My problem is the unfair competition of Chinese app devs having access to Western markets when Western app devs don't have the same level of access to the Chinese market.
That said, there's a large difference between the US/Europe spying on each other, and a country like China, who (along with the US and Europe) has plans to go to war should they deem it necessary.
I will not be shocked if this generation is remembered as the biggest security leak in history.
The reason the West generally doesn't adopt policies like that is because we believe in letting people speak the truth to power and that generally gives us an advantage because we have more overall perspectives and are more likely to organise around the truth. It is challenging to suppress discussions about our own weaknesses and we are aware of where the major problem points are likely to be.
Mimicking China's policies restricting access to markets is probably a loss for us. We want asymmetry here, it gives us an advantage. Given that we seem to have/be giving up the industrial edge it is worth holding on to what we have left.
The reason the West doesn't adopt policies like this is that we run our own propaganda operations against our own citizens. Corporate advertising is an arm of this. The people and organizations with the most wealth and power can buy the biggest megaphones, and our system just lets those viewpoints get massively amplified. We don't need to suppress individual thought and speech, since it largely isn't competitive in the average American's mind.
A lot of people criticize the state of Chinese academics as uncreative and fraudulent, and their industries as copycats, but there might cross a tipping point where China is clearly more innovative than the EU, even as the EU leads the world in democratically-minded regulations and civic rights.
There are many world democracies and autocracies. We absolutely should never expect that merely following some first principles of free markets and democracies should determine why some nations rank atop the world.
Have you ever talked to an average person
I don't understand this argument. Are you OK with US companies or the NSA doing it? How does one group doing something bad justify not caring about another group doing it?
Not to mention, the US is an allied country whose interests overwhelmingly align with the interests of most of Europe. Conceptually, surveillance sucks - but if these are my only choices, I'd much rather have a dossier with the NSA than with their Chinese counterpart.
If you have two choices and both behave same on some principle, trying to have a principled stand is futile.
> I'd much rather have a dossier with the NSA than with their Chinese counterpart.
That's a naive view. For Italians, dossier with Giorgia Meloni or her friends can be far more dangerous than with Xi. By proximity and relevance, they are more likely to be vocal about/active in Italian politics. Also, Italian govt. has far more power to influence their lives than Chinese govt. has.
As an Indian, I'll be far more concerned about how much I am tracked by Modi/Indian police/agencies than the Chinese counterparts.
That seems insane given that China has been engaged in a proxy war against Europe (via Russia) for the past couple of years.
I don’t want to be spied on in general. No matter by whom.
If a foreign adversary directly controls the media your citizens consume, that is a pretty huge risk.
they use that information to manipulate you as much as they can
which is most people is a lot more then they think it is
like a _huge lot more_, humans are fundamentally quite manipulable
especially teens, the main target audience of TickTock
well they also can use the information to idk. know exactly when it's the best time to kitnap a kit of someone they want to blackmail, it's not that china hasn't done stuff like that more then just one or two times
What I don't understand is this hatred of Trump, he was the first one to consider China an enemy, I remember when he started with the tariffs, the whole democratic party went crazy. Trump has been right about many things that now are like normality.
I remember the first act of Biden was to stop a railroad strike and causing a environmental disaster the day after
I ALSO think the lack of reciprocal market access and the differences between TikTok (its equivalent) in China and the US version are concerning. It’s telling that children in China have caps on how much time they can spend in the app, but the US version doesn’t have any such thing.
i've reported over 100 antisemitic content and comments - none of them have been taken down
simply having an israel flag and yellow ribbon on your tiktok name can result in over 20 antisemitic replies, even if your comment has nothing to do with the conflict
this lack of action seems to contribute to the growing number of teens developing antisemetic views, which is deeply, deeply troubling
There are games, stories, books and movies filled with murder, rape, nazis, evil, gore, antiheroes etc. I was never once motivated to replicate that behaviour. It was always just something crazy/bad people did. All my friends also knew the world is full of crazy people who believe crazy things.
