This is going to be an interesting experiment:
A widely used social network across the world WITHOUT american content.
Until now, the closest thing we had like this were national our regional networks like Russia's vk, but Vk was never truly popular outside Russian speaking countries.
Now we, for the first time ever, will have the situation where a social network has global reach but without american content.
Will it keep being a english first space? Will it survive/thrive? How the content is going to evolve? What does this means in terms of global cultural influence? Will we see internationalized Chinese content dominating it? Will this backfire for the US?
Tiktok is actually surprisingly national in how it serves its content. If you're outside the US you don't see most American accounts except the ones that go very viral.
Edit: I should clarify. This might mean most content you see is English, if you're interested in English content. However it matters where the video was geographically uploaded from. If you upload a tiktok video and check the stats you'll see most views are from your region or country.
Tiktok shows videos locally, then regionally and then finally worldwide if yoo have a big hit.
It would be interesting to know what fraction of the English content people see is posted geographically from within America.
Switzerland has just 8 million people, which are divided into two big language groups. And most people speak (or at least understand) English. So, it's natural for the algorithm to converge to content in English.
What I've learned is that since Switzerland has 3 official languages (German, French and Italian) children and teens at school focus on learning one of the other two regions they are not from.
In particular this leads to French and Italian cantons to be moderately fluent in each other's language. Strikingly when I lived in Lausanne, more people knew Italian than English. English was really not on their radar (plus, add that francophones are kind of elitist when it comes to languages and don't really like to consume content that is not in french).
In German speaking Switzerland proficiency in English was still subpar from most of the rest of Europe when walking in a shop or going to a restaurant.
Not to derail, but when I was in Switzerland, I found the German Swiss to be far more elitarian about NOT learning French, than the other way around. And French Swiss being a minority, they kinda got treated as other or less-than in the bulk of Switzerland. But all German Swiss are at least willing to try English, while the French Swiss tend to avoid English, so maybe that's where the vibe comes from?
For both you and OP, first of you, thank you for "elitarian", but even after reading the definition, I still think you both meant "elitist".
And even though I probably tend to agree with both of you, it's kinda funny to blame French or German speakers about being elitist against English speakers, of which native speakers are notoriously monolingual :-)
I don't blame anyone, I'm Italian and I'm fluent in French, English and Polish besides Italian.
I'm just saying that in the French part of Switzerland English wasn't a given among any generation and it neither was common in the German/Italian parts too if you exclude the expats.
And yes, francophone tend to be very elitist about consuming exclusively french content, regardless of them being from France, Switzerland or Belgium.
> And most people speak (or at least understand) English.
This is wrong. In cities where there's a lot of tourism, they might understand. Most Swiss people only speak their local languages (German or French). As for those living in Ticino, they tend to be better polyglots.
About 40% of all Swiss inhabitants speak English at least once a week [1].
Anecdotally, I can't think of a single acquaintance younger than 50 years old that doesn't speak fluently. Everyone in Switzerland learns English at school for at least five years. Most even for seven years.
Some of my German speaking friends even talk in English to French speaking people, even when both have learned the other‘s respective language at school.
> Everyone in Switzerland learns English at school for at least five years. Most even for seven years.
We learn the other's respective language for 7 years, too. Yet, as you pointed out, people speak in English because there is no willingness to learn and apply the other's language.
Some of my friends speak English fluently, but I have a very hard bias as I work in IT. My whole family doesn't speak any language other than French. Most of the people I've been to school with don't come close to speaking English casually. None would watch an English content creator.
Due to the shared heritage between the English and German languages, perhaps it's different in the German-speaking region. If you ask someone slightly complicated English questions, they might not be completely lost - after all, some words share the same etymology. But Switzerland is absolutely not an English-speaking country at all.
I met plenty of people in Lausanne who didn't speak English, or at least didn't want to speak English (it is hard to tell, and anyways, it doesn't really matter). I visited Montreal shortly after my 2 year stay in Lausanne ended and I was surprised on how multi-lingual people were there.
Well, it makes sense. Canada still has a significant English-speaking majority. Even if Québec in isolation has a French-speaking majority, there's a very large incentive for French-speaking citizens to learn English because their province is surrounded by primarily Anglophone regions.
There are also other factors at play. Montréal has a fairly large community of native English speakers and receives a lot of tourism from Anglophone Canada and the United States due to its status as the largest city in Québec (and second largest in Canada). It also gets a lot of immigrants, many of which are (at least initially) more proficient in English than in French.
I can't say I'm entirely familiar with the situation in Switzerland, but as far as I know the country has four official languages, none of which are English. It also doesn't border any English-speaking countries. It seems English is mostly used as a lingua franca for communication between citizens who don't otherwise share a language rather than due to the direct presence of native Anglophones. Also, Romansh aside, all national languages of Switzerland (French, German and Italian) are spoken in areas that directly border a country where that language is the national language (France, Italy, Germany/Austria). With Switzerland being in the Schengen Area, its linguistic regions may be considered to be part of a much larger individual linguistic communities, which I feel may also diminish the need to learn other languages.
> I can't say I'm entirely familiar with the situation in Switzerland, but as far as I know the country has four official languages, none of which are English.
The language of French Switzerland is French. You'll never hear German, Italian, or Romansch. If you only spoke German and not French or English, you really couldn't live there very effectively (only places like Bern or Basel are truly multi-lingual), yes you'll get your official docs in German but then what? I assume the same is true in German speaking Switzerland, and I have no idea about Italian Switzerland.
If a Swiss German and Swiss French met for coffee, what language do you think they would wind up speaking? Perhaps English if neither had comfortable fluency in the other language. Not to take away from your point, but English can get you really far in this world.
I'm sorry if this sounds offensive or derogatory. But as a Swiss person, I've never heard anyone call it "Alemannic". Whether it be foreigners, Swiss-French speakers or Swiss-German speakers, everyone called it "German".
> Swiss German (Standard German: Schweizerdeutsch, Alemannic German: Schwiizerdütsch, Schwyzerdütsch, Schwiizertüütsch, Schwizertitsch Mundart, and others; Romansh: Svizzers Tudestg) is any of the Alemannic dialects spoken in the German-speaking part of Switzerland, and in some Alpine communities in Northern Italy bordering Switzerland.
All Swiss-German is an Alemannic dialect, not all Alemannic dialects are Swiss-German, is how I'd interpret that.
It depends what you interact with. I tried it fresh today and it quickly decided I'm a Berliner muslim who likes Nigerian food because I lingered for a minute on something. That interest graph is very fast and volatile.
Uhh... that's kind of how these algorithms work. I presume you interact (i.e. don't scroll past) with a lot of the English posts. It's going to index on that and show you more English content. When I'm abroad, I might see a few posts in their native language but the algorithm will revert to showing English posts about the city/country once it realizes I'm not really jiving with Portuguese posts, for example.
I believe the algo is somewhat timezone based, too.
Very common for ppl to be served Chinese or asian influencer content after 12pm (EST). So common, in fact, most of the western users begin posting "whelp, time to go to bed!"
The majority of the content feels regional, though.
I would believe if someone said it was completely organic. It's just how Internet is and how social graphs build up. The typical American notion that the Internet is nearly 100% dominated by American English socio-cultural platform and English is the foundational language of the world's all cognitive processing is just an annoying megalomaniac hallucination.
English is used as a lot as a fallback language for inter-cultural exchanges. In that sense it's kind of dominating, but that's it. Intra-cultural communications happens in local languages, and even if that preferred language happened to be one of en-* locales, that only means everyone is functionally bilingual, and it doesn't mean cultural informational borders don't exist. Data still only goes through bridging connections.
It tends to get people annoyed if you don't. Facebook user distribution is like 12% Indian and 6% American. Twitter is(was) 34% English and 16% Japanese. Bluesky was at one point 43% Japanese. If your feed ISN'T filled with Hindi, Chinese, Spanish, Japanese and so on, with only one in five or less made in English sent from US, your feed is tampered with. But otherwise that social media would be genuinely less useful.
Mastodon only had the raw feed and that drove European network operators insane, so much so that they effectively GFW'd itself.
I actually had to check if TikTok was subject to the French protection laws on localized media quotas. I see it applies to Netflix et al, but not directly to TikTok.
My anecdotal evidence of watching TikTok usage on others’ phones while riding subway systems in Paris suggest there’s plenty of English-language content out there.
in Morocco most of the adults speak French and Arabic, so when they need to speak to an Englisher they get some kids over to help because they all speak English from TikTok
TikTok is surprisingly national at the surface level, but it is all coordinated back with the parent China based entities (ByteDance, Douyin, and the CCP), so that even if it is national, it upholds China’s national interests. See the story at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42739855 for more details. But basically, TikTok executives had to agree to let ByteDance monitor their personal devices, swear oaths to uphold various goals of the CCP (“national unity” “socialism” etc), report to both a US-based manager and a China-based manager, uphold the CCP’s moderation/censorship scheme, and so on. It is REALLY aggressive and unethical, but also reveals how subtly manipulative the entire system of TikTok is.
Do you think it would be possible to show this programmatically? As in scrape n posts from TikTok and Reels and show the first displays CCP tendencies?
Or is this like a general US freedom China dictator logic
> This is going to be an interesting experiment: A widely used social network across the world WITHOUT american content.
China has had such social networks for a long time. Their Weibo and Xiaohongshu are two prominent examples. Weibo started as a copycat of Twitter, but then beats Twitter hands-down with faster iterations, better features, and more vibrant user engagement despite the gross censorship imposed by the government.
My guess is that TT can still thrive without American content, as long as other governments do not interfere as the US did. A potential threat to TT is that the US still has the best consumer market, so creators may still flock to a credible TT-alternative for better monetization, thus snatching away TT's current user base in other countries.
To directly answer the question, Rednote is not generally used outside China, and the point about these apps being representative of "global" social media apps is false.
It received some popularity among TikTok refugees from the US and subsequently also from around the world by users who got curios about what the fuzz was all about.
It's called Dispo. You probably haven't heard of it because it became almost irrelevant a few weeks after launch. #1 on the app store doesn't mean a whole lot.
I agree. But I'm just saying that #1 on the app store doesn't preclude something from being a fad and my guess is that in 1 month's time, no one is going to be talking about RedNote outside of Chinese communities.
How many of those downloads originated in China? Genuine question, I read the article and it doesn't say. Apple's App Store is available in China, and China's population alone could be skewing those numbers.
I think it will be a temporary phenomenon. Tiktok people arrived on RedNote last week and were jaw-droppingly amazed at videos of flashy modern Chinese cities, natural wonders (Guilin mountains), beautifully dressed young men and women, tasty food, Luigi fandom, and cute cats.
For many it was a revelation that the US government/media complex has been systematically lying to them about China. They are arriving at an acceptance that the US is a shabby declining empire dominated by a corrupt elite and heartless broligarchs. Always a good thing to bump up against reality, imho.
However I think that the US-based population of Tiktok refugees will subside once the novelty effect has worn off. Probably shrink by half in a month. Hopefully there will remain a positive lingering effect.
Yeah, me neither. Some analysis said the absolute number is large but the percentage is still small. And the migration is more about protesting. Xiaohongshu will need to come up with better monetization schemes too.
> Will we see internationalized Chinese content dominating it?
This is a weird fantasy, but it brings up an interesting point. The complete lack of Chinese influence on global pop culture. Especially when compared to Japan or Korea, countries with a fraction of the population but many, many times the influence.
I wish the CCP didn't wall off their citizens from the rest of the world in the name of protecting their own power. Think of the creativity we are all losing out on.
> The complete lack of Chinese influence on global pop culture
The CCP has tried to get their culture out there, it just has not been successful at the visually obvious scale of Japan or Korea. But their culture is definitely getting out there, and I think we often don't spot the Chinese influence on something unless some journalist finds out and writes an article about it.
Some of their influence is leveraged in business deals, with several movies being altered by the demand of the CCP, and these changes persisting in worldwide releases, not just the Chinese-released version of the movies.
Some of their influence is leveraged in video games- Genshin Impact is a famously successful Chinese game. There are some competitive Chinese teams in various pockets of e-sports too. Tencent also owns several video game developers, and occasionally uses their influence to change parts of a game to please the CCP.
There is a Chinese animation industry (print and video), and occasionally they get a worldwide success. I remember being surprised when I found out that "The Daily Life of the Immortal King" was Chinese- you can tell it isn't Japanese but lots of people guess that it is Korean.
Mostly true but the exception is K-Pop, which as I understand was the creation of a project by the South eKorean government. There was a severe financial crisis in the late 1990s where the country almost went bankrupt. Desperately seeking sources of revenue, the government funded K-Pop groups which eventually become a global phenomenon (BTS et al). At least that is what some Koreans have told me.
I became so interested in ancient Chinese mythology after playing black myth wukong. Also my cousin is watching cDramas all the time and she intends to marry Chinese guy… So I think the soft power is there already, whether we like it or not. but I think it’s good to have competing content instead of being fed whatever powers that be think is good fur us
As someone who wants to learn Chinese, I think about it all the time. Watching Chinese shows just isn't as fun for whatever reason. I was telling my wife the other day I have met so many people who credit Friends for why they can speak English.
That's soft power right there.
I've had to resort to watching anime on Netflix with Chinese dubs - anime is good because people actually talk slower and usually use simple language. When I watched Three Body (Chinese version) the dialogue was impenetrable lol
For better or worse, I think CCP has long been on the backfoot in international propaganda just because what passes for persuasive narratives in authoritarian contexts falls flat to global audiences fluent in western entertainment and media culture.
Of course they have modernized, but most actual influence obtained thus fair (e.g. international olympic committees covering up investigations, stopping the NBA from venturing criticisms) has come from projection of soft power rather than being on the cultural cutting edge.
I've never considered there to be one, although I'm open to the idea.
It's easy for me to recognize an Ameican pop culture or an Anglo pop culture, and the favor each show for certain imports over others, but those don't seem nearly so universal as your usage of "global pop culture" suggests.
Latin, Arabic, Russian, Chinese, French, Indian/South Asian, etc each represent huge "pop culture" markets of their own but also each have their own import biases.
The only good Chinese language films were all filmed in Hong Kong, directed by people like Wong Kar-Wai. In the Mood for Love is widely considered one of the greatest films ever made.
Chinese cultural (and censor) sensibilities are why big budget US movies are almost universally boring and terrible these days. Authoritarian societies aren’t exactly known for creating good art.
This is precisely what i'm talking about. A country of 1.4b with a film industry that gets billions in state subsidies and they best they can do is mild popularity of a few films on their physical borders.
As a Chinese American, this is the real reason people don't know about China.
To be honest, most of the movies/shows China creates sucks. They're Marvel-esque CGI fests with awful storylines.
Meanwhile, Japan and Korea are creating awesome media.
The whole narrative about the US gov trying to "hide" China isn't really true. There are a ton of viral videos on YouTube about how great China is. And we welcome Chinese immigrants every year.
The real problem is that China itself doesn't execute when it comes to soft power.
I think you are a bit too premature: China has at least one(usually dozens) competitor for literally everything America has. You just don't hear about everything in the US.
Think of any industry and there is probably a Chinese competitor that is trying.
Tesla -> BYD
Google -> Baidu
Starbucks -> Luckin Coffee
IMAX -> China Film Giant Screen or maybe POLYMAX
Finally Disney -> Possibly Beijing Enlight Pictures
They released an animated film Ne Zha in 2019 that according to wikipedia was "the highest-grossing animated film in China,[16] the worldwide highest-grossing non-U.S. animated film,[17] and the second worldwide highest-grossing non-English-language film of all time at the time of its release. With a gross of over $725 million,[18] it was that year's fourth-highest-grossing animated film, and China's all time fourth-highest-grossing film.[19]"
Ok I'll admit part of the reason people don't hear about these companies is that they are still too half baked. But look at BYD, they started off producing junk but this Chinese mindset of grinding and rapid iteration has put them to be super successful today. Why couldn't that kind of happen with their Disney competitor?
Another thing that might be happening is the literal closing off of the world into two spheres. Western US led and Eastern Chinese led. As we are seeing with BYD, they are taking over all the non western markets(and some western as well) but the US has essentially slammed the door shut on them (they haven't actually but made it impossible to enter with their tariffs). Maybe the Disney competitor will take hold in the non western aligned world?
Honestly its a shame they are not open or democratic. The idea of watching or even being part of a rising country that is building their empire is fascinating to watch. Will they collapse due to demographics or these fundamental issues like communism or will they make it? Unfortunately for many people, the only option is to stick with the US and work to keep the ship afloat as there is no place for them in China.
I'm resentful for not having BYD here to offer affordable vehicles. The vast numbers of people who are now boxed out of the middle class could desperately use the help of a vehicle that doesn't cost them $700 a month.
True that. My wife watched a few Chinese dramas, but they're quite boring compared to k-dramas or japanese shows. I find them annoying and full of propaganda. Only the historical ones are borderline interesting. Also the CCP crackdown on celebrities didn't help.
By contrast, there's now a very good k-drama with Lee Min-ho happening in space or the Gyeongseong Creature horror drama with Park Seo-joon.
I did see some good Chinese movies, mostly out of Hong Kong. Wong Kar-wai directed a bunch of good ones but they all predate Xi's regime and the takeover of HK.
One of my favourite contemporary artists is Ai Weiwei, who has gone missing in 2011 only to finally reappear four years later. I understand he now lives in Portugal. Got his book on my night stand, 1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows.
I think they meant that because content is siloed already by language barriers, the only ecosystem that would be affected by the removal of US users is the English-speaking subsystem.
That said, the English-speaking world clearly extends well beyond the US and English commonwealth countries nowadays. Also, a lot of videos don't have any dialogue and can also cross the language barrier.
There will be a small category of content that will disappear. For instance, my fyp was full of Chinese fashion content (by choice) so I'm sure there are other categories of content that non-Americans consume that are American. Whether it's Movies or Music or whatever.
English is literally the most commonly spoken language in the world. No language in the world will fit your criteria if you want more than two thirds of the global population to speak it.
A quick search seems to confirm this. A few sites list the number to be around ~1.3 billion people who speak English at all, with around ~360-380 million being native speakers. For example: https://www.babbel.com/en/magazine/how-many-people-speak-eng....
1/3 of the global population is at all, there’s only 380 million native English speakers.
US, UK, Canada, Australia is where you find the bulk of native speakers. In say Germany or whatever they may become fluent but it’s relatively rare for German parents to be speaking English to each other in casual conversation next to an infant’s crib.
> there’s only 380 million native English speakers
Not how a lingua franca works.
There are 1.5 to 2 billion English speakers [1]. By far the largest number of people to speak a single language. Most of them are in America [2]. (If you count English learners, No. 2 is China [3].)
But this number is dubious as it's largely from self response. Here [2] is a list by country. So 25% of Thais, 50% of Ukrainians, 50% of Poles, and so on "speak English."
In the sense of being able to say hello, thank you, and introduce themselves that is probably true. But "my name is Bob" maketh not a common tongue. If we narrowed it down to the percent of people that could hold a basic conversation, the number would plummet precipitously, likely leaving Mandarin at the top.
You know, they weren't the one to bring it up and their point seems to have consistently been that the majority of the global population does not speak English.
Plurality of the world (25%) and a larger plurality of the internet-connected world (37%, [1]) speak English. (Granted, most of TikTok’s market now probably doesn’t speak English.)
There are only about 400 million native English speakers. You can't just add up the population of English speaking countries, because that excludes immigrants living in these countries, and people born there who did not learn English as their first language.
As for people who learned it later, even in Europe, only about 40% self-identify as being able to speak English. If you visit places like China or Indonesia, you'll soon notice that very few people know more than a few basic words in English once you leave the tourist areas.
IMO first-or-not is moot. It’s estimated that around one billion people speak English to a reasonably fluent level. Included in that is many of the commonwealth countries in which English often holds second spot as a lingua franca (eg. India). It’s an incredibly global language.
this is horseshit. Canada, the US and the UK alone have - minimum - 400 million. Australia has 25 million, Ireland 5, New Zealand 5, then there's the Anglophone African nations, plus a lot of the Carribbean. Nigeria on its own likely has 100 million native speakers of English
As I've said, you can't just sum up populations. About 20% of the US population are immigrants. A lot of them won't speak English as their native language.
Only about 60 million Nigerians speak English. Hausa is the most commonly spoken native language. Just because English is the official language doesn't mean that it's people's native language.
I'm not just making stuff up. The 400 million number is from The Ethnologue, a source which linguists generally consider as reliable.
I'd like to see their working for that number. Let's say we subtract 20% from Canada + the UK + the US, we get ~320 million. add Nigeria and Uganda and you have easily 400 million. That's without Australia, Ireland, New Zealand or any of the African or Caribbean countries.
There aren't that many native English speakers in Nigeria and Uganda. To me, it looks like your back-of-the-envelope calculation will come pretty close to 400 million.
Not all Nigerians can speak English. But there are a lot who can. It honestly felt about 50/50 to me. And I see some other commenters saying that 60 million Nigerians have some ability to speak it. (But you need to think of that like if I was to say 60 million Americans have some ability to speak Spanish.)
However, even for those with some facility with English,I don't know that I'd classify it as their native language.
That’s at all, there are only ~380 million native English speakers.
Of that 1/3 (of the global population) a significant percentage have extremely limited skills, though the threshold is above knowing a few random words.
By coming from different country their native language (IE what language they heard as infants) more closely resembles that country than America. Note I said 47 million and there are more than 47 million immigrants.
There are also some native born Americans to immigrants who also don’t have English as their first language and People born in China whose first language is English, but that’s ever smaller refinements on a specific estimate.
> ~47 million Americans aren’t native English speakers having immigrated from a non English speaking country.
Your link says 46M total which includes native speakers. So it does not state how many non-native speakers. (not that it would matter as most would be proficient english speakers, just pointing out you're exagerating and your numbers are wrong)
The question of your native language is answered long before any of what you’re talking about here. A 20 year old isn’t time traveling to have different parents when they take an exam.
I presume the US market is the dominant target market for ads / influencing, a quick google search suggests it is 75% of the global spend. So the other issue is not just losing US influencers but all influencers will take a haircut. I don't know how much of popular content is paid for by such revenue but taking a 75% haircut could put a real damper on content producers - especially those who make it a full time job. I don't know if that'll make it better with an increase in proportion of more organic content. I personally don't use TikTok - I waste enough time on HN.
There is an additional separate issue that influencer is a coveted 'career' for many children (~30%), so not only would it wipe out many jobs it'll kill their dreams. I guess like cancelling the space program at a time when kids really wanted to be astronauts.
I think there is a lot wrong with society and TikTok is part of it - but that's a much longer discussion for some other time.
If so, good riddance. The good point of TikTok is that the videos appear genuine and wholesome. Not the hyper-optimized for monetization crap YouTube Shorts show you. I much prefer the videos with kids goofing around on icy streets over the American narrator telling me some bs about some great baseball player.
Sometimes dreams are all they have - especially if they're young.
I think we have to understand the reality that the economy today is not what it once was, not even close. I think a lot of people are looking to the influence trade since they see the corporate / political / economic future as failing them and they want to carve out something on their own while the getting is good and while they still can. Sure some just want to be famous but others appear to have a very realistic view of their prospects both as an influencer and elsewhere.
Hopefully the US tech industry is not so schlerotic that they're unable to clone it and offer a competitive alternative. Given TikTok has demonstrated there's a huge amount of money to be made in that space. Although given how awful Google Shorts and Reels' recommendation algorithms are in comparison, maybe there really will be no replacement.
This was covered in a recent podcast. Apparently TikTok classifies videos on many more factors than e.g. Youtube and other US companies. China can do this because they have a cheap pool of many users who can perform this activity.
The podcaster felt that with AI capabilities getting better day by day (maybe - that's another discussion) that this multi factor classification could be automated. It seems not to have been done yet AFAIK.
You'd think with all the H1Bs the US is importing some of those could bring in some recommendation engine expertise.
The truth is that the recommendation engine is power and people drawn to power in the US were too quick to abuse it driving out the old hands - and once institutional knowledge is lost it's hard to get back.
I don't think it will survive because non American cultural exports are not quite there yet you have to be born outside the US to understand the reach of Hollywood/cultural export as an opinion shaping tool
But then again Telegram survived and they had to resort to kidnapping the CEO so if it does survive the US pretty much gifted that space to a geopolitical adversary
But I'm pretty sure Langley/MD folk thought about this and are betting on it not surviving
It will take ages for that to happen. AFAIK the "ban" only really removes it from app stores, I don't think it even requires store owners to force it off of phones that have downloaded it already.
I wonder if it's more of a deactivation pending XYZ, with a readiness to flip the on-switch back on if there's a policy change in the U.S. (which it seems like there might be).
True enough but I don't think that will be fast either. The main reason to update would be features and they can keep the old version of any APIs up to support US customers. Other than that the only reason they would have to update is any breaking changes in Android/iOS which are a lot rarer these days afaik since they're both so mature as OSs.
There are such products. Outside of America whatsapp is a dominant social app but its use internally is almost mute despite being an american social app.
Tiktok america is over 50% of tiktok revenue I think that more than anything else would choke out growth world wide.
How will YouTube shorts, and instagram stories pivot? They already aren’t seen as true rivals, but maybe they can change or spinoff a third brand. The gold in TR has always been its algorithm. Maybe they can fake it. How easy will it be to circumvent via vpn? Will other English content on tt skyrocket? Eg uk and Canada.
Yes, but it's also singularly focused on its core experience rather than being a bolted-on experience that is confusingly blended into an ecosystem where it's not the primary experience.
I'm really at loss at how bad Google is at algorithms considering how pioneering they have been in selecting engineers based on their algorithmic skills and their immense contributions to the whole ML sector.
I can let Spotify play on its own for hours and it will be just right...Even with songs I know nothing about, it's just very good.
I tried Tik Tok once and I could see how easily it could pick content.
But Youtube and Youtube Music are a disaster. Youtube Music is a decent service, but it's hard to get suggested anything really.
Youtube Shorts are a disaster. Sure I like the Sopranos, I find some Joe Rogan's interview interesting and sure I like the NBA, but that's virtually all it feeds me, even if I start scrolling away to other topics.
If a US-based alternative appeared which not only substituted performatively, but also monetized creators and influencers enough to put everyone else to shame, people could not help but notice and migrate there in droves.
It would be pretty cool if there was a respectable capitalist with enough money, or if that won't do it then a bigger more-respectable political organization or something, and Tiktok would be nothing but a memory of how things used to be before they got better.
Think about it, a social force or financial pressure strong enough to reverse unfavorable trends, even after they have already gained momentum.
And all it takes is focusing that pressure in an unfamiliar direction that could probably best be described as "anti-enshittification".
I’d worry that such a platform would be used to reverse social trends unfavorable to the owner, instead of social trends unfavorable to society in general.
It also seems… sort of bad if an individual has the ability to be strong enough to reverse a social trend, right? So we basically would have to expect one of the trends they should reverse to be… their own existence. In general it is unreasonable to expect individuals to be so enlightened as to work against their own existence, I think.
This is why I can't wait for Loops to enable real federation, because it distributes this over a number of instances and isn't putting all the eggs in one basket.
First, I still don't think the ban will actually happen. The current administration will punt the issue to the next and Trump has already signaled he wants to save Tiktok, whatever that means. That might be by anointing a buyer that he personally is an investor in. Tiktok may choose to still shutter in the US rather than being forcibly sold.
But there's a biger issue than loss of American content should this come to pass: the loss os American ad revenue for the platform and creators. A lot of people create content aimed at Americans because an American audience is lucrative for ad revenue. If that goes away, what does that do to the financial viability of the platform?
A worrying angle is that Elon is essentially subservient to the CCP because of Tesla’s presence in China. Remember when Tesla signed a pledge to uphold socialism at the behest of the CCP a couple years back? It’s also why Elon - who claims to uphold free speech, capitalism, democratic values, etc - will NEVER say anything negative about China. If Trump is close to Elon, and Elon is easily influenced/controlled by the CCP, it really undermines the independence of US leadership. I am concerned this next administration will be soft on China in all the wrong ways, including not enforcing a ban that has been legally instituted and upheld unanimously by SCOTUS.
At least in Germany, for Gen Z, Facebook is quite dead and Instagram co-exists with TikTok, both with >70% of the cohort [1] using them. There is no clear winner. Anecdata, but for freshmen, TikTok is way more popular.
TikTok-based social media campaigns also e.g. managed to unexpectedly swing an election in Romania (for Georgescu, was later annulled).
Why do you think Instagram is immune from being used in social media based campaign? The only difference between TikTok and Instagram is the recommendation engine they use
... I do not think that it's immune? I don't see where I implied this, sorry if I was unclear. ^^'
This specific campaign was done via TikTok, though, and had massive impact, which shows that TikTok has heavy usage and is popular, outside of the US and China.
(I'm not American, I have no horse in this "ban foreign TikTok" race. :D)
Sorry me neither english no good the thing I'm trying to understand why do you think they used TikTok over YT shorts or Instagram Reels? What makes it better suited from a coding POV usage numbers suggest comparable MAUs for all three
India also just banned TikTok, I wouldn't be surprised if bans became widespread outside of America with any country worried about China's geopolitical power.
I think the easiest answer to follow for "why is this not prevented by free speech protection" is "the fact that petitioners “cannot avoid or mitigate” the effects of the Act by altering their speech." (page 10 of this ruling, but is a reference to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turner_Broadcasting_System,_In...)
Simple answer. A chinese owned company has no such rights or protections. Free speech does not apply. The law also does not censor content (so no free speech violation anyway). The law simply bans the distribution of the app on marketplaces stores for reasons stated (national security). Big difference.
Interesting that the reference linked is in reference to must-carry regulation. The tiktok scenario is the opposite though? Must-not-carry that content! I suppose Uncle Sam's sword cuts both ways.
The United States is currently in the middle of a cyber cold-war with China.
They hacked all of our major telco's and many of America's regulatory organizations including the treasury department. Specifically they used the telco hacks to gather geolocation data in order to pinpoint Americans and to spy on phone calls by abusing our legally mandated wiretap capabilities.
Yet people are arguing that we should allow the people who did that to continue to install apps on millions of Americans phones.
I can't tell if people just don't know that this is happening, or if they take their memes way too seriously. I sort of wonder if they don't know it's happening because they get their news from Tiktok and Tiktok is actively suppressing the stories.
The TikTok ban is security theater through and through.
Chinese spy agencies don't have to make an app that millions of American teens use to harvest data on them. American companies have been doing the job for them.
The brokers don't care. They'll sell to anyone and everyone. And the people they sell to don't care either. They'll process and re-sell it too. And on and on, until it ends up in the hands of every interested party on Earth, i.e. everyone.
So don't worry, the Chinese already have a detailed copy of your daily routine & reading habits. Just love this new world that we've created to make $0.002/click.
EDIT — if it makes you feel any better, the Chinese are doing it too!
> The vendors in many cases obtain that sensitive information by recruiting insiders from Chinese surveillance agencies and government contractors and then reselling their access, no questions asked, to online buyers. The result is an ecosystem that operates in full public view where, for as little as a few dollars worth of cryptocurrency, anyone can query phone numbers, banking details, hotel and flight records, or even location data on target individuals.
- harvesting data: sure the CCP could buy some data from data brokers; but that data is very limited compared to the data that TikTok itself has on its users
but data harvesting is not the real problem
the big problem is that you have a social network to which millions of your citizens are connected and used daily, which is under the control of a foreign adversary; it's a bit like if CBS was owned by the CCP
From a geopolitics standpoint, the effective question here is “whose guns are the owners of the company worried about?” Elon is a bit of an outlier here because he’s effectively bought the government now, but in theory, if the US government decides to arrest Elon and seize his assets, that’s a big problem for Elon, whereas if China does, that’s a lesser problem for him (yes, Tesla, I know). It’s the same reason the US banned Huawei from US telecoms: the US government can’t threaten Huawei like they can Cisco.
None of this is a normative statement - I’m not saying that this is good or bad, but if you want to know why the US government thinks Elon is better than ByteDance, it’s because they can shoot Elon tomorrow if they decide to, but they can’t shoot Zhang Yiming without causing an international incident.
No, that's not acceptable either. Elon should never have been allowed to get full control of Twitter/X. But that is a separate battle. And it doesn't make the issue with TikTok being under CCP control any less of a problem (unless you're China and trying to shift the narrative with "what about Elon", and if you are that basically proves the point that you can't have a foreign adversary in a position to be able to heavily, while subtly, influence public opinion through an algorithm.)
When it comes to actual harm done to Americans (particularly via their own data), that harm is continually done by US commercial and government interests.
He does take regular phone calls from Putin, the content of which we're not privy to, and he meets with the Iranian government on the down-low.
I think those alone would be grounds to at least take a close look at his access to Twitter data, his censorship choices and any input he has into the algorithms.
Don't we need to have a pretty low opinion of the average american cognitive skill to feel the need to protect them from foreign propaganda for fear it would take a hold on them?
If the general public is that stupid and that this kind of protection is really needed, then it also means that democracy is no longer a viable form of government because the public is also too stupid to vote.
> Don't we need to have a pretty low opinion of the average american cognitive skill to feel the need to protect them from foreign propaganda for fear it would take a hold on them
that's naive. Literally leaving CNN on in your living room 3 days a week will eventually change you opinions. Our minds absorb things we hear repetitively, even if we now they might be half truths or lies.
> Don't we need to have a pretty low opinion of the average american cognitive skill to feel the need to protect them from foreign propaganda for fear it would take a hold on them?
No. Influential foreign propaganda is inconspicuous. There’s nothing to be mindful of other than “who benefits if this is widely believed?” and it’s not a low opinion to think most people aren’t mindful of that.
I'm not saying that it doesn't work and I'm not saying that I hold the general public in high esteem. What I say is that holding the general public in low esteem while at the same time holding democratic values sacred is, as Spock would say, illogical.
> What I say is that holding the general public in low esteem while at the same time holding democratic values sacred is, as Spock would say, illogical.
I fully agree. The last year has shaken my confidence in democracy more than any other time in my lifetime. Not because of threats of war or revolution, but because what is the point of elections if the majority is chronically misinformed? Why have a yes/no election if no one knows what the question is?
It's still the best worst system, and i'm still going to vote in 2 years and again in 4, but my faith is low.
This leads to why the US didn't setup a pure democracy. The job of certain long term branches like the senate, supreme court & certain unelected positions is to be able to think long term & say "eat your veggies" without the worry of losing there job because someone else is offering nice European chocolates.
If you acknowledge that all humans have a lot of cognitive biases and information processing weaknesses, acknowledging that these are easily exploitable is not holding people in low esteem. It is taking a realistic stance on how open all of us are to being influenced in ways that we will not notice and barely understand.
An interesting parallel, they've studied cult recruitment and intelligent people are not less likely to join one. In fact, often times, the better they are at reasoning, the better they are at convincing themselves something bad is in fact ok.
It's self-evident. Propaganda is defused through rhetorical skills. You know, knowing about the general forms of sophism, all that stuff. Rhetorical skills correlate with intelligence.
- Lack of US privacy legislation
- Security-sensitive systems and infrastructure owned by competitor nations
The existance of a different problem is not a justification to avoid progress on the original one.
PS: Curious how many total comments there are on this article. Either everyone is 3x as likely to comment on it as usual or something else is different. Ijs.
But neither of those problems are addressed by a TikTok ban. If privacy legislation was enacted and it banned TikTok as a result the conversation would be very different.
If you consider TikTok a “Security-sensitive system” that seems to be such a broad category as to be useless. I guess we should stop using any and all Chinese produced software systems then? Which isn’t an unreasonable opinion but again it feels like a different conversation than “ban TikTok”.
You don't consider a massively deployed app, on a majority of mobile devices, via which blackmailable individual profiles can be assembled "security-sensitive"?
I'd absolutely consider Meta to be security sensitive. And Microsoft. And Google. And Netflix.
Disposable idiots are a necessary asset for any intelligence operation. Kim Jong-nam's assasins, for example, "were told to play harmless tricks on people in the vicinity for a prank TV show" [2].
Doesn't that imply that TikTok would be deliberately protecting high-profile individuals from CSAM prosecution? That seems like the sort of thing that should have triggered some warm-up scandals before requiring Chinese disinvestment.
It isn't like TikTok are the only part of the internet with a CSAM problem. By default anything that offers file hosting has a CSAM problem. To keep the Chinese away from blackmail material the US would have to ban any form of image hosting served from the Chinese mainland - the CSAM people go to the CSAM, it doesn't proactively seek people out.
> Kim Jong-nam's assasins, for example, "were told to play harmless tricks on people in the vicinity for a prank TV show"
What? How is that connected to "blackmailable individual profiles"?
How can they blackmail me? Please explain. You mean like "I see you watch cat videos so now go revolt against your government or I will tell everyone you watch cat videos?", this is the blackmail part?
They may not be able to. But it sure would be helpful to have a list of people in likely financial distress with addresses close to military installations. Such a person may not ask questions if given a job offer from an influencer or whatever to take selfies around town.
> people in likely financial distress with addresses close to military installations
Sure, that's possible, but I think it's a bit of a stretched argument. Can't you target people like that on Facebook with ads? Can't you buy data about these people from U.S. data brokers? Can't you already access this data publicly because people share it openly on social media?
Except they've just spun up different apps accessing the same data, and also people are flocking to alternatives even more connected to China's Intel apparatus than TikTok allegedly was, because fundamentally a shit ton of Americans don't trust their government. And IMO, they're right not to.
We could shut all of this shit down if we actually wanted to, but that means going after American companies too, which they won't. They want to have the cake and eat it too: outlaw foreign spying on American users without outlawing domestic spying on American users. They want to make it so China can't do exactly what social media et al does in America, to Americans. Americans are not stupid: they are perceiving this. They know they are being manipulated, perhaps by China, perhaps by the U.S., definitely by dozens if not hundreds of private enterprises, likely all fucking three.
On one hand, the American government's priority is the security of America and her citizens, but on the other, we have an entire segment of the economy now utterly dependent on being able to violate citizen's privacy at will and at scale. Surveillance capitalism and foreign surveillance are effectively interoperable. You can't kill one without killing the other.
Edit: And even more on the personal front, for your every day Joe: this is completely stake-less. "Oh China is spying on me!" big fucking deal. The NSA was caught spying on us decades ago, and by all accounts, they still are. Google AdSense probably knows my resting heart rate and rectal measurements that it will use to try and sell me the new flavor of Oreo. We accept as a given that our privacy is basically long gone, not only did that boat leave the pier, it sailed to the mid-Atlantic, sunk, and a bunch of billionaires imploded trying to check out the wreckage in a poorly made submarine. I don't fucking care if China is spying on me too, that's just a fact of my online existence.
People are not flocking to other more Chinese apps. A handful of people are. You're not seeing new signups to Instagram or YouTube because a lot of people who are on TikTok already had accounts on those platforms.
Little Red Book/RedNote is the #1 app on the App Store, followed by Lemon8 at #2. Duolingo reported a 216% increase in parties interested in learning Mandarin[0], people are actively boycotting the likes of Meta/Google[1], and many content creators have set up shop there (albeit with a much smaller following)[2]. It’d be disingenuous to write off these effects.
Yes, because it went from like the worst app in the US to a pretty popular one in a short period of time. YouTube has 240 million accounts in the US. Instagram has 170 million. 500k accounts in RedNote is nothing in comparison.
People are protesting because it's cool to do especially when you're a rebellious youngster but I'm pretty convinced it's going to fizzle out. I don't think it's fair to say it's disingenuous to believe as much. Maybe you could say it's "too early" to write it off, to which I'd respond saying it's too early to buy into the belief that it will take over American culture in any way that resembles TikTok.... and, even if it did, that it would not be banned from the US again.
Yeah, and BeReal beat out TikTok for a couple of months too. Being topical for a moment doesn't mean something has staying power. Learning Mandarin is a pretty big barrier to entry lol. 2x on Duolingo doesn't mean that much, how many were learning it last year?
Privacy legislation only works because companies have to worry about whistleblowers leaking violations to the media, which would cause them to be fined. China can disappear any whistleblowers and has full control over their media. If CCP compromising TikTok is proven despite this, then it's over for TikTok anyways and fines are irrelevant.
The “it cant happen to here” is strong in America. I saw a guy videotaping the palisades fire instead of packing and vacating. People thinks it only happens in the movies but on my time on earth reality is far stranger than fiction
I find it easy to believe. If Russia can run a psyop to sway opinion towards supporting their interests why can’t China? HN is hardly some tiny unknown forum.
HN is absolutely a tiny unknown forum. To my understanding, it has around 5 million or so uniques monthly. By contrast, Instagram has 2 billion registered active users, and it’s only the 4th most popular
It's less about bare privacy and more about the fact that it's a closed loop system.
Meta collects your data and advertisers can indirectly use that data to serve you ads. In addition, government actors can use Meta's advertising tools to spread propaganda.
But TikTok is an all-in-one solution. The government have direct control over the algorithm in addition to having access to all of the data. They don't have to go through a third party intermediary like Meta and aren't only limited by a public advertising API.
it's not just about data harvesting, it's about propaganda as well, and no, you can't "just buy" as much data as tiktok gathers on people, tiktok most likely has some of the richest data gathered from users, because they can get away with it.
Yeah it's simply an incredibly powerful way to influence US youth in ways that are favorable to the CCP.
I don't understand how or why this is hard for people to grasp? It's no different than Radio Free Europe being secretly funded by the CIA, except it's even more powerful.
Radio Free Europe was covertly funded by the CIA into the 1970s, but your comment should say “having been” instead of “being”, because its current funding is not a secret: that comes from the US Agency for Global Media, an openly acknowledged part of the US government.
> American companies have been doing the job for them.
This right here is the answer. People just don’t care about this type of privacy because they assume some American company already has their data. Combine that with us being two generations removed from the Cold War and the average TikTok user doesn’t see any reason why the owner of this specific data being Chinese matters and frankly I’m sympathetic to that argument. If you live in the US, someone like Musk is going to have a greater influence on your life than the Chinese government and I see no reason to trust him any more or less than the Chinese government. So any discussion of this being a matter of national security just rings hollow.
I worry less about the data and more about how a lot of kids, teens, and young adults get their news from TikTok (and social media in general).
That's the real value of TikTok. Having the eyeballs of young people and being able to (subtly or not) influence their perception of the world is valuable in a way that massive amounts of data aren't.
I do also worry about this with Musk, but I also acknowledge that taking away social media ownership from a foreign company is different than taking it away from a US company.
I just find this line of argument incredibly ironic because it is fundamentally an anti-free speech argument in defense of both the US and Musk while making the defense of the Chinese app with strong censorship a pro-free speech position. That doesn’t necessarily make the argument invalid, but it certainly makes it feel a little disingenuous to the general public.
IMO the same argument holds for both Musk/X and the CCP/TikTok: social media networks upon which the US public has become heavily dependent, should not be under the absolute control of some unaccountable person/entity with a strong personal agenda -- this applies to both Musk and the CCP.
If there was a way to force Musk to sell X or ban it, I would support that 100%. But that's unlikely to ever happen especially now with co-President Musk. But in the meantime, either breaking TT free of CCP control, or banning it, would be at least one battle won.
I am a fairly active consumer of TikTok content. It's a huge app with many many different niches that have their own little communities. Mostly, the algorithm has decided that what I need to see is woodworking videos, car videos, and some dad jokes. But there certainly is a very interesting undercurrent of "information". One really interesting wave was when the TikTok ban passed Congress. Suddenly my feed was filled with absolutely random people saying how bad this is and how it just doesn't make sense, etc. Like if you are an influencer on a platform that just got banned, of course you'll have some feelings about it. But interestingly most people who do regularly show up (the woodworkers, car guys, etc.) who do have big followings pretty much didn't talk about it. Even this week when the ban is about to happen, the popular and established accounts that aren't politics-focused are not talking about it. But now there is a new wave of completely random people talking about "how much is the US government freaking out that we are all moving to Red Note?" And at this point I don't trust that all of them are actual humans, let alone humans who haven't been paid, or if they are AI-generated personas meant to really overtly drive people like me to the new app.
My point isn't that there is some grand conspiracy here, just that if you wanted to have outsized influence on people who are there just for entertainment, you could do it and make it look organic. Inception has to be the target's idea and all that.
In a similar vein I see talking heads of people in their kitchens contemplate world issues. Russia/Ukraine, Israel/Palestine, life in China: you can get in-depth opinions on all those issues from a hairdresser in Nebraska or a mechanic in Michigan, and they all will present them well enough. So I think there is something there.
But the clear damn solution is to pass laws that prohibit a bunch of this stuff across the board. The fact that Instagram Reels can do exactly what TikTok is doing but with ties to a different world power makes this ban seem shameless. Ban them all. Or none. Or regulate them like they should be regulated. But don't pretend like this security theater is somehow going to fix anything meaningful.
A sibling of mine who gets a significant portion of their income through their Tiktok following confessed to me recently that they completely understand why they are shutting it down.
Apparently influencers get a lot of unsolicited pressure to take stances on things like Palestine even if they're just a crafting influencer.
There is an undercurrent of opinion on the platform that happens to align with Chinese worldviews that is strong enough to make politically neutral (or at least abstaining) influencers on the platform uncomfortable.
It really feels like you are repeatedly trying to imply something nefarious without actually making any accusations of nefarious behavior. All you have really said here is that some of the people who use the platform don't have the right opinion and therefore it is understandable to ban the app. That seems like an incredibly hypocritical argument to make in defense of the actions of the American government.
I'm not sure how you arrived at that interpretation of my comment but it does seem to be the one you were trying to goad out of me with your responses so you could reply with this.
>I'm not sure how you arrived at that interpretation of my comment but it does seem to be the one you were trying to goad out of me with your responses so you could reply with this.
What a weird comment. I goaded an interpretation out of you? I was just trying to get at why you seemingly think TikTok is different than any other social network and your response was that "There is an undercurrent of opinion on the platform that happens to align with Chinese worldviews". But I guess the bad faith alarm has already been triggered so not much point continuing from here.
> If you live in the US, someone like Musk is going to have a greater influence on your life than the Chinese government and I see no reason to trust him any more or less than the Chinese government. So any discussion of this being a matter of national security just rings hollow.
Just because Musk is a f*ing problem for all Americans, doesn't mean that the CCP isn't a problem. Not much you can do about "President" Musk -- so you have to work with what you can control.
The value is in the ability to influence what your enemy sees, and to push whatever narratives are best for you and worst for your enemy. They don’t give a shit about the data.
For anyone reading this who is knowledgeable about this topic, where, specifically, can a regular citizen buy personal data about people from data brokers?
It's unlikely you can. They're generally only willing to set up corporate deals to sell data in massive bulk. You could buy a domain name, set up a decently real looking website with a corpo looking email, then go to any broker like https://www.acxiom.com/customer-data/ (not affiliated, first one i found on google) and do the whole corporate dance of signing a contract to get what you want.
I am in favor of banning TikTok, but not strictly because they harvest data. I am far more concerned about them manipulating people on a large scale, I think TikTok is an effective tool for manipulating public opinion and I have no doubt that they're actively engaged and consciously engaging America in a form of psychological warfare. We are facing the very real threat of a military conflict with China, I do not want the Chinese government in this position of power.
I frankly don't understand why I keep seeing on social media people like yourselves push the idea that it's okay because other companies are also harvesting the data. It is obviously not about the data. It is about China being in a position to manipulate information flow.
The rationalizations and justifications are more a window into people's thought process than they are actual arguments. This person has decided that TikTok isn't that bad, and you are witnessing how they reverse engineer from that view point back to the argument.
That's why arguing in this sense never works. Someone isn't trying to work something out, they've already decided and are trying to explain the decision to you. That's not the same thing as thinking through something.
I mean let's not pretend that an app on the vast majority of peoples phones isn't a non-trivial vector for a zero-day attack.
If there is an invasion of Taiwan, I don't think it would be unthinkable that everyone's phones being broken wouldn't be a major tactical and political advantage of shifting the US's priorities and political will in the short run.
Sure, it burns the asset in the process, but I mean... this has been a priority for an entire century.
i dont think fhats the right attack? the influential use of tiktok sould be sharing propaganda like the US did about the iraq war "we did it and the taiwanese people are excited to be liberated and reunified with china"
along with details about how the US has no defensive alliance with taiwan, and that the US does not need to intervene
I agree; the Tiktok algorithm would be used to subtly shift public opinion rather than something overt that burns their assets
This is a very realistic scenario. It doesn't mean people will suddenly see messages from the CCP on their screens. It could mean that posts that are critical of China are subtly downweighted (not banned, that would be too obvious and problematic) while those favorable towards China would be upweighted.
One thing the CCP is quite good at, from its long experience of always controlling the narrative in China, is this type of social media manipulation.
Ehh... I just disagree, even if I agree that my concern is wildly speculative. The isolationist right already has them covered there. If they can take the island, it's over. The US is not going to mount an invasion to save Taiwan, but will sell them weapons and help defend it.
If they can't take the island quickly, then maybe propaganda helps. I just think neutering or nuking everyone's phones for a few days is enough to genuinely split the attention of the American people. I think it's very safe to say our culture cares much more about it's butter than it's guns right now. We are decadent.
Yes, but my point is that TikTok is the most downloaded app in the United States, with apparently about 100 million installs. I'm just looking at reports on various sites.
Edit: other sites put YouTube, and others higher with TikTok at 40% of phones.
Nothing else controlled by the CCP looks like it even comes close to that in America.
A surprising (and funny) example of this is how the open-source intelligence community and sites like Bellingcat used purchased or leaked data from private Russian commercial data brokers to identify and track the detailed movements of elite Russian assassination squads inside Russia as well as in various other countries. They learned the exact buildings where they go to work every day as well as who they met with and their home addresses. https://www.newyorker.com/news/dispatch/how-bellingcat-unmas...
Volunteer open-source researchers also used these readily available data sources to identify and publicly out several previously unknown Russian sleeper agents who'd spent years hiding in Western countries while building cover identities and making contacts. https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2022/08/25/socialite-widow-j...
To your point, if volunteer internet hobbyists can use commercial broker data to identify and track elite Russian assassins and undercover sleeper agents, in Russia and around the world, China having direct access to US Tiktok data, which Tiktok sells to anyone through brokers anyway, doesn't seem like an existential intelligence threat to our national security. Forcing TikTok to divest Chinese ownership would, at most, make Chinese intelligence go through an extra step and pay a little for the data.
If politicians were really worried about foreign adversaries aggregating comprehensive data profiles on everyone, just addressing China's access to TikTok is a side show distraction. Why didn't they pass legislation banning all major social media services from selling or sharing certain kinds of data and requiring the anonymization of other kinds of data to prevent anyone aggregating composite profiles across multiple social platforms or data brokers? That would actually reduce the threat profile somewhat.
Obviously, they aren't doing that because the FBI, CIA, NSA, TSA, INS, IRS, Homeland Security and their Five Eyes international partners are aggressively buying data broker info on all US residents at massive scale every day and aggregating it into comprehensive profiles - all with no warrants, probable cause or oversight. The US Constitution doesn't apply because it's just private commercial data, not government data. Any such law would have to explicitly carve out exceptions allowing US and allied intelligence agencies to continue doing this. Alternatively, they could put such use under the secret FISA intelligence court. US intelligence has thoroughly co-opted FISA oversight but jumping through the FISA hoop is extra work and filling out the paperwork to be rubber-stamped is annoying. They much prefer remaining completely unregulated and unsupervised like they are now, collecting everything on everyone all the time without limit. They've certainly already automated collecting all the data they want from every broker.
So yeah... let's very publicly make a big show of slapping just China and only about TikTok - and loudly proclaim we really did something to protect citizen privacy and reduce our national data aggregation attack surface. This is the intelligence community cleverly offering a fig leaf of plausible deniability to politicians who can now claim they "did something", while leaving the US intelligence community free to pillage every last shred of citizen privacy in secret.
As far as I understand, many of those brokers are specific to Russia, and get their data specifically from Russian sources which Ukrainians are unlikely to be involved with.
Russian officials / employees are easier to bribe, so there are brokers selling access to car ownership / license plate records, cell phone location records and call logs, passport records etc.
It's not like the spies were routinely careless or didn't do the obvious things a spy should do. They did travel under cover identities but those covers were linked to mobile phone and other data in foreign countries. That left a trail that could be followed to identify real personal data when they intersected back in Russia. They also used public posts on Russian social media. I guess OO7 didn't know a single group photo from some department secretary's retirement party can undo years of spy craft. And just swapping out a SIM when you get back home in Russia doesn't change the phone's ESN.
I'm not an expert though. There's a lot of detailed info on OSINT sources and methods online. The bottom line is it's extremely difficult to put the data genie back in the bottle. The stuff seeps out everywhere and searching aggregated databases from multiple sources and time periods uncovers any connection. It only requires a single slip-up happening one time. This just reinforces that a regular citizen in a Western democracy who's not a spy trained to operate under cover with a nation-state providing authentic false identities, is screwed in terms of maintaining their own privacy.
Idk the math isn't mathing. In the US drugs are moved using graffiti or word of mouth or dead drops because dealers are operating under the assumption all digital devices are monitored. If they use phones at all burners are discarded not sim swapped
Is the FSB/GRU more incompetent than my local fentanyl dealer? new identity, plastic surgery, contacts to protect iris scanning, no digital comms except in house tech, avoiding legal entrypoints seem to be the very basic in today's age especially for a hit
Tom Clancy lied that's a few hours of my life I'll never get back lol
But what is the point of all this data? People don’t live forever or have unlimited exploitable LTV, so there is a very narrow window of time for where this data is useful for a given population. Is the goal to just use it to influence elections?
It’s this - anyone saying otherwise simply does not know, or is pushing some kind of an agenda. I fully believe some people in the US government buy the whole “security” angle, but it’s very obviously bogus. So is the idea of selling it - china is very protective of chinese user data, there’s no way they are going to trust an american investor to play by their rules, even if a serious price was offered, which it hasn’t been. this entire thing feels like theater, honestly.
That’s theater too - at least without acknowledging the clear harm that american algorithm does as well. The logic simply doesn’t add up, unfortunately - I am for banning all social media apps.
Like foreign adversaries can already run influence campaigns on american media platforms, often, the american ones will even cooperate with it. It’s just theater. They dont need tiktok to do whatever people are saying the reason is.
It’s not theater. Just calling something security theater isn’t an argument and the fact that Congress passed bipartisan legislation to ban it after internal security briefings should at least cause you to question your assumption.
The other key point you are missing is that we can ban one app and then ban/regulate others later. You don’t have to do it all at once even if all organizations were engaging in the same behavior.
Even more - the process and legislation required to just ban/regulate Meta or other American tech companies for example is more difficult not just because of the actual legal apparatus required to make it happen, but because of economic considerations and jobs and such too. Further, no doubt the CIA, NSA, and FBI all but have offices at Meta headquarters. They might be engaging in activity or influence campaigns we don’t like - but that’s for us to figure out, not some other country.
TikTok is just some random company that doesn’t matter outside of engaging in activities we don’t like and we choose to allow it to do business in the United States as we see fit.
As casually as we can decide to allow it to do business in the United States so too can we revoke that permission. We do this all the time. We recently stopped Nippon Steel from buying US Steel. TikTok isn’t anything special.
It's about having an adversarial entity -- one with whom the US could be at war with one day -- have control over a social media network that is highly pervasive in US society. It's not about harvesting the data. It's about having the ability to subtly manipulate public opinion through control of the algorithm that determines what comes up on people's feeds.
Yes, foreign adversaries can run TV ads like anyone else, or have their people on social media to try to sway the conversation (there's even a name for these people in China - "wumao"). I'm sure there's some people working for the CCP on this thread. But control of the network is a whole other level of influence -- orders of magnitude greater.
It's one of those things. If you asked most Hacker News readers how they feel about the authoritarian government of a single party state literally controlling the algorithm that determines everything you see, most would swear up and down that they would never stand for it.
But yet what happens in practice is people line up to defend it. I can only guess most of the people defending it are active users and aren't aware of how distorted their perception of the world is by the content they see there.
There's some defending it in general, but it's also just a really tough precedent to allow when it could, so easily, be used to shut down any other service they want by just waving the magic "national security" flag.
It's possible to believe TikTok is bad and that the pathway the US just proved out to banning it in the US has shown that no US court will seriously question the "security reasons" fig leaf. Telegram and Signal are both used by plenty of people the US could easily paint as "security threats" and it's unclear there's any defense to a ban that they could mount at this point.
I am of 100% of the same opinion as you. I have told people for years about the cyber warfare going on and that we're losing it, and they just don't seem to care and want that serotonin hit and ignore the rest. I also want curbs on other social media, but TikTok and the war of China against the US on the internet is in a league of its own. The CCP are no doubt funneling the data to their servers, and no doubt have plans for further damaging our youths' minds through brain rot of tiktok diverting them from far more productive activities. There's a reason CCP has strong curbs on similar apps regarding young people in their nation.
Also the idea that a country that has built the most extensive digital surveillance apparatus in the world will somehow avoid the temptation to use TikTok to monitor people abroad..
We just don't care. We know the all the American TLAs are on our phones, so what's a few more Chinese ones? It's a problem for Washington war wonks to freak out about, not teens in Omaha.
Those teens in Omaha will eventually become voting adults in Omaha and then will eventually come into positions of leadership in both the public and private sector. I can guarantee that 0% would appreciate being blackmailed or unknowingly used as pawns in spycraft. Teens in Omaha may not understand the full scope of what it means.
No, they all collect the same level of blackmailable stuff. They shouldn't ban TikTok, they should ban all data collection and get rid of the third party doctrine altogether. But China is sort of an active adversary to the US right now so banning it is a heavy handed method that will probably mostly work to prevent mass indoctrination from a rival and also prop up ailing US social media companies. The US govt wants mass indoctrination and blackmail material on people, it just doesn't want China to have it.
Literally there are countless things. Firstly, the app is pinging TikTok servers all day so as you move throughout the world, your IP is changing and betraying your location. Your location reveals your social graph and movement patterns, who you associate with, and where you spend the night.
People watch all sorts of content on TikTok including sexual/sensual content. While they are watching alone in their rooms, all their usage patterns are recorded in intimate details and they reveal all their sexual proclivities. That is quite easy fodder for blackmail.
Health information can often easily be gleaned from people's watch history. If you know people are struggling with their mental or physical health, or are having financial troubles, these are all things that can be used as leverage for blackmail.
Does TikTok have private messages? Any platform with "private" messages can collect blackmail. Tucker Carlson was fired over two texts (or emails, I do not recall).
They may be blackmailed for watching forbidden topics like Russia friendly channels. Or explicit material if TikTok has it.
They may be blackmailed if they are in the wrong social network if TikTok has such a thing.
> And furthermore, why is it okay that it's collected AND owned by a company based in a country not subject to the rule of law?
Because I, as an adult, decided that I am ok with sharing my personal data within their app in exchange for getting to use the app.
As long as I am not sharing personal data of other people (who haven’t consented to it like I did) or some government/work/etc info that I have no right to share, I am not sure how this is anyone else’s business.
P.S. I would somewhat get your argument if it wasn’t TikTok but something that could theoretically affect the country’s infrastructure or safety (e.g., tax preparation software or a money-managing app or an MFA app for secure logins). But all personal data on me that TikTok has is purely my own, has nothing critical at all (all it knows is what i watch and do within the app), and has zero effect on anyone or anything else.
> As long as I am not sharing personal data of other people (who haven’t consented to it like I did)
The ruling mentions that users are in fact doing this.
> (Draft National Security Agreement noting that TikTok collects [...] and device and network data (including device contacts and calendars)). If, for example, a user allows TikTok access to the user’s phone contact list to connect with others on the
platform, TikTok can access “any data stored in the user’s contact list,” including names, contact information, contact photos, job titles, and notes. 2 id., at 659.
I also don't believe that most adults using this app really know how much data TikTok collects. It isn't just "what i watch and do within the app". A fuller quote from the above that doesn't just focus on data involving other people is
> The platform collects extensive personal information from and about its users. See
H. R. Rep., at 3 (Public reporting has suggested that TikTok’s “data collection practices extend to age, phone number, precise location, internet address, device used, phone
contacts, social network connections, the content of private
messages sent through the application, and videos
watched.”); 1 App. 241 (Draft National Security Agreement
noting that TikTok collects user data, user content, behavioral data (including “keystroke patterns and rhythms”),
and device and network data (including device contacts and calenders)).
I also don't particularly believe that the US has to allow espionage just because the government spying got the individuals being spied on to agree to it.
And why have we forgotten about kids?
The law in question doesn't forbid you, or any other adult, or even any child for that matter, from knowingly installing the app. It forbids companies from assisting in wide scale espionage. You can still install the app if you want, the US companies just can't help operate the espionage app.
I'd have no problem either, if TikTok were only collecting data on you.
I wouldn't have much of a problem, if TikTok were collecting data on x0,000s of people.
To me, it rises to the level of security-sensitive when information is collected on enough people that there's a high likelihood of people in future sensitive positions (military, government, legal) having had their information collected historically.
One can't put the genie back in the bottle when a competitor government can see a new president elected... and pull up a profile of what they swiped from 10-40.
That scenario impacts not just you (the future president), but everyone you have power or influence over.
And given the Chinese government's documented willingness to coerce people in foreign countries (i.e. the "not police" police stations), betting they won't use that power seems shortsighted...
Hopefully we'll ban those too. The first step is always the hardest, so you should always look for the easiest path (which in this case is banning a foreign government from controlling a social media app).
This is like saying that you don't care about free speech because you don't have anything to say right now. It's no where close to being a justification.
Lots of people think this way and, to be honest, it speaks more to the inability of the thinker to consider the realities of the US's current relationship with China. A good thought experiment is whether you think the people of Crimea or Donetsk would prefer having the Ukrainian government spy on them instead of the Russian government and whether this preference changed in 2014 or 2022.
It's easy to have a gut reaction that your own government has a greater impact on your life than a foreign one, but that does not reflect the reality that 1) the US government is generally benign in that it historically has not abused its power over citizens; 2) the Chinese government has; and 3) the US and China are going to war one day, and China might win.
If you're part of one of the subgroups that the American government has historically mistreated then it absolutely makes sense to be more afraid of your own government.
>A good thought experiment is whether you think the people of Crimea or Donetsk would prefer having the Ukrainian government spy on them instead of the Russian government and whether this preference changed in 2014 or 2022.
we're not in that situation, but i would expect the people of crimea and donetsk would prefer that nobody surveilled them.
but in a practical sense, surveilliance of people in donetsk and crimea by china would be less immediately threatening to their life, because china is not conducting military action in those places.
>1) the US government is generally benign in that it historically has not abused its power over citizens
i don't understand how anyone can seriously make this claim, and i really don't understand why potential danger isn't a consideration.
potential danger is simply danger. privacy rights are established in recognition that a threat is itself harmful.
and abuse is not unreal. america has had a larger incarcerated population than any other country for my entire lifetime. both absolute size and per capita.
in america, political movements are consistently dismantled by counterintelligence. political action is met with violence and arrest.
perhaps few people are outright murdered, but it's not necessary to murder the powerless. outside of america proper, american power is much more lethal.
every concern and contradiction that threatens the present situation - environment, infrastructure, housing, healthcare, labor, war - is maintained by suppression of political organizing, enabled by surveillance.
the administration incoming next week has promised a massive project of deportation. it has promised retaliation against journalists. it is apparently motivated to criminalize the existence of transgender people. none of these threats are reduced by american surveillance of american people.
>2) the Chinese government has [abused its power]
sure. but this is a problem primarily for chinese people, and americans are not subjects of chinese power.
american surveillance of american people does not reduce any threat of chinese power.
why isn't the american legislature addressing the problems of american people subject to american power?
>3) the US and China are going to war one day.
i don't expect this. there's too much to lose on both sides. it would be a disaster and a tragedy.
true or not, it's certain that american citizens would benefit, and america itself would improve, if arbitrary surveillance on the present scale was impossible.
> 1) the US government is generally benign in that it historically has not abused its power over citizens; 2) the Chinese government has
And before someone hops in with Kent State, Tuskegee trials, et al., let's set the comparison bar at order-of x00,000 to x0,000,000 citizens killed by the government.
> the US government is generally benign in that it historically has not abused its power over citizens
To the extent this is maybe remotely arguably defensible, it is only so because the US has historically defined internal subjects who it wished to abuse most intently as non-citizens (or even legal non-persons), including chattel slavery of much of the Black population until the Civil War, and the largely genocidal American Indian wars up through 1924. But even in those cases you still have to ignore a lot of abuse in the period after nominal citizenship was granted (for Black Americans, especially, but very much not exclusively, in the first century after abolition of slavery).
So, should we also ban Chinese companies Alibaba, Baidu, Haier, Lenovo, Tencent, and ZTE from operating in the United States? Why just TikTok (Who is ironically also banned in China)?
And should Israeli companies, like those associated with NSO Group, face similar scrutiny after reports of their tools being used to hack U.S. State Department employee phones?
Everyone outside of the US already knows the American three letter agencies and their allies like the Mossad can access, hack or destroy all their networks if push comes to shove. Most network services all over the world are run on infrastructure owned by a handful of American companies with deep defense and government ties - AWS, Google, MS.
As other powers arise, they will naturally want equivalence. The American government may decide that is not in their interest to make this easy - but I'd suggest as Hacker News community, we retain the ability to see beyond propaganda and balance contrary viewpoint.In this case (or the case on Nippon steel),how does one differentiate between "security" considerations and potentially a straightforward cash grab attempt by rich American investors?
I can think that China is up to no good with my data and still be mad at my own Govt for doing the exact same thing. The outrage is not that TikTok is banned, it's that Zuckerburg is doing the exact same harms to America that China is alleged to be doing, but only 1 app is banned. Hence people flocking to Rednote rather than using Reels.
There's at least three separate reasons that justify banning TikTok. If Trump bails them out, it's a complete betrayal of his base and the country at large.
1. Competitive balance. China does not allow US social media companies. If we allow theirs, our industry is essentially fighting with one hand tied behind its back.
2. China controls the algorithm for determining who sees what. This gives them tremendous ability to influence public opinion, and consequently public elections. That cannot be allowed to stand as long as China is hostile to the US.
3. China gets extremely detailed data about the interests and proclivities of millions of Americans, including military personnel and elected officials. This data is not otherwise publicly available and can be used for blackmail and other manipulation. Which is completely unacceptable when we have no mechanism to punish them from doing this short of global nuclear war.
Even ignoring the enormous threat to national sovereignty, TikTok has no redeeming qualities. It's an addiction machine that profits off people wasting away in front a screen. That alone is not a reason to ban it, but it sure does make the case stronger.
Banning TikTok is a clear-cut positive for the American people. Every American adult should be in support.
All of your points except 1. are true of American social media companies. 2., in particular, is widely documented: the Facebook mood manipulation fiasco, Cambridge Analytica, Musk's personal tweaking of the Twitter trending hashtags, and YouTube's heavy-handed censorship of legitimate medical advice during Covid are just a few of the higher profile instances of this.
> If Trump bails them out, it's a complete betrayal of his base and the country at large.
There is no wall. The Trump "tax cuts" raised taxes on most Americans and cut them for the 1%. Trump has not faced any consequences for betrayal in the past, why would he now?
In fact, TikTok helps promote the lack of awareness of all the above. If anything he'll want to keep it in place, to keep the public misinformed.
> Yet people are arguing that we should allow the people who did that to continue to install apps on millions of Americans phones
Who are "the people who did that" - Byte Dance or China as a whole? If it's the latter, I'm afraid there are still plenty of apps made by Chinese companies like, DJI, Lenovo, and thousands of IoT apps to control random geegaws via WiFi or BT.
The interesting thing is that, using these tactics, the supreme court has made the legal case for every other country to ban US owned social networks! My opinion is that the US government has made another stupid move.
I think the fallout from this is many Americans like myself don’t see China as our enemy. Based on the recent RedNote phenomenon, Chinese citizens don’t see it that way either.
Maybe the uniparty in the USA should make it a priority to improve the life of everyday Americans and not Zuck and Elon. Young people don’t care who the establishment is warring with because they know the establishment doesn’t represent them, they represent themselves.
> They hacked all of our major telco's and many of America's regulatory organizations including the treasury department.
Please cite your sources. After decades of watching American propaganda, we know all too well that it is trivial to make up shit from thin air and have a large segment of the population eat it up.
Yes, what is the point if the cites you have are all based on speculation and vague allegations by US officials? Do you actually have credible evidence that a group affiliated with the Chinese government hacked American ISPs? If not, don't bother.
> On January 12, 2010, Google revealed on its weblog that it had been the victim of a cyber attack. The company said the attack occurred in mid-December and originated from China. Google stated that more than 20 other companies had been attacked; other sources have since cited that more than 34 organizations were targeted.
Tbh I think this has a lot more to do with sympathy for Palestinians and the last year of protests on college campuses.
Besides, who cares if China is listening to us through the app. China and I have no beef with one another. China feeds me and clothes me and builds most of the stuff in my life and I give China my money. It's a good relationship! Much better than my relationship with this state, tbh.
>I can't tell if people just don't know that this is happening, or if they take their memes way too seriously.
Exactly. Everyone is having fun bidding adieu to their Chinese spys. And I think they're losing sight of the fact that there's abundant reporting on harrassing expats and dissidents internationally, pressuring countries to comply with their extradition requests, to say nothing of jailing human rights lawyers and democratic activists and detaining foreigners who enter China based on their online footprint.
Most of the time I bring this up I get incredulous denials that any of this happens (I then politely point such folks to Human Rights Watch reporting on the topic), or I just hear a lot of whataboutism that doesn't even pretend to defend Tiktok.
And here's their overall 2025 page on China which details, among other things, harassment of critics based out of Italy, detention of U.S. based artist, and even harrassment of protestors in San Fransisco.
I think their suppression of criticism on Uighur forced labor has also encompassed harassment of extended support networks people from the region as well, but that's just off the top of my head and not necessarily on that page.
Not a link to the Human Rights Watch report; however, at oral argument this was stated by the US government (https://www.oyez.org/cases/2024/24-656 @ 1:58:32):
Elizabeth B. Prelogar: And the one final point on this is that ByteDance was not a trusted partner here. It wasn't a company that the United States could simply expect to comply with any requirements in good faith.
And there was actual factual evidence to show that even during a period of time when the company was representing that it had walled off the U.S. data and it was protected, there was a well-publicized incident where ByteDance and China surveilled U.S. journalists using their location data --this is the protected U.S. data --in order to try to figure out who was leaking information from the company to those journalists.
> Yet people are arguing that we should allow the people who did that to continue to install apps on millions of Americans phones
This paternalistic framing is the disconnect between you and those opposed to the ban. The idea that it's TikTok insidiously worming its way onto American phones like a virus. In reality, people download the app and use it because they like it. This ban will, in effect, prevent people from accessing an information service they prefer. You must acknowledge this and argue why that is a worthy loss of autonomy if you want to meaningfully defend the ban to someone who doesn't like it.
If it helps, reframe the ban as one on a website rather than an app. They're interchangeable in this context, but I've observed "app" to be somewhat thought-terminating to some people.
For the record - I would totally support a ban on social media services that collect over some minimal threshold of user data for any purposes. This would alleviate fears of spying and targeted manipulation by foreign powers through their own platforms (TikTok) and campaigns staged on domestic social media. But just banning a platform because it's Chinese-owned? That's emblematic of a team-sports motivation. "Americans can only be exposed to our propaganda, not theirs!" How about robust protections against all propaganda? That's a requirement for a functional democracy.
The point of my response is: sometimes you have to be paternalistic, and the federal government doesn't need to meaningfully defend the ban to someone who doesn't like it because those people don't matter. They meaningfully defended the ban to the courts.
> I can't tell if people just don't know that this is happening, or if they take their memes way too seriously. I sort of wonder if they don't know it's happening because they get their news from Tiktok and Tiktok is actively suppressing the stories.
No, it's just information asymmetry shaping public opinion. The US lets its dirty laundry air out. US whistleblowers, press, and historians dig up every shitty thing the US has ever done and US citizens are free to discuss it, sing about it, turn it into movies and viral memes, etc. China doesn't allow this. No one in China is going to become famous by calling for justice for those killed by Mao or exposing MSS-installed backdoors in Chinese telecoms. That kind of talk is quelled immediately. The result is that public discourse trends more anti-American than anti-China.
Respectfully, I should be able to install whatever the fuck I want on my phone. Regardless of which apps I choose to rot my brain with, neither the US nor Chinese government should have any say in it, period.
If a red line is not drawn, websites will be next, then VPNs, then books. And then the Great Firewall of America will be complete.
I agree, you should be able to install whatever the fuck you want.
Google and Apple shouldn't be helping China get you to do that, by hosting and advertising it in their app store though*. Oracle shouldn't be helping China spy on Americans by hosting their services.
This isn't a law against you installing things on your phone. You're still free to install whatever you want on your phone.
*And if there is a valid first amendment claim here, it would probably be Google and Apple claiming that they have the right to advertise and convey TikTok to their users, despite it being an espionage tool for a hostile foreign government. Oddly enough they didn't assert that claim or challenge the law.
I'd agree that forbidding individuals from installing it would be an overreach, because it would be a more restrictive step then is reasonably necessary to eliminate the legitimate government interest of counter espionage.
I don't think that the governments actions here are more restrictive than necessary for that. The fact that they make some legitimate actions more difficult is completely acceptable (inevitable even).
For most people the Venn Diagram of cars they can acquire, and road legal cars, is a single circle. The government mandating all cars, even those driven solely on private property, be road legal would be an absurd overreach. At the same time they have no obligation to make it easy to acquire non road legal cars just because their legitimate regulations have happened to make that difficult.
The problem is that the rhetoric around this law from its promoters is that of an app ban, not a business sanction. And indeed, the app is being banned from Apple and Google's app stores despite it being free to download and use.
The government currently lacks the ability to yank a binary from computing devices en masse, but the technology to do so is already mostly in place. (See Apple’s notarization escapades in the EU, for example. And I think Microsoft is working in a similar direction: https://secret.club/2021/06/28/windows11-tpms.html) I have a sickening feeling that this is only step one, and that the government will eventually mandate the ability to control and curate all software running on desktop and mobile devices within the country for “security” reasons. National security goons are salivating at the prospect, to say nothing of US corporations that are getting clobbered by foreign competitors.
I believe Google Play does actually have the ability to remove apps if it wants to, intended for malware.
If the government were to mandate that they use that feature, or Apple use that feature, especially to prevent future side-loaded installs, I'd be much more sympathetic to the overreach arguments. But that's not what they did. Rather this is a narrow law that prevents these companies from assisting in wide scale espionage. The fact that they could do some other bad thing doesn't mean the thing they did is bad.
The courts use phrases like "narrowly tailored to achieve the governments legitimate interest" to describe the balancing test here...
I think a democratic nation is well within its rights to restrict its citizens access of certain systems.
There is no such thing as unlimited liberty, especially with regards to systems under control of hostile nations such as China and Russia. Would you be comfortable allowing mass release of unrestricted Hamas / ISIS, Russian propaganda content to North American teenagers? National security is a real thing and geopolitics always play a critical role in people's lives.
One could perhaps argue that we must educate our citizens better, however I think rather than being naive, it's better to implement realistic regulations (within _democratic_ means of course) to contain the threats.
> Respectfully, I should be able to install whatever the fuck I want on my phone.
Like every other right, your freedom ends where other peoples freedom begins. You can install whatever you'd like on your phone... unless it prevents others from exercising their rights. That's how we all get to stay free from the "might makes right" crowd.
Joining your phone to a botnet belonging to a hostile foreign power might very well prevent others from enjoying the very rights you're trying to preserve.
You have a point about avoiding the slippery slope though. I do hope that the deciders are taking that risk seriously.
To me, the 'profiles on the next generation of leaders, throughout their formative years' argument is stronger than the botnet one.
I don't particularly trust Google or Apple to firewall a malicious and determined nation-state actor (0 days being 0 days), but it seems lower probability than the technically trivial data collection.
Websites and books are already being banned in the US. Ask anyone who can no longer access PornHub or who has seen books being removed from libraries.
But it's not about what you install, or even what you say. It's what you're told and shown. The US and China want control over that, for obvious reasons.
Meta has been 'curating' - censoring - content for years. TikTok is no different. X isn't even trying to pretend any more.
The cultural noise, cat videos, and 'free' debate - such as they are - are wrappers for political payloads designed to influence your beliefs, your opinions, and your behaviours, not just while consuming, but while voting.
A library choosing not to carry a book isn't a ban. The government making it ILLEGAL for anyone to distribute the book would be a ban. As far as I know that is not happening anywhere in the US with some extremely narrow exceptions like CSAM.
If TikTok turned out to be State sponsored spyware, would you reconsider?
I support your slippery slope argument. I wonder where your red line is relative to "state sponsored spyware" and "typical advertising ID tracking" or "cool new app from company influenced by an adversarial super power".
All spyware should be illegal. A law to reign in the ubiquitous data collection on everyone's computing devices would be great. Maybe start by requiring all data collection to be opt-in and for a specific purpose. Make it illegal to deny functionality that doesn't strictly require the requested data. "Paying with your privacy" shouldn't be a thing. Crush every data broker.
This law is different to that, it's all about specific actors, not about behavior and actions. A "people we don't like" list. CNN could be on a similar list soon. All constitutional of course - the law will specifically mention how this is all for national security. And no one's speech is being suppressed, the journalists can always write for a different news channel.
How can you call Americans naive when over and over again for the past 2 decades there have been non-stop news stories about how the US Gov spends insane amounts of effort ensuring the technology Americans use is not fully secure? Maybe you should understand that the public can actually recognize Machiavellianism.
edit: before you downvote me, how many of you remember:
- Bullrun
- PRISM
- Dual EC DRBG and the Juniper backdoors, that too also were exploited by secondary adversaries
- FBI urging Apple to install a backdoor for the govt after the San Bernardino shootings
- the government only recently mandating that partnered zero-day vendors must not sell their wares to other clients who would then target them against Americans
> Yet people are arguing that we should allow the people who did that to continue to install apps on millions of Americans phones
Who are "the people who did that" - Byte Dance or China as a whole? If it's the latter, I'm afraid there are still plenty of apps made by Chinese companies like, DJI, Lenovo, and thousands of IoT apps to control random geegaws via WiFi or BT.
It's not hard to see the pattern: any Chinese tech champion that does as well as, or better than American companies will find itself in legal peril. Huawei didn't get in trouble after hacking Nortel, but they got sanctioned much later, when their 5G base equipment was well-received by the markets. TikTok had the best ML-based recommendation systems when it burst in the scene, Google and Meta still haven't quite caught up yet.
Anyone here who's not a TikTok content creator reasonably upset about losing access to the platform? Can you tell me why it will sting for you? I was really surprised that my daughters (avid teenage TikTok users) are much more relieved than mad. Both said they wasted too much time on TikTok and were hoping life will now feel better. Seems the very thing that made the platform sticky puts it in a guilty pleasure category perhaps.
(I'm asking about the lived experience outside of the political questions around who should decide what we see / access online.)
EDIT: Thank you for the replies! Interesting. I'm still wondering if most people use TikTok just for passive entertainment? I don't love Youtube, but it's been a huge learning and music discovery resource for me.
The only thing I get sent from TikTok are dances and silly memes but I don't have an account.
Other's have said it; but TikTok was such a nice format for media. It emphasized what the creator can provide its users; what content was legit; entertaining, informative, etc.
Whereas Instagram and FB are more about personal "branding". You post the best version of yourself and it's rewarded with engagement. Where on TikTok the emphasis is on the content; even creators I follow and have seen dozens of videos on I couldn't tell you what their account name was.
On TikTok you put up or you were shut up.
The experience, in the end, was always on point for shortform content. Nothing else like it exists; and I don't think American tech can make it because they benefit too much from being ad networks. Maybe YouTube shorts.
I've heard the algorithms for YouTube shorts are much worse. Most people have said the best thing about TikTok is how well it learns the content you want to see.
I never used tiktok. You don't follow accounts? You just open and scroll and hope eventually you get something? There's a nothing being done intentionally by the user to find content?
You can follow accounts, and they offer a Following tab to keep track of accounts you really like, but the default consumption mode is to use it just like TV. When you're done with a video you scroll to the next. The app uses signals like how long you spent on a video, whether you liked it or not, whether you sent it to friends or not, etc to see how much you like a video. You can also reset your "algorithm" if you find yourself consuming content you don't like.
> The experience, in the end, was always on point for shortform content. Nothing else like it exists; and I don't think American tech can make it because they benefit too much from being ad networks.
I have a lot of Japanese friends and travel between Japan and here frequently. TikTok is huge in Japan and a lot of my For You Page is content trending in Japanese spheres. I don't live in Japan so being able to plug into Japanese media is a very, very convenient thing.
I'll probably continue trying to use the app if possible since I mostly connect with Japanese content, but I will say there's also a fun world of Japanese creators who straddle the English and Japanese speaking words who are about to lose an outlet to the English speaking world, and I feel really bad for that too.
The "algorithm" is also just so much better than Reels and others. I spent an afternoon of PTO training my algorithm a couple years ago and it's been great ever since. My partner and I share TikToks with each other all the time and. we shape each other's algorithm and interests. Reels fixates too much on your follows and Youtube Shorts is honestly a garbage experience. Both platforms really reward creators building "brands" around their content rather than just being authentic or silly. I treat Reels as the place for polished creators or local businesses who are trying to sell me something and TikTok as the place for content. I find that I get a lot less ragebait surfaced to me than I do on other platforms, though I admit my partner gets more than I do. We both skip those videos quickly and that has helped keep this stuff off our FYP.
An important thing to remember is TikTok was one of the first platforms that was opt-in for short-form content. Both Reels and Shorts was foisted upon users who had different expectations of the network and as such had to deal with the impedance mismatch of the existing network and users who didn't want short-form content. TikTok's entire value proposition is short-form content.
I second this. I spend a few minutes each evening watching random people out and about in Japan, Korea, China as it is fascinating to learn about foreign cultures in such a direct way. Just yesterday I learned about the palm scanners some stores in China have as a payment system.
I'm pretty upset about it honestly. TikTok's algorithm has always done a fantastic job of providing interesting clips in a way that Facebook and Instagram has never been able to provide. I will say that upon a new account, it's mostly garbage, but it quickly learned what I was interested in and what I would tend to engage with. It also does this while showing me considerably fewer ads than the meta platforms.
That said, the algorithm got noticeably worse after 2021. Maybe because of the TikTok shop. I’ve categorized around 3,000 clips into different collections (with 600+ being in “educational”) but that fell off over the last few years. I would be a lot more upset about the ban if they had maintained quality, but now I’m like well, whatever.
I've found something like a very efficient sorting into communities of shared interest, and something egalitarian in being able to see people with 0 views and get reactions from them.
It's by contrast to say, Youtube and X, where The Algorithm (tm) sustains a central Nile river of dominant creators and you're either in it or you're not.
That said, I think the political questions are rightly the dominant ones in this convo and those color my lived experience of it.
I don't create for TikTok, I have never had a TikTok account, and I don't use TikTok, outside of being exposed to videos on other sites, or occasionally clicking a link.
I had been exposed to DouYin before, but my first experience of TikTok in real life was someone at a party, holding their phone, exclaiming something along the lines of "I can't look away, it's so addictive." It was uncomfortable, and I'm aware of how fake this sounds, but it happened.
But I think this is very bad.
With Section 230 in crosshairs, EARN IT being reintroduced every year or two, and access to books and sites being fragmented across the US, things are very already bad, and have the potential to get much worse. TikTok being banned is censorship, and presents a significant delta towards more censorship.
Congress didn't just "ban TikTok", Congress banned its first social media. This is case law, this is precedent, this is a path for banning other social media apps.
I think this is bad because I think this is the start of something new and something bad for the internet.
Not a content creator and use it regularly. My algorithm is mostly silly stuff, music, etc. I'm not convinced there's a discernible risk to national security, and as someone with a lot of libertarian views, I think the ban is an overstep by the US government.
The "sticky"-ness is real, but many will flock to the TikTok copies in other platforms like Instagram, Facebook, X, anyway.
Regardless, I enjoy the platform. It's fun to reference the viral sounds/trends on the platform with other friends that use it.
technology changed our life. especially internet and smart phone impact a lot on social engagement between peoples.
if people spend much time on internet or smart phones daily, if it is not tiktok, it will be something else.
should we go back to non smart phone time? or even roll back to no internet time? maybe no electricity time.
technology is just like a tool. how people use it matters not the technology itself can be evil.
tiktok's algorithm helps speed up information delivery to the people who likes it. eventually it helps to form a community of people online who like similar thing or have similar options.
people needs to be aware of the content on any platform has "survivorship bias". seeing couple of examples is not representing the whole.
> I was really surprised that my daughters (avid teenage TikTok users) are much more relieved than mad.
A sense of relief may be a coping mechanism. I've heard laid-off colleagues inform me they felt relief in the immediate aftermath; granted, the lay-offs were pre-announced before they communicated who would be "impacted", and it was at a high-pressure environment; but the human mind sometimes reacts in unexpected ways to loss outside of one's control. Rationalization is a mechanism for ego defense.
TikTok has replaced Reddit for me (I can expand more on why I stopped using Reddit, but it's not related to TikTok) in terms of "checking what's up on the internet" or as Reddit would put it "Checking the homepage of the internet".
I trust TikTok's "algorithm" to give me quick and entertaining short-bits about what's going on, what's interesting, etc. It learns what I'm into effortlessly, and I appreciate how every now and then it would throw in a completely new (to me) genera or type of content to check out. Whenever I open it, there is a feed that's been curated to me about things I'm interested in checking out, few new things that are hit or miss (and I like that), and very few infuriating/stupid (to me) things.
Its recommendation engine is the best I have used. It's baffling how shitty YouTube's algorithm is. I discover YouTube channels I'm into form TikTok. Sometimes I'd discover new (or old) interesting videos from YouTube channels I already follow from TikTok first. For example, I follow Veritasium and 3Blue1Brown on YouTube but I certainly haven't watched their full back catalog. YouTube NEVER recommends to me anything from their back catalog. When I'm in the mood, I have to go to their channel, scroll for a while, then try to find a video I'd be interested in from the thumbnail/title. And once I do, YouTube will re-recommend to me all the videos I have already watched from them (which are already their best performing videos). Rarely would it recommend something new from them.
On TikTok, it frequently would pull clips from old Veritasium or 3Blue1Brown videos for me which I'd get hooked after watching 10 seconds, then hob on YouTube to watch the full video. It's insane how bad YouTube recommendation algorithm is. Literally the entire "recommended" section of youtube is stuff I have watched before, or stuff with exactly the same content as things I have watched before.
Here is how I find their recommendation algorithm to work:
YouTube: Oh you watched (and liked) a brisket smoking video? Here is that video again, and 10 other "brisket smoking videos". These are just gonna be stuck on your home page for the next couple of weeks now. You need to click on them one by one and mark "not interested" in which case you're clearly not interested in BBQ or cooking. Here are the last 10 videos you watched, and some MrBeast videos and some random YouTube drama videos.
TikTok: Oh you watched (and liked) a brisket smoking video? How about another BBQ video, a video about smokers and their models, some videos about cookouts and BBQ side dishes, a video about a DIY smoker, another about a DIY backyard project for hosting BBQ cookouts, a video about how smoke flavors food, a video about the history of BBQ in the south, a video about a BBQ joint in your city (or where ever my VPN is connected from), etc. And if you're not interested in any of those particular types, it learns from how long you spend watching the video and would branch more or less in that direction in the future.
Another example is search. Search for "sci fi books recommendations":
YouTube: Here are 3 videos about Sci-Fi books. Here are 4 brisket smoking videos. Here are some lost hikers videos (because you watched a video about a lost hiker 3 weeks ago). Here are 3 videos about a breaking story in the news. Here are 2 videos about sci-fi books, and another 8 about brisket.
TikTok: Here is a feed of videos about Sci-Fi books. And I'll make sure to throw in sci-fi book videos into your curated feed every now and then to see if you're interested.
I'm not just upset because I have a general dislike of being told I'm an idiotic, addicted, communist stooge who is easily brainwashed. I am used to folks telling me that- it started when I was writing anti-war editorials in the early oughts, so there is nothing new in that.
What I regret is that I have been following a number of quite-good political discussions on the platform, with a nicely diverse group of interlocutors.
While the discussion generally leans far left, there are many flavors of that left:
not a lot of tankies, mostly just people between "dirt bag left" and "black panther party", lots of women, BIPOC, trans folks, academics, working people, indigenous folks, queer folks of all stripes, activists, and folks who just don't like authority.
Those conversations had been very hard to come by on Yt, Ig, or Fb.
I think it's the response format for videos. I don't think it's worth bothering to speculate about other reasons, though I did note that several legitimate left news sources were shuttered in 2020 when Meta and Tw started their political purge.
Anyhow, I know that folks in the US have very little regard for political autonomy, so I am not surprised that this happens, and compared to the carceral state and the happy ecocide of the planet this is a very little thing. But I will still miss it.
> Anyone here who's not a TikTok content creator reasonably upset about losing access to the platform? Can you tell me why it will sting for you?
I like living in a country where the government does not get to decide what I'm allowed to read/watch/see. The TikTok ban chips away at that in a meaningful way.
I value this above most other concerns, including vague worries about "Chinese spying".
But why didn't Supreme Court find the first ammendment arguments compelling? As per first ammendment it is legal and protected to print/distribute/disseminate even enemy propaganda in the USA.
Even at the height of cold war for example Soviet Publications were legal to publish, print and distribute in the USA.
What changed now?
Even a judge, Sotomayer said during this case that yes, the Government can say to someone that their speech is not allowed.
Looks like a major erosion of first amendment protections.
Because there is no "TikTok" ban and never has been.
There is a "TikTok cannot be controlled by the CCP" law. TikTok is completely legal under the law as long as they divest it. However, in a great act of self-incrimination, Bytedance (de facto controlled by CCP) has decided to not divest and would rather shutdown instead.
Exactly. And what puzzles me is that the evidences offered by the Congress was quite speculative, whether it's about data collection, content manipulation, influence of Chinese laws, or the potential future threat. Yet ByteDance chose not to argue about the evidence, but to argument about 1A.
It would have been great for ByteDance to IPO TikTok in the USA, it has had plenty of time to do so, it would have made lots of people boatloads of money, Chinese and Americans alike. Even Snapchat, which had similar levels of pervasive arrogance, IPO'd.
In the late 80s and early 90s, the foreign-exchange reserves of China was less than a billion dollars. The US government could spend $50M to negotiate a lot of things from China, like having a war with Vietnam even though it was Soviet who was behind Vietnamese government. Nowadays, Chinese government could easily say fuck this $100B. Papa can afford it to call your bluff.
It's great that an entire nation can gain wealth through hard work and good strategic decisions, at least in some way. But it hurts me that the US lost its way in the process by losing so much manufacturing capabilities, to the point that we can't even adequately produce saline solutions, nor could we make shells or screws for our war planes cheaply.
Any amount of $$$ earned by CCP will not be easily passed down to citizens.
I’d be interested if there’s any objective measure of how much a countries money is passed down back to its citizens or hoarded by people in power. Is there any such measure?
Even if the money from the IPO itself doesnt go to directly to random citizens it still pumps a ton of money into their economy providing capital for other investments in new markets creating jobs, spending on goods/services by the company, hiring internally (IPOs always allow companies to expand), etc etc. That money doesn't just sit in a giant pile being unused, like Scrooge McDuck's gold pile.
Not to mention the training and development it would give a whole new class of people in China to operate global businesses.
The evidence and reasoning by Congress was all "non-justiciable" by the courts.
Congress looked at some evidence and made a decision. That is their purview and our checks-and-balances do not allow the courts to second-guess Congress like that. They can look at the "how" of the law, but not the "why".
Specifically the court looked at "what is congress' goal and is there any other way to achieve that goal that doesn't stop as much speech" and there isn't, but they can't question the validity of Congress' goals.
So there's no point in Bytedance arguing any of it, at least not in court.
>And what puzzles me is that the evidences offered by the Congress was quite speculative, whether it's about data collection, content manipulation, influence of Chinese laws, or the potential future threat.
I think in a national security paradigm, you model threats and threat capabilities rather than reacting to threats only after they are realized. This of course can and has been abused to rationalize foreign policy misadventures and there's a real issue of our institutions failing to arrest momentum in that direction.
But I don't think the upshot of those problems is that we stop attempting to model and respond to national security threats altogether, which appears to be the implication of some arguments that dispute the reality of national security concerns.
> Yet ByteDance chose not to argue about the evidence, but to argument about 1A.
I think this is a great point, but perhaps their hands were tied, because it's a policy decision by congress in the aforementioned national security paradigm and not the kind of thing where it's incumbent on our govt to prove a specific injury in order to have authority to make policy judgments on national security.
If you look at the people defending TikTok, if you ask similar questions they won't try to defend it either, it's an immediate switch to whataboutism with regards to native US tech companies or arguing that the US Gov is more dangerous than the CCP.
But all that only just confirms the priors of the people who are pro-Ban. And unfortunately it's about justifying why we shouldn't ban TikTok, not why we should ban TikTok. They can't provide a good justification for that, the best they can is just poison the well and try to attack those same institutions. But turns out effectively saying "fuck you" to Congress isn't going to work when Congress has all the power here.
This is just hypocrisy baiting, this isn't a real analysis at any level. They didn't bring ANY evidence for them to argue against, it was purely an opinion by the state that there could exist a threat, which again is not supported by evidence, true or not. America has a lot to gain by controlling tiktok and one American billionaire will become a lot richer, that's all there is to it. I mean both candidates used tiktok to campaign while wanting to ban it. It's just a ridiculous notion and even they know that.
"Oh you love hamburgers? Then why did you eat chicken last night? Hmmm, curious... You are obviously guilty"
According to the Federal Bureau
of Investigation, TikTok can access “any data” stored in a
consenting user’s “contact list”—including names, photos,
and other personal information about unconsenting third
parties. Ibid. (emphasis added). And because the record
shows that the People’s Republic of China (PRC) can require TikTok’s parent company “to cooperate with [its] efforts to obtain personal data,” there
is little to stop all that
information from ending up in the hands of a designated
foreign adversary. Id., at 696; see id., at 673–676; ante, at
3. The PRC may then use that information to “build dossiers . . . for blackmail,” “conduct corporate espionage,” or advance intelligence operations.
It basically just says that the app asks for the user's contact list, and that if the user grants it, the phone OS overshares information. That's really thin as evidence of wrong-doing. It doesn't even say that this capability is currently coded into the app. This sounds more like an Android/iOS problem - why is the contact sharing all or nothing? Would the ban still be OK if the app didn't have read contact permissions?
"But before seeking to impose that remedy, the coordinate branches spent years in negotiations with TikTok exploring alternatives and ultimately found them wanting. Ante, at 4. And from what I can glean from the record, that judgment was well founded."
Maybe that was one of the alternatives. I wasn’t on the task force but if I was asked to then I would have went one on one with their tech lead’s and asked them to stop collecting this.
But it seems it is greater than that. How you interact with it, your likes and dislikes can be used as a fingerprint and against you.
This fingerprint can then be used against firesteelrain some time in the prophetic future.
Gorsuch says
“To be sure, assessing exactly what a foreign adversary may do in the future implicates 'delicate' and 'complex' judgments about foreign affairs and requires 'large elements of prophecy.' Chicago & Southern Air Lines, Inc. v. Waterman S. S. Corp., 333 U. S. 103, 111 (1948) (Jackson, J., for the Court). But the record the government has amassed in these cases after years of study supplies compelling reason“
Then he says this.
“ Consider some of the alternatives. Start with our usual and preferred remedy under the First Amendment: more speech. Supra, at 2. However helpful that might be, the record shows that warning users of the risks associated with giving their data to a foreign-adversary-controlled application would do nothing to protect nonusers’ data. 2 App. 659–660; supra, at 3. Forbidding TikTok’s domestic operations from sending sensitive data abroad might seem another option. But even if Congress were to impose serious criminal penalties on domestic TikTok employees who violate a data-sharing ban, the record suggests that would do little to deter the PRC from exploiting TikTok to steal Americans’ data. See 1 App. 214 (noting threats from “malicious code, backdoor vulnerabilities, surreptitious surveillance, and other problematic activities tied to source code development” in the PRC); 2 App. 702 (“[A]gents of the PRC would not fear monetary or criminal penalties in the United States”). The record also indicates that the “size” and “complexity” of TikTok’s “underlying software” may make it impossible for law enforcement to detect violations. Id., at 688–689; see also id., at 662. Even setting all these challenges aside, any new compliance regime could raise separate constitutional concerns—for instance, by requiring the government to surveil Americans’ data to ensure that it isn’t illicitly flowing overseas. Id., at 687 (suggesting that effective enforcement of a data-export ban might involve).”
Do they do this with other bans, like those against network hardware? Other countries sell their goods here at the American government's leisure. It's always been this way.
What if Congress passed a law that said "The New York Times must shut down unless all foreign owners divest"? That's effectively impossible for a publicly traded corporation. Is that just a ban, in practice?
That's what the question of strict scrutiny vs. intermediate scrutiny vs. rational basis is about. The courts would have to decide the appropriate level of scrutiny given the legal context and then apply that to the law as written.
Your hypothetical clearly implicates the Times' speech, so intermediate scrutiny at least would be applied, requiring that the law serve an important governmental purpose. I think that would be a difficult argument for the government to make, especially if the law was selective about which kinds of media institutions could and could not have any foreign ownership in general. The TikTok law is much more specific.
It's interesting to read the full TikTok opinion https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/24-656_ca7d.pdf and search for "scrutiny" and "tailored" while referencing some of the diagrams from the overview above. It's a good case study of how different levels of scrutiny are evaluated!
IANAL, but my lay opinion is that thanks to the foreign commerce clause this would be a matter of rational basis.
So quite likely Congress could craft such a law and have it hold up, if it could show that foreign control of the NYT (which is incidentally the case) posed a national security concern.
Except this isn't a law against any foreign owner, just specifically a foreign owner that is essentially the #1 geopolitical adversary of the US.
A large part of the US-China relationship is zero-sum. If America loses, china wins, and vice versa. That relationship is not the same for, say, the US-France relationship.
That’s what the China hawks want you to believe, it’s not just a lie but a shameful, war mongering lie. And they will increasingly use that lie to shut people up, shut apps down, until we have no choice but to believe that the Chinese want us dead and we them. It’s textbook propaganda and you’re spreading it.
China and the US have been in a massively successful, mutually beneficial global economic partnership for decades. Zero sum my ass. Take a peace pipe, make friends not war.
I want to believe you, but arguments like this are so simplistic that it's profoundly disappointing. It is simultaneously the case that they are extensive trade partners and that there's ongoing harassment in the South China Sea, the horrifying takeover of Hong Kong and the increasingly chilling situation in Taiwan, or the harassment of expat dissidents who have fled to the West.
To say nothing of extremely adversarial cases of increasingly aggressive hacking, corporate espionage, "wolf warrior" diplomacy, development of military capabilities that seem specifically designed with countering the U.S. in mind, as well as the more ordinary diplomatic and economic pushback on everything from diplomatic influence, pushing an alternative reserve currency, and an internal political doctrine that emphasizes doubling down on all these fronts.
I don't even feel like I've ventured an opinion yet, I've simply surveyed facts and I am yet to meet a variation of the Officer Barbrady "nothing to see here" argument that has proved to be fully up to speed on the adversarial picture in front of us.
I think what I want, to feel reassured, is to be pleasantly surprised by someone who is command of these facts, capable of showing that I'm wrong about any of the above, and/or that I'm overlooking important swaths of the factual landscape in such a way that points to a safe equilibrium rather than an adversarial position.
But instead it's light-on-facts tirades that attempt to paint these concerns as neocon warmongering, attempting to indulge in a combination of colorful imagery and ridicule, which for me is kind of a non-starter.
Edit in response to reply below: I'm just going to underscore that none of the facts here are in dispute. The whataboutism, insinuations of racism, and "were you there!?" style challenges (reminiscent of creation science apologetics) are just not things I'm interested in engaging with.
if you reread your post, looking for whatabboutism, each critique you provide could be described as such in response to "we're great trading partners and will continue to be"
why are these whatabboutisms interesting but others are not? what makes you comfortable with working with americans, when its clear how they treat expat political dissidents like Assange and Snowden? why are you ok working with the US who's military is tuned for seizing iranian oil shipments? why are you favourable to a US reserve currency when the US has been abusing its power by putting all kinds of unilateral sanctions, and confiscating reserves without any due process? its not just china thats trying to make a new reserve currency, the EU does too, so they can buy iranian oil.
minus all the whatabboutisms, america and china exchanged ~$750B worth of goods and services in 2022, with neither's trangressions being a blocker. Americans by and large care much more about the cost and variety of goods than they do about fishing rights in the south china sea. americans dont care that much about US foreign policy goals, compared to shopping and culture.
>why are these whatabboutisms interesting but others are not?
I don't agree that they are whataboutisms for starters. I don't present them in response to criticisms of the U.S. to deflect away those criticisms, which is an essential, definitional characteristic of a whataboutism. Everything ususal to the critique of whataboutisms is sufficient I think to address the new examples you present in your comment, which I would say just fall in the same old category.
The critiques of China in this context are "interesting" because they relate to democratic norms, human rights, freedom of expression and the security environment that safeguards them.
And perhaps most importantly, I don't regard democratic values and economic transactions to be in a relationship where the loss of one is compensated by the presence of the other. This is a point which I believe is a relatively well understood cornerstone of western liberal democracies.
Have you been to China? Know anyone from there? Or is your opinion on what they deserve based entirely on TV headlines? Do you relate to them as humans? That’s what I need to see before I take anyone’s condemnation of any group of people seriously.
I’m disputing none of the facts you raise, I just don’t think it’s reason enough to label the entire country as an enemy state and shut the door like a petulant child. Especially in light of the horrifying atrocities that we ourselves are funding.
> China and the US have been in a massively successful, mutually beneficial global economic partnership for decades
Past performance is not indicative of future results. China is now grappling with sluggish GDP growth, declining fertility, youth unemployment, re-shoring/friend-shoring, a property crisis, popular discontent with authoritarian overreach (e.g. zero COVID and HK), and increasingly concentrated power under chairman-for-life Xi. Their military spending has hockey-sticked in the past two decades and they're churning out ships and weapons like nobody's business. He realizes that the demographic and economic windows of opportunity are finite for military action against Taiwan (and by extension its allies like the US and Japan). The Chinese military's shenanigans in the South China Sea with artificial islands, EEZ violations, and so forth in combination with Xi's rhetorical sabre-rattling in domestic speeches don't paint a pretty picture.
Before somebody like this poster calls me a "war-mongering [liar]" or something similar let me point out that this is the opinion of academics [1], not US DoD officials or politicians. I have nothing but reverence for China's people and culture. I'd love to visit but unfortunately it's my understanding that I'd have to install tracking software on my phone and check in with police every step of the way. This type of asymmetry between our governments is why this ban has legs.
With the gift of hindsight I think it's safe to say that neoliberal policy (in the literal sense of the term, not the hacky partisan one) is a double-edged sword that got us to where we are today. To say that the US-China relationship is sunshine and puppies is ignorant of the facts.
> I'd love to visit but unfortunately it's my understanding that I'd have to install tracking software on my phone and check in with police every step of the way.
Uh, what? I've never encountered this in my trips to China.
You do have an ID scanned (like literally, on a photocopier) when you check into a hotel.
Do you dispute the persecution of Uyghurs in China? The UN, US Dept. of State, House of Commons in the UK and Canada, Dutch Parliament, French National Assembly, New Zealand, Belgium, and the Czech Republic?
This is not a government to be friends with. It's time we go our separate ways from the CCP.
