Regardless of what you think about TikTok, the banning of an app in the interest of "national security" is largely unprecedented.
The jump from banning Huawei from building critical public infrastructure to banning an app that hasn't even conclusively been proven to behave in any uniquely dangerous ways seems to be an intense, unjustified escalation of this conflict. [1]
You may disagree with me on the strict security-related merits of banning TikTok, and I am willing to concede all of them, however this will, either way, establish a precedent of an app's coverage by 1st amendment free speech protections, and of what standards the government needs to do to ban an app, whether it be a Chinese social media app or an end-to-end encrypted messaging app. [2]
If the standard is simply to claim that it's "a national security threat" without requiring any further evidence (besides the fact that it's Chinese) then that might be cause for concern.
> Regardless of what you think about TikTok, the banning of an app in the interest of "national security" is largely unprecedented.
Every legal action was unprecedented at some point, until a precedent was set. That alone is not a strong argument against the TikTok ban being just.
In addition to that, note that the EFF post you linked to mentions Lawfare's primer [1] which explains the legal case for the divesting order. In short, Congress delegated some of its constitutional authority over foreign commerce to the President in 1988, explicitly empowering the President to prohibit mergers, acquisitions, or takeovers that threaten national security. TikTok's acquisition by ByteDance falls under that authority.
> Congress delegated some of its constitutional authority over foreign commerce to the President in 1988, explicitly empowering the President to prohibit mergers, acquisitions, or takeovers that threaten national security. TikTok's acquisition by ByteDance falls under that authority.
However, Congress cannot delegate a power they do not have. The US Constitution specifically states that:
> No Bill of Attainder [law to punish a particular person or company, rather than those who meet certain categories] [...] shall be passed.
> No person [that includes corporations] shall [...] be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law
These combine to limit the degree to which Congress can decide to just punish a certain company. For instance, they can certainly pass a law saying that any company that threatens national security must be sold or cease doing business. But I believe under current legal precedents Congress could NOT pass a law saying that TikTok must be sold (for no reason... just because Congress doesn't like it) or that all companies that are owned by Democrats must be sold.
Now, if TikTok actually threatens national security, then no one questions whether the President has the authority to order it sold. But "due process" requires that the decision of whether it threatens national security be made on the basis of some reasoning. They don't have to necessarily be RIGHT about whether it threatens national security, but they do at least have to have some reason for believing that it does.
ByteDance claims that the decision was completely arbitrary and based on nothing more than "the company is based in China". If that is true, then this is reminiscent of the Japanese internment camps in WWII -- nothing but plain racism on the part of the government. If that is NOT true, and TikTok threatens national security (not just Donald Trump's ego), then of course it should be sold.
I look forward to finding out the truth of the matter.
You are spot-on about the constitution guaranteeing that laws must not be passed just to punish a certain company. What I believe you are missing, however, is that there is existing law that the divesting order is based on.
Any acquisition involving foreign commerce is subject to the approval of the CFIUS (Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States). Following is an explanation taken from a recent Congressional Research Service report [1] (page 5).
"These regulations created an essentially voluntary system of notification by the parties to an acquisition [...]. Despite the voluntary nature of the notification, firms largely comply with the provision, because the regulations stipulate that foreign acquisitions that are governed by the Exon-Florio review process that do not notify the committee remain subject indefinitely to divestment or other appropriate actions by the President. The regulations make it clear that the President alone determines 'whether a transaction threatens national security.'"
When ByteDance acquired TikTok, they chose not to undergo that review. This was their legal right. However, that made their acquisition liable to be retroactively disallowed by the President.
> The regulations make it clear that the President alone determines 'whether a transaction threatens national security.'
HOWEVER, I maintain that this authority can only be exercised under certain restrictions. For instance, if the President were to declare that all social media companies that "fact check" his statements threatened national security that would be a violation of the first amendment (free speech). As such, the courts would be responsible for overturning his declaration.
Similarly, if the President were to just declare ByteDance to be a threat to national security without even having a reason for doing so, I maintain it would violate the requirement to engage in due process. He doesn't need to have a GOOD reason, but it can't be "because I feel like it" or "because they said mean things about me".
I'm not clear on whether the right to due process is inapplicable because ByteDance voluntarily chose not to undergo the review.
I am quite inexperienced in US law, but are you just told that acquisition of one foreign company by another foreign company should be reviewed by some random US committee?!
Of course the U.S. has no authority over any two foreign companies that do no business within the country. However, if one of the two companies engages in interstate commerce in the U.S. -- which TikTok does -- it is considered to be a U.S. business [1] for the purposes of the CFIUS review.
Are you saying that CPC gets to ban Google, Facebook, Twitter & a ton of other non-Chinese online companies but the US government does not get to ban Chinese online companies, even in the name of fairness both in terms of trade and information flow? Chinese companies have to obey the CPC's orders that infringe users' privacy. Whether or not it is right for a country's government to spy on its citizens, the current arrangement is assymetric.
If TikTok were made in India, then you would have a good point.
>Are you saying that CPC gets to ban Google, Facebook, Twitter & a ton of other non-Chinese online companies but the US government does not get to ban Chinese online companies, even in the name of fairness both in terms of trade and information flow?
Yes I am.
My concerns center the precedent of banning software. If banning software to further the interests of national security is established as a precedent, it is reasonable to assume this will be weaponized against end-to-end encrypted messaging apps like Signal. This would erode a strong, hard fought for precedent that code is speech. The Bernstein v. Department of Justice decision ended Export Control of encryption on the basis of software as speech. [1] Courts affirmed this right again in a ruling against a California law banning the sale of violent video games to minors, as it infringed on the speech of video game companies. [2]
Since you brought up China's policies, they also happen to ban end-to-end encrypted apps as there is a strong precedent for doing so in the interests of national security. [3] These simply aren't policies worth emulating.
They're not banning the software. They're banning doing business with ByteDance.
If no money or contract is executed, you aren't covered.
It's ByteDance that chooses to enforce a ToS and have a contract - they could put the code and app up for download with no money changing hands, and it'd be fine.
This is importantly different. Not saying it's right or wrong, just specifically different.
Indeed. I don't see why people are mischaracterising this ban; it isn't banning software, it's an extension of the concept of a 'commercial embargo' - except now it applies to a company instead of a country.
Why does the CPC ban Google, Facebook, Twitter & a ton of other non-Chinese online companies?
They want control over media, especially political content. They want to make sure speech, affiliation and such is under their control. Are you saying the US should adopt this approach?
No, the symmetry matters only in the relationship between the two countries, not in them mirroring each other in their domestic practices.
The patriarch of a neighboring family does not welcome members of your family into their home, so why should your family welcome them into yours? On the other hand, that the patriarch practices domestic violence is another matter; you don't mirror that.
Those two are inseparable. China's policy towards foreign media is a domestic policy. Diplomacy and trade relations are subservient to that. They are worried about foreign influence on chinese political culture. That is what is being mirrored in the US by the tiktok case.
In any case, the has never been symmetry... or any intention to have symmetry. Each country has its goals. That's how trade deals always work.
China's primary goals were/are exports and the abovementioned protection against foreign and/or free media. The US' goals are US investment into china, an american-like legal framework for protecting these investments and adoption of US-compatible IP protections. That's what each side wanted. It reflects values. That's what they got. Both complain they didn't get enough of what they wanted.
It's not like the US is going to adopt elements of chinese patent law for the sake of symmetry.
>Are you saying the US should adopt this approach?
Is this what's happening right now? Is there political speech being conducted on tiktok that the president doesn't like? Can the same speech be found on other platforms (eg. twitter)?
Are you saying that China gets to ban free speech but the US doesn't?
The US has the 1st Amendment. China doesn't (but should).
If we're just talking about investment, then things are not as asymmetric as you claim. Chinese investment in the US has historically been tiny compared to US investment in China. That only began to change a few years ago, as China began to invest abroad, but the US' protectionist policies have now essentially ended Chinese investment in the US.
I'm sorry, but I'm not going to care about what the CCP does over there. I don't live over there, I don't work over there, I don't consume media produced over there. Trying to "get back" at China for frivolous reasons simply won't cut it.
> the banning of an app in the interest of "national security" is largely unprecedented
Given “apps” have been around in a significant way since only 2008 [1], this is equivalent to saying Obama didn’t ban any apps in the name of national security.
Banning foreign companies in the name of national security is well precedented and Congressionally authorised.
Replace "apps" with "software" or "text/video content" or whatever you want to make it clearer the concerns here. We shouldn't cheer the banning of any of this kind of software. We should denounce the excuse of national security concerns lest the next software or content ban you might regret the executive precedent given.
>No it's not. China has banned most Western apps in the interests of national security.
Chinese law doesn't carry a legal precedence in the US court system. My concerns regarding free speech and the precedence for banning end-to-end encrypted apps remain in tact. Additionally, China bans end-to-end encrypted messaging apps, which bolsters my concerns regarding precedence.
>And that article you listed on analysing TikTok is hilariously incompetent. Didn't think to investigate multiplexing data With the video stream ?
Even if I concede that no one has proven the apps safety, it seems to me that the burden of proof should be on the administration to demonstrate that the app behaves in uniquely dangerous ways, not on security researchers to prove that it doesn't.
I don't think anyone's arguing that it's not legitimate for a country to ban a company on national security grounds, but that this is stretching the definition of what constitutes a national security threat.
Which companies currently banned in the US would you say are comparable to TikTok in terms of the threat they could potentially pose?
I think there is a question to be asked if Constitutional rights apply to foreign entities like companies that are actively working against the US. At the level of nation states, one has to take care that they are holding themselves to their own standard so tightly that other countries who don't do the same take advantage of it. There isn't any greater power to enforce justice and as such many concepts of fairness don't work the same.
Otherwise you end up with companies that will oppose the US because it doesn't ruin their business but which will cave to other countries because it will. An "every body else is doing it" argument works a bit differently when there is no higher power to appeal to.
Moreover, I think the whole thing kind of represents an adoption of the Chinese position. Since Deng ("let in fresh air, but keep out the flies"), China's attitude has been to liberalize economically but reject political rights.
Political rights like speech, affiliation, and such were seen as dangerous. Media, especially, was seen as something highly dangerous. Anything with potential to cause another tianmen is a "national security interest." They did not want what happened to the USSR to happen in the PRC.
The US is moving closer to this position. Espionage concerns may be a catalyst, but if you listen to legislators (eg congressional grillings) it's clear that content is their concern. Are you giving my opponent more eyeballs than me? Are you promoting left/right wing content? Why is this protest more prominent than that one?
The reality of modern politics is that online media is as important as CNN. Murdoch matters less than Zuck now. Politicians are highly sensitive to this.
There still hasn't been a politically (in the US) important media company that wasn't western. Tiktok has the potential to become one. US legislators seem as likely to allow a chinese CNN to succeed in the US and China is to allow CNN to succeed in China.
The Deng quote is slightly different: "If you open the window for fresh air, you have to expect some flies to blow in." ("打开窗户，新鲜空气会进来，苍蝇也会飞进来。")
What you describe is true though, especially since 89 (TAM, collapse of soviet union)
In the grand scheme of things, apps as we know them are a product of the 2000s, right? Apps are unprecedented as well by that logic, which makes that seem less significant.
I mean we could also say that we might simply disagree with China politically enough to justify such an action (like the US has done against Cuba, Sudan or Iran).
I do agree with you and think though the fact that it's targeting a single company is a bit odd (like other commenters above has also said - why TikTok and not just an industry or sector from a country) and raises some concern from me as well.
In 2008, the government bailed out big banks. In 2020, the government bailed out big corporations. Nobody gives a shit about precedents and principles anymore. Why should anyone give a shit about TikTok? Shut them down, lock them up! Nothing the government can do today is hypocritical, nothing compared to what they've already done!
I think the government should lock them up, simply because that would show elites the nonsensical reality which everyone else is subjected to! There are no principles. Whoever has the money and the most political connections can do whatever they want and everyone else can shut the hell up.
It's about time the elite neoliberals actually participated in their own system on a 'level playing field' (as in, the rigged-game field which everyone else is forced to play on)... There is no free market, hasn't been one for over a decade.
The government should ban TikTok because that would send a powerful message to technocratic neoliberals; let them know what unrestrained capitalism is really about.
Our corporate masters think that employees should bow down to them, but they will not bow down to their own masters (Trump).
It's about time they find out what happens when you don't bow down to your master. Welcome to neoliberal capitalism.
My concerns are largely over the precedent that might allow banning end-to-end encrypted apps over "national security," but there is an argument to be made on 1st Amendment grounds.
There are two 1A considerations here: whether an "app" is speech, and the speech of TikTok's users. If courts decide that TikTok is a "public forum," then there would be precedence to prevent the privation of this public forum in the interests of free speech. [1] On the other consideration, one of the landmark cases regarding software, Bernstein v. Department of Justice, ruled that code is speech, and this directly lead to the end of export control on encryption. [2] This has been further affirmed by a ruling in favor of the video game industry against a law banning the sale of games to minors in CA. [3]
This should be a top-level post. It saddens me the sheer number of people who accept the TikTok banning blindly because "national security" (not here so much but people I've talked to at work/other forums). This vague terminology could be adapted to encompass any communication that might be a threat to "national security" including encryption.
Once the precedent is set it will be damn near impossible to go back; just look at the Patriot Act.
The silliness in the statement about being "obligated" to the TikTok community.... It's contradictory, just like all ToS would be. Compare:
PublicRelationsStatement:
"Put simply, we have a thriving community and we are grateful – and responsible – to them."
With:
TermsofService[1] ( hilariously, TikTok provides a read time estimate on the ToS of "279 - 354 minutes"):
We reserve the right to disable your user account at any time ... in our sole discretion ....
We reserve the right, at any time and without prior notice, to remove or disable access to content at our discretion for ... no reason.
You further acknowledge that ... you (i) have no right to receive any income or other consideration from any User Content ... including in any User Content created by you, and (ii) are prohibited from exercising any rights to monetize or obtain consideration from any User Content within the Services or on any third party service ( e.g. , you cannot claim User Content that has been uploaded to a social media platform such as YouTube for monetization).
By posting User Content ... you waive ... any and all rights of privacy, publicity, or any other rights of a similar nature in connection with your User Content.... [Y]ou hereby waive and agree never to assert any and all moral rights ... with respect to any User Content you Post to or through the Services.
I'm sure there's more, but the point is, as far as legal obligation goes, users are the junior partner for sure, and it's pretty silly to claim TikTok is "responsible" to the community for much of anything, as a result of the ToS and other behind the scenes manuvering.
