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wilg | on: TikTok goes dark in the US
they didn't ban the app. they said china couldn't own it. but china would rather not sell it.

we don't let any foreign citizens work on missiles and stuff (ITAR), we shouldn't let adversarial countries own and control communications infrastructure

sterlind | parent | next
> they didn't ban the app. they said china couldn't own it. but china would rather not sell it.

this doesn't get enough attention. ByteDance could have easily partitioned off the US environment and made bank selling it. but the influence potential was too juicy for CCP to let ByteDance sell it. even if the CCP wasn't manipulating the algorithm to sway US public opinion - I don't know whether they were or not - having that option open was far too valuable to part with it.

and I think they were playing a game of chicken, honestly. they bargained for the US government being too dysfunctional - and TikTok too popular - for the ban to happen.

SilasX | root | parent
>this doesn't get enough attention. ByteDance could have easily partitioned off the US environment and made bank selling it. but the influence potential was too juicy for CCP to let ByteDance sell it.

I think that's kind of trivializing the position they were in. Would you take the same tone if it were an American startup that were forced to sell a big chunk of itself pre-IPO? Would you roll your eyes at them for "being greedy" at any indication of pushback against such a requirement?

I don't think the law is necessarily bad, considering the national security implications, but it's a cop-out to dismiss the burden of being forced to sell a major part of an enterprise as no big deal and the owner as just stubborn.

sterlind | root | parent
> Would you take the same tone if it were an American startup that were forced to sell a big chunk of itself pre-IPO? Would you roll your eyes at them for "being greedy" at any indication of pushback against such a requirement?

to be clear, I don't think ByteDance was greedy. I suspect ByteDance would have been happy to cash out. but it wasn't up to them, they needed approval from the CCP.

if a US social media startup somehow got extremely popular in China, I'd understand and even empathize with China requiring it be sold. they'd be right to mistrust us.

creato | root | parent | next
> if a US social media startup somehow got extremely popular in China

China avoided this problem by ensuring that never happened in the first place.

AnthonyMouse | root | parent
No, we've seen this happen before in China, where some US company becomes popular, e.g. millions of people in China have bought iPhones.

Then China requires the company's operations in China to be more than 50% owned by China. The TikTok thing is very much "what's good for the goose", but it's also the US acting more like China the authoritarian country.

portaouflop | root | parent | next
Apple China (if such a thing exists?) is owned >50% by the Chinese state?

I couldn’t figure out if that is actually true

AnthonyMouse | root | parent
China had a longstanding requirement that companies operating there under certain conditions had to have majority domestic ownership. It appears they've relaxed it somewhat in recent years and now I'm not sure if it applied to Apple China or not.

But the distinction is somewhat redundant with their government structure anyway. If they want to force you to do something there, how much does it matter if they say "you have to because we have majority control of this company" or "you have to because we have a one-party system and control the law"?

If the US government e.g. orders a US company to censor criticism of the US, the company can sue them and plausibly win. If you can't do the same in China, you don't control that company, they do.

creato | root | parent
> US social media startup
AnthonyMouse | root | parent
That also happened, e.g. YouTube (Google) operated in China prior to 2009, but Google US didn't much like censoring things on behalf of China.
SilasX | root | parent
The question was whether you would roll your eyes at the startup and have no sympathy for that startup because of the "big chunk of change" they could have gotten selling it.

You can both believe that the requirement is justified and that it comes at a big cost for the org that would have to sell. They aren't mutually exclusive.

hypeatei | parent | next
Yes, I know the law doesn't name TikTok/ByteDance specifically to be banned outright, that is just the effect.

> let adversarial countries own and control communications infrastructure

This is an exaggeration that a social media platform for short form content is communications infrastructure, akin to a cell tower or fiber optic line. I'd the say the same for your mention of ITAR in a thread about, again, a social media platform.

If we were serious, there would be regulations for all social media, not just forcing of U.S. ownership then saying "all good, this can't be bad since Americans own it"

stratocumulus0 | root | parent | next
At the same time, foreign companies are only allowed to operate in China through partnerships with Chinese companies. Why should we play fair if they don't?
tsimionescu | root | parent | next
By this logic, the US should start imprisoning people who aren't vocal enough about being anti-China, right? Why should the US play fair if China isn't?
ascorbic | root | parent | next
China is a totalitarian dictatorship with complete surveillance over the domestic internet. Not really comparable.
Lordarminius | root | parent | next
And you think America is not ?
chenster | root | parent
The difference is communists spying on Americans vs Americans spying on Americans.
wilg | root | parent
yeah and we don't want them having a surveillance tool over a huge part of our domestic internet
DiogenesKynikos | root | parent
That's not actually true. JV requirements are limited to a small (and constantly shrinking) number of economic sectors. Many, many large US companies own their own operations in China.
wilg | root | parent | next
it is not an exaggeration at all. it's a different layer of infrastructure, but it's still infrastructure. the mention of ITAR is an analogy, which I know you understand.

if "we were serious" about what? the issue of foreign control is not relevant to domestic companies. we could have some other regulations too, sure, but this one is reasonable.

hypeatei | root | parent | next
Serious, meaning we wouldn't play whack-a-mole and instead place rules on all of them then let the free market decide. I'll repeat, disclosures could be added for foreign controlled apps. I take issue with the fact that we're making a Chinese app the boogeyman but foreign influence campaigns can happen on any platform as seen in recent U.S. elections on Facebook et. al

I think people should be able to decide which social media apps they want to use. They're not even close to reaching the levels of the "infrastructure" box you're forcing them into to justify this decision.

wilg | root | parent
i dont want to argue about the definition of infrastructure. concretely, tiktok crosses the threshold of influence and risk where it is reasonable to require them to divest or close. no brainer.
leptons | root | parent
>it's a different layer of infrastructure, but it's still infrastructure.

TikTok isn't "infrastructure", TikTok is software. TikTok exploits the infrastructure of the internet across the world, it is not infrastructure itself. The servers TikTok runs on is technically "infrastrucutre", but those same servers could run anything else, the hardware is not "TikTok". I could run "TikTok" the software on any hardware, even if it isn't connected to the public internet, and that would not qualify it as "infrastructure", at least not in the sense that it's servicing any population.

yobid20 | root | parent
Actually they are specifically named in the law lol, i wasnt expecting that but it very clearly up front states it.
6P58r3MXJSLi | parent
> but china would rather not sell it.

why should China obey to an US request?

Of course they are against selling it, like the US government of course is against Google selling to the Chinese.

But that speaks volumes on the sad state of our democracies, they are so brittle that students protesting against the slaughter of Palestinian kids can trigger a cold war and the revanche of the authoritarian doctrines of a not so distant past.