I do not dispute it (in fact if you have good sources on the latest goings-on about this issue I’d appreciate it). But to say that it’s cause enough to excommunicate the CCP and go to war… is hypocrisy of the highest order, when we ourselves clearly fund and condone massive atrocities as long as it’s someone else’s hands. Road to peace is not paved with blood, do not be confused. Peace comes from boring communication work: talking, arguing, hashing the problems out, day in and day out. Shutting the door is the first step to a tragedy, always.
I don't advocate war, but I'd prefer a relationship similar to Russia or North Korea. No trade whatsoever. No trade with nations that trade with China.
Well, to a large extent, the reason Russia and North Korea are hopeless backwaters ruled by petty dictators and filled with suffering… is precisely because nobody would trade with or invest in them. And when they predictably fall into dysfunction and despair, they end up threatening everyone’s peace. You reap what you sow. We need to do better.
That's completely wrong. All of Europe heavily traded with Russia, and Germany even wanted to base their green transformation plan primarily on trade with Russia.
By which point, Russia was already in the hands of a dictator. Too late and too little, as they say. But yes, obviously, every country deserves a large share of blame for its own situation.
Either way - even if I concede this, my point stands that starving nations and denying them development isn't a great long term strategy for peace.
My person in deity do I need to go down the list of genocides and atrocities the US has either participated in or funded in its long and bloodsoaked history? It's a long list but it ends with the billions of dollars in weapons, aid and personnel we sent to help Israel try to wipe out the Palestinians.
This isn't an attempt at whataboutism here, no one is denying that what China is doing to the Uyghurs is terrible, but the US and its allies have no moral high ground to stand on at all in this regard.
That was the us policy for 20 years under the assumption that political liberalism with follow economic liberalism. It has not. This is also no one sided. China is preparing for conflict with the US so we must also. Yes hawks can push a country into war but so can doves.
Or the US is preparing for conflict with China, so China must also. But actually it's probably a two way feedback loop between the two of them that the ignoramuses that run each country love because it makes their jobs exciting and, probably, profitable.
All powers are mutually antagonistic and it prudent to prepare to confront each other. As long as thoes efforts are equally matched and neither side is prepared thinks it can gain an advantage the peace is held as it held during the cold war.
The Scotus case linked to here by others has noted the possibility of tying networks of contacts to Tiktok user profiles, and network mapping political groups in Taiwan can be leveraged to support any number ventures to disempower the island's democracy-favoring majority.
Only insofar as their support networks extend into the United States. But you're right to suggest that Taiwan should consider a ban also, over similar security concerns.
>Now, regarding the international situation, The biggest wish of most of us Chinese is that the United States disappears completely and permanently from this beautiful earth.
>Because the United States uses its financial, military and other hegemony to exploit the world, destroy the peace and tranquility of the earth, and bring countless troubles to the people of other countries, we sincerely hope that the United States will disappear.
>We usually laugh at the large number of infections caused by the new coronavirus pandemic in the United States, not because we have no sympathy, but because we really hope that the United States will disappear.
>We usually laugh at the daily gun wars in the United States, not because we don’t sympathize with the families that have been broken up by shootings, but because we really hope that the United States will disappear.
>We usually laugh at Americans for legalizing drugs, not because we support drugs, but because we really hope that the United States will disappear.When we scold American Olympic athletes, it's not because we lack sportsmanship, but because we really hope that America will disappear.
>We make fun of Trump and Sleepy Joe, not because we look down on these two old men, but because we really hope that the United States will disappear.
>We Chinese are hardworking, kind, reasonable, peace-loving and not extreme. But we really don't like America. Really, if the Americans had not fought with us in Korea in the early days of our country, prevented us from liberating Taiwan, provoked a trade war, challenged our sovereignty in the South China Sea, and bullied our Huawei, would we Chinese hate them?
And that's what Chinese netziens agree without controversy on one of their biggest social media sites. What about the CCP here? Well if we look at Wang Huning, Chief Ideologue of the CCP, he is explicitly an postliberal who draws from the Schmittian rejection of liberal heterogenity, which he sees as inherently unstable, in favour of a strong, homogenous and centralized state based on traditional values in order to guarantee stability. And if it that's just internally, how do you think a fundamental rejection of heterogenity translates to foreign policy? So yes, whether you think China is a problem, China certainly thinks you are a problem.
It's always very interesting to see people pull out threads with low like counts (like 12k) and claim that central idea of the post is widely held.
We're talking about platforms with tens of millions of users; wide appeal is at least a quarter million likes, with mass appeal being at least a million. A local-scale influencer can gather 10-30k likes very easily on such a massive platform.
>It's always very interesting to see people pull out threads with low like counts (like 12k) and claim that central idea of the post is widely held.
In what context is 12k likes a low amount? To me this is reminiscent of arguments I heard from neocons that global anti-Iraq war protests, the largest coordinated global protests in history at the time, counted as "small" if you considered them in absolute terms as percentages of the global population.
I think it's the opposite, that such activities are tips of the proverbial iceberg of more broadly shared sentiment.
It would be one thing if there were all kinds of sentiments in all directions with roughly evenly distributed #'s of likes. I'm open to the idea that some aspect of context could be argued to diminish the significance, but it wouldn't be that 12k likes, in context, is a negligible amount. It would be something else like its relative popularity compared to alternative views, or some compelling argument that this is a one-off happenstance and not a broadly shared sentiment.
Do you disagree then that's not a sentiment widely reflected within Chinese social media? I simply gave an example for brevity, other answers are similar, I would encourage people to actually go in and read themselves here.
bro literally citing chinese facebook comments ;) if you started taking pissed off internet comments seriously we'd have to go to war with every country in the world
look man, i'm not saying china is some heavenly force of justice. but the thing about peace is that it's bigger than both sides, and it's maintained by the grace of those who understand that often the real threat isn't the enemy, it's your fear of the enemy.
>it's maintained by the grace of those who understand that often the real threat isn't the enemy, it's your fear of the enemy.
But how do you know that? Do you any such examples of how the CCP or China is dicussing politics amongst themselves to support that claim, their ideological leanings and papers or their own national strategies?
Sadly that's above the pay grade of everyone here only the rich folk that run the world get to see that on all sides :)
One idea would be to completely ignore news outlets and look at raw data imports, exports, official visits to try to identify geopolitical patterns algorithmically has anyone on HN attempted such a thing?
That might be true, and yet it's also true that enemies are not just a fictional concept, and letting them have undue influence that weakens your society probably isn't a good idea.
The ban is not rooted in the concept ByteDance has a minority of investors who are Chinese citizens so any comparisons framed around that concept will not change the analysis. The reason for the ban, agree with it or not, is the perceived control and data sharing with the Chinese government made possible by many things (mainly that they are HQ'd in that government's jurisdiction and then have all of these other potentially concerning details, not that they just have one of these other details).
If the NYT were seen as being under significant control of and risking sharing too much user data with the Chinese government then it would indeed make sense to apply the same ban.
Personally, I'm still on the fence about the ban. On one hand having asymmetry in one side banning such things and the other not is going to be problematic. On the other the inherent problems of banning companies by law. Such things work out in other areas... but will it work out in this specific type of example? Dunno, not 100% convinced either way.
>Personally, I'm still on the fence about the ban. On one hand having asymmetry in one side banning such things and the other not is going to be problematic.
I wouldn't worry about that, as FB, twitter, reddit etc are banned in China. To the extent that we want equilibrium here, banning Tiktok would reprsent a step toward parity.
>>>mainly that they are HQ'd in that government's jurisdiction
ByteDance is; TikTok is not. TikTok is headquartered in USA and Taiwan. Why is that not part of the analysis? The CCP can control/influence ByteDance, the US can't do anything about that. But it could do a number of things to prevent ByteDance control/influence on TikTok, and it jumped directly to "must divest".
Congress could have passed a law banning TikTok from transmitting any user data back to ByteDance/China, for example. Why not do that, if that was the actual concern?
Well, reporting as recent as April of 2024 suggested that Bytedance is able to access tiktok user data despite Operation Texas. And generally speaking, we have seen enough in the way of (1) security breaches and (2) leaky promises not to disclose data either to govts or 3rd party data brokers, only for those reassurances to fall flat. I would even go so far as to say that professions to uphold trade agreements or international agreements are uniquely "soft" in their seriousness from China in recent history.
Guarantees of insulation from bad actors from major tech companies unfortunately are not generally credible, and what is credible, at least relatively speaking, are guarantees imposed by technology itself such as E2E encryption and zero knowledge architecture, as well as contextual considerations like the long term track record of specific companies, details of their ownership and their physical locations.
The reporting I found (from the Verge) was that an employee of TikTok (in America) would email spreadsheets to executives in China, and other similar cases of US employees having the actual access to data and passing it along to other folks in China.
This all suggests to me that the 'Operation Texas' technical controls were actually in place and pretty good (or dude in China would have just run some SQL himself), and what isn't in place is hard process control to prevent US workers from emailing stuff to China. Which, you know, is exactly what Congress could pass a law to deal with.
I took the article to be absolutely damning in its reckoning on the utility of Operation Texas, precisely because it proved that no amount of technical control would be a match for the human infrastructure that tied Tiktok to China.
Which I suppose is a different way of making the same point as you.
Haha, yah, I think we agree; Operation Texas does what it says on the tin (the data is stored in the USA! It can only be directly accessed from within the USA) but ultimately that doesn't matter at all, since Jim in Texas can just email it all to China.
Yes, because the NYT is a publicly traded company. And it is majority-controlled by a single American family - the Sulzbergers. I'm not sure you could argue that a Chinese national owning a single share of NYT stock could have any kind of sway on the operation of the company. Could the same be said for the relationship China has with TikTok?
Well, yes. Just like you're allowed to say who your biggest enemy or your best friend is, even if your biggest enemy or best friend don't feel the same way about you.
Anyways, who do you think China would say their #1 geopolitical adversary is?
As far as i can tell, the Chinese care mostly about building and investing. They're aware that the US sees them as their "number one enemy" (what a childish, irresponsible way to refer to a nation of a billion, mostly innocent, people), and that the US has maintained its global domination since WWII by political assassinations, bombings, proxy wars, and half-assed failed invasions.
My advice? Stop using words like "geopolitical adversary" to mask what you really want to say. This is life, not a chessboard.
I think the equivalent would be if New York Times is somehow owned by Tencent and given that the Chinese government uses golden shares to control private companies. In that case, I think it's fair game to force NYT to divest or force them to shutdown.
What if Congress passed a law that said "The New York Times must shut down unless all foreign owners divest"?
This already exists in some ways. Foreign companies are not allowed to own American broadcasters. That's why Rupert Murdoch had to become a (dual?) American citizen when he wanted to own Fox television stations in the United States.
That would be like telling Facebook to "divest" from the US government. Which, in this case, means ignoring all government requests for data and censorship. Facebook obviously cannot do that.
Ostensibly, the US government honors the 1st and 4th amendments, and only restricts speech on the platform in rare instances where that speech is likely to incite or produce imminent lawless action, and only issues warrants for private data which are of limited scope for evidence where the government has probable cause that a crime has occurred.
The accusation is that the CCP and Bytedance have a much more intimate relationship than that, censoring (or compelling) speech and producing data for mere political favors. Whether or not this is true of Facebook's relationship with US political entities is up for debate.
The only reason it isn't widely known that social media platforms in the US share information with the government regularly is because it's illegal for said platforms to disclose those requests. It used to be that platforms would have canaries, similar to a dead man's switch, that would be removed once they were subject to these types of requests. None of them do it any more because the requests are commonplace.
Cross the US government and see how fast that turns into shadow bans, your loved ones getting tortured, someone else working with your SSN, dummy up and fish, imprisoned algorithmically etc you won't even have to cross them just be guilty by association
No horse in this race as both horses hate and will trample me but just saying lol
Of all the arguments in all directions, by far the least compelling have been the ones that attempt to both-sides equivalences between the U.S. and China on question of free speech and democratic norms. It's not that there's no offenses on the U.S. side, it's just the game of whatabouting reeks of JV debate team sophistry that is very discouraging to engage with.
The single party domination, the great firewall, the authoritarian surveillance are without comparison in scale and I think that has to be among the explicitly agreed upon facts that sanity check any conversation on this topic.
Edit since I can't reply to the comment below: all the examples mentioned below appear to involve the very equivocation between differences in scale that I spent this whole comment talking about, or attempt to equate past vs present, or are too vague to even understand the nature of the comparison, and collectively are so disorganized and low effort that they are degrading the focus and quality of the conversation as a whole.
lol @ the edit could not be more specific and factual than this I thought HN was about facts
if any false equivalences were made or scales underestimated prove it with data to further the conversation not some hand wavy righteous comment that's for Reddit as they say :D
This is completely incorrect. Divestment in this context means the selling of an asset by an organization. You cannot "divest" in this sense from a government. That's nonsensical.
The equivalent in Facebook (Meta) terms would be China requiring Facebook, if it wished to continue operations in China, to sell the Chinese Facebook product to a Chinese or other, as to be defined by China, non-American entity. In some sense this is already the case.
You could say that about all the American tech companies that are banned in China. They just have to comply with Chinese law and will be unbanned. For example, Google, unlike Microsoft/Apple, chose to withdraw from China rather than comply with Chinese law.
It doesn’t label ccp. It denigrates four countries as foreign adversaries. And then allows the president to remove any company located in those adversaries.
Kaspersky was banned this way. Tiktok was hard coded in the law to be banned. The law allows for sale. It doesn’t enforce sale.
it's more specifically ByteDance must divest. The effects that happen because of a divestment by ByteDance, such as TikTok losing access to "the algorithm", are just incidental. The oral arguments for the case are on YouTube and are worth a listen.
>owever, in a great act of self-incrimination, Bytedance (de facto controlled by CCP) has decided to not divest and would rather shutdown instead.
How is it self-incrimination? That logic doesn't work.
80% of TikTok's users are outside of the U.S., why would they sell the whole thing?
And the law is written in a way that there is no value to just sell the American operation without the algorithm, they have to sell the whole thing, including the algorithm, in order for there to be a serious buyer.
It's technology highway robbery. Imagine if China told Apple "sell to us or be banned", we'd tell them to pound sand too.
The West told plenty of its companies, through public pressure or laws, that they have to divest from Russia, and they did. Rationally they recognized that selling their assets is financially more lucrative than just closing their operations and making 0$.
Now why would an corporation which alleges to not be controlled by a government refuse to sell and forego billions in income, even though it is against the interest of their shareholders?
from what I know the bids that have been put in place are just for the US operations and there are some bids that dont include the algo as a part of the deal.
Separately, it's hard to get upset about this when China absolutely does not allow similar foreign ownership of large apps in their country. Look at all the hoops, including domestic ownership requirements, required to sell saas or similar in China.
Fact: TikTok’s parent company ByteDance Ltd. was founded by Chinese entrepreneurs, but today, roughly sixty percent of the company is beneficially owned by global institutional investors such as Carlyle Group, General Atlantic, and Susquehanna International Group. An additional twenty percent of the company is owned by ByteDance employees around the world, including nearly seven thousand Americans. The remaining twenty percent is owned by the company’s founder, who is a private individual and is not part of any state or government entity.
```
The Chinese government directly owns shares of ByteDance. It has representatives of the government working in the company ensuring it takes the "correct political direction": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ByteDance#Management
The above is based on a linked research paper but the numbers may actually be much higher as it can't really account for proxy ownership, various CCP committees influencing these companies, state banks providing loans only for companies that play ball, etc.
And even if it wouldn't directly have fingers in the pie, it's an authoritarian state, and it always has de-facto control over anything it decides to control. The state can always just waltz in like a mafia boss: "nice outfit you have here, would be a shame if anything were to happen to it..."
While more democratic nations are not entirely flawless on this, the separation of powers, independent judiciary, and free press do offer protections against this, as does having a general culture where these sort of things aren't accepted. Again, not flawless 100% foolproof protections, but in general it does work reasonably well.
> However, like most other Chinese companies, ByteDance is legally compelled to establish an in-house Communist Party committee composed of employees who are party members.
> In 2018, China amended its National Intelligence Law, which requires any organization or citizen to support, assist and cooperate with national intelligence work.
> That means ByteDance is legally bound to help with gathering intelligence.
"Another way the Chinese government could assert leverage over a deal involving TikTok would be by exercising its “golden share” in a unit of ByteDance. In such an arrangement, the Chinese government buys a small portion of a company’s equity in exchange for a seat on its board and veto power over certain company decisions.
In 2021, an investment fund controlled by a state-owned entity established by a Chinese internet regulator took a 1 percent stake in a ByteDance subsidiary and appointed a director to its board."
Committees representing the interests of the Chinese Communist Party exist inside of most major corporations in China. It would not be possible to operate a company like ByteDance without acquiescing to government interference
You can read the full "Opinion on
Strengthening the United Front Work of the Private Economy in the New Era" here[1] in English, though I suspect you don't need the translation.
Excerpts from what the Party says openly:
> Strengthening united front work in the private economy is an important means by which the Party’s leadership over the private economy is manifested.
> This will help continuously strengthen the Party’s leadership over the private economy, bring the majority of private economy practitioners closer to the Party
> Strengthening united front work in the private economy is an important part of the development and improvement of the socialist system with Chinese characteristics.
> Educate and guide private economy practitioners to arm their minds and guide their practice with Xi Jinping’s Thoughts on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era; maintain a high degree of consistency with the Party Central Committee on political positions, political directions, political principles, and political roads; and always be politically sensible. Further strengthen the Party building work of private enterprises and sincerely give full play to the role of Party organizations (党组织) as battle fortresses and to the vanguard and exemplary role of Party members.
> Enhance ideological guidance: Guide private economy practitioners to increase their awareness
of self-discipline; build a strong line of ideological and moral defense; strictly regulate their own words and actions
China's economic reform didn't quite embrace capitalism the same way many other places did. Their businesses still inherently do not have the same managerial independence that many have come to expect as normal in the rest of the world. While Chinese businesses are allowed to have some private control, the government still exercises control over "private" businesses when they decide they are important or large enough.
Imagine if all Fortune 500 companies were required to have Trump appointees on their boards. That would sound crazy here, but that's how things still work in China.
The divestiture clause is just a red herring -- sure, that sounds perfectly fine. But you can substitute it (in the future) with anything.
In the future, the owners of a free press will be permitted to operate if and only if there is board seat made out to a CIA member. Unions will be permitted to congregate as long as they register with the Office of Trade Security
All in all, a huge blow to the potential power of individual rights (essentially goes to the Founding Fathers' point that having a list of rights set in stone is NOT the end-all, be-all, it's who decides the rights that count)
> But why didn't Supreme Court find the first ammendment arguments compelling? As per first ammendment it is legal and protected to print/distribute/disseminate even enemy propaganda in the USA.
> Even at the height of cold war for example Soviet Publications were legal to publish, print and distribute in the USA.
That was explicitly brought up in oral arguments by the court, and the response by the US Gov was: "The act is written to be content neutral."
The court's opinion explains that they agree the law is "appropriately tailored" to remain content neutral. Whether it's "enemy propaganda" or not is, in their view, irrelevant to the application of the law. TikTok can exist in America, using TikTok is not banned, the owner just can't be a deemed "foreign adversary", which there is a history of enforcement (to some degree).
As I understand, a print publication can't have a business entity in the US if it's owned by a foreign adversary. Given that, an American could still travel to the foreign country themselves and bring an issue back. That would be similar to side loading apps.
In order to comply with the law, Apple and Google cannot distribute the app because it is deemed to be unlawfully owned by a foreign adversary; that's the ban. But anyone who wants to get it through other means can still do so. Presuming that's how it works, it doesn't seem to be logically different from radio/print media.
That makes me curious about the details; it's worth noting that the Soviet Embassy's physical location would be Soviet sovereign land that is licensed to them by the US so long as they are allowed to maintain an embassy presence. If people go onto the embassy to buy the magazine, they are literally traveling to a foreign country to buy it.
According to Wikipedia (yes I am linking directly to it and not a source, sorry to all of my teachers.) it seems that the magazines were distributed by news stands in many major USA cities, you did not need to go to the Embassy. But it also go on to note that this was because of an inter-governmental agreement which muddies the water. E.g. "Was it because of the agreement or because of the constitution and we just _said_ it was because of the agreement."
I don't really know the exact legal situation surrounding this, but the viewpoint that in the past Soviet propaganda could be freely distributed in the US a rather curious viewpoint. The US government spent decades chasing down (alleged) communists, both using hard power and soft power, and many were effectively silenced, and many more never even dared to speak up.
So whatever the exact legal situation was the time, a free speech utopia where even enemies of the US had free reign did not exist. De-facto free speech was significantly more restricted on this topic.
> Like such cannot be enforced for example against foreign radio stations or print publications.
If the law and acts calling for their divestiture were deemed "content neutral" then they could. But an app, with algorithmic profiling, delivery, and data capture, for the purposes of modeling and influence, is not the same as a radio station or a publication, so it would probably not be easy or even possible to the SC's standards to write a content neutral law in that way. But they have deemed that with apps like TikTok, when done so carefully, it is possible and divestiture can be enforced neutral of content.
We don't need to stick our head in the sand and act like TikTok is the same as a print publication.
The SC's decision, and Gorsuch's opinion in particular, is carefully written to not fundamentally rewrite the First Amendment, I'd urge you to read it.
The replies here seem slightly off base. The Court acknowledges that 1s amm. free speech issues are at play. A law can regulate non-expressive activity (corporate ownership) while still burdening expressive activity, which is the case here. In such instances, the Court grants Congress more leeway compared to laws explicitly targeting speech. It checks that (1) the govt has an important interest unrelated to speech (it does), and (2) the law burdens no more speech than necessary (arguable, but not obviously wrong)
My reading of it is they didn't bother to take the motivation of the law into account (suppression of speech), and only took the law "as written" to decide.
> We need not decide
whether that exclusion is content based. The question be-
fore the Court is whether the Act violates the First Amend-
ment as applied to petitioners. To answer that question, we
look to the provisions of the Act that give rise to the effective
TikTok ban that petitioners argue burdens their First
Amendment rights...
they talk more about the motivations of the law in part D.
The "exclusion" referred to in this quote is not the exclusion of tiktok. The court is responding to one of the arguments that tiktok made. Certain types of websites are excluded from the law, and (tiktok says) if you have to look at what kind of website it is, then obviously you're discriminating based on content.
the court is saying that this would be an argument that this law is unconstitutional, period. That's a very hard thing to prove because you need to show that the law is bad in all contexts, and to whoever it applies to, very hard. So tiktok is not trying to prove that, that's not how they challenged the law - instead tiktok is trying to prove something much more limited, ie that the law is bad when applied to tiktok. It's an "as-applied" challenge. In which case, the argument about looking at other websites is irrelevant, we already know we're looking at tiktok. As the opinion says "the exclusion is not within the scope of [Tiktok's] as-applied challenge"
> At what point in the ruling did they wonder what motivated the effective ban? "5 why's" it, so to speak. Did they ever say, "because X, Y, and Z, it is clear the intent of the law is not to prevent speech of certain parties"?
part D. "The record before us adequately supports the conclusion that Congress would have passed the challenged provisions based on the data collection justification alone"
This is belied by the lack of laws (and lack of provisions in this law) preventing American companies from collecting data and selling to the highest bidder, including China.
from the opinion: "[Tiktok] further argue that the Act is underinclusive as to the Government’s data protection concern, raising doubts as to whether the Government is actually pursuing that interest"
ie what you're saying...the Court replies:
"the Government need not address all aspects of a problem in one fell swoop...Furthermore, as we have already concluded, the Government had good reason to single out TikTok for special treatment"
Congress can solve one problem without needing to solve all problems.
The quote you posted is about if the exclusion of platforms "whose primary purpose is to allow users to post product reviews, business reviews, or travel information and reviews" means the law is content-based, but the Court is saying that provision is irrelevant because TikTok brought an "as-applied" challenge (and not a facial one) [0] and that provision doesn't change how it applies to them. So they are looking at the parts of the law (and the congressional record supporting them) which actually cause TikTok to be subject to the qualified divestiture.
Right, I'm saying they based it on on the "text" of the law, instead of the motivation.
At what point in the ruling did they wonder what motivated the effective ban? "5 why's" it, so to speak. Did they ever say, "because X, Y, and Z, it is clear the intent of the law is not to prevent speech of certain parties"?
> Right, I'm saying they based it on on the "text" of the law, instead of the motivation.
Sure, although they do discuss TikTok's challenge to the motivation ("Petitioners further argue that the Act is underinclusive as to the Government’s data protection concern, raising doubts as to whether the Government is actually pursuing that interest"). I just don't think the quote you had stands for what you were saying.
> At what point in the ruling did they wonder what motivated the effective ban?
Above is at page 15. Also, I think you're probably looking for the paragraph starting with "For the reasons we have explained, requiring divestiture for the purpose of preventing a foreign adversary from accessing the sensitive data of 170 million U.S. TikTok users is not 'a subtle means of exercising a content preference.' Turner I, 512 U. S., at 645." (at 12).
I saw elsewhere you likened this to the Trump muslim ban. I don't think that comparison is apt. The First Amendment issues there were not decided by the 9th circuit in the first one (“we reserve consideration of [First Amendment religious discrimination] claims until the merits of this appeal have been fully briefed.” State v. Trump, 847 F.3d 1151, 1168 (9th Cir. 2017)) the stay there was issued due to likelihood of success on the merits wrt due process issues; I don't know offhand about the second one; and the third attempt was upheld.
I appreciate the thorough response. So they speak to the motivation in part being "preventing a foreign adversary from accessing the sensitive data of 170 million U.S. TikTok users", but not at all the portion of the motivation to "prevent the CCP from having a megaphone into 170 million attentive US TikTok users" (my words). Did they omit that this was likely a motivation, or contend that it wasn't.
I think this is discussed at length in part II.D (starts at the bottom of 17). I would write more but I have spent too long already on this thread :)
I would be a bit careful about trying to liken motivation for something like an EO to a law though; many members of congress voted to pass the exact language in the final bill, and they might not all have agreed with _why_. So I would put to you that the text itself is the primary thing one should consider, especially more in the legislative case than the executive one.
> But why didn't Supreme Court find the first ammendment arguments compelling?
Read the decision. They thought the act was content-neutral, and they thought that the espionage concerns were sufficient to reach a decision w/o having to involve the First Amendment. Gorsuch and Sotomayor weren't quite so sure as to the First Amendment issues, but in any case all nine justices found that they could avoid reaching the First Amendment issues, so they did just that.
The first amendment doesn't apply here. You can say whatever you want anywhere else on the internet. You can print what you want anywhere you want. You can distribute what you want anywhere you want. Bytedance refused to sell TikTok so it's being shut down. They could divest, but they didn't.
It just isn’t the Wild Draw 4 some people imagine it to be. You can’t commit fraud or libel or false advertising and claim First Amendment protection. Similarly, there are levels of scrutiny when the government claims national security to shut down a media platform.
The opinion actually assumes without deciding that First Amendment scrutiny applies, so I don't think it "absolutely" does. (But yes, it probably does and Sotomayor and Gorsuch would decide as much)
>But why didn't Supreme Court find the first ammendment arguments compelling?
Apparently the owners of the operation are not US citizens operating in the USA and don't have any first amendment rights because that's part of the US Constitution and doesn't apply to other countries.
There weren't any laws passed banning Soviet associated agencies from publishing based on chain of ownership. Nothing to do with SCOTUS.
Read the opinion, the law was upheld on intermediate scrutiny. It doesn't ban based on content, it bans based on the designation of the foreign parent as an adversary. Since it's not a content ban, or rather because it's a content-neutral ban, strict scrutiny does not apply.
Without strict scrutiny, the law merely needs to fulfill a compelling government interest.
The motivation was based on content, so the actual text of the law shouldn't matter. Such acts have been overturned before (see the Muslim ban) based on motivation.
Speech and immigration are completely different areas of the law, there's no useful legal point of comparison in this context.
The motivation is largely irrelevant to the analysis of this case. What matters is what effects the law has and what services it provides the government.
So for example, the law technically doesn't ban TikTok at all, but rather mandates divestiture. However, the timeline wasn't realistic to manage such a divestiture, so the court recognized that the law is effectively a ban. The effect is what matters.
Similarly, the law provides a mechanism for the President to designate any application meeting a set of criteria a "foreign adversary controlled application". The court recognizes that the government has a compelling interest in restricting foreign adversaries from unregulated access to the data of US citizens, and the law services that interest.
The law represents a restriction on freedom of expression, TikTok is banned, but the law also represents a compelling government interest. To determine the winner of these two motivations, the court has established various thresholds a law must overcome. The relevant threshold in this case was determined to be Intermediate Scrutiny, and a compelling government interest is sufficient to overcome intermediate scrutiny.
> The motivation is largely irrelevant to the analysis of this case. What matters is what effects the law has and what services it provides the government.
You can say whatever you want on a telephone call.
BUT:
The telephone network is regulated. Your cell phone must comply with FCC regulations. You personally may have a restraining order that prohibits you from calling certain people.
IE, if a phone is found to violate FCC rules, pulling it from the market has little to do with the first amendment.
If these FCC rules were designed specifically with the intent to suppress speech of certain parties, they could be found in violation of your first amendment rights if challenged. IMO the ruling does not bother to examine whether the motivation of drafting the Act was to suppress speech.
This case was not about speech. It was about a vehicle for speech having a high risk of being used for espionage and PSYOPS. If TikTok was the only vehicle available for people to post on the internet, then maybe the First Amendment argument would hold water.
This decision doesn't tell people they can't speak any more than, say, shutting down a specific TV station or newspaper which has been used for money laundering or which is broadcasting obscene content.
The case is entirely about speech, and the various levels of scrutiny that apply to laws that violate the First Amendment. You should read the decision before commenting on what was argued and decided in said decision.
Creating and distributing in the USA, sure. That is allowed. This is why the government isn't regulating Chinese content on Instagram, for example.
The issue here is that TikTok "content" (aka the algorithm that decides what content you get to see) is created abroad and controlled from abroad. The data collected by the app goes abroad. So then it becomes an import/export issue, and the government can and does regulate that.
This is why the government has already agreed to letting TikTik be run by a US entity. You can have the same content and same algorithm, just kept within the borders of the USA.
It's about controlling the narrative. A broad group of US citizens use TikTok to discuss social inequality, class warfare, and other topics that would give people, individually and collectively, more power and US billionaires have no say in it.
Because this is not about the first amendment? This just happens to be a company that runs a social network. Congress regulates commerce with foreign nations and made the decision, as it has in many other cases, that a foreign nation can not be the beneficial owner of TikTok. TikTok then made no effort to divest, giving away the game if you want, and predictably lost this challenge.
The arguments presented to the SCOTUS and the opinion itself are totally contained within the context of the First Amendment. No one is even arguing about anything other than the First Amendment and the exceptions permitted to that amendment.
Well, yes, because that is the only hope TikTok had - to claim it was targeted because of the speech on TikTok, and not because this is a very boring case of regulating commerce, which as said is well established and has lots of precedent. And their expensive lawyers made it happen, when they should have been looking for buyers. And then SCOTUS unanimously said nah.
SCOTUS fully agreed that the law violates the First Amendment as written, it wasn't even a question at any level from the district court on up.
The decision was balanced on strict or intermediate scrutiny. At the distict court level it was observed that the case should probably be decided via intermediate scrutiny, but they upheld the ban under strict scrutiny due to "national security concerns".
The SCOTUS didn't bother with strict scrutiny or national security, and decided that the correct analysis was intermediate scrutiny and that the ban merely needed to serve a compelling government interest (which regulation of applications controlled by foreign adversaries meets).
It's entirely about speech, the only question in the entire case as decided at the district and SCOTUS level was speech. Whether the government should be allowed to violate the 1st Amendment due to compelling interest is everything the case turns on.
Personally, I think using intermediate scrutiny here is wild.
Print media is different. It is much more exhausting to read a newspaper because critical thinking circuits are automatically engaged.
You are more removed from the content because everything is in the physical world. And even within a single newspaper there are so many different topics that it is hard to be in a bubble.
The Internet automatically leads to bubble creation, 200 character messages and indoctrination.
It is more like loudspeakers they had in villages during Mao's tenure blaring politically correct messages. Or like the Volksempfänger (radio) during the Nazi era. Interestingly, many of the most destructive revolutions happened after the widespread use of radio.
Of course the Internet isn't nearly as bad, but most people are completely unable to even consider a view outside of their indoctrination bubble.
TikTok doesn't do speech. Users on TikTok do speech. Banning TikTok doesn't prevent any users from printing / distributing / disseminating their speech.
The first amendment doesn't have any provision regarding the potential reach or enablement of distribution of the speech of the people.
Agreed. TikTok allows people to speak into the app, and to receive speech, but the act of organizing and strategically disseminating the speech is not speech -- it's societal scale hormone regulation and should be controlled for the health of the national body. It's wild that so many people are up in arms about TikTok when it is a Chinese app that is banned in China, where apps are heavily restricted.
For anyone who does consider these algorithms speech, I challenge you to share a single person at any social media company who has taken direct responsibility over a single content feed of an individual user. How can speech exist if nobody is willing to take ownership of it?
The case law around editorial control is at odds with most platforms' section 230 protection, which makes the fact that TikTok argued that its algorithm _is_ speech pretty different from how most platforms have argued to date (in order to preserve their section 230 protections)
I've understood that social media companies deliberately do not identify as editors because they don't want to be responsible for generated feeds of users. Is this wrong? This is why I'm asking to see evidence of a specific person from a social media company taking direct responsibility over a user's consumed content.
"You can drive anywhere you like..." as they take away the super major highways owned by foreign adversaries and leave the ones bending the knee to USA national interests.
It seems incredibly logical from a state perspective. Sucks for users who can't choose to use a major highway without it being owned by an technofeudal oligarch. That statement holds true regardless of any platform. What were those blockchain people up to again?
I'm not bent out of shape over the tiktok ban, but you've got me wondering. Do newspapers do speech? Or is it the editors and columnists who do speech? Could a newspaper be shut down by congress if the law didn't say anything about the editors and columnists, merely denying them the means of distribution?
Newspaper is probably a bad example because the first ammendment specifically calls out protecting the press
> Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
That's kind of what I was thinking w.r.t. ”first amendment doesn't have any provision regarding the potential reach or enablement of distribution of the speech of the people.”
The entire notion that there's a free speech angle here is a disingenuous red herring by Tik Tok to muddy the waters.
Speech is in no way being limited or compelled - you can say the exact same thing on dozens of other platforms without consequence. You can even say it on tik tok without consequence. You can even publish videos from tik tok in the US just fine.
This law is about what types of foreign corporation can do business in the US, and what sorts of corporate governance structures are allowed.
This is false. There is absolutely content on TikTok critical of the US, Israel, western businesses, etc that is boosted by TikTok’s algorithm and effectively censored or hidden on many American-owned social networks,
First amendment rights is the only argument that I agree with keeping TikTok alive. However if there is proof that China is manipulating the algorithm to feed the worst manipulative content to Americans then I do think there’s a national security concern here.
The SCOTUS opinion does not rely on a national security interest to justify itself, merely that the ban is content neutral and thus is subject to intermediate scrutiny.
This is an especially superficial take, sure the Constitution says nothing about national security but reality sure does...
Any person that has ever gotten a security clearance has given up some of their first amendment rights to do it and if they talk about the wrong thing to the wrong person they will absolutely go to jail.
And as always the classic example of free speech being limited still stands. Go yell FIRE in a crowded movie and see how your dumbass 1st amendment argument keeps you out of jail.
Bit of a non-sequitor here but the classic example of yelling 'Fire' in a theater has me thinking about public safety. Obviously there have been many crowd-crush related injuries and fatalities throughout history. But we've also come a long way since the 1800's or 1900's with fire drills, emergency exits, etc.
It almost seems like any hazard or danger from a false alarm (intentional or otherwise) should be the liability of the owners or operators of a property for unsafe infrastructure or improper safety briefing.
Anyway, I don't expect that to appear as a major legal issue, given this is primarily used as a rhetorical example.
Bytedance was trying to make your argument. The ruling is that the first ammendment doesn't apply and that was always a stretch for Bytedance as illustrated by the unanimous decision.
I'm not really sure what point you're trying to make, but the law is whatever congress has passed, whatever the courts have interpreted, and whatever the executive executes. People who read the Constitution and make up their own interpretation clearly missed the part about the separation of powers and the role of the judiciary.
I'm not really sure what point you're trying to make, but the law is whatever congress has passed, whatever the courts have interpreted, and whatever the executive executes.
My point is, the First Amendment tells Congress not to do that.
What exactly does "shall make no law" mean to you? Be specific.
The text says "Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech"
It doesn't say "Congress shall make no law regulating any kind of speech"
The difference between these two, if it isn't already obvious, is that people do not have a right to all types of speech.
Congress can, always could, and always has regulated speech for which people do not have a recognized right to make. Things like fraud or threats are not legal, and Congress is absolutely within their right to make these types of speech illegal, and it would be silly and unfounded to suggest that they couldn't.
Furthermore, your personal interpretation of the text is irrelevant. The Constitution itself delegates the judiciary as the body which can interpret it. And they have, many times, ruled that the 1st has exceptions.
So you may have a strong opinion about what you want the law to be, but you are not correct about what is actually is.
I never told you what my opinion was. I'm just saying that, yes, it's the people with the guns who decide what the law is and what it isn't. And the above is what they've said it means. The rest of us merely have opinions.
I imagine you'll get the same content on YouTube shorts or Facebook reels? I don't like using apps, so I never bothered with Tiktok, but tiktok watermarks are still on most of the short videos I view, content creators are either putting their work on multiple platforms, or someone else is ripping it off and putting it on different platforms.
This would have been a great opportunity to regulate and prohibit massive data collection on mobile phones, by writing a law that requires the platforms (iOS,android) to architect differently and police this aggressively. Takes care of a lot of the TikTok worry and cleans up ecosystems from location tracking/selling weather apps as well.
There's no compelling argument or evidence of data collection with TikTok, to my knowledge. Theres more evidence of data collection and aggregation with American platforms than TikTok. Additionally, TikTok is operated independently within the USA and hosted on American servers. I think if there's any opportunity to regulate data collection, TikTok seems to have positioned itself defensively and seems to be distant from being used as an example. The only thing that seems to matter with this ban is that TikTok is mostly owned by a Chinese company.
I'd love to be corrected, but I haven't been provided any evidence or information that suggests this ban was justified at all.
I met someone who did some high-level work for ByteDance. I asked them what they thought of the worries that TikTok was a CCP spying instrument.
They said ByteDance is as disorganized as any other big tech company, and it would be approximately impossible for them to discretely pull that off.
It's easy to see "CCP" and think bogeyman, but it is interesting to think about how achievable it would be to pull off something shady at Google or Facebook, and apply that same thought process to ByteDance.
Given the Cambridge Analytica scandal, why wouldn't it be achievable at Facebook, let alone TikTok.
The CCP could mandate that the TikTok algorithm display certain types of political content, then further mandate that any criticism of the CCP be limited, especially discussion of the said censorship. Most users wouldn't know about it and leakers at ByteDance wouldn't be able to change that. It's not the US - they are punished in China in a way that doesn't happen in the US.
None of the litigants proposed that, and neither did the act in question. The court doesn't usually address matters outside the controversy in question, so it's no surprise that they didn't here.
TikTok is perhaps the most impressively addictive social media app ever created. The algorithm used in the US was apparently banned in China for being too addictive.
There's a certain historic symmetry with how opium was traditionally used in China, then Britain introduced stronger, more disruptive versions, forcing a stronger social reaction.
Geopolitics aside, I think everyone is kind of aware that social media is a vice, and like it or not, this could just be the beginning of our society beginning to scrutinize these platforms.
From a geopolitical perspective, this issue about 3 items:
1) Influence- TikTok gives the CCP significant direct influence over the views of Americans.
2) Data- TikTok collects massive amounts of data on 100s of millions of Americans. Opens many avenues for spying, extortion of influence, etc.
3) Reciprocity- Foreign tech companies are essentially banned from operating in China. Much like with other industries, China is not playing fair, they’re playing to win.
Insofar as TikTok has offered a “superior” product, this might be a story of social media and its double edge. But this far more a story of geopolitics.
> 1) Influence- TikTok gives the CCP significant direct influence over the views of Americans.
There is no credible argument that the CCP doesn't directly control the alg as it's actively being used for just that in tawain/etc.
Does the US really want a (hostile?) foreign govt to have clear direct access to influence 170m americans, an entire generation - completely unfettered? Incredible national security implications. Bot farms can influence X/Meta/etc, but they can be at least be fought. TikTok itself is the influence engine as currently constructed.
> Does the US really want a (hostile?) foreign govt to have clear direct access to [...] americans
Apparently, American users want this? Approximately 700k users have joined RedNote, a Chinese platform. It's out of the frying pan and into the fire for Americans.
Well yes, people are addicted to this content so of course they'll seek out alternatives. People want to be distracted by pretty pictures and funny stories and someone telling them their opinions are right
> Does the US really want a (hostile?) foreign govt to have clear direct access to influence 170m americans, an entire generation - completely unfettered?
As the SCOTUS said itself:
“At the heart of the First Amendment lies the principle that each person should decide for himself or herself the ideas and beliefs deserving of expression, consideration, and adherence.” Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. v. FCC
Functionally; as TikTok is a known/controlled mouthpiece for the CCP - it's infringing the first amendment rights of the foreign govt within US borders?
2. A core principle of the constitution is that those rights apply to noncitizens as well as citizens. They are human rights, not citizen rights. It's significantly more ridiculous for corporations to have free speech than a government. They don't have less of a right to free speech because we don't like them.
1) to be honest, when I see how russia, Iran and other states influence all other networks (especially when it comes to voting), not sure how tiktok is worse than all of them - just think of Facebook & Cambridge Analytica https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook%E2%80%93Cambridge_Ana...
It is mind blowing to me that this fact is not widely understood. A mountain was made out of a molehill. $4B was spent in 2016. $12B in 2024. Yet $100,000 somehow is believed to have made any difference whatsoever. Literally 0.0025% of the total in 2016.
Yup exactly the same thing is happening only with money laundered through nonprofits and political pacs. Once its there the same buy data and place ads & influence is completely legal - which makes the singled out ban on TikTok at odds with the stated purpose of it
Cambridge Analytica had zero effect on the 2016 elections. It was the mother of all nothingburgers. I encourage all who see this comment to dig into the truth of that case.
The huge difference is that while foreign adversaries run influence networks on other social media platforms (and are opposed and combatted by those platforms) TikTok (the platform itself) is controlled by the foreign adversary (the CCP).
Americans are already quite free to seek a broad range of domestic and foreign viewpoints. Chinese citizens, on the other hand, are not. At all.
The key point here is that an algorithm can invisibly nudge those viewpoints, and a foreign adversary controls the algorithm.
Insofar as your claim is that powerful people and institutions care most about power, I agree. It’s very telling that TikTok would shutdown instead of divest. (Meanwhile, U.S. companies have routinely taken the other side of the deal in China: minority stake joint ventures in which “technology transfer” is mandated. AKA intellectual property plundering.)
> Americans are already quite free to seek a broad range of domestic and foreign viewpoints.
The reality is they live in an establishment controlled media bubble, that is itself full of propaganda.
Being free does not mean free to live in a lie constructed for the benefit of someone else, it means being free to live in reality, and that freedom is being denied to Americans. At least the Chinese are aware of their reality.
I can navigate my browser to Al Jazeera, RT, or Xinhua without interference. Meanwhile, China has a national firewall imprisoning its netizens. So, while most Americans opt to live inside filter bubbles, they are free to escape if they so choose. Not so for the citizens of China, who live in the iron grip of the CCP.
That’s to say nothing of censorship. I can post “f** Joe Biden” on any social platform in the U.S. Meanwhile, a Chinese netizen compares Xi to Winnie the Pooh and gets a visit from the police. And their post never sees the light of day.
These aren’t differences of degree. They are differences of category.
> I can navigate my browser to Al Jazeera, RT, or Xinhua without interference
The reason you can is that very few people actually do. As the Tik Tok affair shows, the moment the US suspects it might have some real competitor in controlling the narrative, it shuts them down. Maybe it's the right thing to do, but it's worth taking note that it's how things are.
Americans live in a society lying to them by omission. You have to have learned AlJazeera, RT or Xinhua exist, because they're not going to be shown to you by normal channels, and you almost certainly go on a watchlist if you visit too much.
The whole point is to remove anything that may cause a passive media consumer to question what is presented to them.
It doesn't matter what media are available as long as you manage to control their impact- that is, the vast majority of your citizens don't really watch them. The moment one becomes impactful, you can shut it down citing dangerous foreign interference (and it's true!).
Both AJ and RT are widely available online. Your bar of "American cable networks must grant licenses to broadcast hostile foreign state propaganda" is one that no other country abides by.
In fact, even the idea of allowing CNN or BBC to broadcast into people's homes in Russia is so laughable, I don't know why you even brought it up, or what your point is.
> In fact, even the idea of allowing CNN or BBC to broadcast into people's homes in Russia is so laughable, I don't know why you even brought it up, or what your point is.
No one's talking about availability in Russia except you.
And to add some substance about why AJ and RT can be accessed I will quote another commenter who put it better than I did:
"The reason you can is that very few people actually do. As the Tik Tok affair shows, the moment the US suspects it might have some real competitor in controlling the narrative, it shuts them down. Maybe it's the right thing to do, but it's worth taking note that it's how things are."
> No one's talking about availability in Russia except you.
That's the other side of the coin. Why do you expect one country to be totally open and allow the other to be totally closed? How is that a standard that makes any sense?
> "The reason you can is that very few people actually do."
I don't see what consumption habits have to do with anything. This is also contradicting what you just said, that people in the US don't have access to this content.
> As the Tik Tok affair shows, the moment the US suspects it might have some real competitor in controlling the narrative, it shuts them down.
Who is the "US" here? The U.S. government? A specific company? Without specifics you aren't really saying anything at all, just implying some greater unfalsifiable conspiracy.
> This is also contradicting what you just said, that people in the US don't have access to this content.
The point is that their other media so promotes a lack of curiosity by providing a false impression of being comprehensive. If you risk bursting that bubble suddenly you are first mocked, then they try to buy you, then they block you, and tell you it is your fault.
The US is held to higher standards because that is how it promotes itself. Many of us outside the US are actually saddened by a betrayal of these values, because we are all too aware of how lacking many places are, and we need the US to be better than this.
> The point is that their other media so promotes a lack of curiosity by providing a false impression of being comprehensive. If you risk bursting that bubble suddenly you are first mocked, then they try to buy you, then they block you, and tell you it is your fault.
I'm not being funny but I honestly couldn't follow that.
> The US is held to higher standards because that is how it promotes itself.
You are right, they are. That's why they didn't prevent TikTok from operating and growing domestically for years. Then the Chinese government starting using it as an asset of their espionage apparatus, so in response the U.S. STILL didn't ban the content in contains, but rather told the (apparently) independent company operating TikTok that the content is free to remain as long as it's not controlled by a hostile foreign government. The refusal to sell is the most obvious public facing proof that they are in fact Chinese government controlled.
All of that is how the U.S. is different, but as evidenced by this conversation and multiple other threads, no one really cares about the nuance.
> if intolerant ideologies are allowed unchecked expression, they could exploit open society values to erode or destroy tolerance itself through authoritarian or oppressive practices.
The application of this principle can be seen when closed societies maintain complete control over their domestic media, while spreading as much toxic nonsense as possible abroad[1].
At the same they are completely intolerant of speech at home, they exploit the openness of the west by pushing disinfo they know to be wrong (and harmful) aboard. They continue to muddy the waters by pretending their information warfare is "just asking questions" (RT's moto is "Question More"). It's an extension of their hybrid warfare efforts, and shouldn't be seen as anything less.
Darn it, then decade I spent in Asia and the 100+ trips to Europe and the Middle East didn't prepare me for the rapier banter of some rando on the internet.
Yes the categories of “our glorious leader” on one side and “their wretched despot” on the other. The categories of “our objective news” and “their state propaganda”.
“Their brutish enforcers” vs “our noble police”.
You have to accept that the era of American exceptionalism is over and we’ll all be measured by our actions rather than the dreamy stories told.
> It’s very telling that TikTok would shutdown instead of divest.
TBF; The CCP passed laws that likely make it illegal for TikTok to sell/export that kind of information (the algo). They can't divest without also neutering the sticking power of the service.
And why did the CCP pass those laws? Perhaps bc they understood it would block divestment, acting as a poison pill to would be acquirers, thereby forcing foreign governments to fight their own public in outright banning TikTok.
It doesn't have to be either /or. You should be skeptical of US spy agency behavior, and still recognize the threat of Chinese influence via psyops algorithm to the United States.
0) Protectionism- TikTok is eating Meta's lunch. Meta can't make a social app as good as TikTok in the same way GM can't make a car as good a value as BYD.
Much like Google was eating the lunch of everything in China and the CCP, in response, made it essentially impossible for them to operate.
This is not new behavior between the two countries, the only thing new is the direction. US is finally waking up to the foreign soft power being exercised inside our own country, and it isn't benefiting us.
> Google was eating the lunch of everything in China and the CCP, in response, made it essentially impossible for them to operate.
Google was operating in China until 2010 when they got banned because they stopped censoring search results. Other Western search engines like Bing continue operate in China.
They also got their source code stolen by Chinese state hackers. The word "hostile" doesn't begin to describe their experience operating on the mainland.
This is just a different bias on point 3, reciprocity. BYD benefits from state subsidies and state sponsored intellectual property theft on an industrial scale. See again, point 3.
That certainly plays some role in why domestic social media companies haven't stirred up resistance to the ban, but is more like #50 in terms of geopolitical strategy.
The domestic companies lost some attention share to TikTok sure, and a ban or domestic sale would generally be in their interests, but it's not like they were about to be Myspaced. They've remained among the most valued companies -- presently and in forecasts -- even while it was "eating their lunch"
> it's not like they were about to be Myspaced. They've remained among the most valued companies
It hasn't been an overnight switch, but the trajectory did not look good for US companies. TikTok was even eating into TV viewing time. There's a fixed amount of attention and TikTok was vacuuming it up from everywhere.
I won’t say that isn’t relevant; when you’re building a coalition you don’t say no to allies. But it was a cherry on top of a well-baked pie. Not a foundational motivation.
True, but I'd say that in this area (vs. manufacturing where tariffs can be applied), it's more taboo/embarrassing to admit how dominated Instagram was. Reels is the cheap knockoff of the genuine article.
> If, for example, a user allows TikTok access to
the user’s phone contact list to connect with others on the
platform, TikTok can access “any data stored in the user’s
contact list,” including names, contact information, contact
photos, job titles, and notes. 2 id., at 659. Access to such
detailed information about U. S. users, the Government
worries, may enable “China to track the locations of Federal
employees and contractors, build dossiers of personal information for blackmail, and conduct corporate espionage.”
It has blown my mind how "free Palestine" has become a meme. That war started with a bunch of terrorists kidnapping/raping/murdering college-age kids at a music festival, and college kids around the world started marching _in support of_ the perpetrators.
At some point, I realized that I avoid social media apps, and the people in those marches certainly don't.
I know that there's more to the Israel:Palestine situation than the attack on the music festival, but the fundamental contradiction that the side that brutalized innocent young people seems to have the popular support of young people is hard to ignore. I wonder to what degree it's algorithmically driven.
In response, Israel has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians, 80% civilians, 70% women and children, have destroyed more than half of their buildings residential or otherwise, displaced millions, refuse aid. Disproportionate does not begin to cover it
It looks like you are comparing a specific terrorist group to Israel as a society. Be aware that there is a large propaganda machine which uses this tactic to dehumanize Palestinians in order to justify a genocide against them.
Now if you wanted to compare atrocities—which honestly you shouldn’t—you would compare the Palestinian children that were brutalized both in the Gaza genocide, and in any one of the number of IDF incursions into Gaza and the West Bank before and after oct 7. That is compare victims to one side, to the victims of the other side.
But people generally don’t pick sides like that. They don‘t evaluate the atrocities committed by one armed group to the atrocities committed by the other and favor one over the other. And they certainly don‘t favor one civilian group over another based on the actions of their armed groups. People much more simply react to atrocities as they happen. And Israel has committed enough atrocities during the Gaza genocide that social media will be reacting—both in anger and horror—for a long time to come.
1. Is there any real evidence of the CCP using TikTok for anything?
3. Then what is Microsoft doing in China? What is Apple doing in China? Etc. No tech company is banned from China, the only companies that choose not to operate in China are those that do not agree to follow Chinese laws.
Nail in the head with reciprocity. I think the US honored its end of the bargain over the past four plus decades since China started manufacturing goods for US companies. China clearly benefited since they are now the second largest economy. Along the way China grew ambitious which is fine but they made an idiotic policy error in timing. They should’ve waited a couple more decades to show teeth.
> That same year, Douyin imposed a 40-minute daily limit for users under 14. Last year, Chinese regulators introduced a rule that would limit children under age 18 to two hours of smartphone screen time each day.
It’s not the same, no. I provided the link because it’s what I assume the OP is referring to.
Limiting use to 40 minutes is not a ban but it still shows a view that extended exposure to it is harmful. To turn it on its head, if more than 40 minutes is viewed harmful for Chinese youth, why not American?
It's a clear sign the international version of TikTok, because of it's addictiveness and content, would never be allowed for a single minute in China by the people that know the most about what it is, and what is does.
If it was a legal requirement for Chinese apps in China, and this is the path for societal heath then why not pass that law for all social apps in the US?
Blanket content bans are the stuff of dictatorships, but restricting access to demographics that could be most harmed by it (children for example) is a good idea, and I wish the US would look into it.
The whole country had a shift though, they implemented gaming and entertainment regulations and video sites like bilibili went from $153 to a low of $8 a share.
China didn't go after TikTok _alone_ - they reportedly went after anything deemed too addictive, including limiting the time spent on games. It was very clearly aimed towards reducing digital addiction (which is something us in the West still try to ignore as an epidemic)
it's called Douyin. It's the same product, the same way a Mexican Coke is the same thing as an American Coke, and both are produced by the same company (Coca Cola).
The analogy to Coca Cola? Let me make another comparison: the 737 Max with one AoA sensor was made by the same company that only sold the one with two in America.
It would be more like Coke was Mexican owned and HFCS was outlawed in Mexico. Then Mexican Coke used sugar and the Coke they exported to America used HFCS. And America said, hey, you're not consuming the same Coke you send here: we're going to ban you if you don't sell to us and our plan is to keep making HFCS Coke once we buy you. You were also hurting Pepsi (Facebook/Twitter), who also only plan on ever using HFCS.
I dont think tiktok app is banned because of algorithm, because bytedance created and maintains both Doyin and Tiktok.
I think it is form of compartmentalizing Internet and social networks, to keep Chinese internet and social media separate from the US.
the red book app, where tiktok refugees are flocking to right now, also want to introduce geofence and compartmentalize Chinese users and US users separately
You are making a distinction without a difference. China knows TikTok is harmful, which is why it allows it's export and bans domestic consumption. Think of it like a drug.
Tiktok is banned completely in China because it doesn't not have the agressive filtering and CPP propaganda in place to operate in China. The CPP can not allow Chineze citizens to engage in an open exchange of ideas with eachother or with the citizens of other free nations, for obvious reasons.
You cannot operate a TV channel, a radio station or a newspaper in China without running everything through CCP first for approval. You won't find a single news report critical of the CCP because of this.
Every social media app or website in China is required to ask for your real name and ID number, and implement any censorship requested by the party. If you post something that rubs the government the wrong way, your identity is readily available.
I don't believe this level of content control, censorship and user prosecution is there for all American media. And if it were, you are allowed to set up your own channel or social media app in America to be the exception.
>Every social media app or website in China is required to ask for your real name and ID number, and implement any censorship requested by the party. If you post something that rubs the government the wrong way, your identity is readily available.
I didn't know this. Do you have any reading on the subject you can recommend?
"It’s almost like they recognize that technology is influencing kids’ development, and they make their domestic version a spinach version of TikTok, while they ship the opium version to the rest of the world,”
Indeed, it's all protectionism. They want the money to go to American companies instead. Why do you think the EU, which is generally far more aggressive about these things, has not yet banned TikTok? It's also the same reason Huawei are thriving elsewhere but banned in the US. It's all just trying to protect their big companies with deep pockets.
EU is always slow. They felt browser choice was an issue 0 years after it stopped being one, and then freaked out about cookies also 10 more more years later when it wasn't really an issue. Data tracking is an issue, sure. Not cookies though, not anymore.
The government doesn't care about addictive anything, this is about control and access. If they cared about life or citizens in general they would fix healthcare and maybe introduce any kind of gun control. This is the same government that was slanging cocaine in the 1980's...
Multiple reps publicly said TikTok needed to be banned because they couldn't control the narrative around Gaza as easily. TikTok is the only platform I regularly see content about Gaza fed from the algorithm.
"enormous threat to U.S. national security and young Americans’ mental health ... capable of mobilizing the platform’s users to a range of dangerous, destabilizing actions. The Senate must pass this bill and send it to the president’s desk immediately.”
Are you referring to the completely scientifically-untrained "bros" who were touting ivermectin and other treatments or cures with little to no scientific evidence of efficacy?
TikTok itself is banned in mainland china. Do you need much more of a source?
Yes, you could say Douyin is available in place of TikTok, but have you asked yourself why they have 2 separate apps? One for mainland China, and another for everyone else?
So is Wikipedia. Otherwise Chinese people just cannot stop reading all those wiki pages about that fungi that only grow on a certain volcano in French New Guinea. How addictive!
There are many reasons why there are two separate apps and not necessarily related to how addictive the algorithm is. The "source" you linked gives one such reason:
> Like other social media services in China, Douyin follows the censorship rules of the Chinese Communist Party. It conscientiously removes video pertaining to topics deemed sensitive or inflammatory by the party, although it has proved a little harder than text-based social media to control.
Also have you used Douyin? It's really feels like basically the same thing.
You could substitute anything you don't like (gambling, alcohol, gacha games, convenience foods, televised sports, reality TV) for "social media" in the above and it makes as much sense.
"anything you don't like (gambling, alcohol, gacha games, convenience foods, televised sports, reality TV)"
Respectively, heavily regulated, heavily regulated, poorly regulated but really has to toe the line to not fall into the first bucket, fairly regulated (with shifting attitudes about what they should be, but definitely not unregulated), probably only a problem because this is "gambling" again lately and has been regulated in the past and I suspect may well be more heavily regulated in the near future, and people probably would not generally agree this belongs in the list.
Good points. I would welcome a discussion on ways social media (however defined) should be regulated to mitigate harms. Hopefully, that would put the perceived harms in context of other harms we regulate.
The GP's statement doesn't work with reality TV or televised sports. Both of those are produced with a lot of human effort, and the cycle time for new content is way too large to form addictions.
Gambling, alcohol, and gacha games are clearly addictive and frequently are not set up to be in the best interests of the users.
“ Gambling, alcohol, and gacha games are clearly addictive “
There are billions of casual drinkers / gamblers / gamers who do not show any sign of addiction. I’m really tired to hear the same nonsense repeated again and again. Do a pyschology study of any casino employee that spends 40 hours a week in a gaming venue, or any manufacturer of gaming devices that professionally play games 40 hours a week, and none of these employees exposed to so much gambling / drinking are addicted.
Psychology studies have not established that these items are “addictive”, because if they were, they would be banned all over the world. Nowhere in the western world are they banned, ghey are regulated for “fairness”. There are some individuals that throw the word addiction around without justification, please dont be one of them.
Alcohol is literally physiologically addictive. Withdrawal symptoms include seizures and death. Of course these things are known to be and recognized by governments as addictive. Addictive things aren't always banned. Here's a US government page discussing alcohol addiction from an organization the government has dedicated to raising awareness of the adverse effects of alcohol, including addiction:
You also basically observed that the people selling the addictive thing don't get addicted, which is sort of obvious. You don't get addicted by being near e.g. alcohol and providing it to others. You get addicted by regularly drinking it.
Casino employees are typically barred from gambling at the venue they work at or others within the same ownership group, often not even at venues under different ownership within the same geographical area as their employer.
Scientific studies have established nicotine is addictive yet purchase and smoking of cigarettes is legal in most countries.
I've learned that moderation is key to avoiding their harmful effects. It’s easy to get caught up in the thrill, but understanding how these systems work is crucial. For instance, gacha games often rely on the same reward mechanisms as gambling, making them equally compelling. Exploring resources to stay informed can help reduce risks. For example, I came across a review on Wild Cash x9990 DEMO by BGaming at https://wildcashx9990.com/ which offers insight into gaming mechanics. Since the site itself doesn’t allow gambling
> doesn't work with reality TV or televised sports. Both of those are produced with a lot of human effort
Those two types of content are about the cheapest TV to produce. Per second of video produced (counting all the unpopular content), short videos might be more expensive, but the costs are very distributed.
Totally fair. I was thinking more in terms of the rate at which people can consume it; if your primary interest is following a sport, or current reality-TV shows, you can only consume content as quickly as it is released.
> TikTok is perhaps the most impressively addictive gambling app ever created.
> Geopolitics aside, I think everyone is kind of aware that gambling is a vice, and like it or not, this could just be the beginning of our society beginning to scrutinize these platforms.
The comparison here is a slot machine: you pay a a few to play, you pull the lever to play, you win a prize.
Here, the payment is your attention, you swipe to the next video to play the game, and the prize if you land on a good video is a small hit of dopamine.
Everyone's losing their collective mind about people watching videos on a platform not approved by our oligarchs, while there's an epidemic of people racking up gambling debt from the sudden prevalence of DraftKings and other mobile sports betting apps.
At least in circles I frequent, people are pretty upset with the state of sports betting too. Feels like lots of things are pretty crappy these days, simultaneously
I love to drink. Absolutely adore it. Putting on a great recors, open 2 bottles of wine and call 10 different people during the span of 4 hours. I wouldn't trade it for social media any day of the week. I am drinking right now actually
Yes? The person you replied to was pretty explicit in drawing a comparison to vices like gambling and alcohol, which are indeed usually regulated. Gacha games are also being recognized as thinly veiled gambling and regulated as such.
There was a bill introduced in the US that didn't go anywhere. Of course gambling has recently been heavily deregulated in the US so I suppose we can't expect much to be done about gambling in video games right now. https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/162...
I vaguely recall it in at least one of those state bills to regulate social media for kids (listing it as an addictive behavior that's "harmful to minors" or whatever), but can't find specifics. I don't know whether something has passed anywhere in the US.
Note that the Supreme Court decided the argument based on national security grounds, not content manipulation grounds.
Justice Gorsuch in his concurrence specifically commended the court for doing so, believing that a content manipulation argument could run afoul of first amendment rights.
He said that "One man's covert content manipulation is another's editorial discretion".
Be that as it may, I think a large percentage of the opposition don't buy this natsec reasoning at all. You could use that excuse for anything, like mass surveillance via the Patriot Act...
EFF's stance is that SCOTUS's decision based on national security ignores the First Amendment scrutiny that is required.
> The United States’ foreign foes easily can steal, scrape, or buy Americans’ data by countless other means. The ban or forced sale of one social media app will do virtually nothing to protect Americans' data privacy – only comprehensive consumer privacy legislation can achieve that goal.
Shutting down communications platforms or forcing their reorganization based on concerns of foreign propaganda and anti-national manipulation is an eminently anti-democratic tactic, one that the US has previously condemned globally.
I don't buy it either. Entire generations are growing up without expectations of digital privacy. Our data leaks everywhere, all the time, intentionally and otherwise.
I think it's more about the fact that users of platform are able to connect and share their experiences and potential action for resolving class inequality. There's an entire narrative that is outside of US govt/corp/media control, and that's a problem (to them).
The fentanyl pipeline is what came to my mind as well; another thing exported from China to the US to disastrous effect on the well-being of many Americans.
To be fair, trying to consider the other way around, I wonder what Chinese people could point to as disastrous stuff (in terms of the well-being of their population) coming from the US.
Maybe it was just a genuine outlet for interconnected entertainment compared to other platforms. American's have always sought similar entertainment since the dawn of the 'couch potato.' Now we can go back to consuming curated narratives/influence on our good ole traditional grams and tubes.
What needs to happen is that all of these platforms need to be straight up banned. TikTok is getting picked on because of its ties to China, but why is it better for Zuckerberg or Musk to have the capabilities that are so frightening in the hands of the CCP?
The US social media billionaire class is ostensibly accountable to the law, but they're also perfectly capable of using their influence over these platforms to write the law.
One plausible theory for why the politicians talk about fears of spying instead of the real fears of algorithmic manipulation is because they don't want to draw too much attention to how capable these media platforms are of manipulating voters, because they rely on those capabilities to get into and stay in power.
Because if Zuck or Musk does something bad with said power, we can do something about it.
We can't really jail the CCP. Additionally, Zuck and Musk don't have armies to back up their propaganda. We shouldn't let foreign powers own the means of broadcast...
Who is we, though? I can't do anything about it. Can you?
The people who can do something about it are the people who are already in power in the US. They understandably don't want to share with the CCP, but most of them came to power by manipulating enough voters into voting for them. They stay in power by ensuring that enough voters continue to want to vote for them. Which means that someone like Zuckerberg or Musk has an insanely inordinate amount of influence over whether these people who are in power stay in power.
Yes, I think it's marginally better that that influence remain out of the hands of the CCP, but I would rather that that influence not exist at all. It's too dangerous and too prone to corruption.
Who is we, though? I can't do anything about it. Can you?
Isn't this true for literally all problems in a democracy? Do you have a better solution?
Hopefully we'll get AGI soon and it'll take over and rule as a benevolent overlord. Short of that, everything in your comment feels like it has always applied to every societal problem, and always will.
> Isn't this true for literally all problems in a democracy? Do you have a better solution?
Create a level playing field where money does not amplify speech. Our existing democracy is basically a spending contest with a very small component of eloquently persuading voters to vote against their own interest. The richest of the rich have voices and can manipulate the platforms on which others express their voices, and so those rich people either pick the victors or become them.
For democracy to survive we have to get past the idea that a "free market" approach to speech leads to democratic outcomes. It doesn't, it leads to plutocratic outcomes, which is painfully obvious on both sides of the aisle right now. Americans haven't had a true representative of the people in generations.
US is not a democracy in a strict sense, it is more like plutocracy (people with money have the power).
- the electoral college where winner takes all, so minority opposition vote is always suppressed
- gerrymandering that dilutes and suppresses the minority opposition vote
- oligopoly of two parties
- unchecked financial influence by allowing unlimited funding via PACs
- legalized lobbying/bribery
- influence of special interest groups
- the influence of legal system with expensive lawyers (that only rich can afford)
this all indicate that it is people with deep pockets who have all the power
Perhaps algorithmically weaponized "speech" by bad actors with bad intentions, especially controlled by adversaries, doesn't work, and was wholly unpredicted or accounted for by the founders.
I'd like to note that TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew,
a former Goldman Sachs banker and venture capital investor,
joined TikTok in March 2021.
He is from Singaporean and is married to Vivian Kao,
an American of Taiwanese descent.
Unlike Zuck, Musk, and Bezos,
Chew did not found the company with which he is most associated,
and his net worth is somewhat less than a billion dollars.
I, personally, have views that would lean towards being labeled by HN users as supporting a “nanny state” (at least far departure from younger libertarian phase), but even I struggle with a “why” on banning these platforms in general.
It's still weird to me to see tech website comments calling for extreme government restrictions on technology use. Limiting adults to 1 hour of screen time per day across social apps? That's a call for an insane level of government intrusion into our lives that is virtually unheard of outside of extremely controlling governments.
> Geopolitics aside, I think everyone is kind of aware that social media is a vice, and like it or not, this could just be the beginning of our society beginning to scrutinize these platforms.
Come on. We all know that TikTok was banned because the US regime couldn't control it.
If they really wanted to ban vice, they would have banned Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and their kin a long ago.
Like Facebook, the "algorithm" is nothing special. TikTok made some smart design decisions that collect more interaction data that legacy social sites like Instagram and YouTube. They use that data to effectively recommend content.
I disagree that social media is a vice. There's nothing inherently wrong with better communication. Although it's hard for me to see the value (or appeal) in TikTok.
What aspect of modern social media contributes to better communication? We're not taking about WhatsApp here, we're talking about algorithmic infinite scroll feeds.
Just on Facebook I can see what all of my old high school friends are up to. I can instantly send anyone a message. I can find things buy that people are selling. I have a community of people who are into the same obscure hobby. That's just off the top of my head.
> I think everyone is kind of aware that social media is a vice
I don't think this is true. Everyone that is reading this forum might even be too strong. The majority of people happily eating the pablum up as the users of TikTok can't even tell the blatantly false content from just the silly dancing videos.
I think that’s besides the point given the entity that is banning it. It’s because it’s Chinese. An equally addictive Western-made app would not have been banned.
And generally speaking as a culture we are too liberal to ban things for being too addictive. Again, showing that it is not relevant in this case since it will not inspire bans of other addictive (pseudo) substances on those grounds.
That might be true but it's irrelevant. Why? Because that's not the issue the government tackled. Arguing "national security" with (quite literally) secret evidence is laughable. Data protection too is a smokescreen or the government would've passed a comprehensive Federal data protection act, which they'd never do.
It's hard to see how the government would tackle algorithmic addiction within running afoul of First Amendment issues. Such an effort should also apply to Meta and Google too if it were attempted.
IMHO reciprocal market access was the most defensible position but wasn't the argument the government made.
That being said, the government did make a strictly commerce-based argument to avoid free speech issues. As came up in oral arguments (and maybe the opinion?) this is functionally no different to the restrictions on foreign ownership of US media outlets.
I wish it were a reckoning for social media, but reading here shows there's plenty of people here who are passionate about "China bad" and see this only through that one lens. And they seem to think it is strictly about TikTok.
even harder is finding a payment system that is not US-based and broadly accepted (no, not crypto).
I do have some hopes for a digital euro and, maybe, maybe, even Wero. But i fear it will never take off because too many players are involved and there is no clear marketing strategy to get it to people. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wero_(payment)
What is China for Americans, for us Europeans, is the USA.
Some argue that it's even worse for Europeans because the Chinese military and government can't reach you while in the USA. And there is no safe place for Europeans from the US government, unless they move to China or Russia.
Oh come on. The US is in a military alliance with most of Europe. And hasn’t banned any European apps from operating. And has similar democratic and human rights policies.
As I understood your post: You said the US is worse because "Europeans" are willing to relocate to the US. And also that China is better because they are not likely to relocate to neither Russia nor China.
This is an incorrect understanding of what they wrote. It's not about Europeans relocating to the US or Americans relocating to China.
They're saying (that other people are saying) that in the US, you are safe from the Chinese government/military. In the EU, you are not safe from the US government/military.
Also note that the claim is not that the US is worse than China for Europeans. The claim is that the US is worse for Europeans than China is for Americans.
The last part about relocating is saying that you can only be safe from the US government/military in China or Russia.
Based on extradition agreements, this conclusion seems true enough on the surface. And maybe US military bases in Europe play a role as well. But this is a thread about national security concerns via social media, and I think it's hard to make a broad and definitive conclusion due to the wide variety of soft and hard powers that countries exert internationally.
> this could just be the beginning of our society beginning to scrutinize these platforms.
I think politicians have scrutinized american social media and they're 100% fine with the misery they induce so long as they are personally enriched by them.
> There's a certain historic symmetry with how opium was traditionally used in China
TikTok isn't anywhere near as destructive as opium was. Hell, purely in terms of "mis/disinformation" surely facebook and twitter are many times worse than TikTok.
Surely the appropriate modern parallel is fentanyl.
I think TikTok and social media in general is much more insidious than opium, because it is hard to know if you are using an addictive product, or what product you’re even being sold (like if you are being sold a subtly manipulated information diet). For example, it just came out that TikTok staff (in the US) were forced to take oaths of loyalty to not disrupt the “national honor” of China or undermine “ethnic unity” in China and so on. TikTok executives are required to sign an agreement with ByteDance subsidiary Douyin (the China version of TikTok) that polices speech and demands compliance with China’s socialist system. That’s deeply disturbing but also undetectable. It came out now because of a lawsuit.
> this could just be the beginning of our society beginning to scrutinize these platforms.
Could not be more wrong. "Society" is not deciding anything here. The ban is entirely because of idelogical and geopolical reasons. They have already allowed the good big tech companies to get people hooked as much as they want. If you think you are going to see regulation for public good you will probably be disappointed.
The US gov will do nothing to regulate US owned social networks because they're doing for free the work that the government wants to do itself: collect as much data as possible from each individual. The separation between Meta's collected data and government is just one judicial request away. That's why the US gov hates other countries having this power.
The Tik Tok divestment law was passed by overwhelmingly by both houses of the duly elected Congress. At the time, a majority of Americans polled supported the law, while a minority opposed it: https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/more-support-than-oppose-tik....
In a democracy, this is how "society decides" what's in the "public good." This is not a case where legislators are going behind the public's back, hiding something they know they public would oppose. Proponents of the law have been clear in public about what the law would do and what the motivations for the law are. There is nothing closer to "society decides" than Congress overwhelmingly passing a law after making a public case for what the law would do.
Yes, they're doing it for "ideological and geopolitical reasons"--but those things are important to society! Americans are perfectly within their rights to enact legislation, through their duly elected representatives, simply on the basis of "fuck China."
This may in some ways be technically correct, but it is also true that in a democracy, the elite make decisions with the support of the people through manufactured consent. This process involves the manipulation of the populace through mass media, to intentionally misinform and influence them.
One could take the position that this process is so flawed as to be illegitimate. In this case it would be a valid position to believe that society had not fairly decided these things, and they were instead decided by a certain class of people and pushed on to the rest of us.
That's the notion of "false consciousness" that Marxists trot out to justify why they're right even though people don't agree with them. It's a tool for academics to justify imposing themselves as right-thinking elites who know better than the unwashed masses.
I disagree strongly with any authoritarian rule, but it is probably correct that the masses don’t actually know the best way to run society. That doesn’t mean we need to impose rule, it means we need to understand manufacturing consent (which is a distinct concept from false consciousness and well supported by the facts), it means we need to combat manufactured consent and better educate people.
100% agreed, unfortunately. There is truth in sayings like "the customer doesn't know what's best for them"... I think because they are often simply not informed or intelligent enough.
Most people are sufficiently informed and intelligent. They simply don't (1) care about the things you care about; or (2) don't agree with you that your preferred approaches will bring about desired outcomes.
It can still be both- in the sense that once a precedent is set using the these additional ideological and geopolitical motivations as momentum, maybe there will be an appetite for further algorithm regulations.
As a tech person who already understood the system, it's refreshing that I now often see the comment "I need to change my algorithm"- meaning, I can shape the parameters of what X/Twitter / Instagram/ YouTube / TikTok shows me in my feed.
I think there's growing meta-awareness (that I see as comments within these platforms) that there is "healthy" content and that the apps themselves manipulate their user's behavior patterns.
Hopefully there's momentum building that people perceive this as a public health issue.
These bans done for political purposes toward public consent for genocide (ie see ADL/AIPAC's "We have a big TikTok problem" leaked audio, and members of our own congress stating that this is what motivates the regulations) won't lead to greater freedoms over algorithms. It is the opposite direction - more state control over which algorithms its citizens are allowed to see
The mental health angle of support for the bans is a way the change gets accepted by the public, which posters here are doing free work toward generating, not a motivating goal or direction for these or next regulations
You want a political body to make decisions apolitically?
> mental health angle of support
This was de minimis. The support was start to finish from national security angles. There was some cherry-on-top AIPAC and protectionist talk. But the votes were got because TikTok kept lying about serious stuff [1] while Russia reminded the world of the cost of appeasement.
I know the state didn't do it or say they did it for mental health purposes, I'm responding to the reasons given here for supporting these regulations
BTW you're the one who cast doubt on me for suggesting UnitedHealth is incentivized to raise prices to get around profit caps, which turned out to be exactly the case despite your sense-making of the rules in place: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42716428
> you're the one who cast doubt on me for suggesting UnitedHealth is incentivized to raise prices to get around profit caps, which turned out to be exactly the case despite your sense-making of the rules in place
Yea, it might be naive to think the government will act in the interest of the consumer (although it has happened before)- but at least maybe it'll continue the conversation of users themselves....
THis situation is another data point and is a net good for society (whether or not the ban sticks).
Discussion around (for example) the technical implementation of content moderation being inherently political (i.e., Meta and Twitter) will be good for everyone.
Yeah, the ban is interesting because it’s happened before (company being forced to sell or leave), but never to a product used at this scale. There are allegedly 120M daily active users in the US alone. That’s more than a third of Americans using it every day.
While many have a love hate relationship with it, there are many who love it. I know people who aren’t too sad, because it’ll break their addiction, and others who are making really decent money as content creators on it. So generally, you’re exactly right. “Society” is not lashing back at TikTok. Maybe some are lashing back at American social media companies (eg some folks leaving Twitter and meta products).
But if we wanted to actually protect our citizens, we’d enact strong data privacy laws, where companies don’t own your data — you do. And can’t spy on you or use that data without your permission. This would solve part of the problem with TikTok.
While data privacy laws would be good, I don’t see how it would help with TikTok since they have no reason to actually follow the laws when CCP comes calling.
That's because "being hooked" is not why it is being banned. It's banned because people are hooked on it and an adversarial foreign power has the ability to use it for their own gain.
Which is why a viable solution for TikTok was selling it to a US company. If it was just about the population "being hooked", a sale would not be an acceptable outcome.
More specifically the ban is because of the platform being used to support Palestine. There are public recordings of congressmen openly and plainly saying so.
Many other platforms have been used for that for even longer, and none of them are in danger of being banned. I don't think this is the real reason, if there is even a singular reason.
I believe the singular reason is that TikTok is controlled by the CCP and they use it as a tool to further increase political and social division by manipulating the algorithm.
This is evidenced by the fact that ByteDance could've sold TikTok in the US for a huge amount of money to comply with the recent legislation, but the Chinese government won't allow the sale. They aren't interested in the money, which to me sounds like they only ever cared about the data and influence.
Side note: I used Perplexity to summarize the recent events to make sure I'm not totally talking out my butt :). Just a theory though, happy to be proven wrong!
First, they are american platforms, and already do a lot of filtering. It's not easy to ban an American platform either, and there is more leverage to twist their arm.
Second, how does your comment change the fact that there are multiple politicians on record saying this is why they are going after tik tok?
Because if the Chinese government actually is using it or plans to use it as a propaganda tool there is no amount of money they would accept. The fact that it wasn't sold to a US company offers credibility to the fact that the product is useless to China if it's controlled by a US company and they wanted to keep the data they learned about addiction to themselves. Also probably wanted to build some outrage among young users for the government banning their favorite app
The sell or be banned part, instead of just banned, was most certainly lobbied for by the US social media companies hoping to get it on the off chance it had served its purpose, wasn't as useful as China had hoped, or the slim chance they really did just want Americans to copy dance trends.
If you have to get a sale done, it will absolutely create a discount on the price. This is regardless of the interest — all parties know you have a time limit. Yes you may still do a sale quickly and the price may still be at a premium to your last funding round or whatever you want to use as a mark to market, but it will be at a discount to what you could have gotten.
if US government says who is allowed to buy and buyers collude (by pooling financial and political capital together) they can easily not fight a bidding war and lowball instead
Can you give an example of how the most eligible buyers might collude in a way that benefits them all equally, so that this would happen?
For me, it's very hard to conceive of any concrete way that would work. It's a brand, some partnerships, and a network of users that would all go to whatever buyer, and would give that buyer a huge benefit over their existing domestic competitors. So under what circumstances would those domestic competitors allow that instead of aggresively trying to secure it for themselves?
I'm open to believing you, I just don't see what you have in mind.
Campaign with the president, offer large amounts of money to the presidents campaign, donate huge sums to a small inauguration party, and then just be picked to get it at a deep discount. The entire point of bribes is that corruption let's you get away with things at a lesser cost. You just screw over everyone else except for the bribe receiver.
Elon musk is an example of acquisition of global social network. Political capital is needed because the tiktok question is politicized heavily (national security as a reason).
Plus FTC will review the acquisition process as well.
> Political capital is needed because the tiktok question is politicized heavily (national security as a reason)
This is entirely meaningless. You don’t need political capital to maintain the status quo.
> Do you have a counter example?
To your hypothetical? My example is the law. FACA is tightly defined. Bytedance needs to divest to a non-FAC to return to the status quo. Trump could do something else to fuck with them. But that’s true of anyone anywhere.
except when the government decides to intervene and reject the transaction. See, this seems like routine, but ultimately it gives the government an option to cancel transaction they dont like and they can always cite some bogus reason like "national security" and use racist pretext like ethnicity of the CEO or whatever
It doesn’t. The courts do. TikTok could be sold to a Hungarian businessman. As long as it can’t be proved they aren’t controlled by China, they should be allowed to reënter app stores.
Generally speaking, we tend to refer to governments in countries with independent judiciaries as being separate from their courts. The same way we refer to the government in parliamentary democracies separately from their parliaments. (Or governments separately from a country’s people, even though one is a subset of the other.)
> Do you think there isn't any collusion between Supreme Court and the other branches of government?
Not super relevant here. This SCOTUS barely upheld the ban with Bytedance as the owner.
Rich people can always find a common ground and negotiate deals among themselves, its what they do every day.
As a rich person I’d rather get 30% of tiktok with 99% certainty by committing 30% of capital needed, rather than 100% of tiktok with 30% certainty and committing 100% of capital needed.
I don't know about Shorts but Instagram has solved the addiction problem by ignoring signals like the user tapping "not interested" or scrolling past videos quickly. They just show junk.
Think of it like consumer protection laws - Ford has higher safety requirements for the vehicles they sell domestically than they do for those sold in Mexico. Thus, it could be argued that they are not maximizing their monetization of the US market by cutting out expensive safety features that consumers don't pay extra for.
China is wise to have such laws to protect their citizens.
I am a farmer, I grow tomatoes. The ones I sell to large markets, I use pesticides, herbicides, petrochemical fertilizers, etc etc. The ones I grow for my own consumption and for sale at the local market -- those get organic compost and no chemical treatments.
1) I sell to you my special and cherished resource. You may live in the fever dream of "market rules all", but a cold surprise may come that not everyone does.
2) You can afford what I sell - especially if political winds blow so that your benevolent rulers choose to impose 1000% tariffs on my good tomatoes
3) That you even _know_ there's a difference, and that tomatoes come from a farm and not the store or a can.
Where is TikTok not maximizing monetization? If you mean the GP's comment on China's ban on the algorithm originally used then you are missing a critical aspect of that: It wasn't TikTok's choice to stop or decrease monetization there.
Also, even if they were differently monetizing by region, you are also missing the non-monetary reasons this might happen: Manipulation & propaganda. Even aside from any formal policy by the Chinese govermnent self-censorship by businesses and individuals for anything the Party might not like is very common. Also common is the government dictating the actions a Chinese company may take abroad for these same efforts in influencing foreign opinions.
Corporations in China all operate at the behest of "the people" (aka the party). If the government thinks a product is damaging or harmful to society, it can be taken off the market without any legal mechanisms necessary.
Only the control by a foreign adversary part is being threatened in the US, not the algorithmic opium part twisting the minds of the population. They're two different things. The US so far has no qualms with it if an American is in control of the strings. That's where China differs.
> The US so far has no qualms with it if an American is in control of the strings. That's where China differs
Legally, there is no issue with TikTok being Japanese, Korean, Indian, Saudi, Polish, Ugandan, Brazilian or Mexican. Just not owned by a foreign adversary country.
Yes, thank you. I've updated the earlier sentence from "foreign control" to "control by a foreign adversary". It's indeed the fact that China is a geopolitical enemy-to-be that's the problem.
But, they're also something like our third biggest trading partner. China is like a Schroedinger's Adversary: Simultaneously an adversary and a friend, until you ask a politician and the wave function collapses and he picks one.
Don't fool yourself or fall for the propaganda: China is hardly an adversary -- just look at how much money we send them and how many goods they send us. If they were truly an adversary we'd be treating them like we do Russia.
> If they were truly an adversary we'd be treating them like we do Russia
As you said, we trade with them extensively. We didn’t tighten the screws on Russia until it actually invaded Ukraine. Until Xi actually invades Taiwan, it’s profitable to pretend.
> they say it's a national security threat and vote to remove it?
From app stores and American hosting. Only if Bytedance doesn’t sell TikTok to e.g. a French or Indian or American owner. TikTok.com will still resolve (unless Bytedance blocks it).
Any country has mechanisms to ban products the government deems as bad. I think the point is those are much more liberally used in China vs in the US, not that the US would be unable to do it
1) A single party apparatus determines something must be removed, and by fiat it is immediately removed
2) Multiple agencies investigate and make a determination that a real threat exists, the threat and measures to resolve it are debated strongly in two houses of Congress between strongly opposing parties, an passes with bi-partisan support, the law is signed by the President, then the law is upheld through multiple challenges in multiple courts and panels of judges, finally being upheld by the Supreme Court of the country. And no, this is not yet a situation where the country has fallen into autocracy so the institutions have all been corrupted to serve the executive (I.e., not like Hungary, Venezuela, Russia, etc.).
If you think these are the same... I'll just be polite and say the ignorance expressed in that post is truly stunning and wherever you got your education has deeply failed — yikes.
Frankly, I’m not sure what these comments even mean. Douyin (Chinese TikTok) has the same level of brainrot content, except with some restrictions (political and societal level stuff). Chinese kids are as much addicted to it as Western kids to TikTok/IG, from what I’ve seen.
> TikTok is perhaps the most impressively addictive social media app ever created.
What nonsense.
> The algorithm used in the US was apparently banned in China for being too addictive.
"Apparently"? Tiktok was forced to separate itself into a chinese version and the non-chinese version by the US because we didn't want "da ccp" controlling tiktok.
> There's a certain historic symmetry with how opium was traditionally used in China, then Britain introduced stronger, more disruptive versions, forcing a stronger social reaction.
There is no historic symmetry. Unless china invades the US and forces americans to use tiktok. Like britain invaded china ( opium wars ) and forced opium on china's population.
What's with all the same propaganda in every tiktok/china related thread? The same talking points on every single thread for the past few years.
"Tiktok was forced to separate itself into a chinese version and the non-chinese version by the US because we didn't want "da ccp" controlling tiktok."
You're talking about Propaganda but you are spreading straight up fake news.
ByteDance initially released Douyin in China in September 2016.
ByteDance introduced TikTok for users outside of China in 2017.
There was no "split", let alone one "forced by the US".
> There was no "split", let alone one "forced by the US".
There was no split? You wrote: "ByteDance initially released Douyin in China in September 2016. ByteDance introduced TikTok for users outside of China in 2017."
You say there was no split while explicitly proving that there was split? You're not that stupid are you?
Why do you think "tiktok" was created in 2017 when bytedance already had douyin( aka tiktok ) in 2016?
Why is there a "tiktok" for china and a "tiktok" for everyone else? Because the "tiktok in china ( duoyin ) was influenced by the chinese government and to appease the US, bytedance branched off tiktok from "douyin".
I doesn't have anything to do with "appeasing" the US, the Chinese version is heavily filtered and tilted towards CPP prefered activities and worldview, such a platform would never work on the international market and they know it.
And it obviously is not a split if they are seperate apps from the beginning. Why do you lie so much btw?
> I doesn't have anything to do with "appeasing" the US
No. It had everything to do with it. How can you say that when tiktok is getting banned? Even after bytedance bent over backwards to appease the US?
> the Chinese version is heavily filtered and tilted towards CPP prefered activities and worldview, such a platform would never work on the international market and they know it.
Sure. But nothing prevents tiktok from catering their app to other nations differently. You do realize that most nations get different versions of tiktok, facebook, youtube, etc right?
> And it obviously is not a split if they are seperate apps from the beginning.
But they weren't separate apps from the beginning. Your fellow bot/propagandists wrote: "ByteDance initially released Douyin in China in September 2016. ByteDance introduced TikTok for users outside of China in 2017."
If someone is born in 2016 and another person is born in 2017 are born in the same year? Are they the same person?
> Why do you lie so much btw?
Everyone can read this thread and see that you are lying. Not me.
> “You do realize that most nations get different versions of TikTok, Facebook, YouTube, etc., right?”
That statement is misleading, as the differences between these platforms across various countries are typically minor—mostly due to copyright restrictions—so users can still access roughly 99% of the same content. This situation isn’t remotely comparable to TikTok’s China-only counterpart, Douyin, which exists in a separate and completely different ecosystem. I suspect you’re aware of this, yet you brought it up anyway. What is your motivation for such dishonesty?
> “No. It had everything to do with it. How can you say that when TikTok is getting banned? Even after ByteDance bent over backward to appease the US?”
Could you explain exactly what the United States did before 2017 that caused ByteDance to launch a separate app for every country outside of China (not just in the US)? You seem to be muddying the waters by referring to this potential 2024 ban, but that obviously can’t be the reason ByteDance created a separate platform for every non-China country back in 2017.
> “But they weren’t separate apps from the beginning.”
Actually, they were. Douyin is geo-restricted to China (requiring a Chinese phone number to register) and was never accessible to users outside the country. This restriction was put in place to limit the information available to Chinese users, clearly separating Douyin from TikTok right from the start.
> "Everyone can read this thread and see that you are lying. Not me."
Well, I certainly agree that everyone can read this thread and make a judgement on who is more honest.
> Even after bytedance bent over backwards to appease the US?
In 2017 when TikTok was launched, there were no US government rules towards it, there were no demands made by the US government about TikTok - that part is the absolutely wrong part of your argument. You either didn't know that, or you are lying about it. Either way it's misinformation.
ByteDance didn't do anything to appease the US in 2016 or 2017. Bytedance offering Douyin for China, and a separate app TikTok for other markets is specifically about controlling the content that people see in China. TikTok is banned in China because content on TikTok isn't as filtered and strictly controlled in the same ways that China's government wants it to be for their own people - TikTok was specifically made for markets outside of China for this reason. The US had NOTHING to do with that, it is strictly about China controlling China's population with Douyin, or more specifically, not losing control of Chinese people by allowing anti-China videos to appear in Douyin. It's far easier for China to control the narrative they want if there are two separate apps that essentially provide the same user experience. The Chinese government controls TikTok, and I have not seen a single anti-China video in my wife's TikTok feed, so I'm willing to believe that they do have some control over content in the US too.
I hope that's not too complicated for you to understand.
>> Why do you lie so much btw?
>Everyone can read this thread and see that you are lying. Not me.
The other person is not lying. You may not be lying, but you really don't have your facts straight.
> Tiktok was forced to separate itself into a chinese version and the non-chinese version by the US because we didn't want "da ccp" controlling tiktok
No. TikTok was forced to put its data on American servers [1].
Douyin was launched in 2016 as musical.ly, and is unrelated to U.S. pressure. (EDIT: Douyin was launched in 2016, TikTok in 2017. Musical.ly was acquired in 2017 and merged into/basically became TikTok. TikTok has never been in China.)
Musical.ly was not China only and I knew musical.ly before it was the predecessor of tiktok. From how I recall it, it had mostly American users. Was the split during the rebranding?
I don't know if you are just ignorant about history and unwilling to Google, or if you are making the point that of course British did not force feed opium to the people.
What is very well established is that the british fought a war , literally called the opium war by Western historians themselves with the main objective of keeping their opium distribution into China open after the emperor banned it
Their action was akin to if some majority owner of Purdue pharma invades US and forces US government to "keep the oxy market open" while letting "people make their own decision".
Tbh, what you describe sounds nothing like forcing opium on a people.
If mexico invaded and started making meth in the US, or started sending even more meth into the US than they do now by totally taking over the border, I would not begin taking meth.
I'm not saying Britain didn't do something _against the will of the goverment_. I'm just questioning OP's nonsense that individuals were forced to consume Opium vs not forced to consume TikTok - in both cases, clearly nobody was forced. And in both cases, it's products made to be addictive.
I'd like to see less pervasive chronic use of media, so would hope Canada follows suit, but I don't think banning specific services for political reasons is necessarily a good way to get there. Along with other toxic outlets like gambling, we should be able to make coherent judgements about what belongs and what doesn't based on assessments of well-being indicators that evolve over time. I know it's a fairly conservative take, but it's one I'm happy with, and have a hard time seeing how we're better off with the existence of things like TikTok that provide such an easy way to siphon off human hours in a way that few things other than TV before.
Incidentally, I feel almost controversial for seeing more ads for alcohol and gambling than anything else, and thinking "when did we agree it was a good thing to be more permissive about encouraging objectively addicting risky behavior?".
TikTok is also banned in China. For the Chinese market, Douyin is there from the same company ByteDance. Americans need to understand this decision is not an emotional one but for the nation, just like the opposite party does for its nation.
> this decision is not an emotional one but for the nation, just like the opposite party does for its nation
I'd argue that it is an emotional decision for both, and it does seem ironic that the US would be following China in restricting a platform that people see as a major tool for free speech. Whether you agree with that or not the optics are terrible, and the users are very aware of it. If this is really a big concern then they would also ban facebook/instagram/snapchat, but they aren't being included in this, despite having a worse track record.
Facebook/Instagram/Snapchat are not functionally owned & operated by an unfriendly foreign government that would have incentive to destabilize the USA via civil unrest by influencing our algorithms.
They are owned and operated by unfriendly actors with no allegiance to the government - they just need to be profitable. If there was a publicly owned and operated alternative I would feel better about that, but for example Facebook has been shown to experiment with their algorithm and increase depression rates in the past. If the argument is that the US should own/operate it then I'm not opposed to that because we could remove the profit incentive, but then meta/snapchat would have to become parts of the government instead of independent companies, and with them already being global I don't see how that would actually be implemented. Right now the proposal is to continue letting them do all the harm and data collection, so the reasoning for the change doesn't match up with the actions being taken.
The US government protects Facebook, and is what enabled them to become they company they are today. There are plenty of examples of their loyalty to the US government. They make back doors available and allow the US government to moderate content. Seems like they are very aligned!
Theoretically that can happen. But functionally, that hasn't happened - and in fact, the primary incentive is for that not to happen (bad business, etc).
I think there would need to be some basis in fact for these claims, right?
"enormous threat to U.S. national security and young Americans’ mental health. This past week demonstrated the Chinese Communist Party is capable of mobilizing the platform’s users to a range of dangerous, destabilizing actions. The Senate must pass this bill and send it to the president’s desk immediately.”
The United States, through its influence over Facebook, instagram, and twitter, facilitated the Arab Spring. Of course we don’t want an adversary to have the same influence over our domestic political conversation.
Surprised not more people are tying this to the Uber-Didi situation. IIRC it was a big complicated mess, but e.g. (this)[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybersecurity_Law_of_the_Peopl...] seems to imply that e.g. Uber would have to use Chinese domestic servers subject to auditing, etc. Upshot is eventually Uber stopped dumping billions to try to get a foothold, and eventually divested their Chinese operations.
(Also later Didi got kinda screwed imo right after their IPO in IMO a retaliatory move by the Chinese gov). So, is this TikTok ban one more shot in a new form of economic warfare? Is this type of war even new? Again, IMO, I think in instituting this law, this kind of stuff was on at least some of congress' minds.
Didi/Uber was more complicated than just data stuff.
At a high level, chinese tech culture is an insane no holds barred cage match with very little legal structure to protect IP or employees or anything and most companies who enter fail at participating in this.
Didi did a lot of corporate espionage and sabotage at uber china. They'd have "double agents" working for uber they'd pay to f stuff up. This type of thing is not practices in america because it is extremely illegal, but it was fine in China at not something that uber could do "back" to didi. There were people on the uber china fraud team paid by didi to tip off fraud networks on how to fraud. In the last year in china, they moved a ton of important work back to US offices because the china office was "compromised".
It is a lot more complicated, and I agree with the vibe of your comment based on some readings, but couldn't find much regarding sources about the sabotage. I found [this article](https://www.digitalaoban.com/why-uber-failed-in-china/), and I also found another by searching "IMEI FRAUD UBER DIDI SIM CARD", (but that other article was literally copy pasted from the first) (couldn't find sources from the first) (I have some hurtful things to say about tech journalism but this website is too polite for that)
Again, don't really doubt, but more sort of wondering where you sorts get primary information from.
This will ultimately benefit the current Big Tech incumbents. Tiktok was gaining ground rapidly on advertising money and I wouldn't be surprised if there was lobbying that stifled the competition.
Instead of banning TikTok, we should be trying to compete with them and make a better product that wins customers over. It's sad to see the US becoming more authoritarian and follow China's example.
In a more functional democracy we would see that mass data collection of any sort, by any company (foreign or domestic), is a national security risk.
Have witnessed first-hand the threats by foreign state actors penetrating US-based cloud infrastructure. And it’s not like any of our domestic corporations are practicing the type of security hygiene necessary to prevent those intrusions.
So idk, the whole thing feels like a farce that will mainly benefit Zuck and co while doing very little to ultimately protect our interests.
We would be much better off actually addressing data privacy and passing legislation that regulates every company in a consistent manner.
> In a more functional democracy we would see that mass data collection of any sort, by any company (foreign or domestic), is a national security risk.
You obviously don't mean "democracy," but some other word. We don't see mass data collection as a problem because most Americans don't care about privacy. The only reason this Tik Tok thing is even registering is because of the treat of China, which Americans do care about.
There's nothing preventing China from buying mass data from Facebook or one of the many data brokers. This is about censorship and the ability to control public narratives.
You're falsely equating mass data. If anyone can buy the data from brokers then it's effectively public and could be weaponized by anyone. If TikTok collects their own data and doesn't sell it, then it's not public and can be weaponized exclusively by the Chinese government. And that's separate even from algorithm manipulation, which is another liability that's difficult to catch & prove definitively.
"We have to seriously challenge the claim by Facebook that they are not selling user data," commented Damian Collins MP, chair of the UK Parliament's Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee.
"They may not be letting people take it away by the bucket load, but they do reward companies with access to data that others are denied, if they place a high value on the business they do together. This is just another form of selling."
Not defending what FB did in your example, but when you have to start redefining terms in order to make your argument, you're on shaky ground.
My point is that as long as data is being collected and sold in the US, China has access to it. They don't need TikTok for that.
The US government, on the other hand, desires to control all narratives widely disseminated among its citizens. They can do that with Facebook. They can do that with Twitter. They cannot do that with a foreign company. So they shut it down.
It's questionable what a more functional democracy would actually do, since there hasn't really been one in history. There's been other forms of democracy, but they've all had their flaws, and none of them so far have acted in the interests of all the people in that country.
I am not an "America bad" type of fellow, but US democracy is clearly reaching a local minimum. I suspect "never more functional" is an idea with which even your representative would disagree. There are multiple major issues that Congress should have addressed decades ago and instead they've only become more intractable. The country is more than its government, but the core democratic component, Congress, simply gets very little done. I do not think it can go much longer before some series of events forces broad compromises and realignment.
We'll probably pull a Rome and go from republic to dictatorship, kick off a civil war or two, and eventually it'll settle down into empire. I'd say we have 25 years left.
I mean, however flawed the EU may be, I think they are earnestly trying to protect the average person from the current paradigm of abusive data collection. Perfect can’t be the enemy of good.
The EU has been trying to ban encryption for the last 3 years so that it can read all your text messages, listen to your conversations and monitor the images you send to your loved ones/friends without requiring a warrant from the authorities, therefore granting them an unlimited access to everyone's private life without offering any possible recourse.
The EU's pro-privacy stance is a just a facade, they want as much data as the US government, they just don't want to admit it publicly.
ok, that’s fair, I totally blanked on the anti-encryption stance.
I still think having something on the books for general data protection is a net good, as it forced all the biggest US-based companies to at least start implementing data privacy controls.
Regardless of one’s view on the outcome, this case is a reminder that textualism as a legal philosophy stands on shaky ground. This case is decided not on some strict analysis of the words written by a legislator, but on the court’s subjective view that there is a compelling national interest (which in turn seems based on speculation about the future, rather than a factual analysis of events).
Textualism might give the court some useful definitions, but it is after all still called, quite literally, an opinion.
You misapprehend what textualism is. It does not say that every legal case can be decided by interpreting written law. It is merely a philosophy of how to interpret written law when its meaning is what's at issue. What American lawyers call "textualism" is how most continental european courts interpret written laws. It would hardly merit a label, if it wasn't for a long history in the 20th century of jurists departing from written law in making decisions. In this case, there is no dispute about what the written law means. It's about applying a pre-existing legal concept, the freedom of speech, to particular facts.
Another example that highlights the distinction: Justice Gorsuch, one of the Supreme Court's preeminent textualists, is also one of the biggest proponents of criminal rights. Those cases similarly involve defining the contours of pre-existing legal concepts, such as "unreasonable search or seizure." Nobody denies that such questions are subjective--in referring to what's "unreasonable," the text itself calls for a subjective analysis.
Not to wave anybody off an interesting rabbit hole, but is that the germane difference here? My understanding: common law features a relatively smaller "source of truth" of written law, and relatively more expansive and variably-binding jurisprudence, where judge decisions set precedent and shape the law. Civil law writes almost everything down ahead of time.
I guess civil law gives you less room to explore ideas like "living" statutes and laws that gain and change meaning over time; if there was such a change, you'd write it down?
Regardless: whether you're a textualist or realist, in the US you're still operating in a common law system.
It's the difference OP is referring to. You can be the judge of if it's relevant in the US to talk about civil law as the "norm" given that our legal system is not, in fact, based on civil law. I'm just providing a link to the concepts OP was referencing.
> Another example that highlights the distinction...
No, that just highlights the hypocritical picking-and-choosing they do to justify it. Gorsuch is a textualist when he wants to be, just like the others.
Do you understand that the word "unreasonable" would be a subjective analysis and that this would be the textualist recommendation? The text itself calls for a subjective analysis. And therefore doing so would be the textualist position.
> Textualism is a formalist theory in which the interpretation of the law is based exclusively on the ordinary meaning of the legal text, where no consideration is given to non-textual sources, such as intention of the law when passed, the problem it was intended to remedy, or significant questions regarding the justice or rectitude of the law.
Textualism in modern context is a tool used by conservative justices used to uphold laws that serve business interests and conservative causes.
This was a unanimous decision. The only points where Sotomayor and Gorusch disagreed with the majority decision was whether TikTok's operation qualified under strict scrutiny for first amendment considerations, but both agreed that even under strict scrutiny, the law would have survived the challenge.
Much of the decision is indeed based around an analysis of the words written by the legislature.
It's not really speculation, though. Certain aspects of the intelligence relationships between the US and China are highly asymmetrical already.
For example, Chinese nationals can enter our country and gather information on our infrastructure, corporations, and people with relative ease because English is prevalent, and foreign nationals have, with the exception of certain military/research areas, the same access that US citizens have. On the other hand, foreign nationals in China are closely monitored and have very few rights, assuming they know Chinese, are physically in China (Great Firewall), and know how to get around in the first place.
China has unfettered access to our media ecosystem, research, patents, etc., and they do their best to create an uncompetitive/hostile environment for any other country to attempt the same on their territory. Some of this has to do with trade—to be fair, these are intertwined—but the situation regarding intelligence is bleak.
Yeah it’s funny MAGA still wants to encourage more H1b from China because you know apparently Americans are smart enough and are lazy. (Thanks for your vote though we will get rid of trans migrants!)
Well gosh, that sentence makes it seems like Congress could do anything!
However, this case is about something else. The opinion states that there is a first amendment interest, but that interest is secondary to a compelling national security interest that, in the court’s view, is valid. That may or may not be correct - but it is a subjective interpretation.
>that sentence makes it seems like Congress could do anything!
Yeah, it's the perhaps most powerful clause in the constitution. A large number of laws are formed like "[actual law ...] in commerce." That is the hook needed for a lot of laws to be constitutional. Technically those laws only apply to interstate or international commerce.
