot act, and the fact that people are celebrating it on some red-scare bullshit is terrifying.
I am personally disgusted that my government thinks it should be in the business of telling me what apps I can have on my phone. I am a grown adult, and a taxpayer, and the US Government has no fucking business telling me where I can watch and/or post videos.
Maybe it's time to build a decentralized alternative so this never happens again.
It's hard for China to claim that they are being treated unfairly, when US companies are generally only permitted to hold a minority 49% interest of the Chinese operations.
Yeah. If you don't stop it here, where does it end? Next thing you know, you'll have a guy doing millions of dollars of business with proxies for the Russian government in the White House.
> lmao, it's just exactly what cpc said at the time they banning Google and Facebook
The CCP is not some weird thing that's wrong 100% of the time, so the US must always do the opposite thing.
The CCP banning Google/Facebook was wrong, but not for the reason of removing something a "geopolitical adversary has control" over, it was wrong because it was part of their extensive and illiberal censorship regime. The US has nothing similar.
If you look at the point of a Chinese, the block of Google/Facebook certainly can be justified by "geopolitical adversary has control". The exactly same reasoning of data security and propaganda manipulation can be applied.
You can't say without hypocrisy that China blocking US social media is censorship but US banning Chinese app is national security.
> If you look at the point of a Chinese, the block of Google/Facebook certainly can be justified by "geopolitical adversary has control". The exactly same reasoning of data security and propaganda manipulation can be applied.
It could, but that's clearly not the reason they are banned in China. IIRC, foreign websites were perfectly kosher in China just as long as they fully complied with its illiberal censorship regime.
> "In January 2010, Google announced ... they were no longer willing to censor searches in China and would pull out of the country completely if necessary."
> ... On 6 August [2018], China Communist Party's official newspaper People's Daily published a column which was soon deleted saying that they might welcome a return of Google if it plays by Beijing's strict rules for media oversight.
----
> You can't say without hypocrisy that China blocking US social media is censorship but US banning Chinese app is national security.
I can without hypocrisy (see above). Your ignorance doesn't make your false equivalencies true.
> China bans US businesses because it has an autocratic, ethnocratic government. The US is banning a Chinese business for obvious national security reasons.
In the 1950s, China forced private enterprises to sell half of their shares to the state In the 1990s, it required foreign companies to establish joint ventures and share intellectual property as a condition for entering the Chinese market.
Congrats, you just walked in the primary stage of socialism
Do you have a reading comprehension problem? Because all the stuff you were reminded of has nothing to do with the kind of "illiberal censorship regime" that I was referring to in what you quoted.
> Congrats, you just walked in the primary stage of socialism
I feel like you're trying to taunt me, but you're doing a pretty poor job of it. Your mention of joint ventures, seems to confusing walking back from socialism with becoming more socialist, somehow.
>> China gives you a list of requirements to operate in the country, if you meet it, you can operate.
Some US companies (like Google) choose not to operate there because they don't want to put up with harassment and intellectual property theft that comes with having offices on the mainland.
Huh, I didn't realize there were different rules for very specific types of media, TIL
However, Document No. 107 has not lifted restrictions on foreign investment in services related to information content security, such as public communities, instant messaging, search engines, news publishing, live streaming, short videos, and online games. Generative AI services, which also fall under ICP services, show no sign of opening up to foreign businesses. This reflects the Chinese government's cautious stance on opening internet information service businesses to foreign capital, given these services' relevance to China's ideological security and social stability.
Totally agree with you, I can't understand how laid back some people are with "all they had to do was sell..."
Terrible precedent for global trade, thing is Silicon Valley pulls hard for deregulation, and it's common wisdom here that regulating tech would be slowing down the only economic sector we have that's still growing, so we cannot write any rules that might make for a fair playing field, protect Americans from data leaks and disinformation or whatever, only tool we have is ban competition.
doesn't seem like an American, as there's no American exceptionalism, more like a Chinese(or other 3rd-world country) liberal disillusioned after once believing in the old US...
We have a lot of people like that, who used to believe in America's free trade, democracy, fair competition, and innovation. I used to be one too
He’s probably Chinese; a few weeks ago I remember seeing a similar long comment which referred to solar panels pricing in the context of women’s rights in China - which I thought was strange.
Which part is incorrect? You won't say. This is just an assertion. Why is it a platitude when I make an argument, but when you do it, it's accepted uncritically? State censorship is bad no matter what state is doing it.
God forbid the rest of the world stops wearing jeans, stops drinking coke and has declining divorce rates. They can't have TikTok at all costs. That will show em. We can't have them get brainwashed by others, we already have a monopoly on that. We need to keep it.
US social media companies have been banned in China for many years, so in fact the “brainwashing” you’re referring to has only gone in one direction until now.
You raise an important point. Why should a Chinese company be allowed to operate freely in the U.S. when U.S. companies offering similar services are totally banned in China? Doesn’t this violate the principles of free trade and frameworks to which the two countries have agreed?