Why is the US always focusing on individual companies instead of working on laws to protect them from all companies invading the privacy of their citizens? Banning one player isn't going to help much in the long run I would think.
I am coming to believe that what we are seeing is a kind of "race" to see which aspiring superpowers will eventually control (or own) the main companies that are intentionally the most successful in invading the privacy of citizens.
People can only inhabit a finite number of social media networks, and there can eventually only be a fairly small number of big players in a position to produce massively detailed rich profiles on individuals and therefore hold most influence on them (consumer behaviour & voting behaviour)
Imagine that the USA clamps down heavily on facebook, and in 4 years some rival company from Russia or China ended up achieving the largest market share / richest per-person psych profiles. That represents a security threat even greater than the (nearly catastrophic) threat that Facebook represents today. Who wins and who loses in this race is going to make a massive difference in what the planet looks like 20, 10, even 5 years from now.
The government was supposed to represent people, but since we made corruption legal, its mainly accountable to money. Corporations and the government alike are therefore controlled by those with wealth and intent. They're two sides of the same coin.
Eh... in some parts of the US there is still a stigma against being LGBT. Grindr being foreign owned means opening up the possibility of people (who aren't ready to come out) being blackmailed. And that's clearly a national security threat and different from wanting data profiles on everyone.
> that's clearly a national security threat and different from wanting data profiles on everyone.
What's the threat model here? Certainly ousting LGBT people is scummy, but I'm not sure I understand how it jeopardizes the security of the nation.
You could argue that the ability to blackmail government officials compromises national security, but lots of things in that "data profile" could be used for blackmail. I don't see a reason to break this issue out separately.
I would imagine that if someone is hiding some use of the Grindr app from their S/O, they can be blackmailed. It would be particularly evident due to the location and photo-based tenants of the service. That is exactly why they ask the questions they do on the counterintelligence polygraph
Right, but certainly the same applies for any app someone might use to cheat (Tinder, Facebook, etc). I don't understand why Grindr is in a class of its own.
Because it’s use implies Homosexuality, which may or may not be known by the SO. Most SO would forgive cheating with the opposite sex before cheating with the same sex I’d imagine. It’s an extra layer of uncertainty.
>> that's clearly a national security threat and different from wanting data profiles on everyone.
> What's the threat model here? Certainly ousting LGBT people is scummy, but I'm not sure I understand how it jeopardizes the security of the nation.
Any kind of blackmail can be valuable, but one that is still illegal in many parts of the world is super valuable.
* Gay government employee travels on official business to one of the ~70 countries where homosexuality is illegal
* Chinese military operative threatens to turn them in to authorities if they don't cooperate
Or maybe one day people will realize that there is a life beyond the friggin' social networks. They have their uses but the degree to which people depend on them is not very healthy.
Because the subtext is, "It is OK for companies to invade the privacy of US citizens, so long the companies' own countries is also on the US side as well".
Five Eyes includes US, CA, UK, NZ and AU. Does it mean that German or French social networks are not allowed in the US? Conversely, should Italy or Russia ban US social networks?
There are no absolute friends and absolute enemies. China was a good commercial partner of the US until a few years ago. Italy has been spied for decades by the CIA. The US wiretapped Germany's PM. Israel was caught installing spy mobile phone cells around the White House.
Or is threatening the economic and technological supremacy of the US by competing on the global markets already a way of not siding with the US?
I don't think this question deserves the downvotes, because it's not easily answered in a clear fashion. It's a question that leads to many others.
We know there is geopolitical maneuvering by different countries to improve their standing on the world stage, politically and/or economically, and that includes how they engage on business and technology. The great firewall was not for nothing. Same with fights over 5G or who can operate where, data privacy laws, etc.
OTOH, it's not clear exactly what's at stake when there's a dispute over control of tiktok. Are the worlds governments competing over data sources they could tap to make weaponizable models of societal function? Are they just competing for ownership of emerging markets to help their economies? Does all this amount to a pissing match between the worlds elites? Or are ideological differences sufficient to cause wildly different outcomes for humanity, especially the little folks, depending on who gets the upper hand?
As 1984 put it ‘oceania has always been at war with eurasia’ edit: eastasia.
Country’s have complex relationships. At the height of the Cold War the US and USSR still had some trade. It’s really propaganda that boils things down to allies and enemies.
Allegiances shift over time. I like to remind people of The Living Daylights (1987), in which James Bond helps a bunch of Islamic fundamentalists blow up a plane.
(it's a Soviet plane running drugs, so it's OK, and the Mujahedein involved are run by a chap who went to Oxford, and are fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan, so that's OK too)
> It’s really propaganda that boils things down to allies and enemies.
Yes and no, there are some ways of seeing things that are not really compatible. For example, the USSR wanted to export communism internationally which meant incidentally fomenting violent coups around the world to create socialist powers they could control. If you are a target of such strategies you can't seriously be "friendly" with such powers - it's not just propaganda.
People are not their governments. Viewing competing governments as competition between their countries - I think that is propaganda. The US government violates the privacy of US people through mass surveillance. Now it is competing for control over social media. Yet the goal of mass surveillance of US people, which harms US people, is justified in terms of US interests.
During the cold war all sorts of things were justified because they made sense from the perspective of US (governmental) interests. The Vietnam war, the Mujahideen, the toppling of free and democratic governments. In a "realist" framework, the ends justify the means. The "ends" and "means" here are considered from the point of view of the statesman.
When the world is viewed as a chessboard between competing nations, human beings outside the decision making centers suffer - we are reduced to being expendable resources, collateral damage, in the pursuit of "national" interests.
Especially in dictatorships like China and Russia, indeed.
> Viewing competing governments as competition between their countries
I don't understand this comment. So if a foreign government is opposed to you, it's OK because it does not represent its people and therefore you should not do anything about it? As far as I know the government controls the use of violence force so in the end of the day governments matter over people when it comes to foreign relations.
> During the cold war all sorts of things were justified because they made sense from the perspective of US (governmental) interests. The Vietnam war, the Mujahideen, the toppling of free and democratic governments.
This hardly happened in a vacuum. In case you missed an episode the whole of Europe and several parts of Asia were threatened to be taken over by communist rule, in a violent fashion - the US acted as a counter power to that.
The US has fomented violent coups and interfered with legitimate elections all around the world in service of exporting capitalism and free market imperialism (e.g., in Italy, Indonesia, Iran, any number of countries in Central and South America).
And Stalin repeatedly instructed revolutionary communists to stand down in order to avoid provoking Western powers (e.g, in Greece, Italy, France, Yugoslavia, and even China). The USSR provided little to no assistance to revolutionaries in Central and South America, believing that socialism needed to develop there naturally.
> The USSR provided little to no assistance to revolutionaries in Central and South America
So I guess Cuba does not count? Sending missiles right at the doorstep of the US and constant financial aid seems to counter your point.
> The US has fomented violent coups and interfered with legitimate elections all around the world in service of exporting capitalism and free market imperialism (e.g., in Italy, Indonesia, Iran, any number of countries in Central and South America).
Every major power does that, but they are not all equal. The British empire was in comparison a lot more violent that the US has ever been. And people who lived under Soviet Rule (even outside of Russia) also know very well it was far from a peace-loving, people-respecting regime.
The USSR proposed deescalation and moratoria on new weapons development repeatedly during the Cold War, and they were consistently rebuffed. Did the US not have a presence in Europe on the Soviet Union’s doorstep?
“Everybody does imperialism” is not the glimmering rebuttal you think it is.
Trump has said that the goal is to punish China for the coronavirus: [1]
> It's a big business. Look, what happened with China with this virus, what they've done to this country and to the entire world is disgraceful.
The trade war is obviously a major factor as well, but Trump thinks that bashing China helps his reelection chances and helps deflect away from his administration's incompetent response to the virus.
They would need to explain how TicTok brainwashes americans to vote(or not vote) but Facebook and Twitter categorically does not do the same thing. If "brainwashing" on social media exists then all should be made illegal not only the a small subset.
Twitter and Facebook are US companies, while ByteDance (the company behind TikTok) is not. This makes them pretty different legislation-wise. Not saying that the brainwashing part doesn't apply to all three.
Adults believe in every picture with a caption or video with text and sad music in it, as long as it doesn't have any clear association with a government. After all, it's not propaganda if the source is private, and the message is ostensibly made for teh lulz, right?
FB and Twitter no doubt brainwash people into all kinds of silliness - we've seen that quite vividly in the past 3 months. But there's not a whole lot you can do about them legally under US law. There is a whole lot you can do with TikTok and other foreign companies that represent a national security threat.
That is the point, make a new law. I mean FB way where I can target with ads extremely precise groups make it possible to systematically slit a nation in all the political regions, split the population in relevant groups, and preciously target them non stop with fake or misleading stuff.
This could be fixed in many , many ways - like not allowing political ads, or not allowing targeted political ads, or labeling clearly what is paid political propaganda or the exteme solution , limited electoral budget (why should the guy with more money is more equal then the rest?? it is are torical question I know constitution in US allows this )
The data is pretty clear in a lot of cases on contentious issues. It's the interpretation that is being driven/manipulated and weaponized for some agenda.
E.g. people have had all the data for car accidents for decades, and yet we don't have a large, concerted movement to ban or "reinvent" cars/roads/driving/driver's licenses even though it could save tens of thousands of lives. Likewise, we've had police and crime statistics for decades as well but only recently had a "big movement" mobilize around addressing some of it. Additionally, we have all the data to "call in to question" some of the hard narratives of said movement, yet people are doubling-down on it. At some point we have to agree that it's not about data anymore. It's about mind-share, and feelings/emotions and other intangible things that are causing shifts that we should all be worried about.
With that in mind, it's absolutely clear to me that we should be taking a close look and scrutinize the platforms that can cause such societal shifts. TikTok, Twitter, Facebook, Google Search, etc. They can all explicitly or at the very-least subtly manipulate and drive societal movements/impressions on issues. At least let's agree that they promote certain types of viral topics/movements that have criteria that make them more "virable".
It's about both, really. Data is darn near useless by itself. But from data you can easily infer things like age, gender, political affiliation, income and education level and so on, which can then be _easily_ used to swing an election.
I am not taking about the data I am taking about access to the data and the devices. This is G5 controversy all over again. It's a trojan horse which can be used by the CCP.
There is no ability to take them to court for misuse, no opposition media.
There already exists a law: if there's a threat to national security (which there is), the executive branch has relatively broad discretion. You can't really "make a law" in the time remaining until election, not with Pelosi turning everything into a political showdown, and _especially_ not if China prefers Biden (which, according to Nancy Pelosi it does: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arS5qzS95cE).
Here's one way you could interfere with US elections without showing political ads BTW: show "vote" reminders only to people who you infer from data to be democrats. At a first approximation, to people in urban centers in swing states. Not an "ad" per se, but you can still swing the election quite easily - in swing states elections are close by definition. As far as I'm aware there exists no law prohibiting such interference.
This is how FB and Twitter are going to do it if the DNC doesn't like the final polls.
Then this trail would hopefully surface the evidence about this National Security issue and we are not left without a retraction like in the case where China was accused of planting chips in PC motherboards.
Thats not really why they are worried about TikTok, it comes back to the issue of the CCP and and that China defacto owns TikTok which means that information can be harvested. This is G5 controversy all over. The brainwashing part is just noise. The real concern is real given Chinas history.
I mean FB has a lot of information about users, have you seen how you are tagged in the ads ? Any private person can target any subgroup and we know that FB transferred this data to different companies in the past, the probability that some government somewhere that wanted the FB data does not have it yet (maybe a bit outdated) is Zero.
Let's assume you block all applications that are suspected of relations with CCP (no proof, no trial) this won't stop CCP just buying this data from shady american (or foreign) companies so it would be smart to fix the root of the problem(data collection and brainwashing)
In the US we have rule of law, we have rights. There is no rule of law in china only rule of the party. FB and Twitter er scrutinized, this would never happen in China.
Oh they care. A lot. They care about anything that gives them access to western data so that's just wrong. They care quite a lot about TikTok as it provides a potential backdoor (given that the CCP defacto owns bytedance)
Like, when a President who disagrees publicly with his own intelligence agencies claims that something is the result of intelligence, I am very sceptical.
I'm very sceptical of US intelligence justifications in general (and have been since 2003) but even more so under the current administration.
"I love FT and I subscribe to the paper but I see more anti-trump sentiment than an actual argument there. "
I really don't see any anti-Trump sentiment there, can you clarify what you mean?
> They would need to explain how TicTok brainwashes americans to vote(or not vote) but Facebook and Twitter categorically does not do the same thing.
The easiest answer is: because ByteDance said so.
ByteDance has a internal board staffed by the CCP, and their CEO Zhang Yiming has even:
> promised that the firm would in the future “Further deepen cooperation with authoritative [official party] media, elevating distribution of authoritative media content, ensuring that authoritative [official party] media voices are broadcast to strength.” [0]
> If "brainwashing" on social media exists then all should be made illegal not only the a small subset.
The US, like almost every other country, regulates international commerce differently than domestic commerce. The US intentionally makes it harder to regulate domestic matters in order to protect the rights of the people the government is tasked with protecting. They even go so far as having separate agencies responsible for domestic matters vs foreign matters.
And what prevents some political party you don't like just use money to buy data from FB directly , or if getting the data is harder this days use the ad targeting and get same result that you don't like(make some people stay at home and not vote for your favorite and mobilize the guys in the group you don't like)
Cynical answer: This is about creating chaos and allowing some buyer to get a really good deal. The hoped outcome is that that buyer will support trumps re-election and the headlines about china will rally support but that the damage won't be enough to cause China to act back.
Less cynical answer: wider action would require congress to be involved and congress is permanently gridlocked
Yeah, this isn't a perspective I've seen anyone elucidate, and I don't have any evidence for it, but my gut says that it's a corrupt play intended to force sale/some other tawdry goal. Or maybe they just want to get back at those "tiktok teens."
The crazy thing is, I'd actually support real action on China. The CCP are a problem I feel we have been ignoring for too long. Instead, everything trump has done has been carefully designed NOT to actually change anything except to produce headlines in both countries and try to make more people indebted or reliant on his administration and strengthen the hand of the CCP.
"real action" on China would require the hard work of making the case to the 100m American TT users, building a bipartisan consensus, and passing a bill.
The current administration has no intention of doing any of that. Attemping to rule by decree is easier and makes for immediate headlines. By the time the executive order gets thrown out in court, plenty of political hay has been made among the party faithful.