There are even supreme court cases discussing this:
>Congress uses different modifiers to the word “commerce” in the design and enactment of its statutes. The phrase “affecting commerce” indicates Congress’ intent to regulate to the outer limits of its authority under the Commerce Clause. [...] Considering the usual meaning of the word “involving,” and the pro-arbitration purposes of the FAA, Allied-Bruce held the “word ‘involving,’ like ‘affecting,’ signals an intent to exercise Congress’ commerce power to the full.” Ibid. Unlike those phrases, however, the general words “in commerce” and the specific phrase “engaged in commerce” are understood to have a more limited reach. In Allied-Bruce itself the Court said the words “in commerce” are “oftenfound words of art” [...] The Court’s reluctance to accept contentions that Congress used the words “in commerce” or “engaged in commerce” to regulate to the full extent of its commerce power rests on sound foundation, as it affords objective and consistent significance to the meaning of the words Congress uses when it defines the reach of a statute.[0]
The original sin was Wickard, which found a farmer “growing wheat to feed animals on his own farm” was subject to interstate commerce “reduced the amount of wheat he would buy for animal feed on the open market, which is traded nationally, is thus interstate, and is therefore within the scope of the Commerce Clause” [1]. The court even noted that the farmer’s “relatively small amount of production of more wheat than he was allotted would not affect interstate commerce itself,” ruling that “the cumulative actions of thousands of other farmers” acting as he did would.
This seems true… many many thousands of farmers combined consuming their own self grown wheat, would produce noticeable effects on interstate commerce. Specifically wheat markets, futures, etc…
I think the meaning of the commerce clause is pretty explicit in the constitution. The existence of unreasonable interpretations of the commerce clause doesn't change that the commerce clause on it's own, just with a simple reading of it, isn't powerful. Also worth noting that at least one textualist, Justice Thomas, dissented in that case, exactly because of textualism.
Honestly, it seems completely irrelevant that a simple reading of the commerce clause isn't that powerful. What matters is how things are applied, and what precedents have been established. As applied the commerce clause is immensly powerful. As layman we can whinge about how words have been twisted, but in terms of things i can personally influence it means exactly nothing.
Whoops, "doesn't change " should be "doesn't mean." I think the simple reading actually is pretty powerful. It just says "[The Congress shall have Power . . . ] To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;" There aren't many qualifiers there except notably intrastate commerce.
> Yeah, it's the perhaps most powerful clause in the constitution
It's worth noting that many conservative lawyers and activists have been calling for a more limited interpretation of interstate commerce, as a way of shifting power away from Congress to individual states.
Whether Congress has jurisdiction here is not at issue. The court is deciding a different question, which is whether the ban would violate the first amendment. We look at their ruling:
>We granted certiorari to decide whether the Act, as applied to petitioners, violates the First Amendment.
What does this have to do with the First Amendment? How would this be different from an antitrust ruling that requires Alphabet to divest Youtube, but Alphabet decides to shut down Youtube instead?
>Petitioners argue that such a ban will burden various First Amendment activities, including content moderation, content generation, access to a distinct medium for expression, association with another speaker or preferred editor, and receipt of information and ideas.
Sotomayor expands on this in her concurrence:
>TikTok engages in expressive activity by “compiling and curating” material on its platform. Laws that “impose a disproportionate burden” upon those engaged in expressive activity are subject to heightened scrutiny under the First Amendment. The challenged Act plainly imposes such a burden: It bars any entity from distributing TikTok’s speech in the United States, unless TikTok undergoes a qualified divestiture. The Act, moreover, effectively prohibits TikTok from collaborating with certain entities regarding its “content recommendation algorithm” even following a qualified divestiture. And the Act implicates content creators’ “right to associate” with their preferred publisher “for the purpose of speaking.”
The Supreme Court can only rule on cases brought to it. And in those cases, they are ruling on specific points of law which one party believes that a lower court misapplied. In this case, the parties asked the Court specifically to review whether a TikTok forced divestiture (not a ban, a forced sale) violated the First Amendment.
> The Supreme Court can only rule on cases brought to it.
That might be technically true, but if (1) you're the lawyer representing a party in an important case, (2) you've already appealed that case up to the highest appelate court and lost, and (3) you think there's any chance that the Supreme Court might change the ruling in your favor, then wouldn't it basically be professional malpractice to not petition for certiorari? Of course, they only accept a tiny percentage of the petitions they receive.
>What does this have to do with the First Amendment?
Because obviously changing the owner-editor of a media outlet has everything to do with their editorial policy. The SCOTUS just said that censorship is ok (and forcing the change of the editor is censorship, there is no doubt about it), as long as it's against another state's editorial preferences potentially having a significant audience in the country.
The government doesn't care about the editorial policy so long as if it's not managed by a foreign adversary or proxies of a foreign adversary, which obviously fall out of scope of the First Amendment. This is consistent with the wholly uncontroversial indictments of the owners of Tenet Media who allegedly conspired with Russia. Meanwhile, the commentators on the channel, such as Tim Pool and Dave Rubin, claimed to have had full editorial control over their content that just so happened to align exactly with Russian propaganda, yet they were free to go.
This is about as much foreign commerce as it is me buying a Xiaomi phone.
I know there's court precedent, but corporations aren't people. It's yet another Chinese platform that Americans use to communicate with other western companies.
> Corporate personhood is irrelevant to this case.
Further more, "Corporations are people" implying corporations have rights isn't related to corporate personhood and is based on a (often deliberate by opposing politicians) misinterpretation of the phrase, as spoken by Mitt Romney.
What Romney was saying and what is true when he said "Corporations are people" is confusing because people interpret it as "Corporations are persons" which is not what he, or the case law he was referring to implied. The singular of the phrase is much more clear, a corporation is people.
The whole case was about a group of people pooling their funds to make a movie about Hilary Clinton being bad and the court found that the people still had free speech rights when acting through a corporation to pool their funds and so political donation limits didn't apply as long as no political campaign was involved. Hence, Super PACs having to say that the campaigns their supporting aren't involved with the campaigns.
It's actually an incredibly complicated and nuanced situation and the decision is equally so.
That’s actually my point. I don’t think strict textualism really has anything to do with any case. As soon as you say it’s the rule of law that drives every case, you find yourself somehow interpreting an awful lot.
> a compelling national interest (which in turn seems based on speculation about the future, rather than a factual analysis of events).
I keep seeing this claimed, but these aren't hypothetical risks. China has managerial control over ByteDance. China has laws that require prominent companies to cooperate in their national security operations, and they've recently strengthened them even more. China has already exercised those powers to target political dissidents. This is the normal state of affairs in Chinese business; this is how things work there. It isn't like the west where companies have power to push back, or enjoy managerial independence.
Let's not forget that the US government has forced US companies to secretly hand over user data for "national security" purposes. Anyone who denies that China does similar things either doesn't know how the world works or is consciously denying reality.
But China is a bit different in that they don't simply have the authority to request data, they have the authority to direct management of the company.
I can make guesses about a lot of things, but I know for a fact that what Chinese law requires is materially different than what US law requires.
Regardless, "someone associated with the government got a job at your company" is entirely different in consequence than "the government requires you to have government interests on your board"
> Textualism might give the court some useful definitions, but it is after all still called, quite literally, an opinion.
I don't think you understand SCOTUS' decision here. They are not banning TikTok. Congress is doing so (actually forcing a sale of TikTok or be banned). They are simply ruling whether Congress acted unconstitutionally by doing so. In other words, if they overrule Congress, they would have to show how Congress' ruling contravenes the Constitution, when the Constitution grants Congress the authority to regulate commerce and decide matters of national security.
Congress isn't banning TikTok either. The law says US businesses can't work with TikTok. TokTok is choosing to shut down to try and force the issue politically. TikTok can choose stay running, the app will still be on your phone, no IP addresses are being blocked. The laws impact comes from choking off revenue and marketing (access to app stores).
You're right, though it's effectively a ban on the iPhone because the only way to get apps is through the Apple Store; but yes, it's not like the app itself will stop working, or there will be some IP block, by order of Congress.
Could TikTok work through a browser? I can get to Facebook and YouTube through my iPhone Safari browser. Indeed I buy Kindle ebooks through the iPhone Safari because the Kindle and Amazon apps won't let me make purchases.
"We're not banning your business, we're just cutting the water and power and changing the locks oh and also we burned down the entire building and salted the earth so nothing will ever grow again."
I'd use the term 'originalism' rather 'textualism', but you have a point. For 1st amendment cases, the court hasn't (yet) tried to use their new fangled originalist methodologies. In fact justice Gorsuch wrote separately in the Tiktok case to dig on the levels of scrutiny.
I think it's understandable, in a Chesterton's Fence sort of way - they better make sure that if they're going to start using a new methodology, it works better than what they use now, (these weird judge-created levels of scrutiny), but there's so much 1A precedent that is hard to be confident.
For 2nd amendment, they have used 'originalism' already. There isn't nearly as much precedent in that area, and so they were able to start more or less from scratch.
Rather I think this a good example of how people go through the steps of delegimitizing institutions if it dosen't agree with their opinion. If the Supreme Court's opinion is "shaky" then I guess the Pro-TikTokers would teetering on pole in the middle on the ocean.
But why didn't Supreme Court find the first ammendment arguments compelling? As per first ammendment it is legal and protected to print/distribute/disseminate even enemy propaganda in the USA.
Even at the height of cold war for example Soviet Publication s were legal to publish, print and distribute in the USA.
What changed now?
Even a judge, Sotomayer said during this case that yes, the Government can say to someone that their speech is not allowed.
Looks like a major erosion of first amendment protections.
People have rights to speak within reason. Governments don't. The Chinese government shaping content is not protected. The law notably does not ban individual content.
RT is required to register as a foreign agent in the US and is required to disclose information regarding its activities in the country or be subject to civil and criminal penalties for non-compliance. So I would not say it's able to operate without restriction.
The justices seem to have argued that eliminating a platform for speech does not inhibit your ability to voice that speech on another platform, so is not a violation of the first amendment. I think this is an important outcome and really goes against what many so called "free speech absolutists" would argue.
they found some of the arguments compelling and acknowledged that the law may burden free speech. But they also found that the law is not about speech, it's about corporate ownership. In these cases the court will often (not always) defer to congress / the state.
Individuals can bring Pravda into the USA that is protected speech. But Congress could ban Pravda from doing business in the US same as it can ban or sanction any other foreign business.
Because the law bans the operation of software by a foreign adversary. It does not ban speech.
Legal precedent holds that source code (the expressive part of software) is speech, but that executing software (the functional part) is not speech. Even when the operation conveys speech, the ban is on the functional operation of the software, so the First Amendment doesn't apply.
It seems like everyone missed the analogy of TikTok being like a Soviet newspaper, but the better analogy was like Tiktok being a tracking device, which transmitted your exact location, along with a microphone and video camera provided by the Soviet. The hardware may be Apple (made in China, designed in California), but the software extends the hardware usage to the software provider. I'm not sure there was any era of US history which the law would have permitted that.
It's opinion regardless of the specific legal philosophy. Each philosophy makes decisions about what kinds of information, sources, context, etc are considered to form the "correct" interpretation. Those decisions are opinions.
Since I'm a reasonably well-known textualist, I'll bite:
First, the court was not asked to reconsider the meaning of the First Amendment. In the US, we generally hew to the rule of "party presentation," which generally provides that courts will consider the parties' arguments, not make up new ones on their own.
TikTok's claim was that application of the statute in question to it violated the First Amendment's clause that "Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech." The Supreme Court has considered the interpretation and application of that clause in...well, a whole lot of cases. TikTok asked the court to apply the logic of certain of those precedents to rule in its favor and enjoin the statute. It did not, however, ask the court to reconsider those precedents or interpret the First Amendment anew.
Since the court was not asked to do so, it's no surprise that it didn't.
Second, as noted, the court has literally decades' worth of cases fleshing out the meaning of this clause and applying it in particular circumstances. Every textualist, so far as I'm aware, generally supports following the court's existing precedents interpreting the Constitution unless and until they are overruled.
Third, even if one is of the view that the Court ought to consider the text anew in every case, without deferring to its prior rulings interpreting the text, this would have been a particularly inappropriate case for it to do so. A party seeking an injunction, as TikTok was, has to show a strong likelihood of success on the merits. That generally entails showing that you win under existing precedent. A court's expedited consideration of a request for preliminary relief is not an appropriate time to broach a new theory of what the law requires. The court doesn't have the time to give it the consideration required, and asking the court to abrogate its precedents is inconsistent with the standard for a preliminary injunction, which contemplates only a preview of the ultimate legal question, not a full-blown resolution of it.
Fourth, what exactly was the court supposed to do with the text in question, which is "abridging the freedom of speech"? The question here is whether the statute here, as applied to TikTok, violates that text. Well, it depends on what "the freedom of speech" means and perhaps what "abridging" means. It's only natural that a court would look to precedent in answering the question. Precedent develops over time, fleshing out (or "liquidating," to use Madison's term) the meaning and application of ambiguous or general language. Absent some compelling argument that precedent got the meaning wrong, that sort of case-by-case development of the law is how our courts have always functioned--and may be, according to some scholars, itself a requirement of originalism.
Well, India has already banned Tik-Tok, now the US is. It looks like some European countries are giving it the side eye. This may be the beginning of the end for it.
No matter what you think of this ban, the court is obviously not the right place to solve it. It is completely unsurprising that this is a unanimous decision because foreign trade is one of the few powers expressly given to the federal government in the constitution:
>[The Congress shall have Power . . . ] To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;[0]
(The actual law may not have relied exclusively on the Commerce Clause, you would have to read it to find out. But from a high level there is nothing stopping congress from regulating any instance foreign trade.)
I'm a Canadian. Almost every major Canadian newspaper is owned by American ideologically-conservative hedge funds, the only variance is how activist they are in their ownership. Our social media (like everyone's) is owned by Americans, men who are now kowtowing to Trump.
And meanwhile, Trump is now incessantly talking about annexing our country. The Premier of Alberta is receptive to the idea.
So, how should a Canadian federal government responsibly react to that?
I'm surprised TikTok isn't trying to push a web version, hosted outside the USA as an alternative to shutting down. While it would be difficult for a new social media service to gain traction that way, TikTok has a huge established audience.
Sort of. In a mobile browser, it almost immediately tries to get me to download the app, which is the opposite of pushing the web version in a marketing sense. Pushing would be telling app users that the app will become unavailable soon and they should use TikTok on the web.
Sounds like we have our answer. Have China flood the internet with "content". American scrapers train on it. Now we can ban LLM use on American websites, compromised by China!
FWIW, this has driven many users to RedNote, which is even more Chinese in every way, regardless of whether it's even the same kind of platform. I doubt it would ever be anywhere near the same numbers as TikTok (assuming ByteDance didn't sell off) but it does illustrate the trouble with this i.e. cat-and-mouse game.
I don’t know the details of this app’s corporate structure, but if it’s developed here and user data stays here it would not qualify under the act. Based on the context of your and other comments I assumed it was also a foreign-controlled app
The REDnot is not a "foreign-controlled" app, it's a foreign app, and it does not target the US market. The US citizens chose to use a non-US app. How would US enforce a ban? Send marines to Shanghai and capture CEOs?
REDnote is explicitly "小红书国际版", or "Little Red Book International Version" and is in English in US app stores. It's definitely targeting non-Chinese users.
Oh I misread your comment (read /inside/ rather than /outside/ for some reason), but obviously the same way they’re going to ban tiktok? Make it illegal for the app stores to host.
This is very misleading "news" and it doesn't illustrate anything, a bunch of users installed rednote out of protest, but this is a fully chinese app with 100% chinese content and 99% of users will move to youtube, instagram, etc
According to CNN, roughly 700,000 people have installed Rednote—though that figure only represents those who have tested the app and doesn’t necessarily reflect sustained usage. By comparison, TikTok is said to have around 110 million users in the United States, meaning 700,000 installs amount to less than 1% of TikTok’s user base.
Meanwhile, YouTube’s user numbers in the U.S. are estimated at 240 million, but it’s unlikely to gain many new downloads since almost everyone already has the app.
In my view, it’s unrealistic to think Rednote will replace TikTok.
> 700,000 installs amount to less than 1% of TikTok’s user base.
700k in how much time? RN tops the (Play Store) charts here (EU/Croatia) as well, and anecdotally there's a lot of word of mouth growth. Even though TikTok will not get banned over here.
> It’s unrealistic to think Rednote will replace TikTok.
Possibly, but it does have a foot in the door. It doesn't look like they were ready for western audience so remains to be seen if they can seize on the opportunity.
Considering that RedNote doesn't allow LGBTQ+ content or "too much skin" to be shown (women-only policy BTW) I don't think it'll end up being very popular with today's TikTok crowd.
Rednote has been shown as the top free app (per Apple’s own App Store in my device at least) for going on a week, so the magnitude may be larger than you imply.
Also, having tried it myself, the algorithm works much like TikTok whereby it learns to show English speakers English content pretty quickly.
Also the general consensus among people who have used IG and TikTok (I personally don’t use IG) seems to be that the former does not at all substitute for the latter, particularly in terms of the subjective “authentic” feel of the content (IG often said to be lacking the community feel of TikTok).
I explicitly stated in a different comment that Rednote will not replace TikTok. I don’t think anyone seriously believes that. It’s subject to the same ban after all.
The interesting aspect here is rather the magnitude of dissatisfaction that a large percentage of users feel towards the other mainstream US social content platforms.
I don't think that's going to happen. The party official seems to be positive about the event overall based on their press release recently. IMO it's going to the opposite direction, where they try to get more foreign users on the platform and have them stay there. If I were a CCP official, I would love to have more soft power by having everyone on a Chinese platform.
A non-trivial number of videos I've seen this week mention also being able to find the creator of said video on Rednote. It is also the number 1 downloaded app in the US iOS store this week. The news may be a logical extreme, but it's not fake.
Having a non-trivial number of videos is not the same as being the replacement platform. Youtube is also being spammend with tiktok users uploading old content. The idea that after the dust settles the majority of 110 million tiktok users will end up using a tightly censored chinese social media platform rather than moving to obvious alternatives such as instagram and youtube seems very very unlikely.
I agree. I'm not sure if I think all of this is good or not. Even if you, a gov't, didn't have an interest in managing your citizens vis-a-vis some platform, it doesn't mean other govt's don't have that interest, so maybe there's some validity to it in that case. But all of that raises even more questions, like "so what?" and "to what end?"
I feel like the protest move to RedNote will be short lived. The censorship there is draconian - if you say even the slightest thing that offends the CCP on red note, you get banned. See this discussion on the subreddit for TikTok (https://www.reddit.com/r/TikTok/comments/1i2wll3/how_to_not_...).
Something I read that’s interesting - RedNote changed the English name to cover their actual name - the Chinese name is little red book, as in the red book of Mao (not sure if true).
> the Chinese name is little red book, as in the red book of Mao (not sure if true)
That is the Chinese name of the app (although I've heard mixed reports on if "little red book" as a term for the book actually common in China). The founder claims it's because of the founder's "career at Bain & Company and education at the Stanford Graduate School of Business" which both use red, but I'm pretty sure it's a pun on his name also being Mao.
My wife and I are split on this, though neither of us are regular TikTok users.
I keep coming across elected officials who are apparently briefed on something about TikTok, and they decide there’s a reasonable threat regarding the CCP or some such. The idea that the CCP could drive our national conversation somehow (still murky) bothers me.
My wife feels like this is the US Government trying to shut down a communication and news delivery tool.
While I don’t agree with her, I don’t think she’s wrong. It seems all the folks who “have it on good authority” that this is a dangerous propaganda tool, can’t share what “it” is.
If the President had over Meta and X the sort of control the CCP has over TikTok, Instagram and Twitter would be banned in most countries. The only reason this is debated so much here is we’re (in my opinion correctly) very cautious about free speech.
One, he's not. Two, there is a massive difference between the owner of X being in the government and the government being in X. Three, the owner of every media platform is not in the government.
The owner of Twitter/X is about to be in the president’s cabinet. And the owner of Meta is clearly cozying up to the incoming administration with their new “anti-woke” policies.
> The idea that the CCP could drive our national conversation somehow (still murky) bothers me.
Even if all the CCP can do is modify how often some videos and comments show up to users on tik tok, there's a chance that level of control could have been enough to instigate the whole jump to red note we're seeing. After all, the suggestion originated within tik tok itself as the videos talking about it (and the comments praising it) went viral. Sure everyone was primed to do something with the deadline approaching, but it's entirely possible that the red note trend isn't an organically viral one, but a pre-planned and well executed attempt to throw a wrench in the works.
red note's infrastructure seems to have had no problems absorbing millions of new users at the drop of a hat, cloud scaling is good, but that kind of explosive growth in mere days, when unexpected, often results in some visible hiccups. Maybe the engineers are just that good, or maybe they had a heads up that it'd be happening.
Utter speculation on my part, but I've found it interesting I've not come across anyone else mention the possibility.
Censorship is a form of propaganda, and even the very obvious/reported examples we've seen reported over the years are pretty bad. And you have to assume that there is more going on than is actually reported/noticed, especially in subtler ways. It's also just obvious it's happening in the sense that the Chinese government has ultimate control over TikTok.
I don't see a section on their main wiki either, even though YT is pretty notorious for deleting stuff, even political stuff https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YouTube
Biden has said he won't enforce the ban and Trump has said he will keep TikTok from going dark. Shou is attending the inauguration. Ivanka and Kai are posting actively on TikTok. It is not going anywhere.
An interesting angle to this whole drama that I haven’t seen discussed much: in the creator industry, TikTok is known for being significantly harder to make money from your content, as compared to YouTube. For various reasons, content just makes much more money on YouTube than it does on TikTok.
I do wonder what will happen if TikTok users migrate to YouTube shorts, and if that will change this.
It's really quite funny to read the timeline in the opinion.
Essentially, Trump started the TikTok ban, Biden continued it, and Congress finally put it into law. And now both Trump and Biden, as well as Congress, are shying away from actually enforcing the ban.
• In August 2020, President Trump issued an Executive
Order finding that “the spread in the United States of mobile applications developed and owned by companies in
[China] continues to threaten the national security, foreign
policy, and economy of the United States.”
• President Trump determined
that TikTok raised particular concerns, noting that the
platform “automatically captures vast swaths of information from its users” and is susceptible to being used to
further the interests of the Chinese Government.
• Just days after issuing his initial Executive Order, President Trump ordered ByteDance Ltd. to divest all interests
and rights in any property “used to enable or support
ByteDance’s operation of the TikTok application in the
United States,” along with “any data obtained or derived
from” U. S. TikTok users.
• Throughout 2021 and 2022, ByteDance Ltd. negotiated
with Executive Branch officials to develop a national security agreement that would resolve those concerns. Executive Branch officials ultimately determined, however, that
ByteDance Ltd.’s proposed agreement did not adequately
“mitigate the risks posed to U. S. national security interests.” 2 App. 686. Negotiations stalled, and the parties
never finalized an agreement.
• Against this backdrop, Congress enacted the Protecting
Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications
Act.
A simpler explaination, politicians were worried that Tiktok may influence mit-term and presidential elections, but it turns out a good place to run campaigns.
The whole thing, including Biden setting the deadline for literally the last day of his presidency, strikes me as extremely odd. I have no idea what the real story is here, but it very much seems that what is happening is not at all what it seems.
"Impactful" might be counting your chickens a little too early. Let's see if it has any impact. The next POTUS might just ignore it, or some other shenanigans might be used to work around whatever the imagined impact was.
The interesting bits from the text[1], relative to the now flagged sibling
-----
(3) FOREIGN ADVERSARY CONTROLLED APPLICATION.—The term “foreign adversary controlled application” means a website, desktop application, mobile application, or augmented or immersive technology application that is operated, directly or indirectly (including through a parent company, subsidiary, or affiliate), by—
(A) any of—
(i) ByteDance, Ltd.;
(ii) TikTok;
(iii) a subsidiary of or a successor to an entity identified in clause (i) or (ii) that is controlled by a foreign adversary; or
(iv) an entity owned or controlled, directly or indirectly, by an entity identified in clause (i), (ii), or (iii); or
(B) a covered company that—
(i) is controlled by a foreign adversary; and
(ii) that is determined by the President to present a significant threat to the national security of the United States following the issuance of—
(I) a public notice proposing such determination; and
(II) a public report to Congress, submitted not less than 30 days before such determination, describing the specific national security concern involved and containing a classified annex and a description of what assets would need to be divested to execute a qualified divestiture.
-----
The way I read this is that Congress is bootstrapping the law with its own finding that ByteDance, Ltd/TikTok are Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications, but then, in (3)(B), the President is responsible for determining any other entities this law should cover given previously stated parameters (what they mean by "covered entity" here), using the procedure it then provides.
I believe that addresses the concern about this being a "Bill of Attainder".
Edit: Obviously IANAL, but it also doesn't appear that this issue of this being a Bill of Attainder was raised by TikTok, nor was it considered in this opinion. Perhaps they will do so in a separate action, or already have and it just hasn't made its way to the court(?), but if it were such a slam dunk defense, you think their expensive lawyers would have raised it.
The Supreme Court has made only very narrow rulings around Bills of Attainder.
To me this bill seems problematic on that front in two directions. One is that it explicitly names a target of the ban. Secondly, it grants the president power to arbitrarily name more. Similar to how a King can declare certain Subjects be Attainded on His Whim.
But the petitioners (TikTok) did not raise this issue so the court did not have to decide on it. Instead they focused on the first amendment issue, which seems like a loser -- there is no speech present on TikTok that the law bans; any content on TikTok can be posted to red-blooded American apps like shorts or reels so the speech itself is not affected.
> I believe that addresses the concern about this being a "Bill of Attainder".
The definition of "foreign adversary controlled application" in the bill is explicit in including either (a) this specific list of organizations, OR (b) other organization that might meet certain criteria later. I'm not sure how the existence of (b) addresses the concern that (a) amounts to a bill of attainder.
This analysis seems reasonable, but I think the simpler explanation blatant corruption, since the legislation is moving judicial responsibility from from the judicial branch to the legislature and president, and a great deal of money is involved.
> I think the simpler explanation blatant corruption, since the legislation is moving judicial responsibility from from the judicial branch to the legislature and president
I mean, that's true of basically all administrative agencies.
Thousands of US content creators were earning on TikTok. Now they need to migrate over to other alternatives. Also this is a reminder for all content creators to always plan for failovers. Though I would assume most them already are on multiple platforms.
Not at all the case except for the largest ones. It is hard to grasp the distribution capacity of TikTok. It WILL put your content in front of people interested in it. It's crazy good at that. Also, a lot of money came in from the live streams within the app.
An implementation detail that might be interesting is that the discussed method of the ban is to use the same ISP block that is used for torrent sites (and other websites).
This may be a bit of relevance when talking about how banning a website get applied through the legal system.
That’s a good point. Apparently VPN popularity is already exploding in states that PornHub had to block.
Maybe we will finally get the decentralized computer network we thought we were building in the 1990s (as a combination of software overlays and point to point unlicensed wireless links).
Who are they actually supposed to be selling to? Given the US has pretty active antitrust for now, I can't really think of anyone who has both the money and expertise to run it and would be allowed to buy it.
Bits that can't be exported can be recreated by the new owner, most likely with material differences anyways not just because the new owner might not be able to recreate the original faithfully but because they might not want to.
rumors are that XHS wont region split, in which case this is setting up to a monumental event in the evolution and future of the internet. words can't really describe how big of a decision this is going to be.
> I don't think that's going to happen. The party official seems to be positive about the event overall based on their press release recently. IMO it's going to the opposite direction, where they try to get more foreign users on the platform and have them stay there. If I were a CCP official, I would love to have more soft power by having everyone on a Chinese platform.
But in a nut shell I think we're seeing outcome #2 play out, which has huge ramifications for the Chinese internet. Essentially this could become a precedent for all Chinese apps moving forward, and essentially the great firewall slowly dissolving. Trends have been slowly going that way with Bilibili, Douban, Kuaishou, etc, being more open to foreigners. There's still a lot to play out over the next few weeks as Trump assumes office and Tiktok CEO attends the inauguration. But there is just too much to comment about this entire situation, and most people who aren't Chinese or have experience with the great firewall are not going to comprehend just how monumental this whole ordeal has already been, and will be.
Still have no good answer on why its bad for a company that is supposedly under Chineese influence to collect this kind of information on us, and adjust and tweak an 'algorith' for displaying content. But its perfectly fine for a US company to do it? Wouldn't the right solution be to protect the citizens from all threats, foreign and domestic?
Plenty of good answers have already been put forward. But in case you're asking in good faith, here are the two main ones:
1- It's in the interest of the US government to protect its interests and citizens from governments that are considered adversarial, which China is. And unlike other countries, the Chinese government exercises a great deal of direct control over major companies (like ByteDance). If TikTok was controlled by the Russian government would we even be having this conversation? (Ironically most Americans are freaked out about Russia, but when it comes to global politics, China is the much greater threat to the U.S.)
I think social media in general - including by US companies - does more harm than good to society and concentrates too much power and influence in the hands of a few (Musk, Zuck, etc.) So this isn't to say that "US social media is good". But from a national security standpoint, Congress' decision makes sense.
2- If China allowed free access to US social media apps to its citizens then it might have a leg to stand on. But those are blocked (along with much of the Western internet) or heavily filtered/censored. TikTok itself is banned in China. So there's a strong tit-for-tat element here, which also is reasonable.
> (Ironically most Americans are freaked out about Russia, but when it comes to global politics, China is the much greater threat to the U.S.)
American-backed forces are fighting the Russian army itself in Ukraine. Implied in all of that is a desire to not have US forces fight them directly in Poland.
> Ironically most Americans are freaked out about Russia, but when it comes to global politics, China is the much greater threat to the U.S.
China benefits greatly from the rules based order that America spends considerable effort to maintain and uphold. They would prefer a different rules based order than the one America would prefer, but they're better off with than without and recognize that.
OTOH, Russia does not. They prefer chaos.
China is definitely the stronger threat. But Russia is a greater immediate threat because they're only interested in tearing things down. It's easier to tear things down than to build them up, especially if you don't care about the consequences.
I disagree; and it's the dismissal for the past 13-14 years of China as an immediate threat which is what has in part allowed China to become such a large longer-term threat.
> They would prefer a different rules based order than the one America would prefer
I would put it differently: China wants its own global hegemony instead of the U.S.' -- and that's understandable (everyone wants to rule the world). But if the U.S. doesn't want that to happen then it has to take steps to counter it.
I agree with point #1, but then this ban should also include the US controlled sites - having the main office in the US doesn't mean the data is any more secure, or that the products do less harm socially.
For point #2, this seems like you're saying "they don't have a leg to stand on, and we want to do the same thing". If we don't support the way they control the internet, we shouldn't be doing adopting the same policies. I don't think governments should have any ability to control communication on the internet, so this feels like a huge overstep regardless of the reasons given for it
Re #2 -- while there is a tit-for-tat element here, forcing a sale of TikTok or removing it from the App stores, is still worlds apart from the type of censoring of information that the Chinese government engages in. So it's not a case of "we want to do the same thing". If you've lived in China (I have) you'll know what I'm talking about.
Good clarification - I'm not saying we're adopting all the same policies, but it is a step in that direction, and I think we need to have a clear line saying we never do anything close to that. Similar to the "first they came" poem, this could be used to justify further expansion of this power, and that poem does start with "First they came for the communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a communist"
Agreed that there's always a risk that something like this sets a precedent for abuse of power to control information by the US government. And we know that the US gov is not beyond spying on its citizens (Snowden, NSA). However, there are still fairly robust safeguards in place in the US by virtual of the political structure, to make this much less likely to happen. Those same safeguards make it unlikely that while Trump and Elon would almost certainly exercise the degree of control that Xi has if they could, they are prevented from the worst by the structure in place.
The problem in China is that there weren't strong safeguards to prevent a totalitarian control (CCP is supposed to be democratic within itself in that leaders are elected, though it's all restricted to party members, of course), and when Xi came into power he was able, within a few years, to sweep aside all opposition, primarily through "anti-corruption campaigns". So he now has a degree of control and power that would be a wet dream for Trump. (And you should see the level of adulation in the newspapers there.)
Now in the US we have a separate problem, and that is we have a system where unelected people like Elon and Zuckerberg, Murdoch, etc., exercise a tremendous amount of influence over the population through their policies and who are pursuing a marriage between authoritarian politics and big business (by the way, there's a term for this, it's called "fascism"). That is a serious problem -- but it's separate from the TikTok issue and shouldn't be used to discount the dangers of the CCP having control over a highly popular social network in the US.
The US companies continue to feed the same information to the Chinese, even though the Federal government has been trying to get them to stop for almost a decade (I cite sources elsewhere in this thread).
So, all of your arguments apply equally to the big US owned social media companies.
Since the ban won’t stop the Chinese from mining centralized social media databases, the important part of the question is:
> Wouldn't the right solution be to protect the citizens from all threats, foreign and domestic?
> won’t stop the Chinese from mining centralized social media databases
that's not the issue; the issue is control of the network
> Wouldn't the right solution be to protect the citizens from all threats, foreign and domestic?
No. In the US government's view, its responsibility is to counter potential foreign threats -- and not just foreign, but adversarial (this wouldn't be an issue for a social network controlled by the UK or Japan, for example) -- which would include a highly pervasive social network controlled by a foreign government that is the US' largest adversary.
As for whether social media companies in general are good or bad for American society, that's a completely separate question. (I tend to think they do more harm then good, but it's still a separate question.)
> If China allowed free access to US social media apps to its citizens then it might have a leg to stand on.
So now the US should just do everything China does? What happened to American ideals protecting themselves? If free speech really works, it shouldn't matter that TikTok exists.
The GFW doesn't just block websites/networks/content that is controlled by adversarial foreign governments, but all websites/networks/content which the CCP is unable to censor. The GFW is about controlling the flow of information to its citizens from __any__ party not under the CCP's control.
1) You can not protect users from being influenced by the media they consume-- that is basically the very nature of the thing.
2) This is not about protecting users of the app, this is about preventing a foreign state from having direct influence on public opinion.
It is obvious to me why this is necessary. If you allow significant foreign influence on public opinion, then this can be leveraged. Just imagine Russia being in control of a lot of US media in 2022. Or 1940's Japan. That is a very serious problem, because it can easily lead to outcomes that are against the interests of ALL US citizens in the longer term...
SCOTUS explicitly avoided ruling on this justification, and it seemed at argument that even some of the conservative justices were uncomfortable with the free speech implications of it.
It's not a top down broadcast and the SCOTUS has a hard time wrapping their head around 250 individual people receiving individualized content with no oversight or necessity for accuracy.
Isn’t that already happening? Fox news parroting russian talking points to sow division among the working class population of this country? Why is that fine? Because they get Rs in power in the process?
Right, Congress was shown some pretty convincing evidence that execs in China pull the strings, and those execs are vulnerable to Chinese government interference.
As we’ve seen in the past couple of weeks, social media companies based in the US are also vulnerable to US government interference — but that’s the way they like it.
They released a Marty Rimm-level report citing that pro-Palestinian was mentioned more than pro-Israeli content in ratios that differed from Meta products. This was the 'smoking gun' of manipulation when it's more of a sign Meta was the one doing the manipulation.
The opinion today has almost nothing to do with how content is controlled on the platform; the court is very clear that they'd have upheld the statute based purely on the data collection issue.
I don't know what Congress has said but there absolutely is evidence that TikTok has been used to spy on users for political reasons. A US based engineer claims that he saw evidence that Hong Kong protestors were spied on in 2018 at the behest of a special committee representing the CCP's interests within ByteDance. This is not surprising, most major corporations within China maintain a special committee representing the government's interests to company executives
Do law enforcement portals provide current location information? There's an extended history of the TikTok being used to spy on the location of user devices
Okay, that's because Grindr users choose to publicly share their current location; that's the point of the app. Governments having an API that lets them access data that users publicly share seems substantively different from governments having access to private information, obtaining that information by subverting internal controls at TikTok and ByteDance intended to keep it private. I think anyone not arguing for arguments sake would acknowledge that
Most apps coerce their users into sharing location information. That's why they released apps and did not just use progressive web apps in the first place.
But, this is done under the guise of commercial interests, usually advertising, so it's okay?
That's the way I like it for my children. Pardon the demagogue. The US, being the awful mess it is is still 100x better IMHO than the chinese government. It's the lesser evil kind of thing and honestly the reason I believe that democracy is 100% THE way to go. Things can only get US level nefarious with democracy. Far from perfect but much less evil.
The only problem with democracy is that it's so fragile and susceptible to bad non-democrat actors intervention, which is more of an awareness problem.
No, X doesn't have a corporate governance structure that requires Chinese government control, because it is a US company.
Companies in China (and especially those of prominence) have formal structures and regulations that require them to cooperate with the government, and sometimes require the companies to allow the government to intervene in operations if necessary.
It is not possible for a CCP official to show up to a board meeting at X and direct the company to take some action, because that isn't how US corporations work.
A CCP official could show up at a Tesla board meeting and announce they're going to seize Gigafactory Shanghai unless Musk takes down some content on X. There doesn't seem to be much of a difference.
Tesla is quite notable as the only foreign automaker which China has allowed to operate independently in China. All of the rest of them were forced to joint venture with 51%+ control being handed over to a Chinese domestic company. So, really it's pretty surprising that they haven't done that even before Musk owned X.
But regardless, there is a huge difference between a request and actually having managerial authority -- the most obvious being that someone with managerial authority can simply do whatever they want without trying to compel someone else. Also, X, being subject to US law, must comply with that no matter what consequences Musk is threatened with. So, any threats may have limits in what they can practically accomplish.
You are assuming a lot about supposed evidence nobody has said anything specific about. One shouldn't also assume people in Congress know how to evaluate any evidence. Nor justices, based on the questions they asked.
As a matter of political science and public choice theory, the legislature is the branch of government most trusted to collect information and make these kinds of deliberations.
You might buy that, but I don't. Unless they can actually put forward publicly compelling evidence of a national security risk, this can only be seen as a handout to Facebook by the government. This saga just gives more evidence that the US government exists primarily to serve the interests of US's oligarch class. Aside for those oligarchs, it does nothing to serve US citizens' interests.
Would you call Marjorie Taylor Greene a qualified and trusted investigator for the american people? I sure wouldn’t. Talking about what the legislature is supposed to be is irrelevant. What the legislature actually is is relevant.
Congress members speak of space lasers and weather control... I'm not sure they're competent as a whole. Actually, it reminds me of the Russian guy that always spouts nonsense about nuking UK into oblivion, and that theory that he's just kept around to make the real evil people look sane.
I’m sure he’s bending at the knee right now because he feels very secure and just had a change of heart about everything precisely one month after the election.
Is he bending the knee, or dropping the mask? The billionaire+ class rightly sees this as their big opportunity to seize power for the next several generations, removing worker and consumer protections and enshrining themselves as essential parts of the government.
The short answer here is that directly addressing a threat from a foreign adversary formally designated by both the legislative and executive branches long before the particular controversy before the court affords the government a lot more latitude than they would have in other cases.
I’m not sure anyone is disputing that, certainly I’m not.
There is an adjacent point that many of us feel is just as important, which is that there is evidence in the public record (see Snowden disclosures among others) that there is lawbreaking or at least abuse of clearly stated constitutional liberties taking place domestically in the consumer internet space and has been for a long time.
Both things can be true, and both are squarely on topic for this debate whether on HN or in the Senate Chambers.
China can benefit without doing any influencing. It can simply mine the vast amount of data it gets for sentiment analysis. Say they want to be more aggressive against the Philippines. They can do an analysis to gauge the potential outrage on the part of the American people. If it's low they can go ahead.
China can show favorable political content to America and American youth.
American culture has been such an influencing force on the world due to our conduits, movies and music. TikTok is a Chinese conduit, and I do believe this is happening. Our culture can be co-opted, the Chinese had John Cena apologize to ALL of China. They can easily pay to have American influencers spin in a certain way, influencing everything.
China has blocked US social media for years (decades perhaps?). I don't know if they've explicitly said all the reasons, but "social stability" is a big one.
Good point. Social media accounts should only be available to people who live in the country where the company is based. Then there's no need to ban Facebook and X elsewhere.
Yes, there is a distinction there. The issue is that it's a small part of the overall problem when looked at the larger scale. The overarching issues of political influence at odds with individual citizens, hostile engagement-maximizing algorithms, adversarial locked-down client apps, and selling influence to the highest bidder are all there with domestically-incorporated companies. The government's argument basically hinges on "but when these companies do something really bad we can force domestic companies to change but we can't do the same for TikTok". That's disingenuous to American individuals who have been on the receiving end of hostile influence campaigns for over a decade, disingenuous to foreign citizens not in the US or China who can't control any of this, and disingenuous to our societal principles as we're still ultimately talking about speech.
That can’t be it. Facebook sells the same data to foreign adversaries including China and Russia. The most famous incident involved the British company Cambridge Analytica, which used it to manipulate election outcomes in multiple countries:
And here’s a story about an executive order from Biden the next year. Apparently the White House concluded that the investigation wasn’t enough to fix the behavior:
I assure you, if you read the opinion, that is indeed it, and the objection you raise about other instances of data collection not being targeted is addressed directly.
I think you would be hard pressed to come up with any evidence for your assertion. First of all the UK is not a foreign adversary (quite the opposite). Secondly Facebook didn't sell data in that case, it was collected by Cambridge Analytica via Facebook's platform APIs (as described in your own link). In general Facebook doesn't sell data, their entire business model is based on having exclusive access to data from its platforms.
Facebook's owners & their peers have a massive amount of control over public policy, so no, I don't think the US government can tell them to stop doing it.
Yet the government convinced both Facebook and Twitter to suppress both the Hunter laptop and information about the Covid vaccines that we all know is true now - that it doesn’t prevent the spread of Covid and that immunity wears off.
I’m not anti-vax. I’ve been shot up with Covid vaccines more often than I can count and I was early in line for the J and J one shot and I took an mRNA booster before it was recommended by the US once I started reading it was recommended by other country’s health departments.
But where we are now is totally the fault of Biden and the Democratic establishment.
No argument here. Most Democrats, including Biden, and all Republicans serve at the whims of Facebook's owners and their peers. Hence the enormous handout to Facebook in this decision.
This is arguing technical definitions. As of this week, foreign intelligence agencies transfers money that eventually ends up at Facebook, and they get the data in return.
They can claim this is not a sale if they want, but it’s still a sale. Drug dealers make similar arguments about similar shell games where you hand a random dude some cash, then later some other random dude drops a bag on the ground and you pick it up.
Since Facebook was first caught doing this during the Obama administration, it’s hard to argue they are not intentionally selling the data at this point.
> That can’t be it. Facebook sells the same data to foreign adversaries including China and Russia.
I'm not sure they do that anymore, not in the current geopolitical climate and not with the DC ghouls having taken over the most sensitive parts of Meta the company (there were many posts on this web-forum about former CIA people and not only working at the highest levels inside of Meta).
This whole Cambridge Analytica thing is such a nothing burger - I have yet to be given a concise reason how it was anything other than targeted advertising. Something that happens day-in, day-out a billion times over on all our "western" platforms in the form of ads. And no, the fact that this data wasn't "consented to" doesn't mean anything other than being a technicality. If anything, I'd chalk the whole thing up to anti-Trump hysteria that happened around that time.
It's still completely legal for Meta to sell that user data to Chinese owned companies. So no security is provided by this change. I see it as theatre.
People keep coming up with other avenues by which China could get this information, but the court addresses that directly: the legislature is not required to address every instance of a compelling threat in one fell swoop.
I thought this too, but I think there's a new law for this as well:
"In a bipartisan measure, the House of Representatives unanimously pass a bill designed to protect the private information of all Americans by prohibiting data brokers from transferring that information to foreign adversaries such as China"
https://allen.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=...
The case turns on the fact that China is formally designated a foreign adversary. The statute doesn't allow the government to simply make up who its adversaries are on the fly, or derive them from some fixed set of first principles. There's a list, and it long predates this case.
It’s bad because China has different interests than the US. Imagine if a war breaks out in Taiwan and they send targeted propaganda to members of the US military.
US-made missiles are blowing stuff up inside Russia because Russia invaded a treaty partner who gave up their nukes in exchange for a security alliance with the US. And yet Russian apps are in our app stores. Nobody needs to imagine.
No servers in Russia. Given Pavel's prior history it seems unlikely that he would cooperate with Russian government. Plenty of other criticism of telegram is warranted but it's probably not a tool of the Russian government.
I would argue that Telegram is a much, much larger security threat to the average individual American than Tiktok. Except they comply with government search warrants and don't enable E2E encryption by default so they are useful to the American National Security Establishment and get to stay.
There are no Russian apps that collect extensive data on hundreds of millions of Americans. (And if I'm wrong about that, the US should absolutely force divestiture of those apps or ban them).
You are free to have that our opinion but our elected government disagrees with you. It’s not the job of the court to adjust laws based on personal preference of HN commenters.
Sorry, While I understand that there are degrees of interest misalignment, I'm not sure what Hitler's interests refers to in this context. Hitler is deceased so it's unlikely his interests are relevant in a discussion about TikTok.
Wouldn't banning the collection of this confidential data provide a better solution? Meta could still turnaround and sell this information to Chinese companies.
My preference would be a law that bans some specific activity (i.e. the collection of some set of data that should remain "private"). From there it would be straightforward to establish when an application (like TikTok or Instagram) was collecting this data and they could be prosecuted or their application banned at that point.
This banning of TikTok because of "national security" leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Might the next application banned on these ground be domestic? It's unsettling, in my opinion, to see this precedent set.
Define the US here. Is it the government, the people, the business interests of the private sector?
Each one of those has different interests, often competing ones.
In any functional nation the people's interests should prevail, and it seems to me that any information capable of swaying the public's opinion is informing them that their interests are being harmed in favor of other ones.
Your question is irrelevant because none of the parties you've listed have interests that are aligned with the CCP, assuming you're referring to the people as a whole. Obviously there are specific individuals whose interests are aligned with China's government but laws in a democracy aren't meant to make everyone happy, they're meant to meet the interests of the majority of people
> none of the parties you've listed have interests that are aligned with the CCP
The interest of the people is to have a peaceful coexistence and cooperation with China, while the interest of the military-industrial complex is to keep the tension high at all times so that more and more money is spent on armaments.
Who do you think the US government will favor in the end?
Who has more power to determine the result of the next elections, considering that to run a presidential campaign you need more than a billion dollars?
No citizen gains from war except the few that sell weapons and want to exploit other countries.
Don't you know, China is the new enemy of the US. That's what the elites in the US have decided and that is enough to be considered as the will of the people.
That's not what I said, I said that the interests of the majority do not align with the interests of the Chinese government. That seems self evident to me but YMMV
Then China would just fall back to bombarding them with propaganda on one of the other large social media platforms that are prone to both known and unknown influence.
They would be within their rights to do that. But then they would have to compete with other participants in the discussion. On TikTok they can ensure there is no such competition.
The magnitude of the attack is not comparable. One thing is being a bad actor in a network owned by someone else where you can get monitored, caught and banned. Versus owning the network completely and amplifying messages with ease at scale. The effort needed and effectiveness of the attack is extremely different.
Domestic based social media platforms can be pressured to comply with demands such as the DOJ's investigation into Russia's 2016 disinformation campaign on Facebook. Likewise social media platforms based in a foreign adversary would be pressured to comply with demands of that foreign adversary.
This is a common criticism in these kinds of discussions, but no, protecting oneself from foreign influence and threats does not require a moral high-ground, just as locking your front door doesn't.
For some reason I can't reply to "luddit3" below you. But he should check a list of countries that started the most wars and invasions in the last 150 years and which one tops it easily.
There is no good, just bad and kill-it-with-fire kind of evil. You choose bad you get a bad life. You choose the other you get literally hell. One government harvests and sells the organs of its healthy population[0][1][2] and the other makes some people feel sad.
Ironically, the "good" guys here allow you to talk shit on the internet about them while the "bad" guys would catch and harvest my organs someday for writing this comment.
Indeed - if the US is this afraid of a popular social network under foreign control then every country outside the US should be petrified.
And domestically in the US - citizens should be demanding the dismantling of the big powerful players - which ironically the US government is against because of it's usefulness abroad..... ( let's assume for one moment, despite evidence to the contrary, that the US government doesn't use these tools of persuasion on it's own population ).
I have no horses in the race but if you justify a Tiktok ban in the US because of a foreign influence, you also do justify a Facebook ban in the EU on the same arguments.
Check out the scandal in Romania, some guy that had less than 5% in polls got 30% because of tiktok. Other candidates had tiktok campaigns too but probably didn't use bots.
Social media is a legitimate threat to any countries democracy if used wisely. It is dangerous to have one of the biggest ones in the hands of your enemy when they can influence your own countries narrative to such an extent.
For me the biggest scandal in Romania is that they threw the people's choice to the trash just because he didn't show up in polls... a few months after banning another candidate, Sosoaca, for, and I cite textually, "calling for the removal of fundamental state values and choices, namely EU and NATO membership".
Note that from the little I know about both Sosaca and Georgescu, they both look like dangerous nutjobs that should not rule, but if I were a Romanian I would be more worried about a democracy that removes candidates it doesn't like for purely political reasons (not for having commited a felony or anything like that) than about them.
I'm no lawyer and can't be arsed to do the proper research but for Georgescu to be able to declare he had 0 campaign spending while everyone knows that the tiktok campaign cost 20-50 million euros is insane to me.
If they aren't already prosecuting him on this I guess technically it's legal but such a weird loophole in the law. Any spending towards promoting a candidate should be public knowledge imo. EDIT: he was claiming bullshit like GOD chose him and that's how he got that good of a result. I guess his God is the people in the shadows that made his tiktok campaign lol
> For me the biggest scandal in Romania is that they threw the people's choice to the trash just because he didn't show up in polls
I think they did it for many reasons but not because he didn't show up in polls.
Top ones are:
- PSD didn't advance in the second round and they had the leverage to pull it off
- Georgescu was clearly anti-NATO so maybe the US pulled strings
- Danger of having a president with Russian sympathies
- He was claiming that he didn't spend a single dime on the election while everyone in the know knows that his tiktok campaign cost sever million euros
I mean that the only evidence that his votes came from the TikTok campaign is that he didn't show up in polls and unexpectedly obtained a great result. So they automatically assume the delta between expected and obtained votes are people manipulated by the TikTok campaign (which apparently are assumed to have become some kind of zombies whose opinion doesn't count).
Out of the fourth reasons you list at the end, only the fourth is not pure authoritarianism (why wouldn't people in a democracy be free to elect a president that dislikes NATO or likes Russia if that is their will?). Campaign funding fraud has happened in many Western countries but typically it's handling by imposing fines, maybe some jail time, but definitely not cancelling the result of an entire election.
I'm not naive enough to believe we live in a true democracy. IMO this cancelling was good for 2 reasons : first I believe Georgescu is a nutjob, second.. if there was any doubt that we don't live in a true democracy now it's pretty clear.
And considering the level of education of most of the Romanian population I believe having "true" democracy would destroy the country. I understand this may not be a popular opinion but I'm trying to be realistic here lol
I actually sympathize with all that. Over the past few decades, I have slowly become increasingly skeptical about true, unfettered democracy being the best form of government. In the past, although the level of education probably was worse than now, the fact that people got their news from rather centralized sources controlled by elites acted as a "nutjob filter". With social networks, we are witnessing what should be the true power of democracy (people electing candidates in spite of what the elites think), but it can easily create monsters.
I just wish the Western world would drop the hypocrisy in this respect, and stop claiming to defend more democracy than it actually does. A relevant problem is that democracy is often used as an easy excuse to keep people content. Singapore is a hugely successful country in most respects, with better quality of life than most Western countries, but we shouldn't take example from it because we have democracy! China is constantly growing and improving the quality of life of their citizens, is still behind most of the West in that respect but on the path to overtake us, but it doesn't matter, we have democracy! Maybe if we weren't constantly claiming the moral high ground, when as you mentioned our own democracies are at most relative and the difference with more authoritarian countries is a matter of degree; we could be more self-critical and focus on actually fixing things.
Sounds like a great opportunity for the US government to inform the people on what's the actual truth. You say Americans don't believe their government anymore? I wonder why...
Do you think the truth is, like, inherently more compelling than lies? If Americans don't believe their government anymore, how is their government supposed to use China's lies to highlight the truth?
This is being positioned as a national security issue that a foreign government has so much influence over the US public (and data on people if they want, like geolocation, interests, your contacts, etc).
Note: I'm not saying I either agree or disagree ... just pointing out the dynamics in the case being made.
Legally, the national security component is relatively minor to the case. It's played up to be the justification for the law but SCOTUS doesn't really get to decide whether that is good justification or even correct.
> The nation’s highest court said in the opinion that while “data collection and analysis is a common practice in this digital age,” the sheer size of TikTok and its “susceptibility to foreign adversary control, together with the vast swaths of sensitive data the platform collects” poses a National Security Concern.
SCOTUS doesn't really get to decide whether that is good justification or even correct
They do, and they did. From the ruling:
The Act’s prohibitions and divestiture requirement are
designed to prevent China—a designated foreign adver-
sary—from leveraging its control over ByteDance Ltd. to
capture the personal data of U. S. TikTok users. This ob-
jective qualifies as an important Government interest un-
der intermediate scrutiny.
My point was that SCOTUS didn't review whether there was a compelling national security interest or not – they didn't review any of the classified material, etc. SCOTUS didn't consider whether or not it was good or meaningful policy, they simply accepted the national security argument which more-or-less required them to uphold the DC court's application of intermediate scrutiny.
The concern isn't broadly that "social media companies have data". The concern is the governing environment that those companies operate in, which can be coopted for competing national security purposes.
This isn't a consumer data privacy protection.
The concerns here are obvious: For example, it would be trivial for the Chinese military to use TikTok data to find US service members, and serve them propaganda. Or track their locations, etc.
First, it's a national security issue for a company controlled by the CCP to have intimate data access for hundreds of millions of US citizens. Not only can they glean a great deal of sensitive information, but they have the ability to control the algorithm in ways that benefit the CCP.
Second, China does not reciprocate this level of vulnerability. US companies do not have the same access or control over Chinese users. If you want to allow nation states to diddle around with your citizens, then it ought to be a reciprocal arrangement and then it all averages out.
Back in the early stage of social media, US companies had the choice to operate in China as long as they comply with the censorship and local laws. Had they chosen not to quit China market at the point, they would have been probably huge in China holding major access over Chinese users too. (How would Chinese government react to that is something we never get to see now...)
I keep seeing argument regarding "China bans social medias from other countries". It's not an outright ban saying that "Facebook cannot operate in China", but more like "Comply with the censorship rules or you cannot operate in China". It's not targeting "ownership" or "nation states". e.g. Google chose to leave, while Microsoft continues to operate Bing in China.
Good point, but still that's not reciprocity. Allowing the CCP to fine tune their propaganda at American citizens while US companies have to comply with heavy handed censorship is not a fair trade.
Yeah it could be broader for sure, would prefer it to be an allowlist rather than a blocklist, but the presence of a workaround doesn't make banning something pointless, and as the SC pointed out in their decision, a law does not need to solve all problems in one fell swoop in order for it to be valid.
I just wish we could ban user-tracking (and data brokers) entirely so we wouldn't have this problem to begin with, or at least not to the current extent.
Keeping the data securely inside our country is never going to work if China can simply open their wallet and spend billions of $ to obtain the data.
It is obviously way better on this matter than China, but in principle, liberties are selectively granted in US and in China.
The TikTok ban topic has been stale for long time before it became the main harbor for Pro-Palestine content after it became under censorship by US social media thus depriving anti-Palestine from controling the narrative, effectively becoming a major concern for AIPAC et al.
Data collection is more of a plausible pretext at this point.
Why do we need a good answer? Does US need to be a good guy on some made up rules? Post Soviet collapse, US could have just taken over a bunch of territories. We don’t alway need to be some faithful country when the rest of the world is always messing up asking for millions of Americans to spill blood. I think RoW take US goodwill for granted. We don’t need to play nice. That’s not how competition works.
If US wants to imitate China, they should imitate its industry not its restrictions to freedoms.
The ideal world order isn't the one where Chinese can't find out what happened on Tiananmen square and Americans can't find out what happened in Gaza. That's a very shitty arrangement and I am shocked that the Americans are picking that as their future.
> The ideal world order isn't the one where Chinese can't find out what happened on Tiananmen square and Americans can't find out what happened in Gaza.
I don't see how this law banning a social media site brings us at all closer to a world where Americans cannot get access to accurate information about major global conflicts. This is so far down the imagined "slippery slope" as to be absurd. In fact, I'd strongly argue that this law would achieve the opposite. If you're relying on Tik Tok for accurate information like this, then you are opening yourself to echo chambers, biased takes, and outright propaganda. There are many excellent sources out there in America freely available and easily accessible.
If your concern is editorial preference, then wouldn't a social media application explicitly controlled by a State apparatus be a concern?
I fail to see how anything going on at Twitter is relevant to what I mentioned. Does Twitter shifting its content priorities somehow make the plethora of excellence sources unavailable?
Exactly how I expect things to pan out. Some 10-15 years ago the countries with dictatorships had the idea that they need to control the discussions on internet, now it is the US. I expect it to have cascading effect as Twitter, FB, Instagram etc are all foreign companies with known associations with the US government and intelligence and ban those everywhere fir national security reasons.
Why do you think that Bezos and Zuckerberg have seen the light with the elections if the US government has nothing to do with these private enterprises?
Twitter and Meta are foreign everywhere else, everywhere else except China TikTok is foreign as well and apparently they all lick their respective governments.
And if Twitter and Meta are found to be interfering with national interests in foreign countries and get banned or reeled in due to that, how is that a bad outcome for the world?
it is a bad outcome because it means everyone is locked in their propaganda locality and theres no one to break the narrative. IMHO it’s beneficial to have a global network as we are living on a planet with artificial borders.
very true, everything started on the seventh and ended thanks to the strength of the new American president and now it’s all fine again as it was before the seventh. no need for political movements or anything, lets concentrate on the more positive things as Musk said.
FWIW facebook was blocked in 2009, after ETIM (East Turkistan Islamic Movement) (allegedly) used it to organise the July Urumqi riots, and facebook refused to follow Chinese law and cooperate with the police to identify the perpetrators.
Whatever you think of the law of the PRC, they applied it consistently, Facebook was blocked for doing something that would get any Chinese company shut down.
Tiktok is getting blocked in America for doing what American companies do.
Obviously, China has a constitution, but the freedoms enumerated there are not the same as those in America's. And those that are enumerated are pointless (like North Korea's constitution).
My point is that there's an inherent hypocrisy in saying we're more free than them, but then doing a tit-for-tat retaliatory measure. How can we be more free when we're doing the same things the other side is?
China has a constitution mostly like America’s, freedom of speech, religion, press are enshrined even more strongly than in the American constitution. What China lacks is judicial review and an independent judiciary, so the constitution has no enforcement mechanism, and so is meaningless. The Chinese government as formed has no interest in rule of law.
The Chinese constitution, in addition to endowing rights, also endows obligations.
So while you have things like:
> Article 35 Citizens of the People’s Republic of China shall enjoy freedom of speech, the press, assembly, association, procession and demonstration.
You also have things like:
> Article 54 Citizens of the People’s Republic of China shall have the obligation to safeguard the security, honor and interests of the motherland; they must not behave in any way that endangers the motherland’s security, honor or interests.
It doesn't matter because the law is completely at the mercy of officials to interpret and enforce. A Chinese court was once asked to clarify contradicting interpretation from officials, and they got seriously beat down for it because it isn't the job of the judiciary to tell the officials how to interpret law. The only way an officials ruling is overturned is if their boss (or someone up the hierarchy) disagrees.
Compare this to the Supreme court, which is supposedly in Trump's hands, ruling against Trump twice on this tiktok ban alone (the first to kill his executive order, and the second to not pause the law to wait for him to take office).
> If you believe in liberal values (with a small l), like freedom of speech, you lead by example
America is ridiculously pro free speech. That doesn’t mean we must then tolerate libel, slander, fraud, false advertising, breach of contract, et cetera because someone screams free speech.
The Bill of Rights exists in balances, and the First Amendment is balanced, among other the things, with the nation’s requirement to exist. That doesn’t mean the Congress can ban speech. But it can certainly regulate media properties, including by mandating maximum foreign ownership fractions.
> one group of people which have made any criticism of them carry legal consequences
Jews? You know we have other federally-protected classes, correct?
If you’re referring to Israel, no, there aren’t legal consequences for criticising Israel. Half of the vocal minority of the internet is constantly up in arms about Israel.
The "example" being banning things for nebulous reasons? If anything this is the US following China's lead in restricting what software their citizens can access.
Are you aware of this Wikipedia page? [0]
I think you should motivate why you believe that what is described in that page should not be called "constitution". Or articulate why you believe that thing does not exist. Or at least motivate your statement. Where does it come from?
Say, for example, congress passes and the president signs a law that says that product sponsorships in videos need to be disclosed. If a US company (or a European, Australian, Japanese, etc) country violates that law, we're pretty sure that a judgement against them can change that behavior.
It sounds like you have ignored all the answers and then you're saying there's no good answers?
If you want to convince someone they're not good answers you would have to at least engage with them and show how they fail to be correct/moral/legal or something. Pretending they don't exist does nothing.
Why would you want an outside nation to have an outsized influence America's social fabric? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQXsPU25B60 Chomsky laid out manufacturing consent decades ago and while his thesis revolves around traditional media heavily influencing thought-in-America, the influencing now happens from algorithmic based feeds. Tik Tok controls the feed for many young American minds.
While I agree with you about domestic policy, I'm not sure why it's inconsistent or hypocritical to deal with an external threat posed from those who want to destroy or harm you.
The details specific to China and TikTok are kind of moot when talking about broad principles. And there is a valid discussion to be had regarding whether or not it does pose a legitimate national security threat. You would be absolutely correct in pointing out all of the trade that happens between China and the USA as a rebuttal to what I'm about to offer.
To put where I'm coming from into perspective, I'm one of those whacko Ayn Rand loving objectivists who wants a complete separation between state and economy just like we have been state and church and for the same reasons. This means that I want nothing shy of absolute laissez-faire capitalism.
But that actually doesn't mean that blockades, sanctions and trade prohibitions are necessarily inconsistent with this world view. It depends on the context.
An ideal trade is one in which both parties to that trade benefit. The idea being that both are better off than they were before the trade.
This means that it is a really stupid idea to trade anything at all at any level with those who want to either destroy or harm you.
National security is one of the proper roles of government.
And I don't think you necessarily disagree with me, because you're saying "we should also be protected our citizens from spying and intrusions into our privacy" and yes! Yes we absolutely should be!
But that's a different role than protecting the nation from external threats. You can do your job with respects to one, and fail at your job with respects to the other, and then it is certainly appropriate to call out that one of the important jobs is not being fulfilled. Does that make it hypocritical? Does it suddenly make it acceptable for enemy states to start spying?
By all means criticize your government always. That's healthy. But one wrong does not excuse another. We can, and should, debate whether TikTok really represents a national security threat, or whether we should be trading with China at all (my opinion is we shouldn't be). It's just that the answer to "why its bad when China does it but it's right when it's done domestically" is "it's wrong in both cases and each can be dealt with independently from the other without contradiction"
optimistically, this is the first step towards banning or at least forcing more transparency for all algorithmic feeds. there's absolutely similar concerns about the leadership of American companies being able to sway public opinion in whatever direction they choose via promotion or demotion of viewpoints. but it's only been possible to convince those with the power to stop them of the danger from China, because while probably none of the companies have "America's best interests" at heart when tuning their algorithms, it's much clearer that China has reason to actively work against American national interests (even just demoting honest critique of China is something to be wary of)
It's about psychological manipulation of Americans. TikTok is a completely different experience in China. Social media influences us in negative ways. And the Chinese government can and does take advantage of that.
Judging by your karma and registration date, you spend some time here on HN. There have been lots of good answers why; they are the many prior discussions of this topic.
You are just seeming to ignore them for whatever reason.
Where in that CNBC article does it say that it's fine for US companies to do that? I don't see that anywhere, yet that's the point you're claiming is being made.
It is, and if this a stepping stone to that conversation, that’s a good thing. Great even. If you expect to have everything at once, you’ll make no progress.
The comparison isn't even close. TikTok's relationship with the Chinese government is well-documented, not "supposed". They are legally required to share data under China's National Intelligence Law. The Chinese government has also a track record of pushing disinformation and find any way to destabilize Western democracies.
Douyin (The Chinese Tiktok version) limits users under 14 to 40 minutes per day and primarily serves educational content, while TikTok's algorithm outside China optimizes for maximum engagement regardless of content quality or user wellbeing.
US tech companies pursuing profit at the expense of user wellbeing is concerning and deserves its own topic. However, there is a fundamental difference between a profit driven company operating under US legal constraints and oversight, versus a platform forced to serve the strategic interests of a foreign government that keeps acting in bad faith.
> Douyin (The Chinese Tiktok version) limits users under 14 to 40 minutes per day and primarily serves educational content, while TikTok's algorithm outside China optimizes for maximum engagement regardless of content quality or user wellbeing.
This isn't true, at least not for adults' accounts. I've watched my girlfriend use it and the content was exactly what she watched on TikTok, mostly dumb skits, singing, dancing, just all in Chinese instead of half in Chinese. It also never kicked her off for watching too long.
I was told a similar story about Xiaohongshu, where it was supposedly an app for Chinese citizens to read Mao's quotations (through the lens of Xi Jinping Thought) to prove their loyalty. Then I saw it for real and it's literally Chinese Instagram.
I do, but there is no data or evidence supporting said non-resident corporation is under control of an adversary, so why should I believe anything the government claims? If you're going to talk about security, just stop, nearly every component in your phone is produced in China, and you still use that everyday.
At the very least they have an export ban on the "algorithms" which is why they won't sell, and chinese control, especially under Xi, is well documented, so I don't know what kind of smoking gun you'd expect. It'd be more unusual if there was a laissez faire position by the government.
Regardless, assembly of an iPhone with Taiwanese, Korean, and Japanese components in China is not the same as mass surveillance as a service.
I asked for evidence or even some data, show me something that can verify anything you're saying beyond a reasonable doubt. You can't, you're basically regurgitating talking points on topics neither of us really know anything about. I'm not saying I'm against a ban, but "China evil" shouldn't be good enough for a semi intelligent society.
In terms of algorithms, most US companies refer to that as intellectual property. Google doesn't sell their search algorithm to other search engines so I don't think your point makes any sense. Companies keep their IP secret for a reason, they don't want competition digging into their profits. What US company isn't engaging in the same completely legal behaviors?
My point about the phones is that China like America can target any electronic like the US was doing 20 years via interdiction. If we look at the NSA ANT catalog, specifically DIETYBOUNCE, everything they accuse China of is stuff we practically invented.
edit: Also I just purchased a M4 Mac mini, shipped directly from China.
> Wouldn't the right solution be to protect the citizens from all threats, foreign and domestic?
Maybe. But there is a huge constitutional distinction between foreign and domestic threats. And the supreme court was pretty clear that the decision would be different if it didn't reside with a "foreign adversary".
The rational for why TikTok should be banned in the United States is precisely the same rational why Xitter, Facebook, Instagram, et al, should be banned in other countries.
Meta, Musk, and others have no right or grant to operate in the EU, Canada or elsewhere. They should be banned.
Clearly the US government would like only US companies to collect this kind of data. Eliminating the biggest competitors for companies like Google, X and Meta is likely just the icing on the cake.
Because it's not the TWEAKING of the content tho tis the problem. It's the ability to manipulate individuals using fake or altered content.
Not sure why this is a hard one to understand but with the ability to individualized media, you can easily feed people propaganda and they'd never know. Add in AI and deep fakes, and you have the ability to manipulate the entire discourse in a matter of minutes.
How do you think Trump was elected? Do you really think the average 20 something would vote for a Republican, let alone a 78 year old charlatan? They were manipulated into the vote. And that is the most innocuous possible use of such a tech.
> there's no evidence at all that Tik Tok's been feeding China any data.
Because China's political system applies absolutely no pressure for transparency.
> Whereas we have proof and evidence that US agencies can access data about citizens from anywhere else in the world without even needing a court order.
Something we know about because the US political system has levers that can be pulled to apply pressure for transparency.
You'd have to be very naive not to think that the Chinese government has an interest in controlling what US users of TikTok see. Whether they actually have or not is a somewhat useless question because we'll never know definitively, and even if they haven't today there's nothing saying they won't tomorrow.
We can say that they have both the motive and capability to do so.
> You'd have to be very naive not to think that the Chinese government has an interest in controlling what US users of TikTok see.
Just because something has been repeated in the news 20000 times, it doesn't make it true without evidence. Speculation is just it: speculation.
As far as I've seen, it's not Chinese company spying on me, it's US ones, it's not Chinese companies hacking Wifis in all major airports to track regular citizens, it's US ones, it's not Chinese intelligence spying on European politicians, it's US ones, it's not Chinese diplomacy drawing the line between rebels/protesters, good or bad geopolitically, it's always Washington, it's not Chinese intelligence we know of hacking major European infrastructure and bypassing SCADA, it's US one.
The elephant in the room is US' fixation for exceptionalism and being self authorized to do whatever it pleases while at the same time making up geopolitical enemies and forcing everybody to follow.
I don't buy it, I'm sorry. I don't particularly like the Chinese system, I don't particularly love their censorship, and I don't particularly like their socials on our ground when our ones are unable to operate there (unless they abide to Chinese laws, which are restricting and demand user data non stop, something they are very willing to do in US though).
My beef is with American's exceptionalism and with the average American Joe who cannot see the dangers posed by the foreign policy of its own country. The US should set the example and then pretend the same, instead it does worse than everybody and cries that only it can. It's dangerous.
I'm mainly thinking of Snowden, who wasn't afforded whistleblower protections, and who mainly distributed through foreign media like Der Spiegel and The Guardian.
If we banned all Chinese business with America, America would hurt a lot more than China. Our plutocracy made sure of that fact decades ago.
I care becsuse I hate hypocrisy. Simple as that. They'll sweep Russian activity under the rug as long as it's done in an American website. This mindset clearly isn't results oriented.
Where were you for the last 10+ years when China was blocking all social media from the US but the US wasn’t blocking it? Or does hypocrisy just apply to the USA? It seems like you have some kind of agenda unrelated to the pure concept of hypocrisy.
Unless you work directly for the US government in some way, you are perfectly free to get on a VPN and continue using tiktok. And unlike your chinese friends, you don't even need to break the law to do it.
The People chose to use TikTok as their free press. The US government has banned a tool The People were using for speech. The government utilized a specious argument of "security" in denying The People to their free press comprised of TikTok. The government provided zero evidence of national security being compromised. If anything, the US government has called into question how they are using data from US-based social media companies such that we may now expect reprisals from all around the world - maybe that's what they wanted?
Programs like Prism [0] certainly lend credence to the idea that this ban reflects the US’ own behavior in terms of how it uses data. However Prism was markedly different given it collected data vs being a dial the government can turn to produce a given outcome in the consumers of the content.
All of the congressional hearings over the past ~15 years demonstrates how business in the US is still pretty much governed by the rule of law. I’m of the opinion that there isn’t some shadow cabal working with Musk and Zuckerberg to control our minds. However we know that the CCP absolutely manages what the public can consume, so personally while I’m no fan of heavy handed government intervention in business, this ban seems like “a good thing” to me. We must protect the short, middle and long term prospects of our population — it’s a fundamental duty of the federal government to do so.
I agree that evidence would be nice, but let's not pretend TikTok is simply a 'speech platform' for 'The People'. It is an app on your mobile phone collecting data about you and making it available to a foreign adversary and feeding you content controlled by a foreign adversary.
First Amendment Right is only for American citizens, no? If you're a visitor to the US for example, you don't get the First Amendment protection against anything, you're a guest. Why doesn't the same principle apply to a foreign company? I don't see how banning tik tok affects your first amendment rights or first amendment rights of American companies - maybe you can explain?
The constitution applies to everyone within the borders of the country, not just citizens. Tourists still get due process, can say what they want, cannot be forced to house american soldiers in their hotel, etc.
No idea if this applies to companies, but foreign visitors do get protections.
>The constitution applies to everyone within the borders of the country
Minor clarification that some parts specify "citizen" (e.g. voting). Others specify "person" or "resident" or the like, which would be anyone within the border.
The Constitution binds the activity of the government, individuals are irrelevant. Congress is forbidden from passing a law that violates the inalienable rights of humans, freedom of speech and association being one that is conveniently enumerated in the first amendment.
You will not find anywhere in the text that limits this to citizenship (with the sparse examples of the concept of citizenship coming up being things like eligibility for presidential office). The purpose of the Constitution is to spell out the abilities of the government, and one of the things it is expressly forbidden from doing is passing laws that curtail peoples' ability to communicate or associate.
Ridiculous statement. You must believe they should have political speech then? Maybe they should be able to donate to elections or even vote too? Why stop at corporations?
If they want speech, they should reside in the US, not just own a piece of a company that does.
The rights enforced inside the US are very generous compared to most countries and many apply to both legal and illegal residents, but restricting some rights, especially political ones, is crucial to have a sovereign state
The problem is framing information access as a threat. It is not and that's fundamentally not a First Amendment positive stance. If I want to gorge myself on Chinese propaganda it's my right as an American.
Because the Chinese are openly hostile towards the United States and its interests, whereas American companies have a vested interest in the U.S. and are beholden to its laws.
I don't know why realpolitik is so hard for technologists to understand, perhaps too much utopian fantasy scifi?
What is stupid in these replies to me is that people seemingly think the interests of american companies and the american working class are somehow aligned.
(a) American companies’ business interests don’t fully align with the needs of their users or the general public,
and that
(b) the Chinese Communist Party’s objectives —which include weakening, destabilizing, and impoverishing the United States— are even less aligned with the interests of American citizens.
> Wouldn't the right solution be to protect the citizens from all threats, foreign and domestic?
Indeed, but at the point we are in history the steps to get that done - aka, copy the EU GDPR and roll it out federally - would take far too long, all while China has a direct path to the brains of our children.
Because China is a rival geopolitical power and the US is... us.
It's a national security concern. I get that there's a lot of conversation and debate to be had on the topic but the answer here is very straightforward and I don't understand why people are so obtuse about it.
The thing is, doing it domestically is also a national security concern. We know that data leaks and breaches don't only happen, they are commonplace. Banning TikTok but continuing to allow domestic social media companies to amass hoards of the same kind of data without any real oversight is like saying, "Sorry, you can't have this on a golden platter, the best we can do is silver."
It's not leaks and breaches that are the immanent concern here. The concern is deep, adversarial manipulation of public sentiment -- a psyops asset that gives a competing nation significant leverage as they pursue ends that challenge established US interests in the Pacific.
You don't have to agree that protecting those interests is worth the disruption to the global market, free speech ideology, etc. But to engage in the debate, you need to recognize that this is the core concern.
>The concern is deep, adversarial manipulation of public sentiment -- a psyops asset that gives a competing nation significant leverage as they pursue ends that challenge established US interests in the Pacific.
I share the exact same concern about "deep, adversarial manipulation of public sentiment" from US-based corporations running algorithmically-generated designed to addict consumers, and also believe that everyone needs to recognize that core concern as well.
I can see information on this specific event on Wikipedia, CNN, Youtube, etc right now; all "western-controlled". It's also available through Al-Jazeera, Reuters, and other foreign sources.
You have an interesting and unique definition of "state censorship". Almost like one defined by a bias inherently interested in letting specific foreign interests continue to proliferate under the guise of an emotional appeal.
Raises eyebrow I’m talking about watching the video. And surely you understand the content moderation will be different once the cat is out of the bag.
But it’s cool for Elon Musk to do it to get Trump elected, or zuck to do it for who knows what aims (but certainly expanding his own influence and power)
> "Sorry, you can't have this on a golden platter, the best we can do is silver."
Right, and silver is better than nothing.
I think many of us on HN would agree that US social media companies having the means to manipulate user sentiment via private algorithms is a bad thing. But it's at least marginally better than a foreign adversary doing so because US companies have a base interest in the US continuing to be a functional country. Plus it's considerably more difficult to pass a law covering this domestically, where US tech giants have vested interests, lobbyists and voters they can manipulate.
So yes, a targeted ban against a foreign-owned company isn't the ideal outcome. But it's not difficult to see why it's considered a better outcome than doing nothing at all.
Tiktok was banned primarily for influence, secondarily for data.
The influence is what law makers care far more about. Remember what Russia was doing on facebook in 2016? Now imagine that Russia actually owned facebook at the time.
You're not wrong that domestic threats exist as well. But perhaps the biggest thing to know that may help you understand, is that the national security apparatus operates within the paradigm of what is called 5GW, or Fifth Generation Warfare[1]. 5GW is all about information, and a foreign adversary controlling the algorithmic news feed of 170 million Americans for an average 1 hour a day is important in that context.
I'm still not sure I understand the national security concerns around 17-year old nobodies publishing videos of themselves doing silly dances. Or the "metadata" those 17 year olds produce. Are people sharing nuclear secrets on TikTok or something (and not doing the same on US services)?
I haven't followed this closely, but I assumed it was related to a foreign entity having the ability to hyper-target content towards said 17 year olds (and the entire userbase in general) -- A modern form of psychological warfare.
The concern is they won't be 17 forever. 5/10/20/30 years down the line some small portion of these kids are going to hold important jobs, and some of them will have worthwhile blackmail material in their tiktok history.
OK, wild. It's farfetched, but at least the "blackmail" angle makes a little bit of sense. Still strangely targeted. There are a lot of other apps where people are making "potential blackmail" material.
You can still push a particular group of those 17-year olds pushing specific views to influence elections. As long as some proportion of the electorate watches stuff on TikTok.
> the national security concerns around 17-year old nobodies publishing videos of themselves doing silly dances
C'mon, we can have a more informed conversation than that.
TikTok is an entertainment platform the average young American watches for more than an hour a day. Videos cover just about any topic imaginable. We just had an election. Is it really so impossible to imagine a foreign power adjusting the algorithm to show content favorable to one candidate over another? It's entirely within their power and they have every motive.
So why a single product? Young people watch content from way more than a single app. And reportedly (from my kid) they are all just moving over to a different Chinese content-sharing app. If we're worried about "foreign" influence, shouldn't we be blocking all non-US sources of information that young people might watch and be influenced by? It looks pretty ham-fisted to just target one of those sources.
How did they find TikTok originally? Or Snapchat, or all the other silly apps they use? We're all being bombarded with marketing and advertising every day. Maybe this new app is good at marketing and the product itself is as good as TikTok, who knows, I don't use either of them.
The TikTok ban would have been the perfect opportunity for any number of competing US social media apps to swoop in and offer TT's current users a replacement, but they seem to have all failed to address that market.
The trouble I have is that Facebook & X do this, too, and their owners are similarly unaccountable to US law, but we aren't we banning them. If this law were applied equally, I'd be all in favor. Instead it is transparently just a handout to Facebook to remove a business competitor. That sucks, big time.
I share that concern. But I also recognize that passing an equivalent law for domestic social media networks would be considerably less likely to pass. Perfect as the enemy of good and all that.
I work from the basic principle that a foreign, government-controlled adversary having control over discourse is worse than a domestic company having the same, despite strongly disliking both.
Just at a base level, Facebook, X, etc are staffed by Americans who have a vested interest in the country remaining functional. The CEOs of those companies are, though it's very unlikely, arrestable. Can't say the same for TikTok.
> Facebook, X, etc are staffed by Americans who have a vested interest in the country remaining functional. The CEOs of those companies are arrestable.
I suspect this is our fundamental disagreement. I disagree with both of these statements. Facebook's & X's executives have a vested interested in power and money for themselves and their peers. These oligarchs are in practice above the law, just like China's and Russia's oligarchs are. This decision only gives them even more control. It's bad for those US citizens who are not in the oligarch class.
I don't think Tiktok will bring about the end of America as a functioning country. I do think Facebook's executives have an interest in gaining control for themselves at any cost, up to & including the end of America as a country if that is the most profitable route for themselves.
Put another way, I think China & Facebook's execs are about equal in terms of danger to US citizens (I'd probably give the edge to Facebook's execs, since they have direct control over US policy, but we're splitting hairs here). So banning one but not the other is a crappy situation, because it concentrates that power even further.
Because it’s used to influence elections worldwide. Most recently the first round of the Romanian elections were won by an unheard of pro-Russian candidate who ran a disinformation campaign on TikTok, allegedly organised by the Kreml.
Do you have any proof that the Chinese government played a role in his campaign? Because the 2016 United States election was possibly influenced by disinformation campaigns on Facebook, yet there is no ban and Zuck is taking an even more lax approach to moderation than Tiktok.
I don’t understand why people are so obtuse about national security being an excuse. Do we really believe the Chinese are going to infiltrate by way of tiktok when they can hack into our telecom networks or any significant figures individual machines? This is about neutering our biggest global economic threat.
Economics, prestige, etc. It’s worth a lot to China to be competing with the US in social media / Internet stuff. China (and Russia) have been pushing a narrative that the US operates on two sets of rules for them vs everyone else.
The US is happy to invade countries and turns a blind eye to Israeli aggression but Russia or China want to do it and they are met with sanctions etc. The last bastion of American exceptionalism was how it’s a free market and values free speech and free competition.
There was a national security threat but the US walked right into it: China is making a move for the top spot as global hegemon. It’s recruiting other countries to say don’t work with the US, work with us instead. The US flinched. Ralph blew the conch and all the kids just installed RedNote .
Except that's not the point at all. The US just proved to the world that it doesn't care about competition and it's citizens (in some number) have rejected the concept of "National Security" by switching to a more explicitly Chinese company.
That's a blow to hegemony that will have lasting consequences.
I’d assume the concern is more swaying public opinion, sowing division to make us incapable of unified political effort, or even to destabilize us, things like that, not so much infiltrating networks - they already manufacture much of that equipment.
If I understand correctly how it works, it’s a propagandist’s dream, building personalized psych profiles on each person. You could imagine that it’d be the perfect place to try generating novel videos to fit specific purposes, as well - the signals from this could feed back directly into the loss functions for the generative models.
I think politicians’ efforts to regulate tech are generally not great, but I think this one is pretty spot-on.
National security doesn't have to mean they use the app to take over the devices it is installed on. It can also be used to spread misinformation or blackmail people.
This is the argument that a group of toddlers make when one of them gets caught with their hand in the cookie jar. "Yeah...yah....but Mrs. Spangler, I saw Sally steal a cookie last week". OK, cool....your friend is stealing one now and currently has their hand in the cookie jar.
Terrible comparison. China hasn’t been caught doing anything nefarious with Tiktok whereas Facebook was caught red handed. The problem is a tiktok ban is based on speculation and playing on the fears of the american people. The irony is the story is pitched as China using tiktok to program a bunch of american monkeys, meanwhile our own government is programming us with “china is the adversary”
Sally stole a cookie from the cookie jar and now the teacher is pointing at the fat kid and not letting him be in the classroom alone with the cookie jar. Just bc he is fat.
> Do we really believe the Chinese are going to infiltrate by way of tiktok when they can hack into our telecom networks or any significant figures individual machines?
The allegation is that it's used to spread misinformation and affect public sentiment, not for infiltration.
This law is dumb, because in no way does it prevent the exact same data to be collected, processed by a US entity and then transferred to China.
I suspect that it's not about data being transferred, but the fact that TikTok can shape opinions of Americans... which US companies do a lot, without any oversight.
Because they're trying to ignore the national security aspect to talk about tracking generically. Which is a valid argument and a good discussion to be had, but it's irrelevant in this context.
If the US was going to get into a legitimate hot "soldiers shooting at soldiers" type of war with any country, China is extremely high on that list. Maybe even #1. Pumping data on tens of millions of Americans directly into the CCP is bad. Putting a CCP-controlled algorithm in front of those tens of millions of Americans is so pants-on-head-retarded in that context it seems crazy to even try to talk about anything more general than that.
Foreign propaganda bots are just as present on US social media, and US social media amplify them just as much.
So where exactly is the meaningful difference here? I don't see it.
The actual difference is that US does not see the money from Tiktok, and blocking tiktok is a convenient excuse to give their propaganda platforms a competetive edge.
Actually doing something about the fundamental problem of foreign influence through the internet would basically destroy sillicon valley, and no politician wants to be responsible for that.
Because it's not clear what the national security concern is. With weapons or infrastructure, it's easy to understand how they can be used against the U.S., but with a social media platform, it's harder to see the threat. The concern really seems to lie with the users of TikTok.
So what's the issue? That people living in the U.S. and using TikTok might be influenced to act differently than how the powers that be want us to act?
I think one of the issues is the details of the national security risk hasn't been articulated well. I haven't followed this in detail, but from what I've seen in summaries, news articles etc is just a vague notion of a theoretical risk from an adversary, with no details on exactly what the risk is, or if there is an actual issue here (vs just a theoretical issue that can happen at some point).
Because personal data about US citizens is up for sale to more or less whoever wants it, and the US government doesn’t seem to have a problem with this otherwise.
Which makes it seem far more plausible that the real national security capability that is being defended is that of the US gov to influence narratives on social media. And while even that might be constitutional, it’s a lot less compelling.
Laws don't have to solve all of the potential problems that may exist in order to be valid (this is one of the things they talk about in the decision).
But US companys sale all info about users anyway to anyone (just see today GM) and you accept in between often to over 800 cookies on websites. If thats ok, whats the difference. Why is it ok a website does include over 800 cokies?
X or Facebook isn’t “us”. If we had any reason to believe there were or were even likely to be strong effective democratic controls over their ability to manipulate public sentiment it might be different. But as it stands, it feels more like local oligarchs kicking out competitors in their market: “the US population is our population to manipulate, go back to your own”.
Yeah it's not even a point of view that requires nuance; it's pretty clearly a matter of US interests v. adversarial interests. Anecdotally, a lot of people that struggle to understand this are also squarely in the camp of assuming that the US is doing data collection solely for nefarious purposes.
Except:
• the US performs these activities (data collection, algorithm manipulation allegedly, etc) for US interests, which may not always align with the interests of individuals in the US, whereas
• adversarial foreign governments perform these activities for their own interests, which a US person would be wise to assume does not align with US interests and thus very likely doesn't align with the interests of US persons.
If a person's main concern is living in a better United States, start with ensuring that the United States is sticking around for the long run first. Then we can work on improving it.
It seems like two different arguments if you s/US/multi-national-corporations/g in that sentence. I don't have that much faith that multi-national-corporations interests align with US (or China for that matter).
They're headquartered in the US with substantial US ownership, which is the same logic applied to Tiktok. Zuckerberg's pretty heavily rooted in the US with no obvious inclination to leave, and you can see the effect that the change in administrations is having on his steering of Meta as a whole.
HN is literally banned in China [1][2]. And since VPNs are also illegal in China, they're breaking the law if they are here. I doubt they'd break the law if they had such a strong allegiance to China.
> no good answer on why its bad for a company that is supposedly under Chineese influence to collect this kind of information on us,
In the context of a discussion on a US-specific ban on TikTok I'm taking the "us" in OP's post to mean people in the US. If you aren't in the US the ban doesn't apply to you so the discussion is irrelevant.
No. The U.S. court should make decisions in the U.S. interest. But this HN thread represents people from around the world who may not share the U.S. interest at a personal level. Leading to remarks which are trying to sway US opinion.
In a way, this thread could very well be monitored and commented on by a non US nation state
Right, its because a law should be passed regulating this sort of data for the good of all citizens, but our congress can't / won't pass that, so they only stepped in when it became an obvious national security concern.
It'll come back as an issue in a less obvious manner next time, and every time until they pass such a law.
Which, imho, won't happen while our overall political environment remains conservatively dominant.
Domestic governments shouldn't let hostile foreign governments the ability to exert soft power over 1/2 of their population. Hence why China banned all USA based tech companies from operating there.
As a Chinese grown up within the Great Firewall, now I began to really feel all the hypocrisy around the matter of "freedom of Internet". It seems the block of Facebook and Twitter in China is surely justified at the very begining, for the same "national security" grounds. China have exactly the same amount of reason to believe the US is stealing data or propelling propaganda by social network.
It seems there are indeed things that can override citizen's free choice even in the "lighthouse of democracy and freedom", and CCP didn't make a mistake for building the firewall. My need to use Shadowsocks to use Google instead of Baidu or some other crap was simply a collateral damage.
Of course, the Chinese censorship is way more intensive, but this act makes a dangerous precedent.
TikTok is also blocked by the GFW in China, so this puts the USA on par with blocking it also. Weirdly enough, Douyin isn’t banned, specifically, so you should still be able to use it in the states.
So if you use the American app store to install TikTok, it works just fine, even for the falun dafa content? Interesting. I've heard that tiktok.com is actually blocked by the GFW, so even if you have the app, you still can't view content without a VPN, but I guess I can check for sure in a few months.
Obviously the USA doesn't have a GFW, so they can't actually block tiktok, just ban it from the app store and prevent business from resolving in the US around it (e.g. paying content creators).
The funny thing is that when China did that, it was unanimously condemned in the Western world as an authoritarian move, and often use as an example of why China was a dictatorship with no freedom of speech, etc. But now it's actually the normal thing to do?
The opinion is mostly not about control over recommendation algorithms; it goes out of its way to say that the data collection is dispositive. Check out Gorsuch's concurrence for some flavor of how much more complicated this would be with respect to the recommender.
The US occupies a new office downtown. China wants eyes on a specific room, and the choice spot for monitoring it is someone else's apartment. This person happens to own a bakery also in town, and it sort of seems like the apartment is a reach for them as it is.
Now in your feed you get a short showing some egregious findings in the food from this bakery. More like this crop up from the mystical algorithmic abyss. You won't go there anymore. Their reviews tank and business falls. Mind you those posts were organic, tiktok just stifled good reviews and put the bad ones on blast.
6 months later the apartment is on the market, and not a single person in town "has ever seen CCP propaganda on tiktok".
This is the overwhelmingly main reason why Tiktok is getting banned.
For the same reason Grindr was forced to sell to a non-Chinese parent, the risks of putting some apps / information in the hands of strategic competitors is too high. If a domestic company tried to blackmail people with their sexual history, they face domestic legal accountability. China does not.
That's an interesting hypothetical, I have another one.
Imagine you're a country with natural resources. Private industries want those resources. Suddenly the US media is flooded with fabricated or exaggerated stories about the country written by NGOs and Think Tanks. Suddenly, out of nowhere a coup happens in the country with the stated intention of "liberalization" and "democratic reforms". The country goes through shock therapy and structural adjustments as it takes on mountains of IMF loans to enter the world markets-- it has to sell off control of all its national resources and industries to American companies. The life expectancy plummets.
Oh wait this isn't a hypothetical this is just actual US foreign policy.
Ah the land of free speech and freedom of the press.
Not even in Europe we have such crackdown on freedom while Americans scream censorship because nazi symbols and certain phrases are illegal in Germany.
It sounds like they are just banning it from new installs on app stores, won't people just browse to the URL to use it?
The distinction between apps and websites seems arbitrary to me... especially since a huge fraction of apps seem to be effectively just a browser window with a single website locked in full screen.
I have never before used tiktok, but just now as an experiment I opened it in a browser and scrolled for a minute- I had no problem accessing an apparently endless stream of mostly young women jumping up and down without bras, and young men vandalizing automobiles.
It makes sense to shut down the app in the US immediately rather than be unable to update it- but does that necessarily mean they would also shut it down outside the US, or access directly via the website?
There's a difference in degree, it's less addictive. HN works a little differently, in that its goal is not primarily to convert attention directly into revenue.
Personally, I still need to be deliberate in limiting my use, so I wouldn't be sad to see it disappear, even though I do find some value in it.
None of us have more than 24 hours in our days. That time is precious. Products that are specifically designed to suck up as much of it as possible must be avoided.
I'm really bored at this point by the political discussions around this. We've heard it all a million times. As far as I'm concerned, that's missing the point.
Because, at the end of the day, and ignoring for a moment the practicality of the notion, the world would just be a better place without them.
Seriously, go read a book. We'd be living in a different world if that scaled.
The whole thing with social media is network effects though. The added friction of a VPN, though small, is just so much larger than "click download, open app"
What does this shutdown mean for US employees of Bytedance? Will they shut down their US offices or continue business as usual working from the US but only serving users outside?
From the oral arguments it was immediately obvious that Alito and Thomas had already decided their opinion --- as had the other judges, frankly. They were very skeptical of the ByteDance/petitioner's argument. The Act at issue was written in a very specific way to neuter a lot of their points. Elizabeth Prelogar, representing the US Government, is also an extremely good SC lawyer in oral arguments. A Per Curiam decision is not surprising at all, most people who follow the court were expecting it.
China's vision of the Internet turned out to be more prescient than we realised at the time. Everyone is going to their own Great Firewall. In hindsight, it will seem crazy that we ever allowed media platforms to be controlled by foreign governments - especially ones which like to seed revolution, social unrest and regime change
>In a unanimous decision, the Supreme Court sided with the Biden administration, upholding the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act which President Joe Biden signed in April.
Glad to see when it comes to protecting tech monopolies the wisest among us are in full agreement.
Silly things like a right to a speedy trial are up for debate though.
I think this is a massive over reach. You can argue to restrict social media to those over 18, but Americans should have a right to consume content they choose.
What's next, banning books by Chinese authors? Banning Chinese Americans from holding key positions in social media companies, after all they might have uncles in the CCP!
Follow the money. TikTok is an issue for Facebook, BYD cars are an issue for Tesla.
Can someone explain in unambiguous terms why people are so drawn specifically to TikTok? I have tried TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts, and they are all basically the same--algorithmically-driven feeds of short videos. I don't see how banning TikTok is such a big problem, just use one of the other apps.
Great twitter thread analyzing the Supreme Court decision from a former Congressional Staffer who now leads a think tank doing tech-focused policy work: https://x.com/marcidale/status/1880274466619691247
Yes, that's precisely the argument of the pro-ban faction. China doesn't allow TikTok in China. It's not about the money, it's about control over a medium that can be exploited for influence, or at the very least the effects of that platform on its audience.
It's silly to pretend like ByteDance are acting on principle. Go post an LGBT meme or refer to Lai Ching-te as the "President of Taiwan" on Red Note and see how long that lasts.
Sure, but parent's argument was focused on ad revenue and wondering why TikTok chose to forego that revenue ( which presumed that most US entities would bend to such demand, but failed to consider non financial considerations ).
edit:
<< Go post an LGBT meme or refer to Lai Ching-te as the "President of Taiwan" on Red Note and see how long that lasts.
China does not pretend to give lipservice to freedom of speech. US does. That is why its population needs to hold its government accountable.
US used to be much smarter in general. Now that Trump is starting a 2nd term on Monday, the world over now realizes the US is comprised of a bunch of imbeciles. We've lost our prestige, and we'd been trading on it for a long, long time.
The world realizes the USA is no longer messing around, that's all. If anything, we've only gained prestige in the last couple months, we're finally getting stuff done...
Hmm? That is a rather bold statement bordering on bluster. Could you elaborate? The move shows something, but I am not certain it can be interpreted this way.
The Democrats loss fair and square. They should have spoken up a lot sooner. Everyone on the inside knew that Biden was incompetent. If they had a real primary would Kamala ever have been the nominee?
The Democrats lost strongholds like Miami of all places. The dumbest thing they did was go against the tech industry who have always been their biggest supporters. Would Republicans go after Evangelical Christians or the NRA?
To say that Miami was a democratic stronghold is not really accurate. They've leaned Democrat recently, but the margins haven't been that high, and they've been decreasing for a number of elections now.
So that was there whole platform - “we aren’t Trump”?
Do you think the population got more ignorant in 4 years? This is all on the DNC and Biden. Biden should have either voluntarily not run or stronger Democrats should have had a primary and crucified him.
The DNC lied to the American public for years. They knew that Biden wasn’t all there. They basically tried to do a “Weekend with Bernie” on them.
Not to mention that strategically for the first time in modern history they had the new industry titans in their back pocket - BigTech - and threw them under the bus.
The American population doesn’t care about going after BigTech like HN does.
I long maintained that there should be a minimum level of 'something' required to vote. It used to be land, but anything that effectively makes one have a stake in the country would do. If possible, would you accept a restriction on the right to vote based on such a criterion?
Democrats lose due to significant ignorance in the population and successful propaganda by hostile entities. It's not an accident that the reddest states at the least educated and least literate. If you doubt that I'm happy to support the claim, but I think we both know it's true.
> They are completely out of touch with what the mainstream wants.
Democrats are the only party actually offering to give the majority what they want, but due to ignorance and propaganda the majority have become emotionally hostile to the means necessary to accomplish implementing what they want.
Despite Trump's promises that gullible desperate people fell for, his policies are likely to make things much harder for hid voters and not only not give them what they want, but give them what they explicitly don't want. Well, they'll still get bigoted policies, at least.
> Any other Democrat could have distanced themselves from Biden. But his own VP couldn’t.
There should have been no reason to. Trump is a rapist felon who literally advocated for injecting leach as a cure to a pandemic. That people voted for him at all shows just how bad things are.
Democracy can't function with such a gullible population. At the least I have a front row ticket to the fall of a modern empire though. That's something.
<< Democrats are the only party actually offering to give the majority what they want
<< Democracy can't function with such a gullible population.
I am trying to be charitable in my interpretation, but you are not making it easy. One could easily argue that given that Trump won, majority got what they want already. Please tell me that you understand what I am telling you now. I did manage to hear some people drawing appropriate conclusions from this cycle, but I am not certain you did.
<< Trump is a rapist felon who literally advocated for injecting leach as a cure to a pandemic.
Yeah.. a felony in this case being the equivalent of a parking ticket in business; not to mention national level politics. It is hard for me understand why people have a hard time grasping that and/or why this was not a useful label for this election cycle. Hell, the moves taken ( including mug shot ) did the exact opposite of the desired effect.
<< At the least I have a front row ticket to the fall of a modern empire though. That's something.
Not sure why this is so complicated --- blame the DNC and party elites, not the population that voted for Trump.
If the DNC was trying to win, they would have never let Biden run for re-election, and then they would have never let Harris become the candidate without a primary.
The Democrats literally told the US population Trump was going to destroy democracy in America, and then created a situation that enabled him to win in a landslide.
The Democrats didn't lose because Harris didn't get a primary. Literally no one but Republicans who would never have voted for her to begin with cared about that.
Democrats lost because they keep triangulating and trying to appeal to centrist Republicans who either don't exist, or would never vote for them regardless. If Harris had distinguished herself from Biden by taking a firm stance against the Palestinian genocide - which was the single issue much of her base cared about - she would have won.
Also, Trump didn't win in a landslide. It was a close election, and Trump definitely won the popular vote, but the margins were still about 51% to 49%.
> Democrats didn't lose because Harris didn't get a primary
The point is Harris would have been replaced in a primary. Democrats needed a candidate who could call Biden out on his failures, namely, not taking inflation seriously (Manchin said so!) and completely flubbing it on the border.
> If Harris had distinguished herself from Biden by taking a firm stance against the Palestinian genocide
She would have lost worse in Pennsylvania and maybe picked up Michigan and had absolutely zero effect anywhere else because foreign policy wasn’t a material factor in this election. (It was a loud factor. But not in an electorally relevant way.)
I get the impulse to do this. My pet war was Ukraine. But neither was actually voted on because Americans don’t tend to think about foreign policy unless we’re actually at (or about to go to) war ourselves.
>Democrats lost because they keep triangulating and trying to appeal to centrist Republicans who either don't exist, or would never vote for them regardless. If Harris had distinguished herself from Biden by taking a firm stance against the Palestinian genocide - which was the single issue much of her base cared about - she would have won.
Everyone thinks that their one particular issue was the crucial one, but all the data shows that the issues that actually mattered were A) inflation and B) the border / immigration / crime / perception of disorder.
The only two Dem Senators that underperformed Harris were Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. The rest of the downballot had been running hard centrist on the border for much longer and with less baggage, and guess what, they did better.
Your concern about losing the dominant culture status is useless. Recent geopolitical situation clearly shows soft power is useless. Hardpower is where everything is at.
I'd love to see what a global ban for TikTok, WhatsApp, Instagram, YouTube, and X would look like. Even better: massive breakdown of iOS and Android installations. Just for a couple of weeks, then revert to the nightmarish status quo we live in. Now that would be an interesting experiment. The change in people's behavior would be palpable for those fourteen days, I bet. It'd be so much fun.
Daniel Dennett was strong proponent of alternative information distribution mechanisms in case of internet goes down for everyone. We haven't even studied such scenarios.
I'm a strong proponent of alternative information distribution mechanisms within the Internet. An "anti-normie" kind of channel of information. Hell, up until the web 2.0 came along, the Internet was exactly that for the most part.
We got something similar with social interactions during covid lockdowns (if your country had those). Btw i feel like people would go literally MAD, I can see it when just WhatsApp crashses for just a couple hours (doesn't happen often but I remember people's reactions when it happened).
You can get a feel of what it would do for yourself by getting a dumbphone and limiting yourself from accessing social media.
>You can get a feel of what it would do for yourself by getting a dumbphone and limiting yourself from accessing social media.
I already do that. It's the most alienating and pessimism-inducing thing. I'd just love to see a world where people aren't hunched over, staring at a screen for 90% of their waking life.
Have you tried going to a classroom full of young adults like yourself in the last eight to ten years, without using one? I did, for years. You'll feel like there's no point in trying to socialize with anyone most of the time, as there's a huge barrier between them and yourself. Even when the phones aren't physically involved, people are way, way less social now than back then. Engaging in spontaneous conversations or interactions with people you aren't really familiar with is something that isn't seen in a positive light as much anymore. It's even panic-inducing or seen as ill-advised for many people, in environments that should be very conducive to such things, and safe for them to take place (college, for instance).
I'm haven't been in the young adult category for a few years now :)
What you describe fills me with really bad feelings. I truly feel bad for all that the younger generations are missing, and what we're losing as a species.
I'm still holding out hope that we'll see a bit of a social antibody reaction to the corporate takeover of the social sphere. I see some hope amongst younger folks, but it's pretty dire, and your descriptions make me less hopeful.
Tech is fun to play with, sure, but if the cost is that we lose our humanity when in each others presence - well I'd rather throw most of it in the trash. We're unconsciously throwing away much of what it means to be human - and all for the sake of some corporate profit. It's like a social suicide.
I have trouble lumping those 5 services together. Maybe its something to do with me being a middle-age American male?
Instagram/X/TikTok: Hot garbage. Good riddance. Ban them and this country is a better place.
Whatsapp/YouTube: Actually quite useful. The former for real-time global communications. The latter for visual how-to's of all kinds (bicycles, home maintenance).
> Overall, I view this is as an admission to US populace and the world that the US is a weak-minded country that can easily be influenced by propaganda.
I’d be fine with a general rule that if China (or anyone) places limits on US social media that effectively limits / bans them… same goes for Chinese social media platforms. Done.
Here's what recently happened in Romania, all through TikTok.
Turns out China (or here, Russia) infiltrated the country, waged an enormous disinformation campaign and succeeded by getting their chosen candidate elected. Without TikTok, this would not have happened. I have talked about this with Romanians who concur.
In the real world, there are two responses to this.
1. "Tough luck, it's too late now, should just stand by and watch the country get taken over".
2. "Ban it and future popular big platforms controlled by a foreign adversary".
That's it. We'd all love for something inbetween. It's not happening, all such options would end up becoming 1). That's the state of the modern day world.
The facts that
A. They seem to rather abandon the app rather than receive tens of billions by selling it
B. "The Chinese government also weighed a contingency plan that would have X owner Elon Musk acquire TikTok’s U.S. operations"
C. The remaining mountains of evidence that it is a CCP tool
Mean that the arguments of Congress here are valid and this is the right decision. It is a tool directly controlled by a foreign adversary, for geopolitical, not profit-oriented, purposes. This is nothing like the PATRIOT act or other moves by governments that claim "protect the children" or "protect against terrorism" for some ulterior motive of surveillance or worse. It might be a rarity, but in this case the claims by Congress are factual and a sufficiently good reason.