Every guy in my school had seen 4chan atleast if not pol.
At the end of the day what prevents people from turning evil is being raised well. You could ban all depictions of rape/murder in the world but we would still have rapists, racists, theives, and murderers.
I am a free speech absolutist. I do not believe the cost of hiding evil in the way you advocate would meaningfully influence how many evil people are created. I do believe letting the government enforce or police it in any way might seem okay in the short term but overall harm us in the long term.
I think your understanding of how people form beliefs is not accurate.
Both good and bad ideas are contagious. Humans are vulnerable to social proof. Most humans aren't that smart. Most humans aren't impervious to the madness of crowds. They will adopt the religion of their parents. They will adopt the bigotry of their peers, typically no more and no less. A person from 100 years ago is more racist than a person today because they were surrounded by different norms. People aren't rational actors, they absorb what they're given.
imagine this scenario: you're just a simple teen being born in a certain country, not having to do with any kind of conflict or politics, and you're bombarded with hate comments like "jump" and "keys", which are euphemisms for self-harm, and even "baby killer" for simply belonging to a certain population or ethnicity.
i have experienced this firsthand - i received these exact replies on a comment i posted on a cute cat video.
no one, especially not an innocent person, should be subjected to such treatment.
Being anti Israel is not anti semitism.
Being anti Zionist is not anti semitism.
Saying from river to sea Palestine will be free is not anti semitism.
Calling for the destruction of a state is not antisemitism.
I’ve personally come across 2 actually anti-Semitic content on TikTok and have reported it and have seen it taken down.
moreover, why should one be targeted by harassment by simply being born in a certain country?
Maybe I'm a free speech absolutist. I don't think the gov't should be able to ban any app for the content on that app (barring extreme things like csam, etc.)
Now that a single foreign company has gained the level of breakout popularity that had already been achieved by 20+ domestic companies, it's time for pearl clutching galore. Every single argument being levied at China and their authoritarianism is a dynamic we've already been suffering from domestic corporations and their authoritarianism. Give me a break!
Instead of hanging their hats on this simplistic election year stunt, the government could still create universal regulations that reign in the surveillance industry and give Americans control of their personal data and digital lives, preserving individual liberty rather than trying to mitigate the downstream effects on the collective. Yet apart from essentially toothless regulations by a few states regarding some very specific types of personal data, still crickets.
So I guess the lawmakers' concerns still aren't really about protecting Americans, but just making sure nominally American surveillance companies at least get paid when Americans get surveilled and propagandized by foreign powers? It seems like no matter which way this case gets decided and which way the precedent gets set, We the People are set to lose.
The issue is surveillance by a hostile nation. It's not a "stupid election year stunt," since we have elections every other year, and that rule would preclude any effort to do anything ever.
Which even without Tiktok, can be straightforwardly done by China (and every other foreign power) paying the domestic surveillance companies for access and influence in straightforward business relationships. And if that gets clamped down on in another decade, then by paying more for not so straightforward business relationships.
Well seeing as this other country is likely to be at war with either us or our allies soon, yes that is a pretty big deal.
If a country that we are likely to be at war with has significant influencer over our population, that is indeed a big deal.
> So I guess the lawmakers' concerns still aren't really about protecting Americans,
Of course it is about protecting Americans. It is about protecting Americans and our allies from the effects of an upcoming war between super powers.
That is very much a reasonable concern.
> We the People are set to lose.
No we don't. If an enemy country is less effectively able to wage war against us or our allies, that would be a win for our country. Us and our allies winning wars is better than us losing them.
So, how will the war begin? Who will begin it? How long has the US or its allies been planning to start this war?
China will start it when they invade our ally Taiwan.
It would also, almost certainly involve a pre-emptive strike from china onto american forces. This would be because China knows that the only way to have even a chance of success is to strike first against the USA.