And when the order does get thrown out in court, the administration blames 'activist judges' instead of the merits of their own case.
That's roughly my expectation too, though there is a chance the order will stand: courts are surprisingly accepting of "we can't tell you, national security" as long as the order is quite narrow. An order only targeting TT might well be acceptable to a sufficiently disinterested judge.
Either way, the CCP will continue (or even intensify) it's activities, Trump will rally the faithful and someone will probably make a few billion for nothing more than already having a few billion and being in the right place at the right time.
I'm pretty sure it's fuelled by pettiness following the sinking of Trump's rally in Tulsa, Okla by TikTok teens and K-Pop Stans. Being "tough on China" and national security are convenient cover. It's just sad.
The issue with Chinese tech companies isn't really a matter of personal privacy -- it's a matter of national security.
Chinese tech companies can (and often are) required to work directly in conjunction with the Chinese military to further their goals and operations.
Also, the US has separate agencies and requirements for setting domestic policy vs foreign policy. The authorities that oversee what Facebook does is entirely different from the authorities that oversee what TikTok does -- so this is not a matter of a single group 'choosing' between the two. The laws of the US intentionally have more rigor for domestic issues.
> Why is the US always focusing on individual companies instead of working on laws to protect them from all companies invading the privacy of their citizens?
Simple: regulating all businesses even closely to European standards would impact many big corporations that are, coincidentally or not, big donors to both political parties.
Only going after "politically suitable" companies (in the case of the Republicans, TikTok + anything connected to Jeff Bezos, Big Tech for Democrats) is way more effective for the parties.
And it isn't about privacy of the citizenry. Its about sticking it to China. The US executive hasn't and doesn't care about what happens to the citizens, just about reelection.
The US political system is structured in such a way that it's very difficult to draft legislation and get it passed. You have to get a bill to pass a majority in the house, then (generally) get 60% in the senate, then get past the president's veto, and then implementation of that legislation will fall to a governmental organisation ultimately run by a political appointee who is appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate. That organisation then needs to fight out any judgements they make in federal court and are ultimately decided by judges who are appointed by current and previous presidents.
Right, so, lots of stakeholders, very difficult to please. Add to that the fact that the house is elected every 2 years (so 50% of the time it's election year), so is the senate (although only 1/3rd of the seats, so it's impossible to swing the senate quickly), and the president every 4 years. And since the incumbent president's party always suffers in mid-term elections, and since the senate can't swing quickly, a single party has only had complete control of government for 14 years out of the last 50 years.
So basically, the President generally gets 2 years after being elected during which they might have the actual power to draft, and pass legislation. Most of which gets spent on 1 single piece of legislation - for Obama is was Healthcare, for Trump is was repealing Healthcare (failed in the Senate) and Tax cuts.
It’s a feature really. It can be frustrating but the idea is that big changes can be made but not on a whim. There generally has to be compromise.
I wouldn’t want to live under a system that can make drastic changes on a whim. The USA is a very multicultural place with many different people with different priorities. We need to find common ground before certain types of things change. This is good even if frustrating at times.
It was a feature until Congress gave in and allowed the scope and usage of executive orders to grow thus allowing the president to bypass congress in a lot of cases. Now congress basically acts as a defensive block to allow a president to enact laws err executive orders at will.
Yeah I think it’s time to begin limiting federal power. I feel like a coalition of Democrats and Republicans could come together on this.
Everyone being so occupied with national law is driving us crazy. Time to give more power to states and use a weakened federal government for some general oversight, monetary policy, and foreign affairs.
Decriminalized marijuana has been a good experiment in allowing states to make their own choice based on the cultural and financial needs that are unique to each state.
It’s probably too late but a good argument for drastically lowering federal taxes is that then states would be forced to raise local taxes as the federal government wouldn’t subsidize as much.
I feel like in today’s climate that both sides would find common ground in this as you often here republicans wanting less federal authority and democrats complaining their states pay most of the taxes that get redistributed to generally republican states.
Congress passed the PATRIOT ACT, multiple resolutions to invade foreign countries , almost passed SOPA until some people woke up, passed disaster debt ceiling increases routinely which will bankrupt this nation, passed increased regulation of healthcare markets with forces people to buy lamborgini coverage when a simple kia may do.
And in return the only positive i can say is we get some tax deductions which do not apply to heavily taxed, large urbanized states like CA, NY, IL.
No. Gridlock is good. Its the only thing putting a check on Congress from completely ruining this country.
See counter case: Switzerland. Complete gridlock. Massive check on congress via direct democracy. People argue about the zaniest litttle things. Yet people are freer here than in most other countries in the world
The US government benefits from corporate invasion of individual privacy because it can and does coerce corporations to share their information with the government.
The issue at hand is not invasion of privacy, but rather the state's monopoly thereof versus its foreign adversaries.
Why is our politics/legislation in this space derivative of the US? Isn't the point of the EU to get a large enough regulatory block to be effective at (among other things) regulating multinationals?
So far all I've seen is minor bureaucratic layers (eg gdpr) and rulings (eg the adwords antitrust case) that change nothing meaningful. I don't even know who to complain to.
Issue is that in the EU the states have too much power that they don't want to let go. Currently, each country can block any EU-wide legislation on the main topics and the minor need two thirds approval.*
* Actually 55% of the countries, but they must have 65% of the population which means that France and Germany are enough to block everything proposed by all the others even they all get together.
That might become a problem, or be a problem in places... but it's not the problem.
The primary problems (IMO) are:
(1) Influence of multinational interest. Regulation could literally half FB's EU revenue without being very radical, for example.
(2) Lack of polity. The EU parliament is a clown house and becoming worse. There is no political public discourse around it. It doesn't have power. Voters use it for experimental/protest voting. Political parties use it as a proving ground for nationally oriented politicians, and for jobs. The whole thing is dysfunctional.
(3) EU politics plays almost no role in national politics.. parliaments or governments. There's no public discourse here either.
(4) The "executive" is totally closed doors. Legislation is a part of governance, but not all of it.
(5) They don't really know what to do, and they're timid.
Blaming insufficient power, in politics, is a copout most of the time. It absolves everyone. This should be a political faux pax. Use the powers you have more effectively. Maybe then you can have more power.
Well, the Euro Commission is nominated by the state governments and only approved by the EP. Every decision of the EP could be blocked from the euro council which is again formed by the state leaders. Do you see a pattern here or something?
I know that Daily Mail and the like love to hate Brussels but Brussels is only what it is let to be.
Not sure what "tried and insulting" means in this case, but it might be my english. My point is that you blame the symptoms and refuse to realize the root cause.
Calling the EP "clown house" is also insulting and calling the EU bureaucracy outright incompetent is tabloid style simplification and I'm not sure what else I can compare it to.
Yes, it is easy to say: "they are not strong leaders", but they can't be strong leaders, but how they could be when they are dependent and have limited mandate?
You're backwards. The topic is talking about how 65% of population is required to pass. If France and Germany have 33%, as you say, then every single other country combined is 67%. They would then have enough population to block legislation together in most cases
I guess they're trying with threatening one app in particular and see if the other will backtrack in fear, and putting a new law into place most likely takes time and they wanted to move fast.
> Why is the US always focusing on individual companies instead of working on laws to protect them from all companies invading the privacy of their citizens? Banning one player isn't going to help much in the long run I would think.
The matter is whether "is is ok to do business with a company from a communist country for as long as you are not dealing with the state itself" vs. "it is ok to do business with a communist country in general, just not with their dangerous businesses"
Given the context of the issue, one whats to ask why now the later is fine, and the prior is not?
It also does sound, and look completely schizophrenic when the same part of political establishment vouches for both at the same time.
It feels the establishment is still very, very eager to keep doing business with China, just as much as they are eager to keep insane profits that come from the trade with China, and they will immediately run back to Beijing to bargain for concessions right after the elections.
Remember, the establishment has collectively sank legislations barring companies from dealing with labour rights abusing contractors abroad.
“He thought that by making a promise to follow international standards or rules he would be able to escape the regulation or the kind of pressure from the American government,” said Ding. “But I think now he realizes he might have been wrong and that if he doesn’t want to sell the company, the only one who can help him is the Chinese government -- which is what he’s tried to avoid the past few years.”
It's the same with Huawei, if Huawei wasn't a government owned or backed company before, after the U.S. tried to kneecap it, it sure as hell will become one if only to survive.
Exactly. My understanding is that ByteDance has tried to maintain some distance with the Chinese government in the past, but this pressure from the US essentially forces it to reverse course.
It's antithetical to the US's purported objective of promoting a more liberalized market economy in China (though I suppose that was never something this administration really cared about).
>It's antithetical to the US's purported objective of promoting a more liberalized market economy in China (though I suppose that was never something this administration really cared about).
You're missing the context behind why that policy was in place. A big part of that was the hope that China would democratize in the process. Clearly that has not happened so it makes sense to pull the plug. No point giving out free concessions to trade partners that aren't willing to reciprocate.
It was never about giving "free concessions." It was about opening up China to foreign investment, so that foreign companies could make returns. It's difficult to overstate just how massively foreign companies profited from trade liberalization with China.
Foreign companies were able to earn large returns in China because China's tariffs went from ~40% to ~3%, restrictions on foreign investment were reduced or eliminated in most sectors, big state-owned enterprises were split up and forced to operate like regular companies that have to earn a profit, IP courts were created, along with many other changes large and small.
The sudden cries that China took advantage of the West are just completely out of touch with reality.
I wouldn't put any amount of trust in their claimed independence from the CCP. After all, that's exactly what a CCP vehicle for foreign intelligence ops would say.
Of course there's plenty of reason to be skeptical, but given that the CCP have taken down ByteDance's apps in the past leads to me to believe that they're less willing to cooperate, whereas companies like Tencent seem fully aligned with the CCP.
Maybe it's a next level play the more hardline authoritarian China becomes the easier it is to rally the domestic population to be anti-Chinese in all matters. Remember when terrorists created sectarian violence in Iraq for the sole purpose of inciting ethnic conflict?
I wouldn't have believed it was possible even 5 years ago in the U.S. but now who knows.
> As a company we have always focused on transparency, so we want to explain why we are taking this step.
is patent bullshit, even more than the usual marketing speak. They sure as heck weren't transparent about hiding posts from unattractive or LGBTQ people [1], or when they waited hours before calling police on a suicide which happened live on the platform to protect their image [2], or even about how they hid posts during the Hong Kong protests [3]. The last one is especially rich - they tried to claim it was because users "came to TikTok for joyful content" that there were very few posts from Hong Kong about the protests. This (The Administration vs TikTok) is a battle where both sides are awful.
TikTok is fun because it has funny videos and dances and memes. If a company doesn't want its content to fill up with toxic politics, they shouldn't be forced to.
Radio Free Asia (unsure of legitimacy of this site) has stated China used TikTok data out of the Houston consulate (remember it was shut down by the State Department out of the blue and neighbors were filming the consulate burning documents in the courtyard) to manipulate the BLM protest narrative: https://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/3876672/posts
“The purpose was to “weaponize” big data technology. It delivered relevant materials precisely to those people who were most likely to participate in the protests, while other people could not even find those videos.”
Radio Free Asia has been founded by the CIA, and is generally considered to be a propaganda rag. Would not use it as a source, and if you can only find RFA as a source and not much else it's probably outright false.
Wasn't that a different organization that operated in the 50s? The modern RFA started in the 90s and gets federal funding but is not associated with the CIA. They probably should have used a new name, but is there any other reason you think they are a CIA rag?
Right, so it went from direct CIA command to command by another independent unaccountable US State Department agency in order to further the exact same goal, because of optics. There is no difference between the two. It went from one three-letter agency to another three-letter agency, and it's goals and methods did not change.
When US intelligence has credible proof of something and want to be trusted, they go to reputable media or outright publishes it.
Something can be propaganda but still remain factual. Agree that framing and bias can still be present but you can't just dismiss it as false without overwhelming proof otherwise you're just making a bad faith argument.
If the only source for something was TASS or the CGTN and you couldn't find any other source, it would be treated as false until proof of the contrary.
The burden of proof is on the person claiming something to provide a credible source. The CIA is not a good source for things that conflict with US interests.
Any evidence that the CIA is involved with the modern RFA, which is a different organization than the one with the same name that the CIA ran in the 50s?
Right. So RFA was created by the CIA. In 1971 the directorship was transferred to the BIB. In 1994 the directorship was transferred once again to the USIA. In 1999, the directorship was transferred to the AGM.
All four of these organizations are under the direct control of the US State Department. Seems to me that this is just shuffling around to obfuscate who owns what. It still uses the same tactics, is directed by the same people, and operates under the same name, it's just a game of shell companies.
However, I never claimed it was still directly controlled by the CIA. It's still controlled by the State Department, and is indeed founded by the CIA, as there is continuity between the CIA and the modern RFA. By the standard that you are requesting, that is to prove that the CIA is still directly connected to RFA right this present minute, it's not realistic to provide such proof. However, there is proof that the RFA is still commanded by the same people as under the CIA, and that is sufficient.
You literally made a claim without providing any evidence. Just because the CIA created something doesn't mean it's false. Do you hear yourself? And I'm the one being downvoted...unbelievable.
I didn't. I claimed that RFA is an unreliable source on topics that directly have to do with the interests of US foreign policy because it was founded by the CIA expressly as propaganda and is under the control of the State Department.
I'm willing to accept that the information might be true, which is why I'm asking for a reliable source. If some information is only reported by a source that is very interested and was created for propaganda, it is likely false.
> I claimed that RFA is an unreliable source on topics that directly have to do with the interests of US foreign policy because it was founded by the CIA expressly as propaganda and is under the control of the State Department.
This is not a universally accepted truth. You made a claim and didn't back it up. It's not that hard. Honestly, I'm not even trying to defend RFA but it's irritating to see people make claims without substantiating them and then trying to argue about it afterwards.
Zuck probably did not have any to do with Tiktok getting banned in India. The current border conflict between India and China provided the impetus to getting it banned in India.
"By banning TikTok with no notice or opportunity to be heard (whether before or after the fact), the executive order violates the due process protections of the Fifth Amendment."
The 5th amendment rights that they are asserting apply to people.
This brings us back to the question of "Are corporations people?"
"No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation."
The 14th Amendment expands the scope of the 5th Amendment by clarifying when and how Due Process must be applied. The Court has generally expanded the scope over the last 200 years, and I do not think TikTok will have to seriously argue whether or not Constitutional due process applies in this case. The arguments should mostly lie in whether or not Due Process was applied and likely more on the application of Federal law in the case.