I’m not concerned so much about TikTok as spyware or data gathering or a vector for influencing young minds… though it is all of that, to some extent.
The real problem is the one sided nature of the U.S.-China trade relationship.
I do think that the TikTok ban is being taken too lightly by the people of US. But the more interesting point is that your logic implies that China making a sensible move in banning US companies. There is a real question of why companies like Google are allowed to operate outside the US - if it is this big a deal to the US politicians it suggests their military has been using it aggressively against opponents with some success.
"Why would an adult not hit someone when that someone hits them?"
Some people believe that not retaliating stops cycles and systems. Some of us have principles beyond the very childlike, "well, they did it first".
If you believe state censorship is bad, you should oppose it when it is deployed, even if it's deployed against someone you think is also bad.
Like, I think using slurs is bad. I oppose using slurs, even against people I loathe. I have a principal, and I do not violate that principle even if it would hurt people I would consider my opponents.
Same here. My commitment to my principal that "state censorship is bad" far outweighs any feelings about China.
Sure; but negotiations involve a give and take. You can't push things in the a direction if you just tout your purity and one side gives in and gets rolled over.
I think some progress was made getting TikTok on US servers and the US hires etc. Maybe more transparency in how the company operated or observers within could have been good next steps. Maybe some mutual concession with some version of US media operating within China.
Ideally finding benefit to nation states competition benefits global citizens in some way such as the green race transition to renewables is good ... Can we have privacy and democratic media race somehow? ... Maybe not possible :)
Stiff systems like whatever version of Communism the Chinese have now, with Emperor for Life Xi don't do as well with changing circumstances and the buildup their own internal contradictions as well as the flexible democracies so there is more than just China's demographic collapse in the equation.
Good point but it remains to be seen. China has seemed to look at the Soviets and 'improved' upon their design. At the same time the West has dove deeper into their downsides (corruption) with no improvement in sight. Does China really need to last forever or do they just need to outlast their rival?
I am shocked that so many seem to root for China pointing a mind-control weapon at hundreds of millions of people? The Chinese government wants Europe and the US to fall to them. The good does not outweight the bad, in my opinion.
One doesn't have to support the existence of Instagram and Twitter to definitely not support the Chinese control of TikTok. I think the world would be better without closed-source algorithm-controlled short video feeds.
> The Chinese government wants Europe and the US to fall to them. The good does not outweight the bad, in my opinion.
Do you believe this in your heart? Or how about this: do you believe that Europe wants China to fall? Or that the US wants China to fall?
I feel there’s some uncontroversial stuff like China wanting absolute control over messaging about itself, in the context of avoiding organized resistance in its internal affairs. And it goes to extreme measures to do that.
But (glibly) “we want no criticism to be mentioned of us” does not lead to “we want the US to collapse”! There’s a whole texture to the Chinese position here, one that is different from, say, Russia actually taking more or less direct control of various places during the Cold War.
There is an element global competition no ? Controlling more of global trade is advantageous. It's not that they want others you fail; they just want a bigger pice of the pie.
> The Chinese government wants Europe and the US to fall to them. The good does not outweight the bad, in my opinion.
Have you been repeated this for years that now you take it at face value?
I'm no fan of the Chinese regime, but as an European it's my biggest ally spying on me, lying (Iraq/Lybia) and manipulating me.
China is on the other part of the world and it's history it has never bothered neither Europe nor US. In fact it's our troops that conquered and killed Chinese in millions, not them.
you're right, but blocking the best one isn't going to sit right with consumers. if we just passed comprehensive data laws then i would be in support but one company lobbying another company to remove an app doesn't help us at all
>Meta, X, Google could not come up with a better TikTok. So now they buy or ban what they can't conquer. Talk about free market.
What makes you think that, it's just an algo and network effects.
>I love the us vs them argument. Because it's baseless. Why don't you stop buying everything that's made in China. Let's see how far you get.
Because that would be harmful to US consumers. Lack of short video entertainment reccomended in a particular way is not very harmful. No microwaves or fridges for a couple of years is.
>Nobody is brainwashing anyone.
Influence operations on social media by nation states and others is a verified and ongoing concern. The US and others have been doing this for decades. If China is not doing it via Tiktok already, they would when the invasion of Taiwan starts.
>Except women the world over getting everything for free because they have holes. Nobody complains about that.
>> I love the us vs them argument. Because it's baseless. Why don't you stop buying everything that's made in China. Let's see how far you get.
> Because that would be harmful to US consumers. Lack of short video entertainment reccomended in a particular way is not very harmful. No microwaves or fridges for a couple of years is.
And it wouldn't be a bad thing to "stop buying everything that's made in China," but it's not something anyone can do suddenly. It would require a massive political project on par to the industrialization of China. China makes pretty much everything now (IIRC, they have 30-40% of the world's manufacturing capacity), and that is not a good thing for anyone who is not an authoritarian Chinese communist.