> Turns out China (or here, Russia) infiltrated the country, waged an enormous disinformation campaign and succeeded by getting their chosen candidate elected.
But in the US, Russia also has waged enormous disinformation campaigns on US-based social media networks. Taking the problem of foreign (dis|mis)information, election interference, etc seriously requires that we do more than ban one network based on the ownership of that company. After TikTok gets shut down, Chinese influence operations can still use Twitter/X, Meta, Reddit etc. We need better tools and regulations to make these campaigns visible stoppable in real-time, rather than just banning one network while leaving up multiple other vulnerable networks. This ban is political theater, where the US can act like it's doing something while not having to address the harder parts of the problem.
> A. They seem to rather abandon the app rather than receive tens of billions by selling it
I think this is weak evidence of them being a mostly political tool. Valuations based on their actual use are well above what anyone has actually offered to pay. And disentangling US operations from the rest of TikTok would not be straight-forward; do you merely cleave it in two? Given network effects, would cutting off the US component to sell it make both the US and non-US portions less valuable?
one would think the ranking member on the House Intel Cmte - my very own Rep - would agree with you, given how he'd be way more privy to such things than you, me, talking heads on TV, etc. yet he disagrees and cites free speech concerns [0][1].
in my mind none of these reasons add up. if this were truly about influence ops on social media we would not have blinders on for our own platforms' role in them. remember Cambridge Analytica and the 2016 campaign, or Facebook's role in the Myanmar genocide? or more-recently the ops Israel ran? furthermore if this were really about our data, we would again not have blinders on. the CCP can still purchase our data as we're all up for sale given our lack of data privacy/protection laws.
as such i tend to side with my Rep: this is bunk, and the pretexts flimsy. i believe the answer is to focus on education - critical thought particularly - and enacting data privacy/protection laws. i do not believe that would lead to 1).
now will that happen? i'm doubtful tbh. our own govt loves the fact that we're up for sale, for it allows them to side-step the need for a warrant. have a great weekend.
What you're really complaining about is that too many people agree with Georgescu. The way mainstream media works, only a few candidates get air time so there's little competition. Georgescu was able to build a following on the alternatives so the election was suspended (without motivation) and new regulations put in place to make sure no un-approved candidate stands a change.
They were so busy banning Șoșoacă and demonizing the best candidate (Simion) that they forgot about Georgescu.
We were already a laughing stock for banning a candidate (Șoșoacă). Now we've suspended democracy and postponed the election 'til kingdom come.
This is laughable, even with your depiction of the events. The candidate in question (Georgescu) had a very popular platform, and was supported by a large bases or Romanians on the left and right.
He was, however, opposed to further expansion of NATO.
If these ideas are too scary to let general public even consider, then democracies have to step in and censor the media. And that begins by banning TikTok, the largest platform where a narrative like this can bypass the existing power structures.
Exactly. Why not make it official? I feel like split up movies peaked awhile ago ("chop chop movie boy"), but is now limited to live video with a person in the foreground.
I’ve seen these too on Instagram and TikTok, but usually it’s some tense part of a movie and the scene encourages me to basically go watch the whole movie, which then turns out to not be as great as that one curated clip.
I don't really agree with this line of thinking if you consider the addictive part of TikTok.
Imagine the US legalized and exported meth. All of a sudden, the US is "competing" because everyone is hooked on drugs. We had Opium wars in a somewhat similar vein as the social media wars.
Isn't that the same argument used by China for why the GFW is needed? The US allows all sorts of things that can be argued as net negative (e.g. smoking).
Attempts at intervention by legacy states over the evolution of the internet (which will obviously fail on sufficiently long time-scales) are also a net negative.
Not sure if sarcastic or not, I'll bite. If tiktok infringes some kind of data privacy laws, punish them. If the data privacy laws of the US are bad, improve them.
But this? Just because some... not so bright soldiers use tiktok to upload videos of their base? What else is there so bad it requires a total ban? It seems like hypocrisy to me, when Meta, Google, X also have similar data available and also don't want to adhere to for example EU laws.
If what TikTok is doing is dangerous when TikTok does it why is it safe when everyone else does it?
This is theft, pure and simple. The government-industrial complex is trying to steal this app. The private side wants to make money and the public side wants yet another way to control narratives on social media much the way President Musk does on twitter.
TikTok is fun but it has degraded into a commercialized mess of copycats, IP theft and scams.
Like everything else that is commercialized on the internet. It has a lifespan of a few years before it becomes unusable to all but the meek and the ignorant.
A new service will emerge and replace it within months. The truth is their algorithm is about as complicated as a HS algebra test.
As a free speech absolutist, I hope that what comes out of this is a completely anonymized, uncensorable alternative. We've gotten the arbitrary censorship walled garden social media sites mostly because until now there hasn't been any particular reason for most users to step outside of them.
I think many have tried but face an uphill battle of unless a significant majority is willing to relocate, the prevailing content will be things that are deemed undesirable/bannable on other platforms, which distracts potential users.
Having a completely decentralized solution also comes with the issue of future governance. If a single entity controls the direction (even if the spec is open and you can host it yourself), then it's not decentralized. If you end up with a consortium then you'll face the same issue of email, innovation is hard to spread as you need multiple actors with competing interests to agree.
If your vision is having multiple entities providing different experiences tailored to individual taste, they might start consolidating and effectively forming several disjoint platforms.
p.s.
The web can be said to be decentralized but it's dominated by large players all the way from hosting to browsers. If all three major browsers don't agree on your proposal, it's effectively dead. Who's to say entrenched players won't arise in your vision of a decentralized social media?
I don't think that's at odds with what I said. If there's a good decentralized protocol that gets momentum, good for it. But, the interests that build social media apps well in terms of what is successful in the marketplace, usually chose not to do that because it isn't in their interest to do so. They spend a lot of money on marketing, driving engagement, etc, and most don't want to share it.
Email is a bit of an outlier because it gained critical mass before the web was predominantly commercialized.
Since the ban is about not allowing app stores to host TT, can TT build its own App Store to offer the download of its app, given that Apple has to allow other app stores?
What I love is that apparently tons of Americans are signing up for a different Chinese social video app whose name is being translated as “Red Note”. I would love if the end result of this was another several years of congressional drama about a different Chinese app.
What's interesting is that RedNote doesn't have the same level of segregation as TikTok, so the US and China users are having a lot of interesting interactions. Assum the app doesn't get banned, it'll be interesting to see if the experiences get more silo'd
> if the end result of this was another several years of congressional drama about a different Chinese app
No need. If it’s Chinese and has more than 100mm (EDIT: 1mm) users, Commerce can designate it a foreign-adversary controlled application and designate it for app-store delisting.
I think the threshold is way lower than that?
The "Covered Company" definition mentions 1 million monthly active users for at least 2 of the 3 months preceding some determination.
Also, I wonder who is the foreign-based "reviews" site that lobbied for the exclusion clause immediately following that?
Can't confirm as I don't speak Chinese but Sharp China podcast says this is a mistranslation, and that the word for Mao's little red book is not the same as the Chinese name for Rednote
If Wikipedia is to be believed, the Chinese nickname is “Treasured Red Book.” It’s just a coincidence that the English nickname happens to match the literal translation of this app’s name. Still hilarious.
Isn't Red Note planning to segregate based on IP to prevent US Influence from those TikTok refugees? The original CN users aren't exactly happy with the newcomers either, and the TikTok refugees themselves are getting quite a culture shock with regards to cultural attitudes to LGBQT or even basic "leftist" activism like strikes and collective bargaining
Anyways, those alternatives are not so algorithmically driven, and especially if it's forcing actual user interaction and discussion that certainly would be good for Americans to understand what the mainland Chinese are really thinking and saying domestically. Because if you go to the actual main discussion forums like Weibo, oh boy it's not going to be pretty.
To be punk rock. The main reason I see thrown around is most younger users don't care if China has their user data and understand that the government is banning it for their own selfish reasons (money).
As per Mitt Romney, it was banned because TikTok contained too much anti-Israel content (remember, the push for the ban became really strong very soon after Oct 7 when the genocide began)
Chinese social media has pretty transparent upfront censorship regime: dont criticize CCP, adhere to One China Policy, dont push LGBTQP+ propaganda, everything else is allowed.
Americans on red book are surprised to see the actual life in China and are shocked how different it is from american MSM propaganda about China, you can find plenty of these threads on Twitter how tiktok refugees are amazed by how brainwashed they were by US mass media
Ok, so besides not being able to talk about these immediate 3 third rails, we're completely free to talk about anything. What a perfect platform for free speech idealists to flock to.
What in the actual hell, why wouldn't they go to one of the various other free sites that isn't controlled by such an obvious bad actor? Unless of course they don't care at all about that and they're really being quite dumb.
And yes, of course real life in China is different than that displayed in corporate US media. Real life in France, Australia, Nigeria and Svalbard are all different than what is displayed there too. None of that makes it a good idea to be so outrageously stupid as to adopt such a platform.
it signifies lack of trust from US citizens in their own government that lied non-stop for decades and kept brainwashing them with one false narrative (like Iraqi WMDs) after another
More like jailing people for inciting riots by repeatedly and vehemently posting proven wrong information. Freedom of speech is great and all, but you are advocating for freedom from consequences
This is such a slippery slope. If I post on my social media that I hate my government and its policies - it should be protected as political speech.
You cannot jail people for their thoughts. Unless a person is physically present in public and is inciting violence in person, they do not violate anything
Except that’s not what Mao’s book was/is called in China, it’s a label the US applied to it. In China it’s better known as 红宝书 (Hóng Bǎo Shū) “The Red Treasure Book” or simply “The Red Book”.
Because if this sequence of events (one allegedly Chinese-government controlled social media app is banned over apparent ties to the government, so all of its American users immediately switch to another Chinese app whose name can be translated as "Little Red Book") happened in a movie, a reasonable person would balk at how ludicrous and on-the-nose the whole thing was.
It feels like a joke, and if you can somehow create enough space to actually see the humor in it, its kind of funny.
You don't destroy what can give you even more power by controlling it. Trump/Musk/Zuck plan is to control it, not destroy it: the army of teens willing to be inundated by propaganda just to keep using it is too appealing to ignore, and China will happily trade that control for something (less/no tariffs?).
Maybe someone smarter than me can explain - how both Biden and Trump can hint or announce they wont enforce the law. Signed laws upheld by the Supreme Court can be filtered out by the President? News to me.
They've announced that they won't enforce the fines required by the law. But yes, selective enforcement of laws is legal — it's how prosecutorial discretion works.
The law makes it illegal for Oracle, Apple and Google to continue doing what they are doing. It does in fact make it illegal for some companies to operate with TikTok. The president can use this law in the future on other companies controlled by foreign adversaries to divest or face a ban.
We all know the Elephant in the room, that Israel‘s genocide in Palestine led to lots of criticism on Tik Tok, and that led the Israel lobby to push a Tik Tok ban.
Here is what Chairman McCaul said: “I was proud to join 352 of my Republican and Democrat colleagues and pass H.R. 7521 today. CCP-controlled TikTok is an enormous threat to U.S. national security and young Americans’ mental health. This past week demonstrated the Chinese Communist Party is capable of mobilizing the platform’s users to a range of dangerous, destabilizing actions. The Senate must pass this bill and send it to the president’s desk immediately.”[1]
The U.S. national security angle identified is "mobilizing the platform’s users to a range of dangerous, destabilizing actions". And give me a break that they actually care about "young Americans’ mental health". This bill was about pro-Palestine content ... "being mobilized by CCP" that was harming "young people's health".
The fact that none of this was put forward by the lawyers makes me think the tiktok lawyers were incompetent. I went through the testimonies given and it was DAMMMMMNNNN weak. Three issues were identified by me: The Bill suddenly declares "non-aligned countries" to be "foreign adversaries" but there is no declared war so how can they be adversaries already; The Bill declares anyone facilitating the company including through the transfer of communication is in violation of the bill but that is a freedom of speech issue which they did not bring up but instead brought the ban as a FoS issue; The Bill labels TikTok and ByteDance as companies to be sold [to an aligned state] or banned entirely but that is the only company being single-handedly called out and I don't know how to say this but that sounds like some form of discrimination and unsubstantiated claim of threat. They could have done a better job at the SCOTUS.
The next Supreme Court decision will be them deciding if disagreeing with the TikTok decision is sufficient grounds for being censored.
Public disagreement with the TikTok decision could lead to legislative pressure, which would add support to the pressure campaigns of Chinese lobbyists and diplomats, or of other organizations that are funded or donated to by Chinese people or people of Chinese descent. This could either result in new legislation being passed that nullifies the ban, or pressure the Executive into failing to enforce the ban.
Either of those outcomes would, in effect, allow the user data of Americans to be accessed by the government of China. Disagreement with the TikTok ban would in and of itself aid America's adversaries.
Besides, disagreement with it implies that America unduly restricts speech, when we're supposed to hate China because China unduly restricts speech. That's a clear case of creating a false equivalence in order to foment discord, which again is material support to China's goal to monitor American's communications and corrupt the minds of America's children.
I believe Biden says his admin won't enforce the ban, as they only have 1 day left in office after it goes into effect.
Trump has signaled he doesn't support the ban, and wants tiktok under american ownership. The legislation allows the president to put a 90 day hold on the ban too.
There seems to be a lot of misinformation around this, no surprise given the TikTok user base..
The law targets other companies that would be breaking the law if they continue providing services for a China-owned TikTok past the ban date. The statute of limitations is five years, past a Trump presidency. No, an executive order can not cancel a law. Google, Apple & co would be exposing themselves to a lot of uncertainty and risk, and for what?
One of the few federal powers in the constitution includes "control over foreign commerce". Somehow a Chinese website is now "foreign commerce". China bad.
The GenZ folks (including my kids) that I interact with on a day-to-day basis are much happier on that application and they’re starting to realize that the US is not what it pretends to be
That doesn’t mean any place is better (though possible) it simply means people started finally realizing the truth of the United States
China is an ethnostate. What does China offer the future to anyone who's not Chinese? Chinese nationals in the United States have substantially more rights than they do in China.
The key issue here now is: The future, freedom, international policy etc of you US guys no longer depends on democratic structures in ANY way whatsoever.
Who pays Trump most, wins. Who does what Musk wants, wins.
From what I know, there is no second Oligarch-run corrupt country that would come close to this. This is worse than China and Russia combined.
Sorry, not meant to bash our US HN friends at all, just an observation from another western country targeted by MuskTrump that has yet to follow the US lead (which they will), so we still have some time left to be in shock and awe about what is going on on your side of the pond for a while.
Commenting on your own posts sucks, but let me add:
The current status of insanity is that the US is threatening to invade a EU country by force to annex it to be able to exploit natural resources and gain a strategic military position.
Again, let me repeat, as very clearly a lot of people are now completely numb to insanity and just filter it out:
THE US IS THREATENING TO INVADE A EU COUNTRY. YES. SERIOUSLY.
Was US Headlines for one day, now drowned in other madness already.
Anyway, you won't have any democratic say on this anyway, so let's just gamble:
Jeff Yass will bribe Trump heavily, and Trump will then lift the ban next week, no matter what his Supreme Court sock puppets want.
It's a bit disingenuous for Mark Zuckerberg to go on Joe Rogan and say that the Biden administration is anti Meta/anti America, when congress passed this bill to shut down TikTok.
I don't love that TikTok is run by a Chinese company (thus giving way too much control to the Chinese government), but Meta builds such garbage experiences in their apps. There really needs to be a real competitor to Meta.
America has the right to ban since china banned all American tech companies from operating in their nation but this means America could never ever talk about freedom of doing business bs
Any country has the right to this kind of ban, that's what national sovereignty is all about.
A different issue is whether doing it is the right decision or not.
And another issue is the hypocrisy. When China did it, the unanimous opinion from the US (both the official stance and what one could hear/read from regular people, e.g. HN comments) was that such bans were authoritarian and evidence that there was no freedom of speech in China. But now suddenly it's a perfectly fine and even obvious/necessary thing to do...
Being neither from China nor from the US, this paints the US (who have benefitted a lot from riding the moral high horse of free market, etc. for decades) in a quite bad light.
Should the EU ban US social networks for pure economic reasons (so we roll our own instead of providing our data and money to US companies, which would almost surely be good for our economy)? The argument for not doing it used to be that freedom should be above domestic interests, one embraces the free market even if some aspects of it are harmful because overall it's a win. But the US is showing it doesn't really believe in that principle, and probably never has.
China bans US businesses because it has an autocratic, ethnocratic government. The US is banning a Chinese business for obvious national security reasons.
Answering tit-for-tat is fine, even if the thing being done is bad in itself (e.g. waging war is bad, but should a country not use weapons to defend itself when invaded?). If else US and in general the West should have acted earlier: if American companies where free to operate in China and influence its people I doubt this ban would have been enacted.
If you're comparing outsourcing, mutual trade agreements that benefit both countries, to intelligence gathering, copyright/patent theft, media influence, etc., you're probably not going to arrive at a serious position here (not to mention the downvote).
So they were right about banning the US social media platforms then, right? Because according to this court opinion, having foreign social media is a menace to national security. It's funny to see Americans argue for a great firewall lol.
I have mixed feelings. The Supreme Court did the right thing; the democratically elected government did decide upon a ban, so it should likely continue as was made law.
I am not sure that banning forms of media feels good. The point of free speech is to let everyone say their thing and for people to be smart enough to ignore the bad ideas.
I am not sure the general population of vertical video viewers does part 2, however, so I get the desire to force people to not engage. The algorithmic boosting has had lots of weird side effects; increased political polarization, people being constantly inundated with rage bait, and even "trends" that get kids to vandalize their school. (My favorite was when I asked why ice cream is locked up in the freezer at CVS. Apparently it was a TikTok "trend" to lick the ice cream and then put it back in the freezer, so now an employee has to escort you from the ice cream area to the cashier to ensure that you pay for it before you lick it. Not sure how much of this actually happened versus how companies were afraid of it happening, however.)
With all this in mind, it's unclear to me whether TikTok is uniquely responsible for this effect. I feel like Instagram, YouTube Shorts, etc. have the potential to cause the exact same problems (and perhaps already have). Even the legacy media is not guilt free here. Traditional newspapers ownership has changed over the years and they all seem pretty biased in a certain direction, and I am pretty sure that the local news is responsible for a lot of reactionary poor public policy making. (Do I dare mention that I think the whole New Jersy drone thing was just mass hysteria?)
Now, everyone is saying that regulating TikTok has nothing to do with its content, but I'm pretty sure that's just a flat-out lie. First, Trump wanted to ban it because everything on there was negative towards him. Then right-wing influencers got a lot of traction on the platform, and suddenly Democrats want to ban it and Trump wants to reverse the ban. It's pretty transparent what's going on there.
I agree with the other comments that say if data collection is the issue, we shouldn't let American companies do it either. That seems very fair to regulate and I'm in favor of that.
The best effect will be someone with a lot of money and media reach standing up against app stores. I can live with that.
I only take this as a geopolitical decision. Not saying that the US couldn't do that (like any other country) but adding arguments that also apply to other social media apps as well is, IMHO, FUD.
The silliness of the ban itself aside, it is wild how casually the whole “both chambers of congress passed a law and that law was upheld by the highest federal court but maybe it won’t be a law if one guy decides he doesn’t like it” thing is being treated by the media.
It is like “Does America have laws?” is a 3 minute section of Good Morning America between low-carb breakfast recipes and the memoir of a skateboarding dog.
As with anywhere, laws are toothless without enforcement.
In some cases, they are enforced ruthlessly on one group of people, and not on others. This is a feature, not a mistake, by the way. Well, a feature for those with power, not normal citizens.
The real question is:
"Does America have justice?"
It's not a recent one either. The issue of select enforcement of our laws has been around as long as I can recall, and before I was born. It's not even unique to the United States.
What I find most upsetting as part of the normal citizenry, is that rather than taking things to court and finding that the laws need changed, they tend to go the route of charges dropped or pardons when the laws affect them.
I would have less of an issue with the rich and powerful folks avoiding prosecution if they at least did it in a precedent setting way for the rest of us.
Of recent note in the "no" column for the "does America have justice" question, a convicted felon escapes all consequences because he is president elect.
You're Apple or Google's lawyer - the CEO asks, should I take Tiktok down from the app store. What do you say?
Otoh there's a law and civil penalty. On the other, Trump says he won't enforce. Statute of limitations is 5 years, and the liability will exist whether Trump enforces or not. In 5 years, there will (may?) be a new president. On the other hand, trump saying he's not going to enforce may give us an out if we're ever sued over this (we just did what the Pres told us to do...).
Hard call, I give > 50% that they take it down whatever Trump says.
Knowledge of civics among the media is unfortunately not much higher than the average person, which is a real failure considering that they are supposed to be an entire “estate” of democratic society.
The power in question is the president's power over the executive branch of government, e.g. the department of Justice. If the president orders it, the department of Justice could choose to feign ignorance and simply not fine any offending parties under this law. Obviously this is an immense power that should be wielded with the utmost care but at this point I'm not sure anyone cares.
I think the idea is that Trump wields enormous (unprecedented?) control over the members of his party, and thus effectively controls both houses of Congress for at least the next two years. I assume he'll quickly get whatever legislation he wants sent to his desk for signature. I'm wondering how long it takes before the Senate invokes the "nuclear option" on what still requires a filibuster-proof majority to pass.
He has a one seat majority in the House. That means he needs actual complete buy in from every single Republican house member to pass something if the Democrats completely oppose it.
He had more than that during his last term, so this term should be harder to get things done then last time.
Good point - I didn't realize that the new majorities are more narrow than they were in 2017 - but my observation is that he has more control now over these more narrow majorities. In 2017, there were still a lot of "Never Trump" or at least "old establishment" Republicans, and the party had its own brand and ideology that was distinct from Trump. That no longer seems to be the case. And the degree to which he can deploy an angry mob against any Republican that stands up to him, threatening primary challenges or worse, seems totally unprecedented to me.
I say this as a registered Republican since the Bush era who has never voted for Trump. I don't feel like anyone in the party represents me anymore.
There only needs to be one Republican in the house who doesn't like the bill, and we already know that Trump doesn't do even a little bit of bipartisanship (nor I doubt he will start in this next term).
He only has a couple of years to pass bills also, it is unlikely that the Republicans retain control of the house after the next midterm (unless Trump is popular).
I'm seeing 219 R to 215 D, by the way, and the one remaining vacant seat will probably go R again. Unless I'm interpreting something incorrectly(?), it doesn't look like a one-seat majority. Still more narrow than it was in 2017, as you said, but not quite that narrow.
Oh, ya, now that I look at it it isn't one seat, but 5. I wonder why I thought it was one, maybe that was just for the speaker vote? Anyways, this is better for Trump, since I think 5 seats gives him something to work with. He still needs basic consensus, but one rogue house member doesn't kill everything.
Biden will probably not enforce the ban (no fines) and Trump will likely continue that non-enforcement, essentially nullifying the will of Congress and judgement of the court.
I think Biden talk is a nothing burger. You need time to enforce things. Ban goes into effect on the 19th. Do they send out violation notice on 19th (Sunday), 20th (Monday and holiday and transition day) or 21st (first working day) when Biden administration does not exist.
Yes. Not all offices are open on weekends. Of course armed forces are of course police are working but should all agencies be open every day? And are they? Check your neighborhood. Post office may be open on Saturday but not Sunday and definitely not on MlK day. Check the city hall. Check the bill payment in-person windows. Check the social security agency.
Some problems such as LA fires require immediate response, some problems require an escalation mechanism and many others can be dealt during regular business hours.
I think the point being made here is that many offices, including but not limited to your local post office, are closed on Sundays. They were not saying that your specific local post office is integral to enforcing the TikTok ban.
Is there a section in the text of the law that says that enforcement has to happen outside of normal office hours or do you just assume that’s the case because the law is being talked about in the news?
So long as we’re agreeing that they’re not doing anything because the date falls on the day before the administration is dissolved, yes!
I am glad that we are on the same page that the answer to “why don’t they enforce the law that they can’t enforce” is in the question.
> I don’t understand, why wouldn’t they send it out on the 19th?
> "Given the sheer fact of timing, this Administration recognizes that actions to implement the law simply must fall to the next Administration, which takes office on Monday," White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement.
The headline on HN was updated, but it's in the key points on the article:
> Although President-elect Donald Trump could choose to not enforce the law...
Which is ridiculous. It's the executive branch's function to "take care that the laws be faithfully executed" [1]. The president's DOJ can't simply refuse to enforce the law. There's some debate over whether this applies to 'enforcement discretion', in that the president doesn't have infinite resources to perfectly execute the law and some things will slip through, or whether the president can decline to enforce a law that he believes to be unconstitutional before the supreme court declares it to be so.
In theory, no, the president can't simply decline to enforce a law, congress would then be able to impeach and remove him. In practice, though it happens a little bit all the time. And even if this was black and white, I don't know that there's anything that the incoming president can do that the incoming congress would impeach him for.
> The president's DOJ can't simply refuse to enforce the law.
I had to look up how they handle marijuana laws since that has the _look_ of the DOJ doing just that.
'In each fiscal year since FY2015, Congress has included
provisions in appropriations acts that prohibit DOJ from
using appropriated funds to prevent certain states,
territories, and DC from "implementing their own laws that
authorize the use, distribution, possession, or cultivation of
medical marijuana"'[1]
So in that case it's Congress that prohibits the DOJ from enforcing a federal law. So your point stands in that the DOJ may not be able to unilaterally decide not to enforce a law, but apparently congress can sort-of extort them into ignoring laws? Oh America.
Who is "they" in this sentence? You mean the Republican majorities in both houses of Congress who (nearly) all have their seats at this point only because they appealed to Trump's mob of followers? He could be impeached for all manner of things, but (as the parent comment said) I don't know what it would take for these Republicans to do it.
When he first took office in 2017, I figured that it would happen within six months. Given that he was impeached twice, I was almost right, but it didn't happen until Democrats won the House. Even most of the "old establishment" Republicans ended up backing him. Now there are none of those remaining.
Creating three branches of government that all have to agree that a law should exist (legislative) is constitutional (judicial) and should be enforced (executive) has proven to be an excellent method of keeping bad laws from negatively affecting us. Despite being seemingly simple on the surface, it's created a process a bit longer than what a single Schoolhouse Rock video can teach us, and it's too much for legacy media to handle.
Maybe they only learned from the aforementioned Schoolhouse Rock video, because they seem especially bad at understanding anything outside of the legislative branch. Not only does the legislative branch need to pass a bill into law for it to become a regulation, without objection by the judicial branch to its constitutionality, but the executive branch needs to write that law into a federal regulation, and the legislative branch can reject any new regulation they believe doesn't comply with the law, as can the judicial branch, who can also reject the regulation if it isn't constitutional as written, even if the original law that created it was.
It's no wonder that legacy media's wild misunderstandings of how laws and regulations work only get a small snippet of time, between their more entertaining and feel-good stories that drive viewership and revenue.
Fortunately we are no longer stuck with just legacy media, so I recommend finding a news source that actually knows what they are talking about. I've found the best bet is to get news from outlets and aggregators that specialize in a specific topic, shielding them from the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect, and forcing them to publish news that is actually correct.
This is why I come to Hacker News for my tech news aggregation. For political news, my favorite so far has been The Hill, especially for videos like their Daily Brief and Rising videos published on YouTube. I'm open to more, so if anyone has any recommendations, let me know.
What checks remain to counter this power? Impeachment? Constitutional amendment? As I understand it, if the president chooses not to enforce a law, then the only real recourse Congress has is a massive escalation that requires an extremely high level of cooperation. I'm not sure it was ever intended for the executive branch to simply ignore the other two branches and unilaterally decide how to run things. Personally I think willfully refusing to enforce the law of the land should be an impeachable offense but I guess that's not how it works.
The judicial and executive branches are checks on the legislative branch. The entire point of a check is that it can't be overridden. If the judicial branch determines that a law is unconstitutional or the executive branch determines that it should not be enforced, than that's it; it's dead.
The legislative branch can try again with another law, but if it doesn't change whatever made the law unconstitutional or detrimental to enforce, than the relevant branch will keep it dead.
The only condition in which the judicial branch regularly forces the executive branch to enforce laws is when the executive branch tries to legislate through selective enforcement; then the judicial branch will give an all-or-nothing ultimatum, but even then not enforcing is an option, just not selective enforcement.
“I was proud to join 352 of my Republican and Democrat colleagues and pass H.R. 7521 today. CCP-controlled TikTok is an enormous threat to U.S. national security and young Americans’ mental health. This past week demonstrated the Chinese Communist Party is capable of mobilizing the platform’s users to a range of dangerous, destabilizing actions. The Senate must pass this bill and send it to the president’s desk immediately.”[1]
Everybody knows the fearmongering about Chinese control and manipulation is a smokescreen. The real reason is that Tiktok doesn't fall in line with State Department propaganda [1].
It's noteworthy that SCOTUS sidestepped this issue entirely by not even considering the secret evidence the government brought.
That being said, it's unsurprising because you can make a strictly commerce-based argument that has nothing to do with speech and the First Amendment. Personally, I think reciprocity would've been a far more defensible position, in that US apps like Google, FB, Youtube and IG are restricted from the Chinese market so you could demand recipricol access on strictly commerce grounds.
The best analogy is the restriction on foreign ownership of media outlets, which used to be a big deal. Back in the 1980s and 1990s, US companies would defend themselves from foreign takeovers by buying TV stations, for example. That's basically the premise of the movie Working Girl, as one (fictional) example.
Politically, the big loser here is Biden and the Democratic Party because they will be (rightly) blamed for banning a highly popular app (even though the Congressional vote was hugely bipartisan) and Trump will likely get credit for saving Tiktok.
We don't know that the secret evidence was that TT doesn't promote U.S. propaganda. We can surmise, but speculation can be wrong. Besides, the justices might simply have revealed that secret evidence, had it really been just that. But they claim they didn't even consider the secret evidence. Unclear whether they took a peek, but they say they didn't consider it.
The kids flocking to another Chinese app just to avoid using Reels, Shorts, or whatever abomination is on X continues to be so funny to me. Looks like a long game of whack a mole starting.
Any parent (and even us non-parents who've spent a lot of time around kids) know that the best way to get teenagers to stop doing something, is to start doing it yourself. If you forbid them to do something, it's basically inviting them to try their hardest to do it anyways.
This is exactly why I’ve started slinging gen alpha lingo at our daughters: even doing it jokingly makes them cringe enough to stop using it themselves.
PG is full of shit. "Woke" originated within the black activist community and culturally goes back as far as the 1930s. It got adopted and became mainstream within the white liberal progressive community through the popularity of black music artists and social media in the late 20th century. It has absolutely nothing to do with Mao's Red Book or communism.
12-year-olds probably aren't getting the same 10-minute videos of auto insurance adjusters taking exceptional calls that I am. But they might if they're precocious.
I watch at least 2-3 10 minute videos on TikTok daily, and a large number of 5+ minute videos! There's an amazing amount of good content, and once the algorithm hones in on what you care about it gets surfaced for you.
Can't say I have insurance adjusters on my FYP, but I think that speaks to the power of the algorithm's targeting far more than it does the lack of content.
This is how I got mine to stop saying slay, preppy and sigma. The look of horror and cringe on their face when I say crap like "skibidi ohio rizz" in front of them and their friends, is a chef's kiss.
Under a million kids moving over to RedNote for a week or 2 means nothing. There is no whack a mole. Tiktok algo is the sauce, nothing else has the sauce. People enjoyed the sauce.
Reels and YT Shorts are definitely worse, but I would attribute that to not having the same content to even show and not having the same amount of data because of a much smaller audience than to having an inferior recommendation system.
Even if that could occur, they don't have time to hire, design and implement it before their window of capturing the wave is over. RedNote is in a right place wrong time situation that would be in a worse position that Tiktok was in for scrutiny since we already had the house the data here legal battle with Bytedance.
"the sauce" is for the audience to figure out. The sauce was disgusting to me, but that didn't matter to those 100m consumers.
And yes, this begs the question of "when does something become a matter of national security". 10 million? A million moving over before the day of reckoning isn't a small thing.
the sauce = tiktok's algorithm. The audience doesn't figure that out, the company delivering the videos to you does. So far, no one else seems to have even come close. GenZ are proactively against Zuck, so that's even a bigger hole for Reels to overcome. Rednote doesn't have the algo people want and its interface isn't in English. It cost zilch for those kids to make a RedNote account. They are literally making it a meme. They wont be there in 2 months when no one else is there, and the joke is over. RedNote will have even more heavy handed moderation than TikTok as it is currently sharing its userbase with Chinese citizens. RedNote is not an answer to any of the underlying wants or desires of the Tiktok community except for a extreme minority of the TikTok userbase who are rallying against the US govt/Meta. Personally, I think the ban is within the power of the US government to do but do recognize the very real concerns and view of those who think the government shouldn't have done this. The incoming administration is free to seek to undo this if they want, but it can and should take an act of legislation to undo.
The meme I'm seeing everywhere is that with so many Americans joining RedNote, Americans are discovering how much Chinese people are paying for healthcare, food or property, and Chinese people are discovering things like 40 hour work weeks and actually having a holiday from time to time - so now the question is whether US or China bans it first.
China also has 7 main federally recognized holidays. Although, one interesting thing they do is "weekend shifting" where they move the official work days near, e.g. the Spring Festival so that people get a full week of holiday (at the cost of a longer workweek or a one-day weekend right before/after it): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_holidays_in_China#Weeke...
The 666 workweek(6 days a week 6 am till 6pm) is definitely real in some companies and it's a big problem with work culture especially in tech. But in general I'm sure they do holidays.
Oh, wasn't meant at any dig in terms of quality, I don't believe in that kind of characterization. Besides, ostensibly, Chinese developers have been much more successful in this space and seem to deliver better products. I just wouldn't know myself as I stay off of shortform video platforms.
The irony of Americans flocking to a CCP-approved app whose Chinese name is translated to "little red book" is just a bit too on-the-nose. For those who don't know, Little Red Book is also the literature spread during the Cultural Revolution in China that was a collection of quotes and sayings by Chairman Mao.
There's gotta be a joke in there about the communists selling the capitalists the rope the capitalists eventually hang themselves with. But, I digress.
Am I missing something obvious, or is that only available in one language? How do American teenagers use that?
Don't get me wrong, I consumed American media and played American video games before I understood English, so clicking around eventually led you down some path.
But isn't most of that content meant to be consumed by people who understand the language said content is made with?
Mostly just lots of translation. Lots of American and Chinese users are putting translations directly into posts and comments to make it easier for others.
The funny this is American teens may start learning Mandarin as a result of this ill-advised ban, which is exactly what the US government doesn't want!
If this motivates any significant portion of the populace to learn one of the hardest languages to learn (In the West), I'd see that as a justification alone.
They're detecting Americans now somehow and setting the language to English by default; I didn't have to change the language. The translation looks pretty rushed but it's enough to navigate the app. The community guidelines are, notably, still only in Mandarin.
The posts are largely subtitled in both Chinese and English regardless of the spoken language. Comments are often in both languages, but if not you can click Translate.
Kids are born into a world where the last generation is already essentially locked into lifetime servitude, the world is burning, and the "adults in the room" are a circus. How could they not indulge in alternatives? What is there to look forward to, identify with, or love about this place?
Culture thrives when the people are able to live meaningful lives.
The Red Note nonsense is just a meme, somewhat fittingly. First, because the only place you see coverage of all the "kids flocking" is... on TikTok itself. It's always a red (heh) flag when your source for big important events comes only from the affected parties.
But secondly because Red Note is subject to exactly the same regulation as TikTok, for exactly the same reason. There's no protection or loophole there, this app is just a district court injunction away from a ban too. Literally no one cares, they just love to meme.
It isn't really whack-a-mole though, because despite the media coverage there is no "TikTok ban bill." Instead it's a "Hostile nation can't own majority stakes in media companies in the US" bill, and this SCOTUS ruling sets the precedent that can be enforced on as many entities as required.
On a more amusing note the Chinese did NOT expect a bunch of Americans to show up on RedNote, and they're not thrilled so far. It seems that sharing details of how to organize labor unions, protest against your government, 3D print weapons, and so on wasn't what they were hoping for either. There's allegedly talk of them siloing off the new joins from abroad.
So how big does Rednote need to be to "majority stakes in media companies in the US"? I don't like this ruling at all, but it feels very American to see another looming threat and say "well, I'll just wait until it gets too big to deal with it".
It qualifies already, but I really doubt it's going to take off for many reasons. It isn't TikTok, the CCP has a much heavier hand there (ask the kids who ran into a 48 hour review period for their posts), and frankly I don't think the CCP is going to appreciate a bunch of mostly young, leftist teens sharing their ideas with Chinese people. The reaction to "Here's how you can organize a union/3D print a gun" has been hilariously predictable.
US should ban all Chinese software apps and services as long as CCP does not allow Google and Facebook to operate in China. As a matter of fact not only Google and Facebook but all the Western internet social apps and services should be allowed in China. We want equal opportunity and equal rights for business. This way it is not fair play, it is botched market economy.
<< Second, I am pleased that the Court declines to consider the classified evidence the government has submitted to us but shielded from petitioners and their counsel. Ante, at 13, n. 3. Efforts to inject secret evidence into judicial proceedings present obvious constitutional concerns. Usually, “the evidence used to prove the Government’s case must be disclosed to the individual so that he has an opportunity to show that it is untrue.”
Good grief.. I clearly wasn't following it closely, but even the fact that this could have become a thing ( SCOTUS ruling using 'redacted' as evidence ) is severely disheartening.
> but even the fact that this could have become a thing
So you're upset that the Biden admin attempted to sway the court with secret evidence. But any admin always could behave in that way, and nothing you can do can stop that. The fact that the court decided to ignore that secret evidence should be comforting. Sure, nothing forces the court in the future to stick to that, but this is always true as to everything.
Friend. Why would you insist on painting this in a simple political framework and, more amusingly, assume I follow it that same framework? I am not upset. I am disheartened, dispirited, demoralized, and dismayed, but I am not upset.
If that is the case, why would you start the sentence with a 'so' suggesting you made a leap of logic, where nothing of the sort actually occured given that it is almost a complete non-sequitur.
I am open to a conversation, but I think, and please correct me as needed, that your political bias blinds you in ways that affect any and all discussions.
I took "disheartened" as "upset". Replace "upset" in my above reply with "disheartened".
I'm quite sure my reply evinced no political bias. I was saying that any administration could do this sort of thing at any time, and any SCOTUS could accept it when the administration does it. We can expect political animals to do this, so it's not surprising when they do it, but we can also expect the SCOTUS not to go there, and they didn't, so what exactly is disheartening? That politicians are so fallible?
Whereas I would think it disheartening only of the court actually used the secret evidence. But they didn't.
We have their word for it, don't we. I am only half-jesting. If they saw that evidence, it entered their calculus whether they admit it or not, and that is assuming they didn't simply pull a Snowden ( one document for public consumption; one for IC ). Isn't it fun when you can't trust your own government?
But I digress.
<< I'm quite sure my reply evinced no political bias.
Hmm. It is possible that I jumped to conclusion myself. You opened your position with Biden, where he was not mentioned suggesting you have a political axe to grind. Biden is not a SCOTUS member. But I am willing to assume it was a mental shortcut.
<< I was saying that any administration could do this sort of thing at any time, and any SCOTUS could accept it when the administration does it.
I accept that.
<< Whereas I would think it disheartening only of the court actually used the secret evidence.
Hmm, I don't accept this. Even mentioning this as a thing undermines the existing system the same way parrallel construction undermines it. You might not see it as an issue, but I see water slowly chipping away at what was once a solid wall. And I see it, others can see it too.
Officials at the EU should first wonder why there is no European equivalent of Google, or Facebook, or Twitter, or Tiktok (the list could continue forever).
Even if it where, such a company would not find the same obstacles in entering the American market as in would in China.
But the US is a foreign adversary of the EU who has ruined the EU economy in the last three years and wants to wrestle away Greenland.
Half joking, but the US performs corporate espionage in the EU and certainly takes compromising material on EU politicians whenever it can get it.
The slavish adherence from EU NPC politicians (they are mediocre and no one knows how they manage to rise) to US directives has to have some reasons. Being compromised is one of those.
EU governments also spy in the US. Any government that isn't spying on their enemies and allies both is incompetent.
The reason that the EU "adheres to US directives" is mostly just a legacy of WWII and the Cold War, you don't really have to posit any kind of nefarious espionage scheme to explain why European countries want to stay connected to the US economy and military.
Until we ban Denmark as an "adversary" because they won't just hand over Greenland. Or Mexico for setting tarrifs against us (because we declared tarrifs first).
Yup I'd be ok with banning TikTok because all of the US web services that are banned China, but this makes it seem like every country should have their own everything
Exactly, Americans want to voice their opinions whenever a foreign country considers banning or regulating an American social media platform. It's a clear double standard. The U.S. government banning foreign companies is fine, but when a foreign country bans an American company, it’s called censorship or something like that?
People don't fully understand what is at risk of being lost here. Science, history, and technology tutorials, practical life skills like cooking, budgeting, mental health, chronic illness, trauma recovery, creative expression, small businesses, home repair, friend groups, communities, and many people who make their living on TikTok. Losing TikTok means losing a massive ecosystem and all of its connections, knowledge, and content. It's like a library of books vanishing, or a large city disappearing off of a map.
Popular sites come and go. It has admittedly been a few years since we had a big shakeup of where people go to doomscroll, but this is not a paradigm shift -- it is just a chance to see who picks up the slack. It is mildly interesting speculating on whether an existing site will absorb it or if something new will come along. And it is possible TikTok will just keep running. But either way, people gonna make content, people gonna consume content.
a lot of chronic illness sub communities are bad and would be good to lose, just like cryptic pregnancy fb etc - they trigger latent mental illness in people
For those not in the know, why is cryptic pregnancy tiktok bad?
I'd never heard of it, and from what I understand, it's a hashtag people use to share stories of how they found out they were pregnant late in the pregnancy because they didn't have pregnancy symptoms. But I don't understand why that would be bad for people to share/consume.
We also risk losing so much utter nonsense and false information that I'm not at all worried. You want to learn history and science? Buy some (vetted) history and science books.
The number of times I had to correct my step-son when he repeated something he "learned" on TikTok is disturbing.
Unimportant example: He "learned" from a TikTok video that the commonly repeated command of "Open sesame!" is actually "Open says me!". That's not true, and all you have to do is read the story "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves" to know that the story actually hinges on the fact that the secret word is the name of a grain/plant.
Another example: He "learned" that the video game character, Mario, is not saying "It's a me, Mario!" with an Italian accent. He "learned" that he is actually saying some Japanese word, like "Itsumi Mario!".
One more: He "learned" that "scientists" now think that "we" originally put the T-Rex fossils together incorrectly and that the animal's arm bones are actually backwards, and should be reversed to reveal that the T-Rex actually had little chicken wings instead of small arms. Anybody who has seen how bone sockets fit together knows that's nonsense.
Forgetting the political theory and morality of the ban, I say good riddance to the constant firehose of bullshit and lying morons on that app.
And for every video of quality on the platform, there's one that's blatant political propaganda, one that's blatant conspiratorial misinformation, one that's sexualizing children, etc.
It's a mixed bag. It has no more to offer than any other social network. Less, some might argue, because of how easy it is to crosspost to the other video networks.
The only way this is different from the loss of other social networks, Vine most closely, is the government is shutting down the site and collapsing the ecosystem rather than private equity.
Yes, I believe so. It's way easier to upload something on tiktok with captions, voiceovers etc than on YouTube. You can have real communities instead of random channels.
No one is deleting data. You just can't run the app in the US anymore. If someone cares to archive this junk, they can just do it from Australia or wherever.
Why do you call it junk? Is everything on YouTube junk, because there are some really bad and fake prank jokes? Is everything on here junk, because some people don't have the best intentions?
Seriously, even in Germany the public opinion about tiktok is so much influenced by people not even having used the app even once (seen some of the good parts of it).
Meh. If it were worth archiving then someone would be trying to archive it. Nothing the US law is doing would prevent that, even from within the US. If you're really concerned, then start working with ByteDance or archive.org or whoever to actually preserve the data instead of whining that somehow it will be "lost" because you can't install the proprietary reader app from within the USA.
This is ban is only because US has no control over the content and organic anti Israel content was not censored like it was in all other us social platforms.
Wait, where's the Facebook/Meta ban? Is unlawful data collection only unlawful if it's done under a foreign adversary? I guess not to the US Government where their interests align with adversarial data collection practices against its own people.
Facebook / Meta are not controlled by a foreign adversary as designated by the "Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act". Thus they cannot become subject to the distribution restrictions designated by that law.
The core factor in the law is control by a foreign adversary, it's not a law that outlaws data collection.
I know, I was pointing out it's not really about data collection because we allow manipulative practices with our own people. We are our own worst enemy. Meaning government and corporations want that power over our people. They are protecting interests that run counter to the will of the people.
I support any ban on social media platforms because control of the public's data belongs in the hands of individuals.
The law does not care about who financially owns the company, only about designations of control made by the president (along with a 30 day notice).
The law actually skips this step for ByteDance / TikTok and directly adds them to the list of "Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications" along with the enactment of the law.
The argument is that China has a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_share in Bytedance; that despite only owning (on paper) 1% or whatever, they still have effective control over the whole company, if they so desire.
(I don't know if that's true, but it strikes me as plausible)
edit: you can make an analogy to e.g. Meta - Zuckerberg doesn't strictly own a majority, but he does have very strong control because of the particular corporate structure.
- Frying teenagers' brains with short attention deficit videos. That one seems logical, but others are doing it, too.
- Political indoctrination.
- Compromised politicians who can be blackmailed: The big one, but a certain island run by the daughter of a certain intelligence agency operative was largely ignored.
- Corporate espionage: Probably not happening on TikTok. Certainly happening in the EU using US products.
Look at what foreign adversaries are already actively doing: working to turn Americans against each other. Social media is the perfect tool to spread discord. Russia has troll farms that create fake news stories, manipulated photos, and incendiary memes targeted at both sides of the political spectrum. They've even orchestrated in-person protests and counter-protests to those protests, though those efforts have been less successful. Now imagine that instead of merely using fake user accounts to this end, an adversary controlled an entire social network, including its algorithm and its content guidelines and could tailor manipulative content on an individual basis.
I can agree to an extent that TT (and social media in general) is an addictive app and harmful to youth and society in general. Spend enough time on these types of apps and suddenly your worldview is just whatever the TT algorithm pushes to you.
It’s not entirely unprecedented either. There was the case of FB and Myanmar/Burma which strongly promoted military propaganda. This unfortunately lead to violence against Rohingya.
But the argument is very weak in my opinion, and wouldn’t be a reason to outright ban it. Prohibition never works.
The only thing that does work is fixing our society. In the USA, we have increasing wage disparity, increasing homelessness, increasing poverty, food scarcity, water scarcity, worsening climate change related events (see Palisades fire…), and a shit ton of other issues that will remain unsolved for at least the next 4 years.
Yet leadership is doing almost nothing to address this. Neoclassical economics and neoliberalism have outright ruined this country. Fuck the culture war the billionaire class is trying to initiate.
It's hard not to see this as a continuation of the American corporate interests controlling the media their population consumes. TikTok I think has the largest share of American's attention out of all the social media?
Doesn't seem to matter which clown flaps about in the wind at the oval office, control of the narrative holds a steady keel for decades. This is the same story, in a new medium. Sure, as the "sides" in culture wars take turns "ruling", certain things are allowed or disallowed. The real consequential stuff, ideas and patterns that would lead to the empowerment of the working class vs hoarders of capital -- all the back to basic education, critical thinking, civic engagement, and the implicit/explicit deprioritization of any and all that in favour of obedient consumerism.
With the "new" tech they've discovered they can really shape people's opinions, tweak the emotional charge to make people act in such unconsidered ways, en masse, against each others' and their own best interest -- of course they'll hold on to that at any cost. It's unprecedented, though not unimagined.
I wonder what will fill this space. Over all the rises and falls of the various blinking nonsense, I've never really seen people go -back- to an app / service / etc. They all just wither away as the next new things comes up.
> Although Trump could choose to not enforce the law
Ah, clever to leave it up for bribes from ByteDance.
> The nation’s highest court said in the opinion that while “data collection and analysis is a common practice in this digital age,” the sheer size of TikTok and its “susceptibility to foreign adversary control, together with the vast swaths of sensitive data the platform collects” poses a national security concern
What is the point of these "rules and regulations" and "the nation's highest court" when the president could decide just not to enforce them?
Where was this line of thinking when it was Obama ordering the DEA to not enforce marijuana laws? Where is this line of thinking when it's a city that chooses not to enforce dog breed restrictions?
The enforcement of law being separate from the passage of law is a key plank in a functioning democracy, it's one of the safety valves against tyranny.
While I find it entirely plausible that Trump's character is such that he might accept bribes I am aware of no credible evidence that he has ever done so.
The president is in charge of executing the law. It’s in our system of checks and balances. I’m choosing to speak at an extremely general level, of course, but that is the answer to your question.
Specifically, I think it's "take care that the laws be faithfully executed" (Art. II, §3).
Does that mean "If foreign companies don't like our laws, they can pay to have them adjusted"? Seems not very faithful, but I hardly understand that word anymore it feels like.
I mean, SCOTUS also decided nothing a sitting President does in their official capacity while in office can be considered a crime even if it breaks the law so yeah.
The logic behind such a ruling is nonsensical. Imagine if a president, in his/her official capacity, started murdering political rivals. In other countries, that's considered a dictatorship and should be stopped. But in America, that's completely legal according to SCOTUS. In fact, that was one of the questions asked by the justices!
Apparently, committing crimes with absolute immunity is a necessary part of the presidential office. Without such protections, they'd be afraid to do things like extrajudicial drone strikes (Obama) and internment camps (FDR). Oh, wait.
I hate to "Poe's Law" this tangent, but most people forget that Hitler's rise to power was also completely legal. Just change the constitution and get the judiciary to side with you, and you can do anything. It's terrifying.
This is largely a non-starter, though? He can't choose to have it not be a law, he could choose to selectively enforce it. Where selective enforcement is assumed to be no enforcement from your post. But he could, as easily, use it to punish any company he doesn't like that is somehow in breach of it.
And this ultimately puts it in a place where you have to assume that it will be enforced against you. Right?
> Ah, clever to leave it up for bribes from ByteDance.
I agree. And the bribery already started when the Trump campaign found itself doing very well on engagement in TikTok. The CCP had already started the bribery before the election in a bid to maintain influence over the US while halting American influence in China.
The Biden administration I believe said they won't enforce the law starting Sunday, leaving it to the incoming administration to enforce. It'll be wildly popular for Trump to save TikTok, so I expect he'll do it without forcing a sale.
From what I've heard, not enforcing the ban doesn't really work. Apple/Google would be liable if the law does get enforced. So unless they've gone completely insane and want to give Trump a threat to wield over them for his whole term, they'll surely act as if it's being enforced. The term on the law is 5 years too, so even if they do have perfect trust in Trump never changing his mind, they have to worry about the next President deciding to enforce it too.
Veering off-topic but I don't understand how there isn't wide-spread protests/riots right now in the US. Is the working/middle class just accepting all of this, even when it's apparent the government is being sold for quick cash?
A couple of Trump forums focus on distractions like the California fires and delete comments about working class rights. The same forums that were full of workers' rights just until before the election.
Breitbart has nothing on immigration and displacement of US workers. It celebrates the (alleged, Trump claims a lot) phone call between Trump and Xi.
So unless the MAGA crowd goes to the capitol to protest against Trump this time, you won't hear anything anywhere.
The sitting president of the United States of America was banned by almost every major AMERICAN company, and even some Canadian companies (Shopify), yet we're going after Tiktok.
No Chinese ever banned the sitting president of the United States.
> The 75,000,000 great American Patriots who voted for me, AMERICA FIRST, and MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, will have a GIANT VOICE long into the future. They will not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way, shape or form!!!
> To all of those who have asked, I will not be going to the Inauguration on January 20th.
Twitter said the first tweet "is being interpreted as further indication that President Trump does not plan to facilitate an 'orderly transition'" and the second is "being received by a number of his supporters as further confirmation that the election was not legitimate".
So they banned him because they wanted to not because of TOS violations. If you can interpret "I will not attend" as "It's illegitimate" you can interpret anything as anything and ban anyone for any TOS provision.
In a developed country, government would ensure its citizens receive top notch education so that they are able by themselves to understand that using a Chinese owned app is just as bad as using Facebook for instance and so these app would be dead, no one would use them.
Instead when you cut so hard on education that you get millions of flat earth believers, you got to protect them from their own behavior with law. But as far as I know, no law can prevent little Jimmy from putting crayons up his nose.
Blocking TikTok won't just make its user look for better privacy, or at least more independent alternative. They will use something else just as bad or worst.. little red book for instance.
Little red book is truly evil. Every Chinese woman I know uses it. It is truly brain rotting. The relationship advice that it promulgates is every bit as toxic as the stuff on TikTok and instagram
This is going to be an interesting experiment: A widely used social network across the world WITHOUT american content.
Until now, the closest thing we had like this were national our regional networks like Russia's vk, but Vk was never truly popular outside Russian speaking countries.
Now we, for the first time ever, will have the situation where a social network has global reach but without american content.
Will it keep being a english first space? Will it survive/thrive? How the content is going to evolve? What does this means in terms of global cultural influence? Will we see internationalized Chinese content dominating it? Will this backfire for the US?
Tiktok is actually surprisingly national in how it serves its content. If you're outside the US you don't see most American accounts except the ones that go very viral.
Edit: I should clarify. This might mean most content you see is English, if you're interested in English content. However it matters where the video was geographically uploaded from. If you upload a tiktok video and check the stats you'll see most views are from your region or country.
Tiktok shows videos locally, then regionally and then finally worldwide if yoo have a big hit.
It would be interesting to know what fraction of the English content people see is posted geographically from within America.
This hasn't been my experience, using TikTok from Switzerland, I almost exclusively see English language, with a focus on my interests
Switzerland has just 8 million people, which are divided into two big language groups. And most people speak (or at least understand) English. So, it's natural for the algorithm to converge to content in English.
Lived in Switzerland and this is really not true.
What I've learned is that since Switzerland has 3 official languages (German, French and Italian) children and teens at school focus on learning one of the other two regions they are not from.
In particular this leads to French and Italian cantons to be moderately fluent in each other's language. Strikingly when I lived in Lausanne, more people knew Italian than English. English was really not on their radar (plus, add that francophones are kind of elitist when it comes to languages and don't really like to consume content that is not in french).
In German speaking Switzerland proficiency in English was still subpar from most of the rest of Europe when walking in a shop or going to a restaurant.
Not to derail, but when I was in Switzerland, I found the German Swiss to be far more elitarian about NOT learning French, than the other way around. And French Swiss being a minority, they kinda got treated as other or less-than in the bulk of Switzerland. But all German Swiss are at least willing to try English, while the French Swiss tend to avoid English, so maybe that's where the vibe comes from?
For both you and OP, first of you, thank you for "elitarian", but even after reading the definition, I still think you both meant "elitist".
And even though I probably tend to agree with both of you, it's kinda funny to blame French or German speakers about being elitist against English speakers, of which native speakers are notoriously monolingual :-)
I don't blame anyone, I'm Italian and I'm fluent in French, English and Polish besides Italian.
I'm just saying that in the French part of Switzerland English wasn't a given among any generation and it neither was common in the German/Italian parts too if you exclude the expats.
And yes, francophone tend to be very elitist about consuming exclusively french content, regardless of them being from France, Switzerland or Belgium.
Switzerland has 4 official languages and English is not one of them.
> And most people speak (or at least understand) English.
This is wrong. In cities where there's a lot of tourism, they might understand. Most Swiss people only speak their local languages (German or French). As for those living in Ticino, they tend to be better polyglots.
That doesn‘t match my experience.
About 40% of all Swiss inhabitants speak English at least once a week [1].
Anecdotally, I can't think of a single acquaintance younger than 50 years old that doesn't speak fluently. Everyone in Switzerland learns English at school for at least five years. Most even for seven years.
Some of my German speaking friends even talk in English to French speaking people, even when both have learned the other‘s respective language at school.
[1]: https://www.bfs.admin.ch/bfs/de/home/statistiken/bevoelkerun...
> Everyone in Switzerland learns English at school for at least five years. Most even for seven years.
We learn the other's respective language for 7 years, too. Yet, as you pointed out, people speak in English because there is no willingness to learn and apply the other's language.
Some of my friends speak English fluently, but I have a very hard bias as I work in IT. My whole family doesn't speak any language other than French. Most of the people I've been to school with don't come close to speaking English casually. None would watch an English content creator.
Due to the shared heritage between the English and German languages, perhaps it's different in the German-speaking region. If you ask someone slightly complicated English questions, they might not be completely lost - after all, some words share the same etymology. But Switzerland is absolutely not an English-speaking country at all.
No, I wouldn't say it's an English-speaking country either. No one talks in English to their peers that are from the same language region.
But yes, I can mostly speak of the German-speaking part. People generally have little problems switching to English, and are used to speaking as well.
Would you say this is also true of Swiss living in more rural areas? And among older people, too?
This is just a feeling, and I am still speaking for the German part only, but I think age matters less than urban/rural.
Many older people I know have no problems communicating in English when they‘re abroad.
Would be interesting to have the BFS statistics split by age group and region as well…
I met plenty of people in Lausanne who didn't speak English, or at least didn't want to speak English (it is hard to tell, and anyways, it doesn't really matter). I visited Montreal shortly after my 2 year stay in Lausanne ended and I was surprised on how multi-lingual people were there.
Well, it makes sense. Canada still has a significant English-speaking majority. Even if Québec in isolation has a French-speaking majority, there's a very large incentive for French-speaking citizens to learn English because their province is surrounded by primarily Anglophone regions.
There are also other factors at play. Montréal has a fairly large community of native English speakers and receives a lot of tourism from Anglophone Canada and the United States due to its status as the largest city in Québec (and second largest in Canada). It also gets a lot of immigrants, many of which are (at least initially) more proficient in English than in French.
I can't say I'm entirely familiar with the situation in Switzerland, but as far as I know the country has four official languages, none of which are English. It also doesn't border any English-speaking countries. It seems English is mostly used as a lingua franca for communication between citizens who don't otherwise share a language rather than due to the direct presence of native Anglophones. Also, Romansh aside, all national languages of Switzerland (French, German and Italian) are spoken in areas that directly border a country where that language is the national language (France, Italy, Germany/Austria). With Switzerland being in the Schengen Area, its linguistic regions may be considered to be part of a much larger individual linguistic communities, which I feel may also diminish the need to learn other languages.
> I can't say I'm entirely familiar with the situation in Switzerland, but as far as I know the country has four official languages, none of which are English.
The language of French Switzerland is French. You'll never hear German, Italian, or Romansch. If you only spoke German and not French or English, you really couldn't live there very effectively (only places like Bern or Basel are truly multi-lingual), yes you'll get your official docs in German but then what? I assume the same is true in German speaking Switzerland, and I have no idea about Italian Switzerland.
If a Swiss German and Swiss French met for coffee, what language do you think they would wind up speaking? Perhaps English if neither had comfortable fluency in the other language. Not to take away from your point, but English can get you really far in this world.
It is not German, but Alemannic.
I'm sorry if this sounds offensive or derogatory. But as a Swiss person, I've never heard anyone call it "Alemannic". Whether it be foreigners, Swiss-French speakers or Swiss-German speakers, everyone called it "German".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_German
> Swiss German (Standard German: Schweizerdeutsch, Alemannic German: Schwiizerdütsch, Schwyzerdütsch, Schwiizertüütsch, Schwizertitsch Mundart, and others; Romansh: Svizzers Tudestg) is any of the Alemannic dialects spoken in the German-speaking part of Switzerland, and in some Alpine communities in Northern Italy bordering Switzerland.
All Swiss-German is an Alemannic dialect, not all Alemannic dialects are Swiss-German, is how I'd interpret that.
Probably making a distinction between high german and swiss german.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alemannic_German
It depends what you interact with. I tried it fresh today and it quickly decided I'm a Berliner muslim who likes Nigerian food because I lingered for a minute on something. That interest graph is very fast and volatile.
Uhh... that's kind of how these algorithms work. I presume you interact (i.e. don't scroll past) with a lot of the English posts. It's going to index on that and show you more English content. When I'm abroad, I might see a few posts in their native language but the algorithm will revert to showing English posts about the city/country once it realizes I'm not really jiving with Portuguese posts, for example.
i mean, we all have the algorithm tailored to what we want to see, so the parent comment here is kind of a moot point, right?
I joined TikTok and was immediately barraged with naked young girls. Haven't been back since.
My experience is that it serves you the content that you spent time watching and engaging with.
And it's quite easy to steer it towards a certain topic if you want to
I believe the algo is somewhat timezone based, too.
Very common for ppl to be served Chinese or asian influencer content after 12pm (EST). So common, in fact, most of the western users begin posting "whelp, time to go to bed!"
The majority of the content feels regional, though.
I've never used tiktok... Do you mean 12AM (midnight)? Or are people commonly in the habit of mid-afternoon naps?
12PM is Noon. Did you mean Midnight?
Canada and potentially the UK are gonna be having the biggest shock I guess. Potentially Australia too?
The question is, was this a conscious human design decision or did the algorithm learn to do that by itself?
I would believe if someone said it was completely organic. It's just how Internet is and how social graphs build up. The typical American notion that the Internet is nearly 100% dominated by American English socio-cultural platform and English is the foundational language of the world's all cognitive processing is just an annoying megalomaniac hallucination.
English is used as a lot as a fallback language for inter-cultural exchanges. In that sense it's kind of dominating, but that's it. Intra-cultural communications happens in local languages, and even if that preferred language happened to be one of en-* locales, that only means everyone is functionally bilingual, and it doesn't mean cultural informational borders don't exist. Data still only goes through bridging connections.
Considering the algorithm did not crawl out of the primordial ooze unbidden by man I am going to guess the former.
The recommendation engine is at least partially learned so it’s fairly likely that it’s the latter
The algo learned "by itself", but humans set a objetive to optimize and then implemented it to do so as well as it they could.
So essentially both I guess?
It tends to get people annoyed if you don't. Facebook user distribution is like 12% Indian and 6% American. Twitter is(was) 34% English and 16% Japanese. Bluesky was at one point 43% Japanese. If your feed ISN'T filled with Hindi, Chinese, Spanish, Japanese and so on, with only one in five or less made in English sent from US, your feed is tampered with. But otherwise that social media would be genuinely less useful.
Mastodon only had the raw feed and that drove European network operators insane, so much so that they effectively GFW'd itself.
Why is that the question? If it learned to do it by itself it still is being allowed to do it by humans.
You don't deserve the downvotes from the immature peeps around here. Your question is 100% valid.
I would lean for the latter, the simple explanation may be that people just prefer local content.
As an American in the US, I get quite a bit of foreign and foreign language content under For You.
This is the inverse to the situation you describe but it makes me doubtful that non-US don't see a lot of American content.
The algo bends to your interests. But it's trivial to test the default reach if you ever post a video. They show stats for viewer location.
You can even find guides by people trying to make their phone seem american so they can reach us audiences.
If its like Reels (I dont use tiktok) as soon as you are in France its only French content. Same for youtube.
I actually had to check if TikTok was subject to the French protection laws on localized media quotas. I see it applies to Netflix et al, but not directly to TikTok.
Source?
My anecdotal evidence of watching TikTok usage on others’ phones while riding subway systems in Paris suggest there’s plenty of English-language content out there.
in Morocco most of the adults speak French and Arabic, so when they need to speak to an Englisher they get some kids over to help because they all speak English from TikTok
TikTok is surprisingly national at the surface level, but it is all coordinated back with the parent China based entities (ByteDance, Douyin, and the CCP), so that even if it is national, it upholds China’s national interests. See the story at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42739855 for more details. But basically, TikTok executives had to agree to let ByteDance monitor their personal devices, swear oaths to uphold various goals of the CCP (“national unity” “socialism” etc), report to both a US-based manager and a China-based manager, uphold the CCP’s moderation/censorship scheme, and so on. It is REALLY aggressive and unethical, but also reveals how subtly manipulative the entire system of TikTok is.
Do you think it would be possible to show this programmatically? As in scrape n posts from TikTok and Reels and show the first displays CCP tendencies?
Or is this like a general US freedom China dictator logic
It actually doesn't matter whether TT has done it already or not.
What matters is that it has the __capability__ of doing it, in ways that would be difficult to detect, when it proves expedient to do so.
Your link doesn't appear to work
https://archive.is/4Y8w5
Oh weird - it works for me. Maybe the discussion got banned somehow? Here is the underlying story: https://dailycaller.com/2025/01/14/tiktok-forced-staff-oaths...
> This is going to be an interesting experiment: A widely used social network across the world WITHOUT american content.
China has had such social networks for a long time. Their Weibo and Xiaohongshu are two prominent examples. Weibo started as a copycat of Twitter, but then beats Twitter hands-down with faster iterations, better features, and more vibrant user engagement despite the gross censorship imposed by the government.
My guess is that TT can still thrive without American content, as long as other governments do not interfere as the US did. A potential threat to TT is that the US still has the best consumer market, so creators may still flock to a credible TT-alternative for better monetization, thus snatching away TT's current user base in other countries.
Are Weibo and Xiaohongshu used widely outside of China? Given the names alone I'd imagine their adoption is fairly limited to China.
Xiaohongshu is generally known as RedNote outside of China.
To directly answer the question, Rednote is not generally used outside China, and the point about these apps being representative of "global" social media apps is false.
Xiaohongshu is used by a lot of huaqiao outside of China. It has a sizeable overseas userbase, but it also has 300M total users.
To their point, almost exclusively Chinese overseas until the recent memeing.
It received some popularity among TikTok refugees from the US and subsequently also from around the world by users who got curios about what the fuzz was all about.
RedNote was #1 on the App Store download list for a couple of days.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/chinese-app-rednote-hits-1-i...
So was this app at one point in time: https://www.theverge.com/2020/1/9/21058399/david-dobrik-disp...
It's called Dispo. You probably haven't heard of it because it became almost irrelevant a few weeks after launch. #1 on the app store doesn't mean a whole lot.
RedNote is a bit different: it has been wildly popular in China for a number of years, and the Chinese community has been using it overseas already.
It may not retain all the new users, but it is not going to become irrelevant.
I agree. But I'm just saying that #1 on the app store doesn't preclude something from being a fad and my guess is that in 1 month's time, no one is going to be talking about RedNote outside of Chinese communities.
That’s an extremely recent development caused by the TT shutdown looming.
How many of those downloads originated in China? Genuine question, I read the article and it doesn't say. Apple's App Store is available in China, and China's population alone could be skewing those numbers.
App store top apps are per-region. And China one likely even running on completely different infrastructure because CCP.
Yes it's called a meme and it won't last.
Which is honestly weird. It's Little Red Book, not Red Note, in reference to Mao's little red book.
Xiaohingshu is widely used outside China... by Chinese.
My experience in the UK is that the whole Chinese community is on it for anything (discussions, classifieds...) instead of Facebook, Insta, etc.
Looks like it's getting a lot of TikTik refugees now
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c2475l7zpqyo
Yeah, if "widely used" means that multiple nations and cultures use the service, then they are not widely used.
> creators may still flock to a credible TT-alternative for better monetization
Seems people are already mass migrating to Rednote. I’m not sure how that plays out though.
I think it will be a temporary phenomenon. Tiktok people arrived on RedNote last week and were jaw-droppingly amazed at videos of flashy modern Chinese cities, natural wonders (Guilin mountains), beautifully dressed young men and women, tasty food, Luigi fandom, and cute cats.
For many it was a revelation that the US government/media complex has been systematically lying to them about China. They are arriving at an acceptance that the US is a shabby declining empire dominated by a corrupt elite and heartless broligarchs. Always a good thing to bump up against reality, imho.
However I think that the US-based population of Tiktok refugees will subside once the novelty effect has worn off. Probably shrink by half in a month. Hopefully there will remain a positive lingering effect.
Yeah, me neither. Some analysis said the absolute number is large but the percentage is still small. And the migration is more about protesting. Xiaohongshu will need to come up with better monetization schemes too.
Re. copycats -- VK was also a blatant copycat of Facebook, down to copy-pasted CSS styles.
The very first versions, IIRC. Now they have diverged completely.
> Will we see internationalized Chinese content dominating it?
This is a weird fantasy, but it brings up an interesting point. The complete lack of Chinese influence on global pop culture. Especially when compared to Japan or Korea, countries with a fraction of the population but many, many times the influence.
I wish the CCP didn't wall off their citizens from the rest of the world in the name of protecting their own power. Think of the creativity we are all losing out on.
> The complete lack of Chinese influence on global pop culture
The CCP has tried to get their culture out there, it just has not been successful at the visually obvious scale of Japan or Korea. But their culture is definitely getting out there, and I think we often don't spot the Chinese influence on something unless some journalist finds out and writes an article about it.
Some of their influence is leveraged in business deals, with several movies being altered by the demand of the CCP, and these changes persisting in worldwide releases, not just the Chinese-released version of the movies.
Some of their influence is leveraged in video games- Genshin Impact is a famously successful Chinese game. There are some competitive Chinese teams in various pockets of e-sports too. Tencent also owns several video game developers, and occasionally uses their influence to change parts of a game to please the CCP.
There is a Chinese animation industry (print and video), and occasionally they get a worldwide success. I remember being surprised when I found out that "The Daily Life of the Immortal King" was Chinese- you can tell it isn't Japanese but lots of people guess that it is Korean.
Government can't create culture and art anymore than a tech company can. They can only allow it to grow and spread, or block it.
Mostly true but the exception is K-Pop, which as I understand was the creation of a project by the South eKorean government. There was a severe financial crisis in the late 1990s where the country almost went bankrupt. Desperately seeking sources of revenue, the government funded K-Pop groups which eventually become a global phenomenon (BTS et al). At least that is what some Koreans have told me.
I became so interested in ancient Chinese mythology after playing black myth wukong. Also my cousin is watching cDramas all the time and she intends to marry Chinese guy… So I think the soft power is there already, whether we like it or not. but I think it’s good to have competing content instead of being fed whatever powers that be think is good fur us
As someone who wants to learn Chinese, I think about it all the time. Watching Chinese shows just isn't as fun for whatever reason. I was telling my wife the other day I have met so many people who credit Friends for why they can speak English.
That's soft power right there.
I've had to resort to watching anime on Netflix with Chinese dubs - anime is good because people actually talk slower and usually use simple language. When I watched Three Body (Chinese version) the dialogue was impenetrable lol
Taiwanese shows are better if you want to learn Chinese. They speak clearly and don’t speak fast like China shows.
For better or worse, I think CCP has long been on the backfoot in international propaganda just because what passes for persuasive narratives in authoritarian contexts falls flat to global audiences fluent in western entertainment and media culture.
Of course they have modernized, but most actual influence obtained thus fair (e.g. international olympic committees covering up investigations, stopping the NBA from venturing criticisms) has come from projection of soft power rather than being on the cultural cutting edge.
What do you mean by "global pop culture" here?
I've never considered there to be one, although I'm open to the idea.
It's easy for me to recognize an Ameican pop culture or an Anglo pop culture, and the favor each show for certain imports over others, but those don't seem nearly so universal as your usage of "global pop culture" suggests.
Latin, Arabic, Russian, Chinese, French, Indian/South Asian, etc each represent huge "pop culture" markets of their own but also each have their own import biases.
I'd say that in the last two years China has advanced quite a big step with video-games.
The only good Chinese language films were all filmed in Hong Kong, directed by people like Wong Kar-Wai. In the Mood for Love is widely considered one of the greatest films ever made.
Chinese cultural (and censor) sensibilities are why big budget US movies are almost universally boring and terrible these days. Authoritarian societies aren’t exactly known for creating good art.
“Chinese movies” are popular in Vietnam for example, so not fair to say they have no global reach.
Those two share a border, how does that show global reach? I would be surprised if a country didn’t influence its neighbors in some ways.
This is precisely what i'm talking about. A country of 1.4b with a film industry that gets billions in state subsidies and they best they can do is mild popularity of a few films on their physical borders.
Censorship is the enemy of art.
As a Chinese American, this is the real reason people don't know about China.
To be honest, most of the movies/shows China creates sucks. They're Marvel-esque CGI fests with awful storylines.
Meanwhile, Japan and Korea are creating awesome media.
The whole narrative about the US gov trying to "hide" China isn't really true. There are a ton of viral videos on YouTube about how great China is. And we welcome Chinese immigrants every year.
The real problem is that China itself doesn't execute when it comes to soft power.
I think you are a bit too premature: China has at least one(usually dozens) competitor for literally everything America has. You just don't hear about everything in the US.
Think of any industry and there is probably a Chinese competitor that is trying.
Tesla -> BYD
Google -> Baidu
Starbucks -> Luckin Coffee
IMAX -> China Film Giant Screen or maybe POLYMAX
Finally Disney -> Possibly Beijing Enlight Pictures
They released an animated film Ne Zha in 2019 that according to wikipedia was "the highest-grossing animated film in China,[16] the worldwide highest-grossing non-U.S. animated film,[17] and the second worldwide highest-grossing non-English-language film of all time at the time of its release. With a gross of over $725 million,[18] it was that year's fourth-highest-grossing animated film, and China's all time fourth-highest-grossing film.[19]"
[1]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ne_Zha_(2019_film)
Some great info here [2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2J0pRJSToU
Ok I'll admit part of the reason people don't hear about these companies is that they are still too half baked. But look at BYD, they started off producing junk but this Chinese mindset of grinding and rapid iteration has put them to be super successful today. Why couldn't that kind of happen with their Disney competitor?
Another thing that might be happening is the literal closing off of the world into two spheres. Western US led and Eastern Chinese led. As we are seeing with BYD, they are taking over all the non western markets(and some western as well) but the US has essentially slammed the door shut on them (they haven't actually but made it impossible to enter with their tariffs). Maybe the Disney competitor will take hold in the non western aligned world?
Honestly its a shame they are not open or democratic. The idea of watching or even being part of a rising country that is building their empire is fascinating to watch. Will they collapse due to demographics or these fundamental issues like communism or will they make it? Unfortunately for many people, the only option is to stick with the US and work to keep the ship afloat as there is no place for them in China.
I'm resentful for not having BYD here to offer affordable vehicles. The vast numbers of people who are now boxed out of the middle class could desperately use the help of a vehicle that doesn't cost them $700 a month.
True that. My wife watched a few Chinese dramas, but they're quite boring compared to k-dramas or japanese shows. I find them annoying and full of propaganda. Only the historical ones are borderline interesting. Also the CCP crackdown on celebrities didn't help.
By contrast, there's now a very good k-drama with Lee Min-ho happening in space or the Gyeongseong Creature horror drama with Park Seo-joon.
I did see some good Chinese movies, mostly out of Hong Kong. Wong Kar-wai directed a bunch of good ones but they all predate Xi's regime and the takeover of HK.
One of my favourite contemporary artists is Ai Weiwei, who has gone missing in 2011 only to finally reappear four years later. I understand he now lives in Portugal. Got his book on my night stand, 1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows.
Or perhaps you haven't encountered Chinese content because of soft suppression of the content from within the US bubble
Do you have any concrete examples of Chinese culture elements as popular as anime that is "supressed" in the US?
I don't buy this narrative, even as a Chinese American.
There are a ton of viral videos on YouTube about people travelling the most beautiful parts of China. Free for everyone to consume.
Chinese movies/shows just kind of suck, especially compared to the quality of Kdramas and anime.
> This is going to be an interesting experiment: A widely used social network across the world WITHOUT american content.
For whom? UK users?
TikTok users who use the Chinese version are not consuming content from US creators. They won't notice this ban at all.
> For who? UK users?
Literally every TikTok user from around the world? There's more than just the US, UK, and China, y'know.
I think they meant that because content is siloed already by language barriers, the only ecosystem that would be affected by the removal of US users is the English-speaking subsystem.
That said, the English-speaking world clearly extends well beyond the US and English commonwealth countries nowadays. Also, a lot of videos don't have any dialogue and can also cross the language barrier.
2/3 of the global population doesn’t speak English.
TikTok content is mostly visual. My YouTube shorts are frequently foreign language with AI subtitles.
Also, TikTok is banned in India and—ironically—China [1].
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_of_TikTok
A valid point, but I doubt people are going to notice if “clips of people slipping on ice” suddenly exclude Americans post 2024.
There will be a small category of content that will disappear. For instance, my fyp was full of Chinese fashion content (by choice) so I'm sure there are other categories of content that non-Americans consume that are American. Whether it's Movies or Music or whatever.
English is literally the most commonly spoken language in the world. No language in the world will fit your criteria if you want more than two thirds of the global population to speak it.
Why would that criteria matter when what we are discussing is the impact when you remove a country’s creators from a platform?
> Why would that criteria matter when what we are discussing is the impact when you remove a country’s creators from a platform?
That country’s creators belong to the largest native-speaking bloc of the most-commonly spoken language (native or not) in the world.
Actual numbers of English speakers already captured that info. Saying there’s no other language that comes close doesn’t change anything here.
That doesn't sound accurate. Did you mean as a first language?
A quick search seems to confirm this. A few sites list the number to be around ~1.3 billion people who speak English at all, with around ~360-380 million being native speakers. For example: https://www.babbel.com/en/magazine/how-many-people-speak-eng....
https://www.statista.com/statistics/266808/the-most-spoken-l...
> first language?
1/3 of the global population is at all, there’s only 380 million native English speakers.
US, UK, Canada, Australia is where you find the bulk of native speakers. In say Germany or whatever they may become fluent but it’s relatively rare for German parents to be speaking English to each other in casual conversation next to an infant’s crib.
> there’s only 380 million native English speakers
Not how a lingua franca works.
There are 1.5 to 2 billion English speakers [1]. By far the largest number of people to speak a single language. Most of them are in America [2]. (If you count English learners, No. 2 is China [3].)
[1] https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/english-today/articl...
[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/English-speaking_world
[3] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/236986651_The_stati...
CIA gives 18.8%, so about 1.5 billion. [1]
But this number is dubious as it's largely from self response. Here [2] is a list by country. So 25% of Thais, 50% of Ukrainians, 50% of Poles, and so on "speak English."
In the sense of being able to say hello, thank you, and introduce themselves that is probably true. But "my name is Bob" maketh not a common tongue. If we narrowed it down to the percent of people that could hold a basic conversation, the number would plummet precipitously, likely leaving Mandarin at the top.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_languages...
[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_English-s...
> the number would plummet precipitously, likely leaving Mandarin at the top
70% of Chinese speak Mandarin as a first language [1].
> the sense of being able to say hello, thank you, and introduce themselves that is probably true
This is English learners. If you count English learners, a third of Chinese speak English and a majority of the internet-connected world.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_China
Being fluent is a different question, you can dream in English without it being your native language.
first language = A first language (L1), native language, native tongue, or mother tongue is the first language a person has been exposed to from birth
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_language
Yes, we understand what a first language is. You should understand why that’s irrelevant to this discussion.
You know, they weren't the one to bring it up and their point seems to have consistently been that the majority of the global population does not speak English.
Plurality of the world (25%) and a larger plurality of the internet-connected world (37%, [1]) speak English. (Granted, most of TikTok’s market now probably doesn’t speak English.)
[1] https://www.itu.int/en/ITU-D/Statistics/pages/stat/default.a...
> majority of the global population does not speak English
> Plurality of the world ... speak English
Sorry, what point are you trying to make?
Which was my original comment…
As their first language, perhaps
There are only about 400 million native English speakers. You can't just add up the population of English speaking countries, because that excludes immigrants living in these countries, and people born there who did not learn English as their first language.
As for people who learned it later, even in Europe, only about 40% self-identify as being able to speak English. If you visit places like China or Indonesia, you'll soon notice that very few people know more than a few basic words in English once you leave the tourist areas.
IMO first-or-not is moot. It’s estimated that around one billion people speak English to a reasonably fluent level. Included in that is many of the commonwealth countries in which English often holds second spot as a lingua franca (eg. India). It’s an incredibly global language.
I don't think anyone disputes that it is an incredibly global language. I certainly don't.
this is horseshit. Canada, the US and the UK alone have - minimum - 400 million. Australia has 25 million, Ireland 5, New Zealand 5, then there's the Anglophone African nations, plus a lot of the Carribbean. Nigeria on its own likely has 100 million native speakers of English
As I've said, you can't just sum up populations. About 20% of the US population are immigrants. A lot of them won't speak English as their native language.
Only about 60 million Nigerians speak English. Hausa is the most commonly spoken native language. Just because English is the official language doesn't mean that it's people's native language.
I'm not just making stuff up. The 400 million number is from The Ethnologue, a source which linguists generally consider as reliable.
I'd like to see their working for that number. Let's say we subtract 20% from Canada + the UK + the US, we get ~320 million. add Nigeria and Uganda and you have easily 400 million. That's without Australia, Ireland, New Zealand or any of the African or Caribbean countries.
> You have easily 400 million
No you don’t: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Nigeria
~60 million people in Nigeria speak English out of 230 million people, but that 60 million isn’t almost exclusively native speakers.
There aren't that many native English speakers in Nigeria and Uganda. To me, it looks like your back-of-the-envelope calculation will come pretty close to 400 million.
Have you been to Nigeria?
Not all Nigerians can speak English. But there are a lot who can. It honestly felt about 50/50 to me. And I see some other commenters saying that 60 million Nigerians have some ability to speak it. (But you need to think of that like if I was to say 60 million Americans have some ability to speak Spanish.)
However, even for those with some facility with English,I don't know that I'd classify it as their native language.
That’s at all, there are only ~380 million native English speakers.
Of that 1/3 (of the global population) a significant percentage have extremely limited skills, though the threshold is above knowing a few random words.
> Including people who speak English as a second language, estimates of the total number of Anglophones vary from 1.5 billion to 2 billion
wikipedia. You are a bit off...
As for native you have US+UK+Canada+Australia+NZ+Ireland. So more then your 380M.
~47 million Americans aren’t native English speakers having immigrated from a non English speaking country.
Who cares if they're native English speakers or not, as long as they can converse in the language?
shortrounddev2 who brought the topic up without knowing the numbers.
Source?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_immigration_stat...
> aren’t native English speakers
Where does it state this?
Do you assume that all immigrants are non-native english speakers?
By coming from different country their native language (IE what language they heard as infants) more closely resembles that country than America. Note I said 47 million and there are more than 47 million immigrants.
There are also some native born Americans to immigrants who also don’t have English as their first language and People born in China whose first language is English, but that’s ever smaller refinements on a specific estimate.
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You made this statement which is wrong:
> ~47 million Americans aren’t native English speakers having immigrated from a non English speaking country.
Your link says 46M total which includes native speakers. So it does not state how many non-native speakers. (not that it would matter as most would be proficient english speakers, just pointing out you're exagerating and your numbers are wrong)
Link is showing slightly outdated data as is common on Wikipedia, but the breakdown by country is what’s important.
“About 47.8 million immigrants in 2023” https://usafacts.org/answers/how-many-immigrants-are-in-the-...
My family immigrated. We’re native English speakers from India.
So immigration had zero impact on your family being a native English speaker. And again 47 < 47.8
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The question of your native language is answered long before any of what you’re talking about here. A 20 year old isn’t time traveling to have different parents when they take an exam.
If they are native English speakers, then how do they have extremely limited skills?
I added clarification, but “that 1/3” refers to my prior mention of 1/3 as in 1/3 of the global population.
American education.
> TikTok users who use the Chinese version
The what now? There are no Chinese nationals using TikTok. It's banned there. Like it's now banned in the US.
Douyin is TikTok. Before all the drama started, it was the same software powered by most of the same backend servers.
Douyin is a fundamentally different product. Different content, less addictive, etc.
its fantastic for canada
Ah yes, USA, UK and China. The 3 countries that exist.
> but Vk was never truly popular outside Russian speaking countries.
Can't really disagree, but it's my favorite place to pirate fonts. Typing out site:vk.com <thing I want> feels like a real life cheat code.
> widely used social network across the world WITHOUT american content.
As of January 2025, the countries with the most TikTok users are:
Indonesia: Has the most active users with 157.6 million
United States: 120.5 million
Brazil: 105.2 million
Mexico: 77.5 million
Vietnam: 65.6 million
Pakistan: 62.0 million
Philippines: 56.1 million
Russian Federation: 56.0 million
Thailand: 50.8 million
Bangladesh: 41.1 million
I presume the US market is the dominant target market for ads / influencing, a quick google search suggests it is 75% of the global spend. So the other issue is not just losing US influencers but all influencers will take a haircut. I don't know how much of popular content is paid for by such revenue but taking a 75% haircut could put a real damper on content producers - especially those who make it a full time job. I don't know if that'll make it better with an increase in proportion of more organic content. I personally don't use TikTok - I waste enough time on HN.
There is an additional separate issue that influencer is a coveted 'career' for many children (~30%), so not only would it wipe out many jobs it'll kill their dreams. I guess like cancelling the space program at a time when kids really wanted to be astronauts.
I think there is a lot wrong with society and TikTok is part of it - but that's a much longer discussion for some other time.
If so, good riddance. The good point of TikTok is that the videos appear genuine and wholesome. Not the hyper-optimized for monetization crap YouTube Shorts show you. I much prefer the videos with kids goofing around on icy streets over the American narrator telling me some bs about some great baseball player.
> it'll kill their dreams.
They can dream new dreams. I didn't become an astronaut—and realized I didn't actually want to become one, either.
Sometimes dreams are all they have - especially if they're young.
I think we have to understand the reality that the economy today is not what it once was, not even close. I think a lot of people are looking to the influence trade since they see the corporate / political / economic future as failing them and they want to carve out something on their own while the getting is good and while they still can. Sure some just want to be famous but others appear to have a very realistic view of their prospects both as an influencer and elsewhere.
But how viable is it? There's 47 active astronauts and millions of children have dreamt of becoming one.
Well the Astronaut dream clearly wasn’t viable, influencer isn’t viable for 30% of the population but it could be viable for a much bigger proportion.
A lot of creative people were doing very well on TikTok. It made the careers of a huge number of indie writers.
When I say "made" I mean "Earning six or even seven figures."
Crafts and art services were also doing well. And certain influencers, obviously.
It pretty much took over from Insta, which Meta somehow managed to shoot in the head with some of their algo changes.
So - politics aside - that community is pretty unhappy about this.
Dealing with this is going to be interesting insight into Trump's leanings.
Hopefully the US tech industry is not so schlerotic that they're unable to clone it and offer a competitive alternative. Given TikTok has demonstrated there's a huge amount of money to be made in that space. Although given how awful Google Shorts and Reels' recommendation algorithms are in comparison, maybe there really will be no replacement.
This was covered in a recent podcast. Apparently TikTok classifies videos on many more factors than e.g. Youtube and other US companies. China can do this because they have a cheap pool of many users who can perform this activity.
The podcaster felt that with AI capabilities getting better day by day (maybe - that's another discussion) that this multi factor classification could be automated. It seems not to have been done yet AFAIK.
You'd think with all the H1Bs the US is importing some of those could bring in some recommendation engine expertise.
The truth is that the recommendation engine is power and people drawn to power in the US were too quick to abuse it driving out the old hands - and once institutional knowledge is lost it's hard to get back.
It will still legally have American content, but only propaganda :)
https://www.kenklippenstein.com/p/biden-administration-quiet...
India also banned TikTok a while ago
Orkut was one American social network that barely had any American content because it was taken over by Brazilians.
I don't think it will survive because non American cultural exports are not quite there yet you have to be born outside the US to understand the reach of Hollywood/cultural export as an opinion shaping tool
But then again Telegram survived and they had to resort to kidnapping the CEO so if it does survive the US pretty much gifted that space to a geopolitical adversary
But I'm pretty sure Langley/MD folk thought about this and are betting on it not surviving
It will take ages for that to happen. AFAIK the "ban" only really removes it from app stores, I don't think it even requires store owners to force it off of phones that have downloaded it already.
The data must be hosted in the US. Oracle will have to shutdown their servers.
Although TikTok has said they are gearing up to shut the service down.
I wonder if it's more of a deactivation pending XYZ, with a readiness to flip the on-switch back on if there's a policy change in the U.S. (which it seems like there might be).
It probably prevents them from distributing updates though.
True enough but I don't think that will be fast either. The main reason to update would be features and they can keep the old version of any APIs up to support US customers. Other than that the only reason they would have to update is any breaking changes in Android/iOS which are a lot rarer these days afaik since they're both so mature as OSs.
There are such products. Outside of America whatsapp is a dominant social app but its use internally is almost mute despite being an american social app.
Tiktok america is over 50% of tiktok revenue I think that more than anything else would choke out growth world wide.
> Will we see internationalized Chinese content dominating it?
TikTok does not exist in China, they have their own version -- Douyin -- that complies with their more stringent privacy laws.
How will YouTube shorts, and instagram stories pivot? They already aren’t seen as true rivals, but maybe they can change or spinoff a third brand. The gold in TR has always been its algorithm. Maybe they can fake it. How easy will it be to circumvent via vpn? Will other English content on tt skyrocket? Eg uk and Canada.
>The gold in TR has always been its algorithm.
Yes, but it's also singularly focused on its core experience rather than being a bolted-on experience that is confusingly blended into an ecosystem where it's not the primary experience.
YouTube Shorts is terrible. YouTube clearly wanted to have some answer to short-form video but without putting much effort into it.
Instagram Reels is a bit better but it feels very "sanitized" and fake.
I'm really at loss at how bad Google is at algorithms considering how pioneering they have been in selecting engineers based on their algorithmic skills and their immense contributions to the whole ML sector.
I can let Spotify play on its own for hours and it will be just right...Even with songs I know nothing about, it's just very good.
I tried Tik Tok once and I could see how easily it could pick content.
But Youtube and Youtube Music are a disaster. Youtube Music is a decent service, but it's hard to get suggested anything really.
Youtube Shorts are a disaster. Sure I like the Sopranos, I find some Joe Rogan's interview interesting and sure I like the NBA, but that's virtually all it feeds me, even if I start scrolling away to other topics.
I think it’s going to be a lesson to Americans about just how little their content actually matters to the other 96% of the world.
Some other countries banned tiktok too, e.g. India
And China!
How about WeChat, little red book, … in fact the mainland version of tt, …
If a US-based alternative appeared which not only substituted performatively, but also monetized creators and influencers enough to put everyone else to shame, people could not help but notice and migrate there in droves.
It would be pretty cool if there was a respectable capitalist with enough money, or if that won't do it then a bigger more-respectable political organization or something, and Tiktok would be nothing but a memory of how things used to be before they got better.
Think about it, a social force or financial pressure strong enough to reverse unfavorable trends, even after they have already gained momentum.
And all it takes is focusing that pressure in an unfamiliar direction that could probably best be described as "anti-enshittification".
I know, that's a tall ask, never mind . . .
I’d worry that such a platform would be used to reverse social trends unfavorable to the owner, instead of social trends unfavorable to society in general.
It also seems… sort of bad if an individual has the ability to be strong enough to reverse a social trend, right? So we basically would have to expect one of the trends they should reverse to be… their own existence. In general it is unreasonable to expect individuals to be so enlightened as to work against their own existence, I think.
This is why I can't wait for Loops to enable real federation, because it distributes this over a number of instances and isn't putting all the eggs in one basket.
>such a platform would be used to reverse social trends unfavorable to the owner,
Could very well be why Tiktok appeared to begin with, as the original owner's mission.
You're right, anyone who replaced it would most likely have the same mission.
Otherwise,
>expect one of the trends they should reverse to be… their own existence.
Yeah, that won't happen.
Very few could afford it anyway, probably only the usual suspects.
Ah, so Confucius say "Enshittification will be its own reward".
I guess that's as enlightened as things are going to get :\
Is TikTok big in Europe? Is Europe big on social media?
yes on both
> This is going to be an interesting experiment:
Unclear. Biden and Trump both have stated that they will decline to enforce this law.
Until trump lets it sink, tgis is mwaninvless.
Cash bribes are how laws are define now. Is america avaluable audiemce?
First, I still don't think the ban will actually happen. The current administration will punt the issue to the next and Trump has already signaled he wants to save Tiktok, whatever that means. That might be by anointing a buyer that he personally is an investor in. Tiktok may choose to still shutter in the US rather than being forcibly sold.
But there's a biger issue than loss of American content should this come to pass: the loss os American ad revenue for the platform and creators. A lot of people create content aimed at Americans because an American audience is lucrative for ad revenue. If that goes away, what does that do to the financial viability of the platform?
More like Trump can use it as a bargaining chip with China.
> Trump has already signaled he wants to save Tiktok
Trump can blame Biden and move on.
> If that goes away, what does that do to the financial viability of the platform?
Bytedance makes most of its money from Douyin.
He has a major donor that owns part of TikTok. He'll save it for corrupt reasons, ignore the real concerns about it, then move on.
> He has a major donor that owns part of TikTok
He has a major donor who owns part of Bytedance. They’re not losing their investment with this ban.
1. Then why is that investor so aggressively against the forced divestment? (not a ban)
2. Bytedance will certainly lose value if its main product loses one of its main markets.
He also has a major donor who owns Meta, and a major donor who owns Twitter/X.
He also has a daughter who is the only American to hold patents in China without having to license IP to a Chinese company.
We are about to see some strange mental gymnastics out of 1600 Penn.
Anyone with significant financial interests in China should not be able to represent the US in confronting China.
And yet..
A worrying angle is that Elon is essentially subservient to the CCP because of Tesla’s presence in China. Remember when Tesla signed a pledge to uphold socialism at the behest of the CCP a couple years back? It’s also why Elon - who claims to uphold free speech, capitalism, democratic values, etc - will NEVER say anything negative about China. If Trump is close to Elon, and Elon is easily influenced/controlled by the CCP, it really undermines the independence of US leadership. I am concerned this next administration will be soft on China in all the wrong ways, including not enforcing a ban that has been legally instituted and upheld unanimously by SCOTUS.
Or Indian content. It will probably end up getting banned in a lot of places over time.
Instagram and Facebook is more popular outside the US and China than TikTok.
At least in Germany, for Gen Z, Facebook is quite dead and Instagram co-exists with TikTok, both with >70% of the cohort [1] using them. There is no clear winner. Anecdata, but for freshmen, TikTok is way more popular.
TikTok-based social media campaigns also e.g. managed to unexpectedly swing an election in Romania (for Georgescu, was later annulled).
[1] https://www.absatzwirtschaft.de/tiktok-vs-instagram-ein-verg... - sorry, I only found a German source
Why do you think Instagram is immune from being used in social media based campaign? The only difference between TikTok and Instagram is the recommendation engine they use
... I do not think that it's immune? I don't see where I implied this, sorry if I was unclear. ^^'
This specific campaign was done via TikTok, though, and had massive impact, which shows that TikTok has heavy usage and is popular, outside of the US and China.
(I'm not American, I have no horse in this "ban foreign TikTok" race. :D)
Sorry me neither english no good the thing I'm trying to understand why do you think they used TikTok over YT shorts or Instagram Reels? What makes it better suited from a coding POV usage numbers suggest comparable MAUs for all three
That it was done via TikTok was widely reported by news outlets on all sides of the political spectrum where I live.
Why they've done it via TikTok - I simply don't know. :D
Maybe better discoverability via the For You page?
aw man disappointing was hoping someone had a dataset for rating discoverability, platform bias etc tired of news from all spectrums :)
maybe next Christmas if I'm not on the Santa naughty list
Yeah, actual comparable hard data would be nice, agreed :D
India also just banned TikTok, I wouldn't be surprised if bans became widespread outside of America with any country worried about China's geopolitical power.
I think the easiest answer to follow for "why is this not prevented by free speech protection" is "the fact that petitioners “cannot avoid or mitigate” the effects of the Act by altering their speech." (page 10 of this ruling, but is a reference to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turner_Broadcasting_System,_In...)
Simple answer. A chinese owned company has no such rights or protections. Free speech does not apply. The law also does not censor content (so no free speech violation anyway). The law simply bans the distribution of the app on marketplaces stores for reasons stated (national security). Big difference.
The EFF disagrees.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/01/eff-statement-us-supre...
[delayed]
Interesting that the reference linked is in reference to must-carry regulation. The tiktok scenario is the opposite though? Must-not-carry that content! I suppose Uncle Sam's sword cuts both ways.
This is a limitation on foreign control of TikTok, not a limitation on speech. TikTok can stay in the us market if it eliminates the foreign control
Congress is explicitly empowered in the Constitution to regulate foreign trade. Free speech is not relevant.
That's a great point. Hadn't thought about that angle
The easier answer is ”This is really eating into Meta’s revenues”
The United States is currently in the middle of a cyber cold-war with China.
They hacked all of our major telco's and many of America's regulatory organizations including the treasury department. Specifically they used the telco hacks to gather geolocation data in order to pinpoint Americans and to spy on phone calls by abusing our legally mandated wiretap capabilities.
Yet people are arguing that we should allow the people who did that to continue to install apps on millions of Americans phones.
I can't tell if people just don't know that this is happening, or if they take their memes way too seriously. I sort of wonder if they don't know it's happening because they get their news from Tiktok and Tiktok is actively suppressing the stories.
The TikTok ban is security theater through and through.
Chinese spy agencies don't have to make an app that millions of American teens use to harvest data on them. American companies have been doing the job for them.
They — just like the FBI, NSA, American police departments and almost every TLA — can just buy the data from a broker, https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/01/nsa-finally-admi...
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/06/how-federal-government...
The brokers don't care. They'll sell to anyone and everyone. And the people they sell to don't care either. They'll process and re-sell it too. And on and on, until it ends up in the hands of every interested party on Earth, i.e. everyone.
So don't worry, the Chinese already have a detailed copy of your daily routine & reading habits. Just love this new world that we've created to make $0.002/click.
EDIT — if it makes you feel any better, the Chinese are doing it too!
https://www.wired.com/story/chineses-surveillance-state-is-s...
> The vendors in many cases obtain that sensitive information by recruiting insiders from Chinese surveillance agencies and government contractors and then reselling their access, no questions asked, to online buyers. The result is an ecosystem that operates in full public view where, for as little as a few dollars worth of cryptocurrency, anyone can query phone numbers, banking details, hotel and flight records, or even location data on target individuals.
- harvesting data: sure the CCP could buy some data from data brokers; but that data is very limited compared to the data that TikTok itself has on its users
but data harvesting is not the real problem
the big problem is that you have a social network to which millions of your citizens are connected and used daily, which is under the control of a foreign adversary; it's a bit like if CBS was owned by the CCP
100% this. Setting the topic of conversation for millions of Americans is absolutely unacceptable to throw to the hands of foreign powers.
But it’s acceptable to put in the hands of Elon Musk?
From a geopolitics standpoint, the effective question here is “whose guns are the owners of the company worried about?” Elon is a bit of an outlier here because he’s effectively bought the government now, but in theory, if the US government decides to arrest Elon and seize his assets, that’s a big problem for Elon, whereas if China does, that’s a lesser problem for him (yes, Tesla, I know). It’s the same reason the US banned Huawei from US telecoms: the US government can’t threaten Huawei like they can Cisco.
None of this is a normative statement - I’m not saying that this is good or bad, but if you want to know why the US government thinks Elon is better than ByteDance, it’s because they can shoot Elon tomorrow if they decide to, but they can’t shoot Zhang Yiming without causing an international incident.
No, that's not acceptable either. Elon should never have been allowed to get full control of Twitter/X. But that is a separate battle. And it doesn't make the issue with TikTok being under CCP control any less of a problem (unless you're China and trying to shift the narrative with "what about Elon", and if you are that basically proves the point that you can't have a foreign adversary in a position to be able to heavily, while subtly, influence public opinion through an algorithm.)
No making decisions by a committee of individuals doing their best in an open and transparent way is the correct method.
Basically what Twitter was before Elon bought it.
That incessant whataboutism is the only recourse of those who oppose the ban really helps the cause of those who are for it.
Elon Musk doesn't have a military hostile to the US, nor are his companies controlled by any, so for the purposes of this concern, yes.
When it comes to actual harm done to Americans (particularly via their own data), that harm is continually done by US commercial and government interests.
He does take regular phone calls from Putin, the content of which we're not privy to, and he meets with the Iranian government on the down-low.
I think those alone would be grounds to at least take a close look at his access to Twitter data, his censorship choices and any input he has into the algorithms.
Don't we need to have a pretty low opinion of the average american cognitive skill to feel the need to protect them from foreign propaganda for fear it would take a hold on them?
If the general public is that stupid and that this kind of protection is really needed, then it also means that democracy is no longer a viable form of government because the public is also too stupid to vote.
> Don't we need to have a pretty low opinion of the average american cognitive skill to feel the need to protect them from foreign propaganda for fear it would take a hold on them
that's naive. Literally leaving CNN on in your living room 3 days a week will eventually change you opinions. Our minds absorb things we hear repetitively, even if we now they might be half truths or lies.
> Don't we need to have a pretty low opinion of the average american cognitive skill to feel the need to protect them from foreign propaganda for fear it would take a hold on them?
No. Influential foreign propaganda is inconspicuous. There’s nothing to be mindful of other than “who benefits if this is widely believed?” and it’s not a low opinion to think most people aren’t mindful of that.
Propaganda works. PR works. The global ad industry is worth trillions, not because it doesn't work.
I'm not saying that it doesn't work and I'm not saying that I hold the general public in high esteem. What I say is that holding the general public in low esteem while at the same time holding democratic values sacred is, as Spock would say, illogical.
> What I say is that holding the general public in low esteem while at the same time holding democratic values sacred is, as Spock would say, illogical.
I fully agree. The last year has shaken my confidence in democracy more than any other time in my lifetime. Not because of threats of war or revolution, but because what is the point of elections if the majority is chronically misinformed? Why have a yes/no election if no one knows what the question is?
It's still the best worst system, and i'm still going to vote in 2 years and again in 4, but my faith is low.
This leads to why the US didn't setup a pure democracy. The job of certain long term branches like the senate, supreme court & certain unelected positions is to be able to think long term & say "eat your veggies" without the worry of losing there job because someone else is offering nice European chocolates.
Democratic values are good but not without flaws.
If you acknowledge that all humans have a lot of cognitive biases and information processing weaknesses, acknowledging that these are easily exploitable is not holding people in low esteem. It is taking a realistic stance on how open all of us are to being influenced in ways that we will not notice and barely understand.
> If the general public is that stupid
What is your evidence that propaganda efficacy scales inversely with intelligence?
An interesting parallel, they've studied cult recruitment and intelligent people are not less likely to join one. In fact, often times, the better they are at reasoning, the better they are at convincing themselves something bad is in fact ok.
It's self-evident. Propaganda is defused through rhetorical skills. You know, knowing about the general forms of sophism, all that stuff. Rhetorical skills correlate with intelligence.
> Don't we need to have a pretty low opinion of the average american cognitive skill
Well, half the country voted for a convicted felon who _illegally tried to overturn the results of an election_, so yeah, it's pretty low.
> democracy is no longer a viable form of government because the public is also too stupid to vote.
"Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others" -- Churchill
It's flawed, but still miles better than what China has. At least there are still some safeguards on Trump, unlike Xi.
Do not underestimate your enemy.
Fifty four percent of Americans now read below the sixth grade level.
That's a convenient fig leaf.
There are 2 separate problems:
The existance of a different problem is not a justification to avoid progress on the original one.PS: Curious how many total comments there are on this article. Either everyone is 3x as likely to comment on it as usual or something else is different. Ijs.