Im no fan of banning an app just because it’s from another country but
> As a company we have always focused on transparency
Isn’t something you can say when the only way to see something is from an “algorithm” curated feed. Facebook says the same thing and it’s always really upsetting.
I think that free world should ban every company that comply with china censorship, here we are not talking about something like explicit content, or violence censorship which belong to cultural differences, here we are talking about not being put in jail because you say publicly that tibet should be free. or because you try to report abuse and suppression of the ruling class
this type of free speech should be guaranteed to anyone and reinforced with the non-violent marginalization of those who struggle to take away fundamental human rights, the ban of a society under the control of this regime is the least I expect from a state that wants to enact these rights.
talk about what you want (here you can do it) talk about rights in the west etc ... (here you can do it) there (in china) you are just on another level, compare them if you want .. here you can do it .. but try to go there ..
Hate to say it, but the terrific first amendment in the US only applies to the government. Companies and individuals can kick you out for saying things they dont like.
There are laws against certain kinds of discrimination by companies, but those are not the first amendment.
Just wanted to clarify that so we dont pretend companies are upholding constitutional rights on a regional basis. They are not accountable to it anywhere.
I have come to disagree with the sentiment. The constitution prevents congress from restricting free speech because it is a document written about what congress can and cannot do, not because the authors wanted to argue that restricting freedom of speech was a job that should be left to individuals and businesses.
It is only in response to someone mistakenly arguing to assert their 1st amendment rights in a context where it isn't applicable that this rebuttal even makes any sort of sense--which is not the case for the OP, who didn't mention the 1st amendment or even the US at all. Even here, it is a pedantic argument, such a declaration is a mere technical mistake. In liberal democracies we value freedom of expression.
There's a paradox, though. If we say e.g. YouTube is not allowed to remove content, that's actually a restriction of freedom of speech. In particular, YouTube's freedom of speech.
I'm not generally in favor of taking corporate personhood to logical extremes, but I'm kind of OK with companies having values and being able promote those values. Being able to promote some speech over others is part of that.
The First Amendment applies to the government because the government is a privileged party. Its role in society is dislike that of any private citizen or enterprise, and the restrictions we place on it reflect that uniqueness. It only makes sense to extend the First Amendment to other parties that have a unique role.
Which we do, e.g. Common Carrier restrictions on the movement of goods, and a variety of special requirements on telecommunications companies. If we want to say that social media platforms have become a core aspect of modern democracy and need to be regulated as such, there's an argument to be made. But applying it to private businesses in general is overreach in my opinion.
There's another line of reasoning that "First Amendment" is a stand-in for the societal value of freedom of speech. While it doesn't legally apply, we invoke it to mean that freedom of speech is the first-est of amendments, i.e. is the freedom that we rank more highly than any others. This still gets into the same paradox though. A company shouldn't be forced to equally support all viewpoints because then it's not a freedom, but we can certainly express dissatisfaction that a private party is acting in a way counter to the values of our society.
>If we say e.g. YouTube is not allowed to remove content, that's actually a restriction of freedom of speech. In particular, YouTube's freedom of speech.
This is not quite right, legally speaking. Currently Youtube and other platforms enjoy the protection of Communication Decency Act Section 230 [1]. In particular, the passage "No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider".
This passage has two side effects. One is, those platforms enjoy a liability protection - they cannot be sued for the content published on them, as they are not 'speaker/publisher' of the content (the original poster is). The other is, those platforms should not enjoy the freedom of speech protection - as they are not, legally speaking, the 'speaker/publisher' of the content.
The 'freedom of speech of Youtube' argument runs counter to Youtube's best interest - immunity from civil liability, as granted through the Section 230.
I think you need to re-read that law yourself. Section 230 holds Internet platforms not liable for illegal or libelous speech because they aren't the publisher of that speech. If you read on it also says explicitly they can't be held accountable for:
"any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected"
Any Internet platform can moderate to their heart's content, even if it goes beyond the extent demanded by the law. There are no constitutional free speech protections on the Internet. The "publisher/platform" thing is pure horseshit spread by people who cry about "online censorship". Unfortunately that tactic seems to be working.
This is not correct. Section 230 does not restrict or amend a sites freedom of speech, nor does it make a distinction between a platform or publisher.
The effect of the law is that sites have less civil liability for user generated content, even if they make some decisions about what content is acceptable.
Those decisions can't get limited under the first amendment, and the content still has 3rd party speech protection.
So the government asking YouTube to remove a video would be a 1a violation, by controlling it's moderation decisions.
I am not firm with US law, and there is something I just do not understand - but would like to.
If YT is just some form of medium, not the "speaker"/provider and by that not allowed to remove content under its own freedom of speech, why is it then allowed (even forced) to block my content under copyright laws if it infringes someone's copyright.
Why not just route the DMCA request to me and I would need to react. Isn't YT treated as provider/publisher, when forced to react to DMCA requests on my behalf, if I infringe on some copyright?
My understanding is that the DMCA contains specific provisions requiring hosts to remove content upon request, and stripping them of their protections if they do not do so.
Youtube already has guidelines on the content you're not allowed to post (spam, nudity, violence, harassment, hate speech...) and that hasn't impacted their CDA or copyright-safe-harbor exceptions.
> There's a paradox, though. If we say e.g. YouTube is not allowed to remove content, that's actually a restriction of freedom of speech. In particular, YouTube's freedom of speech.
Putting aside whether or not this is nonsense to begin with, it certainly doesn't apply to China, which is a government. A law requiring companies serving the US market to not comply with censorship by China is restricting what China can do, not what those companies can do. The companies then have a problem if they exist in two jurisdictions which now have conflicting laws, but they can solve it by moving out of whichever jurisdiction they please.
What's to stop the companies from claiming they just happen to want to remove the speech of their own volition? If the CEO of TikTok says he doesn't want "free Tibet" on his platform because he wants to be on good terms with China, not because China specifically told him to censor it, is that his freedom?
> What's to stop the companies from claiming they just happen to want to remove the speech of their own volition?
The fact that they would have no choice if they were subject to China's jurisdiction. You can't choose to do something you're being forced to do, therefore if you do it, it wasn't your choice.
> The fact that they would have no choice if they were subject to China's jurisdiction.
Wouldn't the reverse be true in the US? Assume that actually supported China's radical opinions, while being subject to US jurisdiction - wouldn't they be forced out of business? Isn't that what's going on now?
> You can't choose to do something you're being forced to do, therefore if you do it, it wasn't your choice.
Would you say that an EU law restricting companies from complying with a US warrant is restricting the companies, or the US?
(In practice the way this is done is with data location rules, that EU data must be stored in the EU, which is clearly a restriction on the way the company operates)
> I'm kind of OK with companies having values and being able promote those values.
As long as those values don't conflict with things like freedom of speech, I agree. But the second they do, there needs to be repercussions.
For example.
I as a consumer want to use Amazon because I've never had a bad experience with them. But I really really really don't want to be complicit in forced child labor because somewhere in their supply line is a company using it.
Think of it like the Overton window. Everything inside the window is fair game, but the second you step outside of that window you pretty much get destroyed or very nearly. Basically put the fear of god in them the same way the IRS puts the fear of god in citizens for not paying taxes.
I'm ok with you valuing your religion or women's rights. I'm not ok with you banning accounts of activists who are critical of the chinese government (zoom).
> The constitution prevents congress from restricting free speech because it is a document written about what congress can and cannot do
This is not correct as a blanket statement. The constitution defines the powers of all three branches of government, not just congress. It also puts some restrictions on states and has some general prohibitions that don't just apply to government (for example, it defines treason). No other amendment in the Bill of Rights has "congress shall make no law" in it; they all just say certain things are prohibited or required, period. And subsequent amendments, such as the Fourteenth, place restrictions on States. Parts of the constitution are specifications for congress specifically. But not all of it.
The reason individuals and businesses can refuse to allow speech they don't like in their homes or places of business, or on their websites, is that that is part of their right to free speech--the right to control speech on their own property.
This. The writers of the constitution understood that if you didn't like doing business with a company you could just take your business to their competitor. If you don't like your bridge club or church, pick a different one. But if your government is infringing your rights, it's very difficult for most people to pick a different government.
This has been hashed out many times. Government cannot be allowed to use private companies as a shield. For instance (this has been tried in the US/canada/uk etc) can a city violate the rights of citizens if it hires a "private" company to conduct policing? Can a city ban certain people from walking the streets if it puts those streets in the hands of a "private" holding company?
So what if the government partners with all the large tech companies to have them voluntarily enforce restrictions on speech? Oh, you're free to say whatever you want, just not online. Or on the airwaves. Or in public parks, which were recently put in control of a private management company too. You are free to stand in your bedroom and talk to the wall. Just don't talk loud enough that your corporate landlord kicks you out for a noise violation.
But when the private companies overshadow government, there is no competition to take your business to. If Facebook has all my friends, I have to choose my principles or my friends. So far principles won for me but not many can do that offering. And my friends are slowly coming around again :)
Almost as if government regulation relating to monopolies and "too big to fail" corporations actually means something? Maybe a competent government would actually advocate and enforce laws to stop one company controlling your life.
Lots of bad effects can happen. Imagine you live in a place with one internet provider (most of us) and no cell service. Then imagine that because of something you said, that internet provider cancels your account and doesn't want to work with you anymore. Especially in covid times, that's basically barring you from working.
Or say you live in a small town with one grocery store, and they don't like your BLM tshirt so one day they ban you. Private company, they can do that. But now where do you buy food?
Or your Brand X car breaks down, but Brand X decides they don't want you in any Brand X dealerships anymore, but the problem is your car needs a specific diagnostic tool only available to Brand X dealers.
A sidenote that this interestingly showcases (to me) how people lived and ate before giant grocery store chains. Folks were a lot more decentralized and trade/bartered/bought with their farm from those nearby in the community. Why did we reach a point where one dangerously relies on solely a just-in-time commercial grocery outfit just to live?
And I agree, the internet monopoly is a huge issue. The internet should become widely available to all. I would say as a utility, but that then points out the fact that I have one giant power company that could also, censor me and cut me off from my only main source of power... hmmm...
This is one of the areas where liberal and conservatives alike are often in strong agreement. I find it curious that we haven't seen a protest over this issue that carries enough weight to illicit some serious change. It doesn't strike me as a difficult one to get 100k people to march for, and if the NRA/GOA backed it you could easily get 20-30k individuals who are well armed (and still peaceful) to join in like they did in Virginia.
I must be missing something because I cannot imagine why everyone is so tolerant of companies having nation-state level ability to ruin lives, and to routinely face no consequences when they do so.
> But if your government is infringing your rights, it's very difficult for most people to pick a different government.
I am not sure if I am attacking a straw man here, but it sure sounds like you claim that buying one way flight ticket is very difficult compared to getting rid of FAAMG in your life?
I understand there are other complications involved in moving abroad that just the flight ticket, but I still think that the big global corps are much more difficult to get rid of than my government. Including the fact that they very much keep communication with my friends at least as much hostage as my government if I decide to move away.
Moving to another country is quite difficult unless you are sponsored by an employer there, have dual citizenship, or are rich.
Sure you can fly there, but your tourist visa will run out in a few weeks and they will kick you out if they can find you. So now you're on the run, and good luck finding a job, renting an apartment, or getting health care with an expired tourist visa.
Oh and if you're an American, you won't be able to open an account in a local bank because American banking laws control all banks everywhere.
The above are generalizations and some countries are easier to move to than others. And all of them IMO are much more difficult than deleting Facebook.
I haven't bought anything off Amazon in awhile. I'm sure I still use AWS when I browse the web but I'm not militant in my lack of support. Hopefully they move somewhere else, but it's fine regardless.
I'd be on the next flight out if there was some sort of undocumented American community somewhere in Western Europe or something. But that simply doesn't exist.
>The writers of the constitution understood that if you didn't like doing business with a company you could just take your business to their competitor.
Is there actually something in the Federalist Papers talking about free market competition? I'm not aware they considered this at all.
Employers have the right to hire or not hire whomever they want barring discrimination against protected classes, based on whatever criteria they want to consider relevant. "Person who said a stupid thing on the internet" is not a protected class.
A Twitter mob doesn't have any objective power to prevent anyone from finding employment. They do, however, have free speech rights which include the right to communicate with someone's potential employer and argue that they should not be hired. If literally every employer decides not to hire someone based solely on what that mob says, then (notwithstanding how ridiculous that scenario would be in real life) that's possibly a labor rights issue more than a free speech issue.
I have never seen a Twitter mob manage to avoid the use of libelous claims. This begs the question, what could be done to protect people from online mobs? What relief do you think unions could provide?
A very focused rider required on contracts that employment can't be terminated due to political speech outside of work hours. Make that one of a small handful of similar riders required by companies to hire 'union' members and I think you'd end up with a LOT of people joining that union.
It would remove a lot of leverage of the twitter mobs if they know ahead of time the target is protected.
Define "political speech," bearing in mind that everything that can be proven not to be "political speech" under that definition is implicitly fair game as grounds for termination in this case.
I'm familiar with the standards and I stand by my assessment with full confidence. Twitter mobs routinely make up facts and spread completely unfounded misinformation that is demonstrably contrary to what evidence suggests. That's 3/4 of the criteria right then and there.
[0] To prove prima facie defamation, a plaintiff must show four things: 1) a false statement purporting to be fact; 2) publication or communication of that statement to a third person; 3) fault amounting to at least negligence; and 4) damages, or some harm caused to the person or entity who is the subject of the statement.
Now what you need to do is show damages. Lost your job? Deplatformed or demonetized? Vendors, partners, or clients cut ties? Victim of harassment (online or otherwise)?
You haven't demonstrated negligence. Nor did you demonstrate that the statement was made seriously. Elon musk called someone a "pedo guy" because he moved to Thailand, and was found to be fine because a reasonable person wouldn't take the statement seriously. Threading the needle between protected hyperbole and protected good faith mistakes is practically speaking not feasible. Negligence is a higher standard than what you seem to believe.
Keep in mind, making an accusation not totally supported by evidence is not defamation. In the US, it falls on the defamed to both prove that the accusation is false and prove that the accuser knew it was false. Not that they had doubts or uncertainty, but that they knowingly lied. Making an ultimately incorrect acusation based on incomplete evidence isn't legally negligent.
[0]Negligence is "a failure to behave with the level of care that someone of ordinary prudence would have exercised under the same circumstances."
Essentially, it comes down to what a reasonable person would do.
