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...
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.
[1] https://www.lawfareblog.com/tiktok-and-law-primer-case-you-n....
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.
If TikTok were made in India, then you would have a good point.
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.
[1] https://www.eff.org/press/archives/2008/04/21-40
[2] https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/08-1448.ZS.html
[3] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/25/business/china-whatsapp-b...
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?
Trade fairness is a red herring.
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.
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.
No it's not. China has banned most Western apps in the interests of national security.
And that article you listed on analysing TikTok is hilariously incompetent. Didn't think to investigate multiplexing data with the video stream ?
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.
> is largely unprecedented "in the US".
As others stated, if the US wants to start using China as a country to base its precedents on, that's even more concerning in my view.
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.
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.
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.
In the USA. China has done is many times.
I imagine China disallows end-to-end encrypted messaging apps as well, which is largely the basis of my concern.
Public Relations Statement: "Put simply, we have a thriving community and we are grateful – and responsible – to them."
With: Terms of Service[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.
Edit: I am an EU citizen if it matters.
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 US side of what? What does it mean to be on the US side?
> 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.
1. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-07-07/tiktok-to....
FB and Twitter didn't have people on them embarrass Trump by tanking one of his rallies:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/21/style/tiktok-trump-rally-...
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.
[0]: https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/01/16/bytedance-cant-outrun-b...
Less cynical answer: wider action would require congress to be involved and congress is permanently gridlocked
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.
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.
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.
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 17th amendment changed this.
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.
* 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.
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.
The kicker is at the end:
“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.
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.
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.
1: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/mar/17/tiktok-tr...
2: https://theintercept.com/2020/02/06/tiktok-suicide-brazil/
3: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/09/15/tiktoks...
“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.”
From the article there’s mention of fake IDs. That made me think of this news item: https://www.fox5atlanta.com/news/shipments-of-nearly-20000-f...
Something is afoot and TikTok needs to not be here anymore.
It was legitimate a few years ago, but nowadays I don’t trust it.
But FB can do this in India and its ok ?
https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-executive-supported-in...
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."
> 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.
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 ..
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
That's just scratching the surface.
We should ban it.
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)
Maybe free speech actually SHOULD be free everywhere, private interests be damned?
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?
[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/amendment-1/g...
[2] https://www.visualcapitalist.com/most-valuable-companies-all...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separation_of_church_and_state...
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.
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
More info: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/oct/14/spain-...
"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.
blocking those who block is freeing those who are blocked is not becoming like them.You may feel those actions are just, but being just does not make them legal.
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, ...
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.
What we are in is a sort of techno-mercantilism where governments enlist large companies to deliver geopolitical influence in exchange for protection.
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.
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.
Or, you know, just practicing a certain religion or being from a specific ethnic group[0].
So please don't be so small minded bringing this "free world" propaganda terms here...
Peace
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,
[0] https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/STUD/2020/6487...
An former employee of Weibo (China's Twitter clone) who recently moved to the US did a great interview with VOA
The page you're posting that comment on is social media...
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.
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.
Sigh.
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.
>> As a company we have always focused on transparency
maybe this is another parody like the MasterWiki one?
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.
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.
Quote form fortune[1]:
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.
[1] https://fortune.com/2020/08/06/tiktok-ban-trump-executive-or...
[1] https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/new-approach-to-chin...
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.
"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."
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/executive-or...
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/03/mike-pompeo-do...
Where there's money to be made, no poison is too poisonous for big companies.
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.
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.
> 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.
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?
> 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.
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.
- 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I did business there and I know you all well.