But neither of those problems are addressed by a TikTok ban. If privacy legislation was enacted and it banned TikTok as a result the conversation would be very different.
Forcing TikTok to divest from mainland Chinese control absolutely solves the second, in TikTok's case.
That there exist other problems is not a justification for inaction on this particular problem.
If you consider TikTok a “Security-sensitive system” that seems to be such a broad category as to be useless. I guess we should stop using any and all Chinese produced software systems then? Which isn’t an unreasonable opinion but again it feels like a different conversation than “ban TikTok”.
You don't consider a massively deployed app, on a majority of mobile devices, via which blackmailable individual profiles can be assembled "security-sensitive"?
I'd absolutely consider Meta to be security sensitive. And Microsoft. And Google. And Netflix.
I'm curious what netflix behavior you imagine would ever be blackmailable?
"You watched Red One, and we'll tell you employer and wife about it unless you ..."
How does this work?
> blackmailable individual profiles can be assembled
What does that even mean in this context? Have you used TikTok before?
> What does that even mean in this context?
TikTok's CSAM problem is well documented [1].
Disposable idiots are a necessary asset for any intelligence operation. Kim Jong-nam's assasins, for example, "were told to play harmless tricks on people in the vicinity for a prank TV show" [2].
[1] https://endsexualexploitation.org/articles/tiktok-under-fede...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Kim_Jong-nam
Doesn't that imply that TikTok would be deliberately protecting high-profile individuals from CSAM prosecution? That seems like the sort of thing that should have triggered some warm-up scandals before requiring Chinese disinvestment.
It isn't like TikTok are the only part of the internet with a CSAM problem. By default anything that offers file hosting has a CSAM problem. To keep the Chinese away from blackmail material the US would have to ban any form of image hosting served from the Chinese mainland - the CSAM people go to the CSAM, it doesn't proactively seek people out.
> It isn't like TikTok are the only part of the internet with a CSAM problem
Of course not. I was just providing an easy example of what TikTok may have that we don’t want the CCP to.
> TikTok's CSAM problem is well documented [1].
Did you mean for that link to go somewhere different?
Thank you—fixed.
> TikTok's CSAM problem is well documented [1].
Your link doesn't say anything about TikTok?
> Kim Jong-nam's assasins, for example, "were told to play harmless tricks on people in the vicinity for a prank TV show"
What? How is that connected to "blackmailable individual profiles"?
How can they blackmail me? Please explain. You mean like "I see you watch cat videos so now go revolt against your government or I will tell everyone you watch cat videos?", this is the blackmail part?
> How can they blackmail me? Please explain
They may not be able to. But it sure would be helpful to have a list of people in likely financial distress with addresses close to military installations. Such a person may not ask questions if given a job offer from an influencer or whatever to take selfies around town.
> people in likely financial distress with addresses close to military installations
Sure, that's possible, but I think it's a bit of a stretched argument. Can't you target people like that on Facebook with ads? Can't you buy data about these people from U.S. data brokers? Can't you already access this data publicly because people share it openly on social media?
Except they've just spun up different apps accessing the same data, and also people are flocking to alternatives even more connected to China's Intel apparatus than TikTok allegedly was, because fundamentally a shit ton of Americans don't trust their government. And IMO, they're right not to.
We could shut all of this shit down if we actually wanted to, but that means going after American companies too, which they won't. They want to have the cake and eat it too: outlaw foreign spying on American users without outlawing domestic spying on American users. They want to make it so China can't do exactly what social media et al does in America, to Americans. Americans are not stupid: they are perceiving this. They know they are being manipulated, perhaps by China, perhaps by the U.S., definitely by dozens if not hundreds of private enterprises, likely all fucking three.
On one hand, the American government's priority is the security of America and her citizens, but on the other, we have an entire segment of the economy now utterly dependent on being able to violate citizen's privacy at will and at scale. Surveillance capitalism and foreign surveillance are effectively interoperable. You can't kill one without killing the other.
Edit: And even more on the personal front, for your every day Joe: this is completely stake-less. "Oh China is spying on me!" big fucking deal. The NSA was caught spying on us decades ago, and by all accounts, they still are. Google AdSense probably knows my resting heart rate and rectal measurements that it will use to try and sell me the new flavor of Oreo. We accept as a given that our privacy is basically long gone, not only did that boat leave the pier, it sailed to the mid-Atlantic, sunk, and a bunch of billionaires imploded trying to check out the wreckage in a poorly made submarine. I don't fucking care if China is spying on me too, that's just a fact of my online existence.
People are not flocking to other more Chinese apps. A handful of people are. You're not seeing new signups to Instagram or YouTube because a lot of people who are on TikTok already had accounts on those platforms.
Little Red Book/RedNote is the #1 app on the App Store, followed by Lemon8 at #2. Duolingo reported a 216% increase in parties interested in learning Mandarin[0], people are actively boycotting the likes of Meta/Google[1], and many content creators have set up shop there (albeit with a much smaller following)[2]. It’d be disingenuous to write off these effects.
[0] https://techcrunch.com/2025/01/15/duolingo-sees-216-spike-in...
[1] https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/meta-boycott-faceb...
[2] https://www.reuters.com/technology/over-half-million-tiktok-...
Yes, because it went from like the worst app in the US to a pretty popular one in a short period of time. YouTube has 240 million accounts in the US. Instagram has 170 million. 500k accounts in RedNote is nothing in comparison.
People are protesting because it's cool to do especially when you're a rebellious youngster but I'm pretty convinced it's going to fizzle out. I don't think it's fair to say it's disingenuous to believe as much. Maybe you could say it's "too early" to write it off, to which I'd respond saying it's too early to buy into the belief that it will take over American culture in any way that resembles TikTok.... and, even if it did, that it would not be banned from the US again.
Yeah, and BeReal beat out TikTok for a couple of months too. Being topical for a moment doesn't mean something has staying power. Learning Mandarin is a pretty big barrier to entry lol. 2x on Duolingo doesn't mean that much, how many were learning it last year?
Privacy legislation only works because companies have to worry about whistleblowers leaking violations to the media, which would cause them to be fined. China can disappear any whistleblowers and has full control over their media. If CCP compromising TikTok is proven despite this, then it's over for TikTok anyways and fines are irrelevant.
> Either everyone is 3x as likely to comment on it as usual or something else is different. Ijs.
Or maybe this story is hugely relevant to a lot more people than your average story? I find it hard to believe china is waging a huge phsyop on HN
The “it cant happen to here” is strong in America. I saw a guy videotaping the palisades fire instead of packing and vacating. People thinks it only happens in the movies but on my time on earth reality is far stranger than fiction
I find it easy to believe. If Russia can run a psyop to sway opinion towards supporting their interests why can’t China? HN is hardly some tiny unknown forum.
HN is absolutely a tiny unknown forum. To my understanding, it has around 5 million or so uniques monthly. By contrast, Instagram has 2 billion registered active users, and it’s only the 4th most popular
Psyop is probably an overly sophisticated term. Garbage-spam is more apropos.
E.g. Fox News comments are that are base-level "Nunh unh!" or argumentless boosting.
It's less about bare privacy and more about the fact that it's a closed loop system.
Meta collects your data and advertisers can indirectly use that data to serve you ads. In addition, government actors can use Meta's advertising tools to spread propaganda.
But TikTok is an all-in-one solution. The government have direct control over the algorithm in addition to having access to all of the data. They don't have to go through a third party intermediary like Meta and aren't only limited by a public advertising API.
it's not just about data harvesting, it's about propaganda as well, and no, you can't "just buy" as much data as tiktok gathers on people, tiktok most likely has some of the richest data gathered from users, because they can get away with it.
I doubt it is about data. It should be about digital heroin and psychological warfare.
Yeah it's simply an incredibly powerful way to influence US youth in ways that are favorable to the CCP.
I don't understand how or why this is hard for people to grasp? It's no different than Radio Free Europe being secretly funded by the CIA, except it's even more powerful.
Radio Free Europe was covertly funded by the CIA into the 1970s, but your comment should say “having been” instead of “being”, because its current funding is not a secret: that comes from the US Agency for Global Media, an openly acknowledged part of the US government.
> American companies have been doing the job for them.
This right here is the answer. People just don’t care about this type of privacy because they assume some American company already has their data. Combine that with us being two generations removed from the Cold War and the average TikTok user doesn’t see any reason why the owner of this specific data being Chinese matters and frankly I’m sympathetic to that argument. If you live in the US, someone like Musk is going to have a greater influence on your life than the Chinese government and I see no reason to trust him any more or less than the Chinese government. So any discussion of this being a matter of national security just rings hollow.
I worry less about the data and more about how a lot of kids, teens, and young adults get their news from TikTok (and social media in general).
That's the real value of TikTok. Having the eyeballs of young people and being able to (subtly or not) influence their perception of the world is valuable in a way that massive amounts of data aren't.
I do also worry about this with Musk, but I also acknowledge that taking away social media ownership from a foreign company is different than taking it away from a US company.
> I worry less about the data and more about how a lot of kids, teens, and young adults get their news from TikTok (and social media in general).
Fox News* is America's most watched television news source. Is this the kind of alternative you are envisioning?
*Also owned by a foreign national
If you're under 40 years of age Fox is "owned" by a US national who's been a citizen longer than you've been alive.
I just find this line of argument incredibly ironic because it is fundamentally an anti-free speech argument in defense of both the US and Musk while making the defense of the Chinese app with strong censorship a pro-free speech position. That doesn’t necessarily make the argument invalid, but it certainly makes it feel a little disingenuous to the general public.
IMO the same argument holds for both Musk/X and the CCP/TikTok: social media networks upon which the US public has become heavily dependent, should not be under the absolute control of some unaccountable person/entity with a strong personal agenda -- this applies to both Musk and the CCP.
If there was a way to force Musk to sell X or ban it, I would support that 100%. But that's unlikely to ever happen especially now with co-President Musk. But in the meantime, either breaking TT free of CCP control, or banning it, would be at least one battle won.
Perhaps the privacy and free speech absolutism that prevail among hacker forum commenters are not the values to run a civilization by.
I am a fairly active consumer of TikTok content. It's a huge app with many many different niches that have their own little communities. Mostly, the algorithm has decided that what I need to see is woodworking videos, car videos, and some dad jokes. But there certainly is a very interesting undercurrent of "information". One really interesting wave was when the TikTok ban passed Congress. Suddenly my feed was filled with absolutely random people saying how bad this is and how it just doesn't make sense, etc. Like if you are an influencer on a platform that just got banned, of course you'll have some feelings about it. But interestingly most people who do regularly show up (the woodworkers, car guys, etc.) who do have big followings pretty much didn't talk about it. Even this week when the ban is about to happen, the popular and established accounts that aren't politics-focused are not talking about it. But now there is a new wave of completely random people talking about "how much is the US government freaking out that we are all moving to Red Note?" And at this point I don't trust that all of them are actual humans, let alone humans who haven't been paid, or if they are AI-generated personas meant to really overtly drive people like me to the new app.
My point isn't that there is some grand conspiracy here, just that if you wanted to have outsized influence on people who are there just for entertainment, you could do it and make it look organic. Inception has to be the target's idea and all that.
In a similar vein I see talking heads of people in their kitchens contemplate world issues. Russia/Ukraine, Israel/Palestine, life in China: you can get in-depth opinions on all those issues from a hairdresser in Nebraska or a mechanic in Michigan, and they all will present them well enough. So I think there is something there.
But the clear damn solution is to pass laws that prohibit a bunch of this stuff across the board. The fact that Instagram Reels can do exactly what TikTok is doing but with ties to a different world power makes this ban seem shameless. Ban them all. Or none. Or regulate them like they should be regulated. But don't pretend like this security theater is somehow going to fix anything meaningful.
A sibling of mine who gets a significant portion of their income through their Tiktok following confessed to me recently that they completely understand why they are shutting it down.
Apparently influencers get a lot of unsolicited pressure to take stances on things like Palestine even if they're just a crafting influencer.
Unsolicited pressure from whom and what form does it take?
Other accounts on the app. Mostly comments from my understanding.
i.e. peer pressure that exists absolutely everywhere and is in no way exclusive to TikTok.
They don’t get this kind of pressure on YouTube or IG.
So what are you actually claiming here? Do you think these comments are coming from fake accounts?
There is an undercurrent of opinion on the platform that happens to align with Chinese worldviews that is strong enough to make politically neutral (or at least abstaining) influencers on the platform uncomfortable.
It really feels like you are repeatedly trying to imply something nefarious without actually making any accusations of nefarious behavior. All you have really said here is that some of the people who use the platform don't have the right opinion and therefore it is understandable to ban the app. That seems like an incredibly hypocritical argument to make in defense of the actions of the American government.
I'm not sure how you arrived at that interpretation of my comment but it does seem to be the one you were trying to goad out of me with your responses so you could reply with this.
>I'm not sure how you arrived at that interpretation of my comment but it does seem to be the one you were trying to goad out of me with your responses so you could reply with this.
What a weird comment. I goaded an interpretation out of you? I was just trying to get at why you seemingly think TikTok is different than any other social network and your response was that "There is an undercurrent of opinion on the platform that happens to align with Chinese worldviews". But I guess the bad faith alarm has already been triggered so not much point continuing from here.
> If you live in the US, someone like Musk is going to have a greater influence on your life than the Chinese government and I see no reason to trust him any more or less than the Chinese government. So any discussion of this being a matter of national security just rings hollow.
Just because Musk is a f*ing problem for all Americans, doesn't mean that the CCP isn't a problem. Not much you can do about "President" Musk -- so you have to work with what you can control.
The value is in the ability to influence what your enemy sees, and to push whatever narratives are best for you and worst for your enemy. They don’t give a shit about the data.
For anyone reading this who is knowledgeable about this topic, where, specifically, can a regular citizen buy personal data about people from data brokers?
https://www.acxiom.com/customer-data/
https://www.epsilon.com/us/products-and-services/data
It's unlikely you can. They're generally only willing to set up corporate deals to sell data in massive bulk. You could buy a domain name, set up a decently real looking website with a corpo looking email, then go to any broker like https://www.acxiom.com/customer-data/ (not affiliated, first one i found on google) and do the whole corporate dance of signing a contract to get what you want.
I am in favor of banning TikTok, but not strictly because they harvest data. I am far more concerned about them manipulating people on a large scale, I think TikTok is an effective tool for manipulating public opinion and I have no doubt that they're actively engaged and consciously engaging America in a form of psychological warfare. We are facing the very real threat of a military conflict with China, I do not want the Chinese government in this position of power.
I frankly don't understand why I keep seeing on social media people like yourselves push the idea that it's okay because other companies are also harvesting the data. It is obviously not about the data. It is about China being in a position to manipulate information flow.
The rationalizations and justifications are more a window into people's thought process than they are actual arguments. This person has decided that TikTok isn't that bad, and you are witnessing how they reverse engineer from that view point back to the argument.
That's why arguing in this sense never works. Someone isn't trying to work something out, they've already decided and are trying to explain the decision to you. That's not the same thing as thinking through something.
I mean let's not pretend that an app on the vast majority of peoples phones isn't a non-trivial vector for a zero-day attack.
If there is an invasion of Taiwan, I don't think it would be unthinkable that everyone's phones being broken wouldn't be a major tactical and political advantage of shifting the US's priorities and political will in the short run.
Sure, it burns the asset in the process, but I mean... this has been a priority for an entire century.
i dont think fhats the right attack? the influential use of tiktok sould be sharing propaganda like the US did about the iraq war "we did it and the taiwanese people are excited to be liberated and reunified with china"
along with details about how the US has no defensive alliance with taiwan, and that the US does not need to intervene
I agree; the Tiktok algorithm would be used to subtly shift public opinion rather than something overt that burns their assets
This is a very realistic scenario. It doesn't mean people will suddenly see messages from the CCP on their screens. It could mean that posts that are critical of China are subtly downweighted (not banned, that would be too obvious and problematic) while those favorable towards China would be upweighted.
One thing the CCP is quite good at, from its long experience of always controlling the narrative in China, is this type of social media manipulation.
Ehh... I just disagree, even if I agree that my concern is wildly speculative. The isolationist right already has them covered there. If they can take the island, it's over. The US is not going to mount an invasion to save Taiwan, but will sell them weapons and help defend it.
If they can't take the island quickly, then maybe propaganda helps. I just think neutering or nuking everyone's phones for a few days is enough to genuinely split the attention of the American people. I think it's very safe to say our culture cares much more about it's butter than it's guns right now. We are decadent.
That's every popular app.
Yes, but my point is that TikTok is the most downloaded app in the United States, with apparently about 100 million installs. I'm just looking at reports on various sites.
Edit: other sites put YouTube, and others higher with TikTok at 40% of phones.
Nothing else controlled by the CCP looks like it even comes close to that in America.
But TT is the only widely popular app in the US controlled by the CCP
> just buy the data from a broker
A surprising (and funny) example of this is how the open-source intelligence community and sites like Bellingcat used purchased or leaked data from private Russian commercial data brokers to identify and track the detailed movements of elite Russian assassination squads inside Russia as well as in various other countries. They learned the exact buildings where they go to work every day as well as who they met with and their home addresses. https://www.newyorker.com/news/dispatch/how-bellingcat-unmas...
Volunteer open-source researchers also used these readily available data sources to identify and publicly out several previously unknown Russian sleeper agents who'd spent years hiding in Western countries while building cover identities and making contacts. https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2022/08/25/socialite-widow-j...
To your point, if volunteer internet hobbyists can use commercial broker data to identify and track elite Russian assassins and undercover sleeper agents, in Russia and around the world, China having direct access to US Tiktok data, which Tiktok sells to anyone through brokers anyway, doesn't seem like an existential intelligence threat to our national security. Forcing TikTok to divest Chinese ownership would, at most, make Chinese intelligence go through an extra step and pay a little for the data.
If politicians were really worried about foreign adversaries aggregating comprehensive data profiles on everyone, just addressing China's access to TikTok is a side show distraction. Why didn't they pass legislation banning all major social media services from selling or sharing certain kinds of data and requiring the anonymization of other kinds of data to prevent anyone aggregating composite profiles across multiple social platforms or data brokers? That would actually reduce the threat profile somewhat.
Obviously, they aren't doing that because the FBI, CIA, NSA, TSA, INS, IRS, Homeland Security and their Five Eyes international partners are aggressively buying data broker info on all US residents at massive scale every day and aggregating it into comprehensive profiles - all with no warrants, probable cause or oversight. The US Constitution doesn't apply because it's just private commercial data, not government data. Any such law would have to explicitly carve out exceptions allowing US and allied intelligence agencies to continue doing this. Alternatively, they could put such use under the secret FISA intelligence court. US intelligence has thoroughly co-opted FISA oversight but jumping through the FISA hoop is extra work and filling out the paperwork to be rubber-stamped is annoying. They much prefer remaining completely unregulated and unsupervised like they are now, collecting everything on everyone all the time without limit. They've certainly already automated collecting all the data they want from every broker.
So yeah... let's very publicly make a big show of slapping just China and only about TikTok - and loudly proclaim we really did something to protect citizen privacy and reduce our national data aggregation attack surface. This is the intelligence community cleverly offering a fig leaf of plausible deniability to politicians who can now claim they "did something", while leaving the US intelligence community free to pillage every last shred of citizen privacy in secret.
This sounds super cool where can I get/buy this data? Would be a fun dataset to mess around with
Any idea why it is unidirectional? If the data is openly available why can't the Russians track US/Ukrainian agents the same way?
As far as I understand, many of those brokers are specific to Russia, and get their data specifically from Russian sources which Ukrainians are unlikely to be involved with.
Russian officials / employees are easier to bribe, so there are brokers selling access to car ownership / license plate records, cell phone location records and call logs, passport records etc.
There's a good Bellingcat article on this at https://www.bellingcat.com/resources/2020/12/14/navalny-fsb-...
Interesting any idea why the FSB/GRU make their agents operate using their real identities as opposed to using a cover?
Or did Tom Clancy lie and they are so incompetent they can't even use OSINT tools lol
It's not like the spies were routinely careless or didn't do the obvious things a spy should do. They did travel under cover identities but those covers were linked to mobile phone and other data in foreign countries. That left a trail that could be followed to identify real personal data when they intersected back in Russia. They also used public posts on Russian social media. I guess OO7 didn't know a single group photo from some department secretary's retirement party can undo years of spy craft. And just swapping out a SIM when you get back home in Russia doesn't change the phone's ESN.
I'm not an expert though. There's a lot of detailed info on OSINT sources and methods online. The bottom line is it's extremely difficult to put the data genie back in the bottle. The stuff seeps out everywhere and searching aggregated databases from multiple sources and time periods uncovers any connection. It only requires a single slip-up happening one time. This just reinforces that a regular citizen in a Western democracy who's not a spy trained to operate under cover with a nation-state providing authentic false identities, is screwed in terms of maintaining their own privacy.
Idk the math isn't mathing. In the US drugs are moved using graffiti or word of mouth or dead drops because dealers are operating under the assumption all digital devices are monitored. If they use phones at all burners are discarded not sim swapped
Is the FSB/GRU more incompetent than my local fentanyl dealer? new identity, plastic surgery, contacts to protect iris scanning, no digital comms except in house tech, avoiding legal entrypoints seem to be the very basic in today's age especially for a hit
Tom Clancy lied that's a few hours of my life I'll never get back lol
Again, how does this change any of the realities of TikTok? "Leave them alone because other abuses exist" is not an argument.
this is a rabbit hole I can jump down with a good cup of tea tonight thanks bud
Not just about data harvesting though.
But what is the point of all this data? People don’t live forever or have unlimited exploitable LTV, so there is a very narrow window of time for where this data is useful for a given population. Is the goal to just use it to influence elections?
It’s this - anyone saying otherwise simply does not know, or is pushing some kind of an agenda. I fully believe some people in the US government buy the whole “security” angle, but it’s very obviously bogus. So is the idea of selling it - china is very protective of chinese user data, there’s no way they are going to trust an american investor to play by their rules, even if a serious price was offered, which it hasn’t been. this entire thing feels like theater, honestly.
TikTok is being banned because of the algorithm, not user data. Though that’s a nice side benefit.
That’s theater too - at least without acknowledging the clear harm that american algorithm does as well. The logic simply doesn’t add up, unfortunately - I am for banning all social media apps.
Like foreign adversaries can already run influence campaigns on american media platforms, often, the american ones will even cooperate with it. It’s just theater. They dont need tiktok to do whatever people are saying the reason is.
It’s not theater. Just calling something security theater isn’t an argument and the fact that Congress passed bipartisan legislation to ban it after internal security briefings should at least cause you to question your assumption.
The other key point you are missing is that we can ban one app and then ban/regulate others later. You don’t have to do it all at once even if all organizations were engaging in the same behavior.
Even more - the process and legislation required to just ban/regulate Meta or other American tech companies for example is more difficult not just because of the actual legal apparatus required to make it happen, but because of economic considerations and jobs and such too. Further, no doubt the CIA, NSA, and FBI all but have offices at Meta headquarters. They might be engaging in activity or influence campaigns we don’t like - but that’s for us to figure out, not some other country.
TikTok is just some random company that doesn’t matter outside of engaging in activities we don’t like and we choose to allow it to do business in the United States as we see fit.
As casually as we can decide to allow it to do business in the United States so too can we revoke that permission. We do this all the time. We recently stopped Nippon Steel from buying US Steel. TikTok isn’t anything special.
It's not theater.
It's about having an adversarial entity -- one with whom the US could be at war with one day -- have control over a social media network that is highly pervasive in US society. It's not about harvesting the data. It's about having the ability to subtly manipulate public opinion through control of the algorithm that determines what comes up on people's feeds.
Yes, foreign adversaries can run TV ads like anyone else, or have their people on social media to try to sway the conversation (there's even a name for these people in China - "wumao"). I'm sure there's some people working for the CCP on this thread. But control of the network is a whole other level of influence -- orders of magnitude greater.
It's one of those things. If you asked most Hacker News readers how they feel about the authoritarian government of a single party state literally controlling the algorithm that determines everything you see, most would swear up and down that they would never stand for it.
But yet what happens in practice is people line up to defend it. I can only guess most of the people defending it are active users and aren't aware of how distorted their perception of the world is by the content they see there.
There's some defending it in general, but it's also just a really tough precedent to allow when it could, so easily, be used to shut down any other service they want by just waving the magic "national security" flag.
It's possible to believe TikTok is bad and that the pathway the US just proved out to banning it in the US has shown that no US court will seriously question the "security reasons" fig leaf. Telegram and Signal are both used by plenty of people the US could easily paint as "security threats" and it's unclear there's any defense to a ban that they could mount at this point.
I am of 100% of the same opinion as you. I have told people for years about the cyber warfare going on and that we're losing it, and they just don't seem to care and want that serotonin hit and ignore the rest. I also want curbs on other social media, but TikTok and the war of China against the US on the internet is in a league of its own. The CCP are no doubt funneling the data to their servers, and no doubt have plans for further damaging our youths' minds through brain rot of tiktok diverting them from far more productive activities. There's a reason CCP has strong curbs on similar apps regarding young people in their nation.
> Tiktok is actively suppressing the stories.
Is there any evidence of this? FWIW, I saw plenty of tiktoks talking about the China hack
It's completely irrelevant whether they have done it or not. The only thing that matters is the fact that they can do it.
We're not going let you have nukes just because you haven't nuked anybody yet.
Also the idea that a country that has built the most extensive digital surveillance apparatus in the world will somehow avoid the temptation to use TikTok to monitor people abroad..
It's beyond naive.
Yeah i shared with relatives by taking a screenshot of a tiktok to show them the news
There is no evidence. This is just blind speculation. 95% of the population just doesn't care about telecom cybersecurity.
I agree the evidence is weak, and circumstantial, but it is not true that there none. Quick overview of some of it (which includes critique of it):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_by_TikTok
We just don't care. We know the all the American TLAs are on our phones, so what's a few more Chinese ones? It's a problem for Washington war wonks to freak out about, not teens in Omaha.
Those teens in Omaha will eventually become voting adults in Omaha and then will eventually come into positions of leadership in both the public and private sector. I can guarantee that 0% would appreciate being blackmailed or unknowingly used as pawns in spycraft. Teens in Omaha may not understand the full scope of what it means.
Can you definitively point to something TikTok collects that can be used for blackmail that isn't collected by any other social media app?
No, they all collect the same level of blackmailable stuff. They shouldn't ban TikTok, they should ban all data collection and get rid of the third party doctrine altogether. But China is sort of an active adversary to the US right now so banning it is a heavy handed method that will probably mostly work to prevent mass indoctrination from a rival and also prop up ailing US social media companies. The US govt wants mass indoctrination and blackmail material on people, it just doesn't want China to have it.
Please give an example of something that someone would be ashamed of or blackmailed by that goes through their TikTok?
Literally there are countless things. Firstly, the app is pinging TikTok servers all day so as you move throughout the world, your IP is changing and betraying your location. Your location reveals your social graph and movement patterns, who you associate with, and where you spend the night.
People watch all sorts of content on TikTok including sexual/sensual content. While they are watching alone in their rooms, all their usage patterns are recorded in intimate details and they reveal all their sexual proclivities. That is quite easy fodder for blackmail.
Health information can often easily be gleaned from people's watch history. If you know people are struggling with their mental or physical health, or are having financial troubles, these are all things that can be used as leverage for blackmail.
the fact that a person is closeted gay, or that location data revealed exactly when they were with a mistress
Does TikTok have private messages? Any platform with "private" messages can collect blackmail. Tucker Carlson was fired over two texts (or emails, I do not recall).
They may be blackmailed for watching forbidden topics like Russia friendly channels. Or explicit material if TikTok has it.
They may be blackmailed if they are in the wrong social network if TikTok has such a thing.
Why is it okay that it's collected by any?
And furthermore, why is it okay that it's collected AND owned by a company based in a country not subject to the rule of law?
"Facebook does it too" isn't a reason not to be worried about TikTok.
> And furthermore, why is it okay that it's collected AND owned by a company based in a country not subject to the rule of law?
Because I, as an adult, decided that I am ok with sharing my personal data within their app in exchange for getting to use the app.
As long as I am not sharing personal data of other people (who haven’t consented to it like I did) or some government/work/etc info that I have no right to share, I am not sure how this is anyone else’s business.
P.S. I would somewhat get your argument if it wasn’t TikTok but something that could theoretically affect the country’s infrastructure or safety (e.g., tax preparation software or a money-managing app or an MFA app for secure logins). But all personal data on me that TikTok has is purely my own, has nothing critical at all (all it knows is what i watch and do within the app), and has zero effect on anyone or anything else.
> As long as I am not sharing personal data of other people (who haven’t consented to it like I did)
The ruling mentions that users are in fact doing this.
> (Draft National Security Agreement noting that TikTok collects [...] and device and network data (including device contacts and calendars)). If, for example, a user allows TikTok access to the user’s phone contact list to connect with others on the platform, TikTok can access “any data stored in the user’s contact list,” including names, contact information, contact photos, job titles, and notes. 2 id., at 659.
I also don't believe that most adults using this app really know how much data TikTok collects. It isn't just "what i watch and do within the app". A fuller quote from the above that doesn't just focus on data involving other people is
> The platform collects extensive personal information from and about its users. See H. R. Rep., at 3 (Public reporting has suggested that TikTok’s “data collection practices extend to age, phone number, precise location, internet address, device used, phone contacts, social network connections, the content of private messages sent through the application, and videos watched.”); 1 App. 241 (Draft National Security Agreement noting that TikTok collects user data, user content, behavioral data (including “keystroke patterns and rhythms”), and device and network data (including device contacts and calenders)).
I also don't particularly believe that the US has to allow espionage just because the government spying got the individuals being spied on to agree to it.
And why have we forgotten about kids?
The law in question doesn't forbid you, or any other adult, or even any child for that matter, from knowingly installing the app. It forbids companies from assisting in wide scale espionage. You can still install the app if you want, the US companies just can't help operate the espionage app.
That's where scale changes kind.
I'd have no problem either, if TikTok were only collecting data on you.
I wouldn't have much of a problem, if TikTok were collecting data on x0,000s of people.
To me, it rises to the level of security-sensitive when information is collected on enough people that there's a high likelihood of people in future sensitive positions (military, government, legal) having had their information collected historically.
One can't put the genie back in the bottle when a competitor government can see a new president elected... and pull up a profile of what they swiped from 10-40.
That scenario impacts not just you (the future president), but everyone you have power or influence over.
And given the Chinese government's documented willingness to coerce people in foreign countries (i.e. the "not police" police stations), betting they won't use that power seems shortsighted...
> I, as an adult, decided that I am ok with sharing my personal data within their app in exchange for getting to use the app
You, as an adult, may also choose to drunk drive. The country is bigger than single people. Security threats are collective.
Hopefully we'll ban those too. The first step is always the hardest, so you should always look for the easiest path (which in this case is banning a foreign government from controlling a social media app).
Teens don't understand the full scope of what anything means: that's practically the definition of teenager.
This is like saying that you don't care about free speech because you don't have anything to say right now. It's no where close to being a justification.
Oh we care. I care way, way less about an American company with my data over the CCP.
I've heard it put that, if you're not a government official, having your own government spy on you could be more consequential than a foreign one.
Lots of people think this way and, to be honest, it speaks more to the inability of the thinker to consider the realities of the US's current relationship with China. A good thought experiment is whether you think the people of Crimea or Donetsk would prefer having the Ukrainian government spy on them instead of the Russian government and whether this preference changed in 2014 or 2022.
It's easy to have a gut reaction that your own government has a greater impact on your life than a foreign one, but that does not reflect the reality that 1) the US government is generally benign in that it historically has not abused its power over citizens; 2) the Chinese government has; and 3) the US and China are going to war one day, and China might win.
If you're part of one of the subgroups that the American government has historically mistreated then it absolutely makes sense to be more afraid of your own government.
>A good thought experiment is whether you think the people of Crimea or Donetsk would prefer having the Ukrainian government spy on them instead of the Russian government and whether this preference changed in 2014 or 2022.
we're not in that situation, but i would expect the people of crimea and donetsk would prefer that nobody surveilled them.
but in a practical sense, surveilliance of people in donetsk and crimea by china would be less immediately threatening to their life, because china is not conducting military action in those places.
>1) the US government is generally benign in that it historically has not abused its power over citizens
i don't understand how anyone can seriously make this claim, and i really don't understand why potential danger isn't a consideration.
potential danger is simply danger. privacy rights are established in recognition that a threat is itself harmful.
and abuse is not unreal. america has had a larger incarcerated population than any other country for my entire lifetime. both absolute size and per capita.
in america, political movements are consistently dismantled by counterintelligence. political action is met with violence and arrest.
perhaps few people are outright murdered, but it's not necessary to murder the powerless. outside of america proper, american power is much more lethal.
every concern and contradiction that threatens the present situation - environment, infrastructure, housing, healthcare, labor, war - is maintained by suppression of political organizing, enabled by surveillance.
the administration incoming next week has promised a massive project of deportation. it has promised retaliation against journalists. it is apparently motivated to criminalize the existence of transgender people. none of these threats are reduced by american surveillance of american people.
>2) the Chinese government has [abused its power]
sure. but this is a problem primarily for chinese people, and americans are not subjects of chinese power.
american surveillance of american people does not reduce any threat of chinese power.
why isn't the american legislature addressing the problems of american people subject to american power?
>3) the US and China are going to war one day.
i don't expect this. there's too much to lose on both sides. it would be a disaster and a tragedy.
true or not, it's certain that american citizens would benefit, and america itself would improve, if arbitrary surveillance on the present scale was impossible.
> 1) the US government is generally benign in that it historically has not abused its power over citizens; 2) the Chinese government has
And before someone hops in with Kent State, Tuskegee trials, et al., let's set the comparison bar at order-of x00,000 to x0,000,000 citizens killed by the government.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Revolution#Death_to...
> the US government is generally benign in that it historically has not abused its power over citizens
To the extent this is maybe remotely arguably defensible, it is only so because the US has historically defined internal subjects who it wished to abuse most intently as non-citizens (or even legal non-persons), including chattel slavery of much of the Black population until the Civil War, and the largely genocidal American Indian wars up through 1924. But even in those cases you still have to ignore a lot of abuse in the period after nominal citizenship was granted (for Black Americans, especially, but very much not exclusively, in the first century after abolition of slavery).
That your examples are a century old proves the point about the US govt. being benign.
Why?
So, should we also ban Chinese companies Alibaba, Baidu, Haier, Lenovo, Tencent, and ZTE from operating in the United States? Why just TikTok (Who is ironically also banned in China)?
And should Israeli companies, like those associated with NSO Group, face similar scrutiny after reports of their tools being used to hack U.S. State Department employee phones?
Yes
On unfair trade practices and ethical violations, yes. Ban them all. Nothing of value will be lost.
Everyone outside of the US already knows the American three letter agencies and their allies like the Mossad can access, hack or destroy all their networks if push comes to shove. Most network services all over the world are run on infrastructure owned by a handful of American companies with deep defense and government ties - AWS, Google, MS.
As other powers arise, they will naturally want equivalence. The American government may decide that is not in their interest to make this easy - but I'd suggest as Hacker News community, we retain the ability to see beyond propaganda and balance contrary viewpoint.In this case (or the case on Nippon steel),how does one differentiate between "security" considerations and potentially a straightforward cash grab attempt by rich American investors?
> I can't tell if people just don't know that this is happening
This. It's this. Don't waste your time thinking past this answer, you already nailed it.
I can think that China is up to no good with my data and still be mad at my own Govt for doing the exact same thing. The outrage is not that TikTok is banned, it's that Zuckerburg is doing the exact same harms to America that China is alleged to be doing, but only 1 app is banned. Hence people flocking to Rednote rather than using Reels.
There is no legal way to ban FB -- nor would there be any way to ban TT if it were not owned and controlled by a foreign power.
There's at least three separate reasons that justify banning TikTok. If Trump bails them out, it's a complete betrayal of his base and the country at large.
1. Competitive balance. China does not allow US social media companies. If we allow theirs, our industry is essentially fighting with one hand tied behind its back.
2. China controls the algorithm for determining who sees what. This gives them tremendous ability to influence public opinion, and consequently public elections. That cannot be allowed to stand as long as China is hostile to the US.
3. China gets extremely detailed data about the interests and proclivities of millions of Americans, including military personnel and elected officials. This data is not otherwise publicly available and can be used for blackmail and other manipulation. Which is completely unacceptable when we have no mechanism to punish them from doing this short of global nuclear war.
Even ignoring the enormous threat to national sovereignty, TikTok has no redeeming qualities. It's an addiction machine that profits off people wasting away in front a screen. That alone is not a reason to ban it, but it sure does make the case stronger.
Banning TikTok is a clear-cut positive for the American people. Every American adult should be in support.
All of your points except 1. are true of American social media companies. 2., in particular, is widely documented: the Facebook mood manipulation fiasco, Cambridge Analytica, Musk's personal tweaking of the Twitter trending hashtags, and YouTube's heavy-handed censorship of legitimate medical advice during Covid are just a few of the higher profile instances of this.
> If Trump bails them out, it's a complete betrayal of his base and the country at large.
There is no wall. The Trump "tax cuts" raised taxes on most Americans and cut them for the 1%. Trump has not faced any consequences for betrayal in the past, why would he now?
In fact, TikTok helps promote the lack of awareness of all the above. If anything he'll want to keep it in place, to keep the public misinformed.
> Yet people are arguing that we should allow the people who did that to continue to install apps on millions of Americans phones
Who are "the people who did that" - Byte Dance or China as a whole? If it's the latter, I'm afraid there are still plenty of apps made by Chinese companies like, DJI, Lenovo, and thousands of IoT apps to control random geegaws via WiFi or BT.
The interesting thing is that, using these tactics, the supreme court has made the legal case for every other country to ban US owned social networks! My opinion is that the US government has made another stupid move.
> I can't tell if people just don't know that this is happening, or if they take their memes way too seriously.
I would say both at the same time
I think the fallout from this is many Americans like myself don’t see China as our enemy. Based on the recent RedNote phenomenon, Chinese citizens don’t see it that way either.
Maybe the uniparty in the USA should make it a priority to improve the life of everyday Americans and not Zuck and Elon. Young people don’t care who the establishment is warring with because they know the establishment doesn’t represent them, they represent themselves.
Try posting a Winnie the Pooh meme on RedNote.
> They hacked all of our major telco's and many of America's regulatory organizations including the treasury department.
Please cite your sources. After decades of watching American propaganda, we know all too well that it is trivial to make up shit from thin air and have a large segment of the population eat it up.
I'm tempted to say: what's the point if you've preemptively disregarded it as made up "American propaganda."
But here you go anyway: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt_Typhoon
Yes, what is the point if the cites you have are all based on speculation and vague allegations by US officials? Do you actually have credible evidence that a group affiliated with the Chinese government hacked American ISPs? If not, don't bother.
CISA does. Much of it has been made public.
Google it yourself, if you're actually interested. It's fascinating.
https://archive.ph/20241007181947/https://www.wsj.com/politi...
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/30/us/politics/china-hack-tr...
NYT would of course never back erroneous allegations by US officials on geopolitical matters like these.
What satisfiable criteria would you like in a source?
I'm not sure about "all our major telco's, but there is this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Aurora
> On January 12, 2010, Google revealed on its weblog that it had been the victim of a cyber attack. The company said the attack occurred in mid-December and originated from China. Google stated that more than 20 other companies had been attacked; other sources have since cited that more than 34 organizations were targeted.
> I'm not sure...
I am. Google Salt Typhoon.
Tbh I think this has a lot more to do with sympathy for Palestinians and the last year of protests on college campuses.
Besides, who cares if China is listening to us through the app. China and I have no beef with one another. China feeds me and clothes me and builds most of the stuff in my life and I give China my money. It's a good relationship! Much better than my relationship with this state, tbh.
> They hacked all of our major telco's
Can I see the evidence?
Yes, whether you understand it or not is a different question.
Search for Salt Typhoon and Volt Typhoon.
>I can't tell if people just don't know that this is happening, or if they take their memes way too seriously.
Exactly. Everyone is having fun bidding adieu to their Chinese spys. And I think they're losing sight of the fact that there's abundant reporting on harrassing expats and dissidents internationally, pressuring countries to comply with their extradition requests, to say nothing of jailing human rights lawyers and democratic activists and detaining foreigners who enter China based on their online footprint.
Most of the time I bring this up I get incredulous denials that any of this happens (I then politely point such folks to Human Rights Watch reporting on the topic), or I just hear a lot of whataboutism that doesn't even pretend to defend Tiktok.
Do you have links to the Human Rights Watch reporting that you reference?
Here's one from October of last year:
https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/10/09/japan-chinese-authoritie...
And here's their overall 2025 page on China which details, among other things, harassment of critics based out of Italy, detention of U.S. based artist, and even harrassment of protestors in San Fransisco.
https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2025/country-chapters/china
I think their suppression of criticism on Uighur forced labor has also encompassed harassment of extended support networks people from the region as well, but that's just off the top of my head and not necessarily on that page.
Not a link to the Human Rights Watch report; however, at oral argument this was stated by the US government (https://www.oyez.org/cases/2024/24-656 @ 1:58:32):
Elizabeth B. Prelogar: And the one final point on this is that ByteDance was not a trusted partner here. It wasn't a company that the United States could simply expect to comply with any requirements in good faith.
And there was actual factual evidence to show that even during a period of time when the company was representing that it had walled off the U.S. data and it was protected, there was a well-publicized incident where ByteDance and China surveilled U.S. journalists using their location data --this is the protected U.S. data --in order to try to figure out who was leaking information from the company to those journalists.
> Yet people are arguing that we should allow the people who did that to continue to install apps on millions of Americans phones
This paternalistic framing is the disconnect between you and those opposed to the ban. The idea that it's TikTok insidiously worming its way onto American phones like a virus. In reality, people download the app and use it because they like it. This ban will, in effect, prevent people from accessing an information service they prefer. You must acknowledge this and argue why that is a worthy loss of autonomy if you want to meaningfully defend the ban to someone who doesn't like it.
If it helps, reframe the ban as one on a website rather than an app. They're interchangeable in this context, but I've observed "app" to be somewhat thought-terminating to some people.
For the record - I would totally support a ban on social media services that collect over some minimal threshold of user data for any purposes. This would alleviate fears of spying and targeted manipulation by foreign powers through their own platforms (TikTok) and campaigns staged on domestic social media. But just banning a platform because it's Chinese-owned? That's emblematic of a team-sports motivation. "Americans can only be exposed to our propaganda, not theirs!" How about robust protections against all propaganda? That's a requirement for a functional democracy.
Sure, but why can't my teenager smoke cigarettes?
The point of my response is: sometimes you have to be paternalistic, and the federal government doesn't need to meaningfully defend the ban to someone who doesn't like it because those people don't matter. They meaningfully defended the ban to the courts.
Your argument sounds like it's straight out of a CCP playbook.
> I can't tell if people just don't know that this is happening, or if they take their memes way too seriously. I sort of wonder if they don't know it's happening because they get their news from Tiktok and Tiktok is actively suppressing the stories.
No, it's just information asymmetry shaping public opinion. The US lets its dirty laundry air out. US whistleblowers, press, and historians dig up every shitty thing the US has ever done and US citizens are free to discuss it, sing about it, turn it into movies and viral memes, etc. China doesn't allow this. No one in China is going to become famous by calling for justice for those killed by Mao or exposing MSS-installed backdoors in Chinese telecoms. That kind of talk is quelled immediately. The result is that public discourse trends more anti-American than anti-China.
Senator I'm Singaporean.
People are now using Rednote, so what’s new?
Respectfully, I should be able to install whatever the fuck I want on my phone. Regardless of which apps I choose to rot my brain with, neither the US nor Chinese government should have any say in it, period.
If a red line is not drawn, websites will be next, then VPNs, then books. And then the Great Firewall of America will be complete.
I agree, you should be able to install whatever the fuck you want.
Google and Apple shouldn't be helping China get you to do that, by hosting and advertising it in their app store though*. Oracle shouldn't be helping China spy on Americans by hosting their services.
This isn't a law against you installing things on your phone. You're still free to install whatever you want on your phone.
*And if there is a valid first amendment claim here, it would probably be Google and Apple claiming that they have the right to advertise and convey TikTok to their users, despite it being an espionage tool for a hostile foreign government. Oddly enough they didn't assert that claim or challenge the law.
For most people the Venn diagram of things that are possible to install on your phone and things on the app store is a single circle.
That's not a problem in my mind.
I'd agree that forbidding individuals from installing it would be an overreach, because it would be a more restrictive step then is reasonably necessary to eliminate the legitimate government interest of counter espionage.
I don't think that the governments actions here are more restrictive than necessary for that. The fact that they make some legitimate actions more difficult is completely acceptable (inevitable even).
For most people the Venn Diagram of cars they can acquire, and road legal cars, is a single circle. The government mandating all cars, even those driven solely on private property, be road legal would be an absurd overreach. At the same time they have no obligation to make it easy to acquire non road legal cars just because their legitimate regulations have happened to make that difficult.
The problem is that the rhetoric around this law from its promoters is that of an app ban, not a business sanction. And indeed, the app is being banned from Apple and Google's app stores despite it being free to download and use.
The government currently lacks the ability to yank a binary from computing devices en masse, but the technology to do so is already mostly in place. (See Apple’s notarization escapades in the EU, for example. And I think Microsoft is working in a similar direction: https://secret.club/2021/06/28/windows11-tpms.html) I have a sickening feeling that this is only step one, and that the government will eventually mandate the ability to control and curate all software running on desktop and mobile devices within the country for “security” reasons. National security goons are salivating at the prospect, to say nothing of US corporations that are getting clobbered by foreign competitors.
I believe Google Play does actually have the ability to remove apps if it wants to, intended for malware.
If the government were to mandate that they use that feature, or Apple use that feature, especially to prevent future side-loaded installs, I'd be much more sympathetic to the overreach arguments. But that's not what they did. Rather this is a narrow law that prevents these companies from assisting in wide scale espionage. The fact that they could do some other bad thing doesn't mean the thing they did is bad.
The courts use phrases like "narrowly tailored to achieve the governments legitimate interest" to describe the balancing test here...
I think a democratic nation is well within its rights to restrict its citizens access of certain systems.
There is no such thing as unlimited liberty, especially with regards to systems under control of hostile nations such as China and Russia. Would you be comfortable allowing mass release of unrestricted Hamas / ISIS, Russian propaganda content to North American teenagers? National security is a real thing and geopolitics always play a critical role in people's lives.
One could perhaps argue that we must educate our citizens better, however I think rather than being naive, it's better to implement realistic regulations (within _democratic_ means of course) to contain the threats.
> Respectfully, I should be able to install whatever the fuck I want on my phone.
Like every other right, your freedom ends where other peoples freedom begins. You can install whatever you'd like on your phone... unless it prevents others from exercising their rights. That's how we all get to stay free from the "might makes right" crowd.
Joining your phone to a botnet belonging to a hostile foreign power might very well prevent others from enjoying the very rights you're trying to preserve.
You have a point about avoiding the slippery slope though. I do hope that the deciders are taking that risk seriously.
Nobody has thus far provided any evidence of a “botnet.”
Sometimes we aren't the boss and we don't get to see the evidence. That doesn't mean there isn't any.
Can you think of any reason a government engaged in cyberwarfare might want to ensure there was informational asymmetry? I sure can.
OK. Has the government indicated that there is classified evidence?
Yes. It was even submitted to the court here ex-parte (without letting TikTok see it), though the court apparently declined to consider it.
What exactly it says... obviously we don't know.
To me, the 'profiles on the next generation of leaders, throughout their formative years' argument is stronger than the botnet one.
I don't particularly trust Google or Apple to firewall a malicious and determined nation-state actor (0 days being 0 days), but it seems lower probability than the technically trivial data collection.
Websites and books are already being banned in the US. Ask anyone who can no longer access PornHub or who has seen books being removed from libraries.
But it's not about what you install, or even what you say. It's what you're told and shown. The US and China want control over that, for obvious reasons.
Meta has been 'curating' - censoring - content for years. TikTok is no different. X isn't even trying to pretend any more.
The cultural noise, cat videos, and 'free' debate - such as they are - are wrappers for political payloads designed to influence your beliefs, your opinions, and your behaviours, not just while consuming, but while voting.
A library choosing not to carry a book isn't a ban. The government making it ILLEGAL for anyone to distribute the book would be a ban. As far as I know that is not happening anywhere in the US with some extremely narrow exceptions like CSAM.
If TikTok turned out to be State sponsored spyware, would you reconsider?
I support your slippery slope argument. I wonder where your red line is relative to "state sponsored spyware" and "typical advertising ID tracking" or "cool new app from company influenced by an adversarial super power".
All spyware should be illegal. A law to reign in the ubiquitous data collection on everyone's computing devices would be great. Maybe start by requiring all data collection to be opt-in and for a specific purpose. Make it illegal to deny functionality that doesn't strictly require the requested data. "Paying with your privacy" shouldn't be a thing. Crush every data broker.
This law is different to that, it's all about specific actors, not about behavior and actions. A "people we don't like" list. CNN could be on a similar list soon. All constitutional of course - the law will specifically mention how this is all for national security. And no one's speech is being suppressed, the journalists can always write for a different news channel.
You can still install the app on your phone. Tik Tok just can't do business in the US any more.
How can you call Americans naive when over and over again for the past 2 decades there have been non-stop news stories about how the US Gov spends insane amounts of effort ensuring the technology Americans use is not fully secure? Maybe you should understand that the public can actually recognize Machiavellianism.
edit: before you downvote me, how many of you remember:
- Bullrun
- PRISM
- Dual EC DRBG and the Juniper backdoors, that too also were exploited by secondary adversaries
- FBI urging Apple to install a backdoor for the govt after the San Bernardino shootings
- the government only recently mandating that partnered zero-day vendors must not sell their wares to other clients who would then target them against Americans
- Vault7
- XKeyscore
- STELLARWIND
- MUSCULAR
etc.?
> Yet people are arguing that we should allow the people who did that to continue to install apps on millions of Americans phones
Who are "the people who did that" - Byte Dance or China as a whole? If it's the latter, I'm afraid there are still plenty of apps made by Chinese companies like, DJI, Lenovo, and thousands of IoT apps to control random geegaws via WiFi or BT.
It's not hard to see the pattern: any Chinese tech champion that does as well as, or better than American companies will find itself in legal peril. Huawei didn't get in trouble after hacking Nortel, but they got sanctioned much later, when their 5G base equipment was well-received by the markets. TikTok had the best ML-based recommendation systems when it burst in the scene, Google and Meta still haven't quite caught up yet.
Anyone here who's not a TikTok content creator reasonably upset about losing access to the platform? Can you tell me why it will sting for you? I was really surprised that my daughters (avid teenage TikTok users) are much more relieved than mad. Both said they wasted too much time on TikTok and were hoping life will now feel better. Seems the very thing that made the platform sticky puts it in a guilty pleasure category perhaps.
(I'm asking about the lived experience outside of the political questions around who should decide what we see / access online.)
EDIT: Thank you for the replies! Interesting. I'm still wondering if most people use TikTok just for passive entertainment? I don't love Youtube, but it's been a huge learning and music discovery resource for me.
The only thing I get sent from TikTok are dances and silly memes but I don't have an account.
They'll be on RedNote within 2 weeks.
Other's have said it; but TikTok was such a nice format for media. It emphasized what the creator can provide its users; what content was legit; entertaining, informative, etc.
Whereas Instagram and FB are more about personal "branding". You post the best version of yourself and it's rewarded with engagement. Where on TikTok the emphasis is on the content; even creators I follow and have seen dozens of videos on I couldn't tell you what their account name was.
On TikTok you put up or you were shut up.
The experience, in the end, was always on point for shortform content. Nothing else like it exists; and I don't think American tech can make it because they benefit too much from being ad networks. Maybe YouTube shorts.
I've heard the algorithms for YouTube shorts are much worse. Most people have said the best thing about TikTok is how well it learns the content you want to see.
I never used tiktok. You don't follow accounts? You just open and scroll and hope eventually you get something? There's a nothing being done intentionally by the user to find content?
You can follow accounts, and they offer a Following tab to keep track of accounts you really like, but the default consumption mode is to use it just like TV. When you're done with a video you scroll to the next. The app uses signals like how long you spent on a video, whether you liked it or not, whether you sent it to friends or not, etc to see how much you like a video. You can also reset your "algorithm" if you find yourself consuming content you don't like.
> The experience, in the end, was always on point for shortform content. Nothing else like it exists; and I don't think American tech can make it because they benefit too much from being ad networks.
How does TikTok make money?
I feel like they were really headed the product promo / integrated shopping route.
I have a lot of Japanese friends and travel between Japan and here frequently. TikTok is huge in Japan and a lot of my For You Page is content trending in Japanese spheres. I don't live in Japan so being able to plug into Japanese media is a very, very convenient thing.
I'll probably continue trying to use the app if possible since I mostly connect with Japanese content, but I will say there's also a fun world of Japanese creators who straddle the English and Japanese speaking words who are about to lose an outlet to the English speaking world, and I feel really bad for that too.
The "algorithm" is also just so much better than Reels and others. I spent an afternoon of PTO training my algorithm a couple years ago and it's been great ever since. My partner and I share TikToks with each other all the time and. we shape each other's algorithm and interests. Reels fixates too much on your follows and Youtube Shorts is honestly a garbage experience. Both platforms really reward creators building "brands" around their content rather than just being authentic or silly. I treat Reels as the place for polished creators or local businesses who are trying to sell me something and TikTok as the place for content. I find that I get a lot less ragebait surfaced to me than I do on other platforms, though I admit my partner gets more than I do. We both skip those videos quickly and that has helped keep this stuff off our FYP.
An important thing to remember is TikTok was one of the first platforms that was opt-in for short-form content. Both Reels and Shorts was foisted upon users who had different expectations of the network and as such had to deal with the impedance mismatch of the existing network and users who didn't want short-form content. TikTok's entire value proposition is short-form content.
I second this. I spend a few minutes each evening watching random people out and about in Japan, Korea, China as it is fascinating to learn about foreign cultures in such a direct way. Just yesterday I learned about the palm scanners some stores in China have as a payment system.
I'm pretty upset about it honestly. TikTok's algorithm has always done a fantastic job of providing interesting clips in a way that Facebook and Instagram has never been able to provide. I will say that upon a new account, it's mostly garbage, but it quickly learned what I was interested in and what I would tend to engage with. It also does this while showing me considerably fewer ads than the meta platforms.
Seconded. My experiences were similar.
That said, the algorithm got noticeably worse after 2021. Maybe because of the TikTok shop. I’ve categorized around 3,000 clips into different collections (with 600+ being in “educational”) but that fell off over the last few years. I would be a lot more upset about the ban if they had maintained quality, but now I’m like well, whatever.
I've found something like a very efficient sorting into communities of shared interest, and something egalitarian in being able to see people with 0 views and get reactions from them.
It's by contrast to say, Youtube and X, where The Algorithm (tm) sustains a central Nile river of dominant creators and you're either in it or you're not.
That said, I think the political questions are rightly the dominant ones in this convo and those color my lived experience of it.
I don't create for TikTok, I have never had a TikTok account, and I don't use TikTok, outside of being exposed to videos on other sites, or occasionally clicking a link.
I had been exposed to DouYin before, but my first experience of TikTok in real life was someone at a party, holding their phone, exclaiming something along the lines of "I can't look away, it's so addictive." It was uncomfortable, and I'm aware of how fake this sounds, but it happened.
But I think this is very bad.
With Section 230 in crosshairs, EARN IT being reintroduced every year or two, and access to books and sites being fragmented across the US, things are very already bad, and have the potential to get much worse. TikTok being banned is censorship, and presents a significant delta towards more censorship.
Congress didn't just "ban TikTok", Congress banned its first social media. This is case law, this is precedent, this is a path for banning other social media apps.
I think this is bad because I think this is the start of something new and something bad for the internet.
Not a content creator and use it regularly. My algorithm is mostly silly stuff, music, etc. I'm not convinced there's a discernible risk to national security, and as someone with a lot of libertarian views, I think the ban is an overstep by the US government.
The "sticky"-ness is real, but many will flock to the TikTok copies in other platforms like Instagram, Facebook, X, anyway.
Regardless, I enjoy the platform. It's fun to reference the viral sounds/trends on the platform with other friends that use it.
technology changed our life. especially internet and smart phone impact a lot on social engagement between peoples. if people spend much time on internet or smart phones daily, if it is not tiktok, it will be something else. should we go back to non smart phone time? or even roll back to no internet time? maybe no electricity time.
technology is just like a tool. how people use it matters not the technology itself can be evil. tiktok's algorithm helps speed up information delivery to the people who likes it. eventually it helps to form a community of people online who like similar thing or have similar options. people needs to be aware of the content on any platform has "survivorship bias". seeing couple of examples is not representing the whole.
> I was really surprised that my daughters (avid teenage TikTok users) are much more relieved than mad.
A sense of relief may be a coping mechanism. I've heard laid-off colleagues inform me they felt relief in the immediate aftermath; granted, the lay-offs were pre-announced before they communicated who would be "impacted", and it was at a high-pressure environment; but the human mind sometimes reacts in unexpected ways to loss outside of one's control. Rationalization is a mechanism for ego defense.
TikTok has replaced Reddit for me (I can expand more on why I stopped using Reddit, but it's not related to TikTok) in terms of "checking what's up on the internet" or as Reddit would put it "Checking the homepage of the internet".
I trust TikTok's "algorithm" to give me quick and entertaining short-bits about what's going on, what's interesting, etc. It learns what I'm into effortlessly, and I appreciate how every now and then it would throw in a completely new (to me) genera or type of content to check out. Whenever I open it, there is a feed that's been curated to me about things I'm interested in checking out, few new things that are hit or miss (and I like that), and very few infuriating/stupid (to me) things.
Its recommendation engine is the best I have used. It's baffling how shitty YouTube's algorithm is. I discover YouTube channels I'm into form TikTok. Sometimes I'd discover new (or old) interesting videos from YouTube channels I already follow from TikTok first. For example, I follow Veritasium and 3Blue1Brown on YouTube but I certainly haven't watched their full back catalog. YouTube NEVER recommends to me anything from their back catalog. When I'm in the mood, I have to go to their channel, scroll for a while, then try to find a video I'd be interested in from the thumbnail/title. And once I do, YouTube will re-recommend to me all the videos I have already watched from them (which are already their best performing videos). Rarely would it recommend something new from them.
On TikTok, it frequently would pull clips from old Veritasium or 3Blue1Brown videos for me which I'd get hooked after watching 10 seconds, then hob on YouTube to watch the full video. It's insane how bad YouTube recommendation algorithm is. Literally the entire "recommended" section of youtube is stuff I have watched before, or stuff with exactly the same content as things I have watched before.
Here is how I find their recommendation algorithm to work:
YouTube: Oh you watched (and liked) a brisket smoking video? Here is that video again, and 10 other "brisket smoking videos". These are just gonna be stuck on your home page for the next couple of weeks now. You need to click on them one by one and mark "not interested" in which case you're clearly not interested in BBQ or cooking. Here are the last 10 videos you watched, and some MrBeast videos and some random YouTube drama videos.
TikTok: Oh you watched (and liked) a brisket smoking video? How about another BBQ video, a video about smokers and their models, some videos about cookouts and BBQ side dishes, a video about a DIY smoker, another about a DIY backyard project for hosting BBQ cookouts, a video about how smoke flavors food, a video about the history of BBQ in the south, a video about a BBQ joint in your city (or where ever my VPN is connected from), etc. And if you're not interested in any of those particular types, it learns from how long you spend watching the video and would branch more or less in that direction in the future.
Another example is search. Search for "sci fi books recommendations":
YouTube: Here are 3 videos about Sci-Fi books. Here are 4 brisket smoking videos. Here are some lost hikers videos (because you watched a video about a lost hiker 3 weeks ago). Here are 3 videos about a breaking story in the news. Here are 2 videos about sci-fi books, and another 8 about brisket.
TikTok: Here is a feed of videos about Sci-Fi books. And I'll make sure to throw in sci-fi book videos into your curated feed every now and then to see if you're interested.
This is a really good writeup. Thanks for posting it.
I'm pretty upset about it and I am not a creator.
I'm not just upset because I have a general dislike of being told I'm an idiotic, addicted, communist stooge who is easily brainwashed. I am used to folks telling me that- it started when I was writing anti-war editorials in the early oughts, so there is nothing new in that.
What I regret is that I have been following a number of quite-good political discussions on the platform, with a nicely diverse group of interlocutors.
While the discussion generally leans far left, there are many flavors of that left:
not a lot of tankies, mostly just people between "dirt bag left" and "black panther party", lots of women, BIPOC, trans folks, academics, working people, indigenous folks, queer folks of all stripes, activists, and folks who just don't like authority.
Those conversations had been very hard to come by on Yt, Ig, or Fb.
I think it's the response format for videos. I don't think it's worth bothering to speculate about other reasons, though I did note that several legitimate left news sources were shuttered in 2020 when Meta and Tw started their political purge.
Anyhow, I know that folks in the US have very little regard for political autonomy, so I am not surprised that this happens, and compared to the carceral state and the happy ecocide of the planet this is a very little thing. But I will still miss it.
> Anyone here who's not a TikTok content creator reasonably upset about losing access to the platform? Can you tell me why it will sting for you?
I like living in a country where the government does not get to decide what I'm allowed to read/watch/see. The TikTok ban chips away at that in a meaningful way.
I value this above most other concerns, including vague worries about "Chinese spying".
But why didn't Supreme Court find the first ammendment arguments compelling? As per first ammendment it is legal and protected to print/distribute/disseminate even enemy propaganda in the USA.
Even at the height of cold war for example Soviet Publications were legal to publish, print and distribute in the USA.
What changed now?
Even a judge, Sotomayer said during this case that yes, the Government can say to someone that their speech is not allowed.
Looks like a major erosion of first amendment protections.
Because there is no "TikTok" ban and never has been.
There is a "TikTok cannot be controlled by the CCP" law. TikTok is completely legal under the law as long as they divest it. However, in a great act of self-incrimination, Bytedance (de facto controlled by CCP) has decided to not divest and would rather shutdown instead.
Exactly. And what puzzles me is that the evidences offered by the Congress was quite speculative, whether it's about data collection, content manipulation, influence of Chinese laws, or the potential future threat. Yet ByteDance chose not to argue about the evidence, but to argument about 1A.
It would have been great for ByteDance to IPO TikTok in the USA, it has had plenty of time to do so, it would have made lots of people boatloads of money, Chinese and Americans alike. Even Snapchat, which had similar levels of pervasive arrogance, IPO'd.
Yes. The Chinese government probably lost its citizens around $100b by not allowing TikTok to sell.
In the late 80s and early 90s, the foreign-exchange reserves of China was less than a billion dollars. The US government could spend $50M to negotiate a lot of things from China, like having a war with Vietnam even though it was Soviet who was behind Vietnamese government. Nowadays, Chinese government could easily say fuck this $100B. Papa can afford it to call your bluff.
It's great that an entire nation can gain wealth through hard work and good strategic decisions, at least in some way. But it hurts me that the US lost its way in the process by losing so much manufacturing capabilities, to the point that we can't even adequately produce saline solutions, nor could we make shells or screws for our war planes cheaply.
So, you could say that that sweet large scale mind control is apparently worth more than $100b to them...
[delayed]
When you think of it as enough money to give a $100 bill to ~everybody in china, wow. That’s quite a bit of money.
Any amount of $$$ earned by CCP will not be easily passed down to citizens.
I’d be interested if there’s any objective measure of how much a countries money is passed down back to its citizens or hoarded by people in power. Is there any such measure?
Even if the money from the IPO itself doesnt go to directly to random citizens it still pumps a ton of money into their economy providing capital for other investments in new markets creating jobs, spending on goods/services by the company, hiring internally (IPOs always allow companies to expand), etc etc. That money doesn't just sit in a giant pile being unused, like Scrooge McDuck's gold pile.
Not to mention the training and development it would give a whole new class of people in China to operate global businesses.
You don't put your treasure for sale, at least not when you have extracted its value first.
The evidence and reasoning by Congress was all "non-justiciable" by the courts.
Congress looked at some evidence and made a decision. That is their purview and our checks-and-balances do not allow the courts to second-guess Congress like that. They can look at the "how" of the law, but not the "why".
Specifically the court looked at "what is congress' goal and is there any other way to achieve that goal that doesn't stop as much speech" and there isn't, but they can't question the validity of Congress' goals.
So there's no point in Bytedance arguing any of it, at least not in court.
>And what puzzles me is that the evidences offered by the Congress was quite speculative, whether it's about data collection, content manipulation, influence of Chinese laws, or the potential future threat.
I think in a national security paradigm, you model threats and threat capabilities rather than reacting to threats only after they are realized. This of course can and has been abused to rationalize foreign policy misadventures and there's a real issue of our institutions failing to arrest momentum in that direction.
But I don't think the upshot of those problems is that we stop attempting to model and respond to national security threats altogether, which appears to be the implication of some arguments that dispute the reality of national security concerns.
> Yet ByteDance chose not to argue about the evidence, but to argument about 1A.
I think this is a great point, but perhaps their hands were tied, because it's a policy decision by congress in the aforementioned national security paradigm and not the kind of thing where it's incumbent on our govt to prove a specific injury in order to have authority to make policy judgments on national security.
If you look at the people defending TikTok, if you ask similar questions they won't try to defend it either, it's an immediate switch to whataboutism with regards to native US tech companies or arguing that the US Gov is more dangerous than the CCP.
But all that only just confirms the priors of the people who are pro-Ban. And unfortunately it's about justifying why we shouldn't ban TikTok, not why we should ban TikTok. They can't provide a good justification for that, the best they can is just poison the well and try to attack those same institutions. But turns out effectively saying "fuck you" to Congress isn't going to work when Congress has all the power here.
This is just hypocrisy baiting, this isn't a real analysis at any level. They didn't bring ANY evidence for them to argue against, it was purely an opinion by the state that there could exist a threat, which again is not supported by evidence, true or not. America has a lot to gain by controlling tiktok and one American billionaire will become a lot richer, that's all there is to it. I mean both candidates used tiktok to campaign while wanting to ban it. It's just a ridiculous notion and even they know that.
"Oh you love hamburgers? Then why did you eat chicken last night? Hmmm, curious... You are obviously guilty"
There was evidence and it was discussed in the ruling by the Supreme Court. Please read it.
For example, https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/24-656_ca7d.pdf
Gorsuch pg 3
Assuming you mean this:
It basically just says that the app asks for the user's contact list, and that if the user grants it, the phone OS overshares information. That's really thin as evidence of wrong-doing. It doesn't even say that this capability is currently coded into the app. This sounds more like an Android/iOS problem - why is the contact sharing all or nothing? Would the ban still be OK if the app didn't have read contact permissions?It’s a great question. Gorsuch goes onto say
"But before seeking to impose that remedy, the coordinate branches spent years in negotiations with TikTok exploring alternatives and ultimately found them wanting. Ante, at 4. And from what I can glean from the record, that judgment was well founded."
Maybe that was one of the alternatives. I wasn’t on the task force but if I was asked to then I would have went one on one with their tech lead’s and asked them to stop collecting this.
But it seems it is greater than that. How you interact with it, your likes and dislikes can be used as a fingerprint and against you.
This fingerprint can then be used against firesteelrain some time in the prophetic future.
Gorsuch says
“To be sure, assessing exactly what a foreign adversary may do in the future implicates 'delicate' and 'complex' judgments about foreign affairs and requires 'large elements of prophecy.' Chicago & Southern Air Lines, Inc. v. Waterman S. S. Corp., 333 U. S. 103, 111 (1948) (Jackson, J., for the Court). But the record the government has amassed in these cases after years of study supplies compelling reason“
Then he says this.
“ Consider some of the alternatives. Start with our usual and preferred remedy under the First Amendment: more speech. Supra, at 2. However helpful that might be, the record shows that warning users of the risks associated with giving their data to a foreign-adversary-controlled application would do nothing to protect nonusers’ data. 2 App. 659–660; supra, at 3. Forbidding TikTok’s domestic operations from sending sensitive data abroad might seem another option. But even if Congress were to impose serious criminal penalties on domestic TikTok employees who violate a data-sharing ban, the record suggests that would do little to deter the PRC from exploiting TikTok to steal Americans’ data. See 1 App. 214 (noting threats from “malicious code, backdoor vulnerabilities, surreptitious surveillance, and other problematic activities tied to source code development” in the PRC); 2 App. 702 (“[A]gents of the PRC would not fear monetary or criminal penalties in the United States”). The record also indicates that the “size” and “complexity” of TikTok’s “underlying software” may make it impossible for law enforcement to detect violations. Id., at 688–689; see also id., at 662. Even setting all these challenges aside, any new compliance regime could raise separate constitutional concerns—for instance, by requiring the government to surveil Americans’ data to ensure that it isn’t illicitly flowing overseas. Id., at 687 (suggesting that effective enforcement of a data-export ban might involve).”
Can you link it here would be super grateful
It's super interesting to see the custom code in TikTok not in Reels that can enable this not into politics but the algo would be cool to look at
https://arxiv.org/abs/2201.12271
https://kvombatkere.github.io/assets/TikTok_Paper_WebConf24....
https://arxiv.org/abs/2308.04086
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-76520-0_...
https://redfame.com/journal/index.php/ijsss/article/view/566...
https://github.com/SyntaxSparkk/TikTok
https://www.deeplearning.ai/the-batch/issue-122/?utm_source=...
Saw the GitHub thing a while back I meant comparatively TikTok vs Instagram vs YouTube where they differ / are the same etc
I updated with the paper comparing how TikTok is beating FB
All I'm getting from these is TikTok has a better recommendation engine? Am I missing something?
Has anyone scrapped all three to show for a newly created account there is significant difference in topics or something like that?
The academic research is scarce.
This is the next one I found (from a high schooler though)
https://www.jsr.org/hs/index.php/path/article/view/2428
It doesn’t look like a well researched area in terms of academia. I am not an expert in this so don’t know why
Thanks for linking and kudos to that high schooler considering how much in the news it has been you would expect it to be a well reasearched area
Do they do this with other bans, like those against network hardware? Other countries sell their goods here at the American government's leisure. It's always been this way.
What if Congress passed a law that said "The New York Times must shut down unless all foreign owners divest"? That's effectively impossible for a publicly traded corporation. Is that just a ban, in practice?
That's what the question of strict scrutiny vs. intermediate scrutiny vs. rational basis is about. The courts would have to decide the appropriate level of scrutiny given the legal context and then apply that to the law as written.
Your hypothetical clearly implicates the Times' speech, so intermediate scrutiny at least would be applied, requiring that the law serve an important governmental purpose. I think that would be a difficult argument for the government to make, especially if the law was selective about which kinds of media institutions could and could not have any foreign ownership in general. The TikTok law is much more specific.
For those interested, https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R47986 is a relatively approachable overview of these guidelines.
It's interesting to read the full TikTok opinion https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/24-656_ca7d.pdf and search for "scrutiny" and "tailored" while referencing some of the diagrams from the overview above. It's a good case study of how different levels of scrutiny are evaluated!
(Not a lawyer, this is not legal advice.)
IANAL, but my lay opinion is that thanks to the foreign commerce clause this would be a matter of rational basis.
So quite likely Congress could craft such a law and have it hold up, if it could show that foreign control of the NYT (which is incidentally the case) posed a national security concern.
IANALE, but any time the exercise of fundamental rights is being constrained, I understand intermediate scrutiny is the floor.
Except this isn't a law against any foreign owner, just specifically a foreign owner that is essentially the #1 geopolitical adversary of the US.
A large part of the US-China relationship is zero-sum. If America loses, china wins, and vice versa. That relationship is not the same for, say, the US-France relationship.
That’s what the China hawks want you to believe, it’s not just a lie but a shameful, war mongering lie. And they will increasingly use that lie to shut people up, shut apps down, until we have no choice but to believe that the Chinese want us dead and we them. It’s textbook propaganda and you’re spreading it.
China and the US have been in a massively successful, mutually beneficial global economic partnership for decades. Zero sum my ass. Take a peace pipe, make friends not war.
I want to believe you, but arguments like this are so simplistic that it's profoundly disappointing. It is simultaneously the case that they are extensive trade partners and that there's ongoing harassment in the South China Sea, the horrifying takeover of Hong Kong and the increasingly chilling situation in Taiwan, or the harassment of expat dissidents who have fled to the West.
To say nothing of extremely adversarial cases of increasingly aggressive hacking, corporate espionage, "wolf warrior" diplomacy, development of military capabilities that seem specifically designed with countering the U.S. in mind, as well as the more ordinary diplomatic and economic pushback on everything from diplomatic influence, pushing an alternative reserve currency, and an internal political doctrine that emphasizes doubling down on all these fronts.
I don't even feel like I've ventured an opinion yet, I've simply surveyed facts and I am yet to meet a variation of the Officer Barbrady "nothing to see here" argument that has proved to be fully up to speed on the adversarial picture in front of us.
I think what I want, to feel reassured, is to be pleasantly surprised by someone who is command of these facts, capable of showing that I'm wrong about any of the above, and/or that I'm overlooking important swaths of the factual landscape in such a way that points to a safe equilibrium rather than an adversarial position.
But instead it's light-on-facts tirades that attempt to paint these concerns as neocon warmongering, attempting to indulge in a combination of colorful imagery and ridicule, which for me is kind of a non-starter.
Edit in response to reply below: I'm just going to underscore that none of the facts here are in dispute. The whataboutism, insinuations of racism, and "were you there!?" style challenges (reminiscent of creation science apologetics) are just not things I'm interested in engaging with.
if you reread your post, looking for whatabboutism, each critique you provide could be described as such in response to "we're great trading partners and will continue to be"
why are these whatabboutisms interesting but others are not? what makes you comfortable with working with americans, when its clear how they treat expat political dissidents like Assange and Snowden? why are you ok working with the US who's military is tuned for seizing iranian oil shipments? why are you favourable to a US reserve currency when the US has been abusing its power by putting all kinds of unilateral sanctions, and confiscating reserves without any due process? its not just china thats trying to make a new reserve currency, the EU does too, so they can buy iranian oil.
minus all the whatabboutisms, america and china exchanged ~$750B worth of goods and services in 2022, with neither's trangressions being a blocker. Americans by and large care much more about the cost and variety of goods than they do about fishing rights in the south china sea. americans dont care that much about US foreign policy goals, compared to shopping and culture.
>why are these whatabboutisms interesting but others are not?
I don't agree that they are whataboutisms for starters. I don't present them in response to criticisms of the U.S. to deflect away those criticisms, which is an essential, definitional characteristic of a whataboutism. Everything ususal to the critique of whataboutisms is sufficient I think to address the new examples you present in your comment, which I would say just fall in the same old category.
The critiques of China in this context are "interesting" because they relate to democratic norms, human rights, freedom of expression and the security environment that safeguards them.
And perhaps most importantly, I don't regard democratic values and economic transactions to be in a relationship where the loss of one is compensated by the presence of the other. This is a point which I believe is a relatively well understood cornerstone of western liberal democracies.
Have you been to China? Know anyone from there? Or is your opinion on what they deserve based entirely on TV headlines? Do you relate to them as humans? That’s what I need to see before I take anyone’s condemnation of any group of people seriously.
I’m disputing none of the facts you raise, I just don’t think it’s reason enough to label the entire country as an enemy state and shut the door like a petulant child. Especially in light of the horrifying atrocities that we ourselves are funding.
> China and the US have been in a massively successful, mutually beneficial global economic partnership for decades
Past performance is not indicative of future results. China is now grappling with sluggish GDP growth, declining fertility, youth unemployment, re-shoring/friend-shoring, a property crisis, popular discontent with authoritarian overreach (e.g. zero COVID and HK), and increasingly concentrated power under chairman-for-life Xi. Their military spending has hockey-sticked in the past two decades and they're churning out ships and weapons like nobody's business. He realizes that the demographic and economic windows of opportunity are finite for military action against Taiwan (and by extension its allies like the US and Japan). The Chinese military's shenanigans in the South China Sea with artificial islands, EEZ violations, and so forth in combination with Xi's rhetorical sabre-rattling in domestic speeches don't paint a pretty picture.
Before somebody like this poster calls me a "war-mongering [liar]" or something similar let me point out that this is the opinion of academics [1], not US DoD officials or politicians. I have nothing but reverence for China's people and culture. I'd love to visit but unfortunately it's my understanding that I'd have to install tracking software on my phone and check in with police every step of the way. This type of asymmetry between our governments is why this ban has legs.
With the gift of hindsight I think it's safe to say that neoliberal policy (in the literal sense of the term, not the hacky partisan one) is a double-edged sword that got us to where we are today. To say that the US-China relationship is sunshine and puppies is ignorant of the facts.
[1] https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/02/04/china-war-military-taiw...
> I'd love to visit but unfortunately it's my understanding that I'd have to install tracking software on my phone and check in with police every step of the way.
Uh, what? I've never encountered this in my trips to China.
You do have an ID scanned (like literally, on a photocopier) when you check into a hotel.
Do you dispute the persecution of Uyghurs in China? The UN, US Dept. of State, House of Commons in the UK and Canada, Dutch Parliament, French National Assembly, New Zealand, Belgium, and the Czech Republic?
This is not a government to be friends with. It's time we go our separate ways from the CCP.
I do not dispute it (in fact if you have good sources on the latest goings-on about this issue I’d appreciate it). But to say that it’s cause enough to excommunicate the CCP and go to war… is hypocrisy of the highest order, when we ourselves clearly fund and condone massive atrocities as long as it’s someone else’s hands. Road to peace is not paved with blood, do not be confused. Peace comes from boring communication work: talking, arguing, hashing the problems out, day in and day out. Shutting the door is the first step to a tragedy, always.
I don't advocate war, but I'd prefer a relationship similar to Russia or North Korea. No trade whatsoever. No trade with nations that trade with China.
in october, the US did >$300M of trade with russia. looks like trade with NK is quite small, but non-zero as well ( https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/c5790.html )
i imagine its much larger for both if you include bitcoin transactions
Well, to a large extent, the reason Russia and North Korea are hopeless backwaters ruled by petty dictators and filled with suffering… is precisely because nobody would trade with or invest in them. And when they predictably fall into dysfunction and despair, they end up threatening everyone’s peace. You reap what you sow. We need to do better.
That's completely wrong. All of Europe heavily traded with Russia, and Germany even wanted to base their green transformation plan primarily on trade with Russia.
By which point, Russia was already in the hands of a dictator. Too late and too little, as they say. But yes, obviously, every country deserves a large share of blame for its own situation.
Either way - even if I concede this, my point stands that starving nations and denying them development isn't a great long term strategy for peace.
My person in deity do I need to go down the list of genocides and atrocities the US has either participated in or funded in its long and bloodsoaked history? It's a long list but it ends with the billions of dollars in weapons, aid and personnel we sent to help Israel try to wipe out the Palestinians.
This isn't an attempt at whataboutism here, no one is denying that what China is doing to the Uyghurs is terrible, but the US and its allies have no moral high ground to stand on at all in this regard.
That was the us policy for 20 years under the assumption that political liberalism with follow economic liberalism. It has not. This is also no one sided. China is preparing for conflict with the US so we must also. Yes hawks can push a country into war but so can doves.
Or the US is preparing for conflict with China, so China must also. But actually it's probably a two way feedback loop between the two of them that the ignoramuses that run each country love because it makes their jobs exciting and, probably, profitable.
All powers are mutually antagonistic and it prudent to prepare to confront each other. As long as thoes efforts are equally matched and neither side is prepared thinks it can gain an advantage the peace is held as it held during the cold war.
How does banning TikTok defend Taiwan?
The Scotus case linked to here by others has noted the possibility of tying networks of contacts to Tiktok user profiles, and network mapping political groups in Taiwan can be leveraged to support any number ventures to disempower the island's democracy-favoring majority.
does the US ban apply to taiwanese people in taiwan?
Only insofar as their support networks extend into the United States. But you're right to suggest that Taiwan should consider a ban also, over similar security concerns.
Information warfare is a domain of war in the 21st century.
Have you gone to Zhihu or Weibo and read what the Chinese are saying there about you guys? Here's a top thread on there with 12,000 likes - https://www.zhihu.com/question/460310859/answer/2046776391
>I might as well make this clear.
>Now, regarding the international situation, The biggest wish of most of us Chinese is that the United States disappears completely and permanently from this beautiful earth.
>Because the United States uses its financial, military and other hegemony to exploit the world, destroy the peace and tranquility of the earth, and bring countless troubles to the people of other countries, we sincerely hope that the United States will disappear.
>We usually laugh at the large number of infections caused by the new coronavirus pandemic in the United States, not because we have no sympathy, but because we really hope that the United States will disappear.
>We usually laugh at the daily gun wars in the United States, not because we don’t sympathize with the families that have been broken up by shootings, but because we really hope that the United States will disappear.
>We usually laugh at Americans for legalizing drugs, not because we support drugs, but because we really hope that the United States will disappear.When we scold American Olympic athletes, it's not because we lack sportsmanship, but because we really hope that America will disappear.
>We make fun of Trump and Sleepy Joe, not because we look down on these two old men, but because we really hope that the United States will disappear.
>We Chinese are hardworking, kind, reasonable, peace-loving and not extreme. But we really don't like America. Really, if the Americans had not fought with us in Korea in the early days of our country, prevented us from liberating Taiwan, provoked a trade war, challenged our sovereignty in the South China Sea, and bullied our Huawei, would we Chinese hate them?
And that's what Chinese netziens agree without controversy on one of their biggest social media sites. What about the CCP here? Well if we look at Wang Huning, Chief Ideologue of the CCP, he is explicitly an postliberal who draws from the Schmittian rejection of liberal heterogenity, which he sees as inherently unstable, in favour of a strong, homogenous and centralized state based on traditional values in order to guarantee stability. And if it that's just internally, how do you think a fundamental rejection of heterogenity translates to foreign policy? So yes, whether you think China is a problem, China certainly thinks you are a problem.
It's always very interesting to see people pull out threads with low like counts (like 12k) and claim that central idea of the post is widely held.
We're talking about platforms with tens of millions of users; wide appeal is at least a quarter million likes, with mass appeal being at least a million. A local-scale influencer can gather 10-30k likes very easily on such a massive platform.
>It's always very interesting to see people pull out threads with low like counts (like 12k) and claim that central idea of the post is widely held.
In what context is 12k likes a low amount? To me this is reminiscent of arguments I heard from neocons that global anti-Iraq war protests, the largest coordinated global protests in history at the time, counted as "small" if you considered them in absolute terms as percentages of the global population.
I think it's the opposite, that such activities are tips of the proverbial iceberg of more broadly shared sentiment.
It would be one thing if there were all kinds of sentiments in all directions with roughly evenly distributed #'s of likes. I'm open to the idea that some aspect of context could be argued to diminish the significance, but it wouldn't be that 12k likes, in context, is a negligible amount. It would be something else like its relative popularity compared to alternative views, or some compelling argument that this is a one-off happenstance and not a broadly shared sentiment.
Do you disagree then that's not a sentiment widely reflected within Chinese social media? I simply gave an example for brevity, other answers are similar, I would encourage people to actually go in and read themselves here.
Why argue we are on HN scrape US and China social networks. Have at least a 100 million posts from each. Do sentiment and topic extraction.
If it is based on one post I'm sure i can find a Reddit post talking about how non white people should be slaves it's the internet lol
bro literally citing chinese facebook comments ;) if you started taking pissed off internet comments seriously we'd have to go to war with every country in the world
look man, i'm not saying china is some heavenly force of justice. but the thing about peace is that it's bigger than both sides, and it's maintained by the grace of those who understand that often the real threat isn't the enemy, it's your fear of the enemy.
>it's maintained by the grace of those who understand that often the real threat isn't the enemy, it's your fear of the enemy.
But how do you know that? Do you any such examples of how the CCP or China is dicussing politics amongst themselves to support that claim, their ideological leanings and papers or their own national strategies?
Sadly that's above the pay grade of everyone here only the rich folk that run the world get to see that on all sides :)
One idea would be to completely ignore news outlets and look at raw data imports, exports, official visits to try to identify geopolitical patterns algorithmically has anyone on HN attempted such a thing?
That might be true, and yet it's also true that enemies are not just a fictional concept, and letting them have undue influence that weakens your society probably isn't a good idea.
Ok, replace my sentence with "The New York Times must shut down unless all Chinese foreign owners divest"; does that change the analysis?
The ban is not rooted in the concept ByteDance has a minority of investors who are Chinese citizens so any comparisons framed around that concept will not change the analysis. The reason for the ban, agree with it or not, is the perceived control and data sharing with the Chinese government made possible by many things (mainly that they are HQ'd in that government's jurisdiction and then have all of these other potentially concerning details, not that they just have one of these other details).
If the NYT were seen as being under significant control of and risking sharing too much user data with the Chinese government then it would indeed make sense to apply the same ban.
Personally, I'm still on the fence about the ban. On one hand having asymmetry in one side banning such things and the other not is going to be problematic. On the other the inherent problems of banning companies by law. Such things work out in other areas... but will it work out in this specific type of example? Dunno, not 100% convinced either way.
>Personally, I'm still on the fence about the ban. On one hand having asymmetry in one side banning such things and the other not is going to be problematic.
I wouldn't worry about that, as FB, twitter, reddit etc are banned in China. To the extent that we want equilibrium here, banning Tiktok would reprsent a step toward parity.
>>>mainly that they are HQ'd in that government's jurisdiction
ByteDance is; TikTok is not. TikTok is headquartered in USA and Taiwan. Why is that not part of the analysis? The CCP can control/influence ByteDance, the US can't do anything about that. But it could do a number of things to prevent ByteDance control/influence on TikTok, and it jumped directly to "must divest".
Congress could have passed a law banning TikTok from transmitting any user data back to ByteDance/China, for example. Why not do that, if that was the actual concern?
Well, reporting as recent as April of 2024 suggested that Bytedance is able to access tiktok user data despite Operation Texas. And generally speaking, we have seen enough in the way of (1) security breaches and (2) leaky promises not to disclose data either to govts or 3rd party data brokers, only for those reassurances to fall flat. I would even go so far as to say that professions to uphold trade agreements or international agreements are uniquely "soft" in their seriousness from China in recent history.
Guarantees of insulation from bad actors from major tech companies unfortunately are not generally credible, and what is credible, at least relatively speaking, are guarantees imposed by technology itself such as E2E encryption and zero knowledge architecture, as well as contextual considerations like the long term track record of specific companies, details of their ownership and their physical locations.
The reporting I found (from the Verge) was that an employee of TikTok (in America) would email spreadsheets to executives in China, and other similar cases of US employees having the actual access to data and passing it along to other folks in China.
This all suggests to me that the 'Operation Texas' technical controls were actually in place and pretty good (or dude in China would have just run some SQL himself), and what isn't in place is hard process control to prevent US workers from emailing stuff to China. Which, you know, is exactly what Congress could pass a law to deal with.
I took the article to be absolutely damning in its reckoning on the utility of Operation Texas, precisely because it proved that no amount of technical control would be a match for the human infrastructure that tied Tiktok to China.
Which I suppose is a different way of making the same point as you.
Haha, yah, I think we agree; Operation Texas does what it says on the tin (the data is stored in the USA! It can only be directly accessed from within the USA) but ultimately that doesn't matter at all, since Jim in Texas can just email it all to China.
Yes, because the NYT is a publicly traded company. And it is majority-controlled by a single American family - the Sulzbergers. I'm not sure you could argue that a Chinese national owning a single share of NYT stock could have any kind of sway on the operation of the company. Could the same be said for the relationship China has with TikTok?
This is the reason right here. If TikTok was owned by North Korea, this wouldn't be controversial.
draft published by mistake
Well, yes. Just like you're allowed to say who your biggest enemy or your best friend is, even if your biggest enemy or best friend don't feel the same way about you.
Anyways, who do you think China would say their #1 geopolitical adversary is?
As far as i can tell, the Chinese care mostly about building and investing. They're aware that the US sees them as their "number one enemy" (what a childish, irresponsible way to refer to a nation of a billion, mostly innocent, people), and that the US has maintained its global domination since WWII by political assassinations, bombings, proxy wars, and half-assed failed invasions.
My advice? Stop using words like "geopolitical adversary" to mask what you really want to say. This is life, not a chessboard.
Please tell me what I really want to say, since you apparently know me better than I do.
I think the equivalent would be if New York Times is somehow owned by Tencent and given that the Chinese government uses golden shares to control private companies. In that case, I think it's fair game to force NYT to divest or force them to shutdown.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_share
What if Congress passed a law that said "The New York Times must shut down unless all foreign owners divest"?
This already exists in some ways. Foreign companies are not allowed to own American broadcasters. That's why Rupert Murdoch had to become a (dual?) American citizen when he wanted to own Fox television stations in the United States.
That would be like telling Facebook to "divest" from the US government. Which, in this case, means ignoring all government requests for data and censorship. Facebook obviously cannot do that.
Vaguely like that.
Ostensibly, the US government honors the 1st and 4th amendments, and only restricts speech on the platform in rare instances where that speech is likely to incite or produce imminent lawless action, and only issues warrants for private data which are of limited scope for evidence where the government has probable cause that a crime has occurred.
The accusation is that the CCP and Bytedance have a much more intimate relationship than that, censoring (or compelling) speech and producing data for mere political favors. Whether or not this is true of Facebook's relationship with US political entities is up for debate.
The only reason it isn't widely known that social media platforms in the US share information with the government regularly is because it's illegal for said platforms to disclose those requests. It used to be that platforms would have canaries, similar to a dead man's switch, that would be removed once they were subject to these types of requests. None of them do it any more because the requests are commonplace.
Cross the US government and see how fast that turns into shadow bans, your loved ones getting tortured, someone else working with your SSN, dummy up and fish, imprisoned algorithmically etc you won't even have to cross them just be guilty by association
No horse in this race as both horses hate and will trample me but just saying lol
Of all the arguments in all directions, by far the least compelling have been the ones that attempt to both-sides equivalences between the U.S. and China on question of free speech and democratic norms. It's not that there's no offenses on the U.S. side, it's just the game of whatabouting reeks of JV debate team sophistry that is very discouraging to engage with.
The single party domination, the great firewall, the authoritarian surveillance are without comparison in scale and I think that has to be among the explicitly agreed upon facts that sanity check any conversation on this topic.
Edit since I can't reply to the comment below: all the examples mentioned below appear to involve the very equivocation between differences in scale that I spent this whole comment talking about, or attempt to equate past vs present, or are too vague to even understand the nature of the comparison, and collectively are so disorganized and low effort that they are degrading the focus and quality of the conversation as a whole.
Ughyhur Camps vs Reservations/Slavery/Jim Crow/Internment Camps/Operation Paperclip
lingchi vs waterboarding/black sites
NSA vs Great Firewall
provincial one party system vs micro nation based two party system both favoring the rich
TikTok vs Instagram/YouTube
when both sides consider you sub human kind of easy to compare them without emotion :)
but truly curious where have the facts been misrepresented? I would expect this on Reddit but not on a site like HN tbh
lol @ the edit could not be more specific and factual than this I thought HN was about facts
if any false equivalences were made or scales underestimated prove it with data to further the conversation not some hand wavy righteous comment that's for Reddit as they say :D
This is completely incorrect. Divestment in this context means the selling of an asset by an organization. You cannot "divest" in this sense from a government. That's nonsensical.
The equivalent in Facebook (Meta) terms would be China requiring Facebook, if it wished to continue operations in China, to sell the Chinese Facebook product to a Chinese or other, as to be defined by China, non-American entity. In some sense this is already the case.
Not really. There is no analogous concept in the US of the CCP's relationship with large companies.
1) TikTok was already theoretically a US company, but the strings were being pulled by the parent org in China.
2) US and China regulatory burdens and rule of law aren't equivalent, and I'm not going to grant that equivalency.
> There is a "TikTok cannot be controlled by the CCP" law
It’s also not a ban on the content. It’s a ban on hosting and the App Store. TikTok.com can still legally resolve to the same content.
You could say that about all the American tech companies that are banned in China. They just have to comply with Chinese law and will be unbanned. For example, Google, unlike Microsoft/Apple, chose to withdraw from China rather than comply with Chinese law.
Selling TikTok means handing over the source code for the algorithm.
I can see, say, Coca-Cola refusing to sell a local subsidiary if they would be forced to hand over their recipe.
It doesn’t label ccp. It denigrates four countries as foreign adversaries. And then allows the president to remove any company located in those adversaries.
Kaspersky was banned this way. Tiktok was hard coded in the law to be banned. The law allows for sale. It doesn’t enforce sale.
it's more specifically ByteDance must divest. The effects that happen because of a divestment by ByteDance, such as TikTok losing access to "the algorithm", are just incidental. The oral arguments for the case are on YouTube and are worth a listen.
Wait is it actually controlled by the CCP? Did they present evidence for policies implemented by TikTok directed by the CCP?
Does divest in this context mean sell it to a non Chinese owner?
>owever, in a great act of self-incrimination, Bytedance (de facto controlled by CCP) has decided to not divest and would rather shutdown instead.
How is it self-incrimination? That logic doesn't work.
80% of TikTok's users are outside of the U.S., why would they sell the whole thing?
And the law is written in a way that there is no value to just sell the American operation without the algorithm, they have to sell the whole thing, including the algorithm, in order for there to be a serious buyer.
It's technology highway robbery. Imagine if China told Apple "sell to us or be banned", we'd tell them to pound sand too.
No one is asking them to sell the entire company. Just the US arm.
Not sure that changes much but you seem to be talking about non US users, which wouldn't fall under this ruling.
The West told plenty of its companies, through public pressure or laws, that they have to divest from Russia, and they did. Rationally they recognized that selling their assets is financially more lucrative than just closing their operations and making 0$. Now why would an corporation which alleges to not be controlled by a government refuse to sell and forego billions in income, even though it is against the interest of their shareholders?
from what I know the bids that have been put in place are just for the US operations and there are some bids that dont include the algo as a part of the deal.
Separately, it's hard to get upset about this when China absolutely does not allow similar foreign ownership of large apps in their country. Look at all the hoops, including domestic ownership requirements, required to sell saas or similar in China.
quote from tiktok's webiste https://usds.tiktok.com/usds-myths-vs-facts/: ``` Myth: TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance Ltd., is Chinese owned.
Fact: TikTok’s parent company ByteDance Ltd. was founded by Chinese entrepreneurs, but today, roughly sixty percent of the company is beneficially owned by global institutional investors such as Carlyle Group, General Atlantic, and Susquehanna International Group. An additional twenty percent of the company is owned by ByteDance employees around the world, including nearly seven thousand Americans. The remaining twenty percent is owned by the company’s founder, who is a private individual and is not part of any state or government entity. ```
Bytedance is HQ'd in Beijing and required by law to comply without exception with national security requests.
So why is Apple being forced to evict a free app from their store?
> "de facto controlled by CCP"
Where is the evidence for this?
The Chinese government directly owns shares of ByteDance. It has representatives of the government working in the company ensuring it takes the "correct political direction": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ByteDance#Management
https://www.fdd.org/analysis/2024/03/12/5-things-to-know-abo...
I found the first three alone quite compelling:
> ByteDance is Closely Connected to China’s Military-Industrial Complex
> ByteDance is Bound by Chinese State Surveillance Laws
> ByteDance’s Board is Beholden to Beijing
As evidenced that TikTok would rather shut down than continue to print money in the US
It's common knowledge that the CCP has a lot of control over various companies registered there: https://sccei.fsi.stanford.edu/china-briefs/reassessing-role...
The above is based on a linked research paper but the numbers may actually be much higher as it can't really account for proxy ownership, various CCP committees influencing these companies, state banks providing loans only for companies that play ball, etc.
And even if it wouldn't directly have fingers in the pie, it's an authoritarian state, and it always has de-facto control over anything it decides to control. The state can always just waltz in like a mafia boss: "nice outfit you have here, would be a shame if anything were to happen to it..."
While more democratic nations are not entirely flawless on this, the separation of powers, independent judiciary, and free press do offer protections against this, as does having a general culture where these sort of things aren't accepted. Again, not flawless 100% foolproof protections, but in general it does work reasonably well.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/18/tech/tiktok-bytedance-china-o...
> However, like most other Chinese companies, ByteDance is legally compelled to establish an in-house Communist Party committee composed of employees who are party members.
> In 2018, China amended its National Intelligence Law, which requires any organization or citizen to support, assist and cooperate with national intelligence work. > That means ByteDance is legally bound to help with gathering intelligence.
I would say yes.
Where is the evidence for this?
"Another way the Chinese government could assert leverage over a deal involving TikTok would be by exercising its “golden share” in a unit of ByteDance. In such an arrangement, the Chinese government buys a small portion of a company’s equity in exchange for a seat on its board and veto power over certain company decisions.
In 2021, an investment fund controlled by a state-owned entity established by a Chinese internet regulator took a 1 percent stake in a ByteDance subsidiary and appointed a director to its board."
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/01/17/us/tiktok-ban-suprem...
Committees representing the interests of the Chinese Communist Party exist inside of most major corporations in China. It would not be possible to operate a company like ByteDance without acquiescing to government interference
https://www.seafarerfunds.com/prevailing-winds/party-committ...
You can read about it here: https://thediplomat.com/2020/09/are-private-chinese-companie...
You can read the full "Opinion on Strengthening the United Front Work of the Private Economy in the New Era" here[1] in English, though I suspect you don't need the translation.
Excerpts from what the Party says openly:
> Strengthening united front work in the private economy is an important means by which the Party’s leadership over the private economy is manifested.
> This will help continuously strengthen the Party’s leadership over the private economy, bring the majority of private economy practitioners closer to the Party
> Strengthening united front work in the private economy is an important part of the development and improvement of the socialist system with Chinese characteristics.
> Educate and guide private economy practitioners to arm their minds and guide their practice with Xi Jinping’s Thoughts on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era; maintain a high degree of consistency with the Party Central Committee on political positions, political directions, political principles, and political roads; and always be politically sensible. Further strengthen the Party building work of private enterprises and sincerely give full play to the role of Party organizations (党组织) as battle fortresses and to the vanguard and exemplary role of Party members.
> Enhance ideological guidance: Guide private economy practitioners to increase their awareness of self-discipline; build a strong line of ideological and moral defense; strictly regulate their own words and actions
[1]: https://csis-website-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/publi...
China's economic reform didn't quite embrace capitalism the same way many other places did. Their businesses still inherently do not have the same managerial independence that many have come to expect as normal in the rest of the world. While Chinese businesses are allowed to have some private control, the government still exercises control over "private" businesses when they decide they are important or large enough.
Imagine if all Fortune 500 companies were required to have Trump appointees on their boards. That would sound crazy here, but that's how things still work in China.
The divestiture clause is just a red herring -- sure, that sounds perfectly fine. But you can substitute it (in the future) with anything.
In the future, the owners of a free press will be permitted to operate if and only if there is board seat made out to a CIA member. Unions will be permitted to congregate as long as they register with the Office of Trade Security
All in all, a huge blow to the potential power of individual rights (essentially goes to the Founding Fathers' point that having a list of rights set in stone is NOT the end-all, be-all, it's who decides the rights that count)
> But why didn't Supreme Court find the first ammendment arguments compelling? As per first ammendment it is legal and protected to print/distribute/disseminate even enemy propaganda in the USA.
> Even at the height of cold war for example Soviet Publications were legal to publish, print and distribute in the USA.
That was explicitly brought up in oral arguments by the court, and the response by the US Gov was: "The act is written to be content neutral."
The court's opinion explains that they agree the law is "appropriately tailored" to remain content neutral. Whether it's "enemy propaganda" or not is, in their view, irrelevant to the application of the law. TikTok can exist in America, using TikTok is not banned, the owner just can't be a deemed "foreign adversary", which there is a history of enforcement (to some degree).
Like such cannot be enforced for example against foreign radio stations or print publications.
Then how do court justify that it stands in the case of an app.
As I understand, a print publication can't have a business entity in the US if it's owned by a foreign adversary. Given that, an American could still travel to the foreign country themselves and bring an issue back. That would be similar to side loading apps.
In order to comply with the law, Apple and Google cannot distribute the app because it is deemed to be unlawfully owned by a foreign adversary; that's the ban. But anyone who wants to get it through other means can still do so. Presuming that's how it works, it doesn't seem to be logically different from radio/print media.
Soviet Life Magazine for example was printed and sold in the US by the Soviet Embassy.
That makes me curious about the details; it's worth noting that the Soviet Embassy's physical location would be Soviet sovereign land that is licensed to them by the US so long as they are allowed to maintain an embassy presence. If people go onto the embassy to buy the magazine, they are literally traveling to a foreign country to buy it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Life
According to Wikipedia (yes I am linking directly to it and not a source, sorry to all of my teachers.) it seems that the magazines were distributed by news stands in many major USA cities, you did not need to go to the Embassy. But it also go on to note that this was because of an inter-governmental agreement which muddies the water. E.g. "Was it because of the agreement or because of the constitution and we just _said_ it was because of the agreement."
I don't really know the exact legal situation surrounding this, but the viewpoint that in the past Soviet propaganda could be freely distributed in the US a rather curious viewpoint. The US government spent decades chasing down (alleged) communists, both using hard power and soft power, and many were effectively silenced, and many more never even dared to speak up.
So whatever the exact legal situation was the time, a free speech utopia where even enemies of the US had free reign did not exist. De-facto free speech was significantly more restricted on this topic.
That something is allowed doesn't mean that it's guaranteed in the constitution.
In that particular case, it was a result of an agreement with the Soviet government that allowed us to publish Amerika magazine in the USSR.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amerika_(magazine)
> Like such cannot be enforced for example against foreign radio stations or print publications.
If the law and acts calling for their divestiture were deemed "content neutral" then they could. But an app, with algorithmic profiling, delivery, and data capture, for the purposes of modeling and influence, is not the same as a radio station or a publication, so it would probably not be easy or even possible to the SC's standards to write a content neutral law in that way. But they have deemed that with apps like TikTok, when done so carefully, it is possible and divestiture can be enforced neutral of content.
We don't need to stick our head in the sand and act like TikTok is the same as a print publication.
The SC's decision, and Gorsuch's opinion in particular, is carefully written to not fundamentally rewrite the First Amendment, I'd urge you to read it.
The replies here seem slightly off base. The Court acknowledges that 1s amm. free speech issues are at play. A law can regulate non-expressive activity (corporate ownership) while still burdening expressive activity, which is the case here. In such instances, the Court grants Congress more leeway compared to laws explicitly targeting speech. It checks that (1) the govt has an important interest unrelated to speech (it does), and (2) the law burdens no more speech than necessary (arguable, but not obviously wrong)
My reading of it is they didn't bother to take the motivation of the law into account (suppression of speech), and only took the law "as written" to decide.
> We need not decide whether that exclusion is content based. The question be- fore the Court is whether the Act violates the First Amend- ment as applied to petitioners. To answer that question, we look to the provisions of the Act that give rise to the effective TikTok ban that petitioners argue burdens their First Amendment rights...
they talk more about the motivations of the law in part D.
