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.