A reasonable person would probably not invent claims without evidence. Let's take the Kyle Rittenhouse case as the example since it's so recent and visible. The Twitter mob openly calls this individual a murderer, white supremacist, and terrorist, among other things. They also invent and distribute "facts" which are material to the case such as where the individual got the AR-15 used during the event, and the circumstances surrounding its use. [1]Significant effort is undertaken to obfuscate the truth through the editing of video footage and censoring of contrary opinions.
> Elon musk called someone a "pedo guy" because he moved to Thailand, and was found to be fine because a reasonable person wouldn't take the statement seriously.
This is clearly not the case when dealing with situations like the above, and many others which lead to individuals being deplatformed, harassed, or physically threatened, or even attacked. There can be no doubt that claims of racism, sexism, homophobia, or other bigotry are taken seriously by all the major platforms and society as a whole. It is common knowledge that such claims cause harm.
A reasonable person would not make damaging claims without any supporting evidence, manufacture fake evidence, or aid in the distribution of either.
But there is supporting evidence for all of those claims. It is not ironclad (or you may disagree with it). But they are not claims made without evidence. And reasonable people can, and do, disagree about specific pieces of evidence.
Furthermore, repeating a rumor is not negligent. So if I make a claim without evidence, but you repeat it and cite me, only I have done something wrong.
To get concrete, there is evidence that Kyle Rittenhouse murdered someone. He's been charged with first-degree intentional homicide, this is Wisconsin's equivalent of Murder.
There is evidence that Kyle Rittenhouse is a white supremacist. He travelled across state lines to disrupt and intimidate people at a protest for racial justice. While he may not be a card carrying neo-nazi, that's evidence.
There is evidence that Kyle Rittenhouse is a terrorist. He (presumably) unlawfully used violence and intimidation against civilians for political purposes. He's listed on wikipedia's list of right-wing terrorists in the US[0].
So now you have to show that not only are the above statements false, but that they are so blatantly false, that it is unreasonable for a person to believe them, and that to reach those conclusions would require negligence. But of course, you can't really do that. Wikipedia agreeing with me pretty much proves that my claims aren't unreasonable. They may be wrong, but they aren't negligently so.
> They also invent and distribute "facts" which are material to the case such as where the individual got the AR-15 used during the event, and the circumstances surrounding its use.
Coming to incorrect conclusions after good faith investigation isn't negligent. At the moment, as far as I know, Rittenhouse got his rifle within the state of Wisconsin, from a friend. But not knowing that information, it is not unreasonable and negligent to state "He must have acquired the gun illegally, since he is underage and can't transport it across state lines." That's a reasonable conclusion. It's wrong, yes, but it's reasonable.
> This is clearly not the case when dealing with situations like the above,
Just to be clear, you are saying that it is reasonable for a person to call someone else a pedophile without any evidence, but calling someone who shot and killed someone else, on video, a murderer, is negligent? Am I getting that right?
Previously I said that you misunderstand negligence. I'll repeat what I said and add that it appears that you, personally, have an extraordinary level of prudence. Which is totally acceptable, and perhaps even an admirable trait. But it is not ordinary. Legally speaking, you appear to be "unreasonable".
TLDR - At the time the claims were made, there was not enough evidence available to make any potentially defamatory claims. If the same standards were applied to financial reporting, the reporters would be in jail already.
> To get concrete, there is evidence that Kyle Rittenhouse murdered someone. He's been charged with first-degree intentional homicide, this is Wisconsin's equivalent of Murder.
These claims were coming out prior to him being charged and prior to any credible sources reporting details of the story. There was an organized attempt to get ahead of the narrative and paint a particular picture of the events. The fact that it's actually rather difficult to find the details of the 'victims' and their criminal histories is one indicator of that. The below cited debate on the wiki entry is another. And that is without diving into the twitter discourse where it's possible to find every level of bad faith "debate"
> There is evidence that Kyle Rittenhouse is a white supremacist. He travelled across state lines to disrupt and intimidate people at a protest for racial justice. While he may not be a card carrying neo-nazi, that's evidence.
He worked in Kenosha as a lifeguard, and was there cleaning up the neighborhood [0]unarmed earlier in the day. Saying his presence there is evidence is like saying that my fingerprints inside my own home are evidence of whatever crime may have happened there.
> There is evidence that Kyle Rittenhouse is a terrorist. He (presumably) unlawfully used violence and intimidation against civilians for political purposes. He's listed on wikipedia's list of right-wing terrorists in the US[0].
This "evidence" came into existence after the claims were already circulating. [1]The original entry was Kenosha Riots, and there is ongoing organized action to alter the title and information to change the narrative. None of the sources listed existed at the time that the defamatory claims were made.
> Coming to incorrect conclusions after good faith investigation isn't negligent.
There was no investigation, so there cannot have been good faith in the investigation. The individuals claiming he 'crossed state lines with an illegal AR-15' are making multiple false claims at once. He didn't cross state lines to participate, he was already there. He didn't cross with the AR-15, it was given to him by a WI state resident. Even the possession of the weapon itself may not have been illegal as the state statutes leave wiggle room that has yet to be explored.
The ultimate point is that the people who initiated many of these claims are journalists and news publications who should have made a good faith effort to produce accurate reports. They failed miserably to do so, and their reports still carry significant inaccuracies. Some of these reports featured video clips that were edited to better support the narrative. None of these reports, at least that I've been able to find, show all of the video evidence that is public thus far.
> Just to be clear, you are saying that it is reasonable for a person to call someone else a pedophile without any evidence, but calling someone who shot and killed someone else, on video, a murderer, is negligent? Am I getting that right?
Not exactly. I'm saying that Elon Musk is one individual who has no following because of his 'investigative journalism' credentials. He's just a dude who is rather well known for being 'out there'. On the other hand, people absolutely do follow CNN & & & as a 'credible' source for such reporting.
None of what you've said actually matters. Again, the standard isn't that you need to be correct, but that the statements you make would be made by a reasonable person. They can all be ultimatelywrong as long as they aren't unreasonable.
It isn't unreasonable to call someone who shot someone else a murderer. It just is not.
It is not unreasonable to conclude that someone who travelled to another state and then shot someone was doing so for nefarious reasons. It may be wrong, but it isn't unresonable.
> This "evidence" came into existence after the claims were already circulating
I'm not saying that using the Wikipedia article is evidence for the claim. I'm saying that the claim cannot be unreasonable if wikipedia ultimately reached the same conclusion.
Again, you don't need to cite someone else to be not defamatory. As long as the statement, standing alone, isn't unreasonable, you're good.
> None of these reports, at least that I've been able to find, show all of the video evidence that is public thus far.
That doesn't make them defamatory.
> Not exactly. I'm saying that Elon Musk is one individual who has no following because of his 'investigative journalism' credentials.
Your original complaint was about random individuals in twitter mobs making defamatory statements. They also have no credentials. So are you now saying that actually all the random people on Twitter are fine, but it's CNN and NBC and the news organizations that are making defamatory claims?
Because that's a reach. You really think you know defamation better than the lawyers who work for those companies and specialize in defamation?
> It isn't unreasonable to call someone who shot someone else a murderer. It just is not.
How about KKK member, white supremacist, racist, etc?
> It is not unreasonable to conclude that someone who travelled to another state and then shot someone was doing so for nefarious reasons. It may be wrong, but it isn't unreasonable.
This isn't what happened and there is substantial evidence that demonstrates this. He didn't travel there for that reason, he was there when it started because he works there. He traveled a shorter distance 'into another state' than from me to my local mall.
> Because that's a reach. You really think you know defamation better than the lawyers who work for those companies and specialize in defamation?
[0]Lin Wood, (Kyle's lawyer) recently won multiple defamation cases, one of which was against CNN for their poor coverage of the Nick Sandmann case. He's quite literally an expert in the field. I'm happy to let him sort things out.
> Your original complaint was about random individuals in twitter mobs making defamatory statements. They also have no credentials. So are you now saying that actually all the random people on Twitter are fine, but it's CNN and NBC and the news organizations that are making defamatory claims?
They aren't "fine" but they are not the originators of the harm. The so-called journalists intentionally editing video to alter narratives, and large organizations that are trying to alter the publicly available information are absolutely not fine.
And my original point was that I've not seen Twitter mobs (as a collective) avoid crossing the line. However, you can't go after a mob, you can only go after the most important individuals fanning the flames.
I already explained why calling him a white supremacist isn't unresonable. Calling him a KKK member likely falls under the exceptions for hyperbole. And are you saying CNN has called him a KKK member?
You can't use CNN because a twitter user called someone a white supremacist after CNN correctly reported on events and someone else says something inflammatory. Either you can go after CNN for the reporting it does, or you can go after random twitter users for inflammatory stuff, but understand that you already said that that was okay when you claimed musk was "different".
And just a note, Lin Wood did not win a case against CNN. The Sandmann case was settled out of court. Please don't defame CNN like that.
The person you are responding to didn’t make a first amendment argument, or say anything about the US.
They are saying that people outside of China should take a stand against China’s lack of respect for speech rights, rather than playing along with it for profit.
The USG doesn't respect speech rights of it's citizens either so idk where this grandstanding keeps coming from that we're still the champion of free speech when every night police beat and pepper spray people for exercising those rights.
That is also a problem — however it is neither related, nor diminishes the significance of the topic at hand. And the suggestion that the USG and CCP’s respect for speech rights are somehow comparable is just silly.
All of the western world has a significantly better respect for speech rights than the CCP does.
It’s really more nuanced than that though isn’t it?
The issue isn’t so much that TikTok is censoring content. It’s that they’re censoring content at the request of a foreign government.
I’m not a legal scholar by any means so I cannot really comment about the application of the constitution or other applicable law. However, it feels like it’s probably wrong to let another country censor the speech of US citizens, in the US.
Doesn't the "terrific" 1st amendment (not sure in which sense you're using the word) cut against the type of regulations that the gp advocates for?
To the extent that banning pro-Tibet messages is expressive editorial conduct, the government's banning of such companies for engaging in such conduct would violate the 1st amendment protections against viewpoint discrimination.
Put another way, by preventing the government from regulating private companies in such a fashion, the 1st amendment can actually weaken free speech (though I would argue that the actual problem is fact that the big tech companies are so dominant that few viable alternative venues, with different editorial practices, exist).
The result is that when the government tries to reform the editorial practices of the tech companies, it has to do so through awkward means (like saying that they are not enforcing their own rules or threatening to strip them of their protection against libel and other causes of action). Anyway I'm pretty sure that if they condition civil liability protection on their following editorial "best practices", like what current bipartisan bills to reform section 230 do, the courts will not play along.
True - but - we can still ban foreign companies who act in nasty ways.
We 'divest from Oil' for god's sake we can at least 'divest from the CCP'.
The CCP has a team in most (about 85%) of Chinese companies to ensure they tow the party line. They don't care about day-to-day operations, but when it comes to sensitive things, they report back to the CCP.
Thanks to technology ... it's the most systematically totalitarian state ever devised.
When writing 20th century dystopian novels, we never even conceived of the level of personal control.
Imagine if the US president ordered a CIA or GOP organ inside every US company, directed the Fed to put money in certain banks, and directed the banks to make loans to specific companies on specific terms. And then read everyone's email, browser history, chat to make sure they 'complied' and flagged anyone who ever hinted anything other than the accepted truth.
I strongly disagree. Free speech is a cultural ethic. In an enlightened liberal society, we have a shared value that self-expression is a fundamental human right. And, it is wrong to take away someone's human rights. The first amendment exists to ensure the government never violates that human right. But, companies and individuals have a cultural/moral obligation to protect/not violate that right as well, imo.
If a company is deemed to be considered the equivalent of a town square, it can be given the same restrictions as the 1st amendment. For example Malls cannot ban protected speech in their premises.
If a company is not deemed this by courts, they have the full right to ban you for non-protected reasons (excluding racism/sexism and so on)
There are a few areas of regulated speech even in government-involved First Amendment scenarios [1].
It is true that private entities can kick out individuals for utterances found disagreeable. But what if those private entities are practically extensions of those in government positions, working closely with them? During the Framers' time, the proto-US did not have the equivalent of the Dutch East India Company, considered the most valuable company of all time [2].
At what point does a private entity grow so powerful that its private views applied in its selection of who to engage with turn into persecution of the kind that informed the separation of church and state principle [3]? I'd like to get a specialist historian's (specializing in the Framers' discussions) take on this, because I find it interesting that they were all very likely well aware of the Dutch East India Company, yet they did not find it a compelling enough entity to elevate to the level of the separation principle. So I have to wonder: what did they believe was the countervailing force against such a behemoth private entity's selection pressure turning into outright persecution?
Should fix... how? Companies should be compelled to provide a platform for free expression, and forbidden from removing any content, no matter how objectionable?
I think it's clear what parent commenter is suggesting. And that no medium if privately owned has the right to moderate itself and must carry any and all speech and productions. Just because it's unreasonable and makes no sense doesn't mean people don't want it or widely support it on HN.
I think the difference is mediums that have reached a certain size and cultural influence that they are effectively modern public forums. If all public discussion is on happening on these private platforms then they a civic duty to not suppress speech.
What's happening is people conflate "not suppressing speech" with "supporting hate speech." They don't support anything. They're nothing more at this point than a public space maintained by a private entity. Private entities I'll add that are essentially subsidized by taxpayers due to not meeting their obligations of paying their taxes, and no I'm not talking about minimizing tax obligations[0].
Obscenity as a legal term is complicated. Culturally, even more so. One person's "obscenity" is another person's "vernacular of the street." What is obscene in Kuwait might be an everyday greeting in Sydney.
Primarily, you are arguing for compelling corporation to expend effort and expense to carry content deemed objectionable by officers of that company, and I'm not sure you've thought that through. You might think politically-[whatever] voices are being silenced--absent evidence--but if the US government decides to violate hundreds of years of established norms and force websites to cease censoring content, it won't be just content you favor that explodes. And if the US government can force Facebook and Twitter to carry content they don't like, then what legal standard separates them from Hacker News, for example?
I'd rather leave the definition of obscenity to the courts than to a private company.
If a company wants to editorialize their content and provide moderation when they deem fit then they specifically should lose their protections under section 230.
That is completely the opposite of how section 230 works, and section 230 is the entire reason websites like Hacker News are allowed to exist. Your argument has now gotten even worse, not better!
If a company loses Section 230 protections, the safest move is to disable user content completely. No comments anywhere. The next-safest move is to be extremely heavy-handed editorially, since any comment left alone could be the basis for a company-ending lawsuit. Whatever views you believe are being censored now, I guarantee you they would be actually censored completely without Section 230.