The "exclusion" referred to in this quote is not the exclusion of tiktok. The court is responding to one of the arguments that tiktok made. Certain types of websites are excluded from the law, and (tiktok says) if you have to look at what kind of website it is, then obviously you're discriminating based on content.
the court is saying that this would be an argument that this law is unconstitutional, period. That's a very hard thing to prove because you need to show that the law is bad in all contexts, and to whoever it applies to, very hard. So tiktok is not trying to prove that, that's not how they challenged the law - instead tiktok is trying to prove something much more limited, ie that the law is bad when applied to tiktok. It's an "as-applied" challenge. In which case, the argument about looking at other websites is irrelevant, we already know we're looking at tiktok. As the opinion says "the exclusion is not within the scope of [Tiktok's] as-applied challenge"
I'll copy what I said in another comment:
> At what point in the ruling did they wonder what motivated the effective ban? "5 why's" it, so to speak. Did they ever say, "because X, Y, and Z, it is clear the intent of the law is not to prevent speech of certain parties"?
part D. "The record before us adequately supports the conclusion that Congress would have passed the challenged provisions based on the data collection justification alone"
This is belied by the lack of laws (and lack of provisions in this law) preventing American companies from collecting data and selling to the highest bidder, including China.
from the opinion: "[Tiktok] further argue that the Act is underinclusive as to the Government’s data protection concern, raising doubts as to whether the Government is actually pursuing that interest"
ie what you're saying...the Court replies:
"the Government need not address all aspects of a problem in one fell swoop...Furthermore, as we have already concluded, the Government had good reason to single out TikTok for special treatment"
Congress can solve one problem without needing to solve all problems.
The quote you posted is about if the exclusion of platforms "whose primary purpose is to allow users to post product reviews, business reviews, or travel information and reviews" means the law is content-based, but the Court is saying that provision is irrelevant because TikTok brought an "as-applied" challenge (and not a facial one) [0] and that provision doesn't change how it applies to them. So they are looking at the parts of the law (and the congressional record supporting them) which actually cause TikTok to be subject to the qualified divestiture.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facial_challenge
Right, I'm saying they based it on on the "text" of the law, instead of the motivation.
At what point in the ruling did they wonder what motivated the effective ban? "5 why's" it, so to speak. Did they ever say, "because X, Y, and Z, it is clear the intent of the law is not to prevent speech of certain parties"?
> Right, I'm saying they based it on on the "text" of the law, instead of the motivation.
Sure, although they do discuss TikTok's challenge to the motivation ("Petitioners further argue that the Act is underinclusive as to the Government’s data protection concern, raising doubts as to whether the Government is actually pursuing that interest"). I just don't think the quote you had stands for what you were saying.
> At what point in the ruling did they wonder what motivated the effective ban?
Above is at page 15. Also, I think you're probably looking for the paragraph starting with "For the reasons we have explained, requiring divestiture for the purpose of preventing a foreign adversary from accessing the sensitive data of 170 million U.S. TikTok users is not 'a subtle means of exercising a content preference.' Turner I, 512 U. S., at 645." (at 12).
I saw elsewhere you likened this to the Trump muslim ban. I don't think that comparison is apt. The First Amendment issues there were not decided by the 9th circuit in the first one (“we reserve consideration of [First Amendment religious discrimination] claims until the merits of this appeal have been fully briefed.” State v. Trump, 847 F.3d 1151, 1168 (9th Cir. 2017)) the stay there was issued due to likelihood of success on the merits wrt due process issues; I don't know offhand about the second one; and the third attempt was upheld.
I appreciate the thorough response. So they speak to the motivation in part being "preventing a foreign adversary from accessing the sensitive data of 170 million U.S. TikTok users", but not at all the portion of the motivation to "prevent the CCP from having a megaphone into 170 million attentive US TikTok users" (my words). Did they omit that this was likely a motivation, or contend that it wasn't.
Edit: see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42742762 for this same thread
I think this is discussed at length in part II.D (starts at the bottom of 17). I would write more but I have spent too long already on this thread :)
I would be a bit careful about trying to liken motivation for something like an EO to a law though; many members of congress voted to pass the exact language in the final bill, and they might not all have agreed with _why_. So I would put to you that the text itself is the primary thing one should consider, especially more in the legislative case than the executive one.
You mean Sottomayor and likely Gorsuch acknowledge the 1st amendment issues at play. The rest just assume it without deciding.
agreed
> But why didn't Supreme Court find the first ammendment arguments compelling?
Read the decision. They thought the act was content-neutral, and they thought that the espionage concerns were sufficient to reach a decision w/o having to involve the First Amendment. Gorsuch and Sotomayor weren't quite so sure as to the First Amendment issues, but in any case all nine justices found that they could avoid reaching the First Amendment issues, so they did just that.
US has banned foreign ownership of TV/Radio stations for over a 100 years.
The first amendment doesn't apply here. You can say whatever you want anywhere else on the internet. You can print what you want anywhere you want. You can distribute what you want anywhere you want. Bytedance refused to sell TikTok so it's being shut down. They could divest, but they didn't.
> first amendment doesn't apply here
It absolutely does. (It’s in the opinion.)
It just isn’t the Wild Draw 4 some people imagine it to be. You can’t commit fraud or libel or false advertising and claim First Amendment protection. Similarly, there are levels of scrutiny when the government claims national security to shut down a media platform.
> It absolutely does. (It’s in the opinion.)
The opinion actually assumes without deciding that First Amendment scrutiny applies, so I don't think it "absolutely" does. (But yes, it probably does and Sotomayor and Gorsuch would decide as much)
That is not the point of the First Ammendment, it is that Government cannot stop anyone from saying/printing/dissemination of content.
So question if government has power to do so.
Can they ban RT? Or even the BBC, if the government found it wise to do so?
>But why didn't Supreme Court find the first ammendment arguments compelling?
Apparently the owners of the operation are not US citizens operating in the USA and don't have any first amendment rights because that's part of the US Constitution and doesn't apply to other countries.
Love the broken English in this comment. It's quite clear you're not an American citizen. Your interpretation of the First Amendment is irrelevant.
There weren't any laws passed banning Soviet associated agencies from publishing based on chain of ownership. Nothing to do with SCOTUS.
Read the opinion, the law was upheld on intermediate scrutiny. It doesn't ban based on content, it bans based on the designation of the foreign parent as an adversary. Since it's not a content ban, or rather because it's a content-neutral ban, strict scrutiny does not apply.
Without strict scrutiny, the law merely needs to fulfill a compelling government interest.
The motivation was based on content, so the actual text of the law shouldn't matter. Such acts have been overturned before (see the Muslim ban) based on motivation.
Speech and immigration are completely different areas of the law, there's no useful legal point of comparison in this context.
The motivation is largely irrelevant to the analysis of this case. What matters is what effects the law has and what services it provides the government.
So for example, the law technically doesn't ban TikTok at all, but rather mandates divestiture. However, the timeline wasn't realistic to manage such a divestiture, so the court recognized that the law is effectively a ban. The effect is what matters.
Similarly, the law provides a mechanism for the President to designate any application meeting a set of criteria a "foreign adversary controlled application". The court recognizes that the government has a compelling interest in restricting foreign adversaries from unregulated access to the data of US citizens, and the law services that interest.
The law represents a restriction on freedom of expression, TikTok is banned, but the law also represents a compelling government interest. To determine the winner of these two motivations, the court has established various thresholds a law must overcome. The relevant threshold in this case was determined to be Intermediate Scrutiny, and a compelling government interest is sufficient to overcome intermediate scrutiny.
> The motivation is largely irrelevant to the analysis of this case. What matters is what effects the law has and what services it provides the government.
Let's agree to disagree.
To oversimplify:
You can say whatever you want on a telephone call.
BUT:
The telephone network is regulated. Your cell phone must comply with FCC regulations. You personally may have a restraining order that prohibits you from calling certain people.
IE, if a phone is found to violate FCC rules, pulling it from the market has little to do with the first amendment.
If these FCC rules were designed specifically with the intent to suppress speech of certain parties, they could be found in violation of your first amendment rights if challenged. IMO the ruling does not bother to examine whether the motivation of drafting the Act was to suppress speech.
The FCC doesn't make rules based on who owns the telephone though.
Actually, they kind of do.
> US bans sale of Huawei, ZTE tech amid security fears
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-63764450
This was an FCC rule
This case was not about speech. It was about a vehicle for speech having a high risk of being used for espionage and PSYOPS. If TikTok was the only vehicle available for people to post on the internet, then maybe the First Amendment argument would hold water.
This decision doesn't tell people they can't speak any more than, say, shutting down a specific TV station or newspaper which has been used for money laundering or which is broadcasting obscene content.
The case is entirely about speech, and the various levels of scrutiny that apply to laws that violate the First Amendment. You should read the decision before commenting on what was argued and decided in said decision.
Text publications don't run software that reports to adversarial countries.
Creating and distributing in the USA, sure. That is allowed. This is why the government isn't regulating Chinese content on Instagram, for example.
The issue here is that TikTok "content" (aka the algorithm that decides what content you get to see) is created abroad and controlled from abroad. The data collected by the app goes abroad. So then it becomes an import/export issue, and the government can and does regulate that.
This is why the government has already agreed to letting TikTik be run by a US entity. You can have the same content and same algorithm, just kept within the borders of the USA.
The justices said this was not about first amendment. It was about security and securing the users in the country
And what specifically is causing the security issue. Is it speech?
Privacy
I'm not buying it. They don't care about privacy violations for any American companies.
It's about controlling the narrative. A broad group of US citizens use TikTok to discuss social inequality, class warfare, and other topics that would give people, individually and collectively, more power and US billionaires have no say in it.
Because this is not about the first amendment? This just happens to be a company that runs a social network. Congress regulates commerce with foreign nations and made the decision, as it has in many other cases, that a foreign nation can not be the beneficial owner of TikTok. TikTok then made no effort to divest, giving away the game if you want, and predictably lost this challenge.
The arguments presented to the SCOTUS and the opinion itself are totally contained within the context of the First Amendment. No one is even arguing about anything other than the First Amendment and the exceptions permitted to that amendment.
Well, yes, because that is the only hope TikTok had - to claim it was targeted because of the speech on TikTok, and not because this is a very boring case of regulating commerce, which as said is well established and has lots of precedent. And their expensive lawyers made it happen, when they should have been looking for buyers. And then SCOTUS unanimously said nah.
SCOTUS fully agreed that the law violates the First Amendment as written, it wasn't even a question at any level from the district court on up.
The decision was balanced on strict or intermediate scrutiny. At the distict court level it was observed that the case should probably be decided via intermediate scrutiny, but they upheld the ban under strict scrutiny due to "national security concerns".
The SCOTUS didn't bother with strict scrutiny or national security, and decided that the correct analysis was intermediate scrutiny and that the ban merely needed to serve a compelling government interest (which regulation of applications controlled by foreign adversaries meets).
It's entirely about speech, the only question in the entire case as decided at the district and SCOTUS level was speech. Whether the government should be allowed to violate the 1st Amendment due to compelling interest is everything the case turns on.
Personally, I think using intermediate scrutiny here is wild.
Even under strict scrutiny the law survives. Thats what the district court held. So that point doesn't even matter.
Like you can just go read the opinion. It goes into detail on exactly this question and is easy to understand.
Print media is different. It is much more exhausting to read a newspaper because critical thinking circuits are automatically engaged.
You are more removed from the content because everything is in the physical world. And even within a single newspaper there are so many different topics that it is hard to be in a bubble.
The Internet automatically leads to bubble creation, 200 character messages and indoctrination.
It is more like loudspeakers they had in villages during Mao's tenure blaring politically correct messages. Or like the Volksempfänger (radio) during the Nazi era. Interestingly, many of the most destructive revolutions happened after the widespread use of radio.
Of course the Internet isn't nearly as bad, but most people are completely unable to even consider a view outside of their indoctrination bubble.
As far as first ammendment it does make no difference if it is print or voice or online service.
Because it has the option for selling
If the option wasnt there, it would have stricter first amendment scrutiny
They could have still banned it other ways though
and the first amendment aspect is also torn apart in other ways in the court ruling
TikTok doesn't do speech. Users on TikTok do speech. Banning TikTok doesn't prevent any users from printing / distributing / disseminating their speech.
The first amendment doesn't have any provision regarding the potential reach or enablement of distribution of the speech of the people.
Agreed. TikTok allows people to speak into the app, and to receive speech, but the act of organizing and strategically disseminating the speech is not speech -- it's societal scale hormone regulation and should be controlled for the health of the national body. It's wild that so many people are up in arms about TikTok when it is a Chinese app that is banned in China, where apps are heavily restricted.
For anyone who does consider these algorithms speech, I challenge you to share a single person at any social media company who has taken direct responsibility over a single content feed of an individual user. How can speech exist if nobody is willing to take ownership of it?
>the act of organizing and strategically disseminating the speech is not speech
It is, and the court acknowledged that editorial control is protected speech.
The ruling was made based on data privacy ground, not First Amendment Speech ground.
The case law around editorial control is at odds with most platforms' section 230 protection, which makes the fact that TikTok argued that its algorithm _is_ speech pretty different from how most platforms have argued to date (in order to preserve their section 230 protections)
I've understood that social media companies deliberately do not identify as editors because they don't want to be responsible for generated feeds of users. Is this wrong? This is why I'm asking to see evidence of a specific person from a social media company taking direct responsibility over a user's consumed content.
That last sentence needs to be taught in every civics class.
They could have a week of the teacher repeating that single sentence for the entire period
"You can drive anywhere you like..." as they take away the super major highways owned by foreign adversaries and leave the ones bending the knee to USA national interests.
It seems incredibly logical from a state perspective. Sucks for users who can't choose to use a major highway without it being owned by an technofeudal oligarch. That statement holds true regardless of any platform. What were those blockchain people up to again?
an technofeudal oligarch
Like the CCP?
I'm not bent out of shape over the tiktok ban, but you've got me wondering. Do newspapers do speech? Or is it the editors and columnists who do speech? Could a newspaper be shut down by congress if the law didn't say anything about the editors and columnists, merely denying them the means of distribution?
Newspaper is probably a bad example because the first ammendment specifically calls out protecting the press
> Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
That's kind of what I was thinking w.r.t. ”first amendment doesn't have any provision regarding the potential reach or enablement of distribution of the speech of the people.”
No, because "the press" isn't just "the editors and columnists".
The entire notion that there's a free speech angle here is a disingenuous red herring by Tik Tok to muddy the waters.
Speech is in no way being limited or compelled - you can say the exact same thing on dozens of other platforms without consequence. You can even say it on tik tok without consequence. You can even publish videos from tik tok in the US just fine.
This law is about what types of foreign corporation can do business in the US, and what sorts of corporate governance structures are allowed.
This is false. There is absolutely content on TikTok critical of the US, Israel, western businesses, etc that is boosted by TikTok’s algorithm and effectively censored or hidden on many American-owned social networks,
First amendment rights is the only argument that I agree with keeping TikTok alive. However if there is proof that China is manipulating the algorithm to feed the worst manipulative content to Americans then I do think there’s a national security concern here.
There are no carve outs for national security in the First Amendment.
Yes there are. The First Amendment is limited by compelling government interest, which (in practice) means it can be fairly arbitrarily by SCOTUS.
https://firstamendment.mtsu.edu/post/what-the-first-amendmen...
The SCOTUS opinion does not rely on a national security interest to justify itself, merely that the ban is content neutral and thus is subject to intermediate scrutiny.
What does intermediate scrutiny mean?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermediate_scrutiny
This is an especially superficial take, sure the Constitution says nothing about national security but reality sure does...
Any person that has ever gotten a security clearance has given up some of their first amendment rights to do it and if they talk about the wrong thing to the wrong person they will absolutely go to jail.
And as always the classic example of free speech being limited still stands. Go yell FIRE in a crowded movie and see how your dumbass 1st amendment argument keeps you out of jail.
Bit of a non-sequitor here but the classic example of yelling 'Fire' in a theater has me thinking about public safety. Obviously there have been many crowd-crush related injuries and fatalities throughout history. But we've also come a long way since the 1800's or 1900's with fire drills, emergency exits, etc.
It almost seems like any hazard or danger from a false alarm (intentional or otherwise) should be the liability of the owners or operators of a property for unsafe infrastructure or improper safety briefing.
Anyway, I don't expect that to appear as a major legal issue, given this is primarily used as a rhetorical example.
Lets face the truth, the user get what they want, no need to manipulate.
Just look at US social media sites. It’s not like they push MINT content, do they?
Bytedance was trying to make your argument. The ruling is that the first ammendment doesn't apply and that was always a stretch for Bytedance as illustrated by the unanimous decision.
"Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech".
First ammendment protections have no National security caveats.
That is completely false. There are many exceptions to the first amendment which the court has decided don't abridge the freedom of speech.
A classic example of this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threatening_the_president_of_t...
The courts can say anything they want, and they did... but then, so could the authors of the First Amendment, and they didn't.
I'm not really sure what point you're trying to make, but the law is whatever congress has passed, whatever the courts have interpreted, and whatever the executive executes. People who read the Constitution and make up their own interpretation clearly missed the part about the separation of powers and the role of the judiciary.
I'm not really sure what point you're trying to make, but the law is whatever congress has passed, whatever the courts have interpreted, and whatever the executive executes.
My point is, the First Amendment tells Congress not to do that.
What exactly does "shall make no law" mean to you? Be specific.
The text says "Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech"
It doesn't say "Congress shall make no law regulating any kind of speech"
The difference between these two, if it isn't already obvious, is that people do not have a right to all types of speech.
Congress can, always could, and always has regulated speech for which people do not have a recognized right to make. Things like fraud or threats are not legal, and Congress is absolutely within their right to make these types of speech illegal, and it would be silly and unfounded to suggest that they couldn't.
Furthermore, your personal interpretation of the text is irrelevant. The Constitution itself delegates the judiciary as the body which can interpret it. And they have, many times, ruled that the 1st has exceptions.
So you may have a strong opinion about what you want the law to be, but you are not correct about what is actually is.
(Shrug) You read it the way you like, and I'll do the same. You win, though, because the people who agree with you have all the cool guns.
I never told you what my opinion was. I'm just saying that, yes, it's the people with the guns who decide what the law is and what it isn't. And the above is what they've said it means. The rest of us merely have opinions.
Nobody is talking about music?
For the last 4 years, TikTok has been my primary music discovery engine. Probably is for a large chunk of users.
What effect will this have on the music industry?
And just yesterday I saw a news where UK had best music revenue ever, and I do not think US is published but first 1/2 of US also had record sales. (https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/articles/cn858xgng2vo)
And I agree, even for me, music discovery is (was) via TikTok.
I imagine you'll get the same content on YouTube shorts or Facebook reels? I don't like using apps, so I never bothered with Tiktok, but tiktok watermarks are still on most of the short videos I view, content creators are either putting their work on multiple platforms, or someone else is ripping it off and putting it on different platforms.
I’m hoping https://www.albumoftheyear.org/ takes off
This would have been a great opportunity to regulate and prohibit massive data collection on mobile phones, by writing a law that requires the platforms (iOS,android) to architect differently and police this aggressively. Takes care of a lot of the TikTok worry and cleans up ecosystems from location tracking/selling weather apps as well.
There's no compelling argument or evidence of data collection with TikTok, to my knowledge. Theres more evidence of data collection and aggregation with American platforms than TikTok. Additionally, TikTok is operated independently within the USA and hosted on American servers. I think if there's any opportunity to regulate data collection, TikTok seems to have positioned itself defensively and seems to be distant from being used as an example. The only thing that seems to matter with this ban is that TikTok is mostly owned by a Chinese company.
I'd love to be corrected, but I haven't been provided any evidence or information that suggests this ban was justified at all.
I met someone who did some high-level work for ByteDance. I asked them what they thought of the worries that TikTok was a CCP spying instrument.
They said ByteDance is as disorganized as any other big tech company, and it would be approximately impossible for them to discretely pull that off.
It's easy to see "CCP" and think bogeyman, but it is interesting to think about how achievable it would be to pull off something shady at Google or Facebook, and apply that same thought process to ByteDance.
Given the Cambridge Analytica scandal, why wouldn't it be achievable at Facebook, let alone TikTok.
The CCP could mandate that the TikTok algorithm display certain types of political content, then further mandate that any criticism of the CCP be limited, especially discussion of the said censorship. Most users wouldn't know about it and leakers at ByteDance wouldn't be able to change that. It's not the US - they are punished in China in a way that doesn't happen in the US.
> ByteDance is as disorganized as any other big tech company, and it would be approximately impossible
I've worked for AT&T, and letmetellyou about disorganization and corporate ineffectiveness.
And yet: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A
None of the litigants proposed that, and neither did the act in question. The court doesn't usually address matters outside the controversy in question, so it's no surprise that they didn't here.
TikTok is perhaps the most impressively addictive social media app ever created. The algorithm used in the US was apparently banned in China for being too addictive.
There's a certain historic symmetry with how opium was traditionally used in China, then Britain introduced stronger, more disruptive versions, forcing a stronger social reaction.
Geopolitics aside, I think everyone is kind of aware that social media is a vice, and like it or not, this could just be the beginning of our society beginning to scrutinize these platforms.
From a geopolitical perspective, this issue about 3 items:
1) Influence- TikTok gives the CCP significant direct influence over the views of Americans.
2) Data- TikTok collects massive amounts of data on 100s of millions of Americans. Opens many avenues for spying, extortion of influence, etc.
3) Reciprocity- Foreign tech companies are essentially banned from operating in China. Much like with other industries, China is not playing fair, they’re playing to win.
Insofar as TikTok has offered a “superior” product, this might be a story of social media and its double edge. But this far more a story of geopolitics.
> 1) Influence- TikTok gives the CCP significant direct influence over the views of Americans.
There is no credible argument that the CCP doesn't directly control the alg as it's actively being used for just that in tawain/etc.
Does the US really want a (hostile?) foreign govt to have clear direct access to influence 170m americans, an entire generation - completely unfettered? Incredible national security implications. Bot farms can influence X/Meta/etc, but they can be at least be fought. TikTok itself is the influence engine as currently constructed.
> Does the US really want a (hostile?) foreign govt to have clear direct access to [...] americans
Apparently, American users want this? Approximately 700k users have joined RedNote, a Chinese platform. It's out of the frying pan and into the fire for Americans.
Well yes, people are addicted to this content so of course they'll seek out alternatives. People want to be distracted by pretty pictures and funny stories and someone telling them their opinions are right
For perspective on the the root issue, that number seems incredibly high, and it's still only ~.5% of estimated active American TikTok users.
> Does the US really want a (hostile?) foreign govt to have clear direct access to influence 170m americans, an entire generation - completely unfettered?
As the SCOTUS said itself:
“At the heart of the First Amendment lies the principle that each person should decide for himself or herself the ideas and beliefs deserving of expression, consideration, and adherence.” Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. v. FCC
Functionally; as TikTok is a known/controlled mouthpiece for the CCP - it's infringing the first amendment rights of the foreign govt within US borders?
1. source?
2. A core principle of the constitution is that those rights apply to noncitizens as well as citizens. They are human rights, not citizen rights. It's significantly more ridiculous for corporations to have free speech than a government. They don't have less of a right to free speech because we don't like them.
1) to be honest, when I see how russia, Iran and other states influence all other networks (especially when it comes to voting), not sure how tiktok is worse than all of them - just think of Facebook & Cambridge Analytica https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook%E2%80%93Cambridge_Ana...
2) yes, that is an issue.
3) fair point.
Russia illegally spent something like $100,000 on political ads. Thats basically nothing compared to aggregate political spending.
It is mind blowing to me that this fact is not widely understood. A mountain was made out of a molehill. $4B was spent in 2016. $12B in 2024. Yet $100,000 somehow is believed to have made any difference whatsoever. Literally 0.0025% of the total in 2016.
*Source: https://www.emarketer.com/content/political-ad-spend-nearly-...
This is, of course, because both USA political parties run their own propaganda machines
Because it's a good scapegoat, why take responsibility for losing an election when you can easily shift the blame to someone else?
Meanwhile US channels this propaganda money through no profits.
Yup exactly the same thing is happening only with money laundered through nonprofits and political pacs. Once its there the same buy data and place ads & influence is completely legal - which makes the singled out ban on TikTok at odds with the stated purpose of it
1. This was a scandal for FB, not a feature.
Cambridge Analytica had zero effect on the 2016 elections. It was the mother of all nothingburgers. I encourage all who see this comment to dig into the truth of that case.
The huge difference is that while foreign adversaries run influence networks on other social media platforms (and are opposed and combatted by those platforms) TikTok (the platform itself) is controlled by the foreign adversary (the CCP).
It was more a proof of concept. If that could be done on a small scale, why not a large one?
And elections are decided by margins, pushing them even slightly has massive, irrevocable consequences.
> 1) Influence- TikTok gives the CCP significant direct influence over the views of Americans
More to the point: it removes the ability of the existing American establishment to monopolise the viewpoints presented to Americans.
Americans are already quite free to seek a broad range of domestic and foreign viewpoints. Chinese citizens, on the other hand, are not. At all.
The key point here is that an algorithm can invisibly nudge those viewpoints, and a foreign adversary controls the algorithm.
Insofar as your claim is that powerful people and institutions care most about power, I agree. It’s very telling that TikTok would shutdown instead of divest. (Meanwhile, U.S. companies have routinely taken the other side of the deal in China: minority stake joint ventures in which “technology transfer” is mandated. AKA intellectual property plundering.)
> Americans are already quite free to seek a broad range of domestic and foreign viewpoints.
The reality is they live in an establishment controlled media bubble, that is itself full of propaganda.
Being free does not mean free to live in a lie constructed for the benefit of someone else, it means being free to live in reality, and that freedom is being denied to Americans. At least the Chinese are aware of their reality.
I can navigate my browser to Al Jazeera, RT, or Xinhua without interference. Meanwhile, China has a national firewall imprisoning its netizens. So, while most Americans opt to live inside filter bubbles, they are free to escape if they so choose. Not so for the citizens of China, who live in the iron grip of the CCP.
That’s to say nothing of censorship. I can post “f** Joe Biden” on any social platform in the U.S. Meanwhile, a Chinese netizen compares Xi to Winnie the Pooh and gets a visit from the police. And their post never sees the light of day.
These aren’t differences of degree. They are differences of category.
> I can navigate my browser to Al Jazeera, RT, or Xinhua without interference
The reason you can is that very few people actually do. As the Tik Tok affair shows, the moment the US suspects it might have some real competitor in controlling the narrative, it shuts them down. Maybe it's the right thing to do, but it's worth taking note that it's how things are.
Americans live in a society lying to them by omission. You have to have learned AlJazeera, RT or Xinhua exist, because they're not going to be shown to you by normal channels, and you almost certainly go on a watchlist if you visit too much.
The whole point is to remove anything that may cause a passive media consumer to question what is presented to them.
> You have to have learned AlJazeera, RT or Xinhua exist, because they're not going to be shown to you by normal channels
They’ve each run ads on billboards in New York. I distinctly remember Xinhua’s in Time Square.
Recently?
Al Jazeera America closed down some years ago. (2016 apparently).
Definitely after 2016, but before Covid.
At the risk of a tangent, were Xinhua seriously fishing for a US audience? Or was it more kudos from the billboard?
My parents used to be addicted to Al Jazeera, then some unspecified incident occurred and we were never to speak of it again. All very strange.
You have to have learned AlJazeera, RT or Xinhua exist, because they're not going to be shown to you by normal channels
Al Jazeera is widely known across the country, and during the time I had cable television was available in every city in which I lived.
RT is available over-the-air on free regular broadcast channels in some American cities. You can't get less restricted than that.
You speak like someone who's never even been to the United States.
It doesn't matter what media are available as long as you manage to control their impact- that is, the vast majority of your citizens don't really watch them. The moment one becomes impactful, you can shut it down citing dangerous foreign interference (and it's true!).
Al Jazeera America stopped in 2016.
RT America was removed from most services as of 2022 and hasn't been broadcasting since.
This is changing in the wrong direction and you are getting less free over time.
> You speak like someone who's never even been to the United States.
You speak like someone who's never left it.
Both AJ and RT are widely available online. Your bar of "American cable networks must grant licenses to broadcast hostile foreign state propaganda" is one that no other country abides by.
In fact, even the idea of allowing CNN or BBC to broadcast into people's homes in Russia is so laughable, I don't know why you even brought it up, or what your point is.
> In fact, even the idea of allowing CNN or BBC to broadcast into people's homes in Russia is so laughable, I don't know why you even brought it up, or what your point is.
No one's talking about availability in Russia except you.
And to add some substance about why AJ and RT can be accessed I will quote another commenter who put it better than I did: "The reason you can is that very few people actually do. As the Tik Tok affair shows, the moment the US suspects it might have some real competitor in controlling the narrative, it shuts them down. Maybe it's the right thing to do, but it's worth taking note that it's how things are."
> No one's talking about availability in Russia except you.
That's the other side of the coin. Why do you expect one country to be totally open and allow the other to be totally closed? How is that a standard that makes any sense?
> "The reason you can is that very few people actually do."
I don't see what consumption habits have to do with anything. This is also contradicting what you just said, that people in the US don't have access to this content.
> As the Tik Tok affair shows, the moment the US suspects it might have some real competitor in controlling the narrative, it shuts them down.
Who is the "US" here? The U.S. government? A specific company? Without specifics you aren't really saying anything at all, just implying some greater unfalsifiable conspiracy.
> This is also contradicting what you just said, that people in the US don't have access to this content.
The point is that their other media so promotes a lack of curiosity by providing a false impression of being comprehensive. If you risk bursting that bubble suddenly you are first mocked, then they try to buy you, then they block you, and tell you it is your fault.
The US is held to higher standards because that is how it promotes itself. Many of us outside the US are actually saddened by a betrayal of these values, because we are all too aware of how lacking many places are, and we need the US to be better than this.
> The point is that their other media so promotes a lack of curiosity by providing a false impression of being comprehensive. If you risk bursting that bubble suddenly you are first mocked, then they try to buy you, then they block you, and tell you it is your fault.
I'm not being funny but I honestly couldn't follow that.
> The US is held to higher standards because that is how it promotes itself.
You are right, they are. That's why they didn't prevent TikTok from operating and growing domestically for years. Then the Chinese government starting using it as an asset of their espionage apparatus, so in response the U.S. STILL didn't ban the content in contains, but rather told the (apparently) independent company operating TikTok that the content is free to remain as long as it's not controlled by a hostile foreign government. The refusal to sell is the most obvious public facing proof that they are in fact Chinese government controlled.
All of that is how the U.S. is different, but as evidenced by this conversation and multiple other threads, no one really cares about the nuance.
And the greater context to this discussion is this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
> if intolerant ideologies are allowed unchecked expression, they could exploit open society values to erode or destroy tolerance itself through authoritarian or oppressive practices.
The application of this principle can be seen when closed societies maintain complete control over their domestic media, while spreading as much toxic nonsense as possible abroad[1].
At the same they are completely intolerant of speech at home, they exploit the openness of the west by pushing disinfo they know to be wrong (and harmful) aboard. They continue to muddy the waters by pretending their information warfare is "just asking questions" (RT's moto is "Question More"). It's an extension of their hybrid warfare efforts, and shouldn't be seen as anything less.
[1] For example, domestic Russian media encourages citizens to get vaccinated against COVID19, while promoting anti-vaccine conspiracies abroad. This is one of thousands of examples. https://securingdemocracy.gmfus.org/russia-china-iran-covid-...
You speak like someone who's never left it.
Darn it, then decade I spent in Asia and the 100+ trips to Europe and the Middle East didn't prepare me for the rapier banter of some rando on the internet.
Dishes it out but can’t take it?
How appropriate.
Yes the categories of “our glorious leader” on one side and “their wretched despot” on the other. The categories of “our objective news” and “their state propaganda”. “Their brutish enforcers” vs “our noble police”.
You have to accept that the era of American exceptionalism is over and we’ll all be measured by our actions rather than the dreamy stories told.
> The key point here is that an algorithm can invisibly nudge those viewpoints, and a foreign adversary controls the algorithm.
Compared to all the other algorithmic social media in which domestic adversaries control the algorithm.
Yes, exactly, finally you get it. Because yes, China is worse.
> It’s very telling that TikTok would shutdown instead of divest.
TBF; The CCP passed laws that likely make it illegal for TikTok to sell/export that kind of information (the algo). They can't divest without also neutering the sticking power of the service.
And why did the CCP pass those laws? Perhaps bc they understood it would block divestment, acting as a poison pill to would be acquirers, thereby forcing foreign governments to fight their own public in outright banning TikTok.
DingDingDing. Ignoring actual value of the ban - I fully expect Trump to save US TikTok to avoid the bad PR associated.
> Trump to save us TikTok to avoid the bad PR associated
He can just blame it on Biden and use his time productively.
> More to the point: it removes the ability of the existing American establishment to monopolise the viewpoints presented to Americans.
There is no evidence this exists.
It doesn't have to be either /or. You should be skeptical of US spy agency behavior, and still recognize the threat of Chinese influence via psyops algorithm to the United States.
0) Protectionism- TikTok is eating Meta's lunch. Meta can't make a social app as good as TikTok in the same way GM can't make a car as good a value as BYD.
Much like Google was eating the lunch of everything in China and the CCP, in response, made it essentially impossible for them to operate.
This is not new behavior between the two countries, the only thing new is the direction. US is finally waking up to the foreign soft power being exercised inside our own country, and it isn't benefiting us.
> Google was eating the lunch of everything in China and the CCP, in response, made it essentially impossible for them to operate.
Google was operating in China until 2010 when they got banned because they stopped censoring search results. Other Western search engines like Bing continue operate in China.
They also got their source code stolen by Chinese state hackers. The word "hostile" doesn't begin to describe their experience operating on the mainland.
This is just a different bias on point 3, reciprocity. BYD benefits from state subsidies and state sponsored intellectual property theft on an industrial scale. See again, point 3.
That certainly plays some role in why domestic social media companies haven't stirred up resistance to the ban, but is more like #50 in terms of geopolitical strategy.
The domestic companies lost some attention share to TikTok sure, and a ban or domestic sale would generally be in their interests, but it's not like they were about to be Myspaced. They've remained among the most valued companies -- presently and in forecasts -- even while it was "eating their lunch"
> it's not like they were about to be Myspaced. They've remained among the most valued companies
It hasn't been an overnight switch, but the trajectory did not look good for US companies. TikTok was even eating into TV viewing time. There's a fixed amount of attention and TikTok was vacuuming it up from everywhere.
I won’t say that isn’t relevant; when you’re building a coalition you don’t say no to allies. But it was a cherry on top of a well-baked pie. Not a foundational motivation.
True, but I'd say that in this area (vs. manufacturing where tariffs can be applied), it's more taboo/embarrassing to admit how dominated Instagram was. Reels is the cheap knockoff of the genuine article.
> it's more taboo/embarrassing to admit how dominated Instagram was
Where? Stockholders have been vocally livid about it.
>Meta can't make a psyop as dangerous
We should treat social media as the addictive, mind altering drug it is, and stop acting like a free market saturation of them is a good thing.
China having their more potent mind control app pointed at the brains of hundreds of millions of people is not something to celebrate.
> TikTok collects massive amounts of data on 100s of millions of Americans. Opens many avenues for spying, extortion of influence, etc.
you can buy all of that from data brokers
It's not even about them:
> If, for example, a user allows TikTok access to the user’s phone contact list to connect with others on the platform, TikTok can access “any data stored in the user’s contact list,” including names, contact information, contact photos, job titles, and notes. 2 id., at 659. Access to such detailed information about U. S. users, the Government worries, may enable “China to track the locations of Federal employees and contractors, build dossiers of personal information for blackmail, and conduct corporate espionage.”
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/24-656_ca7d.pdf
It seems farcically ridiculous to me to ban the app because it somehow could let china blackmail CEOs.
They have had legit unintentional problems with apps like Strava: https://www.wired.com/story/strava-heat-map-military-bases-f...
What ZTE were up to was way more nefarious, but couldn't be done with just apps.
Bravo, perfect summary of the issue at hand.
It'll be revealing to see which political actors come out in favor of keeping tiktok around.
It has blown my mind how "free Palestine" has become a meme. That war started with a bunch of terrorists kidnapping/raping/murdering college-age kids at a music festival, and college kids around the world started marching _in support of_ the perpetrators.
At some point, I realized that I avoid social media apps, and the people in those marches certainly don't.
I know that there's more to the Israel:Palestine situation than the attack on the music festival, but the fundamental contradiction that the side that brutalized innocent young people seems to have the popular support of young people is hard to ignore. I wonder to what degree it's algorithmically driven.
In response, Israel has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians, 80% civilians, 70% women and children, have destroyed more than half of their buildings residential or otherwise, displaced millions, refuse aid. Disproportionate does not begin to cover it
to say it started on October 7th is beyond being misinformed or a misrepresentation.
>that the side that brutalized innocent young people
…
It looks like you are comparing a specific terrorist group to Israel as a society. Be aware that there is a large propaganda machine which uses this tactic to dehumanize Palestinians in order to justify a genocide against them.
Now if you wanted to compare atrocities—which honestly you shouldn’t—you would compare the Palestinian children that were brutalized both in the Gaza genocide, and in any one of the number of IDF incursions into Gaza and the West Bank before and after oct 7. That is compare victims to one side, to the victims of the other side.
But people generally don’t pick sides like that. They don‘t evaluate the atrocities committed by one armed group to the atrocities committed by the other and favor one over the other. And they certainly don‘t favor one civilian group over another based on the actions of their armed groups. People much more simply react to atrocities as they happen. And Israel has committed enough atrocities during the Gaza genocide that social media will be reacting—both in anger and horror—for a long time to come.
1. Is there any real evidence of the CCP using TikTok for anything?
3. Then what is Microsoft doing in China? What is Apple doing in China? Etc. No tech company is banned from China, the only companies that choose not to operate in China are those that do not agree to follow Chinese laws.
Nail in the head with reciprocity. I think the US honored its end of the bargain over the past four plus decades since China started manufacturing goods for US companies. China clearly benefited since they are now the second largest economy. Along the way China grew ambitious which is fine but they made an idiotic policy error in timing. They should’ve waited a couple more decades to show teeth.
> The algorithm used in the US was apparently banned in China for being too addictive.
Source? I could only find this.
https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/03/08/1069527/china-ti...
> That same year, Douyin imposed a 40-minute daily limit for users under 14. Last year, Chinese regulators introduced a rule that would limit children under age 18 to two hours of smartphone screen time each day.
https://abcnews.go.com/Business/tiktok-china/story?id=108111...
That’s not at all the same as banning the algorithm.
It’s not the same, no. I provided the link because it’s what I assume the OP is referring to.
Limiting use to 40 minutes is not a ban but it still shows a view that extended exposure to it is harmful. To turn it on its head, if more than 40 minutes is viewed harmful for Chinese youth, why not American?
You know they did that with video games too.. Should we do that here?
https://apnews.com/article/gaming-business-children-00db669d...
It's a clear sign the international version of TikTok, because of it's addictiveness and content, would never be allowed for a single minute in China by the people that know the most about what it is, and what is does.
What more do you need to know?
If it was a legal requirement for Chinese apps in China, and this is the path for societal heath then why not pass that law for all social apps in the US?
Blanket content bans are the stuff of dictatorships, but restricting access to demographics that could be most harmed by it (children for example) is a good idea, and I wish the US would look into it.
Maybe the "community notes" model isn't so bad after all
That limit is independent of the used algorithm.
How would you know? If you have only a certain time-window, you may need another kind of algorithm to retain ̶a̶d̶d̶i̶c̶t̶i̶o̶n interest day-over-day.
I mean the limit is for all social media, the algorithm doesn’t matter.
https://abcnews.go.com/Business/tiktok-china/story?id=108111...
Anecdotally, I have heard from people who lived in China at the time that there was a significant shift in content a few years back.
The whole country had a shift though, they implemented gaming and entertainment regulations and video sites like bilibili went from $153 to a low of $8 a share.
China didn't go after TikTok _alone_ - they reportedly went after anything deemed too addictive, including limiting the time spent on games. It was very clearly aimed towards reducing digital addiction (which is something us in the West still try to ignore as an epidemic)
> China didn't go after TikTok _alone_
Because it was never there. Bytedance never launched TikTok in China.
it's called Douyin. It's the same product, the same way a Mexican Coke is the same thing as an American Coke, and both are produced by the same company (Coca Cola).
> it's called Douyin. It's the same product
It’s a similar product. We don’t have any server-side code so we don’t know.
did you read the rest of the sentence or
The analogy to Coca Cola? Let me make another comparison: the 737 Max with one AoA sensor was made by the same company that only sold the one with two in America.
Mexican Coke is different though. It doesn't use HFCS.
Precisely. Like TikTok and Douyin.
Except your analogy breaks as they are not the same product.
Except they are
No, buddy, they're not. If two products have the same name but different ingredients, they are categorically not the same product.
You chose a bad analogy, that's all.
It would be more like Coke was Mexican owned and HFCS was outlawed in Mexico. Then Mexican Coke used sugar and the Coke they exported to America used HFCS. And America said, hey, you're not consuming the same Coke you send here: we're going to ban you if you don't sell to us and our plan is to keep making HFCS Coke once we buy you. You were also hurting Pepsi (Facebook/Twitter), who also only plan on ever using HFCS.
Yes it does. The US product called Mexican Coke doesn't, but Coke in Mexico does.
The entire app is banned. They use a different one called Douyin.
I dont think tiktok app is banned because of algorithm, because bytedance created and maintains both Doyin and Tiktok.
I think it is form of compartmentalizing Internet and social networks, to keep Chinese internet and social media separate from the US.
the red book app, where tiktok refugees are flocking to right now, also want to introduce geofence and compartmentalize Chinese users and US users separately
You are making a distinction without a difference. China knows TikTok is harmful, which is why it allows it's export and bans domestic consumption. Think of it like a drug.
Tiktok is banned completely in China because it doesn't not have the agressive filtering and CPP propaganda in place to operate in China. The CPP can not allow Chineze citizens to engage in an open exchange of ideas with eachother or with the citizens of other free nations, for obvious reasons.
>because it doesn't not have the agressive filtering and CPP propaganda in place to operate in China
Do you believe that all Chinese media is part of a propaganda machine?
Do you believe the same of American or French media?
You cannot operate a TV channel, a radio station or a newspaper in China without running everything through CCP first for approval. You won't find a single news report critical of the CCP because of this.
Every social media app or website in China is required to ask for your real name and ID number, and implement any censorship requested by the party. If you post something that rubs the government the wrong way, your identity is readily available.
I don't believe this level of content control, censorship and user prosecution is there for all American media. And if it were, you are allowed to set up your own channel or social media app in America to be the exception.
>Every social media app or website in China is required to ask for your real name and ID number, and implement any censorship requested by the party. If you post something that rubs the government the wrong way, your identity is readily available.
I didn't know this. Do you have any reading on the subject you can recommend?
I don't have anything handy, but a quick search turned these up.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_real-name_system_in_C...
- https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/01/10/1086366/china-so...
- https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202310/31/WS6541068aa3109068...
Yes. No.
(Although that No is getting a bit blurry with US social media bending over for commander cheeto)
Yes. No.
https://www.deseret.com/2022/11/24/23467181/difference-betwe...
"It’s almost like they recognize that technology is influencing kids’ development, and they make their domestic version a spinach version of TikTok, while they ship the opium version to the rest of the world,”
His comment is obvious propaganda
It’s not about the algorithm but about the owner of the platform.
The same algorithm in US possession isn’t a problem.
Indeed, it's all protectionism. They want the money to go to American companies instead. Why do you think the EU, which is generally far more aggressive about these things, has not yet banned TikTok? It's also the same reason Huawei are thriving elsewhere but banned in the US. It's all just trying to protect their big companies with deep pockets.
EU is always slow. They felt browser choice was an issue 0 years after it stopped being one, and then freaked out about cookies also 10 more more years later when it wasn't really an issue. Data tracking is an issue, sure. Not cookies though, not anymore.
Well said. Only if we start looking at both of these issues separately, owner and algorith and deal with each one appropriately.
It wouldn't be the same algorithm, it would suppress pro-Palestine content more aggressively as Meta does. The US's problem is with the algorithm
The government doesn't care about addictive anything, this is about control and access. If they cared about life or citizens in general they would fix healthcare and maybe introduce any kind of gun control. This is the same government that was slanging cocaine in the 1980's...
Multiple reps publicly said TikTok needed to be banned because they couldn't control the narrative around Gaza as easily. TikTok is the only platform I regularly see content about Gaza fed from the algorithm.
You mean people are waking up to these atrocities and are displeased? Sounds like freedom of press to me...
I'd be interested in a source for that.
https://www.thefp.com/p/tik-tok-young-americans-hamas-mike-g...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/11/13/tiktok-...
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/mar/16/tiktok...
https://theintercept.com/2025/01/09/tiktok-ban-israel-palest...
https://www.aljazeera.com/program/the-listening-post/2024/3/...
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/28/business/tiktok-israel-ha...
https://foreignaffairs.house.gov/press-release/chairman-mcca...
"enormous threat to U.S. national security and young Americans’ mental health ... capable of mobilizing the platform’s users to a range of dangerous, destabilizing actions. The Senate must pass this bill and send it to the president’s desk immediately.”
https://www.axios.com/local/salt-lake-city/2024/05/06/senato...
> The algorithm used in the US was apparently banned in China for being too addictive.
Source?
>> The algorithm used in the US was apparently banned in China for being too addictive.
> Source?
The same source as everything Covid related: Trust me, bro.
> Trust me, bro.
Are you referring to the completely scientifically-untrained "bros" who were touting ivermectin and other treatments or cures with little to no scientific evidence of efficacy?
TikTok itself is banned in mainland china. Do you need much more of a source?
Yes, you could say Douyin is available in place of TikTok, but have you asked yourself why they have 2 separate apps? One for mainland China, and another for everyone else?
Another source (see the section "How is Douyin different from TikTok?"): https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/25/business/china-tiktok-dou...
So is Wikipedia. Otherwise Chinese people just cannot stop reading all those wiki pages about that fungi that only grow on a certain volcano in French New Guinea. How addictive!
Isn't this comment quite reductive?
There are many reasons why there are two separate apps and not necessarily related to how addictive the algorithm is. The "source" you linked gives one such reason:
> Like other social media services in China, Douyin follows the censorship rules of the Chinese Communist Party. It conscientiously removes video pertaining to topics deemed sensitive or inflammatory by the party, although it has proved a little harder than text-based social media to control.
Also have you used Douyin? It's really feels like basically the same thing.
You could substitute anything you don't like (gambling, alcohol, gacha games, convenience foods, televised sports, reality TV) for "social media" in the above and it makes as much sense.
"anything you don't like (gambling, alcohol, gacha games, convenience foods, televised sports, reality TV)"
Respectively, heavily regulated, heavily regulated, poorly regulated but really has to toe the line to not fall into the first bucket, fairly regulated (with shifting attitudes about what they should be, but definitely not unregulated), probably only a problem because this is "gambling" again lately and has been regulated in the past and I suspect may well be more heavily regulated in the near future, and people probably would not generally agree this belongs in the list.
Good points. I would welcome a discussion on ways social media (however defined) should be regulated to mitigate harms. Hopefully, that would put the perceived harms in context of other harms we regulate.
One way could be age limits and more stringent verification of age for all social media platforms.
Another way could be limiting feed algorithms to chronological order only.
Another could be limiting what data can be collected from users on these platforms. Or limiting what data could be provided to other entities.
Who knows if these are the best ways to regulate social media, but they would like help mitigate some of the clear harms.
The GP's statement doesn't work with reality TV or televised sports. Both of those are produced with a lot of human effort, and the cycle time for new content is way too large to form addictions.
Gambling, alcohol, and gacha games are clearly addictive and frequently are not set up to be in the best interests of the users.
“ Gambling, alcohol, and gacha games are clearly addictive “
There are billions of casual drinkers / gamblers / gamers who do not show any sign of addiction. I’m really tired to hear the same nonsense repeated again and again. Do a pyschology study of any casino employee that spends 40 hours a week in a gaming venue, or any manufacturer of gaming devices that professionally play games 40 hours a week, and none of these employees exposed to so much gambling / drinking are addicted.
Psychology studies have not established that these items are “addictive”, because if they were, they would be banned all over the world. Nowhere in the western world are they banned, ghey are regulated for “fairness”. There are some individuals that throw the word addiction around without justification, please dont be one of them.
Alcohol is literally physiologically addictive. Withdrawal symptoms include seizures and death. Of course these things are known to be and recognized by governments as addictive. Addictive things aren't always banned. Here's a US government page discussing alcohol addiction from an organization the government has dedicated to raising awareness of the adverse effects of alcohol, including addiction:
https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/cycle-alcohol-addicti...
You also basically observed that the people selling the addictive thing don't get addicted, which is sort of obvious. You don't get addicted by being near e.g. alcohol and providing it to others. You get addicted by regularly drinking it.
Casino employees are typically barred from gambling at the venue they work at or others within the same ownership group, often not even at venues under different ownership within the same geographical area as their employer.
Scientific studies have established nicotine is addictive yet purchase and smoking of cigarettes is legal in most countries.
I've learned that moderation is key to avoiding their harmful effects. It’s easy to get caught up in the thrill, but understanding how these systems work is crucial. For instance, gacha games often rely on the same reward mechanisms as gambling, making them equally compelling. Exploring resources to stay informed can help reduce risks. For example, I came across a review on Wild Cash x9990 DEMO by BGaming at https://wildcashx9990.com/ which offers insight into gaming mechanics. Since the site itself doesn’t allow gambling
> doesn't work with reality TV or televised sports. Both of those are produced with a lot of human effort
Those two types of content are about the cheapest TV to produce. Per second of video produced (counting all the unpopular content), short videos might be more expensive, but the costs are very distributed.
Totally fair. I was thinking more in terms of the rate at which people can consume it; if your primary interest is following a sport, or current reality-TV shows, you can only consume content as quickly as it is released.
> TikTok is perhaps the most impressively addictive gambling app ever created.
> Geopolitics aside, I think everyone is kind of aware that gambling is a vice, and like it or not, this could just be the beginning of our society beginning to scrutinize these platforms.
Not really. TikTok isn't a gambling app.
The comparison here is a slot machine: you pay a a few to play, you pull the lever to play, you win a prize.
Here, the payment is your attention, you swipe to the next video to play the game, and the prize if you land on a good video is a small hit of dopamine.
Everyone's losing their collective mind about people watching videos on a platform not approved by our oligarchs, while there's an epidemic of people racking up gambling debt from the sudden prevalence of DraftKings and other mobile sports betting apps.
At least in circles I frequent, people are pretty upset with the state of sports betting too. Feels like lots of things are pretty crappy these days, simultaneously
There can be more than one bad thing at a time.
It's a variable reward dopamine hit generator.
I love to drink. Absolutely adore it. Putting on a great recors, open 2 bottles of wine and call 10 different people during the span of 4 hours. I wouldn't trade it for social media any day of the week. I am drinking right now actually
I get you. The techies in here won't, they think it's fun to drink liquified cereal waste.
This is a vibe and I'm here for it.
Yes? The person you replied to was pretty explicit in drawing a comparison to vices like gambling and alcohol, which are indeed usually regulated. Gacha games are also being recognized as thinly veiled gambling and regulated as such.
> Gacha games are also being recognized as thinly veiled gambling and regulated as such.
Where are they being regulated at all?
https://screenrant.com/lootbox-gambling-microtransactions-il...
There was a bill introduced in the US that didn't go anywhere. Of course gambling has recently been heavily deregulated in the US so I suppose we can't expect much to be done about gambling in video games right now. https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/162...
I vaguely recall it in at least one of those state bills to regulate social media for kids (listing it as an addictive behavior that's "harmful to minors" or whatever), but can't find specifics. I don't know whether something has passed anywhere in the US.
Amusingly, Apple and Google might be the first serious regulators of those.
https://www.csie.ntu.edu.tw/~hchsiao/pub/2024_ACSAC_lootbox....
"Verifying Loot-box Probability Without Source-code Disclosure"
Just read the abstract
Note that the Supreme Court decided the argument based on national security grounds, not content manipulation grounds.
Justice Gorsuch in his concurrence specifically commended the court for doing so, believing that a content manipulation argument could run afoul of first amendment rights.
He said that "One man's covert content manipulation is another's editorial discretion".
Be that as it may, I think a large percentage of the opposition don't buy this natsec reasoning at all. You could use that excuse for anything, like mass surveillance via the Patriot Act...
EFF's stance is that SCOTUS's decision based on national security ignores the First Amendment scrutiny that is required.
> The United States’ foreign foes easily can steal, scrape, or buy Americans’ data by countless other means. The ban or forced sale of one social media app will do virtually nothing to protect Americans' data privacy – only comprehensive consumer privacy legislation can achieve that goal. Shutting down communications platforms or forcing their reorganization based on concerns of foreign propaganda and anti-national manipulation is an eminently anti-democratic tactic, one that the US has previously condemned globally.
I don't buy it either. Entire generations are growing up without expectations of digital privacy. Our data leaks everywhere, all the time, intentionally and otherwise.
I think it's more about the fact that users of platform are able to connect and share their experiences and potential action for resolving class inequality. There's an entire narrative that is outside of US govt/corp/media control, and that's a problem (to them).
China doesn't need Tiktok for opium. They have the real thing as well.
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-fentanyl-pipeline-and...
The fentanyl pipeline is what came to my mind as well; another thing exported from China to the US to disastrous effect on the well-being of many Americans.
To be fair, trying to consider the other way around, I wonder what Chinese people could point to as disastrous stuff (in terms of the well-being of their population) coming from the US.
Maybe it was just a genuine outlet for interconnected entertainment compared to other platforms. American's have always sought similar entertainment since the dawn of the 'couch potato.' Now we can go back to consuming curated narratives/influence on our good ole traditional grams and tubes.
"Too addictive" is such a nonsensical way of saying "accurate".
Nicotine being legal but TikTok is not tells you everything you need to know about government wanting to control the "addictiveness" of social media.
What needs to happen is that all of these platforms need to be straight up banned. TikTok is getting picked on because of its ties to China, but why is it better for Zuckerberg or Musk to have the capabilities that are so frightening in the hands of the CCP?
The US social media billionaire class is ostensibly accountable to the law, but they're also perfectly capable of using their influence over these platforms to write the law.
One plausible theory for why the politicians talk about fears of spying instead of the real fears of algorithmic manipulation is because they don't want to draw too much attention to how capable these media platforms are of manipulating voters, because they rely on those capabilities to get into and stay in power.
Because if Zuck or Musk does something bad with said power, we can do something about it.
We can't really jail the CCP. Additionally, Zuck and Musk don't have armies to back up their propaganda. We shouldn't let foreign powers own the means of broadcast...
Who is we, though? I can't do anything about it. Can you?
The people who can do something about it are the people who are already in power in the US. They understandably don't want to share with the CCP, but most of them came to power by manipulating enough voters into voting for them. They stay in power by ensuring that enough voters continue to want to vote for them. Which means that someone like Zuckerberg or Musk has an insanely inordinate amount of influence over whether these people who are in power stay in power.
Yes, I think it's marginally better that that influence remain out of the hands of the CCP, but I would rather that that influence not exist at all. It's too dangerous and too prone to corruption.
Who is we, though? I can't do anything about it. Can you?
Isn't this true for literally all problems in a democracy? Do you have a better solution?
Hopefully we'll get AGI soon and it'll take over and rule as a benevolent overlord. Short of that, everything in your comment feels like it has always applied to every societal problem, and always will.
> Isn't this true for literally all problems in a democracy? Do you have a better solution?
Create a level playing field where money does not amplify speech. Our existing democracy is basically a spending contest with a very small component of eloquently persuading voters to vote against their own interest. The richest of the rich have voices and can manipulate the platforms on which others express their voices, and so those rich people either pick the victors or become them.
For democracy to survive we have to get past the idea that a "free market" approach to speech leads to democratic outcomes. It doesn't, it leads to plutocratic outcomes, which is painfully obvious on both sides of the aisle right now. Americans haven't had a true representative of the people in generations.
US is not a democracy in a strict sense, it is more like plutocracy (people with money have the power).
this all indicate that it is people with deep pockets who have all the power>Zuck and Musk don't have armies to back up their propaganda
But they're about to have all three branches of government to back it up.
So what you're saying is, freedom of speech doesn't really work?
Perhaps algorithmically weaponized "speech" by bad actors with bad intentions, especially controlled by adversaries, doesn't work, and was wholly unpredicted or accounted for by the founders.
> Because if Zuck or Musk does something bad with said power, we can do something about it.
We can? Like what? What's the chance of that happening?
> Zuck and Musk don't have armies to back up their propaganda.
I'd like to note the seating arrangements published for the upcoming presidentia inauguration ceremony.
The TikTok CEO will also be sitting in the same row as Zuck, Musk, and Bezos.
I'd like to note that TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew, a former Goldman Sachs banker and venture capital investor, joined TikTok in March 2021. He is from Singaporean and is married to Vivian Kao, an American of Taiwanese descent.
Unlike Zuck, Musk, and Bezos, Chew did not found the company with which he is most associated, and his net worth is somewhat less than a billion dollars.
Zuck and Musk already have done bad things with their power, and continue to do so. No real consequences so far.
Under what reasoning should these be banned?
I, personally, have views that would lean towards being labeled by HN users as supporting a “nanny state” (at least far departure from younger libertarian phase), but even I struggle with a “why” on banning these platforms in general.
I am surprised someone has not attempted to reverse engineer it or make something very similar.
The symmetry for opium is fentanyl which China senda to the US by the ton.
> beginning to scrutinize these platforms.
I think the government could fix it with a screen time limit. 30 mins for under 18's, and 1 hour for everyone else, per day.
Maybe allow you to carry over some.
After that, it's emergency calls only.
It's still weird to me to see tech website comments calling for extreme government restrictions on technology use. Limiting adults to 1 hour of screen time per day across social apps? That's a call for an insane level of government intrusion into our lives that is virtually unheard of outside of extremely controlling governments.
I'm with you except for the last sentence.
What's happening to TikTok is not a good proxy for the trajectory of social media companies in the US, esp Meta. They've got plenty of tailwind.
Why are people upvoting this.
Internet loves those public school history fact references.
> Geopolitics aside, I think everyone is kind of aware that social media is a vice, and like it or not, this could just be the beginning of our society beginning to scrutinize these platforms.
Come on. We all know that TikTok was banned because the US regime couldn't control it.
If they really wanted to ban vice, they would have banned Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and their kin a long ago.
> TikTok was banned because the US regime couldn't control it
The law is fine with TikTok being owned by a Nigerian.
Well, Nigeria is or can be controlled by the USA. China is an independent country.
> Nigeria is or can be controlled by the USA. China is an independent country
Take a step back and consider how ridiculous this is. Every country in the world other than these six [1] is controlled by the U.S.?
[1] https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-15/subtitle-B/chapter-VII...
Does anyone have any link to some docs explaining how it works?
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/05/business/media/tiktok-alg...
Like Facebook, the "algorithm" is nothing special. TikTok made some smart design decisions that collect more interaction data that legacy social sites like Instagram and YouTube. They use that data to effectively recommend content.
I disagree that social media is a vice. There's nothing inherently wrong with better communication. Although it's hard for me to see the value (or appeal) in TikTok.
What aspect of modern social media contributes to better communication? We're not taking about WhatsApp here, we're talking about algorithmic infinite scroll feeds.
Just on Facebook I can see what all of my old high school friends are up to. I can instantly send anyone a message. I can find things buy that people are selling. I have a community of people who are into the same obscure hobby. That's just off the top of my head.
nothing inherently wrong with fentanyl either. not a strong argument.
That's a great analogy.
> I think everyone is kind of aware that social media is a vice
I don't think this is true. Everyone that is reading this forum might even be too strong. The majority of people happily eating the pablum up as the users of TikTok can't even tell the blatantly false content from just the silly dancing videos.
Americans have faced so little strife domestically that they're unironically comparing social media addiction to the Opium Wars
I think that’s besides the point given the entity that is banning it. It’s because it’s Chinese. An equally addictive Western-made app would not have been banned.
And generally speaking as a culture we are too liberal to ban things for being too addictive. Again, showing that it is not relevant in this case since it will not inspire bans of other addictive (pseudo) substances on those grounds.
That might be true but it's irrelevant. Why? Because that's not the issue the government tackled. Arguing "national security" with (quite literally) secret evidence is laughable. Data protection too is a smokescreen or the government would've passed a comprehensive Federal data protection act, which they'd never do.
It's hard to see how the government would tackle algorithmic addiction within running afoul of First Amendment issues. Such an effort should also apply to Meta and Google too if it were attempted.
IMHO reciprocal market access was the most defensible position but wasn't the argument the government made.
That being said, the government did make a strictly commerce-based argument to avoid free speech issues. As came up in oral arguments (and maybe the opinion?) this is functionally no different to the restrictions on foreign ownership of US media outlets.
I wish it were a reckoning for social media, but reading here shows there's plenty of people here who are passionate about "China bad" and see this only through that one lens. And they seem to think it is strictly about TikTok.
As an European citizen I'm very uneasy with US-based services having my data and I nuked everything from ages bar LinkedIn and HN.
The hard part is de-googling.
even harder is finding a payment system that is not US-based and broadly accepted (no, not crypto).
I do have some hopes for a digital euro and, maybe, maybe, even Wero. But i fear it will never take off because too many players are involved and there is no clear marketing strategy to get it to people. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wero_(payment)
The is a completely legitimate and not uncommon viewpoint. But is it relevant in the context of this thread?
Yes.
What is China for Americans, for us Europeans, is the USA.
Some argue that it's even worse for Europeans because the Chinese military and government can't reach you while in the USA. And there is no safe place for Europeans from the US government, unless they move to China or Russia.
I think that it's a bit overblown.
But it's a problem when your biggest ally treats you like an ally, says you're living off him militarily and spies/hacks you non stop.
China is not a military threat to Europe, it's literally on the other part of the globe. It's only a threat to US geopolitical ambitions.
The US and most of Europe share a military alliance. The US and China are adversaries.
Oh come on. The US is in a military alliance with most of Europe. And hasn’t banned any European apps from operating. And has similar democratic and human rights policies.
As I understood your post: You said the US is worse because "Europeans" are willing to relocate to the US. And also that China is better because they are not likely to relocate to neither Russia nor China.
Is that correct?
This is an incorrect understanding of what they wrote. It's not about Europeans relocating to the US or Americans relocating to China.
They're saying (that other people are saying) that in the US, you are safe from the Chinese government/military. In the EU, you are not safe from the US government/military.
Also note that the claim is not that the US is worse than China for Europeans. The claim is that the US is worse for Europeans than China is for Americans.
The last part about relocating is saying that you can only be safe from the US government/military in China or Russia.
Based on extradition agreements, this conclusion seems true enough on the surface. And maybe US military bases in Europe play a role as well. But this is a thread about national security concerns via social media, and I think it's hard to make a broad and definitive conclusion due to the wide variety of soft and hard powers that countries exert internationally.
> The hard part is de-googling.
But it's worth the effort.
> this could just be the beginning of our society beginning to scrutinize these platforms.
I think politicians have scrutinized american social media and they're 100% fine with the misery they induce so long as they are personally enriched by them.
> There's a certain historic symmetry with how opium was traditionally used in China
TikTok isn't anywhere near as destructive as opium was. Hell, purely in terms of "mis/disinformation" surely facebook and twitter are many times worse than TikTok.
Surely the appropriate modern parallel is fentanyl.
I think TikTok and social media in general is much more insidious than opium, because it is hard to know if you are using an addictive product, or what product you’re even being sold (like if you are being sold a subtly manipulated information diet). For example, it just came out that TikTok staff (in the US) were forced to take oaths of loyalty to not disrupt the “national honor” of China or undermine “ethnic unity” in China and so on. TikTok executives are required to sign an agreement with ByteDance subsidiary Douyin (the China version of TikTok) that polices speech and demands compliance with China’s socialist system. That’s deeply disturbing but also undetectable. It came out now because of a lawsuit.
See this for more https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42739855
EDIT: the link above doesn’t work for others for reason, so here is the source story: https://dailycaller.com/2025/01/14/tiktok-forced-staff-oaths...
> this could just be the beginning of our society beginning to scrutinize these platforms.
Could not be more wrong. "Society" is not deciding anything here. The ban is entirely because of idelogical and geopolical reasons. They have already allowed the good big tech companies to get people hooked as much as they want. If you think you are going to see regulation for public good you will probably be disappointed.
The US gov will do nothing to regulate US owned social networks because they're doing for free the work that the government wants to do itself: collect as much data as possible from each individual. The separation between Meta's collected data and government is just one judicial request away. That's why the US gov hates other countries having this power.
The Tik Tok divestment law was passed by overwhelmingly by both houses of the duly elected Congress. At the time, a majority of Americans polled supported the law, while a minority opposed it: https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/more-support-than-oppose-tik....
In a democracy, this is how "society decides" what's in the "public good." This is not a case where legislators are going behind the public's back, hiding something they know they public would oppose. Proponents of the law have been clear in public about what the law would do and what the motivations for the law are. There is nothing closer to "society decides" than Congress overwhelmingly passing a law after making a public case for what the law would do.
Yes, they're doing it for "ideological and geopolitical reasons"--but those things are important to society! Americans are perfectly within their rights to enact legislation, through their duly elected representatives, simply on the basis of "fuck China."
This may in some ways be technically correct, but it is also true that in a democracy, the elite make decisions with the support of the people through manufactured consent. This process involves the manipulation of the populace through mass media, to intentionally misinform and influence them.
One could take the position that this process is so flawed as to be illegitimate. In this case it would be a valid position to believe that society had not fairly decided these things, and they were instead decided by a certain class of people and pushed on to the rest of us.
See: A Propaganda Model, by Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky: https://chomsky.info/consent01/
What interventions could you not justify using this logic?
That's the notion of "false consciousness" that Marxists trot out to justify why they're right even though people don't agree with them. It's a tool for academics to justify imposing themselves as right-thinking elites who know better than the unwashed masses.
I disagree strongly with any authoritarian rule, but it is probably correct that the masses don’t actually know the best way to run society. That doesn’t mean we need to impose rule, it means we need to understand manufacturing consent (which is a distinct concept from false consciousness and well supported by the facts), it means we need to combat manufactured consent and better educate people.
100% agreed, unfortunately. There is truth in sayings like "the customer doesn't know what's best for them"... I think because they are often simply not informed or intelligent enough.
Most people are sufficiently informed and intelligent. They simply don't (1) care about the things you care about; or (2) don't agree with you that your preferred approaches will bring about desired outcomes.
> Most people are sufficiently informed and intelligent.
Sorry but I don't believe this in the slightest.
It can still be both- in the sense that once a precedent is set using the these additional ideological and geopolitical motivations as momentum, maybe there will be an appetite for further algorithm regulations.
As a tech person who already understood the system, it's refreshing that I now often see the comment "I need to change my algorithm"- meaning, I can shape the parameters of what X/Twitter / Instagram/ YouTube / TikTok shows me in my feed.
I think there's growing meta-awareness (that I see as comments within these platforms) that there is "healthy" content and that the apps themselves manipulate their user's behavior patterns.
Hopefully there's momentum building that people perceive this as a public health issue.
These bans done for political purposes toward public consent for genocide (ie see ADL/AIPAC's "We have a big TikTok problem" leaked audio, and members of our own congress stating that this is what motivates the regulations) won't lead to greater freedoms over algorithms. It is the opposite direction - more state control over which algorithms its citizens are allowed to see
The mental health angle of support for the bans is a way the change gets accepted by the public, which posters here are doing free work toward generating, not a motivating goal or direction for these or next regulations
> bans done for political purposes
You want a political body to make decisions apolitically?
> mental health angle of support
This was de minimis. The support was start to finish from national security angles. There was some cherry-on-top AIPAC and protectionist talk. But the votes were got because TikTok kept lying about serious stuff [1] while Russia reminded the world of the cost of appeasement.
[1] https://www.blackburn.senate.gov/services/files/76E769A8-3ED...
I know the state didn't do it or say they did it for mental health purposes, I'm responding to the reasons given here for supporting these regulations
BTW you're the one who cast doubt on me for suggesting UnitedHealth is incentivized to raise prices to get around profit caps, which turned out to be exactly the case despite your sense-making of the rules in place: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42716428
> you're the one who cast doubt on me for suggesting UnitedHealth is incentivized to raise prices to get around profit caps, which turned out to be exactly the case despite your sense-making of the rules in place
Sorry, could you link to my comment?
Yea, it might be naive to think the government will act in the interest of the consumer (although it has happened before)- but at least maybe it'll continue the conversation of users themselves....
THis situation is another data point and is a net good for society (whether or not the ban sticks).
Discussion around (for example) the technical implementation of content moderation being inherently political (i.e., Meta and Twitter) will be good for everyone.
Yeah, the ban is interesting because it’s happened before (company being forced to sell or leave), but never to a product used at this scale. There are allegedly 120M daily active users in the US alone. That’s more than a third of Americans using it every day.
While many have a love hate relationship with it, there are many who love it. I know people who aren’t too sad, because it’ll break their addiction, and others who are making really decent money as content creators on it. So generally, you’re exactly right. “Society” is not lashing back at TikTok. Maybe some are lashing back at American social media companies (eg some folks leaving Twitter and meta products).
But if we wanted to actually protect our citizens, we’d enact strong data privacy laws, where companies don’t own your data — you do. And can’t spy on you or use that data without your permission. This would solve part of the problem with TikTok.
While data privacy laws would be good, I don’t see how it would help with TikTok since they have no reason to actually follow the laws when CCP comes calling.
That's because "being hooked" is not why it is being banned. It's banned because people are hooked on it and an adversarial foreign power has the ability to use it for their own gain.
Which is why a viable solution for TikTok was selling it to a US company. If it was just about the population "being hooked", a sale would not be an acceptable outcome.
> They have already allowed the good big tech companies to get people hooked as much as they want
To sell you shoes. Not for whatever nightmarish future application of this technology and relationship between private sector and the state represents: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/dec/15/documents...
More specifically the ban is because of the platform being used to support Palestine. There are public recordings of congressmen openly and plainly saying so.
Many other platforms have been used for that for even longer, and none of them are in danger of being banned. I don't think this is the real reason, if there is even a singular reason.
I believe the singular reason is that TikTok is controlled by the CCP and they use it as a tool to further increase political and social division by manipulating the algorithm.
This is evidenced by the fact that ByteDance could've sold TikTok in the US for a huge amount of money to comply with the recent legislation, but the Chinese government won't allow the sale. They aren't interested in the money, which to me sounds like they only ever cared about the data and influence.
Side note: I used Perplexity to summarize the recent events to make sure I'm not totally talking out my butt :). Just a theory though, happy to be proven wrong!
Exactly, even when banned in the US, TikTok (though a lot less valuable business) can still be used to do influence outside the US.
If it was a business they would have sold it.
First, they are american platforms, and already do a lot of filtering. It's not easy to ban an American platform either, and there is more leverage to twist their arm.
Second, how does your comment change the fact that there are multiple politicians on record saying this is why they are going after tik tok?
By “this” I think they meant this moment in time rather than the ban being a result of societal scrutiny.
agree, it was just a shakedown and money grab.
some US oligarchs wanted to buy tiktok at deep discount while it was private, and make money off of making it public company
Why would it be sold at a deep discount?
About 45% of the US population uses TikTok and 63% of teens aged 13 to 17 report using TikTok, with 57% of them using the app daily
Hell of a product, there would be a crazy bidding war for that kind of engagement
Because if the Chinese government actually is using it or plans to use it as a propaganda tool there is no amount of money they would accept. The fact that it wasn't sold to a US company offers credibility to the fact that the product is useless to China if it's controlled by a US company and they wanted to keep the data they learned about addiction to themselves. Also probably wanted to build some outrage among young users for the government banning their favorite app
The sell or be banned part, instead of just banned, was most certainly lobbied for by the US social media companies hoping to get it on the off chance it had served its purpose, wasn't as useful as China had hoped, or the slim chance they really did just want Americans to copy dance trends.
In a fire sale the seller has no leverage.
The seller doesn't need any leverage if there are many interested buyers
If you have to get a sale done, it will absolutely create a discount on the price. This is regardless of the interest — all parties know you have a time limit. Yes you may still do a sale quickly and the price may still be at a premium to your last funding round or whatever you want to use as a mark to market, but it will be at a discount to what you could have gotten.
if US government says who is allowed to buy and buyers collude (by pooling financial and political capital together) they can easily not fight a bidding war and lowball instead
Can you give an example of how the most eligible buyers might collude in a way that benefits them all equally, so that this would happen?
For me, it's very hard to conceive of any concrete way that would work. It's a brand, some partnerships, and a network of users that would all go to whatever buyer, and would give that buyer a huge benefit over their existing domestic competitors. So under what circumstances would those domestic competitors allow that instead of aggresively trying to secure it for themselves?
I'm open to believing you, I just don't see what you have in mind.
Why do they need to benefit all equally?
Campaign with the president, offer large amounts of money to the presidents campaign, donate huge sums to a small inauguration party, and then just be picked to get it at a deep discount. The entire point of bribes is that corruption let's you get away with things at a lesser cost. You just screw over everyone else except for the bribe receiver.
only very few rich people can mobilize financial and political capital to pull off tiktok purchase.
Larry Ellison (since he is CIA/MIC friendly and tiktok is already running on Oracle cloud)
Zuck has too much conflict to acquire tiktok, but other oligarchs like Musk/bezos/gates can pull it off, given their recent meetings with Trump
> only very few rich people can mobilize financial and political capital to pull off tiktok purchase
Why do you assume only a natural person can buy TikTok? Why do you assume you need political capital?
The law doesn’t provide that much executive deference in enforcement.
Elon musk is an example of acquisition of global social network. Political capital is needed because the tiktok question is politicized heavily (national security as a reason).
Plus FTC will review the acquisition process as well.
Do you have a counter example?
> FTC will review the acquisition process as well
Why?
> Political capital is needed because the tiktok question is politicized heavily (national security as a reason)
This is entirely meaningless. You don’t need political capital to maintain the status quo.
> Do you have a counter example?
To your hypothetical? My example is the law. FACA is tightly defined. Bytedance needs to divest to a non-FAC to return to the status quo. Trump could do something else to fuck with them. But that’s true of anyone anywhere.
Hart-Scott-Rodino Improvements Act requires FTC to approve all large M&A deals + DoJ needs to do antitrust review
https://www.ftc.gov/advice-guidance/competition-guidance/gui...
HSR is incredibly routine and politically insulated. It’s closer to a filing than actual review.
except when the government decides to intervene and reject the transaction. See, this seems like routine, but ultimately it gives the government an option to cancel transaction they dont like and they can always cite some bogus reason like "national security" and use racist pretext like ethnicity of the CEO or whatever
> if US government says who is allowed to buy
It doesn’t. The courts do. TikTok could be sold to a Hungarian businessman. As long as it can’t be proved they aren’t controlled by China, they should be allowed to reënter app stores.
Are the courts not US government? Do you think there isn't any collusion between Supreme Court and the other branches of government?
> Are the courts not US government?
Generally speaking, we tend to refer to governments in countries with independent judiciaries as being separate from their courts. The same way we refer to the government in parliamentary democracies separately from their parliaments. (Or governments separately from a country’s people, even though one is a subset of the other.)
> Do you think there isn't any collusion between Supreme Court and the other branches of government?
Not super relevant here. This SCOTUS barely upheld the ban with Bytedance as the owner.
How would that collusion work?
syndication. Pool political and financial capital together to win the bidding from smaller less connected buyers, and share the final ownership
That seems like it would work, but how would they portion out the final ownership? Maybe the person who bid the most could get the most shares?
Rich people can always find a common ground and negotiate deals among themselves, its what they do every day.
As a rich person I’d rather get 30% of tiktok with 99% certainty by committing 30% of capital needed, rather than 100% of tiktok with 30% certainty and committing 100% of capital needed.
I remember trying out TikTok and realizing in horror that it was a slot machine for video content.
Have you seen YouTube shorts and Instagram reels. Lol
I don't know about Shorts but Instagram has solved the addiction problem by ignoring signals like the user tapping "not interested" or scrolling past videos quickly. They just show junk.
They copied TikTok.
> The algorithm used in the US was apparently banned in China for being too addictive.
Apparently?
What's the obvious about it?
I don't understand the argument here, Tik Tok would maximize their monetization in US but not in other markets?
I don't buy it.
Think of it like consumer protection laws - Ford has higher safety requirements for the vehicles they sell domestically than they do for those sold in Mexico. Thus, it could be argued that they are not maximizing their monetization of the US market by cutting out expensive safety features that consumers don't pay extra for.
China is wise to have such laws to protect their citizens.
I am a farmer, I grow tomatoes. The ones I sell to large markets, I use pesticides, herbicides, petrochemical fertilizers, etc etc. The ones I grow for my own consumption and for sale at the local market -- those get organic compost and no chemical treatments.
I am a customer. I eat tomatoes. I choose which tomatoes to buy on my personal preferences.
This presumes that:
1) I sell to you my special and cherished resource. You may live in the fever dream of "market rules all", but a cold surprise may come that not everyone does.
2) You can afford what I sell - especially if political winds blow so that your benevolent rulers choose to impose 1000% tariffs on my good tomatoes
3) That you even _know_ there's a difference, and that tomatoes come from a farm and not the store or a can.
Where is TikTok not maximizing monetization? If you mean the GP's comment on China's ban on the algorithm originally used then you are missing a critical aspect of that: It wasn't TikTok's choice to stop or decrease monetization there.
Also, even if they were differently monetizing by region, you are also missing the non-monetary reasons this might happen: Manipulation & propaganda. Even aside from any formal policy by the Chinese govermnent self-censorship by businesses and individuals for anything the Party might not like is very common. Also common is the government dictating the actions a Chinese company may take abroad for these same efforts in influencing foreign opinions.
Corporations in China all operate at the behest of "the people" (aka the party). If the government thinks a product is damaging or harmful to society, it can be taken off the market without any legal mechanisms necessary.
Unlike in America where... they say it's a national security threat and vote to remove it?
Only the control by a foreign adversary part is being threatened in the US, not the algorithmic opium part twisting the minds of the population. They're two different things. The US so far has no qualms with it if an American is in control of the strings. That's where China differs.
> The US so far has no qualms with it if an American is in control of the strings. That's where China differs
Legally, there is no issue with TikTok being Japanese, Korean, Indian, Saudi, Polish, Ugandan, Brazilian or Mexican. Just not owned by a foreign adversary country.
Yes, thank you. I've updated the earlier sentence from "foreign control" to "control by a foreign adversary". It's indeed the fact that China is a geopolitical enemy-to-be that's the problem.
But, they're also something like our third biggest trading partner. China is like a Schroedinger's Adversary: Simultaneously an adversary and a friend, until you ask a politician and the wave function collapses and he picks one.
> Simultaneously an adversary and a friend, until you ask a politician and the wave function collapses and he picks one
Which politician argues China is a friend?
We bought Soviet oil in the 1970s [1].
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_trade_of_the_Soviet_...
Don't fool yourself or fall for the propaganda: China is hardly an adversary -- just look at how much money we send them and how many goods they send us. If they were truly an adversary we'd be treating them like we do Russia.
> If they were truly an adversary we'd be treating them like we do Russia
As you said, we trade with them extensively. We didn’t tighten the screws on Russia until it actually invaded Ukraine. Until Xi actually invades Taiwan, it’s profitable to pretend.
Chinese ships LITERALLY just cut 3 undersea cables in US allied countries to mess with us.
Oh maybe we should do something about that and actually treat them like an adversary.
> they say it's a national security threat and vote to remove it?
From app stores and American hosting. Only if Bytedance doesn’t sell TikTok to e.g. a French or Indian or American owner. TikTok.com will still resolve (unless Bytedance blocks it).
China literally blocks information.
Any country has mechanisms to ban products the government deems as bad. I think the point is those are much more liberally used in China vs in the US, not that the US would be unable to do it
America uses economic sanctions and bombs.
1) A single party apparatus determines something must be removed, and by fiat it is immediately removed
2) Multiple agencies investigate and make a determination that a real threat exists, the threat and measures to resolve it are debated strongly in two houses of Congress between strongly opposing parties, an passes with bi-partisan support, the law is signed by the President, then the law is upheld through multiple challenges in multiple courts and panels of judges, finally being upheld by the Supreme Court of the country. And no, this is not yet a situation where the country has fallen into autocracy so the institutions have all been corrupted to serve the executive (I.e., not like Hungary, Venezuela, Russia, etc.).
If you think these are the same... I'll just be polite and say the ignorance expressed in that post is truly stunning and wherever you got your education has deeply failed — yikes.
> algorithm used in the US was apparently banned in China
Sounds like they tried.
Frankly, I’m not sure what these comments even mean. Douyin (Chinese TikTok) has the same level of brainrot content, except with some restrictions (political and societal level stuff). Chinese kids are as much addicted to it as Western kids to TikTok/IG, from what I’ve seen.
> TikTok is perhaps the most impressively addictive social media app ever created.
What nonsense.
> The algorithm used in the US was apparently banned in China for being too addictive.
"Apparently"? Tiktok was forced to separate itself into a chinese version and the non-chinese version by the US because we didn't want "da ccp" controlling tiktok.
> There's a certain historic symmetry with how opium was traditionally used in China, then Britain introduced stronger, more disruptive versions, forcing a stronger social reaction.
There is no historic symmetry. Unless china invades the US and forces americans to use tiktok. Like britain invaded china ( opium wars ) and forced opium on china's population.
What's with all the same propaganda in every tiktok/china related thread? The same talking points on every single thread for the past few years.
"Tiktok was forced to separate itself into a chinese version and the non-chinese version by the US because we didn't want "da ccp" controlling tiktok."
You're talking about Propaganda but you are spreading straight up fake news.
ByteDance initially released Douyin in China in September 2016. ByteDance introduced TikTok for users outside of China in 2017.
There was no "split", let alone one "forced by the US".
> There was no "split", let alone one "forced by the US".
There was no split? You wrote: "ByteDance initially released Douyin in China in September 2016. ByteDance introduced TikTok for users outside of China in 2017."
You say there was no split while explicitly proving that there was split? You're not that stupid are you?
Why do you think "tiktok" was created in 2017 when bytedance already had douyin( aka tiktok ) in 2016?
Why is there a "tiktok" for china and a "tiktok" for everyone else? Because the "tiktok in china ( duoyin ) was influenced by the chinese government and to appease the US, bytedance branched off tiktok from "douyin".
I doesn't have anything to do with "appeasing" the US, the Chinese version is heavily filtered and tilted towards CPP prefered activities and worldview, such a platform would never work on the international market and they know it.
And it obviously is not a split if they are seperate apps from the beginning. Why do you lie so much btw?
> I doesn't have anything to do with "appeasing" the US
No. It had everything to do with it. How can you say that when tiktok is getting banned? Even after bytedance bent over backwards to appease the US?
> the Chinese version is heavily filtered and tilted towards CPP prefered activities and worldview, such a platform would never work on the international market and they know it.
Sure. But nothing prevents tiktok from catering their app to other nations differently. You do realize that most nations get different versions of tiktok, facebook, youtube, etc right?
> And it obviously is not a split if they are seperate apps from the beginning.
But they weren't separate apps from the beginning. Your fellow bot/propagandists wrote: "ByteDance initially released Douyin in China in September 2016. ByteDance introduced TikTok for users outside of China in 2017."
If someone is born in 2016 and another person is born in 2017 are born in the same year? Are they the same person?
> Why do you lie so much btw?
Everyone can read this thread and see that you are lying. Not me.
> “You do realize that most nations get different versions of TikTok, Facebook, YouTube, etc., right?”
That statement is misleading, as the differences between these platforms across various countries are typically minor—mostly due to copyright restrictions—so users can still access roughly 99% of the same content. This situation isn’t remotely comparable to TikTok’s China-only counterpart, Douyin, which exists in a separate and completely different ecosystem. I suspect you’re aware of this, yet you brought it up anyway. What is your motivation for such dishonesty?
> “No. It had everything to do with it. How can you say that when TikTok is getting banned? Even after ByteDance bent over backward to appease the US?”
Could you explain exactly what the United States did before 2017 that caused ByteDance to launch a separate app for every country outside of China (not just in the US)? You seem to be muddying the waters by referring to this potential 2024 ban, but that obviously can’t be the reason ByteDance created a separate platform for every non-China country back in 2017.
> “But they weren’t separate apps from the beginning.”
Actually, they were. Douyin is geo-restricted to China (requiring a Chinese phone number to register) and was never accessible to users outside the country. This restriction was put in place to limit the information available to Chinese users, clearly separating Douyin from TikTok right from the start.
> "Everyone can read this thread and see that you are lying. Not me."
Well, I certainly agree that everyone can read this thread and make a judgement on who is more honest.
Stepping into this pile of....
> Even after bytedance bent over backwards to appease the US?
In 2017 when TikTok was launched, there were no US government rules towards it, there were no demands made by the US government about TikTok - that part is the absolutely wrong part of your argument. You either didn't know that, or you are lying about it. Either way it's misinformation.
ByteDance didn't do anything to appease the US in 2016 or 2017. Bytedance offering Douyin for China, and a separate app TikTok for other markets is specifically about controlling the content that people see in China. TikTok is banned in China because content on TikTok isn't as filtered and strictly controlled in the same ways that China's government wants it to be for their own people - TikTok was specifically made for markets outside of China for this reason. The US had NOTHING to do with that, it is strictly about China controlling China's population with Douyin, or more specifically, not losing control of Chinese people by allowing anti-China videos to appear in Douyin. It's far easier for China to control the narrative they want if there are two separate apps that essentially provide the same user experience. The Chinese government controls TikTok, and I have not seen a single anti-China video in my wife's TikTok feed, so I'm willing to believe that they do have some control over content in the US too.
I hope that's not too complicated for you to understand.
>> Why do you lie so much btw?
>Everyone can read this thread and see that you are lying. Not me.
The other person is not lying. You may not be lying, but you really don't have your facts straight.
> Tiktok was forced to separate itself into a chinese version and the non-chinese version by the US because we didn't want "da ccp" controlling tiktok
No. TikTok was forced to put its data on American servers [1].
Douyin was launched in 2016 as musical.ly, and is unrelated to U.S. pressure. (EDIT: Douyin was launched in 2016, TikTok in 2017. Musical.ly was acquired in 2017 and merged into/basically became TikTok. TikTok has never been in China.)
[1] https://www.reuters.com/technology/tiktok-moves-us-user-data...
Musical.ly was not China only and I knew musical.ly before it was the predecessor of tiktok. From how I recall it, it had mostly American users. Was the split during the rebranding?
> Was the split during the rebranding?
Musical.ly was acquired by Bytedance in 2017 and merged into TikTok in 2018 [1]. TikTok itself “was launched internationally in 2017” [2].
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20191005154207/https://beebom.co...
[2] https://chinagravy.com/what-is-douyin-an-introduction/
What viewpoint is your use of “da ccp” supposed to disparage?
I think people (Americans) who view China as a geopolitical rival/enemy of the United States?
> > TikTok is perhaps the most impressively addictive social media app ever created.
> What nonsense.
Obviously experiences will vary, but I think this is actually pretty well-established.
Not many studies, but here's one: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9486470/
how did Britain force the Chinese population to consume Opium?
I don't know if you are just ignorant about history and unwilling to Google, or if you are making the point that of course British did not force feed opium to the people.
What is very well established is that the british fought a war , literally called the opium war by Western historians themselves with the main objective of keeping their opium distribution into China open after the emperor banned it
Their action was akin to if some majority owner of Purdue pharma invades US and forces US government to "keep the oxy market open" while letting "people make their own decision".
Tbh, what you describe sounds nothing like forcing opium on a people. If mexico invaded and started making meth in the US, or started sending even more meth into the US than they do now by totally taking over the border, I would not begin taking meth.
exactly.
I'm not saying Britain didn't do something _against the will of the goverment_. I'm just questioning OP's nonsense that individuals were forced to consume Opium vs not forced to consume TikTok - in both cases, clearly nobody was forced. And in both cases, it's products made to be addictive.
I'd like to see less pervasive chronic use of media, so would hope Canada follows suit, but I don't think banning specific services for political reasons is necessarily a good way to get there. Along with other toxic outlets like gambling, we should be able to make coherent judgements about what belongs and what doesn't based on assessments of well-being indicators that evolve over time. I know it's a fairly conservative take, but it's one I'm happy with, and have a hard time seeing how we're better off with the existence of things like TikTok that provide such an easy way to siphon off human hours in a way that few things other than TV before.
Incidentally, I feel almost controversial for seeing more ads for alcohol and gambling than anything else, and thinking "when did we agree it was a good thing to be more permissive about encouraging objectively addicting risky behavior?".
TikTok is also banned in China. For the Chinese market, Douyin is there from the same company ByteDance. Americans need to understand this decision is not an emotional one but for the nation, just like the opposite party does for its nation.
> this decision is not an emotional one but for the nation, just like the opposite party does for its nation
I'd argue that it is an emotional decision for both, and it does seem ironic that the US would be following China in restricting a platform that people see as a major tool for free speech. Whether you agree with that or not the optics are terrible, and the users are very aware of it. If this is really a big concern then they would also ban facebook/instagram/snapchat, but they aren't being included in this, despite having a worse track record.
Facebook/Instagram/Snapchat are not functionally owned & operated by an unfriendly foreign government that would have incentive to destabilize the USA via civil unrest by influencing our algorithms.
They are owned and operated by unfriendly actors with no allegiance to the government - they just need to be profitable. If there was a publicly owned and operated alternative I would feel better about that, but for example Facebook has been shown to experiment with their algorithm and increase depression rates in the past. If the argument is that the US should own/operate it then I'm not opposed to that because we could remove the profit incentive, but then meta/snapchat would have to become parts of the government instead of independent companies, and with them already being global I don't see how that would actually be implemented. Right now the proposal is to continue letting them do all the harm and data collection, so the reasoning for the change doesn't match up with the actions being taken.
The US government protects Facebook, and is what enabled them to become they company they are today. There are plenty of examples of their loyalty to the US government. They make back doors available and allow the US government to moderate content. Seems like they are very aligned!
Theoretically that can happen. But functionally, that hasn't happened - and in fact, the primary incentive is for that not to happen (bad business, etc).
I think there would need to be some basis in fact for these claims, right?
Well actually, you can argue facebook/twitter etc are causing harm to the US. Just look at its impact oneverything from politics to misinformation.
Direct from the horse's mouth: https://foreignaffairs.house.gov/press-release/chairman-mcca...
"enormous threat to U.S. national security and young Americans’ mental health. This past week demonstrated the Chinese Communist Party is capable of mobilizing the platform’s users to a range of dangerous, destabilizing actions. The Senate must pass this bill and send it to the president’s desk immediately.”
The United States, through its influence over Facebook, instagram, and twitter, facilitated the Arab Spring. Of course we don’t want an adversary to have the same influence over our domestic political conversation.
Surprised not more people are tying this to the Uber-Didi situation. IIRC it was a big complicated mess, but e.g. (this)[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybersecurity_Law_of_the_Peopl...] seems to imply that e.g. Uber would have to use Chinese domestic servers subject to auditing, etc. Upshot is eventually Uber stopped dumping billions to try to get a foothold, and eventually divested their Chinese operations.
(Also later Didi got kinda screwed imo right after their IPO in IMO a retaliatory move by the Chinese gov). So, is this TikTok ban one more shot in a new form of economic warfare? Is this type of war even new? Again, IMO, I think in instituting this law, this kind of stuff was on at least some of congress' minds.
Didi/Uber was more complicated than just data stuff.
At a high level, chinese tech culture is an insane no holds barred cage match with very little legal structure to protect IP or employees or anything and most companies who enter fail at participating in this.
Didi did a lot of corporate espionage and sabotage at uber china. They'd have "double agents" working for uber they'd pay to f stuff up. This type of thing is not practices in america because it is extremely illegal, but it was fine in China at not something that uber could do "back" to didi. There were people on the uber china fraud team paid by didi to tip off fraud networks on how to fraud. In the last year in china, they moved a ton of important work back to US offices because the china office was "compromised".
It is a lot more complicated, and I agree with the vibe of your comment based on some readings, but couldn't find much regarding sources about the sabotage. I found [this article](https://www.digitalaoban.com/why-uber-failed-in-china/), and I also found another by searching "IMEI FRAUD UBER DIDI SIM CARD", (but that other article was literally copy pasted from the first) (couldn't find sources from the first) (I have some hurtful things to say about tech journalism but this website is too polite for that) Again, don't really doubt, but more sort of wondering where you sorts get primary information from.
The comment does not read like made up, so my guess: first or second hand information.
This will ultimately benefit the current Big Tech incumbents. Tiktok was gaining ground rapidly on advertising money and I wouldn't be surprised if there was lobbying that stifled the competition.
Instead of banning TikTok, we should be trying to compete with them and make a better product that wins customers over. It's sad to see the US becoming more authoritarian and follow China's example.
In a more functional democracy we would see that mass data collection of any sort, by any company (foreign or domestic), is a national security risk.
Have witnessed first-hand the threats by foreign state actors penetrating US-based cloud infrastructure. And it’s not like any of our domestic corporations are practicing the type of security hygiene necessary to prevent those intrusions.
So idk, the whole thing feels like a farce that will mainly benefit Zuck and co while doing very little to ultimately protect our interests.
We would be much better off actually addressing data privacy and passing legislation that regulates every company in a consistent manner.
> In a more functional democracy we would see that mass data collection of any sort, by any company (foreign or domestic), is a national security risk.
You obviously don't mean "democracy," but some other word. We don't see mass data collection as a problem because most Americans don't care about privacy. The only reason this Tik Tok thing is even registering is because of the treat of China, which Americans do care about.
There's nothing preventing China from buying mass data from Facebook or one of the many data brokers. This is about censorship and the ability to control public narratives.
You're falsely equating mass data. If anyone can buy the data from brokers then it's effectively public and could be weaponized by anyone. If TikTok collects their own data and doesn't sell it, then it's not public and can be weaponized exclusively by the Chinese government. And that's separate even from algorithm manipulation, which is another liability that's difficult to catch & prove definitively.
Yes there is. Facebook has never done anything like this and never would, that's what is preventing it.
Facebook has never sold user data?
LOL
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-46618582
Do you think your link shows that Facebook sold user data? Did you notice that Facebook wasn't paid and that the users specifically consented?
"We have to seriously challenge the claim by Facebook that they are not selling user data," commented Damian Collins MP, chair of the UK Parliament's Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee. "They may not be letting people take it away by the bucket load, but they do reward companies with access to data that others are denied, if they place a high value on the business they do together. This is just another form of selling."
Not defending what FB did in your example, but when you have to start redefining terms in order to make your argument, you're on shaky ground.
My point is that as long as data is being collected and sold in the US, China has access to it. They don't need TikTok for that.
The US government, on the other hand, desires to control all narratives widely disseminated among its citizens. They can do that with Facebook. They can do that with Twitter. They cannot do that with a foreign company. So they shut it down.
It's questionable what a more functional democracy would actually do, since there hasn't really been one in history. There's been other forms of democracy, but they've all had their flaws, and none of them so far have acted in the interests of all the people in that country.
I am not an "America bad" type of fellow, but US democracy is clearly reaching a local minimum. I suspect "never more functional" is an idea with which even your representative would disagree. There are multiple major issues that Congress should have addressed decades ago and instead they've only become more intractable. The country is more than its government, but the core democratic component, Congress, simply gets very little done. I do not think it can go much longer before some series of events forces broad compromises and realignment.
Everyone obsesses about the US president but congress has had a terrible terrible approval rating for decades now.
https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2F...
We'll probably pull a Rome and go from republic to dictatorship, kick off a civil war or two, and eventually it'll settle down into empire. I'd say we have 25 years left.
I mean, however flawed the EU may be, I think they are earnestly trying to protect the average person from the current paradigm of abusive data collection. Perfect can’t be the enemy of good.
That is blatantly wrong.
The EU has been trying to ban encryption for the last 3 years so that it can read all your text messages, listen to your conversations and monitor the images you send to your loved ones/friends without requiring a warrant from the authorities, therefore granting them an unlimited access to everyone's private life without offering any possible recourse.
The EU's pro-privacy stance is a just a facade, they want as much data as the US government, they just don't want to admit it publicly.
ok, that’s fair, I totally blanked on the anti-encryption stance.
I still think having something on the books for general data protection is a net good, as it forced all the biggest US-based companies to at least start implementing data privacy controls.
Isn’t the EU trying to ban encryption? Do you really think they give a crap about average person
Claiming that “mass data collection” by our own government is inherently a natural security risk is not an assertion based on rational evidence.
It's absolutely a risk because these databases are unregulated honey pots. They're a total liability
Regardless of one’s view on the outcome, this case is a reminder that textualism as a legal philosophy stands on shaky ground. This case is decided not on some strict analysis of the words written by a legislator, but on the court’s subjective view that there is a compelling national interest (which in turn seems based on speculation about the future, rather than a factual analysis of events).
Textualism might give the court some useful definitions, but it is after all still called, quite literally, an opinion.
You misapprehend what textualism is. It does not say that every legal case can be decided by interpreting written law. It is merely a philosophy of how to interpret written law when its meaning is what's at issue. What American lawyers call "textualism" is how most continental european courts interpret written laws. It would hardly merit a label, if it wasn't for a long history in the 20th century of jurists departing from written law in making decisions. In this case, there is no dispute about what the written law means. It's about applying a pre-existing legal concept, the freedom of speech, to particular facts.
Another example that highlights the distinction: Justice Gorsuch, one of the Supreme Court's preeminent textualists, is also one of the biggest proponents of criminal rights. Those cases similarly involve defining the contours of pre-existing legal concepts, such as "unreasonable search or seizure." Nobody denies that such questions are subjective--in referring to what's "unreasonable," the text itself calls for a subjective analysis.
For anyone curious to dig into this more, the terms to read up on are "common law" [0] vs "civil law" [1].
Common law is basically just the US, UK, AU, and NZ. Outside the anglosphere it's mostly civil law.
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_law
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_law_(legal_system)
Not to wave anybody off an interesting rabbit hole, but is that the germane difference here? My understanding: common law features a relatively smaller "source of truth" of written law, and relatively more expansive and variably-binding jurisprudence, where judge decisions set precedent and shape the law. Civil law writes almost everything down ahead of time.
I guess civil law gives you less room to explore ideas like "living" statutes and laws that gain and change meaning over time; if there was such a change, you'd write it down?
Regardless: whether you're a textualist or realist, in the US you're still operating in a common law system.
It's the difference OP is referring to. You can be the judge of if it's relevant in the US to talk about civil law as the "norm" given that our legal system is not, in fact, based on civil law. I'm just providing a link to the concepts OP was referencing.
> Another example that highlights the distinction...
No, that just highlights the hypocritical picking-and-choosing they do to justify it. Gorsuch is a textualist when he wants to be, just like the others.
Do you understand that the word "unreasonable" would be a subjective analysis and that this would be the textualist recommendation? The text itself calls for a subjective analysis. And therefore doing so would be the textualist position.
> Textualism is a formalist theory in which the interpretation of the law is based exclusively on the ordinary meaning of the legal text, where no consideration is given to non-textual sources, such as intention of the law when passed, the problem it was intended to remedy, or significant questions regarding the justice or rectitude of the law.
Textualism in modern context is a tool used by conservative justices used to uphold laws that serve business interests and conservative causes.
This was a unanimous decision. The only points where Sotomayor and Gorusch disagreed with the majority decision was whether TikTok's operation qualified under strict scrutiny for first amendment considerations, but both agreed that even under strict scrutiny, the law would have survived the challenge.
Much of the decision is indeed based around an analysis of the words written by the legislature.
It's not really speculation, though. Certain aspects of the intelligence relationships between the US and China are highly asymmetrical already.
For example, Chinese nationals can enter our country and gather information on our infrastructure, corporations, and people with relative ease because English is prevalent, and foreign nationals have, with the exception of certain military/research areas, the same access that US citizens have. On the other hand, foreign nationals in China are closely monitored and have very few rights, assuming they know Chinese, are physically in China (Great Firewall), and know how to get around in the first place.
China has unfettered access to our media ecosystem, research, patents, etc., and they do their best to create an uncompetitive/hostile environment for any other country to attempt the same on their territory. Some of this has to do with trade—to be fair, these are intertwined—but the situation regarding intelligence is bleak.
Yeah it’s funny MAGA still wants to encourage more H1b from China because you know apparently Americans are smart enough and are lazy. (Thanks for your vote though we will get rid of trans migrants!)
What exactly is your issue with this, as a textualist?
>[The Congress shall have Power . . . ] To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes; . . .
This is foreign commerce. It falls under the explicit jurisdiction of Congress.
Well gosh, that sentence makes it seems like Congress could do anything!
However, this case is about something else. The opinion states that there is a first amendment interest, but that interest is secondary to a compelling national security interest that, in the court’s view, is valid. That may or may not be correct - but it is a subjective interpretation.
>that sentence makes it seems like Congress could do anything!
Yeah, it's the perhaps most powerful clause in the constitution. A large number of laws are formed like "[actual law ...] in commerce." That is the hook needed for a lot of laws to be constitutional. Technically those laws only apply to interstate or international commerce.
There are even supreme court cases discussing this:
>Congress uses different modifiers to the word “commerce” in the design and enactment of its statutes. The phrase “affecting commerce” indicates Congress’ intent to regulate to the outer limits of its authority under the Commerce Clause. [...] Considering the usual meaning of the word “involving,” and the pro-arbitration purposes of the FAA, Allied-Bruce held the “word ‘involving,’ like ‘affecting,’ signals an intent to exercise Congress’ commerce power to the full.” Ibid. Unlike those phrases, however, the general words “in commerce” and the specific phrase “engaged in commerce” are understood to have a more limited reach. In Allied-Bruce itself the Court said the words “in commerce” are “oftenfound words of art” [...] The Court’s reluctance to accept contentions that Congress used the words “in commerce” or “engaged in commerce” to regulate to the full extent of its commerce power rests on sound foundation, as it affords objective and consistent significance to the meaning of the words Congress uses when it defines the reach of a statute.[0]
[0] Circuit City Stores, Inc. v. Adams, 532 U.S. 105 (2001) https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/532/105/case.pdf
> Yeah, it's the perhaps most powerful clause in the constitution.
Only because the Court wants it to be, so they can play Calvinball.
Marijuana grown, sold, and consumed entirely within one state? Still interstate commerce! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonzales_v._Raich
The original sin was Wickard, which found a farmer “growing wheat to feed animals on his own farm” was subject to interstate commerce “reduced the amount of wheat he would buy for animal feed on the open market, which is traded nationally, is thus interstate, and is therefore within the scope of the Commerce Clause” [1]. The court even noted that the farmer’s “relatively small amount of production of more wheat than he was allotted would not affect interstate commerce itself,” ruling that “the cumulative actions of thousands of other farmers” acting as he did would.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wickard_v._Filburn
This seems true… many many thousands of farmers combined consuming their own self grown wheat, would produce noticeable effects on interstate commerce. Specifically wheat markets, futures, etc…
I think the meaning of the commerce clause is pretty explicit in the constitution. The existence of unreasonable interpretations of the commerce clause doesn't change that the commerce clause on it's own, just with a simple reading of it, isn't powerful. Also worth noting that at least one textualist, Justice Thomas, dissented in that case, exactly because of textualism.
Honestly, it seems completely irrelevant that a simple reading of the commerce clause isn't that powerful. What matters is how things are applied, and what precedents have been established. As applied the commerce clause is immensly powerful. As layman we can whinge about how words have been twisted, but in terms of things i can personally influence it means exactly nothing.
Whoops, "doesn't change " should be "doesn't mean." I think the simple reading actually is pretty powerful. It just says "[The Congress shall have Power . . . ] To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;" There aren't many qualifiers there except notably intrastate commerce.
> Yeah, it's the perhaps most powerful clause in the constitution
It's worth noting that many conservative lawyers and activists have been calling for a more limited interpretation of interstate commerce, as a way of shifting power away from Congress to individual states.
Whether Congress has jurisdiction here is not at issue. The court is deciding a different question, which is whether the ban would violate the first amendment. We look at their ruling:
>We granted certiorari to decide whether the Act, as applied to petitioners, violates the First Amendment.
What does this have to do with the First Amendment? How would this be different from an antitrust ruling that requires Alphabet to divest Youtube, but Alphabet decides to shut down Youtube instead?