Maybe a politician will be elected in Taiwan that China really doesn't like. Maybe the decades long, existing trends will continue towards the Taiwanese people no longer thinking themselves as having any sort of chinese identity. Or maybe Xi will simply try to distract the population from problems at home with a foolish hopeless war. There are a lot of possibilities!
> How long has the US or its allies been planning
They aren't planning on starting a war. If China doesn't invade Taiwan, there will be no war.
But yes, the USA would absolutely defend Taiwan from an invasion, and already gives Taiwan weapons to do so.
I hope that some of the politicians in china will eventually learn how foolish such an invasion will be. Or, perhaps, China will simply saber rattle and do nothing like it has been sabre rattling for decades.
China has enough problems as it is, but there is still a chance that they will go off the deep end and invade our allies.
If that happens though, the USA will absolutely defend against such an invasion though.
Why would we allow a country that bans all our news and social media tech companies to operate their company here?
If they want to operate tiktok, then we should be allowed to operate google/Facebook/twitter/etc. They can’t ban our companies on national security grounds and then act like we are crazy for banning theirs.
The difference between europe banning us companies vs Europe banning Chinese companies is simply that europeans can operate similar companies in the United States without issue, whereas any service like this owned by europeans would be immediately banned in China.
Tit for tat policies serve as an effective standard for encouraging foreign countries to open their markets, as each side is incentivized to reduce trade barriers in response to similar actions by the other, ultimately fostering fair and balanced economic exchanges. We do it with airlines, why wouldn’t we do it with social media.
I agree 100%. We don’t need to make it any more complicated than this simple argument.
I just don't think my gov't should be able to ban me from seeing information online. I hate China, but I hate my government banning my own consumption of media more.
You'd be destroying your own country by setting precedents and new legislation and suffer its implications forever, when instead you could respond with a capitalism mindset, understand the market and put together a coordinated effort to kick their asses and make them lose mindshare.
It’s also a simple component of how our visa system works. The reason Americans and Europeans can travel to so many countries visa free is that if you want to travel here then you have to let us travel there.
Denying one country the ability to operate here, because they deny us the ability to operate there will still allow basic freedom, because most other countries don’t operate draconian bans like this. The reality is that by applying these rules we are more likely to spread capitalism, democracy and freedom, by demanding China open up their markets.
no, it isn't tough. Your ex-NATO officials are employees who lack the power to say No to the CCP.
Do Americans want the US to be like that?
no one will ever convince me that any of the owners of megasocial companies are benevolent while state backed are somehow different. none of these people should have the kind of power they have—whether governments or billionaires, no matter their nationality.
if we’re declaring that tiktok gives china massive amounts of power then this means that twitter gives elon massive amounts of power and amazon gives bezos massive amounts of power. if we’re declaring this is happening, then no, i don’t want anyone to have that kind of power. particularly small groups of billionaires who are shady and dark af. and who refuse to be transparent. and who refuse to be held accountable. and who actively take a “we rich deserve privacy protections and you non-billionaire peasants give us all of your secrets.”
if we’re declaring tiktok gives this kind of power then we’re absolute fools if we don’t stop them all. and i don’t think that’s hyperbolic.
I find that a lot of these games are against opponents (real or imagined) that see the chessboard. They see moves ahead and realize that asking question x inevitable leads to y leads to z and z means that I lose money so let's act as if x is ridiculous or not feasible or crazy.
In difference to US companies suing in China where you have on paper also a standing but the bias against you in all kinds of subtle ways is so earth shattering that most times it's not even worth considering suing.
There are very few companies that (1) operate at large scale in the US, and (2) have such an obligation to a hostile government.
Citation needed
Every fucking country in the world is now going to point at the TikTok case and justify censorship.
The arguments used for blocking TikTok are literally the same arguments Iran uses to block, say , YouTube. Like, copy paste and put them there.
I think there are many people sympathetic to the government’s position that will be totally satisfied and this quote is not correct at all.