Read Section 230[0]. It's the foundation of the modern internet and says almost exactly the opposite of what you're suggesting. Read 230(c)(2)(A) twice.
Not the GP, but I'm thinking you could have a system where instead of centralized control, as a user you can subscribe to blocklists provided by the company as well as community-made ones. These would be tasked with the regulation of legal speech, and providing a framework for these lists would be a requirement to be protected under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act if you meet certain requirements; while illegal speech can still be controlled under traditional centralized moderation.
Not sure how legislation would define the requirements for something like this. What would metrics would signal that a platform to have to comply with the regulation? (MAUs?, revenue?, surely having moderation, but should certain kinds of moderation like removing botspam count?) Should a provider be able to silently set-up default lists for new users or should they be prompted? Should the company be required to break down blocklists among different topics (spam/pornography/depictions of violence/a goose with a campfire in the background) and how should the boundaries of topics be defined if so? What kind of functionality should be considered the bare minimum for a framework to build community-curated blocklists?
Mind you, I still am not sure regulation is the way to go. But the truth is that these platforms wield a scary amount of power over the psyche of people to extents that would've made the Stasi drool all over the place, and it does have the ability of corrupting democracy far more than biased TV channels and newspapers since it's no longer Fox News or CNN presenting you something, it's your own acquaintances that get some of their voices artificially boosted while some others are silenced; literally distorting a huge amount of voters' own grasp on reality.
So basically China should be free to limit free speech all over the world? They are a big market and can therefore force companies to comply. This is what will happen if western governments don't intervene.
I'm sick of this response. These social media companies individually can reach billions of people with the ability (proven) to sway their thoughts and emotions (see Facebook, WHO, Reddit). Free speech must apply to public forums like this
Private organizations are allowed to decide how their property is used, including the type of speech it is used to facilitate. This is inherent to the concept of private property. I don't know why you think these companies are public forums. If there is a public forum in this space, it is the internet itself.
People who dislike the limits of these platforms have a variety of other venues on the internet to choose from, but what they are not at all entitled to is the automatic amplification of their voice by these large but private platforms.
The Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that corporations have 1st Amendment rights.
You have to remember that "corporation" can mean any group organized for a purpose. It can be Exxon, but it can also be Planned Parenthood or AARP.
People who can't speak loudly enough by themselves have a right to organize into a corporation, pool their money, and speak loudly together.
You can argue that a business should not be both a commercial enterprise and a holder of 1st Amendment rights, but that's not what the law says. And anyway, it would be an impossible line to draw.
If we’re still talking about TikTok here, the concern is that they don’t have the right to free speech — that the rights on their platform is coopted by a government power.
I'm not still talking about TikTok. I support banning Chinese social networks or any network where China has censorship power (either explicit or through back doors).
I was responding narrowly about the idea that "free speech" demands that the US govt can force companies to choose what to publish.
Forcing a company to stop operating here is an entirely different concept.
Why? Yes, these websites reach a lot of people, but why is that a reason that the site owners should not be able to control the type of content appears on their site?
> here we are talking about not being put in jail because you say publicly that tibet should be free
Expel Spain from the EU. Economic blockade. Whatever it takes. At least the UK held a referendum on Scotland. Fake promises and all but we can't jail dissidents just because they try to form a separate country in today's world.
I know it is completely off-topic AND I know I will be down-voted to death, but it is indeed absolutely shameful what happened in Spain. And we cannot tolerate this in the European Union.
Also the European Court of Justice (ECJ) agrees that separatist politicians should not be jailed for their opinions as elected officials: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-50808766
> Also the European Court of Justice (ECJ) agrees that separatist politicians should not be jailed for their opinions as elected officials: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-50808766
That's not at all what they said. According to the ECJ, they should have had temporary immunity just for the purpose of taking up their seats as MEPs even though they were on trial for a generic crime. That ruling doesn't have any judgement regarding the legality of separatism, and also wouldn't free them of prison time if found guilty by the Spanish court.
The catalonian government, which is an autonomous community of Spain, held a referendum to secede. The Spanish shut down polling stations, but they declared independence anyways, so the central government implemented direct rule and arrested the separatist politicians responsible for it.
So what you're saying is, when I post that Catalonia should be free and go on holiday in Spain, no spooks would follow me around, and no pressure would be put on German companies to fire me, and this isn't even remotely comparable.
7 elected politicians and 2 leaders of the independence movement have been arrested and convicted for the ‘crime’ of holding a referendum. Up to 13 years in prison.
They spent public money on the referendum, didn't they? If the subordinate government could do whatever they wanted, they wouldn't need a referendum, would they.
From what I was able to get from talking to people from Barcelona, anti-independence citizens were viewing the referendum as illegal and didn't attend. So it's no wonder that the separatists "won" the referendum, but it's legitimacy is rather questionable.
The ship sailed long ago on the EU being anything but corrupt at this point for me when they continuously flirted the idea of Turkey being invited in, extend protected statuses in trade arrangements, and do nothing to help their actual members, like Greece, against the war games and provocations that occur on an almost weekly basis in the Aegean. Once again, it's all in the name of the oil.
These are collectives of politicians, who have a huge number of difficult problems to solve and limited means of solving them. They have conflicting, national, local and, yes, some personal demands. A mass of conflicting ideology, with varying levels of diligence, ethics and greed.
Expecting absolute morals is expecting the impossible.
Compared to virtually any government in history, and most governments today, the EU is far, far from corrupt. Yes there is corruption. But no government has no corruption.
And it's certainly not helpful, or thruthful, to use silly rhetoric like 'The ship sailed long ago on the EU being anything but corrupt'.
That is a lie, and I can only hope you are adult enough to admit it is one.
> I think that free world should ban every company that comply with china censorship
"I think the 'free' world should ban software and/or content". Condemn maybe, but it is scary to see such non-free actions encouraged against digital content.
otherwise you risk condemning in words while the regime begins to control and censor your words as well, while you continue to condemn without doing anything, perhaps with a hint of disdain or is it perhaps too much? there are those who take the south china sea, and then declare the republic of taiwan separationist and threaten to invade it weekly, not afraid to show strength, for the simple "desire for reunification" when they have been more separated than united in the last 200 years, invades hong-kong, tramples rights where it controls and then appeals to rights to trample them where before it had no power, we must be careful not to confuse the right of all with the duty to defend the rights of all and the right to express yourself and act is not the same as the right to silence or block,
blocking those who block is freeing those who are blocked is not becoming like them.
To me it doesn't matter what the government origin of the software is, regardless of how involved. I take a hard stance against unilateral banning of otherwise legal software. It's unfortunate that the appeal to emotion is so commonly trotted out to equate fear of government overreach with support for the bad emotion. The list of detestable government actions done under similar pretenses is quite long.
If Cuba is keeping millions of people in internment camps based on religion, or taking away freedom from once-free states (HK), or making expansionist claims, or outright threatening smaller democracies like Taiwan with war and destruction - then sure, Cuban cigars should be banned.
Myself? Against that particular type of banning, granted I can understand general economic reasoning even though I disagree. Now, banning one single brand of cigars even if they are following the law? Completely against that type of targeted banning, and I would immediately question the motives.
Same goes for Huawei or any company/product. You are allowed if you don't break the law. I don't care the origin, I care about the rule of [contestable] law over unilateral action. I may disagree with many laws, but I respect the process much more.
a translation typo ,
you can judge who is the censor in your conscience and who is censoring and if he is censoring the censor or is he more censor than who is censored.
Most countries arrest people who are breaking windows, setting things on fire, engaging in riots after being told to disperse and illegally carrying weapons. All of the people who were arrested were charged and then released (pending bail, recognizance, etc per Washington law).
You may feel those actions are just, but being just does not make them legal.
Which is why we're banning them using the tool for that situation (a foreign company who is acting in a way unaligned to the interests of US citizens) and not arresting them.
We are under no duty to allow the CCP to act within our borders.
If we ban any company that complies with laws we don't like, taken to the extreme doesn't that lead to every country banning companies from every other country that doesn't have laws that map exactly to their own?
This isn't talking about banning a specific company for violating local laws. This is talking about banning all companies from a specific country because that country has laws the US doesn't agree with. Should Europe ban all American companies because the US doesn't have GDPR? Or flip it around, which US law did Tiktok violate?
Yes, the issue with TikTok has never been TikTok itself, and has always been the government institutions that have overwhelming control over their governance. China shouldn't be violating the human rights of their own people, and they definitely shouldn't be exporting the oppression of those rights to the rest of the world.
Given the realities of network effects and the observed tendency for a small number of social media platforms to dominate the market, this doesn't sound particularly realistic. More choice would indeed be great, but I highly doubt that'll ever happen with a product/service whose entire value proposition depends on everyone choosing the same one.
Wasn't this already "attempted" through the natural mechanics of the free market? Social media seems to tend toward monopoly (or at least oligopoly) due to the extreme realization of the network effect in this industry.
Here is a sampling attempts (though I'm sure the graveyard has hundreds if not thousands of members): Friendster, DailyBooth, FriendFeed, Google Buzz, Meerkat, Yik Yak, Vine, Google Plus, MySpace, Path, Orkut, ConnectU, ...
Hardly realistic. People go where their friends are. This prevents scattering groups over many different social media. We had them in the 2000s, then only one made it to now (FB). The others that are big now (Instagram/FB, WhatsApp/FB, TikTok) are successful because IMHO are on a different medium so don't directly compete with FB and/or are used by a different demographic (young people don't go where older people are, same as for music.)
Why do we care if China censors things? Don't US social media companies censor large swaths of content? The reddit bans just happened. You can call it hate speech, but some disagree. Yet those communities and posts were still censored. What is the difference if it's a business or a government doing the censoring?
"I think that free world should ban every company that comply with china censorship"
not gonna happen because of this tiiiiiiiiny thing called money. china has over a billion people. if you want to be in that market, you play by their rules. it's not surprising how people can change their morals with the right dollar amount.
If they would just repeal section 230 already, then the plug would be pulled from all these companies and China would no longer have any influence over what is said on the internet.
What we are in is a sort of techno-mercantilism where governments enlist large companies to deliver geopolitical influence in exchange for protection.
The whole debate over free speech online is only happening because 1) content is passing through a bottleneck of only a few companies and 2) those few companies have decided to actively censor the content.
These two things could not exist simultaneously without an explicit guarantee of legal protection from the government for online publishers of user content. Without that guarantee of protection it's doubtful that any platform could have grown as large as YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, or Google without taking a completely hands-off approach to user content (i.e. as a "common carrier"). The threat of litigation would have forced them to pre-emptively moderate all content just like print media and television.
In the 1990s Congress decided that it's okay for the internet to operate on different legal rules from the rest of society. They decided that internet companies can make editorial choices about their content freely without being legally held responsible for those choices, and the Supreme Court upheld that decision. Online speech is now the domain of Google, Twitter, Facebook, etc. and they have free reign over their virtual kingdoms without regard for any other legal system.
I think I'm more OK with a blanket ban. I guess it'd just be an embargo against China. At least it'll be consistent.
As it is there is a sense of unfairness I think. TikTok seems to be singled out with ambiguous and hard to pin down "national security" issues.
People point to FB and google being blocked in China, but at least the CCP can point to laws they're not complying with. And presumably if FB and google complied with Chinese laws (like Bing), they'd be able to operate there. With TikTok there aren't any laws anyone can point to that they're breaking. For example if there is a law that says social media platforms cannot censor users' content. As it is, this is just giving ammunition to the CCP to point to how unfair the US is being and how the west just wants to keep China and Chinese companies down.
Well then you're going to be banning a lot of companies. Or you'll be putting a lot of businesses in a position where they have to decide whether they want a relationship with China (growing economy, growing global influence) or the United States (stagnant economy, shrinking global influence).
It's the paradox of tolerance. How do you tolerate a platform that doesn't conform to your idea of tolerance? How do you distinguish that censorship from, say, Marvel rewriting Doctor Strange to remove Tibet?
I agree with the idea behind the paradox of tolerance, I just find the idea of this being only applied to a chinese-owned company because of things china does somewhat hilarious. America does much worse so its clearly not about morals or anything like that. I really wish that the discussion would more outwardly become "we're banning tiktok because China is our competitor in international geopolitics" so we can all move on with our lives and stop having these dumb discussions.
it is the paradox of those who do not think and think that all things are the same and therefore that a terrorist in america is the same as one in egypt, one in tibet, one in hongkong and one in china, I am not here to explain all these things if you try to change the subject at the moment I don't have time, if you want to talk about something else ok, but I don't have time someone else will answer you, if you talk about other similar things, these things are not the same thing, one sanctioning by means of a ban on a company that censors is not the same as censorship itself.
as the incarceration of a person carrying out kidnapping is not the same thing.
At least as right and wrong are not the same for most people at least.
And even if in some countries right and wrong are reversed, don't believe that even those who live there don't realize it.
Freedom of speech is not the same in the rest of the world outside of America. Lots of European countries have hate speech laws in place where you can be convicted of crimes for speaking your mind if it's hateful. The EU has been pressuring large tech companies into self complying https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/28/16380526/eu-hate-speech-l...
But just the other day, there was a huge post with lots of uproar about how Google was flagging apps like mastodon for having no content standards regarding hate speech.
don't you realize that you are comparing that "hate speech" at EU level of "hate speech" with the possibility of saying free tibet? those are the same thing for you ? why I'm still replying here.. I think that I'm fighting the 50 cent party ..
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party
They're not the same but I don't think that laws from China or Europe or some other country should impact services in America. If we want the same restrictions we can make the laws ourselves.
All of the western world agrees on the freedom of the press and the protection of political speech -- and that those things are necessary for the protections of human rights.
Reminds me of the guy who taught his girlfriends dog to raise it's paw when it saw hitler talking or when it heard the phrase "heil hitler". He did it as a joke and put the video on youtube and ended up going to jail over it.
Which I very strongly disagree with. It was perhaps in poor taste, but hurt no one.
It happened in Germany, where he went to jail, because he regularly showed forbidden Nazi insignia as well as regularly doing the Hitler salute and shouting "Sieg Heil" - all of which is forbidden by law in Germany.
Especially after he was already on probation for earlier transgressions against these laws.
He did not go to jail because he "only" teached his dog (it was actually his dog) a poor taste trick.
OK - then we have two cases, as nearly the same also happened in Germany[1]. In Germany the owner was sent to prison. As far as I am aware in Scotland the owner had to pay a fine [2].