The argument from TikTok is:
>Petitioners argue that such a ban will burden various First Amendment activities, including content moderation, content generation, access to a distinct medium for expression, association with another speaker or preferred editor, and receipt of information and ideas.
Sotomayor expands on this in her concurrence:
>TikTok engages in expressive activity by “compiling and curating” material on its platform. Laws that “impose a disproportionate burden” upon those engaged in expressive activity are subject to heightened scrutiny under the First Amendment. The challenged Act plainly imposes such a burden: It bars any entity from distributing TikTok’s speech in the United States, unless TikTok undergoes a qualified divestiture. The Act, moreover, effectively prohibits TikTok from collaborating with certain entities regarding its “content recommendation algorithm” even following a qualified divestiture. And the Act implicates content creators’ “right to associate” with their preferred publisher “for the purpose of speaking.”
The Supreme Court can only rule on cases brought to it. And in those cases, they are ruling on specific points of law which one party believes that a lower court misapplied. In this case, the parties asked the Court specifically to review whether a TikTok forced divestiture (not a ban, a forced sale) violated the First Amendment.
> The Supreme Court can only rule on cases brought to it.
That might be technically true, but if (1) you're the lawyer representing a party in an important case, (2) you've already appealed that case up to the highest appelate court and lost, and (3) you think there's any chance that the Supreme Court might change the ruling in your favor, then wouldn't it basically be professional malpractice to not petition for certiorari? Of course, they only accept a tiny percentage of the petitions they receive.
>What does this have to do with the First Amendment?
Because obviously changing the owner-editor of a media outlet has everything to do with their editorial policy. The SCOTUS just said that censorship is ok (and forcing the change of the editor is censorship, there is no doubt about it), as long as it's against another state's editorial preferences potentially having a significant audience in the country.
The government doesn't care about the editorial policy so long as if it's not managed by a foreign adversary or proxies of a foreign adversary, which obviously fall out of scope of the First Amendment. This is consistent with the wholly uncontroversial indictments of the owners of Tenet Media who allegedly conspired with Russia. Meanwhile, the commentators on the channel, such as Tim Pool and Dave Rubin, claimed to have had full editorial control over their content that just so happened to align exactly with Russian propaganda, yet they were free to go.
This is about as much foreign commerce as it is me buying a Xiaomi phone.
I know there's court precedent, but corporations aren't people. It's yet another Chinese platform that Americans use to communicate with other western companies.
> corporations aren't people
Corporate personhood is irrelevant to this case.
> > corporations aren't people
> Corporate personhood is irrelevant to this case.
Further more, "Corporations are people" implying corporations have rights isn't related to corporate personhood and is based on a (often deliberate by opposing politicians) misinterpretation of the phrase, as spoken by Mitt Romney.
What Romney was saying and what is true when he said "Corporations are people" is confusing because people interpret it as "Corporations are persons" which is not what he, or the case law he was referring to implied. The singular of the phrase is much more clear, a corporation is people.
The whole case was about a group of people pooling their funds to make a movie about Hilary Clinton being bad and the court found that the people still had free speech rights when acting through a corporation to pool their funds and so political donation limits didn't apply as long as no political campaign was involved. Hence, Super PACs having to say that the campaigns their supporting aren't involved with the campaigns.
It's actually an incredibly complicated and nuanced situation and the decision is equally so.
Damn and here I was looking forward to the day when I could finally marry Lockheed Martin
> I was looking forward to the day when I could finally marry Lockheed Martin
You can’t marry a child or your cousin (in most states), that doesn’t mean they aren’t people.
Funnily enough, as per Mitt Romney, the TikTok ban was done because it had too much anti-Israel content
See https://x.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1787288209963290753
That’s an incredible behind the curtains slip. I wonder if the media will pick this up.
Seeing how it was made May 2024, seems like they didn't want to highlight the connection.
>This is about as much foreign commerce as it is me buying a Xiaomi phone.
Isn't that obviously foreign commerce?
I'm no fan of textualism but I don't think it had much to do with this case.
SCOTUS didn't have much to work with aside from level of scrutiny. They defer to Congress regarding national security.
That’s actually my point. I don’t think strict textualism really has anything to do with any case. As soon as you say it’s the rule of law that drives every case, you find yourself somehow interpreting an awful lot.
> a compelling national interest (which in turn seems based on speculation about the future, rather than a factual analysis of events).
I keep seeing this claimed, but these aren't hypothetical risks. China has managerial control over ByteDance. China has laws that require prominent companies to cooperate in their national security operations, and they've recently strengthened them even more. China has already exercised those powers to target political dissidents. This is the normal state of affairs in Chinese business; this is how things work there. It isn't like the west where companies have power to push back, or enjoy managerial independence.
Let's not forget that the US government has forced US companies to secretly hand over user data for "national security" purposes. Anyone who denies that China does similar things either doesn't know how the world works or is consciously denying reality.
As do countries on every continent.
But China is a bit different in that they don't simply have the authority to request data, they have the authority to direct management of the company.
Guess how many US intelligence operatives work within corporations to do the exact same thing.
I can make guesses about a lot of things, but I know for a fact that what Chinese law requires is materially different than what US law requires.
Regardless, "someone associated with the government got a job at your company" is entirely different in consequence than "the government requires you to have government interests on your board"
> Textualism might give the court some useful definitions, but it is after all still called, quite literally, an opinion.
I don't think you understand SCOTUS' decision here. They are not banning TikTok. Congress is doing so (actually forcing a sale of TikTok or be banned). They are simply ruling whether Congress acted unconstitutionally by doing so. In other words, if they overrule Congress, they would have to show how Congress' ruling contravenes the Constitution, when the Constitution grants Congress the authority to regulate commerce and decide matters of national security.
Congress isn't banning TikTok either. The law says US businesses can't work with TikTok. TokTok is choosing to shut down to try and force the issue politically. TikTok can choose stay running, the app will still be on your phone, no IP addresses are being blocked. The laws impact comes from choking off revenue and marketing (access to app stores).
You're right, though it's effectively a ban on the iPhone because the only way to get apps is through the Apple Store; but yes, it's not like the app itself will stop working, or there will be some IP block, by order of Congress.
Could TikTok work through a browser? I can get to Facebook and YouTube through my iPhone Safari browser. Indeed I buy Kindle ebooks through the iPhone Safari because the Kindle and Amazon apps won't let me make purchases.
Yes, it has a web version.
"We're not banning your business, we're just cutting the water and power and changing the locks oh and also we burned down the entire building and salted the earth so nothing will ever grow again."
I'd use the term 'originalism' rather 'textualism', but you have a point. For 1st amendment cases, the court hasn't (yet) tried to use their new fangled originalist methodologies. In fact justice Gorsuch wrote separately in the Tiktok case to dig on the levels of scrutiny.
I think it's understandable, in a Chesterton's Fence sort of way - they better make sure that if they're going to start using a new methodology, it works better than what they use now, (these weird judge-created levels of scrutiny), but there's so much 1A precedent that is hard to be confident.
For 2nd amendment, they have used 'originalism' already. There isn't nearly as much precedent in that area, and so they were able to start more or less from scratch.
Rather I think this a good example of how people go through the steps of delegimitizing institutions if it dosen't agree with their opinion. If the Supreme Court's opinion is "shaky" then I guess the Pro-TikTokers would teetering on pole in the middle on the ocean.
But why didn't Supreme Court find the first ammendment arguments compelling? As per first ammendment it is legal and protected to print/distribute/disseminate even enemy propaganda in the USA. Even at the height of cold war for example Soviet Publication s were legal to publish, print and distribute in the USA.
What changed now?
Even a judge, Sotomayer said during this case that yes, the Government can say to someone that their speech is not allowed.
Looks like a major erosion of first amendment protections.
People have rights to speak within reason. Governments don't. The Chinese government shaping content is not protected. The law notably does not ban individual content.
Are they banning any TV channels from hostile countries? RT, for example can be watched by Americans without restriction.
RT is required to register as a foreign agent in the US and is required to disclose information regarding its activities in the country or be subject to civil and criminal penalties for non-compliance. So I would not say it's able to operate without restriction.
They can if they choose to do so. Its not trademark law, just because a government doesnt do something doesnt mean it cannot do something
They will soon!
Lmao these people are rubes. It's like every other bs "national security" argument.
Expect Yandex, VK, RT, Sputnik, SCMP, etc. to be banned as well under similar pretenses.
"Comrades! We can not let these Western dogs infect our proud Soviet minds with this 'Radio Free Europe'!"
The justices seem to have argued that eliminating a platform for speech does not inhibit your ability to voice that speech on another platform, so is not a violation of the first amendment. I think this is an important outcome and really goes against what many so called "free speech absolutists" would argue.
they found some of the arguments compelling and acknowledged that the law may burden free speech. But they also found that the law is not about speech, it's about corporate ownership. In these cases the court will often (not always) defer to congress / the state.
Individuals can bring Pravda into the USA that is protected speech. But Congress could ban Pravda from doing business in the US same as it can ban or sanction any other foreign business.
Because the law bans the operation of software by a foreign adversary. It does not ban speech.
Legal precedent holds that source code (the expressive part of software) is speech, but that executing software (the functional part) is not speech. Even when the operation conveys speech, the ban is on the functional operation of the software, so the First Amendment doesn't apply.
It seems like everyone missed the analogy of TikTok being like a Soviet newspaper, but the better analogy was like Tiktok being a tracking device, which transmitted your exact location, along with a microphone and video camera provided by the Soviet. The hardware may be Apple (made in China, designed in California), but the software extends the hardware usage to the software provider. I'm not sure there was any era of US history which the law would have permitted that.
What Sotomayor said is irrelevant; she's one of nine Justices. What is in the opinion is what is controlling.
> Even a judge, Sotomayer said during this case that yes, the Government can say to someone that their speech is not allowed.
> Looks like a major erosion of first amendment protections.
It's not an erosion because it was already true and has been true for centuries.
"Shaky" compared to what?
Isn't the inquiry made MORE subjective by incorporating extratextual considerations?
Or do you just mean that textualism is oversold, and delivers less than it advertises?
It's opinion regardless of the specific legal philosophy. Each philosophy makes decisions about what kinds of information, sources, context, etc are considered to form the "correct" interpretation. Those decisions are opinions.
Since I'm a reasonably well-known textualist, I'll bite:
First, the court was not asked to reconsider the meaning of the First Amendment. In the US, we generally hew to the rule of "party presentation," which generally provides that courts will consider the parties' arguments, not make up new ones on their own.
TikTok's claim was that application of the statute in question to it violated the First Amendment's clause that "Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech." The Supreme Court has considered the interpretation and application of that clause in...well, a whole lot of cases. TikTok asked the court to apply the logic of certain of those precedents to rule in its favor and enjoin the statute. It did not, however, ask the court to reconsider those precedents or interpret the First Amendment anew.
Since the court was not asked to do so, it's no surprise that it didn't.
Second, as noted, the court has literally decades' worth of cases fleshing out the meaning of this clause and applying it in particular circumstances. Every textualist, so far as I'm aware, generally supports following the court's existing precedents interpreting the Constitution unless and until they are overruled.
Third, even if one is of the view that the Court ought to consider the text anew in every case, without deferring to its prior rulings interpreting the text, this would have been a particularly inappropriate case for it to do so. A party seeking an injunction, as TikTok was, has to show a strong likelihood of success on the merits. That generally entails showing that you win under existing precedent. A court's expedited consideration of a request for preliminary relief is not an appropriate time to broach a new theory of what the law requires. The court doesn't have the time to give it the consideration required, and asking the court to abrogate its precedents is inconsistent with the standard for a preliminary injunction, which contemplates only a preview of the ultimate legal question, not a full-blown resolution of it.
Fourth, what exactly was the court supposed to do with the text in question, which is "abridging the freedom of speech"? The question here is whether the statute here, as applied to TikTok, violates that text. Well, it depends on what "the freedom of speech" means and perhaps what "abridging" means. It's only natural that a court would look to precedent in answering the question. Precedent develops over time, fleshing out (or "liquidating," to use Madison's term) the meaning and application of ambiguous or general language. Absent some compelling argument that precedent got the meaning wrong, that sort of case-by-case development of the law is how our courts have always functioned--and may be, according to some scholars, itself a requirement of originalism.
What are you talking about? The decision was unanimous.
Well, India has already banned Tik-Tok, now the US is. It looks like some European countries are giving it the side eye. This may be the beginning of the end for it.
No matter what you think of this ban, the court is obviously not the right place to solve it. It is completely unsurprising that this is a unanimous decision because foreign trade is one of the few powers expressly given to the federal government in the constitution:
>[The Congress shall have Power . . . ] To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;[0]
(The actual law may not have relied exclusively on the Commerce Clause, you would have to read it to find out. But from a high level there is nothing stopping congress from regulating any instance foreign trade.)
[0] https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/article-1/section-8...
Congress passed a law banning it. Where else would you solve it?
In congress, with another law.
I'm sure the other countries are watching this and considering what the US is doing with their data in its apps.
They dont need to wonder. The US is constantly operating media propaganda campaigns around the globe interfering with elections and promoting coups.
Democratic outcomes that don't agree with our politics are officially deemed illegitimate, even if the elections are certified as fair.
It would be crazy to believe the US is somehow shy about running psyops when we openly arm rebels and bomb countries.
And they’re right to. In the news today: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/01/european-union-o...
Sure. It's a reasonable concern regardless of what country is doing it or having it done to them.
Other countries that were concerned about this started blocking websites of their adversaries decades ago.
TikTok is banned in China. We're just joining in
Sadly they won't, that's just one more reason for e.g. the EU to censor more social media on the grounds that one of their """allies""" does it too.
EU is among the most restrictive legislations when it comes to data leaving European ground already.
Oh look: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/01/european-union-o...
Right?
I'm a Canadian. Almost every major Canadian newspaper is owned by American ideologically-conservative hedge funds, the only variance is how activist they are in their ownership. Our social media (like everyone's) is owned by Americans, men who are now kowtowing to Trump.
And meanwhile, Trump is now incessantly talking about annexing our country. The Premier of Alberta is receptive to the idea.
So, how should a Canadian federal government responsibly react to that?
I'm surprised TikTok isn't trying to push a web version, hosted outside the USA as an alternative to shutting down. While it would be difficult for a new social media service to gain traction that way, TikTok has a huge established audience.
Isn't https://www.tiktok.com exactly this?
Sort of. In a mobile browser, it almost immediately tries to get me to download the app, which is the opposite of pushing the web version in a marketing sense. Pushing would be telling app users that the app will become unavailable soon and they should use TikTok on the web.
> I'm surprised TikTok isn't trying to push a web version,
They have a web version that's surprisingly capable. Not sure if tiktok.com will be blocked on Sunday.
I wonder about that: wouldn't the law force internet providers to blanket block any and all web versions of TikTok?
I don't think so. It probably stops them from using US-based CDNs to host content, but that only makes it less efficient, not inaccessible.
Where is reels, reddit and shorts gonna get all of its most popular content from now?
AI generated slop, of course
Sounds like we have our answer. Have China flood the internet with "content". American scrapers train on it. Now we can ban LLM use on American websites, compromised by China!
Most Reddit is just Twitter screenshots. There are few from BlueSky now but that is pretty recent.
But there is also lot of OC rage-bait.
FWIW, this has driven many users to RedNote, which is even more Chinese in every way, regardless of whether it's even the same kind of platform. I doubt it would ever be anywhere near the same numbers as TikTok (assuming ByteDance didn't sell off) but it does illustrate the trouble with this i.e. cat-and-mouse game.
Edited for word choice.
If it reaches more than 1 million monthly active American users, it too can be subject to the same scrutiny under the law in question.
It runs and operates outside US. How exactly would you enforce the ban? Seize the domain?
> runs and operates outside US
…same as TikTok. Removed from app stores.
I don’t know the details of this app’s corporate structure, but if it’s developed here and user data stays here it would not qualify under the act. Based on the context of your and other comments I assumed it was also a foreign-controlled app
The REDnot is not a "foreign-controlled" app, it's a foreign app, and it does not target the US market. The US citizens chose to use a non-US app. How would US enforce a ban? Send marines to Shanghai and capture CEOs?
REDnote is explicitly "小红书国际版", or "Little Red Book International Version" and is in English in US app stores. It's definitely targeting non-Chinese users.
It's targeting Chinese users abroad. The entire interface, and all the content, is Chinese only it hasn't been localized for anyone.
The interface also has English as an option, although it's not well done.
That's because it's only added recently. It's mainly used by overseas Chinese and mainland Chinese, also, until recently.
Oh I misread your comment (read /inside/ rather than /outside/ for some reason), but obviously the same way they’re going to ban tiktok? Make it illegal for the app stores to host.
... the same way tiktok is being banned? It is going to be removed from the app store
They will levy fines on google and apple if they don't remove it from their stores.
This is very misleading "news" and it doesn't illustrate anything, a bunch of users installed rednote out of protest, but this is a fully chinese app with 100% chinese content and 99% of users will move to youtube, instagram, etc
Fake news.
Looks like you have never used TikTok or RedNote.
Chinese users are starting to caption their videos in English. American users are posting regularly.
It is the number 1 app in my country right now, because of the TikTok ban.
Look up the playstore and you will see. Download it for yourself and you will see.
According to CNN, roughly 700,000 people have installed Rednote—though that figure only represents those who have tested the app and doesn’t necessarily reflect sustained usage. By comparison, TikTok is said to have around 110 million users in the United States, meaning 700,000 installs amount to less than 1% of TikTok’s user base.
Meanwhile, YouTube’s user numbers in the U.S. are estimated at 240 million, but it’s unlikely to gain many new downloads since almost everyone already has the app.
In my view, it’s unrealistic to think Rednote will replace TikTok.
> 700,000 installs amount to less than 1% of TikTok’s user base.
700k in how much time? RN tops the (Play Store) charts here (EU/Croatia) as well, and anecdotally there's a lot of word of mouth growth. Even though TikTok will not get banned over here.
> It’s unrealistic to think Rednote will replace TikTok.
Possibly, but it does have a foot in the door. It doesn't look like they were ready for western audience so remains to be seen if they can seize on the opportunity.
So what number do we determine it to be a matter of national security? 10 million? 50 million?
I don’t think anyone thinks RedNote will replace TikTok — it’s potentially subject to the same ban after all.
But it illustrates the general dissatisfaction among TikTok users with the other mainstream US social content platforms.
Considering that RedNote doesn't allow LGBTQ+ content or "too much skin" to be shown (women-only policy BTW) I don't think it'll end up being very popular with today's TikTok crowd.
It does allow LGBTQ+ content actually. There are tons of it on the platform. It's just it doesn't "explicitly" allow it, if that makes sense.
Rednote has been shown as the top free app (per Apple’s own App Store in my device at least) for going on a week, so the magnitude may be larger than you imply.
Also, having tried it myself, the algorithm works much like TikTok whereby it learns to show English speakers English content pretty quickly.
Also the general consensus among people who have used IG and TikTok (I personally don’t use IG) seems to be that the former does not at all substitute for the latter, particularly in terms of the subjective “authentic” feel of the content (IG often said to be lacking the community feel of TikTok).
I will bookmark this and come back in 6 months. I have seen too many "platform X is replacing playform Y" hype cycles to write long essays about this.
I explicitly stated in a different comment that Rednote will not replace TikTok. I don’t think anyone seriously believes that. It’s subject to the same ban after all.
The interesting aspect here is rather the magnitude of dissatisfaction that a large percentage of users feel towards the other mainstream US social content platforms.
This may be because RedNote is going to "wall off" US users from the Chinese ones:
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/01/rednote-may-wall...
I don't think that's going to happen. The party official seems to be positive about the event overall based on their press release recently. IMO it's going to the opposite direction, where they try to get more foreign users on the platform and have them stay there. If I were a CCP official, I would love to have more soft power by having everyone on a Chinese platform.
Anecdotally, I can tell you that everyone in my kid's circle of friends at school moved over to it within the course of a week.
A non-trivial number of videos I've seen this week mention also being able to find the creator of said video on Rednote. It is also the number 1 downloaded app in the US iOS store this week. The news may be a logical extreme, but it's not fake.
Having a non-trivial number of videos is not the same as being the replacement platform. Youtube is also being spammend with tiktok users uploading old content. The idea that after the dust settles the majority of 110 million tiktok users will end up using a tightly censored chinese social media platform rather than moving to obvious alternatives such as instagram and youtube seems very very unlikely.
Yeah, it's the same with the "millions" of users moving to bluesky or reddit moving to lemmy. A bunch of people go there and eventually come back.
It's not ostensibly, it's an app completely focused on china; did you mean a different word?
Probably. I didn't know that about it when I used that word, but a sibling comment also confirms this, so thanks for the correction.
It asserts how critically powerful platform media is now and that the government sees it as an essential part of managing their citizens
I agree. I'm not sure if I think all of this is good or not. Even if you, a gov't, didn't have an interest in managing your citizens vis-a-vis some platform, it doesn't mean other govt's don't have that interest, so maybe there's some validity to it in that case. But all of that raises even more questions, like "so what?" and "to what end?"
Sure, guy, and Bluesky will become the new Twitter.
A lot of my friends have stopped using twitter and have started using Bluesky.
I feel like the protest move to RedNote will be short lived. The censorship there is draconian - if you say even the slightest thing that offends the CCP on red note, you get banned. See this discussion on the subreddit for TikTok (https://www.reddit.com/r/TikTok/comments/1i2wll3/how_to_not_...).
Something I read that’s interesting - RedNote changed the English name to cover their actual name - the Chinese name is little red book, as in the red book of Mao (not sure if true).
> the Chinese name is little red book, as in the red book of Mao (not sure if true)
That is the Chinese name of the app (although I've heard mixed reports on if "little red book" as a term for the book actually common in China). The founder claims it's because of the founder's "career at Bain & Company and education at the Stanford Graduate School of Business" which both use red, but I'm pretty sure it's a pun on his name also being Mao.
A globally used social media app without American narrative and propaganda. A huge loss for American soft power.
You mean the young people now on Rednote complaining that they can't buy groceries?
Maybe. Network effects are strong, though. I wonder how much losing access to the US market sets back TT's financial & competitive positions
My wife and I are split on this, though neither of us are regular TikTok users.
I keep coming across elected officials who are apparently briefed on something about TikTok, and they decide there’s a reasonable threat regarding the CCP or some such. The idea that the CCP could drive our national conversation somehow (still murky) bothers me.
My wife feels like this is the US Government trying to shut down a communication and news delivery tool.
While I don’t agree with her, I don’t think she’s wrong. It seems all the folks who “have it on good authority” that this is a dangerous propaganda tool, can’t share what “it” is.
If the President had over Meta and X the sort of control the CCP has over TikTok, Instagram and Twitter would be banned in most countries. The only reason this is debated so much here is we’re (in my opinion correctly) very cautious about free speech.
The owner of X is in the government.
> owner of X is in the government
One, he's not. Two, there is a massive difference between the owner of X being in the government and the government being in X. Three, the owner of every media platform is not in the government.
In what way? He's basically just a friend of Trump
In the most literal way possible.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Department_of_Government_Effic...
Not in the government. Analgous to the Federalist Society.
The owner of Twitter/X is about to be in the president’s cabinet. And the owner of Meta is clearly cozying up to the incoming administration with their new “anti-woke” policies.
I believe theres a related argument that congress might be making here, idk.
> The idea that the CCP could drive our national conversation somehow (still murky) bothers me.
Even if all the CCP can do is modify how often some videos and comments show up to users on tik tok, there's a chance that level of control could have been enough to instigate the whole jump to red note we're seeing. After all, the suggestion originated within tik tok itself as the videos talking about it (and the comments praising it) went viral. Sure everyone was primed to do something with the deadline approaching, but it's entirely possible that the red note trend isn't an organically viral one, but a pre-planned and well executed attempt to throw a wrench in the works.
red note's infrastructure seems to have had no problems absorbing millions of new users at the drop of a hat, cloud scaling is good, but that kind of explosive growth in mere days, when unexpected, often results in some visible hiccups. Maybe the engineers are just that good, or maybe they had a heads up that it'd be happening.
Utter speculation on my part, but I've found it interesting I've not come across anyone else mention the possibility.
> It seems all the folks who “have it on good authority” that this is a dangerous propaganda tool, can’t share what “it” is.
No need to speculate too hard here, there are plenty of examples of censorship on TikTok: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_by_TikTok
Censorship is a form of propaganda, and even the very obvious/reported examples we've seen reported over the years are pretty bad. And you have to assume that there is more going on than is actually reported/noticed, especially in subtler ways. It's also just obvious it's happening in the sense that the Chinese government has ultimate control over TikTok.
I tried to find a "Censorship by Youtube" wiki but couldn't find one. Only one documenting the censorship OF youtube https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_of_YouTube.
I don't see a section on their main wiki either, even though YT is pretty notorious for deleting stuff, even political stuff https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YouTube
They make up lies that they tell them in the SCIF.
It's just theater.
Biden has said he won't enforce the ban and Trump has said he will keep TikTok from going dark. Shou is attending the inauguration. Ivanka and Kai are posting actively on TikTok. It is not going anywhere.
I'd be stunned if Trump saved TikTok, that would be really inconsistent with his anti-China rhetoric, which is one of the consistent policies he has.
He may be anti-China, but he’s even more anti-Biden.
An interesting angle to this whole drama that I haven’t seen discussed much: in the creator industry, TikTok is known for being significantly harder to make money from your content, as compared to YouTube. For various reasons, content just makes much more money on YouTube than it does on TikTok.
I do wonder what will happen if TikTok users migrate to YouTube shorts, and if that will change this.
It's really quite funny to read the timeline in the opinion.
Essentially, Trump started the TikTok ban, Biden continued it, and Congress finally put it into law. And now both Trump and Biden, as well as Congress, are shying away from actually enforcing the ban.
• In August 2020, President Trump issued an Executive Order finding that “the spread in the United States of mobile applications developed and owned by companies in [China] continues to threaten the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States.”
• President Trump determined that TikTok raised particular concerns, noting that the platform “automatically captures vast swaths of information from its users” and is susceptible to being used to further the interests of the Chinese Government.
• Just days after issuing his initial Executive Order, President Trump ordered ByteDance Ltd. to divest all interests and rights in any property “used to enable or support ByteDance’s operation of the TikTok application in the United States,” along with “any data obtained or derived from” U. S. TikTok users.
• Throughout 2021 and 2022, ByteDance Ltd. negotiated with Executive Branch officials to develop a national security agreement that would resolve those concerns. Executive Branch officials ultimately determined, however, that ByteDance Ltd.’s proposed agreement did not adequately “mitigate the risks posed to U. S. national security interests.” 2 App. 686. Negotiations stalled, and the parties never finalized an agreement.
• Against this backdrop, Congress enacted the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act.
A simpler explaination, politicians were worried that Tiktok may influence mit-term and presidential elections, but it turns out a good place to run campaigns.
Then Gaza happened.
Ouch
2025, despite all this going on for four years, Gorusch complains bitterly about having had to rule on the case in less than a fortnight
The whole thing, including Biden setting the deadline for literally the last day of his presidency, strikes me as extremely odd. I have no idea what the real story is here, but it very much seems that what is happening is not at all what it seems.
Link to opinion: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/24-656_ca7d.pdf
And it was an unanimous decision. When was the last time we had those for such an impactful decision I wonder?
"Impactful" might be counting your chickens a little too early. Let's see if it has any impact. The next POTUS might just ignore it, or some other shenanigans might be used to work around whatever the imagined impact was.
The majority of Supreme Court decisions are unanimous, including on major issues. The recent trend of divided opinions is relatively new.
Regularly, you just don't read about them as they don't make news headlines.
"impactful decision" is key here.
Many/most scotus rulings are impactful. They are just not all controversial.
The interesting bits from the text[1], relative to the now flagged sibling
-----
(3) FOREIGN ADVERSARY CONTROLLED APPLICATION.—The term “foreign adversary controlled application” means a website, desktop application, mobile application, or augmented or immersive technology application that is operated, directly or indirectly (including through a parent company, subsidiary, or affiliate), by—
(A) any of—
(i) ByteDance, Ltd.;
(ii) TikTok;
(iii) a subsidiary of or a successor to an entity identified in clause (i) or (ii) that is controlled by a foreign adversary; or
(iv) an entity owned or controlled, directly or indirectly, by an entity identified in clause (i), (ii), or (iii); or
(B) a covered company that—
(i) is controlled by a foreign adversary; and
(ii) that is determined by the President to present a significant threat to the national security of the United States following the issuance of—
(I) a public notice proposing such determination; and
(II) a public report to Congress, submitted not less than 30 days before such determination, describing the specific national security concern involved and containing a classified annex and a description of what assets would need to be divested to execute a qualified divestiture.
-----
The way I read this is that Congress is bootstrapping the law with its own finding that ByteDance, Ltd/TikTok are Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications, but then, in (3)(B), the President is responsible for determining any other entities this law should cover given previously stated parameters (what they mean by "covered entity" here), using the procedure it then provides.
I believe that addresses the concern about this being a "Bill of Attainder".
Edit: Obviously IANAL, but it also doesn't appear that this issue of this being a Bill of Attainder was raised by TikTok, nor was it considered in this opinion. Perhaps they will do so in a separate action, or already have and it just hasn't made its way to the court(?), but if it were such a slam dunk defense, you think their expensive lawyers would have raised it.
[1]: https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/7521...
The Supreme Court has made only very narrow rulings around Bills of Attainder.
To me this bill seems problematic on that front in two directions. One is that it explicitly names a target of the ban. Secondly, it grants the president power to arbitrarily name more. Similar to how a King can declare certain Subjects be Attainded on His Whim.
But the petitioners (TikTok) did not raise this issue so the court did not have to decide on it. Instead they focused on the first amendment issue, which seems like a loser -- there is no speech present on TikTok that the law bans; any content on TikTok can be posted to red-blooded American apps like shorts or reels so the speech itself is not affected.
> I believe that addresses the concern about this being a "Bill of Attainder".
The definition of "foreign adversary controlled application" in the bill is explicit in including either (a) this specific list of organizations, OR (b) other organization that might meet certain criteria later. I'm not sure how the existence of (b) addresses the concern that (a) amounts to a bill of attainder.
This analysis seems reasonable, but I think the simpler explanation blatant corruption, since the legislation is moving judicial responsibility from from the judicial branch to the legislature and president, and a great deal of money is involved.
> I think the simpler explanation blatant corruption, since the legislation is moving judicial responsibility from from the judicial branch to the legislature and president
I mean, that's true of basically all administrative agencies.
But with the reversal of Chevron, this will hopefully be somewhat corrected.
Thousands of US content creators were earning on TikTok. Now they need to migrate over to other alternatives. Also this is a reminder for all content creators to always plan for failovers. Though I would assume most them already are on multiple platforms.
Not at all the case except for the largest ones. It is hard to grasp the distribution capacity of TikTok. It WILL put your content in front of people interested in it. It's crazy good at that. Also, a lot of money came in from the live streams within the app.
An implementation detail that might be interesting is that the discussed method of the ban is to use the same ISP block that is used for torrent sites (and other websites).
This may be a bit of relevance when talking about how banning a website get applied through the legal system.
That's not how the law works.
The law levies fines against distributors of the app, it doesn't ban possession or block the operation of the app itself.
Ie, Google and Apple are forced to delist TikTok or face heavy fines
That’s a good point. Apparently VPN popularity is already exploding in states that PornHub had to block.
Maybe we will finally get the decentralized computer network we thought we were building in the 1990s (as a combination of software overlays and point to point unlicensed wireless links).
What ISPs blocks? American ISPs don't block anything. The US government prefers to seize domains and hosting.
We're not (yet) like the UK or EU where rights holders can click a button and have IPs blocked without due process.
trump finally got the (fire)wall he wanted
If TikTok is just in the business of earning money they would've sold.
Who are they actually supposed to be selling to? Given the US has pretty active antitrust for now, I can't really think of anyone who has both the money and expertise to run it and would be allowed to buy it.
An easy solution is to spin off TikTok to its own company and then that company IPOs.
TikTok cannot be sold because the algorithm cannot be sold under the export control laws enacted by China.
Bits that can't be exported can be recreated by the new owner, most likely with material differences anyways not just because the new owner might not be able to recreate the original faithfully but because they might not want to.
Why would I sell my business just to appease some gangsters on capitol hill?
Remember, TikTok has also been banned in the largest country in the world by population for years now..
It's been banned in both of the largest countries.
rumors are that XHS wont region split, in which case this is setting up to a monumental event in the evolution and future of the internet. words can't really describe how big of a decision this is going to be.
That's the opposite of what I've heard
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/01/rednote-may-wall...
>There has been no official announcement that such a change is coming, but Reddit commenters speculated
You may want to read more than the headline next time.
Yeah, from my other reply
> I don't think that's going to happen. The party official seems to be positive about the event overall based on their press release recently. IMO it's going to the opposite direction, where they try to get more foreign users on the platform and have them stay there. If I were a CCP official, I would love to have more soft power by having everyone on a Chinese platform.
Arstechnica quoting a random reddit poster is not the same as the people I've been talking to lol
Can you explain further? Sounds important but I don't understand.
I jobbled down some thoughts a few days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42690618
But in a nut shell I think we're seeing outcome #2 play out, which has huge ramifications for the Chinese internet. Essentially this could become a precedent for all Chinese apps moving forward, and essentially the great firewall slowly dissolving. Trends have been slowly going that way with Bilibili, Douban, Kuaishou, etc, being more open to foreigners. There's still a lot to play out over the next few weeks as Trump assumes office and Tiktok CEO attends the inauguration. But there is just too much to comment about this entire situation, and most people who aren't Chinese or have experience with the great firewall are not going to comprehend just how monumental this whole ordeal has already been, and will be.
How very "land of the free" of America
Still have no good answer on why its bad for a company that is supposedly under Chineese influence to collect this kind of information on us, and adjust and tweak an 'algorith' for displaying content. But its perfectly fine for a US company to do it? Wouldn't the right solution be to protect the citizens from all threats, foreign and domestic?
Plenty of good answers have already been put forward. But in case you're asking in good faith, here are the two main ones:
1- It's in the interest of the US government to protect its interests and citizens from governments that are considered adversarial, which China is. And unlike other countries, the Chinese government exercises a great deal of direct control over major companies (like ByteDance). If TikTok was controlled by the Russian government would we even be having this conversation? (Ironically most Americans are freaked out about Russia, but when it comes to global politics, China is the much greater threat to the U.S.)
I think social media in general - including by US companies - does more harm than good to society and concentrates too much power and influence in the hands of a few (Musk, Zuck, etc.) So this isn't to say that "US social media is good". But from a national security standpoint, Congress' decision makes sense.
2- If China allowed free access to US social media apps to its citizens then it might have a leg to stand on. But those are blocked (along with much of the Western internet) or heavily filtered/censored. TikTok itself is banned in China. So there's a strong tit-for-tat element here, which also is reasonable.
> If TikTok was controlled by the Russian government would we even be having this conversation?
Yandex got fragmented into EU bits and Russian bits. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/aug/23/russia-yandex-...
The head of VK is subject to sanctions https://www.theverge.com/2022/2/26/22951307/us-sanctions-rus... (but it appears that Americans are still free to use VK if they want to?)
> (Ironically most Americans are freaked out about Russia, but when it comes to global politics, China is the much greater threat to the U.S.)
American-backed forces are fighting the Russian army itself in Ukraine. Implied in all of that is a desire to not have US forces fight them directly in Poland.
> Ironically most Americans are freaked out about Russia, but when it comes to global politics, China is the much greater threat to the U.S.
China benefits greatly from the rules based order that America spends considerable effort to maintain and uphold. They would prefer a different rules based order than the one America would prefer, but they're better off with than without and recognize that.
OTOH, Russia does not. They prefer chaos.
China is definitely the stronger threat. But Russia is a greater immediate threat because they're only interested in tearing things down. It's easier to tear things down than to build them up, especially if you don't care about the consequences.
> But Russia is a greater immediate threat
I disagree; and it's the dismissal for the past 13-14 years of China as an immediate threat which is what has in part allowed China to become such a large longer-term threat.
> They would prefer a different rules based order than the one America would prefer
I would put it differently: China wants its own global hegemony instead of the U.S.' -- and that's understandable (everyone wants to rule the world). But if the U.S. doesn't want that to happen then it has to take steps to counter it.
I agree with point #1, but then this ban should also include the US controlled sites - having the main office in the US doesn't mean the data is any more secure, or that the products do less harm socially.
For point #2, this seems like you're saying "they don't have a leg to stand on, and we want to do the same thing". If we don't support the way they control the internet, we shouldn't be doing adopting the same policies. I don't think governments should have any ability to control communication on the internet, so this feels like a huge overstep regardless of the reasons given for it
Re #2 -- while there is a tit-for-tat element here, forcing a sale of TikTok or removing it from the App stores, is still worlds apart from the type of censoring of information that the Chinese government engages in. So it's not a case of "we want to do the same thing". If you've lived in China (I have) you'll know what I'm talking about.
Good clarification - I'm not saying we're adopting all the same policies, but it is a step in that direction, and I think we need to have a clear line saying we never do anything close to that. Similar to the "first they came" poem, this could be used to justify further expansion of this power, and that poem does start with "First they came for the communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a communist"
Agreed that there's always a risk that something like this sets a precedent for abuse of power to control information by the US government. And we know that the US gov is not beyond spying on its citizens (Snowden, NSA). However, there are still fairly robust safeguards in place in the US by virtual of the political structure, to make this much less likely to happen. Those same safeguards make it unlikely that while Trump and Elon would almost certainly exercise the degree of control that Xi has if they could, they are prevented from the worst by the structure in place.
The problem in China is that there weren't strong safeguards to prevent a totalitarian control (CCP is supposed to be democratic within itself in that leaders are elected, though it's all restricted to party members, of course), and when Xi came into power he was able, within a few years, to sweep aside all opposition, primarily through "anti-corruption campaigns". So he now has a degree of control and power that would be a wet dream for Trump. (And you should see the level of adulation in the newspapers there.)
Now in the US we have a separate problem, and that is we have a system where unelected people like Elon and Zuckerberg, Murdoch, etc., exercise a tremendous amount of influence over the population through their policies and who are pursuing a marriage between authoritarian politics and big business (by the way, there's a term for this, it's called "fascism"). That is a serious problem -- but it's separate from the TikTok issue and shouldn't be used to discount the dangers of the CCP having control over a highly popular social network in the US.
Those are answers to a different question.
The US companies continue to feed the same information to the Chinese, even though the Federal government has been trying to get them to stop for almost a decade (I cite sources elsewhere in this thread).
So, all of your arguments apply equally to the big US owned social media companies.
Since the ban won’t stop the Chinese from mining centralized social media databases, the important part of the question is:
> Wouldn't the right solution be to protect the citizens from all threats, foreign and domestic?
> won’t stop the Chinese from mining centralized social media databases
that's not the issue; the issue is control of the network
> Wouldn't the right solution be to protect the citizens from all threats, foreign and domestic?
No. In the US government's view, its responsibility is to counter potential foreign threats -- and not just foreign, but adversarial (this wouldn't be an issue for a social network controlled by the UK or Japan, for example) -- which would include a highly pervasive social network controlled by a foreign government that is the US' largest adversary.
As for whether social media companies in general are good or bad for American society, that's a completely separate question. (I tend to think they do more harm then good, but it's still a separate question.)
> If China allowed free access to US social media apps to its citizens then it might have a leg to stand on.
So now the US should just do everything China does? What happened to American ideals protecting themselves? If free speech really works, it shouldn't matter that TikTok exists.
> government to protect its interests and citizens from governments that are considered adversarial
That's the exact reason why Communist China setup the firewall in the first place. Good luck.
The two are vastly different.
The GFW doesn't just block websites/networks/content that is controlled by adversarial foreign governments, but all websites/networks/content which the CCP is unable to censor. The GFW is about controlling the flow of information to its citizens from __any__ party not under the CCP's control.
1) You can not protect users from being influenced by the media they consume-- that is basically the very nature of the thing.
2) This is not about protecting users of the app, this is about preventing a foreign state from having direct influence on public opinion.
It is obvious to me why this is necessary. If you allow significant foreign influence on public opinion, then this can be leveraged. Just imagine Russia being in control of a lot of US media in 2022. Or 1940's Japan. That is a very serious problem, because it can easily lead to outcomes that are against the interests of ALL US citizens in the longer term...
SCOTUS explicitly avoided ruling on this justification, and it seemed at argument that even some of the conservative justices were uncomfortable with the free speech implications of it.
I think the question "What is Tiktoks speech?" was raised. And the answer, "the algorithm" didn't really strike home.
So I read it like they didn't interpret this as a free speech issue at all.
It's not a top down broadcast and the SCOTUS has a hard time wrapping their head around 250 individual people receiving individualized content with no oversight or necessity for accuracy.
That justification also seems like it quickly can be used to shutdown access to VPN services hosted elsewhere like Mullvad.
Isn’t that already happening? Fox news parroting russian talking points to sow division among the working class population of this country? Why is that fine? Because they get Rs in power in the process?
The whole case turns on foreign adversary control of the data.
Right, Congress was shown some pretty convincing evidence that execs in China pull the strings, and those execs are vulnerable to Chinese government interference.
As we’ve seen in the past couple of weeks, social media companies based in the US are also vulnerable to US government interference — but that’s the way they like it.
They have?
They released a Marty Rimm-level report citing that pro-Palestinian was mentioned more than pro-Israeli content in ratios that differed from Meta products. This was the 'smoking gun' of manipulation when it's more of a sign Meta was the one doing the manipulation.
The opinion today has almost nothing to do with how content is controlled on the platform; the court is very clear that they'd have upheld the statute based purely on the data collection issue.
That report was pivotal during the vote for the law and belies the actual interests.
The court addresses that directly, and every member of it, despite agreeing on little else, disagrees with you.
I don't know what Congress has said but there absolutely is evidence that TikTok has been used to spy on users for political reasons. A US based engineer claims that he saw evidence that Hong Kong protestors were spied on in 2018 at the behest of a special committee representing the CCP's interests within ByteDance. This is not surprising, most major corporations within China maintain a special committee representing the government's interests to company executives
https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2023/6/7/china-spied-on-ho...
The DHS does that in the United States.
Every major social media and dating application has a law enforcement portal. This was documented in BlueLeaks.
Do law enforcement portals provide current location information? There's an extended history of the TikTok being used to spy on the location of user devices
https://archive.ph/kt0fY
Yes, in some cases. Grindr is the most obvious one.
Okay, that's because Grindr users choose to publicly share their current location; that's the point of the app. Governments having an API that lets them access data that users publicly share seems substantively different from governments having access to private information, obtaining that information by subverting internal controls at TikTok and ByteDance intended to keep it private. I think anyone not arguing for arguments sake would acknowledge that
Most apps coerce their users into sharing location information. That's why they released apps and did not just use progressive web apps in the first place.
But, this is done under the guise of commercial interests, usually advertising, so it's okay?
That's the way I like it for my children. Pardon the demagogue. The US, being the awful mess it is is still 100x better IMHO than the chinese government. It's the lesser evil kind of thing and honestly the reason I believe that democracy is 100% THE way to go. Things can only get US level nefarious with democracy. Far from perfect but much less evil.
The only problem with democracy is that it's so fragile and susceptible to bad non-democrat actors intervention, which is more of an awareness problem.
If you think the US is immune to authoritarianism...
Do people not remember 2020-2021?
Is X vulnerable to Chinese government interference because its American executive has other business interests in China at stake?
I’d argue the TikTok remedy should be applied to X, too.
No, X doesn't have a corporate governance structure that requires Chinese government control, because it is a US company.
Companies in China (and especially those of prominence) have formal structures and regulations that require them to cooperate with the government, and sometimes require the companies to allow the government to intervene in operations if necessary.
It is not possible for a CCP official to show up to a board meeting at X and direct the company to take some action, because that isn't how US corporations work.
A CCP official could show up at a Tesla board meeting and announce they're going to seize Gigafactory Shanghai unless Musk takes down some content on X. There doesn't seem to be much of a difference.
Tesla is quite notable as the only foreign automaker which China has allowed to operate independently in China. All of the rest of them were forced to joint venture with 51%+ control being handed over to a Chinese domestic company. So, really it's pretty surprising that they haven't done that even before Musk owned X.
But regardless, there is a huge difference between a request and actually having managerial authority -- the most obvious being that someone with managerial authority can simply do whatever they want without trying to compel someone else. Also, X, being subject to US law, must comply with that no matter what consequences Musk is threatened with. So, any threats may have limits in what they can practically accomplish.
This should be applied to all social media.
Media flat out.
You are assuming a lot about supposed evidence nobody has said anything specific about. One shouldn't also assume people in Congress know how to evaluate any evidence. Nor justices, based on the questions they asked.
As a matter of political science and public choice theory, the legislature is the branch of government most trusted to collect information and make these kinds of deliberations.
You might buy that, but I don't. Unless they can actually put forward publicly compelling evidence of a national security risk, this can only be seen as a handout to Facebook by the government. This saga just gives more evidence that the US government exists primarily to serve the interests of US's oligarch class. Aside for those oligarchs, it does nothing to serve US citizens' interests.
Would you call Marjorie Taylor Greene a qualified and trusted investigator for the american people? I sure wouldn’t. Talking about what the legislature is supposed to be is irrelevant. What the legislature actually is is relevant.
Congress members speak of space lasers and weather control... I'm not sure they're competent as a whole. Actually, it reminds me of the Russian guy that always spouts nonsense about nuking UK into oblivion, and that theory that he's just kept around to make the real evil people look sane.
Good thing Mr Zuckerberg is a shining beacon of independence from the US government.
He's not a formally designated foreign adversary, at least not yet.
The difference is you can easily prosecute Zuck
Easily? No. Within the bounds of the US Constitution, yes.
No. Zuck is very securely within the class of citizens that is immune to prosecution within the US.
I’m sure he’s bending at the knee right now because he feels very secure and just had a change of heart about everything precisely one month after the election.
Is he bending the knee, or dropping the mask? The billionaire+ class rightly sees this as their big opportunity to seize power for the next several generations, removing worker and consumer protections and enshrining themselves as essential parts of the government.
Why is this true of Zuck but was not true of SBF?
He was just a dumb get-rich-quick kid, he didn't have any political power. Zuck has spent the past 2 decades gathering money and power.
How did SBF manage to be the #2 Democratic donor in 2022 without accruing any political power?
By being a moron.
Gigabillionaires with immense influence don't get prosecuted.
That may be true in a legal sense (and my reading of that is the same as yours).
My interpretation of the parent’s comment is that we have pretty serious (and dubiously legal) overreach on this in a purely domestic setting as well.
As someone who has worked a lot on products very much like TikTok, I’d certainly argue that we do.
The short answer here is that directly addressing a threat from a foreign adversary formally designated by both the legislative and executive branches long before the particular controversy before the court affords the government a lot more latitude than they would have in other cases.
I’m not sure anyone is disputing that, certainly I’m not.
There is an adjacent point that many of us feel is just as important, which is that there is evidence in the public record (see Snowden disclosures among others) that there is lawbreaking or at least abuse of clearly stated constitutional liberties taking place domestically in the consumer internet space and has been for a long time.
Both things can be true, and both are squarely on topic for this debate whether on HN or in the Senate Chambers.
There are so many reasons.
- China can access military personnel, politically exposed persons, and their associates. Location data, sensitive kompromat exfiltration, etc.
- China can show favorable political content to America and American youth. They can influence how we vote.
- China could turn TikTok into a massive DDoS botnet during war.
- China doesn't allow American social media on its soil. This is unequal trade and allows their companies to grow stronger.
- China can exert soft power, exposing us to their values while banning ours from their own population.
China can benefit without doing any influencing. It can simply mine the vast amount of data it gets for sentiment analysis. Say they want to be more aggressive against the Philippines. They can do an analysis to gauge the potential outrage on the part of the American people. If it's low they can go ahead.
China can show favorable political content to America and American youth.
American culture has been such an influencing force on the world due to our conduits, movies and music. TikTok is a Chinese conduit, and I do believe this is happening. Our culture can be co-opted, the Chinese had John Cena apologize to ALL of China. They can easily pay to have American influencers spin in a certain way, influencing everything.
Thank you for this concise and comprehensive summary. The DDoS threat had never occurred to me.
So China blocking US social media is justified for the very same reasons?
China has blocked US social media for years (decades perhaps?). I don't know if they've explicitly said all the reasons, but "social stability" is a big one.
As an aside, TikTok itself is banned in China.
Exactly, these are hostile political actors interfering in our country. This is also why Facebook and X should be banned everywhere except the USA.
Meanwhile, it's perfectly fine for foreign adversaries to use American social media to interfere with American events. Anything for that GDP.
Good point. Social media accounts should only be available to people who live in the country where the company is based. Then there's no need to ban Facebook and X elsewhere.
... and also the USA, too.
Yes, there is a distinction there. The issue is that it's a small part of the overall problem when looked at the larger scale. The overarching issues of political influence at odds with individual citizens, hostile engagement-maximizing algorithms, adversarial locked-down client apps, and selling influence to the highest bidder are all there with domestically-incorporated companies. The government's argument basically hinges on "but when these companies do something really bad we can force domestic companies to change but we can't do the same for TikTok". That's disingenuous to American individuals who have been on the receiving end of hostile influence campaigns for over a decade, disingenuous to foreign citizens not in the US or China who can't control any of this, and disingenuous to our societal principles as we're still ultimately talking about speech.
That can’t be it. Facebook sells the same data to foreign adversaries including China and Russia. The most famous incident involved the British company Cambridge Analytica, which used it to manipulate election outcomes in multiple countries:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook–Cambridge_Analytica...
Edit: Apparently it’s not common knowledge that this is still happening. Here’s a story about a congressional investigation from 2023:
https://www.scworld.com/analysis/developers-in-china-russia-...
And here’s a story about an executive order from Biden the next year. Apparently the White House concluded that the investigation wasn’t enough to fix the behavior:
https://www.thedailyupside.com/technology/biden-wants-to-sto...
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/02/28/politics/americans-person...
Edit 2: Here’s a detailed article from the EFF from this month explaining how the market operates: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/01/online-behavioral-ads-...
I assure you, if you read the opinion, that is indeed it, and the objection you raise about other instances of data collection not being targeted is addressed directly.
I think you would be hard pressed to come up with any evidence for your assertion. First of all the UK is not a foreign adversary (quite the opposite). Secondly Facebook didn't sell data in that case, it was collected by Cambridge Analytica via Facebook's platform APIs (as described in your own link). In general Facebook doesn't sell data, their entire business model is based on having exclusive access to data from its platforms.
And the difference is that the US government can tell them to stop doing it.
Facebook's owners & their peers have a massive amount of control over public policy, so no, I don't think the US government can tell them to stop doing it.
Yet the government convinced both Facebook and Twitter to suppress both the Hunter laptop and information about the Covid vaccines that we all know is true now - that it doesn’t prevent the spread of Covid and that immunity wears off.
I’m not anti-vax. I’ve been shot up with Covid vaccines more often than I can count and I was early in line for the J and J one shot and I took an mRNA booster before it was recommended by the US once I started reading it was recommended by other country’s health departments.
But where we are now is totally the fault of Biden and the Democratic establishment.
No argument here. Most Democrats, including Biden, and all Republicans serve at the whims of Facebook's owners and their peers. Hence the enormous handout to Facebook in this decision.
CA wasn’t data being “sold”
This is arguing technical definitions. As of this week, foreign intelligence agencies transfers money that eventually ends up at Facebook, and they get the data in return.
They can claim this is not a sale if they want, but it’s still a sale. Drug dealers make similar arguments about similar shell games where you hand a random dude some cash, then later some other random dude drops a bag on the ground and you pick it up.
Since Facebook was first caught doing this during the Obama administration, it’s hard to argue they are not intentionally selling the data at this point.
> That can’t be it. Facebook sells the same data to foreign adversaries including China and Russia.
I'm not sure they do that anymore, not in the current geopolitical climate and not with the DC ghouls having taken over the most sensitive parts of Meta the company (there were many posts on this web-forum about former CIA people and not only working at the highest levels inside of Meta).
This whole Cambridge Analytica thing is such a nothing burger - I have yet to be given a concise reason how it was anything other than targeted advertising. Something that happens day-in, day-out a billion times over on all our "western" platforms in the form of ads. And no, the fact that this data wasn't "consented to" doesn't mean anything other than being a technicality. If anything, I'd chalk the whole thing up to anti-Trump hysteria that happened around that time.
It's still completely legal for Meta to sell that user data to Chinese owned companies. So no security is provided by this change. I see it as theatre.
People keep coming up with other avenues by which China could get this information, but the court addresses that directly: the legislature is not required to address every instance of a compelling threat in one fell swoop.
I thought this too, but I think there's a new law for this as well: "In a bipartisan measure, the House of Representatives unanimously pass a bill designed to protect the private information of all Americans by prohibiting data brokers from transferring that information to foreign adversaries such as China" https://allen.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=...
It seems pretty bold to assume that Google, Facebook, Amazon, X, etc aren't adversaries. Foreign or otherwise.
The case turns on the fact that China is formally designated a foreign adversary. The statute doesn't allow the government to simply make up who its adversaries are on the fly, or derive them from some fixed set of first principles. There's a list, and it long predates this case.
It’s bad because China has different interests than the US. Imagine if a war breaks out in Taiwan and they send targeted propaganda to members of the US military.
US-made missiles are blowing stuff up inside Russia because Russia invaded a treaty partner who gave up their nukes in exchange for a security alliance with the US. And yet Russian apps are in our app stores. Nobody needs to imagine.
> yet Russian apps are in our app stores
Major social media apps? Chinese apps are still in our app stores, just not TikTok (as of Sunday).
It took me less than 15 seconds to find that VK, which is a major social media app in Russia, is in the Google Play store.
Compared to Tiktok with ~100 million American users, VK is essentially irrelevant and not even worth wasting court time about.
The only Russian app I'm aware of is Telegram. What other Russian apps might people be unwittingly running?
No servers in Russia. Given Pavel's prior history it seems unlikely that he would cooperate with Russian government. Plenty of other criticism of telegram is warranted but it's probably not a tool of the Russian government.
Edit: related https://hate.tg/
I would argue that Telegram is a much, much larger security threat to the average individual American than Tiktok. Except they comply with government search warrants and don't enable E2E encryption by default so they are useful to the American National Security Establishment and get to stay.
And yet Russian apps are in our app stores.
There are no Russian apps that collect extensive data on hundreds of millions of Americans. (And if I'm wrong about that, the US should absolutely force divestiture of those apps or ban them).
>a treaty partner who gave up their nukes in exchange for a security alliance with the US
If it wasn't ratified by the senate then we didn't enter into a treaty, I really don't understand why this is so hard for people to understand.
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but everyone has different interests from everyone else. That's not a sufficient reason.
You are free to have that our opinion but our elected government disagrees with you. It’s not the job of the court to adjust laws based on personal preference of HN commenters.
Yes but there are Reagan's interests and Hitler's interests. You have no choice but to pick the lesser evil.
Sorry, While I understand that there are degrees of interest misalignment, I'm not sure what Hitler's interests refers to in this context. Hitler is deceased so it's unlikely his interests are relevant in a discussion about TikTok.
Wouldn't banning the collection of this confidential data provide a better solution? Meta could still turnaround and sell this information to Chinese companies.
> Meta could still turnaround and sell this information to Chinese companies
Let them collect and ban this. Difference between Meta and TikTok is you can prosecute the former’s top leadership.
My preference would be a law that bans some specific activity (i.e. the collection of some set of data that should remain "private"). From there it would be straightforward to establish when an application (like TikTok or Instagram) was collecting this data and they could be prosecuted or their application banned at that point.
This banning of TikTok because of "national security" leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Might the next application banned on these ground be domestic? It's unsettling, in my opinion, to see this precedent set.
> Let them collect and ban this.
As if this would get banned.
That's funny. How big of a check did Zuck just write to the Trump inauguration?
> China has different interests than the US
Define the US here. Is it the government, the people, the business interests of the private sector?
Each one of those has different interests, often competing ones.
In any functional nation the people's interests should prevail, and it seems to me that any information capable of swaying the public's opinion is informing them that their interests are being harmed in favor of other ones.
Your question is irrelevant because none of the parties you've listed have interests that are aligned with the CCP, assuming you're referring to the people as a whole. Obviously there are specific individuals whose interests are aligned with China's government but laws in a democracy aren't meant to make everyone happy, they're meant to meet the interests of the majority of people
> none of the parties you've listed have interests that are aligned with the CCP
The interest of the people is to have a peaceful coexistence and cooperation with China, while the interest of the military-industrial complex is to keep the tension high at all times so that more and more money is spent on armaments.
Who do you think the US government will favor in the end?
Who has more power to determine the result of the next elections, considering that to run a presidential campaign you need more than a billion dollars?
No citizen gains from war except the few that sell weapons and want to exploit other countries.
| meet the interests of the majority of people
I wonder how do you know "the interests of the majority of people" is to ban Tiktok...
Don't you know, China is the new enemy of the US. That's what the elites in the US have decided and that is enough to be considered as the will of the people.
That's not what I said, I said that the interests of the majority do not align with the interests of the Chinese government. That seems self evident to me but YMMV
Crazy take, More likely the US or it's allies goes to war and they try to play up sympathy with the target.
Nobody wants China to take Taiwan, that's not something its possible to convince people of
> Nobody wants China to take Taiwan, that's not something its possible to convince people of
It's not about convincing them to want it but rather about sowing doubt and confusion at the critical moment.
David French's NYT column last week starts with what one might call a "just-plausible-enough" scenario: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/09/opinion/tiktok-supreme-co... (gift link, yw).
thanks for the gift link :)
Im not so confident about that. Attenuating isolationist policy in the face of Taiwan is the easiest, but I can see anti-ROC propaganda in the mix.
Then China would just fall back to bombarding them with propaganda on one of the other large social media platforms that are prone to both known and unknown influence.
They would be within their rights to do that. But then they would have to compete with other participants in the discussion. On TikTok they can ensure there is no such competition.
The magnitude of the attack is not comparable. One thing is being a bad actor in a network owned by someone else where you can get monitored, caught and banned. Versus owning the network completely and amplifying messages with ease at scale. The effort needed and effectiveness of the attack is extremely different.
Domestic based social media platforms can be pressured to comply with demands such as the DOJ's investigation into Russia's 2016 disinformation campaign on Facebook. Likewise social media platforms based in a foreign adversary would be pressured to comply with demands of that foreign adversary.
Aka because we're the "good" guys
This is a common criticism in these kinds of discussions, but no, protecting oneself from foreign influence and threats does not require a moral high-ground, just as locking your front door doesn't.
Self-interest doesn't require moral justification.
For some reason I can't reply to "luddit3" below you. But he should check a list of countries that started the most wars and invasions in the last 150 years and which one tops it easily.
> countries that started the most wars and invasions in the last 150 years and which one tops it easily
What is the list? Does WWII count as one war, or do we could belligerents individually?
There is no good, just bad and kill-it-with-fire kind of evil. You choose bad you get a bad life. You choose the other you get literally hell. One government harvests and sells the organs of its healthy population[0][1][2] and the other makes some people feel sad.
Ironically, the "good" guys here allow you to talk shit on the internet about them while the "bad" guys would catch and harvest my organs someday for writing this comment.
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ_harvesting_from_Falun_... [1] https://chinatribunal.com/ [2] https://theowp.org/reports/china-is-forcibly-harvesting-orga...
The USA has more prisoners than China and far more per capita https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarce...
And funnily enough, just had a state try to pass a law making prisoners get to "choose" to donate organs for a reduced sentence https://apnews.com/article/organ-donation-massachusetts-stat...
But point is, no love for the CCP but this sort of jingoistic take sucks. China is not "literally hell"
In preventing a country from being invaded, yes, we are.
Indeed - if the US is this afraid of a popular social network under foreign control then every country outside the US should be petrified.
And domestically in the US - citizens should be demanding the dismantling of the big powerful players - which ironically the US government is against because of it's usefulness abroad..... ( let's assume for one moment, despite evidence to the contrary, that the US government doesn't use these tools of persuasion on it's own population ).
> if the US is this afraid of a popular social network under foreign control then every country outside the US should be petrified.
They are and have been.
This is exactly why China controls the internet and any company with a presence there.
I have no horses in the race but if you justify a Tiktok ban in the US because of a foreign influence, you also do justify a Facebook ban in the EU on the same arguments.
Thus why Facebook is blocked in China, but not in the EU, since we have a much less adversarial relationship with them.
I'm not sure how long it will last with Zukerberg and Musk openly threatening the EU.
Interestingly, just saw this in my RSS feed: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/01/european-union-o...
For the same reason you're okay with the US military being present in the US and not the Chinese one.
Check out the scandal in Romania, some guy that had less than 5% in polls got 30% because of tiktok. Other candidates had tiktok campaigns too but probably didn't use bots.
Social media is a legitimate threat to any countries democracy if used wisely. It is dangerous to have one of the biggest ones in the hands of your enemy when they can influence your own countries narrative to such an extent.
For me the biggest scandal in Romania is that they threw the people's choice to the trash just because he didn't show up in polls... a few months after banning another candidate, Sosoaca, for, and I cite textually, "calling for the removal of fundamental state values and choices, namely EU and NATO membership".
Note that from the little I know about both Sosaca and Georgescu, they both look like dangerous nutjobs that should not rule, but if I were a Romanian I would be more worried about a democracy that removes candidates it doesn't like for purely political reasons (not for having commited a felony or anything like that) than about them.
I'm no lawyer and can't be arsed to do the proper research but for Georgescu to be able to declare he had 0 campaign spending while everyone knows that the tiktok campaign cost 20-50 million euros is insane to me.
If they aren't already prosecuting him on this I guess technically it's legal but such a weird loophole in the law. Any spending towards promoting a candidate should be public knowledge imo. EDIT: he was claiming bullshit like GOD chose him and that's how he got that good of a result. I guess his God is the people in the shadows that made his tiktok campaign lol
> For me the biggest scandal in Romania is that they threw the people's choice to the trash just because he didn't show up in polls
I think they did it for many reasons but not because he didn't show up in polls.
Top ones are:
- PSD didn't advance in the second round and they had the leverage to pull it off
- Georgescu was clearly anti-NATO so maybe the US pulled strings
- Danger of having a president with Russian sympathies
- He was claiming that he didn't spend a single dime on the election while everyone in the know knows that his tiktok campaign cost sever million euros
I mean that the only evidence that his votes came from the TikTok campaign is that he didn't show up in polls and unexpectedly obtained a great result. So they automatically assume the delta between expected and obtained votes are people manipulated by the TikTok campaign (which apparently are assumed to have become some kind of zombies whose opinion doesn't count).
Out of the fourth reasons you list at the end, only the fourth is not pure authoritarianism (why wouldn't people in a democracy be free to elect a president that dislikes NATO or likes Russia if that is their will?). Campaign funding fraud has happened in many Western countries but typically it's handling by imposing fines, maybe some jail time, but definitely not cancelling the result of an entire election.
I'm not naive enough to believe we live in a true democracy. IMO this cancelling was good for 2 reasons : first I believe Georgescu is a nutjob, second.. if there was any doubt that we don't live in a true democracy now it's pretty clear.
And considering the level of education of most of the Romanian population I believe having "true" democracy would destroy the country. I understand this may not be a popular opinion but I'm trying to be realistic here lol
I actually sympathize with all that. Over the past few decades, I have slowly become increasingly skeptical about true, unfettered democracy being the best form of government. In the past, although the level of education probably was worse than now, the fact that people got their news from rather centralized sources controlled by elites acted as a "nutjob filter". With social networks, we are witnessing what should be the true power of democracy (people electing candidates in spite of what the elites think), but it can easily create monsters.
I just wish the Western world would drop the hypocrisy in this respect, and stop claiming to defend more democracy than it actually does. A relevant problem is that democracy is often used as an easy excuse to keep people content. Singapore is a hugely successful country in most respects, with better quality of life than most Western countries, but we shouldn't take example from it because we have democracy! China is constantly growing and improving the quality of life of their citizens, is still behind most of the West in that respect but on the path to overtake us, but it doesn't matter, we have democracy! Maybe if we weren't constantly claiming the moral high ground, when as you mentioned our own democracies are at most relative and the difference with more authoritarian countries is a matter of degree; we could be more self-critical and focus on actually fixing things.
I thought it was less about the data and more about the control China had on what Americans saw, and how that could influence Americans.
If China could effectively influence the American populations opinions, how would that not be bad?
Specifically, US citizens can see what's happening in Palestine
If the reality of things, the simple truth, is able to "influence" Americans does it really matter who brought that truth up?
Do you prefer Americans to be ignorant about certain topics, or to be informed even if that comes at the cost of reduced approval for the government?
What if, and hear me out, China didn't limit its propaganda to the truth?
Sounds like a great opportunity for the US government to inform the people on what's the actual truth. You say Americans don't believe their government anymore? I wonder why...
Do you think the truth is, like, inherently more compelling than lies? If Americans don't believe their government anymore, how is their government supposed to use China's lies to highlight the truth?
I'm saying the government should focus on regaining the trust of its citizens, rather than censoring dangerous opinions.
That trust wasn't lost because of foreign propaganda, but because of the government own lies.
This is being positioned as a national security issue that a foreign government has so much influence over the US public (and data on people if they want, like geolocation, interests, your contacts, etc).
Note: I'm not saying I either agree or disagree ... just pointing out the dynamics in the case being made.
Legally, the national security component is relatively minor to the case. It's played up to be the justification for the law but SCOTUS doesn't really get to decide whether that is good justification or even correct.
> The nation’s highest court said in the opinion that while “data collection and analysis is a common practice in this digital age,” the sheer size of TikTok and its “susceptibility to foreign adversary control, together with the vast swaths of sensitive data the platform collects” poses a National Security Concern.
FTA
SCOTUS doesn't really get to decide whether that is good justification or even correct
They do, and they did. From the ruling:
The Act’s prohibitions and divestiture requirement are designed to prevent China—a designated foreign adver- sary—from leveraging its control over ByteDance Ltd. to capture the personal data of U. S. TikTok users. This ob- jective qualifies as an important Government interest un- der intermediate scrutiny.
My point was that SCOTUS didn't review whether there was a compelling national security interest or not – they didn't review any of the classified material, etc. SCOTUS didn't consider whether or not it was good or meaningful policy, they simply accepted the national security argument which more-or-less required them to uphold the DC court's application of intermediate scrutiny.
The concern isn't broadly that "social media companies have data". The concern is the governing environment that those companies operate in, which can be coopted for competing national security purposes.
This isn't a consumer data privacy protection.
The concerns here are obvious: For example, it would be trivial for the Chinese military to use TikTok data to find US service members, and serve them propaganda. Or track their locations, etc.
Two extremely obvious reasons:
First, it's a national security issue for a company controlled by the CCP to have intimate data access for hundreds of millions of US citizens. Not only can they glean a great deal of sensitive information, but they have the ability to control the algorithm in ways that benefit the CCP.
Second, China does not reciprocate this level of vulnerability. US companies do not have the same access or control over Chinese users. If you want to allow nation states to diddle around with your citizens, then it ought to be a reciprocal arrangement and then it all averages out.
Back in the early stage of social media, US companies had the choice to operate in China as long as they comply with the censorship and local laws. Had they chosen not to quit China market at the point, they would have been probably huge in China holding major access over Chinese users too. (How would Chinese government react to that is something we never get to see now...)
I keep seeing argument regarding "China bans social medias from other countries". It's not an outright ban saying that "Facebook cannot operate in China", but more like "Comply with the censorship rules or you cannot operate in China". It's not targeting "ownership" or "nation states". e.g. Google chose to leave, while Microsoft continues to operate Bing in China.
Good point, but still that's not reciprocity. Allowing the CCP to fine tune their propaganda at American citizens while US companies have to comply with heavy handed censorship is not a fair trade.
Because for all of Mark Zuckerburg's flaws (or Elon, or whoever), America is unlikely to go to war with him?
Of course not. He's already winning the war and "The People" have no voice in that matter.
In addition:
• US data brokers can still sell data to foreign companies (out of control of US and thus indirectly to Chinese companies).
• Chinese companies can buy US companies (thereby obtaining lots of data).
If we killed user-tracking, then that would solve a LOT of problems.
> US data brokers can still sell data to foreign companies (out of control of US and thus indirectly to Chinese companies).
This is false. It was made illegal in April, 2024: https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/7520
> (...) to North Korea, China, Russia, or Iran or an entity controlled by such a country
This is very limited and will not prevent indirect sales (like we now see happening with Russian oil for example).
It is also why I said "indirectly".
Yeah it could be broader for sure, would prefer it to be an allowlist rather than a blocklist, but the presence of a workaround doesn't make banning something pointless, and as the SC pointed out in their decision, a law does not need to solve all problems in one fell swoop in order for it to be valid.
I just wish we could ban user-tracking (and data brokers) entirely so we wouldn't have this problem to begin with, or at least not to the current extent.
Keeping the data securely inside our country is never going to work if China can simply open their wallet and spend billions of $ to obtain the data.
Totally agree, and have written my congresspeople several times asking them to push for such legislation
Because US is not really a free country.
It is obviously way better on this matter than China, but in principle, liberties are selectively granted in US and in China.
The TikTok ban topic has been stale for long time before it became the main harbor for Pro-Palestine content after it became under censorship by US social media thus depriving anti-Palestine from controling the narrative, effectively becoming a major concern for AIPAC et al.
Data collection is more of a plausible pretext at this point.
Every country has "selective liberties", that is not a very meaningful criterion.
Liberties are not granted to everyone equaly ≠ Some liberties are [equally] denied.
Why do we need a good answer? Does US need to be a good guy on some made up rules? Post Soviet collapse, US could have just taken over a bunch of territories. We don’t alway need to be some faithful country when the rest of the world is always messing up asking for millions of Americans to spill blood. I think RoW take US goodwill for granted. We don’t need to play nice. That’s not how competition works.
> But its perfectly fine for a US company to do it?
China blocks facebook/twitter/instagram/pinterest/gmail/wikipedia/twitch and even US newspapers.
So clearly they don't think it's okay for a US-company to do it (and are at least an order magnitude stricter about it)...
If US wants to imitate China, they should imitate its industry not its restrictions to freedoms.
The ideal world order isn't the one where Chinese can't find out what happened on Tiananmen square and Americans can't find out what happened in Gaza. That's a very shitty arrangement and I am shocked that the Americans are picking that as their future.
> The ideal world order isn't the one where Chinese can't find out what happened on Tiananmen square and Americans can't find out what happened in Gaza.
I don't see how this law banning a social media site brings us at all closer to a world where Americans cannot get access to accurate information about major global conflicts. This is so far down the imagined "slippery slope" as to be absurd. In fact, I'd strongly argue that this law would achieve the opposite. If you're relying on Tik Tok for accurate information like this, then you are opening yourself to echo chambers, biased takes, and outright propaganda. There are many excellent sources out there in America freely available and easily accessible.
Simple: editorial preferences.
Remember how Musk decided that after the elections Twitter will prioritize fun instagram of politics?
If your concern is editorial preference, then wouldn't a social media application explicitly controlled by a State apparatus be a concern?
I fail to see how anything going on at Twitter is relevant to what I mentioned. Does Twitter shifting its content priorities somehow make the plethora of excellence sources unavailable?
Luckily nobody needs TikTok to find out what happened in Gaza.
The problem is, the world does't need meta/google/twtr either. The bill would eventually backfire US internet companies so bad.
Exactly how I expect things to pan out. Some 10-15 years ago the countries with dictatorships had the idea that they need to control the discussions on internet, now it is the US. I expect it to have cascading effect as Twitter, FB, Instagram etc are all foreign companies with known associations with the US government and intelligence and ban those everywhere fir national security reasons.
I don't understand what this has to do with US companies at all. It's about foreign companies.
Why do you think that Bezos and Zuckerberg have seen the light with the elections if the US government has nothing to do with these private enterprises?
Twitter and Meta are foreign everywhere else, everywhere else except China TikTok is foreign as well and apparently they all lick their respective governments.
And if Twitter and Meta are found to be interfering with national interests in foreign countries and get banned or reeled in due to that, how is that a bad outcome for the world?
it is a bad outcome because it means everyone is locked in their propaganda locality and theres no one to break the narrative. IMHO it’s beneficial to have a global network as we are living on a planet with artificial borders.
Less propaganda is always better. Less foreign propaganda doubly so. There's no benefit in a plurality of propaganda.
The government makes Meta and Xitter suppress Palestinian content, they can't do that to TikTok, so it's being banned.
This is demonstrably false as the discussion about banning TikTok predates the current conflict in Gaza by a long time.
very true, everything started on the seventh and ended thanks to the strength of the new American president and now it’s all fine again as it was before the seventh. no need for political movements or anything, lets concentrate on the more positive things as Musk said.
Your words, not mine
FWIW facebook was blocked in 2009, after ETIM (East Turkistan Islamic Movement) (allegedly) used it to organise the July Urumqi riots, and facebook refused to follow Chinese law and cooperate with the police to identify the perpetrators.
Whatever you think of the law of the PRC, they applied it consistently, Facebook was blocked for doing something that would get any Chinese company shut down.
Tiktok is getting blocked in America for doing what American companies do.
> Whatever you think of the law of the PRC, they applied it consistently
Chinese courts are explicitly subservient to the party.
That doesn't address my point, do you believe the law was applied inconsistently in this case?
So are American ones, apparently.
China doesn't have a constitution like America's.
Edit:
Obviously, China has a constitution, but the freedoms enumerated there are not the same as those in America's. And those that are enumerated are pointless (like North Korea's constitution).
My point is that there's an inherent hypocrisy in saying we're more free than them, but then doing a tit-for-tat retaliatory measure. How can we be more free when we're doing the same things the other side is?
China has a constitution mostly like America’s, freedom of speech, religion, press are enshrined even more strongly than in the American constitution. What China lacks is judicial review and an independent judiciary, so the constitution has no enforcement mechanism, and so is meaningless. The Chinese government as formed has no interest in rule of law.
Not exactly.
The Chinese constitution, in addition to endowing rights, also endows obligations.
So while you have things like: > Article 35 Citizens of the People’s Republic of China shall enjoy freedom of speech, the press, assembly, association, procession and demonstration.
You also have things like: > Article 54 Citizens of the People’s Republic of China shall have the obligation to safeguard the security, honor and interests of the motherland; they must not behave in any way that endangers the motherland’s security, honor or interests.
It doesn't matter because the law is completely at the mercy of officials to interpret and enforce. A Chinese court was once asked to clarify contradicting interpretation from officials, and they got seriously beat down for it because it isn't the job of the judiciary to tell the officials how to interpret law. The only way an officials ruling is overturned is if their boss (or someone up the hierarchy) disagrees.
Compare this to the Supreme court, which is supposedly in Trump's hands, ruling against Trump twice on this tiktok ban alone (the first to kill his executive order, and the second to not pause the law to wait for him to take office).
It does, actually https://english.www.gov.cn/archive/lawsregulations/201911/20...
So what? If you believe in liberal values (with a small l), like freedom of speech, you lead by example.
> If you believe in liberal values (with a small l), like freedom of speech, you lead by example
America is ridiculously pro free speech. That doesn’t mean we must then tolerate libel, slander, fraud, false advertising, breach of contract, et cetera because someone screams free speech.
The Bill of Rights exists in balances, and the First Amendment is balanced, among other the things, with the nation’s requirement to exist. That doesn’t mean the Congress can ban speech. But it can certainly regulate media properties, including by mandating maximum foreign ownership fractions.
> America is ridiculously pro free speech
Except for one group of people which have made any criticism of them carry legal consequences
> one group of people which have made any criticism of them carry legal consequences
Jews? You know we have other federally-protected classes, correct?
If you’re referring to Israel, no, there aren’t legal consequences for criticising Israel. Half of the vocal minority of the internet is constantly up in arms about Israel.
30+ states have anti-BDS statutes that make it a crime to criticize Israel.
You mean make it a violation to boycott israel
A boycott is a form of protest.
Yes. They made it illegal even to stop buying their products!
Oh, which group did you have in mind?
The ones you can't boycott, divest, or sanction and hold a public sector job in many states.
Why won't you say it out loud?
I'm trying not to derail the conversation by saying the state of Israel, and its lobbying apparatus.
The "example" being banning things for nebulous reasons? If anything this is the US following China's lead in restricting what software their citizens can access.
Are you aware of this Wikipedia page? [0] I think you should motivate why you believe that what is described in that page should not be called "constitution". Or articulate why you believe that thing does not exist. Or at least motivate your statement. Where does it come from?
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_China
I agree with this sentiment. tit-for-tat, also anyone who slams into our infrastructure should pay up for the repairs and the inconvenience.
There is a rule of law issue here.
Say, for example, congress passes and the president signs a law that says that product sponsorships in videos need to be disclosed. If a US company (or a European, Australian, Japanese, etc) country violates that law, we're pretty sure that a judgement against them can change that behavior.
China? Not so much, given their history.
It sounds like you have ignored all the answers and then you're saying there's no good answers?
If you want to convince someone they're not good answers you would have to at least engage with them and show how they fail to be correct/moral/legal or something. Pretending they don't exist does nothing.
Yes, all of them should be stopped from doing it. And end Third Party Doctrine. I 100% agree.
Why would you want an outside nation to have an outsized influence America's social fabric? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQXsPU25B60 Chomsky laid out manufacturing consent decades ago and while his thesis revolves around traditional media heavily influencing thought-in-America, the influencing now happens from algorithmic based feeds. Tik Tok controls the feed for many young American minds.
> But its perfectly fine for a US company to do it?
It's not perfectly fine, but you need to start with companies of foreign adversaries first.
While I agree with you about domestic policy, I'm not sure why it's inconsistent or hypocritical to deal with an external threat posed from those who want to destroy or harm you.
The details specific to China and TikTok are kind of moot when talking about broad principles. And there is a valid discussion to be had regarding whether or not it does pose a legitimate national security threat. You would be absolutely correct in pointing out all of the trade that happens between China and the USA as a rebuttal to what I'm about to offer.
To put where I'm coming from into perspective, I'm one of those whacko Ayn Rand loving objectivists who wants a complete separation between state and economy just like we have been state and church and for the same reasons. This means that I want nothing shy of absolute laissez-faire capitalism.
But that actually doesn't mean that blockades, sanctions and trade prohibitions are necessarily inconsistent with this world view. It depends on the context.
An ideal trade is one in which both parties to that trade benefit. The idea being that both are better off than they were before the trade.
This means that it is a really stupid idea to trade anything at all at any level with those who want to either destroy or harm you.
National security is one of the proper roles of government.
And I don't think you necessarily disagree with me, because you're saying "we should also be protected our citizens from spying and intrusions into our privacy" and yes! Yes we absolutely should be!
But that's a different role than protecting the nation from external threats. You can do your job with respects to one, and fail at your job with respects to the other, and then it is certainly appropriate to call out that one of the important jobs is not being fulfilled. Does that make it hypocritical? Does it suddenly make it acceptable for enemy states to start spying?
By all means criticize your government always. That's healthy. But one wrong does not excuse another. We can, and should, debate whether TikTok really represents a national security threat, or whether we should be trading with China at all (my opinion is we shouldn't be). It's just that the answer to "why its bad when China does it but it's right when it's done domestically" is "it's wrong in both cases and each can be dealt with independently from the other without contradiction"
optimistically, this is the first step towards banning or at least forcing more transparency for all algorithmic feeds. there's absolutely similar concerns about the leadership of American companies being able to sway public opinion in whatever direction they choose via promotion or demotion of viewpoints. but it's only been possible to convince those with the power to stop them of the danger from China, because while probably none of the companies have "America's best interests" at heart when tuning their algorithms, it's much clearer that China has reason to actively work against American national interests (even just demoting honest critique of China is something to be wary of)
It's about psychological manipulation of Americans. TikTok is a completely different experience in China. Social media influences us in negative ways. And the Chinese government can and does take advantage of that.
Judging by your karma and registration date, you spend some time here on HN. There have been lots of good answers why; they are the many prior discussions of this topic.
You are just seeming to ignore them for whatever reason.
Where in that CNBC article does it say that it's fine for US companies to do that? I don't see that anywhere, yet that's the point you're claiming is being made.
It is, and if this a stepping stone to that conversation, that’s a good thing. Great even. If you expect to have everything at once, you’ll make no progress.
The comparison isn't even close. TikTok's relationship with the Chinese government is well-documented, not "supposed". They are legally required to share data under China's National Intelligence Law. The Chinese government has also a track record of pushing disinformation and find any way to destabilize Western democracies.
Douyin (The Chinese Tiktok version) limits users under 14 to 40 minutes per day and primarily serves educational content, while TikTok's algorithm outside China optimizes for maximum engagement regardless of content quality or user wellbeing.
US tech companies pursuing profit at the expense of user wellbeing is concerning and deserves its own topic. However, there is a fundamental difference between a profit driven company operating under US legal constraints and oversight, versus a platform forced to serve the strategic interests of a foreign government that keeps acting in bad faith.
> Douyin (The Chinese Tiktok version) limits users under 14 to 40 minutes per day and primarily serves educational content, while TikTok's algorithm outside China optimizes for maximum engagement regardless of content quality or user wellbeing.
This isn't true, at least not for adults' accounts. I've watched my girlfriend use it and the content was exactly what she watched on TikTok, mostly dumb skits, singing, dancing, just all in Chinese instead of half in Chinese. It also never kicked her off for watching too long.
I was told a similar story about Xiaohongshu, where it was supposedly an app for Chinese citizens to read Mao's quotations (through the lens of Xi Jinping Thought) to prove their loyalty. Then I saw it for real and it's literally Chinese Instagram.
It's perfectly fine for a South African immigrant to do it, I really don't understand the problem either.
You don't understand the difference between a non-resident corporation under control of an adversary and a naturalized citizen?
I do, but there is no data or evidence supporting said non-resident corporation is under control of an adversary, so why should I believe anything the government claims? If you're going to talk about security, just stop, nearly every component in your phone is produced in China, and you still use that everyday.
At the very least they have an export ban on the "algorithms" which is why they won't sell, and chinese control, especially under Xi, is well documented, so I don't know what kind of smoking gun you'd expect. It'd be more unusual if there was a laissez faire position by the government.
Regardless, assembly of an iPhone with Taiwanese, Korean, and Japanese components in China is not the same as mass surveillance as a service.
I asked for evidence or even some data, show me something that can verify anything you're saying beyond a reasonable doubt. You can't, you're basically regurgitating talking points on topics neither of us really know anything about. I'm not saying I'm against a ban, but "China evil" shouldn't be good enough for a semi intelligent society.
In terms of algorithms, most US companies refer to that as intellectual property. Google doesn't sell their search algorithm to other search engines so I don't think your point makes any sense. Companies keep their IP secret for a reason, they don't want competition digging into their profits. What US company isn't engaging in the same completely legal behaviors?
My point about the phones is that China like America can target any electronic like the US was doing 20 years via interdiction. If we look at the NSA ANT catalog, specifically DIETYBOUNCE, everything they accuse China of is stuff we practically invented.
edit: Also I just purchased a M4 Mac mini, shipped directly from China.
same reason China forbids or controls US companies operating in China. This is just tit-for-tat.
> Wouldn't the right solution be to protect the citizens from all threats, foreign and domestic?
Maybe. But there is a huge constitutional distinction between foreign and domestic threats. And the supreme court was pretty clear that the decision would be different if it didn't reside with a "foreign adversary".
The rational for why TikTok should be banned in the United States is precisely the same rational why Xitter, Facebook, Instagram, et al, should be banned in other countries.
Meta, Musk, and others have no right or grant to operate in the EU, Canada or elsewhere. They should be banned.
US benefits from Tiktok ban. US benefits from its social media not being banned in other countries. The calculation is pretty clear to me.
Action against Tiktok doesn't preclude action against US companies
There's no room for equality and fairness when it comes to global political rivals especially when there's stone cold evidence of mischief.
Clearly the US government would like only US companies to collect this kind of data. Eliminating the biggest competitors for companies like Google, X and Meta is likely just the icing on the cake.
Because it's not the TWEAKING of the content tho tis the problem. It's the ability to manipulate individuals using fake or altered content.
Not sure why this is a hard one to understand but with the ability to individualized media, you can easily feed people propaganda and they'd never know. Add in AI and deep fakes, and you have the ability to manipulate the entire discourse in a matter of minutes.
How do you think Trump was elected? Do you really think the average 20 something would vote for a Republican, let alone a 78 year old charlatan? They were manipulated into the vote. And that is the most innocuous possible use of such a tech.
I don't think any big business sees protection of its users as a solution to anything.
Not only that, but there's no evidence at all that Tik Tok's been feeding China any data. None.
Whereas we have proof and evidence that US agencies can access data about citizens from anywhere else in the world without even needing a court order.
Everybody forgot already US spying on Merkel's phone?
But that's okay, because America is not bound to any rules I guess. Disgusting foreign policy with a disgusting exceptionalism mentality.
> there's no evidence at all that Tik Tok's been feeding China any data.
Because China's political system applies absolutely no pressure for transparency.
> Whereas we have proof and evidence that US agencies can access data about citizens from anywhere else in the world without even needing a court order.
Something we know about because the US political system has levers that can be pulled to apply pressure for transparency.
You'd have to be very naive not to think that the Chinese government has an interest in controlling what US users of TikTok see. Whether they actually have or not is a somewhat useless question because we'll never know definitively, and even if they haven't today there's nothing saying they won't tomorrow.
We can say that they have both the motive and capability to do so.
> You'd have to be very naive not to think that the Chinese government has an interest in controlling what US users of TikTok see.
Just because something has been repeated in the news 20000 times, it doesn't make it true without evidence. Speculation is just it: speculation.
As far as I've seen, it's not Chinese company spying on me, it's US ones, it's not Chinese companies hacking Wifis in all major airports to track regular citizens, it's US ones, it's not Chinese intelligence spying on European politicians, it's US ones, it's not Chinese diplomacy drawing the line between rebels/protesters, good or bad geopolitically, it's always Washington, it's not Chinese intelligence we know of hacking major European infrastructure and bypassing SCADA, it's US one.
The elephant in the room is US' fixation for exceptionalism and being self authorized to do whatever it pleases while at the same time making up geopolitical enemies and forcing everybody to follow.
I don't buy it, I'm sorry. I don't particularly like the Chinese system, I don't particularly love their censorship, and I don't particularly like their socials on our ground when our ones are unable to operate there (unless they abide to Chinese laws, which are restricting and demand user data non stop, something they are very willing to do in US though).
My beef is with American's exceptionalism and with the average American Joe who cannot see the dangers posed by the foreign policy of its own country. The US should set the example and then pretend the same, instead it does worse than everybody and cries that only it can. It's dangerous.
> Something we know about because the US political system has levers that can be pulled to apply pressure for transparency.
We know most of it because of whistleblower leaks.
Otherwise known as a lever within the US political system that allows for transparency.
No free press, no whistleblowers.
I'm mainly thinking of Snowden, who wasn't afforded whistleblower protections, and who mainly distributed through foreign media like Der Spiegel and The Guardian.
> Not only that, but there's no evidence at all that Tik Tok's been feeding China any data. None.
Yes there has been. TikTok admitted to it. They were tracking journalists.
This is not a mere accusation. Instead the company admitted to it.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/dec/22/tiktok-by...
ever hear of election tampering?
Why do you care if a chinese company is banned from business in the US? All sorts of american companies are banned from doing business in China
I'd prefer neither nation ban companies they don't like but I only have a voice in one.
If we banned all Chinese business with America, America would hurt a lot more than China. Our plutocracy made sure of that fact decades ago.
I care becsuse I hate hypocrisy. Simple as that. They'll sweep Russian activity under the rug as long as it's done in an American website. This mindset clearly isn't results oriented.
Slippery slope fallacy. We aren’t banning all chinese companies just like they haven’t banned all US companies
Where were you for the last 10+ years when China was blocking all social media from the US but the US wasn’t blocking it? Or does hypocrisy just apply to the USA? It seems like you have some kind of agenda unrelated to the pure concept of hypocrisy.
Why do you care if your car gets stolen when people in China get their cars stolen every day? Well because they are taking something away from me
Unless you work directly for the US government in some way, you are perfectly free to get on a VPN and continue using tiktok. And unlike your chinese friends, you don't even need to break the law to do it.
I don't have Chinese friends or use TikTok personally, I was just addressing the stupid question
Because we're looking at the Big Picture and seeing how they're figuring out how to dismantle our First Amendment rights.
First Amendment rights do not extend to corporations under foreign (adversarial) government control. Simple as.
This amendment to the constitution was rewritten a few times, each time more clearly stating that it applies to “the people”.
From: https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/amdt1-7-1/ALD...
The People chose to use TikTok as their free press. The US government has banned a tool The People were using for speech. The government utilized a specious argument of "security" in denying The People to their free press comprised of TikTok. The government provided zero evidence of national security being compromised. If anything, the US government has called into question how they are using data from US-based social media companies such that we may now expect reprisals from all around the world - maybe that's what they wanted?
Programs like Prism [0] certainly lend credence to the idea that this ban reflects the US’ own behavior in terms of how it uses data. However Prism was markedly different given it collected data vs being a dial the government can turn to produce a given outcome in the consumers of the content.
All of the congressional hearings over the past ~15 years demonstrates how business in the US is still pretty much governed by the rule of law. I’m of the opinion that there isn’t some shadow cabal working with Musk and Zuckerberg to control our minds. However we know that the CCP absolutely manages what the public can consume, so personally while I’m no fan of heavy handed government intervention in business, this ban seems like “a good thing” to me. We must protect the short, middle and long term prospects of our population — it’s a fundamental duty of the federal government to do so.
[0]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/07/google-faceboo...
I agree that evidence would be nice, but let's not pretend TikTok is simply a 'speech platform' for 'The People'. It is an app on your mobile phone collecting data about you and making it available to a foreign adversary and feeding you content controlled by a foreign adversary.
To me it seems like it could be a first amendment violation against Americans who want to speak via tiktok.
This is a very weakly held opinion, and I don’t know if the opinion addresses this.
First Amendment Right is only for American citizens, no? If you're a visitor to the US for example, you don't get the First Amendment protection against anything, you're a guest. Why doesn't the same principle apply to a foreign company? I don't see how banning tik tok affects your first amendment rights or first amendment rights of American companies - maybe you can explain?
The constitution applies to everyone within the borders of the country, not just citizens. Tourists still get due process, can say what they want, cannot be forced to house american soldiers in their hotel, etc.
No idea if this applies to companies, but foreign visitors do get protections.
>The constitution applies to everyone within the borders of the country
Minor clarification that some parts specify "citizen" (e.g. voting). Others specify "person" or "resident" or the like, which would be anyone within the border.
The Constitution binds the activity of the government, individuals are irrelevant. Congress is forbidden from passing a law that violates the inalienable rights of humans, freedom of speech and association being one that is conveniently enumerated in the first amendment.
You will not find anywhere in the text that limits this to citizenship (with the sparse examples of the concept of citizenship coming up being things like eligibility for presidential office). The purpose of the Constitution is to spell out the abilities of the government, and one of the things it is expressly forbidden from doing is passing laws that curtail peoples' ability to communicate or associate.
Doesn't the right to bear arms apply only to citizens too?
Legal aliens absolutely have the same First Amendment rights as citizens.
Right, I guess I'm wrong about this then.
Also, the oligarchs just want us to use their crappy social media sites. This sets the stage for making competition illegal in some ways.
Ridiculous statement. You must believe they should have political speech then? Maybe they should be able to donate to elections or even vote too? Why stop at corporations?
If they want speech, they should reside in the US, not just own a piece of a company that does.
The rights enforced inside the US are very generous compared to most countries and many apply to both legal and illegal residents, but restricting some rights, especially political ones, is crucial to have a sovereign state
The constitution is very clear on which parts apply only to citizens. The first amendment is not one of them.
I think you have no good answer to this, you should do some soul searching.
The problem is framing information access as a threat. It is not and that's fundamentally not a First Amendment positive stance. If I want to gorge myself on Chinese propaganda it's my right as an American.
Because the Chinese are openly hostile towards the United States and its interests, whereas American companies have a vested interest in the U.S. and are beholden to its laws.
I don't know why realpolitik is so hard for technologists to understand, perhaps too much utopian fantasy scifi?
It is really amazing to see so many replies here of people who do not just disagree with the ruling but completely deny the principles at play exist.
Computer touchers awash in luxury beliefs.
I've honestly never seen so many stupid people making stupid arguments on HN before.
Nothing but lazy disingenuous arguments who's only purpose is to bait conversations for replying with even lazier whataboutisms.
Either the brainrot has really set in for these people or we are being flooded with ai/bots.
Yes. Or both.
Or mutually-supporting fires, a death-spiral of agitprop fueling already bent values.
What is stupid in these replies to me is that people seemingly think the interests of american companies and the american working class are somehow aligned.
Stupid false dichotomy.
It’s possible to recognize both that
(a) American companies’ business interests don’t fully align with the needs of their users or the general public,
and that
(b) the Chinese Communist Party’s objectives —which include weakening, destabilizing, and impoverishing the United States— are even less aligned with the interests of American citizens.
The idealist and optimist part of technologists tend to block the understanding of the rather simple practicalities at play in geo politics.
Data = Money, the rest is capitalism
my wife can yell at me and spend my money and my neighbour can't, because you know different case
This is essentially a whataboutism argument...
> Wouldn't the right solution be to protect the citizens from all threats, foreign and domestic?
Indeed, but at the point we are in history the steps to get that done - aka, copy the EU GDPR and roll it out federally - would take far too long, all while China has a direct path to the brains of our children.
But it's fine for Russia as long as it's through an American corporation.
Because China is a rival geopolitical power and the US is... us.
It's a national security concern. I get that there's a lot of conversation and debate to be had on the topic but the answer here is very straightforward and I don't understand why people are so obtuse about it.
The thing is, doing it domestically is also a national security concern. We know that data leaks and breaches don't only happen, they are commonplace. Banning TikTok but continuing to allow domestic social media companies to amass hoards of the same kind of data without any real oversight is like saying, "Sorry, you can't have this on a golden platter, the best we can do is silver."
It's not leaks and breaches that are the immanent concern here. The concern is deep, adversarial manipulation of public sentiment -- a psyops asset that gives a competing nation significant leverage as they pursue ends that challenge established US interests in the Pacific.
You don't have to agree that protecting those interests is worth the disruption to the global market, free speech ideology, etc. But to engage in the debate, you need to recognize that this is the core concern.
>The concern is deep, adversarial manipulation of public sentiment -- a psyops asset that gives a competing nation significant leverage as they pursue ends that challenge established US interests in the Pacific.
I share the exact same concern about "deep, adversarial manipulation of public sentiment" from US-based corporations running algorithmically-generated designed to addict consumers, and also believe that everyone needs to recognize that core concern as well.
ALL of it needs to die.
Great. Get that law passed. The question of constitutionality doesn’t preclude _expansion_ of the ban.
Woosh
> The concern is deep, adversarial manipulation of public sentiment
You mean letting U.S. citizens see the flour massacre video on a platform where the security state can’t ban it.
This bill languished for years until that happened.
I can see information on this specific event on Wikipedia, CNN, Youtube, etc right now; all "western-controlled". It's also available through Al-Jazeera, Reuters, and other foreign sources.
You have an interesting and unique definition of "state censorship". Almost like one defined by a bias inherently interested in letting specific foreign interests continue to proliferate under the guise of an emotional appeal.
Raises eyebrow I’m talking about watching the video. And surely you understand the content moderation will be different once the cat is out of the bag.
Are we forgetting the psyop happens on every social media problem? Internet research agency in st petersburg says otherwise.
But it’s cool for Elon Musk to do it to get Trump elected, or zuck to do it for who knows what aims (but certainly expanding his own influence and power)
> "Sorry, you can't have this on a golden platter, the best we can do is silver."
Right, and silver is better than nothing.
I think many of us on HN would agree that US social media companies having the means to manipulate user sentiment via private algorithms is a bad thing. But it's at least marginally better than a foreign adversary doing so because US companies have a base interest in the US continuing to be a functional country. Plus it's considerably more difficult to pass a law covering this domestically, where US tech giants have vested interests, lobbyists and voters they can manipulate.
So yes, a targeted ban against a foreign-owned company isn't the ideal outcome. But it's not difficult to see why it's considered a better outcome than doing nothing at all.
Tiktok was banned primarily for influence, secondarily for data.
The influence is what law makers care far more about. Remember what Russia was doing on facebook in 2016? Now imagine that Russia actually owned facebook at the time.
You're not wrong that domestic threats exist as well. But perhaps the biggest thing to know that may help you understand, is that the national security apparatus operates within the paradigm of what is called 5GW, or Fifth Generation Warfare[1]. 5GW is all about information, and a foreign adversary controlling the algorithmic news feed of 170 million Americans for an average 1 hour a day is important in that context.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generations_of_warfare
That's not forgetting the ability for them to just straight up 100% legally purchase a lot of this information from data brokers.
This was made illegal in April, 2024: https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/7520
Not all data brokers are US based; they can still buy all of this information practically.
I'm still not sure I understand the national security concerns around 17-year old nobodies publishing videos of themselves doing silly dances. Or the "metadata" those 17 year olds produce. Are people sharing nuclear secrets on TikTok or something (and not doing the same on US services)?
I haven't followed this closely, but I assumed it was related to a foreign entity having the ability to hyper-target content towards said 17 year olds (and the entire userbase in general) -- A modern form of psychological warfare.
Like Cambridge Analytica (who used Facebook to do exactly this for the 2016 election).
The concern is they won't be 17 forever. 5/10/20/30 years down the line some small portion of these kids are going to hold important jobs, and some of them will have worthwhile blackmail material in their tiktok history.
OK, wild. It's farfetched, but at least the "blackmail" angle makes a little bit of sense. Still strangely targeted. There are a lot of other apps where people are making "potential blackmail" material.
You can still push a particular group of those 17-year olds pushing specific views to influence elections. As long as some proportion of the electorate watches stuff on TikTok.
I think this underestimates how popular TikTok is with 20/30 year olds.
> the national security concerns around 17-year old nobodies publishing videos of themselves doing silly dances
C'mon, we can have a more informed conversation than that.
TikTok is an entertainment platform the average young American watches for more than an hour a day. Videos cover just about any topic imaginable. We just had an election. Is it really so impossible to imagine a foreign power adjusting the algorithm to show content favorable to one candidate over another? It's entirely within their power and they have every motive.
So why a single product? Young people watch content from way more than a single app. And reportedly (from my kid) they are all just moving over to a different Chinese content-sharing app. If we're worried about "foreign" influence, shouldn't we be blocking all non-US sources of information that young people might watch and be influenced by? It looks pretty ham-fisted to just target one of those sources.
How are kids discovering a new Chinese-owned app? Is it through Tik Tok? Could the Tik Tok algo be biased towards China over US based companies?
How did they find TikTok originally? Or Snapchat, or all the other silly apps they use? We're all being bombarded with marketing and advertising every day. Maybe this new app is good at marketing and the product itself is as good as TikTok, who knows, I don't use either of them.
The TikTok ban would have been the perfect opportunity for any number of competing US social media apps to swoop in and offer TT's current users a replacement, but they seem to have all failed to address that market.
The trouble I have is that Facebook & X do this, too, and their owners are similarly unaccountable to US law, but we aren't we banning them. If this law were applied equally, I'd be all in favor. Instead it is transparently just a handout to Facebook to remove a business competitor. That sucks, big time.
I share that concern. But I also recognize that passing an equivalent law for domestic social media networks would be considerably less likely to pass. Perfect as the enemy of good and all that.
But this is worse than good: it's giving Facebook & X even more control over the discourse by removing a competitor.
I work from the basic principle that a foreign, government-controlled adversary having control over discourse is worse than a domestic company having the same, despite strongly disliking both.
Just at a base level, Facebook, X, etc are staffed by Americans who have a vested interest in the country remaining functional. The CEOs of those companies are, though it's very unlikely, arrestable. Can't say the same for TikTok.
> Facebook, X, etc are staffed by Americans who have a vested interest in the country remaining functional. The CEOs of those companies are arrestable.
I suspect this is our fundamental disagreement. I disagree with both of these statements. Facebook's & X's executives have a vested interested in power and money for themselves and their peers. These oligarchs are in practice above the law, just like China's and Russia's oligarchs are. This decision only gives them even more control. It's bad for those US citizens who are not in the oligarch class.
You disagree that Facebook's employees have an interest in America remaining a functional country?
I don't think Tiktok will bring about the end of America as a functioning country. I do think Facebook's executives have an interest in gaining control for themselves at any cost, up to & including the end of America as a country if that is the most profitable route for themselves.
Put another way, I think China & Facebook's execs are about equal in terms of danger to US citizens (I'd probably give the edge to Facebook's execs, since they have direct control over US policy, but we're splitting hairs here). So banning one but not the other is a crappy situation, because it concentrates that power even further.
Because it’s used to influence elections worldwide. Most recently the first round of the Romanian elections were won by an unheard of pro-Russian candidate who ran a disinformation campaign on TikTok, allegedly organised by the Kreml.
https://www.politico.eu/article/investigation-ties-romanian-...
https://www.politico.eu/article/calin-georgescu-romania-elec...
I understand that, but, you can run that campaign on Instagram, Twitter, or wherever your target audience is, right?
Both those entities are within regulatory reach of the US administration.
Do you have any proof that the Chinese government played a role in his campaign? Because the 2016 United States election was possibly influenced by disinformation campaigns on Facebook, yet there is no ban and Zuck is taking an even more lax approach to moderation than Tiktok.
Blackmail. Information. They could be kids of someone with access/high clearance or get it themselves in a few years.
I don’t understand why people are so obtuse about national security being an excuse. Do we really believe the Chinese are going to infiltrate by way of tiktok when they can hack into our telecom networks or any significant figures individual machines? This is about neutering our biggest global economic threat.
This reads like a denial of the existence of hybrid warfare. Why wouldn't China use TikTok to sow negative sentiment about the US?
Economics, prestige, etc. It’s worth a lot to China to be competing with the US in social media / Internet stuff. China (and Russia) have been pushing a narrative that the US operates on two sets of rules for them vs everyone else.
The US is happy to invade countries and turns a blind eye to Israeli aggression but Russia or China want to do it and they are met with sanctions etc. The last bastion of American exceptionalism was how it’s a free market and values free speech and free competition.
There was a national security threat but the US walked right into it: China is making a move for the top spot as global hegemon. It’s recruiting other countries to say don’t work with the US, work with us instead. The US flinched. Ralph blew the conch and all the kids just installed RedNote .
RedNote falls afoul of the exact same law and will probably be banned soon after TikTok.
Except that's not the point at all. The US just proved to the world that it doesn't care about competition and it's citizens (in some number) have rejected the concept of "National Security" by switching to a more explicitly Chinese company.
That's a blow to hegemony that will have lasting consequences.
Plenty of negative sentiment already on US owned platforms, it gets the clicks and the clicks pay the bills.
I’d assume the concern is more swaying public opinion, sowing division to make us incapable of unified political effort, or even to destabilize us, things like that, not so much infiltrating networks - they already manufacture much of that equipment.
If I understand correctly how it works, it’s a propagandist’s dream, building personalized psych profiles on each person. You could imagine that it’d be the perfect place to try generating novel videos to fit specific purposes, as well - the signals from this could feed back directly into the loss functions for the generative models.
I think politicians’ efforts to regulate tech are generally not great, but I think this one is pretty spot-on.
I think we are already cooked on unifying political effort and destabilization. We don’t need help from China on this.
National security doesn't have to mean they use the app to take over the devices it is installed on. It can also be used to spread misinformation or blackmail people.
Oh. Like what our domestic social media company let happen with Cambridge Analytica? Glad our government is so focused on this one. Great work.
