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jchook | on: TikTok goes dark in the US
Unreal. Land of Freedom bans Social Media app that runs on US servers, on its own terms, with censorship teams staffed by dozens of ex-US State officials[1].

Amazing that Congress will see bipartisan action on this issue before any of the other much more important issues.

It absolutely destroys criticisms of China banning Facebook, etc.

1. https://www.mintpressnews.com/tiktok-chinese-trojan-horse-ru...

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_bin_ | parent | next
it's a trade war response to china's long history of walling non-chinese apps off from their billion-odd-user market while happily collecting users, data, and ad revenue from their own apps in other countries. if china removes all limitations on US tech platforms and ceases exploiting our open-by-default policy, we can talk lifting restrictions. until then, all chinese tech services should be banned.

basically china's entire tech industry was built on the back of creating an artificially constrained market where foreign competitors with superior products were not allowed to compete. that is, everything that wasn't built off outright theft of American tech. that could have been hundreds of billions of dollars of increased market cap and returns to the investing public, hundreds of billions that china effectively stole.

Stephen_0xFF | root | parent | next
In a way you have to hand it to China for this master play. Globalization really complicates economies. China became the world’s factory because it produced products for a fraction of the cost, but it didn’t let the West in to provide services and products built by white collar workers into their economy. It copied and made sure that the services and products were produced by Chinese budding middle class workers. Now you can argue they’re on even footing with the West. I agree with you. They caught up and the handicap should be removed. They want their cake and to eat it too.
whimsicalism | root | parent
in no way are they on an even footing with the US, their wealth is more similar to Mexico.

there is a US-sized subset of China that is close to an even footing with the US, yes

dehrmann | root | parent | next
Somewhere I heard that there would have been much less drama around the TikTok ban if the US had framed it as tit-for-tat punishment for not allowing US social media platforms in China.
jchook | root | parent | next
Going for a tit-for-tat with China on censorship is so hypocritical for the US it undermines its entire global persona.
t-3 | root | parent | next
Nobody outside NATO buys the whole "Mr Justice F. Eagle" shtick anyway though. People inside the US have been raised on anti-China for hundreds of years (yellow journalism never died) and are ready to accept anything to stop the "bad guys" from winning.
w0de0 | root | parent | next
Hundreds of years! A feat for a nation only 250 years old. Particularly considering the panic about Chinese immigration - the first real anti-China event in US history - dates to the latter half of the 1800s.

Also, the “yellow” in “yellow journalism” != the slur “yellow” as in “yellow peril.”

And finally, your conclusion - “[Americans] are ready to accept anything to stop the ‘bad guys’” - would still be a parochial ignorance, as well as ironically biased, even were it not so shakily premised.

jimkleiber | root | parent | next
Very few countries have any power to control external influence on a social media platform. They don't have much ability to create or distribute a local solution so they have to import one. So when you say those outside NATO don't buy the whole shtick, part of that is they don't have the luxury to do so. They almost have to import such things or just not have them.
t-3 | root | parent
People don't buy the shtick because they've been getting their resources stolen, their people bombed, and their governments couped over and over and over again, not because they don't have their own home-grown social media (pretty much everywhere does, it's just not as popular and doesn't make as much money). Pretty hard to believe in the pure heart and good intentions of Uncle Sam by looking at his behavior during the Cold War era or the unipolar moment (ie. within living memory).
jimkleiber | root | parent
I think it's actually harder to believe in bad intentions of people than good intentions. The former makes me miserable, the latter makes me grateful.

So yes, the US government has done a lot that has hurt other people, it has also done a lot that has helped other people. I think we choose whether we want to believe people care about us or don't. I choose to believe they do.

whimsicalism | root | parent
not really true, the china bad all-out propagandizing is actually pretty recent
TeaBrain | root | parent | next
What would be the offended principle that makes going tit-for-tat with China "hypocritical"?
surfaceofthesun | root | parent
I disagree with the hypocrisy argument. The US government tried to clamp down on Covid misinformation during a pandemic, with a declared emergency and there was pushback that was adjudicated by the Supreme Court [1].

The US does plenty of sketchy shit, but it has nothing on the surveillance state imposed by the CCP, nor is it empowered to suppress information in the same manner.

The CCP’s censorship is so heavy handed that others have tried to weaponize it, as discussed recently here:

Tokyo University Used "Tiananmen Square" Keyword to Block Chinese Admissions [2].

———

[1] - https://hms.harvard.edu/news/whats-stake-us-supreme-court-ca...

[2] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42355586

krainboltgreene | root | parent
I did a FIOA request on myself and got back data. I’m no one.

The US also spread COVID antivax information.

tzs | root | parent
Is there actually a ban on US social media platforms in China?

Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and others were operating in China, but when China imposed more and more censorship requirements on all social media platforms in China regardless of whether or not they were domestic or foreign and required all of them to turn over user details to the government many chose not to comply, and then China blocked them.

If a US social media platform were willing to implement China's censorship and disclosure requirements for its Chinese operations would they be able to go back? As far as I know we don't know because none of them have tried.

Note that TikTok as we know it is itself not available in China. The original app that became TikTok is in China, but when they wanted to expand to the rest of the world they split it into two companies and the apps diverged. Both companies are owned by ByteDance.

That's probably the approach a US social media company would need to take to try to get back into China.

whimsicalism | root | parent
China does not police foreign companies and domestic companies equally - it significantly puts its thumb on the scales to favor domestic competitors.

LinkedIn tried really hard to stay in, it simply is not sustainable.

abvdasker | root | parent | next
This is almost certainly true. What I find most offensive is the total unwillingness of elected politicians of both parties to admit that protectionism is the real reason for the ban. Our politicians believe we are stupid.
MIA_Alive | root | parent
just banning isn't a good idea. Chinese companies should be forced to give technology transfers.
9dev | root | parent
Now that was the entire point of this, remember? The offer was to sell to an American entity, or be banned. They didn’t want to sell, so here we are.
sidcool | parent | next
Wasn't the concern of data being siphoned off to China? Even India has banned it. Where does freedom come into picture here?
ascorbic | root | parent | next
What do you mean "even India" has banned it? India is notorious for its censorship and is rated near the bottom of the World Press Freedom Index. Being in that company is absolutely not something the US should aspire to.
sidcool | root | parent
That's not the point. It's in the interest of a country to not let it's data be sucked by a foreign government. And India took the bold but right decision early on.
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sillysaurusx | root | parent | next
I wouldn’t mind my data being siphoned off to China. It’s not even clear that if China had all of our data then it would meaningfully change world events.

Freedom means freedom from censorship. I can’t think of an equivalent event that’s happened in my lifetime in the US. "India did it too" isn’t exactly a strong rallying cry.

That said, we’ll live. Hopefully our blind trust that there were security concerns ends up being worth something.

jchook | root | parent
Arguably China has won the day with the massive migration to RedNote.
ffsm8 | root | parent | next
> massive migration

You're in a bubble if you think there is a massive migration happening to an unlocalized app .

sillysaurusx | root | parent | next
Not at all. There are hundreds of thousands of US users. Most of the content I see is localized and tailored for English. There’s even an auto translate feature. They’re very welcoming and nice, and encourage us to post. Most of them are just showing their houses and what it’s like to live in China.

It was a pleasant surprise. That said, I’m not too interested in endless house tours, so I’m going to see what kind of content there is when things settle down. That’s still a migration though, at least for me.

dkjaudyeqooe | root | parent | next
It's meant as a joke of sorts, not a migration. From the NYT:

"Sure, there are the people calling themselves “TikTok refugees” and joining Xiaohongshu, a Chinese social media app, as a half-joking protest of the U.S. government’s decision to ban TikTok on national security grounds. (The joke part is: OK, Congress, you want to stop us from using a sketchy Chinese social media app? We’ll download an even sketchier Chinese social media app and use that instead.)"

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/18/technology/what-if-no-one...

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/16/arts/tiktok-red-note-chin...

rayval | root | parent
What is impressive to me as a software developer is that the RedNote engineering team added a Translate item to the system, at scale, within a matter of days. It works flawlessly.
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matsemann | root | parent | next
I feel the same concerns for which US bans tiktok are valid for EU and fb/meta/x/twitter/google.

How do we know they're not siphoning our EU data to the US, or controlling what the algorithm shows us to influence politics?

jchook | root | parent
Was it? What was the real concern? And can you prove it?
imgabe | parent | next
China also bans TikTok. That should tell you everything you need to know about whether they believe it is a positive influence.
sschueller | root | parent
China also has a firewall, are we going to do that too? I guess that is one day to become communist, just copy them tit for tat...
imgabe | root | parent
Let’s say you and I are adversaries. Or maybe just competitors. I invite you for a meal. But I won’t eat the meal myself. I only want you to eat it.

Do you think that’s going to be good for you?

sschueller | root | parent | next
Basically how I feel as a European with the US sitting on the other side of the table.
imgabe | root | parent | next
What does the US offer Europe that they don’t use themselves?
paulgb | root | parent
WhatsApp :)

(Kidding aside, your point is very valid)

wildrhythms | root | parent
Why is the only solution to continue the competition rather than engage in mutual cooperation?
timeon | parent
> It absolutely destroys criticisms of China banning Facebook, etc.

What is that criticisms about? US and EU should ban that too.