I was initially wrong in assuming there would have been only one knucklehead on this planet doing something so obviously stupid.
fair enough, I'm not super familiar with the guy I just remember that being the narrative.
As an aside, I remember watching 'The Wave' years ago (I think there's a new version on netflix?) and being fascinated by it. It gave a brief glimpse into the cultural fear of what happened in Germany happening again.
Several European countries have bans on racial hatred and Nazi content because of what happened last time Nazis were allowed to promote hatred on an enormous scale: six million people were exterminated in camps, over and above the civilian and military casualties of the war.
So which flavor of free speech[0] is good enough for you? Which countries pass the threshold? I know that the free speech we have in Germany is probably not good enough for most US people that are keen on free speech, but it's good enough for me (mostly).
When someone calls on the "free world", it has mostly become a US patriotism dog whistle to me without any deeper meaning.
Can you? So China is close to black. Iran has strong internet censorship, so I guess close to black? What about Russia, where AFAIK a normal citizen is pretty free to access information and express their opinion, but bigger political figures are regularly poisoned? What about Turkey?
People here in the comments are already pointing out Spain and the USA, which most people would probably assign to the "free world".
Of course it's a spectrum, but at what difference between countries is such a boycott realistic and doesn't quickly turn into hypocrisy if not enacted against countries uniformly? Shouldn't the USA boycott Iran or Turkey in the same manner if they boycott China? Should Norway start to do the same to US companies?
> here we are talking about not being put in jail because you say publicly that tibet should be free. or because you try to report abuse and suppression of the ruling class
Or, you know, just practicing a certain religion or being from a specific ethnic group[0].
I think every country should ban foreign companies so we can have only national internet ? there is no need for global US companies taking over the world. Nobody trust China and nobody should trust US companies anyway. I live in the supposed "free world" there is no such thing. All over the world there is two classes :
dominants and dominated
So please don't be so small minded bringing this "free world" propaganda terms here...
>I think that free world should ban every company that comply with china censorship,
If you feel that strongly about it, why not an invasion theater where America makes a big show of mobilizing and preparing to send its $3 trillion military to invade and overthrow China unless China liberates their NAZI-style concentration camps (1 million uighers) and end their censorship. China's censorship just cost the world about $10 trillion in lockdowns and lost economic activity, specifically when China applied pressure on the WHO to hide news about what was going on in China as China was battling what at that time was an epidemic rather than pandemic.
I only ask because your position is a very strong one...
>I think that free world should ban every company that comply with china censorship,
It’s hard for me to imagine the US allowing the USSR to distribute apps like this (or any kind, really) back in the Cold War. This action is not as unprecedented as some think. It is misguided, though. The US needs a systematic policy, not a bunch of arbitrary one-offs.
Couldn't the EU leverage the TikTok ordeal to make a similar case to force US-based social networks to divest ownership and restrict data hosting to locations outside of Five Eyes access? Given the revelations around espionage towards NATO allies it doesn't sound unreasonable.
Who cares though honestly. Cry about it TikTok. Honestly ALL social media should be banned. Citizens don't understand the privacy that is being exploited while they think that they're benefiting from a "free service." Besides these companies are mostly fueling a toxic culture that glorifies sin while they get rich off of the poor. Plus it's the American market and we get to make the decisions here about other countries even if it's extremely authoritarian. And honestly china is a despicable marketplace (not to say fight fire with fire) but gg dude, go to other markets they have been exploiting our market for as long as society can remember. Go do business elsewhere. They're already stealing all of our IP and not required barely any pay to make it. So let's set some boundaries where we can.
Forums that don't require you to use your real time, don't track your location, and are text only are not synonymous with the modern sense of social media.
It's really hard to feel bad for a Chinese entity when tens of thousands of small businesses across the country have had their business effectively bankrupted on account of arbitrary government action that is no fault of their own.
Keep in mind that it's not just about a Chinese entity. They employ a lot of people directly, and all those 'influencers' on TikTok also make their livelihoods from their TikTok work. Not all could easily migrate to other platforms.
This is akin to banning YouTube. You're not just banning the company. There's a whole community, of content consumers and creators with jobs, behind it.
If it fails by government policy, that's an awful outcome for tech and the future. We need to encourage new markets, not end them. Tech is ending old markets as it is, if we're not encouraging new ones we're going to end up with increasing unemployment.
Honestly, as much as I dislike the CCP, I definitely want TikTok to stay until/unless there is some real anti-trust or other FAANG weakening happening.
Even if Tik Tok just kills Facebook and becomes the new Facebook, that's fine. Now the US goverment won't feel conflicted between anti-trust and tech nationalism, and we can lobby for much better privacy laws.
Anti-trust has been such a joke in the last few decades, and federal governance so bad in general around all issues of privacy, technology, and competition, I'll accept the Chinese competitor cudgel because it's the best we got.
If and while China sees fit to ban all American apps, programs, and sites, we should return that in kind. I support segregating China off our clean network.
TikTok is awful company which clearly panders to Chinese government, deletes anti-CCP content, and quite probably collects private data and promotes content in its own political interests.
However.
The whole world sees "The West" in general, and US in particular, as a place, where The Rule Of Law, and in general, some respect for the Rules, even for adversaries, is more important than in other places. That's why Russian oligarchs sue each other in London's courts. That's why millions of the most educated, the most creative, the most productive people immigrate to US and other capitalist countries from former Soviet block and not the other way around. Of course, US is not paradise, and everybody how ugly and criminal can it be sometimes; but still, compared to what other parts of the world look like, it's still a City upon a hill. Yes, US is a corrupt, racist country with a lot of deep internal problems, and yet it is still the best champion for democratic values we've got on the whole planet. (Some smaller European countries can have a better record, but they're just not significant enough to have a real influence).
And despite how awful TikTok is, and how I would applaud their demise, these executive orders, which directly violate these core ideals of western civilisation, damage not only US, but these ideals itself in the long run. I'm still amazed that a private company can sue the government and have a real hope at winning — if you're American, you may not realise how precious that possibility even is. And I really hope it does win.
Wait, so your pathway to them not being "censored" (as HN would say) is to show that they aren't being censored (and by censored you mean moderated) by CCP? That's ridiculous.
Can you prove that you aren't yourself? How would someone prove that?? I believe you are allowed to say "free tibet" etc on tiktok without any problems right now.
Not sure this has anything to do with tiktok, but just wanted to say that :
Every compagny that is not paying taxes, is stealing money from all peoples in the country. They use loopholes in the law to make in legal. But that should not be acceptable. It pain me to live in a world where most peoples doesn't care to be robbed constantly.
Some strong Chinese xenophobia in this thread. This place is getting straight up awful towards Chinese.
Cheerleading a racist president who shouts "China flu" and latching onto this flimsy executive order because you finally get the warm fuzzy feeling of fucking over a company started by a Chinese person is straight up fucked.
Chinese administration ban or ostracize large portion of us software , imo us and eu must do the same 'til minimum information freedom for free people ( no China firewall,information circulation ban ) is allowed there too
Kai-Fu Lee, a leading artificial intelligence expert who heads the tech investment firm Sinovation Ventures, worked for Google in China between 2005 and 2009. (Until 2009, Google operated a separate, censored version of its search engine in China.) He said in a Chinese-language statement on Tuesday that Google's experience in China and TikTok's case in the U.S. are "not comparable."
When Google decided it didn't want to comply with China's rules, "it decided to withdraw" from the mainland, Lee said. With TikTok, Lee said, the U.S. government did not provide information on what the app could do to continue operating in the U.S. as a Chinese-owned company, nor did the U.S. provide evidence for its complaints against the app.
I saw this logic on HN frequently, but it's significantly flawed. It can be meaningful only if those two nations are completely independent to each other, which is a contradictory to the premise. Otherwise, there will be fairness escalations. To avoid such situation, modern global diplomacy and free trade already have developed a framework to minimize the friction and ensure a minimal level of fairness.
The problem is that China's legislation and jurisdiction are in a complete control under a single political entity, CCP and its laws are deliberately designed to be ambiguous to allow arbitrary interpretation in favor of CCP. Also, don't forget that CCP's constitution is on top of PRC's constitution.
Obviously, this situation is not acceptable in the the principle of free trading as CCP is blatantly exploiting this political system to discriminate foreign companies and effectively violate the principle of national treatment. In order to join the global free trade system, a long time ago China promised to change its political and economical practice at least minimally compatible to other states. I think the previous presidents till Hu Jintao might keep it in their minds but unfortunately Xi Jinping doesn't seem so.
China made massive concessions in order to join the WTO. It reduced tariffs from ~40% to ~3%, removed joint-venture restrictions from most sectors of the economy, broke up many state-owned enterprises, created a new intellectual property enforcement system out of nothing, and changed all sorts of laws that benefited domestic companies.
That's not to say that there are no legitimate complaints that foreign companies have, but the investment environment for foreign companies improved massively in China, and foreign companies have made huge returns on their investments. There's supposed to be a WTO mechanism for dealing with discrimination against foreign companies, though the Trump administration has put that mechanism out of action by blocking the appointment of judges to the WTO's appellate body.
> removed joint-venture restrictions from most sectors of the economy,
This is misleading. On paper sure, but not in reality. The majority of large companies in China will in fact be forced to participate in a joint venture. And sure there is no "law" on the books requiring forced technology transfer, but foreign companies are forced to do it.
China is a not a country that follows the rule of law. Period. The law is whatever the CCP says it is today. There can be no rule of law without an independent judiciary, and the WTO mechanism's you speak of are completely unenforceable.
>broke up many state-owned enterprises
Also misleading. They were technically "broken" up. But they still have have CCP liaison committees, and CCP members running them. The government still assists them with corporate espionage, and provides them with enormous grants and loans. Large companies in China are still state owned enterprises in all but name.
> but the investment environment for foreign companies improved massively in China
It did improve for a few years, but the current administration has managed to reverse nearly all those improvements.
> The majority of large companies in China will in fact be forced to participate in a joint venture.
That's just not true any more. Companies sometimes choose to enter joint ventures, but in most industries, they're not forced to. Many large foreign companies operate without JV partners in China.
> There can be no rule of law without an independent judiciary, and the WTO mechanism's you speak of are completely unenforceable.
WTO rulings have led to concrete changes in Chinese policy, and beyond that, China has undergone very fundamental changes to its economic structure and regulation as a condition of WTO membership. In terms of things like IP enforcement, there is something approaching rule of law in China. Western companies can enforce their IP rights through the Chinese judiciary, and they have a very good success rate.
> They were technically "broken" up. But they still have have CCP liaison committees
Having a "liaison committee" is very different from being a giant monopoly that rules the market and doesn't have to fear competition. Many large state-owned enterprises were broken up, forced to operate on a profit-basis for the first time, and forced to compete with one another and private enterprises. Private enterprises now make up a large share of the Chinese economy.
> It did improve for a few years, but the current administration has managed to reverse nearly all those improvements.
Do you mean Xi Jinping? Restrictions on foreign companies have continued to be loosened (e.g., the recent loosening of JV restrictions in the auto industry, which made Tesla's Shanghai factory possible).
You are meaning China censorship? And China freedom fight ? Yeah why comply with that ? China should leave their abusive dictatorship before talking about their company right
you forgot to mention that china has hacked google. "In mid-December, we detected a highly sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure originating from China that resulted in the theft of intellectual property from Google" [1]
So you're in favor of the EU forcing Tesla, Facebook, Microsoft to sell their European business to European companies then because those American companies are clearly not up to European privacy standards?
We literally know for a fact that American companies do all the things the Trump administration is accusing TikTok of doing. We've known this since the Snowden revelations.
It's also a 100% different scenario because European and American companies actively decide to not operate in China. If they want to they have to comply with the local laws. Just like European companies in the US or US companies in Europe have to. The fact that the big tech companies are not there is the result of a decision by the companies.
All companies operating in the US have to follow US law. The fact that the government can just say "You can't operate anymore" without giving any evidence of what they're accusing you of is problematic.
Authoritarian regimes are not authoritarian because they don't have laws. They are because they have laws that cover all kinds of bullshit and if you look at the countries that are most authoritarian (Saudi Arabia, China, North Korea), you'll see that they argue "national security" all the time.
Exactly! I am in favour of that. The EU protects its citizens but only to the degree it doesn't damage its relationship with the US. They need to grow some balls and stop treating the US as if it were its best mate. Clearly they are not and their laws do not protect foreign nationals in any way, or at least nearly as much as EU regulations would have them do.
Us is only replying.. China protectionism has always been way stronger than any other peer.. try appeal China administration about a ban and good luck even reading something about that in their China internet
President Trump's executive order states these reasons for banning TikTok:
"TikTok automatically captures vast swaths of information from its users, including Internet and other network activity information such as location data and browsing and search histories. This data collection threatens to allow the Chinese Communist Party access to Americans’ personal and proprietary information — potentially allowing China to track the locations of Federal employees and contractors, build dossiers of personal information for blackmail, and conduct corporate espionage.
"TikTok also reportedly censors content that the Chinese Communist Party deems politically sensitive, such as content concerning protests in Hong Kong and China’s treatment of Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities. This mobile application may also be used for disinformation campaigns that benefit the Chinese Communist Party, such as when TikTok videos spread debunked conspiracy theories about the origins of the 2019 Novel Coronavirus."
A huge amount of smart people in the U.S. seem to completely forget this when it comes to China.
Everyone's so effectively brainwashed to think that China = bad that you can't even start any type of complex conversation about such a multifaceted topic.
It's because China regularly does things that Western countries simply don't do.
For example right now we have an Australian citizen who is being held for no reason and with no ability to purse it through the judiciary because there isn't one.
This is what I’m talking about. You just give for granted that America = good, China = bad.
Should we start listing everything the US has done since the Vietnam war that has never been regarded as genocide (although it was) and nobody has ever paid for? Or all the other shenanigans American administration and agencies have been continuously involved with?
Out of the top of my head:
- guantanamo bay and waterboarding.
- toppling all sorts of South American sovereign government when the CIA would see fit.
- Nixon’s secret bombing of Cambodia from 1970 to 1975
- occupying foreign territory with the intent of making war on terror while seizing natural resources and destabilizing entire regions in the Middle East
I’m just saying: savior and champion of the free world my ass.
Which is why the US should not be reserved any benefit in comparison to China when it comes to human rights and freedoms.
We’re talking about a Western society LITERALLY built on slavery, whose entire prison system has been conceived as a continuation of forced labor.