This is the argument that a group of toddlers make when one of them gets caught with their hand in the cookie jar. "Yeah...yah....but Mrs. Spangler, I saw Sally steal a cookie last week". OK, cool....your friend is stealing one now and currently has their hand in the cookie jar.
Terrible comparison. China hasn’t been caught doing anything nefarious with Tiktok whereas Facebook was caught red handed. The problem is a tiktok ban is based on speculation and playing on the fears of the american people. The irony is the story is pitched as China using tiktok to program a bunch of american monkeys, meanwhile our own government is programming us with “china is the adversary”
Sally stole a cookie from the cookie jar and now the teacher is pointing at the fat kid and not letting him be in the classroom alone with the cookie jar. Just bc he is fat.
> Do we really believe the Chinese are going to infiltrate by way of tiktok when they can hack into our telecom networks or any significant figures individual machines?
The allegation is that it's used to spread misinformation and affect public sentiment, not for infiltration.
This law is dumb, because in no way does it prevent the exact same data to be collected, processed by a US entity and then transferred to China.
I suspect that it's not about data being transferred, but the fact that TikTok can shape opinions of Americans... which US companies do a lot, without any oversight.
It is a separate law from the one passed in April, 2024, which makes what you're talking about illegal: https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/7520
You suspect that? It is the literal stated reason for it.
Because they're trying to ignore the national security aspect to talk about tracking generically. Which is a valid argument and a good discussion to be had, but it's irrelevant in this context.
If the US was going to get into a legitimate hot "soldiers shooting at soldiers" type of war with any country, China is extremely high on that list. Maybe even #1. Pumping data on tens of millions of Americans directly into the CCP is bad. Putting a CCP-controlled algorithm in front of those tens of millions of Americans is so pants-on-head-retarded in that context it seems crazy to even try to talk about anything more general than that.
Foreign propaganda bots are just as present on US social media, and US social media amplify them just as much.
So where exactly is the meaningful difference here? I don't see it.
The actual difference is that US does not see the money from Tiktok, and blocking tiktok is a convenient excuse to give their propaganda platforms a competetive edge.
Actually doing something about the fundamental problem of foreign influence through the internet would basically destroy sillicon valley, and no politician wants to be responsible for that.
Because it's not clear what the national security concern is. With weapons or infrastructure, it's easy to understand how they can be used against the U.S., but with a social media platform, it's harder to see the threat. The concern really seems to lie with the users of TikTok.
So what's the issue? That people living in the U.S. and using TikTok might be influenced to act differently than how the powers that be want us to act?
I think one of the issues is the details of the national security risk hasn't been articulated well. I haven't followed this in detail, but from what I've seen in summaries, news articles etc is just a vague notion of a theoretical risk from an adversary, with no details on exactly what the risk is, or if there is an actual issue here (vs just a theoretical issue that can happen at some point).
Because personal data about US citizens is up for sale to more or less whoever wants it, and the US government doesn’t seem to have a problem with this otherwise.
Which makes it seem far more plausible that the real national security capability that is being defended is that of the US gov to influence narratives on social media. And while even that might be constitutional, it’s a lot less compelling.
Laws don't have to solve all of the potential problems that may exist in order to be valid (this is one of the things they talk about in the decision).
However, there is another law that made sale of data to foreign adversaries illegal, passed in April 2024: https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/7520
But US companys sale all info about users anyway to anyone (just see today GM) and you accept in between often to over 800 cookies on websites. If thats ok, whats the difference. Why is it ok a website does include over 800 cokies?
X or Facebook isn’t “us”. If we had any reason to believe there were or were even likely to be strong effective democratic controls over their ability to manipulate public sentiment it might be different. But as it stands, it feels more like local oligarchs kicking out competitors in their market: “the US population is our population to manipulate, go back to your own”.
Because US social media companies have sold data to foreign adversaries when then used it to attempt to influence domestic matters
Surely China can just buy all the data that's being collected by US companies and sold. So whats the difference here?
Not only is it straight forward it has long precedent. We’ve long limited broadcast licenses for instance.
Yeah it's not even a point of view that requires nuance; it's pretty clearly a matter of US interests v. adversarial interests. Anecdotally, a lot of people that struggle to understand this are also squarely in the camp of assuming that the US is doing data collection solely for nefarious purposes.
Except:
• the US performs these activities (data collection, algorithm manipulation allegedly, etc) for US interests, which may not always align with the interests of individuals in the US, whereas
• adversarial foreign governments perform these activities for their own interests, which a US person would be wise to assume does not align with US interests and thus very likely doesn't align with the interests of US persons.
If a person's main concern is living in a better United States, start with ensuring that the United States is sticking around for the long run first. Then we can work on improving it.
It seems like two different arguments if you s/US/multi-national-corporations/g in that sentence. I don't have that much faith that multi-national-corporations interests align with US (or China for that matter).
They're headquartered in the US with substantial US ownership, which is the same logic applied to Tiktok. Zuckerberg's pretty heavily rooted in the US with no obvious inclination to leave, and you can see the effect that the change in administrations is having on his steering of Meta as a whole.
Not everyone on HN is a U.S. national. Many are Chinese nationals. So the discussion here has conflict of interest depending on one’s allegiance
HN is literally banned in China [1][2]. And since VPNs are also illegal in China, they're breaking the law if they are here. I doubt they'd break the law if they had such a strong allegiance to China.
[1]: https://www.chinafirewalltest.com/?siteurl=news.ycombinator....
[2]: https://en.greatfire.org/news.ycombinator.com
This has never been a significant barrier for savvy Chinese to post outside the Great Firewall.
International Steam is also banned in China yet we curiously see the majority of users nowadays use simplified Chinese.
and no chinese nationals work in the US. oh wait yes they do. and in my experience the majority plan to return to china after making enough money.
> no good answer on why its bad for a company that is supposedly under Chineese influence to collect this kind of information on us,
In the context of a discussion on a US-specific ban on TikTok I'm taking the "us" in OP's post to mean people in the US. If you aren't in the US the ban doesn't apply to you so the discussion is irrelevant.
So a US court should make decisions not in the US interest because people in other countries use some software?
No. The U.S. court should make decisions in the U.S. interest. But this HN thread represents people from around the world who may not share the U.S. interest at a personal level. Leading to remarks which are trying to sway US opinion.
In a way, this thread could very well be monitored and commented on by a non US nation state
Right, its because a law should be passed regulating this sort of data for the good of all citizens, but our congress can't / won't pass that, so they only stepped in when it became an obvious national security concern.
It'll come back as an issue in a less obvious manner next time, and every time until they pass such a law.
Which, imho, won't happen while our overall political environment remains conservatively dominant.
Domestic governments shouldn't let hostile foreign governments the ability to exert soft power over 1/2 of their population. Hence why China banned all USA based tech companies from operating there.
As a Chinese grown up within the Great Firewall, now I began to really feel all the hypocrisy around the matter of "freedom of Internet". It seems the block of Facebook and Twitter in China is surely justified at the very begining, for the same "national security" grounds. China have exactly the same amount of reason to believe the US is stealing data or propelling propaganda by social network.
It seems there are indeed things that can override citizen's free choice even in the "lighthouse of democracy and freedom", and CCP didn't make a mistake for building the firewall. My need to use Shadowsocks to use Google instead of Baidu or some other crap was simply a collateral damage.
Of course, the Chinese censorship is way more intensive, but this act makes a dangerous precedent.
TikTok is also blocked by the GFW in China, so this puts the USA on par with blocking it also. Weirdly enough, Douyin isn’t banned, specifically, so you should still be able to use it in the states.
Tiktok is not blocked, bytedance chose not to list its app on Chinese appstores and blocks +86 phone registration.
tiktok.com links were available in China.
So if you use the American app store to install TikTok, it works just fine, even for the falun dafa content? Interesting. I've heard that tiktok.com is actually blocked by the GFW, so even if you have the app, you still can't view content without a VPN, but I guess I can check for sure in a few months.
Obviously the USA doesn't have a GFW, so they can't actually block tiktok, just ban it from the app store and prevent business from resolving in the US around it (e.g. paying content creators).
And this is why most countries should ban Facebook, Twitter and US social media.
The funny thing is that when China did that, it was unanimously condemned in the Western world as an authoritarian move, and often use as an example of why China was a dictatorship with no freedom of speech, etc. But now it's actually the normal thing to do?
The opinion is mostly not about control over recommendation algorithms; it goes out of its way to say that the data collection is dispositive. Check out Gorsuch's concurrence for some flavor of how much more complicated this would be with respect to the recommender.
The US occupies a new office downtown. China wants eyes on a specific room, and the choice spot for monitoring it is someone else's apartment. This person happens to own a bakery also in town, and it sort of seems like the apartment is a reach for them as it is.
Now in your feed you get a short showing some egregious findings in the food from this bakery. More like this crop up from the mystical algorithmic abyss. You won't go there anymore. Their reviews tank and business falls. Mind you those posts were organic, tiktok just stifled good reviews and put the bad ones on blast.
6 months later the apartment is on the market, and not a single person in town "has ever seen CCP propaganda on tiktok".
This is the overwhelmingly main reason why Tiktok is getting banned.
Why just TikTok? Are American corporations immune from coveting thy neighbor's possessions?
For the same reason Grindr was forced to sell to a non-Chinese parent, the risks of putting some apps / information in the hands of strategic competitors is too high. If a domestic company tried to blackmail people with their sexual history, they face domestic legal accountability. China does not.
Jurisprudentially? Yes.
Why is "The Chinese Communist Part is more dangerous than Meta sharholders" such a hard thing to grasp?
Because Facebook destabilized our nation in 8 years far more than any claims of modern CCP wrongdoings to the US.
Now imagine what would have happened if Facebook was owned by Russia.
Why should it be? What does ByteDance want that isn't also valuable to Facebook?
The destabilization of the United States and the end of it's status as the worlds richest and most powerful country?
Facebook is a company owned by public shareholders.
ByteDance is an arm of the Chinese Communist Party.
What facebook and ByteDance want at their core are very different things.
Is it more dangerous? Facebook has done more harm to the average American than the Chinese Communist Party has.
More dangerous to the US government? Yes, that's true.
What in the tinfoil hat of god…
> This is the overwhelmingly main reason why Tiktok is getting banned.
Because people are writing Orwell fanfiction?
Do you have any evidence at all or just fear, uncertainty, and doubt?
That's an interesting hypothetical, I have another one.
Imagine you're a country with natural resources. Private industries want those resources. Suddenly the US media is flooded with fabricated or exaggerated stories about the country written by NGOs and Think Tanks. Suddenly, out of nowhere a coup happens in the country with the stated intention of "liberalization" and "democratic reforms". The country goes through shock therapy and structural adjustments as it takes on mountains of IMF loans to enter the world markets-- it has to sell off control of all its national resources and industries to American companies. The life expectancy plummets.
Oh wait this isn't a hypothetical this is just actual US foreign policy.
South Korea seems to have done fine.
I cannot tell if this comment was made seriously or as a satire of unhinged conspiracy theories.
Good news for everyone. Get off these endless scrolling trash providers
Ah the land of free speech and freedom of the press.
Not even in Europe we have such crackdown on freedom while Americans scream censorship because nazi symbols and certain phrases are illegal in Germany.
>Not even in Europe we have such crackdown on freedom
Telegram?
Wdym? Last I checked Telegram is not banned in any way.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_commonly_challeng...
It sounds like they are just banning it from new installs on app stores, won't people just browse to the URL to use it?
The distinction between apps and websites seems arbitrary to me... especially since a huge fraction of apps seem to be effectively just a browser window with a single website locked in full screen.
I have never before used tiktok, but just now as an experiment I opened it in a browser and scrolled for a minute- I had no problem accessing an apparently endless stream of mostly young women jumping up and down without bras, and young men vandalizing automobiles.
Tik Tok said they'll fully shut down. They'd rather go dark now than have a slowly-degrading experience, since users won't be able to update the apps.
It makes sense to shut down the app in the US immediately rather than be unable to update it- but does that necessarily mean they would also shut it down outside the US, or access directly via the website?
Why would the experience degrade because US users are disappearing?
There are countries other than America.
I think they just mean fully shut down in the US, as opposed to trying to serve existing US users as best they can.
Good riddance, do the other social networks next!
Agreed! You think HN is different?
There's a difference in degree, it's less addictive. HN works a little differently, in that its goal is not primarily to convert attention directly into revenue.
Personally, I still need to be deliberate in limiting my use, so I wouldn't be sad to see it disappear, even though I do find some value in it.
None of us have more than 24 hours in our days. That time is precious. Products that are specifically designed to suck up as much of it as possible must be avoided.
I'm really bored at this point by the political discussions around this. We've heard it all a million times. As far as I'm concerned, that's missing the point.
Because, at the end of the day, and ignoring for a moment the practicality of the notion, the world would just be a better place without them.
Seriously, go read a book. We'd be living in a different world if that scaled.
Everyone thinks their consumption is more virtuous than everyone else.
HN provides the same basic neophilia.
Prediction: We'll hear that magically Truth Social has sourced sufficient funds that will enable it to make an offer for TikTok.
If US users continue to use the app via VPN, will that hinder the CCPs ability to weaponize it? If so, this outcome may be a good middle ground.
This is not a good outcome, this is Meta shooting itself in the face.
The whole thing with social media is network effects though. The added friction of a VPN, though small, is just so much larger than "click download, open app"
You won’t need a vpn. TikTok isn’t getting blocked. It’s getting delisted from the App Store. The app will still be on your phone.
What does this shutdown mean for US employees of Bytedance? Will they shut down their US offices or continue business as usual working from the US but only serving users outside?
The ruling isn't surprising, although I almost expected Alito or Thomas to dissent.
From the oral arguments it was immediately obvious that Alito and Thomas had already decided their opinion --- as had the other judges, frankly. They were very skeptical of the ByteDance/petitioner's argument. The Act at issue was written in a very specific way to neuter a lot of their points. Elizabeth Prelogar, representing the US Government, is also an extremely good SC lawyer in oral arguments. A Per Curiam decision is not surprising at all, most people who follow the court were expecting it.
I think it is often the case that the justices' opinions are already established, based on their lines of questioning.
In the way that Gorsuch wrote a separate concurrence, I expected Alito or Thomas to want to broadcast a particular message to their audience.
Does this only apply to TikTok or any other "foreign adversary" application that collects user data?
What's stopping another version of TikTok from being created, effectively defeating the purpose of banning a single app?
You could have read either the law or the decision, linked in the comments here, to get the answer to this question.
From the decision:
> Second, the Act establishes a general designa-
> tion framework for any application that is both (1) operated
> by a “covered company” that is “controlled by a foreign ad-
> versary,” and (2) “determined by the President to present a
> significant threat to the national security of the United
> States,” following a public notice and reporting process.
> §2(g)(3)(B). In broad terms, the Act defines “covered com-
> pany” to include a company that operates an application
> that enables users to generate, share, and view content and
> has more than 1,000,000 monthly active users. §2(g)(2)(A).
> The Act excludes from that definition a company that oper-
> ates an application “whose primary purpose is to allow us-
> ers to post product reviews, business reviews, or travel in-
> formation and reviews.” §2(g)(2)(B).
This still doesn't really directly answer the question in plain English.
So would that mean Red Note would get banned as well?
If it gains more than 1 million active users and the president deems it to represent a potential threat, yes
Edit: assuming they, like tiktok, refuse to divest to a company based in the US
Edit: also assuming it is a foreign company. I’ve never even heard of it prior to this comment section
By this reading, and since Trump is sworn in on the 20th, it is really up to his discretion as to whether the tiktok ban remains.
He probably should let it stand for a day or two, and then drop an executive order to make it not banned and thus be a hero to all those who use it.
That's not quite correct, b/c the above only applies to companies other than TikTok/ByteDance, which are called out explicitly in the Act.
However, there is an open question as to whether Trump will choose to enforce the law.
It’s very difficult to recreate the network effects of an app like TikTok. If it were easy, Zuckerberg would have already done it.
It doesn't defeat the purpose. You can just make a new ban. There would be less friction since there is already an example.
China's vision of the Internet turned out to be more prescient than we realised at the time. Everyone is going to their own Great Firewall. In hindsight, it will seem crazy that we ever allowed media platforms to be controlled by foreign governments - especially ones which like to seed revolution, social unrest and regime change
This law does not impose a Great Wall on the Internet in the U.S.
>In a unanimous decision, the Supreme Court sided with the Biden administration, upholding the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act which President Joe Biden signed in April.
Glad to see when it comes to protecting tech monopolies the wisest among us are in full agreement.
Silly things like a right to a speedy trial are up for debate though.
I think this is a massive over reach. You can argue to restrict social media to those over 18, but Americans should have a right to consume content they choose.
What's next, banning books by Chinese authors? Banning Chinese Americans from holding key positions in social media companies, after all they might have uncles in the CCP!
Follow the money. TikTok is an issue for Facebook, BYD cars are an issue for Tesla.
Can someone explain in unambiguous terms why people are so drawn specifically to TikTok? I have tried TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts, and they are all basically the same--algorithmically-driven feeds of short videos. I don't see how banning TikTok is such a big problem, just use one of the other apps.
This makes it easier for those 170M users to find new homes with President Musk's X or any of Zuck's advertising products.
Great twitter thread analyzing the Supreme Court decision from a former Congressional Staffer who now leads a think tank doing tech-focused policy work: https://x.com/marcidale/status/1880274466619691247
It isn't a "ban" except that TikTok would rather shut down than sell, forgoing billions of dollars in the process.
From pure PR perspective, it is a win for China; sometimes it is not about the money. US used to be much smarter those kinds of optics.
>sometimes it is not about the money.
Yes, that's precisely the argument of the pro-ban faction. China doesn't allow TikTok in China. It's not about the money, it's about control over a medium that can be exploited for influence, or at the very least the effects of that platform on its audience.
It's silly to pretend like ByteDance are acting on principle. Go post an LGBT meme or refer to Lai Ching-te as the "President of Taiwan" on Red Note and see how long that lasts.
Sure, but parent's argument was focused on ad revenue and wondering why TikTok chose to forego that revenue ( which presumed that most US entities would bend to such demand, but failed to consider non financial considerations ).
edit:
<< Go post an LGBT meme or refer to Lai Ching-te as the "President of Taiwan" on Red Note and see how long that lasts.
China does not pretend to give lipservice to freedom of speech. US does. That is why its population needs to hold its government accountable.
US used to be much smarter in general. Now that Trump is starting a 2nd term on Monday, the world over now realizes the US is comprised of a bunch of imbeciles. We've lost our prestige, and we'd been trading on it for a long, long time.
The world realizes the USA is no longer messing around, that's all. If anything, we've only gained prestige in the last couple months, we're finally getting stuff done...
Hmm? That is a rather bold statement bordering on bluster. Could you elaborate? The move shows something, but I am not certain it can be interpreted this way.
I lean heavily Democratic when it comes to social issues. But let’s be honest, everyone knew that Biden was losing his mental faculties.
The last time we had two smart candidates was 2012.
So the answer was... Elect in a president who long lost his mental faculties. Okay.
The Democrats loss fair and square. They should have spoken up a lot sooner. Everyone on the inside knew that Biden was incompetent. If they had a real primary would Kamala ever have been the nominee?
The Democrats lost strongholds like Miami of all places. The dumbest thing they did was go against the tech industry who have always been their biggest supporters. Would Republicans go after Evangelical Christians or the NRA?
They gave people no reason to support them.
To say that Miami was a democratic stronghold is not really accurate. They've leaned Democrat recently, but the margins haven't been that high, and they've been decreasing for a number of elections now.
> The Democrats loss fair and square.
Yes, because of how ignorant much of the population is, correlating lower grocery prices with whoever was in office at the time.
> They gave people no reason to support them.
Given how bad the alternative was they were the only rational choice.
So that was there whole platform - “we aren’t Trump”?
Do you think the population got more ignorant in 4 years? This is all on the DNC and Biden. Biden should have either voluntarily not run or stronger Democrats should have had a primary and crucified him.
The DNC lied to the American public for years. They knew that Biden wasn’t all there. They basically tried to do a “Weekend with Bernie” on them.
Not to mention that strategically for the first time in modern history they had the new industry titans in their back pocket - BigTech - and threw them under the bus.
The American population doesn’t care about going after BigTech like HN does.
> So that was there whole platform - “we aren’t Trump”?
No, but frankly if it was that should have been enough.
> Do you think the population got more ignorant in 4 years?
Yes, obviously. Or at least more ignorant people decided to vote this time.
I long maintained that there should be a minimum level of 'something' required to vote. It used to be land, but anything that effectively makes one have a stake in the country would do. If possible, would you accept a restriction on the right to vote based on such a criterion?
And this is why Democrats lose. They are completely out of touch with what the mainstream wants.
Any other Democrat could have distanced themselves from Biden. But his own VP couldn’t.
> And this is why Democrats lose.
Democrats lose due to significant ignorance in the population and successful propaganda by hostile entities. It's not an accident that the reddest states at the least educated and least literate. If you doubt that I'm happy to support the claim, but I think we both know it's true.
> They are completely out of touch with what the mainstream wants.
Democrats are the only party actually offering to give the majority what they want, but due to ignorance and propaganda the majority have become emotionally hostile to the means necessary to accomplish implementing what they want.
Despite Trump's promises that gullible desperate people fell for, his policies are likely to make things much harder for hid voters and not only not give them what they want, but give them what they explicitly don't want. Well, they'll still get bigoted policies, at least.
> Any other Democrat could have distanced themselves from Biden. But his own VP couldn’t.
There should have been no reason to. Trump is a rapist felon who literally advocated for injecting leach as a cure to a pandemic. That people voted for him at all shows just how bad things are.
Democracy can't function with such a gullible population. At the least I have a front row ticket to the fall of a modern empire though. That's something.
<< Democrats are the only party actually offering to give the majority what they want << Democracy can't function with such a gullible population.
I am trying to be charitable in my interpretation, but you are not making it easy. One could easily argue that given that Trump won, majority got what they want already. Please tell me that you understand what I am telling you now. I did manage to hear some people drawing appropriate conclusions from this cycle, but I am not certain you did.
<< Trump is a rapist felon who literally advocated for injecting leach as a cure to a pandemic.
Yeah.. a felony in this case being the equivalent of a parking ticket in business; not to mention national level politics. It is hard for me understand why people have a hard time grasping that and/or why this was not a useful label for this election cycle. Hell, the moves taken ( including mug shot ) did the exact opposite of the desired effect.
<< At the least I have a front row ticket to the fall of a modern empire though. That's something.
Enjoy the ride man. It is gonna get wild.
Not sure why this is so complicated --- blame the DNC and party elites, not the population that voted for Trump.
If the DNC was trying to win, they would have never let Biden run for re-election, and then they would have never let Harris become the candidate without a primary.
The Democrats literally told the US population Trump was going to destroy democracy in America, and then created a situation that enabled him to win in a landslide.
Supporting your argument:
From a left leaning publication
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2025/01/12/opinion/opinion-renee...
And from the WSJ (I don’t know how the paywall bypass works. I pay for Apple News and read the entire article).
The WSJ is right leaning when it comes to business. But I find it to be fair and not Trump worshipper
https://www.wsj.com/opinion/bidens-bitterness-came-back-to-b...
When it all comes down to it. Biden was no better than Trump. They both are old folks who put their own desires above what is best for the country.
Yes, Biden was a horrible president. History will document it as so.
The Democrats didn't lose because Harris didn't get a primary. Literally no one but Republicans who would never have voted for her to begin with cared about that.
Democrats lost because they keep triangulating and trying to appeal to centrist Republicans who either don't exist, or would never vote for them regardless. If Harris had distinguished herself from Biden by taking a firm stance against the Palestinian genocide - which was the single issue much of her base cared about - she would have won.
Also, Trump didn't win in a landslide. It was a close election, and Trump definitely won the popular vote, but the margins were still about 51% to 49%.
> Democrats didn't lose because Harris didn't get a primary
The point is Harris would have been replaced in a primary. Democrats needed a candidate who could call Biden out on his failures, namely, not taking inflation seriously (Manchin said so!) and completely flubbing it on the border.
> If Harris had distinguished herself from Biden by taking a firm stance against the Palestinian genocide
She would have lost worse in Pennsylvania and maybe picked up Michigan and had absolutely zero effect anywhere else because foreign policy wasn’t a material factor in this election. (It was a loud factor. But not in an electorally relevant way.)
I get the impulse to do this. My pet war was Ukraine. But neither was actually voted on because Americans don’t tend to think about foreign policy unless we’re actually at (or about to go to) war ourselves.
>Democrats lost because they keep triangulating and trying to appeal to centrist Republicans who either don't exist, or would never vote for them regardless. If Harris had distinguished herself from Biden by taking a firm stance against the Palestinian genocide - which was the single issue much of her base cared about - she would have won.
Everyone thinks that their one particular issue was the crucial one, but all the data shows that the issues that actually mattered were A) inflation and B) the border / immigration / crime / perception of disorder.
The only two Dem Senators that underperformed Harris were Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. The rest of the downballot had been running hard centrist on the border for much longer and with less baggage, and guess what, they did better.
<< The Democrats didn't lose because Harris didn't get a primary.
I can't tell if this is some weird cope, satire or honest to goodness opinion.
<< It was a close election, and Trump definitely won the popular vote, but the margins were still about 51% to 49%.
Just like the previous sentence fragment. Narrow facts are true, but manage to completely miss the picture.
You realize that some of those Trump supporters voted for a Black man with a Muslim sounding name - twice?
Kamala didn’t lose in Miami of all places because of her stance on Palestine. Nor did she lose every swing state for that reason.
You say that as if they only operate in the US. The US represents less than 20% of their user base.
I mean, it was a ban when China did it to Facebook, no?
If the youth of the rest of the world keeps using it, the US culture attention will be replaced by something else.
This might be another step in the US journey of losing their role as a superpower nation to become just another country.
Your concern about losing the dominant culture status is useless. Recent geopolitical situation clearly shows soft power is useless. Hardpower is where everything is at.
The US is a superpower because of our military and our economy, not because our teenagers are addicted to short videos.
The idea that this will diminish our power globally is beyond laughable.
I'd love to see what a global ban for TikTok, WhatsApp, Instagram, YouTube, and X would look like. Even better: massive breakdown of iOS and Android installations. Just for a couple of weeks, then revert to the nightmarish status quo we live in. Now that would be an interesting experiment. The change in people's behavior would be palpable for those fourteen days, I bet. It'd be so much fun.
Daniel Dennett was strong proponent of alternative information distribution mechanisms in case of internet goes down for everyone. We haven't even studied such scenarios.
I'm a strong proponent of alternative information distribution mechanisms within the Internet. An "anti-normie" kind of channel of information. Hell, up until the web 2.0 came along, the Internet was exactly that for the most part.
We got something similar with social interactions during covid lockdowns (if your country had those). Btw i feel like people would go literally MAD, I can see it when just WhatsApp crashses for just a couple hours (doesn't happen often but I remember people's reactions when it happened). You can get a feel of what it would do for yourself by getting a dumbphone and limiting yourself from accessing social media.
>You can get a feel of what it would do for yourself by getting a dumbphone and limiting yourself from accessing social media.
I already do that. It's the most alienating and pessimism-inducing thing. I'd just love to see a world where people aren't hunched over, staring at a screen for 90% of their waking life.
> It's the most alienating and pessimism-inducing thing
Not using a smart phone makes you feel like that?
Have you tried going to a classroom full of young adults like yourself in the last eight to ten years, without using one? I did, for years. You'll feel like there's no point in trying to socialize with anyone most of the time, as there's a huge barrier between them and yourself. Even when the phones aren't physically involved, people are way, way less social now than back then. Engaging in spontaneous conversations or interactions with people you aren't really familiar with is something that isn't seen in a positive light as much anymore. It's even panic-inducing or seen as ill-advised for many people, in environments that should be very conducive to such things, and safe for them to take place (college, for instance).
I'm haven't been in the young adult category for a few years now :)
What you describe fills me with really bad feelings. I truly feel bad for all that the younger generations are missing, and what we're losing as a species.
I'm still holding out hope that we'll see a bit of a social antibody reaction to the corporate takeover of the social sphere. I see some hope amongst younger folks, but it's pretty dire, and your descriptions make me less hopeful.
Tech is fun to play with, sure, but if the cost is that we lose our humanity when in each others presence - well I'd rather throw most of it in the trash. We're unconsciously throwing away much of what it means to be human - and all for the sake of some corporate profit. It's like a social suicide.
Ah, so it makes you feel like that because of the phone use and antisocial tendencies of others. That makes sense.
I'm truly worried for us.
I have trouble lumping those 5 services together. Maybe its something to do with me being a middle-age American male?
Instagram/X/TikTok: Hot garbage. Good riddance. Ban them and this country is a better place.
Whatsapp/YouTube: Actually quite useful. The former for real-time global communications. The latter for visual how-to's of all kinds (bicycles, home maintenance).
People would just switch to a different service.
I'm not sure how many dimensions this chess game is being played in, but if I were a lawmaker I would be wary of unintended consequences.
Overall, I view this is as an admission to US populace and the world that the US is a weak-minded country that can easily be influenced by propaganda.
> Overall, I view this is as an admission to US populace and the world that the US is a weak-minded country that can easily be influenced by propaganda.
That is quite a silly assumption to make
I’d be fine with a general rule that if China (or anyone) places limits on US social media that effectively limits / bans them… same goes for Chinese social media platforms. Done.
Many people here upset about this.
Here's what recently happened in Romania, all through TikTok.
Turns out China (or here, Russia) infiltrated the country, waged an enormous disinformation campaign and succeeded by getting their chosen candidate elected. Without TikTok, this would not have happened. I have talked about this with Romanians who concur.
In the real world, there are two responses to this.
1. "Tough luck, it's too late now, should just stand by and watch the country get taken over".
2. "Ban it and future popular big platforms controlled by a foreign adversary".
That's it. We'd all love for something inbetween. It's not happening, all such options would end up becoming 1). That's the state of the modern day world.
The facts that
A. They seem to rather abandon the app rather than receive tens of billions by selling it
B. "The Chinese government also weighed a contingency plan that would have X owner Elon Musk acquire TikTok’s U.S. operations"
C. The remaining mountains of evidence that it is a CCP tool
Mean that the arguments of Congress here are valid and this is the right decision. It is a tool directly controlled by a foreign adversary, for geopolitical, not profit-oriented, purposes. This is nothing like the PATRIOT act or other moves by governments that claim "protect the children" or "protect against terrorism" for some ulterior motive of surveillance or worse. It might be a rarity, but in this case the claims by Congress are factual and a sufficiently good reason.
> Turns out China (or here, Russia) infiltrated the country, waged an enormous disinformation campaign and succeeded by getting their chosen candidate elected.
But in the US, Russia also has waged enormous disinformation campaigns on US-based social media networks. Taking the problem of foreign (dis|mis)information, election interference, etc seriously requires that we do more than ban one network based on the ownership of that company. After TikTok gets shut down, Chinese influence operations can still use Twitter/X, Meta, Reddit etc. We need better tools and regulations to make these campaigns visible stoppable in real-time, rather than just banning one network while leaving up multiple other vulnerable networks. This ban is political theater, where the US can act like it's doing something while not having to address the harder parts of the problem.
> A. They seem to rather abandon the app rather than receive tens of billions by selling it
I think this is weak evidence of them being a mostly political tool. Valuations based on their actual use are well above what anyone has actually offered to pay. And disentangling US operations from the rest of TikTok would not be straight-forward; do you merely cleave it in two? Given network effects, would cutting off the US component to sell it make both the US and non-US portions less valuable?
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/01/15/tiktoks-us-unit-could-be-wor...
one would think the ranking member on the House Intel Cmte - my very own Rep - would agree with you, given how he'd be way more privy to such things than you, me, talking heads on TV, etc. yet he disagrees and cites free speech concerns [0][1].
in my mind none of these reasons add up. if this were truly about influence ops on social media we would not have blinders on for our own platforms' role in them. remember Cambridge Analytica and the 2016 campaign, or Facebook's role in the Myanmar genocide? or more-recently the ops Israel ran? furthermore if this were really about our data, we would again not have blinders on. the CCP can still purchase our data as we're all up for sale given our lack of data privacy/protection laws.
as such i tend to side with my Rep: this is bunk, and the pretexts flimsy. i believe the answer is to focus on education - critical thought particularly - and enacting data privacy/protection laws. i do not believe that would lead to 1).
now will that happen? i'm doubtful tbh. our own govt loves the fact that we're up for sale, for it allows them to side-step the need for a warrant. have a great weekend.
[0] https://www.ctinsider.com/columnist/article/tiktok-ban-jim-h... [1] https://himes.house.gov/2024/3/himes-statement-on-protecting...
What you're really complaining about is that too many people agree with Georgescu. The way mainstream media works, only a few candidates get air time so there's little competition. Georgescu was able to build a following on the alternatives so the election was suspended (without motivation) and new regulations put in place to make sure no un-approved candidate stands a change.
They were so busy banning Șoșoacă and demonizing the best candidate (Simion) that they forgot about Georgescu.
We were already a laughing stock for banning a candidate (Șoșoacă). Now we've suspended democracy and postponed the election 'til kingdom come.
Are we that good already?
Thrilling
This is laughable, even with your depiction of the events. The candidate in question (Georgescu) had a very popular platform, and was supported by a large bases or Romanians on the left and right.
He was, however, opposed to further expansion of NATO.
If these ideas are too scary to let general public even consider, then democracies have to step in and censor the media. And that begins by banning TikTok, the largest platform where a narrative like this can bypass the existing power structures.
TikTok should just build out a PWA. That would be a huge fuck you to this whole situation.
How?
It would be interesting to see TikTok go full scorched earth and become a mega pirate movie, music, TV, streaming sports site.
That will never work. The TikTok audience doesn’t have the attention span to support such long form content.
As long as it supports split-screen with Subway Surfers.
Funnily enough there are full movies uploaded on TikTok split up in to parts, they come across my feed every once in a while.
Exactly. Why not make it official? I feel like split up movies peaked awhile ago ("chop chop movie boy"), but is now limited to live video with a person in the foreground.
I’ve seen these too on Instagram and TikTok, but usually it’s some tense part of a movie and the scene encourages me to basically go watch the whole movie, which then turns out to not be as great as that one curated clip.
This outcome is worse than I could have ever conceived:
1) People have valid concerns about TikTok. TikTok will remain, and those concerns will remain.
2) People have valid concerns about free speech. The law that tramples free speech stands and is upheld by the court.
3) People have valid concerns about unfair and unequal enforcement of laws. The law will be blatantly and openly ignored for political reasons.
Literally everyone loses. What a clown show.
Yeah this is why I don't like the "tit for tat - they banned facebook, insta, etc." argument.
We're supposed to be better than them, but we stoop to their level.
> but Trump might offer lifeline
Is this the same guy who wanted to ban TikTok 4.5 years ago? Just asking.
https://www.npr.org/2020/08/06/900019185/trump-signs-executi...
What happens to the copyright on these videos?
This seems like a bandaid, maybe the real national security is that US companies cannot build a product that can compete with TikTok.
I don't really agree with this line of thinking if you consider the addictive part of TikTok.
Imagine the US legalized and exported meth. All of a sudden, the US is "competing" because everyone is hooked on drugs. We had Opium wars in a somewhat similar vein as the social media wars.
Hahaha
Thank goodness! I don’t know how anyone thinks this isn’t a good idea for America.
Market intervention through administrative measures is never a good thing for any country.
I am wondering why, can you develop?
In this case, the necessity of this law is proof that American companies are incapable of producing an app that can compete with Tiktok.
If you don't know why, you don't need to know why.
Do you think a Great Firewall of America is a good thing? Because that is what this ruling enables.
Do you think TikToc is a net positive for the world or the US?
Isn't that the same argument used by China for why the GFW is needed? The US allows all sorts of things that can be argued as net negative (e.g. smoking).
It is not. But not banning it for geopolitical reasons is a net positive for everyone.
It is a net negative.
Attempts at intervention by legacy states over the evolution of the internet (which will obviously fail on sufficiently long time-scales) are also a net negative.
Two net negatives do not make a net positive.
Not sure if sarcastic or not, I'll bite. If tiktok infringes some kind of data privacy laws, punish them. If the data privacy laws of the US are bad, improve them.
But this? Just because some... not so bright soldiers use tiktok to upload videos of their base? What else is there so bad it requires a total ban? It seems like hypocrisy to me, when Meta, Google, X also have similar data available and also don't want to adhere to for example EU laws.
If what TikTok is doing is dangerous when TikTok does it why is it safe when everyone else does it?
This is theft, pure and simple. The government-industrial complex is trying to steal this app. The private side wants to make money and the public side wants yet another way to control narratives on social media much the way President Musk does on twitter.
Yeah! If China wants our data they'll have to buy it from data brokers like everyone else!
TikTok is fun but it has degraded into a commercialized mess of copycats, IP theft and scams.
Like everything else that is commercialized on the internet. It has a lifespan of a few years before it becomes unusable to all but the meek and the ignorant.
A new service will emerge and replace it within months. The truth is their algorithm is about as complicated as a HS algebra test.
Looks like India set the way here. Wonder what it holds for US India relations.
china banned US apps like since forever.
Everyone has been in denial - this was always the most likely outcome.
Could TikTok develop a web app and direct users to it?
Yes. TikTok.com is legal as long as it isn’t hosted here.
As a free speech absolutist, I hope that what comes out of this is a completely anonymized, uncensorable alternative. We've gotten the arbitrary censorship walled garden social media sites mostly because until now there hasn't been any particular reason for most users to step outside of them.
I think many have tried but face an uphill battle of unless a significant majority is willing to relocate, the prevailing content will be things that are deemed undesirable/bannable on other platforms, which distracts potential users.
Having a completely decentralized solution also comes with the issue of future governance. If a single entity controls the direction (even if the spec is open and you can host it yourself), then it's not decentralized. If you end up with a consortium then you'll face the same issue of email, innovation is hard to spread as you need multiple actors with competing interests to agree.
If your vision is having multiple entities providing different experiences tailored to individual taste, they might start consolidating and effectively forming several disjoint platforms.
p.s.
The web can be said to be decentralized but it's dominated by large players all the way from hosting to browsers. If all three major browsers don't agree on your proposal, it's effectively dead. Who's to say entrenched players won't arise in your vision of a decentralized social media?
Nah, centralized apps have won because mass appeal and market momentum hinges on factors almost entirely other than an app's technical architecture.
I disagree. People just need to build a good social networking protocol.
Email for example can be thought of as a social networking app but it's really decentralised.
While you can ban Gmail, it's really hard to ban Email.
Something like AT Protocol would be what it would like like or activity pub.
But so far, they are all so bad.
I don't think that's at odds with what I said. If there's a good decentralized protocol that gets momentum, good for it. But, the interests that build social media apps well in terms of what is successful in the marketplace, usually chose not to do that because it isn't in their interest to do so. They spend a lot of money on marketing, driving engagement, etc, and most don't want to share it.
Email is a bit of an outlier because it gained critical mass before the web was predominantly commercialized.
You mean PeerTube? Perhaps it could also be combined ith I2P.
Exactly - there are technical solutions, they just rely on mass uptake in order to work.
> completely anonymized, uncensorable alternative.
So a fountain of child sexual assault material?
We have that. Welcome to the World Wide Web.
We all walked into the walled gardens and went "ooh, looks mighty nice in here!"
just think a tiny bit about why that would be a bad idea
Since the ban is about not allowing app stores to host TT, can TT build its own App Store to offer the download of its app, given that Apple has to allow other app stores?
Apple doesn't have to and doesn't choose to allow alternative app stores outside of the EU.
What I love is that apparently tons of Americans are signing up for a different Chinese social video app whose name is being translated as “Red Note”. I would love if the end result of this was another several years of congressional drama about a different Chinese app.
What's interesting is that RedNote doesn't have the same level of segregation as TikTok, so the US and China users are having a lot of interesting interactions. Assum the app doesn't get banned, it'll be interesting to see if the experiences get more silo'd
I am afraid this might not last long. There is no official announcement yet for now, to be clear, but still[0].
0. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/01/rednote-may-wall...
I think it would be a good thing if average Americans and Chinese interacted more
Maybe then we will see we are all more alike than we are different
seems like a dangerous idea if you're Uncle Sam or the CCP. dogs and cats may realize they in fact enjoy living together. one can hope though, eh?
> if the end result of this was another several years of congressional drama about a different Chinese app
No need. If it’s Chinese and has more than 100mm (EDIT: 1mm) users, Commerce can designate it a foreign-adversary controlled application and designate it for app-store delisting.
I think the threshold is way lower than that? The "Covered Company" definition mentions 1 million monthly active users for at least 2 of the 3 months preceding some determination.
Also, I wonder who is the foreign-based "reviews" site that lobbied for the exclusion clause immediately following that?
https://www.congress.gov/118/plaws/publ50/PLAW-118publ50.pdf
Hmm, § 2(g)(2)(b) been there since the start [1].
[1] https://www.congress.gov/118/bills/hr7521/BILLS-118hr7521ih....
It’s even better than that. “Red Note” is the softened version. A more direct translation is “Little Red Book.”
> “Little Red Book.”
As in Mao's Little Red Book - https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-34932800
Can't confirm as I don't speak Chinese but Sharp China podcast says this is a mistranslation, and that the word for Mao's little red book is not the same as the Chinese name for Rednote
If Wikipedia is to be believed, the Chinese nickname is “Treasured Red Book.” It’s just a coincidence that the English nickname happens to match the literal translation of this app’s name. Still hilarious.
Isn't Red Note planning to segregate based on IP to prevent US Influence from those TikTok refugees? The original CN users aren't exactly happy with the newcomers either, and the TikTok refugees themselves are getting quite a culture shock with regards to cultural attitudes to LGBQT or even basic "leftist" activism like strikes and collective bargaining
Anyways, those alternatives are not so algorithmically driven, and especially if it's forcing actual user interaction and discussion that certainly would be good for Americans to understand what the mainland Chinese are really thinking and saying domestically. Because if you go to the actual main discussion forums like Weibo, oh boy it's not going to be pretty.
Honest question: why would an American consciously seek out multiple Chinese apps on purpose?
To be punk rock. The main reason I see thrown around is most younger users don't care if China has their user data and understand that the government is banning it for their own selfish reasons (money).
You state that the US gov is banning it for money as if that’s a fact. I’d love to see the evidence for that.
The irony is that China bans essentially all US social media. I guess these users don’t care a ton their selfish bans?
I read it as that's how they think of it. It doesn't actually matter if it's true or not.
OP didn't say "for money".
As per Mitt Romney, it was banned because TikTok contained too much anti-Israel content (remember, the push for the ban became really strong very soon after Oct 7 when the genocide began)
Source: https://x.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1787288209963290753
Freedom.
Americans want freedom of speech without interference from the US government.
TikTok was banned because of sharing anti-zionist videos documenting the genocide of Palestinians.
Americans turn to a dictatorial psuedo-communist government that has direct control over this social media platform so they can get MORE freedom?
I call bullshit.
Chinese social media has pretty transparent upfront censorship regime: dont criticize CCP, adhere to One China Policy, dont push LGBTQP+ propaganda, everything else is allowed.
Americans on red book are surprised to see the actual life in China and are shocked how different it is from american MSM propaganda about China, you can find plenty of these threads on Twitter how tiktok refugees are amazed by how brainwashed they were by US mass media
Please give us some examples of MSM propaganda about China.
Ok, so besides not being able to talk about these immediate 3 third rails, we're completely free to talk about anything. What a perfect platform for free speech idealists to flock to.
What in the actual hell, why wouldn't they go to one of the various other free sites that isn't controlled by such an obvious bad actor? Unless of course they don't care at all about that and they're really being quite dumb.
And yes, of course real life in China is different than that displayed in corporate US media. Real life in France, Australia, Nigeria and Svalbard are all different than what is displayed there too. None of that makes it a good idea to be so outrageously stupid as to adopt such a platform.
Because deep inside, most people are still children, desperate to declare their autonomy.
if China has US consumer's data they can do very little harm as they lack enforcement. So its not a big deal to use Chinese owned social media app.
US however, if it has data on US users, has all the means to cause harm to US users, starting from censorship and persecution.
UK and Germany for example are jailing people for social media posts
https://www.standingforfreedom.com/2024/08/think-before-you-...
That seems decidedly short sighted to trust your enemy more because your own governments also do harm.
it signifies lack of trust from US citizens in their own government that lied non-stop for decades and kept brainwashing them with one false narrative (like Iraqi WMDs) after another
>... jailing people for social media posts
More like jailing people for inciting riots by repeatedly and vehemently posting proven wrong information. Freedom of speech is great and all, but you are advocating for freedom from consequences
This is such a slippery slope. If I post on my social media that I hate my government and its policies - it should be protected as political speech.
You cannot jail people for their thoughts. Unless a person is physically present in public and is inciting violence in person, they do not violate anything
Apparently currently they’re posting tons of 3d printed gun content. People are weird.
The most literal translation of 小红书 is “Little Red Book”, which recalls the famous book of quotes from Mao Zedong: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quotations_from_Chairman_Mao_T...
Except that’s not what Mao’s book was/is called in China, it’s a label the US applied to it. In China it’s better known as 红宝书 (Hóng Bǎo Shū) “The Red Treasure Book” or simply “The Red Book”.
I'm pretty sure it would be more a quick "Add this app to the TikTok court order".
Why would you love that?
It would likely lay bare just how much any of the TikTok detractors actually cared about privacy/security concerns versus cultural ones.
Sometimes it’s fun to watch chaos unfold. It’s subjectively entertaining
Someone wrote, "Because it's punk rock" and I think that sums it up. It's an act of rebellion.
He’s using sarcasm
Why do you love this?
Because if this sequence of events (one allegedly Chinese-government controlled social media app is banned over apparent ties to the government, so all of its American users immediately switch to another Chinese app whose name can be translated as "Little Red Book") happened in a movie, a reasonable person would balk at how ludicrous and on-the-nose the whole thing was.
It feels like a joke, and if you can somehow create enough space to actually see the humor in it, its kind of funny.
It’s a clone being inorganically pushed to fill vacuum.
You don't destroy what can give you even more power by controlling it. Trump/Musk/Zuck plan is to control it, not destroy it: the army of teens willing to be inundated by propaganda just to keep using it is too appealing to ignore, and China will happily trade that control for something (less/no tariffs?).
Maybe someone smarter than me can explain - how both Biden and Trump can hint or announce they wont enforce the law. Signed laws upheld by the Supreme Court can be filtered out by the President? News to me.
They've announced that they won't enforce the fines required by the law. But yes, selective enforcement of laws is legal — it's how prosecutorial discretion works.
the law doesn’t ban tiktok it just grants discretion to the president to ban tiktok
The law makes it illegal for Oracle, Apple and Google to continue doing what they are doing. It does in fact make it illegal for some companies to operate with TikTok. The president can use this law in the future on other companies controlled by foreign adversaries to divest or face a ban.
Just curious, so if the POTUS decides to fine Tiktok, how would Tiktok pay? Because banks can't accept Tiktok transactions.
The companies still take risk not obeying the law. Most large publicly traded companies will not task the liability risk based on a wink and a nod.
Congress writes the law but the executive enforces the law. They can choose not to enforce the ban.
We all know the Elephant in the room, that Israel‘s genocide in Palestine led to lots of criticism on Tik Tok, and that led the Israel lobby to push a Tik Tok ban.
Yes, the "we have a Tiktok problem" statement is proof of that.
I love all the comments saying that the Supreme Court doesn't understand the first amendment.
Kinda funny we have a president that can and will just ignore the Supreme Court and laws
NBC is delusional, thinking Trump who ran on a law and order platform is going to disregard the law.
I think in the future people will look back at kids on social media, like we look back at kids smoking cigarettes.
This is like paying doctors to say only evil foreign cigarettes cause cancer. Buy American!
Surprised some American billionaire hasn't thrown 50 Milly into like 5 clones of tik Tok to see which one takes off?
there should be an easy pivot to an American equivalent but there hasn't been?
Or has there?
Here is what Chairman McCaul said: “I was proud to join 352 of my Republican and Democrat colleagues and pass H.R. 7521 today. CCP-controlled TikTok is an enormous threat to U.S. national security and young Americans’ mental health. This past week demonstrated the Chinese Communist Party is capable of mobilizing the platform’s users to a range of dangerous, destabilizing actions. The Senate must pass this bill and send it to the president’s desk immediately.”[1]
The U.S. national security angle identified is "mobilizing the platform’s users to a range of dangerous, destabilizing actions". And give me a break that they actually care about "young Americans’ mental health". This bill was about pro-Palestine content ... "being mobilized by CCP" that was harming "young people's health".
The fact that none of this was put forward by the lawyers makes me think the tiktok lawyers were incompetent. I went through the testimonies given and it was DAMMMMMNNNN weak. Three issues were identified by me: The Bill suddenly declares "non-aligned countries" to be "foreign adversaries" but there is no declared war so how can they be adversaries already; The Bill declares anyone facilitating the company including through the transfer of communication is in violation of the bill but that is a freedom of speech issue which they did not bring up but instead brought the ban as a FoS issue; The Bill labels TikTok and ByteDance as companies to be sold [to an aligned state] or banned entirely but that is the only company being single-handedly called out and I don't know how to say this but that sounds like some form of discrimination and unsubstantiated claim of threat. They could have done a better job at the SCOTUS.
[1] https://foreignaffairs.house.gov/press-release/chairman-mcca...
The next Supreme Court decision will be them deciding if disagreeing with the TikTok decision is sufficient grounds for being censored.
Public disagreement with the TikTok decision could lead to legislative pressure, which would add support to the pressure campaigns of Chinese lobbyists and diplomats, or of other organizations that are funded or donated to by Chinese people or people of Chinese descent. This could either result in new legislation being passed that nullifies the ban, or pressure the Executive into failing to enforce the ban.
Either of those outcomes would, in effect, allow the user data of Americans to be accessed by the government of China. Disagreement with the TikTok ban would in and of itself aid America's adversaries.
Besides, disagreement with it implies that America unduly restricts speech, when we're supposed to hate China because China unduly restricts speech. That's a clear case of creating a false equivalence in order to foment discord, which again is material support to China's goal to monitor American's communications and corrupt the minds of America's children.
I believe Biden says his admin won't enforce the ban, as they only have 1 day left in office after it goes into effect.
Trump has signaled he doesn't support the ban, and wants tiktok under american ownership. The legislation allows the president to put a 90 day hold on the ban too.
So my guess is that this isn't over yet.
Do you think Apple, Oracle and Google are going to thumb their noses at the law?
Trump initially championed the ban during his first term
For one day? Maybe.
https://www.npr.org/2020/08/06/900019185/trump-signs-executi...
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cly57kxkmrxo
Apparently Trump did well on tiktok during the last election, and ByteDance (and everyone else) knows that Trump plays favorites.
> The legislation allows the president to put a 90 day hold on the ban too.
Only if there is an in-progress divestiture and only before the ban goes into effect.
Aka, TikTok/Biden would have to announce a sale is in process and Biden would have to enact the extension before the 19th.
There seems to be a lot of misinformation around this, no surprise given the TikTok user base..
The law targets other companies that would be breaking the law if they continue providing services for a China-owned TikTok past the ban date. The statute of limitations is five years, past a Trump presidency. No, an executive order can not cancel a law. Google, Apple & co would be exposing themselves to a lot of uncertainty and risk, and for what?
Very sad moment for the united states. Banning an app because the users are too critical of israel/support palestine, and they cannot control it.
Can someone ELI5 how/why this is legal?
One of the few federal powers in the constitution includes "control over foreign commerce". Somehow a Chinese website is now "foreign commerce". China bad.
I think that covers it.
Everybody already moved to red book and are starting to recognize that the US is just an aging colonialist with nothing to offer the future
https://www.reddit.com/r/TikTokCringe/s/hXe9HsWslW
The GenZ folks (including my kids) that I interact with on a day-to-day basis are much happier on that application and they’re starting to realize that the US is not what it pretends to be
That doesn’t mean any place is better (though possible) it simply means people started finally realizing the truth of the United States
China is an ethnostate. What does China offer the future to anyone who's not Chinese? Chinese nationals in the United States have substantially more rights than they do in China.
China has 1.4 billion people. Americans can learn from them.
You use colonialist as a slur, but China has literal colonies in Tibet and the Uyghur land.
This is great news!
The key issue here now is: The future, freedom, international policy etc of you US guys no longer depends on democratic structures in ANY way whatsoever.
Who pays Trump most, wins. Who does what Musk wants, wins.
From what I know, there is no second Oligarch-run corrupt country that would come close to this. This is worse than China and Russia combined.
Sorry, not meant to bash our US HN friends at all, just an observation from another western country targeted by MuskTrump that has yet to follow the US lead (which they will), so we still have some time left to be in shock and awe about what is going on on your side of the pond for a while.
FFS.
Commenting on your own posts sucks, but let me add:
The current status of insanity is that the US is threatening to invade a EU country by force to annex it to be able to exploit natural resources and gain a strategic military position.
Again, let me repeat, as very clearly a lot of people are now completely numb to insanity and just filter it out:
THE US IS THREATENING TO INVADE A EU COUNTRY. YES. SERIOUSLY.
Was US Headlines for one day, now drowned in other madness already.
Anyway, you won't have any democratic say on this anyway, so let's just gamble:
Jeff Yass will bribe Trump heavily, and Trump will then lift the ban next week, no matter what his Supreme Court sock puppets want.
It's a bit disingenuous for Mark Zuckerberg to go on Joe Rogan and say that the Biden administration is anti Meta/anti America, when congress passed this bill to shut down TikTok.
I don't love that TikTok is run by a Chinese company (thus giving way too much control to the Chinese government), but Meta builds such garbage experiences in their apps. There really needs to be a real competitor to Meta.
This is just a roundabout way for Trump to get bribed
Free speech.
America has the right to ban since china banned all American tech companies from operating in their nation but this means America could never ever talk about freedom of doing business bs
Any country has the right to this kind of ban, that's what national sovereignty is all about.
A different issue is whether doing it is the right decision or not.
And another issue is the hypocrisy. When China did it, the unanimous opinion from the US (both the official stance and what one could hear/read from regular people, e.g. HN comments) was that such bans were authoritarian and evidence that there was no freedom of speech in China. But now suddenly it's a perfectly fine and even obvious/necessary thing to do...
Being neither from China nor from the US, this paints the US (who have benefitted a lot from riding the moral high horse of free market, etc. for decades) in a quite bad light.
Should the EU ban US social networks for pure economic reasons (so we roll our own instead of providing our data and money to US companies, which would almost surely be good for our economy)? The argument for not doing it used to be that freedom should be above domestic interests, one embraces the free market even if some aspects of it are harmful because overall it's a win. But the US is showing it doesn't really believe in that principle, and probably never has.
China bans US businesses because it has an autocratic, ethnocratic government. The US is banning a Chinese business for obvious national security reasons.
Answering tit-for-tat is fine, even if the thing being done is bad in itself (e.g. waging war is bad, but should a country not use weapons to defend itself when invaded?). If else US and in general the West should have acted earlier: if American companies where free to operate in China and influence its people I doubt this ban would have been enacted.
Not too obvious to me unless there's some actual evidence of any of these claims of "China takes American data".
They take as much data as any of the various other manufacturing processes we outsourced over the decades.
If you're comparing outsourcing, mutual trade agreements that benefit both countries, to intelligence gathering, copyright/patent theft, media influence, etc., you're probably not going to arrive at a serious position here (not to mention the downvote).
I need to print this sentence out, frame it, paste it on the Tiananmen's wall.
I'm not sure about that... They'll surely continue to use buzzwords "freedom","democracy" for their geopolitics seo.
So they were right about banning the US social media platforms then, right? Because according to this court opinion, having foreign social media is a menace to national security. It's funny to see Americans argue for a great firewall lol.
I have mixed feelings. The Supreme Court did the right thing; the democratically elected government did decide upon a ban, so it should likely continue as was made law.
I am not sure that banning forms of media feels good. The point of free speech is to let everyone say their thing and for people to be smart enough to ignore the bad ideas.
I am not sure the general population of vertical video viewers does part 2, however, so I get the desire to force people to not engage. The algorithmic boosting has had lots of weird side effects; increased political polarization, people being constantly inundated with rage bait, and even "trends" that get kids to vandalize their school. (My favorite was when I asked why ice cream is locked up in the freezer at CVS. Apparently it was a TikTok "trend" to lick the ice cream and then put it back in the freezer, so now an employee has to escort you from the ice cream area to the cashier to ensure that you pay for it before you lick it. Not sure how much of this actually happened versus how companies were afraid of it happening, however.)
With all this in mind, it's unclear to me whether TikTok is uniquely responsible for this effect. I feel like Instagram, YouTube Shorts, etc. have the potential to cause the exact same problems (and perhaps already have). Even the legacy media is not guilt free here. Traditional newspapers ownership has changed over the years and they all seem pretty biased in a certain direction, and I am pretty sure that the local news is responsible for a lot of reactionary poor public policy making. (Do I dare mention that I think the whole New Jersy drone thing was just mass hysteria?)
Now, everyone is saying that regulating TikTok has nothing to do with its content, but I'm pretty sure that's just a flat-out lie. First, Trump wanted to ban it because everything on there was negative towards him. Then right-wing influencers got a lot of traction on the platform, and suddenly Democrats want to ban it and Trump wants to reverse the ban. It's pretty transparent what's going on there.
I agree with the other comments that say if data collection is the issue, we shouldn't let American companies do it either. That seems very fair to regulate and I'm in favor of that.
The best effect will be someone with a lot of money and media reach standing up against app stores. I can live with that.
I only take this as a geopolitical decision. Not saying that the US couldn't do that (like any other country) but adding arguments that also apply to other social media apps as well is, IMHO, FUD.
Wasn't the idea Trump's in the first place?
Not hard to see how this will play out.
Trump will get a bribe from them and it will be opened.
I mean this won't happen. The TikTok CEO is invited to Trump's inauguration.
The silliness of the ban itself aside, it is wild how casually the whole “both chambers of congress passed a law and that law was upheld by the highest federal court but maybe it won’t be a law if one guy decides he doesn’t like it” thing is being treated by the media.
It is like “Does America have laws?” is a 3 minute section of Good Morning America between low-carb breakfast recipes and the memoir of a skateboarding dog.
As with anywhere, laws are toothless without enforcement.
In some cases, they are enforced ruthlessly on one group of people, and not on others. This is a feature, not a mistake, by the way. Well, a feature for those with power, not normal citizens.
The real question is:
"Does America have justice?"
It's not a recent one either. The issue of select enforcement of our laws has been around as long as I can recall, and before I was born. It's not even unique to the United States.
What I find most upsetting as part of the normal citizenry, is that rather than taking things to court and finding that the laws need changed, they tend to go the route of charges dropped or pardons when the laws affect them.
I would have less of an issue with the rich and powerful folks avoiding prosecution if they at least did it in a precedent setting way for the rest of us.
That's the injustice.
Of recent note in the "no" column for the "does America have justice" question, a convicted felon escapes all consequences because he is president elect.
What sentence have others with the same conviction faced in the past? Without that comparison, it is not a “no”.
it may be toothless but will they have an effect?
You're Apple or Google's lawyer - the CEO asks, should I take Tiktok down from the app store. What do you say?
Otoh there's a law and civil penalty. On the other, Trump says he won't enforce. Statute of limitations is 5 years, and the liability will exist whether Trump enforces or not. In 5 years, there will (may?) be a new president. On the other hand, trump saying he's not going to enforce may give us an out if we're ever sued over this (we just did what the Pres told us to do...).
Hard call, I give > 50% that they take it down whatever Trump says.
Knowledge of civics among the media is unfortunately not much higher than the average person, which is a real failure considering that they are supposed to be an entire “estate” of democratic society.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Estate
> but maybe it won’t be a law if one guy decides he doesn’t like it
Are you talking about a presidential veto? What are you saying?
No. The opportunity for a presidential veto in our system happened in April of last year.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/23/tech/congress-tiktok-ban-what...
You've ruled out my only guess, but you still haven't explained what you're talking about!
The power in question is the president's power over the executive branch of government, e.g. the department of Justice. If the president orders it, the department of Justice could choose to feign ignorance and simply not fine any offending parties under this law. Obviously this is an immense power that should be wielded with the utmost care but at this point I'm not sure anyone cares.
I think the idea is that Trump wields enormous (unprecedented?) control over the members of his party, and thus effectively controls both houses of Congress for at least the next two years. I assume he'll quickly get whatever legislation he wants sent to his desk for signature. I'm wondering how long it takes before the Senate invokes the "nuclear option" on what still requires a filibuster-proof majority to pass.
He has a one seat majority in the House. That means he needs actual complete buy in from every single Republican house member to pass something if the Democrats completely oppose it.
He had more than that during his last term, so this term should be harder to get things done then last time.
Good point - I didn't realize that the new majorities are more narrow than they were in 2017 - but my observation is that he has more control now over these more narrow majorities. In 2017, there were still a lot of "Never Trump" or at least "old establishment" Republicans, and the party had its own brand and ideology that was distinct from Trump. That no longer seems to be the case. And the degree to which he can deploy an angry mob against any Republican that stands up to him, threatening primary challenges or worse, seems totally unprecedented to me.
I say this as a registered Republican since the Bush era who has never voted for Trump. I don't feel like anyone in the party represents me anymore.
There only needs to be one Republican in the house who doesn't like the bill, and we already know that Trump doesn't do even a little bit of bipartisanship (nor I doubt he will start in this next term).
He only has a couple of years to pass bills also, it is unlikely that the Republicans retain control of the house after the next midterm (unless Trump is popular).
I'm seeing 219 R to 215 D, by the way, and the one remaining vacant seat will probably go R again. Unless I'm interpreting something incorrectly(?), it doesn't look like a one-seat majority. Still more narrow than it was in 2017, as you said, but not quite that narrow.
Oh, ya, now that I look at it it isn't one seat, but 5. I wonder why I thought it was one, maybe that was just for the speaker vote? Anyways, this is better for Trump, since I think 5 seats gives him something to work with. He still needs basic consensus, but one rogue house member doesn't kill everything.
Biden will probably not enforce the ban (no fines) and Trump will likely continue that non-enforcement, essentially nullifying the will of Congress and judgement of the court.
I think Biden talk is a nothing burger. You need time to enforce things. Ban goes into effect on the 19th. Do they send out violation notice on 19th (Sunday), 20th (Monday and holiday and transition day) or 21st (first working day) when Biden administration does not exist.
I don’t understand, why wouldn’t they send it out on the 19th? Because it’s Sunday? Laws aren’t weekday-only last I checked.
Yes. Not all offices are open on weekends. Of course armed forces are of course police are working but should all agencies be open every day? And are they? Check your neighborhood. Post office may be open on Saturday but not Sunday and definitely not on MlK day. Check the city hall. Check the bill payment in-person windows. Check the social security agency.
Some problems such as LA fires require immediate response, some problems require an escalation mechanism and many others can be dealt during regular business hours.
A law was passed with a date attached to it, and it is very high profile. My local post office has nothing to do with anything.
Stop.
I think the point being made here is that many offices, including but not limited to your local post office, are closed on Sundays. They were not saying that your specific local post office is integral to enforcing the TikTok ban.
Is there a section in the text of the law that says that enforcement has to happen outside of normal office hours or do you just assume that’s the case because the law is being talked about in the news?
The law has a date attached to it. I already mentioned that.
So do all laws
So we agree!
So long as we’re agreeing that they’re not doing anything because the date falls on the day before the administration is dissolved, yes!
I am glad that we are on the same page that the answer to “why don’t they enforce the law that they can’t enforce” is in the question.
> I don’t understand, why wouldn’t they send it out on the 19th?
> "Given the sheer fact of timing, this Administration recognizes that actions to implement the law simply must fall to the next Administration, which takes office on Monday," White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement.
Daww, I tried. Piss off.
The headline on HN was updated, but it's in the key points on the article:
> Although President-elect Donald Trump could choose to not enforce the law...
Which is ridiculous. It's the executive branch's function to "take care that the laws be faithfully executed" [1]. The president's DOJ can't simply refuse to enforce the law. There's some debate over whether this applies to 'enforcement discretion', in that the president doesn't have infinite resources to perfectly execute the law and some things will slip through, or whether the president can decline to enforce a law that he believes to be unconstitutional before the supreme court declares it to be so.
In theory, no, the president can't simply decline to enforce a law, congress would then be able to impeach and remove him. In practice, though it happens a little bit all the time. And even if this was black and white, I don't know that there's anything that the incoming president can do that the incoming congress would impeach him for.
[1] https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artII-S3-3-5/...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_Two_of_the_United_Stat...
> The president's DOJ can't simply refuse to enforce the law.
I had to look up how they handle marijuana laws since that has the _look_ of the DOJ doing just that.
'In each fiscal year since FY2015, Congress has included provisions in appropriations acts that prohibit DOJ from using appropriated funds to prevent certain states, territories, and DC from "implementing their own laws that authorize the use, distribution, possession, or cultivation of medical marijuana"'[1]
So in that case it's Congress that prohibits the DOJ from enforcing a federal law. So your point stands in that the DOJ may not be able to unilaterally decide not to enforce a law, but apparently congress can sort-of extort them into ignoring laws? Oh America.
[1] https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF12270
I missed that, there was another post which was just the ruling itself and not an article, I thought that's what this was and never read the article.
Can they not impeach him for being a convicted felon? Kinda the definition of “high crimes”
Who is "they" in this sentence? You mean the Republican majorities in both houses of Congress who (nearly) all have their seats at this point only because they appealed to Trump's mob of followers? He could be impeached for all manner of things, but (as the parent comment said) I don't know what it would take for these Republicans to do it.
When he first took office in 2017, I figured that it would happen within six months. Given that he was impeached twice, I was almost right, but it didn't happen until Democrats won the House. Even most of the "old establishment" Republicans ended up backing him. Now there are none of those remaining.
The DOJ isn’t involved in that so no
Creating three branches of government that all have to agree that a law should exist (legislative) is constitutional (judicial) and should be enforced (executive) has proven to be an excellent method of keeping bad laws from negatively affecting us. Despite being seemingly simple on the surface, it's created a process a bit longer than what a single Schoolhouse Rock video can teach us, and it's too much for legacy media to handle.
Maybe they only learned from the aforementioned Schoolhouse Rock video, because they seem especially bad at understanding anything outside of the legislative branch. Not only does the legislative branch need to pass a bill into law for it to become a regulation, without objection by the judicial branch to its constitutionality, but the executive branch needs to write that law into a federal regulation, and the legislative branch can reject any new regulation they believe doesn't comply with the law, as can the judicial branch, who can also reject the regulation if it isn't constitutional as written, even if the original law that created it was.
It's no wonder that legacy media's wild misunderstandings of how laws and regulations work only get a small snippet of time, between their more entertaining and feel-good stories that drive viewership and revenue.
Fortunately we are no longer stuck with just legacy media, so I recommend finding a news source that actually knows what they are talking about. I've found the best bet is to get news from outlets and aggregators that specialize in a specific topic, shielding them from the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect, and forcing them to publish news that is actually correct.
This is why I come to Hacker News for my tech news aggregation. For political news, my favorite so far has been The Hill, especially for videos like their Daily Brief and Rising videos published on YouTube. I'm open to more, so if anyone has any recommendations, let me know.
This is just checks-and-balances at work, is it not? It’s by design.
What checks remain to counter this power? Impeachment? Constitutional amendment? As I understand it, if the president chooses not to enforce a law, then the only real recourse Congress has is a massive escalation that requires an extremely high level of cooperation. I'm not sure it was ever intended for the executive branch to simply ignore the other two branches and unilaterally decide how to run things. Personally I think willfully refusing to enforce the law of the land should be an impeachable offense but I guess that's not how it works.
The judicial and executive branches are checks on the legislative branch. The entire point of a check is that it can't be overridden. If the judicial branch determines that a law is unconstitutional or the executive branch determines that it should not be enforced, than that's it; it's dead.
The legislative branch can try again with another law, but if it doesn't change whatever made the law unconstitutional or detrimental to enforce, than the relevant branch will keep it dead.
The only condition in which the judicial branch regularly forces the executive branch to enforce laws is when the executive branch tries to legislate through selective enforcement; then the judicial branch will give an all-or-nothing ultimatum, but even then not enforcing is an option, just not selective enforcement.
“I was proud to join 352 of my Republican and Democrat colleagues and pass H.R. 7521 today. CCP-controlled TikTok is an enormous threat to U.S. national security and young Americans’ mental health. This past week demonstrated the Chinese Communist Party is capable of mobilizing the platform’s users to a range of dangerous, destabilizing actions. The Senate must pass this bill and send it to the president’s desk immediately.”[1]
[1] https://foreignaffairs.house.gov/press-release/chairman-mcca...
U.S. national security: "mobilizing the platform’s users to a range of dangerous, destabilizing actions"
And give me a break on "young Americans’ mental health".
This bill was about pro-Palestine content ... "being mobilized by CCP" and was harming young people's health.
The fact that none of this was put forward by the lawyers makes me think the tiktok lawyers were incompetent.
The fact that none of this was put forward by the lawyers makes me think the tiktok lawyers were incompetent.
Or they knew it would get them nowhere because they understand precisely how unpopular pro-Palestine sentiment is among lawmakers.
Both Biden and Trump have said that they will not enforce this law. So not just "one guy", but two :)
It is one. The other one is already out the door and just said "your problem not mine".
Wait until you hear about how one ordinary guy on a jury can nullify a whole law. Our system is geared to err towards enforcing fewer laws.
Good, now do it for the rest of them, from linkd-in to facebook.
This whole thing is both silly and unsurprising.
Everybody knows the fearmongering about Chinese control and manipulation is a smokescreen. The real reason is that Tiktok doesn't fall in line with State Department propaganda [1].
It's noteworthy that SCOTUS sidestepped this issue entirely by not even considering the secret evidence the government brought.
That being said, it's unsurprising because you can make a strictly commerce-based argument that has nothing to do with speech and the First Amendment. Personally, I think reciprocity would've been a far more defensible position, in that US apps like Google, FB, Youtube and IG are restricted from the Chinese market so you could demand recipricol access on strictly commerce grounds.
The best analogy is the restriction on foreign ownership of media outlets, which used to be a big deal. Back in the 1980s and 1990s, US companies would defend themselves from foreign takeovers by buying TV stations, for example. That's basically the premise of the movie Working Girl, as one (fictional) example.
Politically, the big loser here is Biden and the Democratic Party because they will be (rightly) blamed for banning a highly popular app (even though the Congressional vote was hugely bipartisan) and Trump will likely get credit for saving Tiktok.
[1]: https://x.com/Roots_Action/status/1767941861866348615
We don't know that the secret evidence was that TT doesn't promote U.S. propaganda. We can surmise, but speculation can be wrong. Besides, the justices might simply have revealed that secret evidence, had it really been just that. But they claim they didn't even consider the secret evidence. Unclear whether they took a peek, but they say they didn't consider it.
The kids flocking to another Chinese app just to avoid using Reels, Shorts, or whatever abomination is on X continues to be so funny to me. Looks like a long game of whack a mole starting.
Any parent (and even us non-parents who've spent a lot of time around kids) know that the best way to get teenagers to stop doing something, is to start doing it yourself. If you forbid them to do something, it's basically inviting them to try their hardest to do it anyways.
This is exactly why I’ve started slinging gen alpha lingo at our daughters: even doing it jokingly makes them cringe enough to stop using it themselves.
I do this to my son as well and I have to admit it is unreasonably effective.
Slay. No Cap, Fanum Tax that Skibidi.
Interesting that most of this "gen alpha" slang are phrases used by Black Americans for years
There are tons of people over 30, 40, 50 even over 90 on TikTok.
Are those people also making posts like "I'd rather get shot by Mao than use Instagram Threads/Reels" right now?
Sure. People older than 30 also dislike when the government tries to censor their access to some media.
37 here and: yes.
PG just wrote a blog, it shows the history of how students in the 1960s holding Mao's Red Book (pun intended) was the origin of the "woke" thing.
PG is full of shit. "Woke" originated within the black activist community and culturally goes back as far as the 1930s. It got adopted and became mainstream within the white liberal progressive community through the popularity of black music artists and social media in the late 20th century. It has absolutely nothing to do with Mao's Red Book or communism.
OK forget the "woke" thing here, let me rephrase, does the "1960s Berkeley protests" have a connection with
- Mao's Red Book, and
- the BLM/metoo/woke thing in the 2020s?
Maybe you could tell me what connection you want me to see?
Yeah… People just hate being told what they’re not allowed to do.
It's a very American attitude to rebel against the tyranny of the government, after all. Something about taxation without representation?
That's true, but proportionally they're a vast minority.
The algorithm segregates based on physical features, which can make sure they don't see one another with frequency.
It's known to use facial recognition to boost videos of "beautiful people".
https://www.dexerto.com/tiktok/tiktoks-algorithm-prioritizes...
Not true at all. I see people of all ages.
It is likely targetted at specific demographics.
12-year-olds probably aren't getting the same 10-minute videos of auto insurance adjusters taking exceptional calls that I am. But they might if they're precocious.
I'd be very surprised if anyone on TikTok is getting 10 minute videos on anything.
I'd still be surprised, but less so, I'd auto insurance adjusters are taking the time to make short form content aimed at the 40+ audience.
I watch at least 2-3 10 minute videos on TikTok daily, and a large number of 5+ minute videos! There's an amazing amount of good content, and once the algorithm hones in on what you care about it gets surfaced for you.
Can't say I have insurance adjusters on my FYP, but I think that speaks to the power of the algorithm's targeting far more than it does the lack of content.
https://www.tiktok.com/@claimslife1
Lawyers are getting in on it too. It's a major form of marketing for them now.
- Law by Mike (10M subs): https://www.youtube.com/shorts/meJA30cglvo
- Legal Eagle (3.5M subs): https://www.youtube.com/shorts/lgT4iZ9BYF8
- Ugo Lord (1.9M subs): https://www.youtube.com/shorts/I77J6n72Oto
- Attorney Tom (500k subs): https://www.youtube.com/shorts/kgLTqx2UFUk
- Mike Rafi (300k subs): https://www.youtube.com/shorts/znQgK6God2w
- CEO Lawyer (24k subs): https://www.youtube.com/shorts/RzqBiKLZNy4
Law by Mike puts some pretty incredible production value into their videos.
Sharing YouTube links because TikTok web isn't great and the links will likely stop working in a few days.
This is how I got mine to stop saying slay, preppy and sigma. The look of horror and cringe on their face when I say crap like "skibidi ohio rizz" in front of them and their friends, is a chef's kiss.
Under a million kids moving over to RedNote for a week or 2 means nothing. There is no whack a mole. Tiktok algo is the sauce, nothing else has the sauce. People enjoyed the sauce.
Xiaohongshu has better sauce than youtube shorts or instagram reels.
Using Chinese social media is cool now.
For a 1MM kids, not for 169MM others. They will go where there is the least friction which is likely a Meta or Alphabet product.
>They will go where there is the least friction which is likely a Meta or Alphabet product.
Fortunately, I think you're wrong about this. American children will be saying mandarin catchphrases before they start using Instagram Reels.
Just not if you're gay.
By all accounts, RedNote is hugely gay, with many people talking about how it's full of gay Chinese folks looking to connect with people.
Misinformation. I've seen plenty of gay people on there. Including myself and my partner.
> Tiktok algo is the sauce, nothing else has the sauce.
Tiktok algo is nothing special: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/05/business/media/tiktok-alg...
The volume of interaction data from good interface design and huge user base is the core of the success.
Counterpoint: Reels, YT Shorts
Reels and YT Shorts are definitely worse, but I would attribute that to not having the same content to even show and not having the same amount of data because of a much smaller audience than to having an inferior recommendation system.
> Tiktok algo is the sauce
What makes you think the Bytedance chefs who cooked the sauce wont join the Redbook company? Their HQ were both located in China anyway.
Even if that could occur, they don't have time to hire, design and implement it before their window of capturing the wave is over. RedNote is in a right place wrong time situation that would be in a worse position that Tiktok was in for scrutiny since we already had the house the data here legal battle with Bytedance.
"the sauce" is for the audience to figure out. The sauce was disgusting to me, but that didn't matter to those 100m consumers.
And yes, this begs the question of "when does something become a matter of national security". 10 million? A million moving over before the day of reckoning isn't a small thing.
the sauce = tiktok's algorithm. The audience doesn't figure that out, the company delivering the videos to you does. So far, no one else seems to have even come close. GenZ are proactively against Zuck, so that's even a bigger hole for Reels to overcome. Rednote doesn't have the algo people want and its interface isn't in English. It cost zilch for those kids to make a RedNote account. They are literally making it a meme. They wont be there in 2 months when no one else is there, and the joke is over. RedNote will have even more heavy handed moderation than TikTok as it is currently sharing its userbase with Chinese citizens. RedNote is not an answer to any of the underlying wants or desires of the Tiktok community except for a extreme minority of the TikTok userbase who are rallying against the US govt/Meta. Personally, I think the ban is within the power of the US government to do but do recognize the very real concerns and view of those who think the government shouldn't have done this. The incoming administration is free to seek to undo this if they want, but it can and should take an act of legislation to undo.
The big one is called RedNote, and it's actually fairly well done.
The meme I'm seeing everywhere is that with so many Americans joining RedNote, Americans are discovering how much Chinese people are paying for healthcare, food or property, and Chinese people are discovering things like 40 hour work weeks and actually having a holiday from time to time - so now the question is whether US or China bans it first.
Does China not have holidays? Us isn't great there with a total of 7 federally recognized holidays.
China also has 7 main federally recognized holidays. Although, one interesting thing they do is "weekend shifting" where they move the official work days near, e.g. the Spring Festival so that people get a full week of holiday (at the cost of a longer workweek or a one-day weekend right before/after it): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_holidays_in_China#Weeke...
The 666 workweek(6 days a week 6 am till 6pm) is definitely real in some companies and it's a big problem with work culture especially in tech. But in general I'm sure they do holidays.
Oh, wasn't meant at any dig in terms of quality, I don't believe in that kind of characterization. Besides, ostensibly, Chinese developers have been much more successful in this space and seem to deliver better products. I just wouldn't know myself as I stay off of shortform video platforms.
The irony of Americans flocking to a CCP-approved app whose Chinese name is translated to "little red book" is just a bit too on-the-nose. For those who don't know, Little Red Book is also the literature spread during the Cultural Revolution in China that was a collection of quotes and sayings by Chairman Mao.
There's gotta be a joke in there about the communists selling the capitalists the rope the capitalists eventually hang themselves with. But, I digress.
https://www.xiaohongshu.com
Am I missing something obvious, or is that only available in one language? How do American teenagers use that?
Don't get me wrong, I consumed American media and played American video games before I understood English, so clicking around eventually led you down some path.
But isn't most of that content meant to be consumed by people who understand the language said content is made with?
Mostly just lots of translation. Lots of American and Chinese users are putting translations directly into posts and comments to make it easier for others.
The funny this is American teens may start learning Mandarin as a result of this ill-advised ban, which is exactly what the US government doesn't want!
If this motivates any significant portion of the populace to learn one of the hardest languages to learn (In the West), I'd see that as a justification alone.
xswl
They're detecting Americans now somehow and setting the language to English by default; I didn't have to change the language. The translation looks pretty rushed but it's enough to navigate the app. The community guidelines are, notably, still only in Mandarin.
The posts are largely subtitled in both Chinese and English regardless of the spoken language. Comments are often in both languages, but if not you can click Translate.
You install the app, and can set the language.
While this is true, the translation is quite poor and not all parts of the app are translated.
Given the slop people are dealing with, I'm sure some people feel right at home.
It's good enough.
> Am I missing something obvious, or is that only available in one language? How do American teenagers use that?
It's to spite the United States Government. And it's hilarious.
https://social.coop/@eb/113829092915144918
Can confirm. I had no idea about RedNote till my 18yo niece sent me a link to download it.
I think it's a troubling sign that American cultural decline is much broader and deeper than Trumpism.
Kids are born into a world where the last generation is already essentially locked into lifetime servitude, the world is burning, and the "adults in the room" are a circus. How could they not indulge in alternatives? What is there to look forward to, identify with, or love about this place?
Culture thrives when the people are able to live meaningful lives.
The Red Note nonsense is just a meme, somewhat fittingly. First, because the only place you see coverage of all the "kids flocking" is... on TikTok itself. It's always a red (heh) flag when your source for big important events comes only from the affected parties.
But secondly because Red Note is subject to exactly the same regulation as TikTok, for exactly the same reason. There's no protection or loophole there, this app is just a district court injunction away from a ban too. Literally no one cares, they just love to meme.
It isn't really whack-a-mole though, because despite the media coverage there is no "TikTok ban bill." Instead it's a "Hostile nation can't own majority stakes in media companies in the US" bill, and this SCOTUS ruling sets the precedent that can be enforced on as many entities as required.
On a more amusing note the Chinese did NOT expect a bunch of Americans to show up on RedNote, and they're not thrilled so far. It seems that sharing details of how to organize labor unions, protest against your government, 3D print weapons, and so on wasn't what they were hoping for either. There's allegedly talk of them siloing off the new joins from abroad.
So how big does Rednote need to be to "majority stakes in media companies in the US"? I don't like this ruling at all, but it feels very American to see another looming threat and say "well, I'll just wait until it gets too big to deal with it".
It qualifies already, but I really doubt it's going to take off for many reasons. It isn't TikTok, the CCP has a much heavier hand there (ask the kids who ran into a 48 hour review period for their posts), and frankly I don't think the CCP is going to appreciate a bunch of mostly young, leftist teens sharing their ideas with Chinese people. The reaction to "Here's how you can organize a union/3D print a gun" has been hilariously predictable.
US should ban all Chinese software apps and services as long as CCP does not allow Google and Facebook to operate in China. As a matter of fact not only Google and Facebook but all the Western internet social apps and services should be allowed in China. We want equal opportunity and equal rights for business. This way it is not fair play, it is botched market economy.
US should ban the Internet. Lets have huge LAN parties in every country instead!
I'm in!
Come on, we are Communist China
don't be like us
<< Second, I am pleased that the Court declines to consider the classified evidence the government has submitted to us but shielded from petitioners and their counsel. Ante, at 13, n. 3. Efforts to inject secret evidence into judicial proceedings present obvious constitutional concerns. Usually, “the evidence used to prove the Government’s case must be disclosed to the individual so that he has an opportunity to show that it is untrue.”
Good grief.. I clearly wasn't following it closely, but even the fact that this could have become a thing ( SCOTUS ruling using 'redacted' as evidence ) is severely disheartening.
> but even the fact that this could have become a thing
So you're upset that the Biden admin attempted to sway the court with secret evidence. But any admin always could behave in that way, and nothing you can do can stop that. The fact that the court decided to ignore that secret evidence should be comforting. Sure, nothing forces the court in the future to stick to that, but this is always true as to everything.
Friend. Why would you insist on painting this in a simple political framework and, more amusingly, assume I follow it that same framework? I am not upset. I am disheartened, dispirited, demoralized, and dismayed, but I am not upset.
If that is the case, why would you start the sentence with a 'so' suggesting you made a leap of logic, where nothing of the sort actually occured given that it is almost a complete non-sequitur.
I am open to a conversation, but I think, and please correct me as needed, that your political bias blinds you in ways that affect any and all discussions.
I took "disheartened" as "upset". Replace "upset" in my above reply with "disheartened".
I'm quite sure my reply evinced no political bias. I was saying that any administration could do this sort of thing at any time, and any SCOTUS could accept it when the administration does it. We can expect political animals to do this, so it's not surprising when they do it, but we can also expect the SCOTUS not to go there, and they didn't, so what exactly is disheartening? That politicians are so fallible?
Whereas I would think it disheartening only of the court actually used the secret evidence. But they didn't.
<< But they didn't.
We have their word for it, don't we. I am only half-jesting. If they saw that evidence, it entered their calculus whether they admit it or not, and that is assuming they didn't simply pull a Snowden ( one document for public consumption; one for IC ). Isn't it fun when you can't trust your own government?
But I digress.
<< I'm quite sure my reply evinced no political bias.
Hmm. It is possible that I jumped to conclusion myself. You opened your position with Biden, where he was not mentioned suggesting you have a political axe to grind. Biden is not a SCOTUS member. But I am willing to assume it was a mental shortcut.
<< I was saying that any administration could do this sort of thing at any time, and any SCOTUS could accept it when the administration does it.
I accept that.
<< Whereas I would think it disheartening only of the court actually used the secret evidence.
Hmm, I don't accept this. Even mentioning this as a thing undermines the existing system the same way parrallel construction undermines it. You might not see it as an issue, but I see water slowly chipping away at what was once a solid wall. And I see it, others can see it too.
By the given reasoning every official at the EU wonders why they ever allowed Google, Facebook or Twitter to exist.
This is balkanization.
They have been wondering about that for many years quite explicitly.
Yeah, I think WhatsApp in particular makes Facebook impossible to remove, but I fully expect X to get hit with a banhammer.
The bizarre episode with Elon this week really didn’t help given it appears his whims trump any sense of rules or basic decency.
The US has a lot of leverage on Europe, so I don't think it will happen any time soon.
The US forcing the EU to unban Twitter and Facebook would be the ultimate overreach needed to solidify the plutocracy American society has become.
Officials at the EU should first wonder why there is no European equivalent of Google, or Facebook, or Twitter, or Tiktok (the list could continue forever).
Even if it where, such a company would not find the same obstacles in entering the American market as in would in China.
My representatives represent me, my country, its citizens and its government. They specifically do NOT represent foreign entities.
The ban only has 32% support from the US public. This isn’t happening because the government is representing its citizens.
how many oppose the ban? hint: it is less than 32%.
what percentage of americans vote for a given president? hint: it is less than 32%.
Given the controversy over this, they clearly do not represent "the people". I think that's a big part of the issue.
Clearly, huh?
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/09/05/support-f...
Maybe they'll cite this ruling as part of a reconsideration?
An EU controlled app would be allowed in the US as none of them are foreign adversaries.
But the US is a foreign adversary of the EU who has ruined the EU economy in the last three years and wants to wrestle away Greenland.
Half joking, but the US performs corporate espionage in the EU and certainly takes compromising material on EU politicians whenever it can get it.
The slavish adherence from EU NPC politicians (they are mediocre and no one knows how they manage to rise) to US directives has to have some reasons. Being compromised is one of those.
EU governments also spy in the US. Any government that isn't spying on their enemies and allies both is incompetent.
The reason that the EU "adheres to US directives" is mostly just a legacy of WWII and the Cold War, you don't really have to posit any kind of nefarious espionage scheme to explain why European countries want to stay connected to the US economy and military.
> none of them are foreign adversaries
From the US side it may look like that, but the EU doesn’t see it that way.
Until we ban Denmark as an "adversary" because they won't just hand over Greenland. Or Mexico for setting tarrifs against us (because we declared tarrifs first).
Lovely precedent we just set here.
Yup I'd be ok with banning TikTok because all of the US web services that are banned China, but this makes it seem like every country should have their own everything
Exactly, Americans want to voice their opinions whenever a foreign country considers banning or regulating an American social media platform. It's a clear double standard. The U.S. government banning foreign companies is fine, but when a foreign country bans an American company, it’s called censorship or something like that?
People don't fully understand what is at risk of being lost here. Science, history, and technology tutorials, practical life skills like cooking, budgeting, mental health, chronic illness, trauma recovery, creative expression, small businesses, home repair, friend groups, communities, and many people who make their living on TikTok. Losing TikTok means losing a massive ecosystem and all of its connections, knowledge, and content. It's like a library of books vanishing, or a large city disappearing off of a map.
Popular sites come and go. It has admittedly been a few years since we had a big shakeup of where people go to doomscroll, but this is not a paradigm shift -- it is just a chance to see who picks up the slack. It is mildly interesting speculating on whether an existing site will absorb it or if something new will come along. And it is possible TikTok will just keep running. But either way, people gonna make content, people gonna consume content.
This is always the risk of building your castle on someone else's land (or cloud).
It's insulting to compare libraries to TikTok.
TikTok isn't going away and the content isn't going away. It's just not accessible in the US.
a lot of chronic illness sub communities are bad and would be good to lose, just like cryptic pregnancy fb etc - they trigger latent mental illness in people
For those not in the know, why is cryptic pregnancy tiktok bad?
I'd never heard of it, and from what I understand, it's a hashtag people use to share stories of how they found out they were pregnant late in the pregnancy because they didn't have pregnancy symptoms. But I don't understand why that would be bad for people to share/consume.
having trouble finding articles about this but there is a common associated mental illness https://www.nzherald.co.nz/lifestyle/women-who-claim-to-have...
at least in the facebook groups i have seen, this ^ describes the majority of participants
We have an archiving institution for stuff like that. Relying on a private business to maintain a catalogue is nonsense.
Is no one downloading the best content?
I download all my favorite YouTube videos because inevitably some disappear.
Not sure it's the best, but I've got 240K downloaded so far.
There are plenty of other places they can upload that content.
All of these points apply to YouTube, which has arguably higher quality content on all of those things.
We also risk losing so much utter nonsense and false information that I'm not at all worried. You want to learn history and science? Buy some (vetted) history and science books.
The number of times I had to correct my step-son when he repeated something he "learned" on TikTok is disturbing.
Unimportant example: He "learned" from a TikTok video that the commonly repeated command of "Open sesame!" is actually "Open says me!". That's not true, and all you have to do is read the story "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves" to know that the story actually hinges on the fact that the secret word is the name of a grain/plant.
Another example: He "learned" that the video game character, Mario, is not saying "It's a me, Mario!" with an Italian accent. He "learned" that he is actually saying some Japanese word, like "Itsumi Mario!".
One more: He "learned" that "scientists" now think that "we" originally put the T-Rex fossils together incorrectly and that the animal's arm bones are actually backwards, and should be reversed to reveal that the T-Rex actually had little chicken wings instead of small arms. Anybody who has seen how bone sockets fit together knows that's nonsense.
Forgetting the political theory and morality of the ban, I say good riddance to the constant firehose of bullshit and lying morons on that app.
And for every video of quality on the platform, there's one that's blatant political propaganda, one that's blatant conspiratorial misinformation, one that's sexualizing children, etc.
It's a mixed bag. It has no more to offer than any other social network. Less, some might argue, because of how easy it is to crosspost to the other video networks.
The only way this is different from the loss of other social networks, Vine most closely, is the government is shutting down the site and collapsing the ecosystem rather than private equity.
You honestly believe most of that hasn't already be re-uploaded to other platforms and more of it won't be re-uploaded over the next month?
Yes, I believe so. It's way easier to upload something on tiktok with captions, voiceovers etc than on YouTube. You can have real communities instead of random channels.
Nothing will be lost. It will be trivial to access this content, obviously. The internet has gotten extremely adept at routing around censorship.
No one is deleting data. You just can't run the app in the US anymore. If someone cares to archive this junk, they can just do it from Australia or wherever.
Why do you call it junk? Is everything on YouTube junk, because there are some really bad and fake prank jokes? Is everything on here junk, because some people don't have the best intentions?
Seriously, even in Germany the public opinion about tiktok is so much influenced by people not even having used the app even once (seen some of the good parts of it).
Meh. If it were worth archiving then someone would be trying to archive it. Nothing the US law is doing would prevent that, even from within the US. If you're really concerned, then start working with ByteDance or archive.org or whoever to actually preserve the data instead of whining that somehow it will be "lost" because you can't install the proprietary reader app from within the USA.
This is ban is only because US has no control over the content and organic anti Israel content was not censored like it was in all other us social platforms.
Wait, where's the Facebook/Meta ban? Is unlawful data collection only unlawful if it's done under a foreign adversary? I guess not to the US Government where their interests align with adversarial data collection practices against its own people.
Facebook / Meta are not controlled by a foreign adversary as designated by the "Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act". Thus they cannot become subject to the distribution restrictions designated by that law.
The core factor in the law is control by a foreign adversary, it's not a law that outlaws data collection.
I know, I was pointing out it's not really about data collection because we allow manipulative practices with our own people. We are our own worst enemy. Meaning government and corporations want that power over our people. They are protecting interests that run counter to the will of the people.
I support any ban on social media platforms because control of the public's data belongs in the hands of individuals.
60% of Bytedance is owned by outside of China investors. I fail to see how that makes it controlled by China.
The law does not care about who financially owns the company, only about designations of control made by the president (along with a 30 day notice).
The law actually skips this step for ByteDance / TikTok and directly adds them to the list of "Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications" along with the enactment of the law.
The argument is that China has a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_share in Bytedance; that despite only owning (on paper) 1% or whatever, they still have effective control over the whole company, if they so desire.
(I don't know if that's true, but it strikes me as plausible)
edit: you can make an analogy to e.g. Meta - Zuckerberg doesn't strictly own a majority, but he does have very strong control because of the particular corporate structure.
It's not about data collection, it's about being able to manipulate viewpoints based on that collection and access to people's eyeballs.
So what are the real dangers?
- Frying teenagers' brains with short attention deficit videos. That one seems logical, but others are doing it, too.
- Political indoctrination.
- Compromised politicians who can be blackmailed: The big one, but a certain island run by the daughter of a certain intelligence agency operative was largely ignored.
- Corporate espionage: Probably not happening on TikTok. Certainly happening in the EU using US products.
Look at what foreign adversaries are already actively doing: working to turn Americans against each other. Social media is the perfect tool to spread discord. Russia has troll farms that create fake news stories, manipulated photos, and incendiary memes targeted at both sides of the political spectrum. They've even orchestrated in-person protests and counter-protests to those protests, though those efforts have been less successful. Now imagine that instead of merely using fake user accounts to this end, an adversary controlled an entire social network, including its algorithm and its content guidelines and could tailor manipulative content on an individual basis.
funny many of us(Chinese) also believe that online disputes and the moral decay of teenagers are all part of a conspiracy by the US.
It's possible that we all wrong or we all right about it, or one of us are right
Or, equally as importantly, imagine if US oligarchs used to be doing that and can't as effectively anymore.
US Govt has a lot more limited say on what content is pushed or neutered.
Content relating to the genocide happening in Palestine for example, is much more restricted on US sites.
I can agree to an extent that TT (and social media in general) is an addictive app and harmful to youth and society in general. Spend enough time on these types of apps and suddenly your worldview is just whatever the TT algorithm pushes to you.
It’s not entirely unprecedented either. There was the case of FB and Myanmar/Burma which strongly promoted military propaganda. This unfortunately lead to violence against Rohingya.
But the argument is very weak in my opinion, and wouldn’t be a reason to outright ban it. Prohibition never works.
The only thing that does work is fixing our society. In the USA, we have increasing wage disparity, increasing homelessness, increasing poverty, food scarcity, water scarcity, worsening climate change related events (see Palisades fire…), and a shit ton of other issues that will remain unsolved for at least the next 4 years.
Yet leadership is doing almost nothing to address this. Neoclassical economics and neoliberalism have outright ruined this country. Fuck the culture war the billionaire class is trying to initiate.
> I can agree to an extent that TT (and social media in general) is an addictive app and harmful to youth and society in general.
You could say this about Fox News, scratch-off lottery tickets, Cocomelon, or anything you don't like.
Supreme Court only likes when data is stolen locally by good US-based corporations
It's hard not to see this as a continuation of the American corporate interests controlling the media their population consumes. TikTok I think has the largest share of American's attention out of all the social media?
Doesn't seem to matter which clown flaps about in the wind at the oval office, control of the narrative holds a steady keel for decades. This is the same story, in a new medium. Sure, as the "sides" in culture wars take turns "ruling", certain things are allowed or disallowed. The real consequential stuff, ideas and patterns that would lead to the empowerment of the working class vs hoarders of capital -- all the back to basic education, critical thinking, civic engagement, and the implicit/explicit deprioritization of any and all that in favour of obedient consumerism.
With the "new" tech they've discovered they can really shape people's opinions, tweak the emotional charge to make people act in such unconsidered ways, en masse, against each others' and their own best interest -- of course they'll hold on to that at any cost. It's unprecedented, though not unimagined.
I wonder what will fill this space. Over all the rises and falls of the various blinking nonsense, I've never really seen people go -back- to an app / service / etc. They all just wither away as the next new things comes up.
> It's hard not to see this as a continuation of the American corporate interests controlling the media their population consumes.
Do you find the natsec argument to be compelling considering:
> TikTok I think has the largest share of American's attention out of all the social media?
> Although Trump could choose to not enforce the law
Ah, clever to leave it up for bribes from ByteDance.
> The nation’s highest court said in the opinion that while “data collection and analysis is a common practice in this digital age,” the sheer size of TikTok and its “susceptibility to foreign adversary control, together with the vast swaths of sensitive data the platform collects” poses a national security concern
What is the point of these "rules and regulations" and "the nation's highest court" when the president could decide just not to enforce them?
>> What is the point of these "rules and regulations" and "the nation's highest court" when the president could decide just not to enforce them?
What is the point of freedom of speech and freedom of press when we can just shut down any apps not touting the mono-party lines?
people in the us finally found a real public square to talk, and it is being shut down against the spirit of everything the US purports to stand for.
> What is the point of freedom of speech and freedom of press when we can just shut down any apps not touting the mono-party lines?
I agree with you, and wouldn't agree with a TikTok ban either if it affected me.
But how does that change anything about what I wrote?
Where was this line of thinking when it was Obama ordering the DEA to not enforce marijuana laws? Where is this line of thinking when it's a city that chooses not to enforce dog breed restrictions?
The enforcement of law being separate from the passage of law is a key plank in a functioning democracy, it's one of the safety valves against tyranny.
I doubt those events made it to HN, and the questions are obviously from people outside the US who thought that 'Supreme' means 'Supreme'.
Trump has a history of accepting bribes. Past history with this is very relevant. Let me know if Cleveland mayor is accepting bribes for pitbulls.
While I find it entirely plausible that Trump's character is such that he might accept bribes I am aware of no credible evidence that he has ever done so.
The president is in charge of executing the law. It’s in our system of checks and balances. I’m choosing to speak at an extremely general level, of course, but that is the answer to your question.
Specifically, I think it's "take care that the laws be faithfully executed" (Art. II, §3).
Does that mean "If foreign companies don't like our laws, they can pay to have them adjusted"? Seems not very faithful, but I hardly understand that word anymore it feels like.
From your second line, the answer is mostly no. Why are you assuming otherwise? Who is paying what to who?
It means whatever SCOTUS decides it means, unless and until they decide otherwise.
So can Trump legally ignore this SCOTUS or not? :)
The president can just not enforce a law.
Why are they called laws then? :)
Does the US have a different definition for everything?
I mean, SCOTUS also decided nothing a sitting President does in their official capacity while in office can be considered a crime even if it breaks the law so yeah.
The logic behind such a ruling is nonsensical. Imagine if a president, in his/her official capacity, started murdering political rivals. In other countries, that's considered a dictatorship and should be stopped. But in America, that's completely legal according to SCOTUS. In fact, that was one of the questions asked by the justices!
Apparently, committing crimes with absolute immunity is a necessary part of the presidential office. Without such protections, they'd be afraid to do things like extrajudicial drone strikes (Obama) and internment camps (FDR). Oh, wait.
I hate to "Poe's Law" this tangent, but most people forget that Hitler's rise to power was also completely legal. Just change the constitution and get the judiciary to side with you, and you can do anything. It's terrifying.
> What is the point of these "rules and regulations" and "the nation's highest court" when the president could decide just not to enforce them?
Good question actually.
This is largely a non-starter, though? He can't choose to have it not be a law, he could choose to selectively enforce it. Where selective enforcement is assumed to be no enforcement from your post. But he could, as easily, use it to punish any company he doesn't like that is somehow in breach of it.
And this ultimately puts it in a place where you have to assume that it will be enforced against you. Right?
This isn't a new problem.
"John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it."
> Ah, clever to leave it up for bribes from ByteDance.
I agree. And the bribery already started when the Trump campaign found itself doing very well on engagement in TikTok. The CCP had already started the bribery before the election in a bid to maintain influence over the US while halting American influence in China.
The Biden administration I believe said they won't enforce the law starting Sunday, leaving it to the incoming administration to enforce. It'll be wildly popular for Trump to save TikTok, so I expect he'll do it without forcing a sale.
From what I've heard, not enforcing the ban doesn't really work. Apple/Google would be liable if the law does get enforced. So unless they've gone completely insane and want to give Trump a threat to wield over them for his whole term, they'll surely act as if it's being enforced. The term on the law is 5 years too, so even if they do have perfect trust in Trump never changing his mind, they have to worry about the next President deciding to enforce it too.
> Ah, clever to leave it up for bribes from ByteDance.
News story from yesterday, "TikTok CEO expected to attend Trump inauguration as ban looms":
* https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2025/...
Veering off-topic but I don't understand how there isn't wide-spread protests/riots right now in the US. Is the working/middle class just accepting all of this, even when it's apparent the government is being sold for quick cash?
They can't afford not to accept it, honestly. They need to work so they don't die.
"A 2023 survey conducted by Payroll.org highlighted that 78% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck" "71.93% of Americans Living Paycheck to Paycheck Have $2,000 or Less in Savings" https://www.forbes.com/advisor/banking/living-paycheck-to-pa...
Massive propaganda. Bannon has been brought in line and has fully recanted after his comments about Musk:
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/01/14/bannon-second-trump...
A couple of Trump forums focus on distractions like the California fires and delete comments about working class rights. The same forums that were full of workers' rights just until before the election.
Breitbart has nothing on immigration and displacement of US workers. It celebrates the (alleged, Trump claims a lot) phone call between Trump and Xi.
So unless the MAGA crowd goes to the capitol to protest against Trump this time, you won't hear anything anywhere.
they think they are going to get cheap eggs and bacon
Incredible stuff, really.
Somehow people shilling for Russia can operate unimpeded in this country.
Banning an app because of China's threat only makes you resemble China itself.
The sitting president of the United States of America was banned by almost every major AMERICAN company, and even some Canadian companies (Shopify), yet we're going after Tiktok.
No Chinese ever banned the sitting president of the United States.
Company banned user who fragrantly and continually violated TOS, regardless of who they were... the horror!
These are the tweets he was banned for:
> The 75,000,000 great American Patriots who voted for me, AMERICA FIRST, and MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, will have a GIANT VOICE long into the future. They will not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way, shape or form!!!
> To all of those who have asked, I will not be going to the Inauguration on January 20th.
Twitter said the first tweet "is being interpreted as further indication that President Trump does not plan to facilitate an 'orderly transition'" and the second is "being received by a number of his supporters as further confirmation that the election was not legitimate".
So they banned him because they wanted to not because of TOS violations. If you can interpret "I will not attend" as "It's illegitimate" you can interpret anything as anything and ban anyone for any TOS provision.
Good riddance.
The clock is still "tiking" for TikTok.
As usual, the digital crack / cocaine addicts of this generation are now running to Red note for their next fresh hit in less than 48 hours.
Nothing's changed. Just a new brand of digital crack / cocaine has overtaken another one who's supply is getting cut off by the US.
Although a fine would be better than an outright ban as I said before.
In a developed country, government would ensure its citizens receive top notch education so that they are able by themselves to understand that using a Chinese owned app is just as bad as using Facebook for instance and so these app would be dead, no one would use them.
Instead when you cut so hard on education that you get millions of flat earth believers, you got to protect them from their own behavior with law. But as far as I know, no law can prevent little Jimmy from putting crayons up his nose.
Blocking TikTok won't just make its user look for better privacy, or at least more independent alternative. They will use something else just as bad or worst.. little red book for instance.
Little red book is truly evil. Every Chinese woman I know uses it. It is truly brain rotting. The relationship advice that it promulgates is every bit as toxic as the stuff on TikTok and instagram
How's it worse for me, personally, to give up PII to Tik Tok as opposed to - well, all the US-owned equivalents.