Once this is settled, and the idea that America in inherently superior to China from an ethical standpoint is set aside, well then maybe we can properly talk about geopolitics.
While acerbic, this highlights the difference between the two systems. China is economically and politically exclusive, while US system is inclusive politically and economically (inclusive means you are not stopped from participating, not that everyone would be capable of participating). One facet of an inclusive system are courts that are politically independent. Hence you are able to sue a government in an inclusive system.
"you're not going win any medals (or fights) while holding by your usual ethical standards."
That's the thing! These are not ethical standards. These are about the general rules by which a society operates. Generally countries with inclusive systems work better than countries with exclusive ones. China being the odd man out, apparently, at the moment.
So it's not about ethics, it's about economics. It may seem like a value call, but actually it's a decision along a path does the society want to be more or less like an exclusive system. Since exclusive systems don't work as well financially, it's effectively a call does the system want to be wealthier or poorer long term.
Yes, there is still a difference. No doubt. But Donald Trump is working on it ... since he already mentioned that he wants a third term (https://twitter.com/politicsvideo23/status/12954979623664025... ) one has to see how long the system will uphold the attacks ...
Now if you tried that on Douyin, the results would be different, but Douyin is available in China while TikTok isn't, so Chinese censorship applies to Douyin while it doesn't apply to TikTok.
> You can even call them nazis without it getting removed
Which is why there is something called "Blacklisted tags" and it has been used towards QAnon posts [0] and on BLM posts. [1]
Some tags get shadow-banned so that it doesn't appear on TikTok. The users here take a new hashtag so that it can be searchable. This form of censorship still applies to TikTok.
> There you go. While they're at it, try critiquing the CCP on TikTok. Watch it get removed instantaneously.
It doesn't get removed. Neither does LGBT content or Hong Kong protest content for that matter. Just because people repeat it again and again doesn't make it true and it takes literally three seconds to check if it's true or not.
Are you sure? Only after they were called out publicly for it. [0][1] Explain why they had to own up for their actions on multiple counts of censorship to content that doesn't please the CCP.
> Just because people repeat it again and again doesn't make it true and it takes literally three seconds to check if it's true or not.
Took literally 3 seconds to find this: [2][3]
Since there is clear evidence that have done it before, they can definitely do it again (and have done), especially at sensitive content that the CCP dislikes.
That sucks very much, I agree but at least they won't send police to your home if you write critically about it. Your post here is evidence for that the CCP is way, way worse since your post would be pretty much dangerous to write in China if it were about their government.
If you really believe the US is as bad as China, you're living in a fantasy world my friend.
> they won't send police to your home if you write critically about it.
Well, unless you're Jason Chen writing about the iPhone 4.
(I don't think the US is "as bad as China" but I'm also not interested in meeting low bars. I do think it's nearly impossible to find a line China has crossed but the US has not. It's just a question of frequency.)
I am not really aware about that case, but isn't that Apple rather than the US government? Sure maybe the government sent the actual police officers but surely it must've been apple that pressured them to do it? Regarding being worse I can think of a few:
- Mass surveillance with immediate punishment if you break a rule, decided by bots.
- Concentration camps
- Giving people years of imprisonment for peacefully demonstrating in HK (which was legal afaik)
- Sending people out in different countries buying up masks in the covid-19 crisis and then re-selling them at a higher price.
- Giving citizen points/score to people and if you have a low enough score you can't ride specific trains / leave the country etc.
Just some examples at the top of my head, didn't mention organ harvesting since another person already did that.
I wasn’t going to get involved in this discussion but now I’m tempted.
Has the US done organ harvesting of political prisoners? We’ve done some incredibly messed up stuff from drugging people (including famous composers) to some really really nasty treatment (The details aren’t something I’d like to repeat) of children captured in other countries as part of war but I don’t think we’ve done that.
You can't do this sort of flamewar here, regardless of how strongly you feel about whichever countries. We ban accounts that do this, so please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules.
FWIW, our police also shoot unarmed white people at higher rates (than crime rates would predict, anyway) than unarmed black people. We have a police accountability problem, and we can improve it dramatically with a few relatively small tweaks (remove qualified immunity, weaken police unions, improve police training) whereas China's police violence is top-down policy.
Note that I'm only contextualizing/clarifying; I'll leave it to readers to determine which is preferable.
The US also has the highest prison population in the world, I'm so surprised everyone seems to be fine with that. I cannot imagine calling yourself free when 1 in 150 people is imprisoned.
Even if all fatal police shootings were directly related to a crime committed by the person who is killed (they're not), we have to ask ourselves whether such shootings (or killing by other means, e.g. chokehold) are an appropriate technique for law enforcement.
Which crimes or actions warrant shooting or killing someone, in your opinion?
When we look at data that show killings by law enforcement officers by country, we learn that in the US people are fatally shot at 3.5 times the rate than they are in Canada and 9 times the rate as in France. You are more likely to be killed by the police in America than you are in Colombia, Egypt, Pakistan[1].
> you make it sound like the police are a murder cult.
I am not saying the police are a murder cult; I'm saying that they are here to protect us and that when innocent people are fearful of those meant to protect us, something's wrong.
> Which crimes or actions warrant shooting or killing someone, in your opinion?
No situation warrants killing someone, but there are situations where if that happens it shouldn't be a surprise or immediately viewed as an injustice.
Specifically, violent crimes or crimes that when responded to by police, can turn into a violent situation:
- Direct violence (homicide, murder, domestic abuse, etc.)
- Gang related activity (drug operations, sex operations, etc.)
- Resisting arrest (there's no way for an officer to know what you'll do next and if non-lethal force cannot subdue you, then escalation is warranted)
Where it seems a lot of these situations get out of hand is more in the gang-related or resisting arrest category. It's reasonable for officers to defend themselves, and while it'd be ideal for a non-lethal outcome to happen in each case, it's impossible for every situation to end this way.
Something I've suggested elsewhere when it comes to the "how to reform this?" question is to do a few different things:
- Increase the pay of officers to be at the ranking of a doctor/lawyer while also requiring equally stringent qualifications and training.
- Both before and after admission to the force, regular psychological screenings and profilings that evaluate both your record, your relationships, and your social media history (warranted due to the amount of power you're granted and offset by the high pay).
- Public voting for police chiefs, psychologists, and other officials combined with the above routine psychological screenings and profiling.
Sadly, even with all of this, there will still be mistakes and injustices but I think the above can have a significant impact on making law enforcement less prone to violence.
The police do not exist to protect you, nor do they have a duty to do so. The police exist to keep civil society orderly - that may mean protecting people at times, but often times simply apprehending criminals post-crime is enough.
Put another way, no amount of police are going to prevent you from being murdered or having your wallet stolen, but more police will probably catch more murderers and thieves after their crime.
You can't do this sort of flamewar here, regardless of how strongly you feel about whichever countries. We ban accounts that do this, so please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules.
At least the prisons aren't re-education camps to worship USA culture and the Federal Government. At least I can publicly talk about evil government abuse of its citizens, unlike Chinese people living under the CCP's shadow.
Well, this being a China's company. It would be an error not to anticipate something like that from it.
They are so predictable.
I have a problem expressing this in English, but the idea is "If you make it easy, and risk free for them to blow up your bridges, they will definitely do it."
Xi can only do to Americans, as much as Americans allow him to do.
All Chinese companies are subsidiaries of Chinese communists party. There is no single exception. TikTok and Huawei have been exploiting all of its information and power to influence in the favor of China Communist Party and it's against not just us, but all the free states and people in proper nations.
I think it depends on the size of the company. Some maintain a further distance from the party successfully, some even manage to criticise it, but I don't think you get to ByteDance levels of growth without close connection to the party. Consider that ByteDance has its own CCP Party Secretary.
Of course, this doesn't mean you're exploiting US data at the whim of the party, which is what Trump's actions imply the company is doing. I think you can successfully maintain a separate US structure from their Chinese one, and I don't think China really cares much for what US people do in their own country.
This is retaliation for China's unfair practices. It's not about propaganda, what videos are allowed or disallowed, or who might see which videos you watch. It's about the fact that valuable US tech companies aren't allowed to compete in China. If they were the trade deficit wouldn't nearly as bad. Now the Trump administration is hitting back. This is plainly and simply: Screw you, we're going to take something successful of yours.
The tactics are distasteful: Filing outrageous criminal changes against Meng Wanzhou and the campaign to ban Huawei products as well as this frankly gangster-like hostile takeover of Bytedance's business.
I don't feel sorry for Huawei. Live by the sword, die by the sword. Bytedance on the other hand is only guilty of making a fun product, but in the game being played here fairness to the pawns isn't a priority.
The US trade deficit has basically nothing to do with China's economic policies. It's driven by structural issues inside the United States, as well as the use of the US dollar as the international reserve currency. If the US were to end all trade with China, the trade deficit would just shift to other countries. Americans buy more than they produce, and China has little influence over that.
> valuable US tech companies aren't allowed to compete in China.
Facebook and Google can't operate in China because of censorship laws. Many US high-tech companies do a massive amount of business in China, including Apple, Qualcomm, Micron, AMD and Texas Instruments, to name just a few.
I suspect there's also more lobbying from more isolated (as in not general American) interest involved than people think. I initially thought it would come from the potential buyers like Microsoft but actually articles have mentioned Zuckerberg was throwing his weight behind it before it all took off.
Sure, could be. Maybe it was even Zuckerberg's idea, who knows. Regardless, the strategy is to pressure the CCP to allow better China market access by imposing restrictions on access by Chinese companies. And just like the CCP, this administration is picking targets strategically and using arbitrary and ambiguous reasoning:
Did the CCP really ban Facebook because of censorship or was it actually a protectionist move? Is the Trump administration threatening TikTok for the reasons it says or is it really about punishing China for its trade policy?
> ByteDance has had a party committee since 2017 and is headed by CCP secretary and company editor-in-chief Zhang Fuping (張輔評), reported Human Rights Watch. Members of the committee hold regular gatherings at which they study speeches by Chinese Chairman Xi Jinping (習近平) and "pledge to follow the party in technological innovation."
> In addition, ByteDance on April 25, 2019, signed a strategic cooperation agreement with the Ministry of Public Security's Press and Publicity Bureau (公安部新聞宣傳局) in Beijing. The agreement was billed as "aiming to give full play to the professional technology and platform advantages of Toutiao and Tiktok in big data analysis," strengthen the creation and production of "public security new media works," boost "network influence and online discourse power," and enhance "public security propaganda, guidance, influence, and credibility," among other aspects.
Nobody gives a crap about TikTok or its executives.
If Trump puts them all in jail for life without a trial. I don't care about TikTok and their cronies.
If Trump decided to seize all billionaires' money and assets and distribute it equally to everyone, I would see that as a plus.
In this nonsensical economy, the pathetic moral arguments made by this article are word vomit. Not relevant to anyone's life. Nobody cares.
They should be locked up for abusing our collective brains with this irrelevant crap.
It's hard to know how to feel about this complex situation. On one hand:
- The Chinese government clearly has its tendrils in TikTok and uses it to push its oppressive censorship policies around the world
- The security implications of giving China a backdoor into a large percentage of American phones is too concerning to ignore
On the other hand:
- Explicitly targeting specific companies feels wrong. If security and censorship are real concerns here, Congress should be passing laws that apply to all companies, not just TikTok
- Even though there are sound reasons to restrict TikTok, this is still a transparently protectionist policy by the Trump admin and fits right into his nationalistic, totalitarian, xenophobic playbook. A broken clock is still right twice a day, I suppose
- Requiring a sale to an American company is the mirror image of China's forced technology transfers for foreign companies. Two wrongs don't make a right
I think the best scenario is for Congress to preempt Trump with laws that protect American security and free speech interests without executive action. That's easier said than done, though.
I believe the USA is squarely within its rights to reciprocate the ban that american companies such as Google and Facebook face in China. So the move is justified on commercial grounds alone.
That being said, Trump's claims that TikTok is a national security threat are more than dubious. Sure, the operation of any foreign company can be interpreted as a security threat to any nation. Who's to say that the latest imported batch of Ramen aren't part of a Japanese plot for a new Pearl Harbor involving explosive Ramen. But the only logical conclusion to this way of thinking is to completely isolate a country from the outside world.
In a world full of shady companies, I would much rather bacl companies like FB than companies like TikTok backed by the Chinese government.
Even with all the flaws that the US government and various US companies have, they're so much better in terms of transparency and regulation than their chinese counterparts.
I would love for tiktok (and all similar social media) to disappear and I agree that China is a threat to the rest of the world (although the US is too :-) ) but tiktok do have a point that this has been done by the trump admin like they do things in a banana republic: I don't like things therefore I, the king.. uh president, decide that this has to go.
You might like it here as its a company you don't like but what if the same is done next for Twitter, Telegram, or maybe just foreign companies like e.g. Siemens, Tata, ...
Trump is hollowing out the rule of law and pretends he can do whatever he feels like. It's a mistake to cheer for that even if you agree with some of those decisions.
All I'm reminded of is this famous quote of a German priest ultimately executed by the Nazis:
> First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out-Because I was not a socialist.
> Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out-Because I was not a trade unionist.
> Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out-Because I was not a Jew.
> Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
Tiktok, in your hiring practice, you stated CCP members first and preferred, you have CCP organization in your company and they're very active daily(meeting, discussing how to serve better to CCP and obey CCP's leadership,etc), in fact your CEO etc must follow the CCP leaders in your organization, you're nothing but a CCP puppet. You're further evil enough to leverage the West free world to cover the true you.
this is the same logic as many CCP officers in the news section, they block twitter/facebook/etc inside mainland China, but themselves have active twitter/facebook/etc accounts to push CCP's propaganda. they become so good at leveraging the free world's system to cover their own evil actions. For god sake the west is waking up.
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The jump from banning Huawei from building critical public infrastructure to banning an app that hasn't even conclusively been proven to behave in any uniquely dangerous ways seems to be an intense, unjustified escalation of this conflict. [1]
You may disagree with me on the strict security-related merits of banning TikTok, and I am willing to concede all of them, however this will, either way, establish a precedent of an app's coverage by 1st amendment free speech protections, and of what standards the government needs to do to ban an app, whether it be a Chinese social media app or an end-to-end encrypted messaging app. [2]
If the standard is simply to claim that it's "a national security threat" without requiring any further evidence (besides the fact that it's Chinese) then that might be cause for concern.
[1] https://medium.com/@fs0c131y/tiktok-logs-logs-logs-e93e81626...
[2] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/08/tiktok-ban-seed-genuin...