The EU banned Russia Today (correctly in my opinion) and that was nothing compared to TikTok. Propaganda isn't free speech.
Unfortunately, our Supreme Court unanimously disagrees with me about what our Constitution requires.
If it was just about content then yes, it'd be unconstitutional.
But security/trade concerns about a geopolitical opponent are not the same thing, have never been the same thing, and it would be crazy to treat them as the same thing.
Not to mention that as a trade issue, China already bans basically all the popular American social media sites, and just a ton of popular US sites in general. Turnabout is entirely fair play and expected when it comes to trade.
I don’t see where that’s in the constitution.
https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2019/05/16/1...
We don't allow own telephone system to be foreign owned, and those laws have been around for 90 years, and nobody is crying about free speech over that.
We take the global world for granted, but it is made up of sovereign states many of them have their own constitution.
If platforms can do censorship, so can the government.
The US sees China as an existential threat and TikTok is one of its key weapons. Tiktok is getting banned for the same reason Cuba can't have nukes. It's a national security concern.
I don't endorse it. But I understand it.
America blundered in the 80s by allowing technology transfer to then and still hostile foreign power. It has woken up to its stupidity 45 years too late. But better late than never.
It's not fair.....but love and war Yada yada.
Really this is about not allowing China to do things and then not retaliating in kind. This is what China does to American companies and so no American company can really survive long term in China. It creates an imbalance and will eventually lead to China’s complete domination in most key industries. America is finally catching on.
This is a reductive and misleading analysis. The US has already prohibited foreign entities from holding broadcast/common carrier licenses, or from owning significant chunks of equity in holders of those licenses [1]. It should be kind of obvious why a country would not want their biggest media providers to be foreign-owned.
You could argue that if the US wants to update the 1934 telecommunications act for the 21st century, it should do so more thoughtfully and comprehensively (I would agree). But the TikTok ban, however poorly written or haphazardly targeted, is fairly in line with a legal doctrine that has been commonly known and accepted for 90 years.
[1]: https://www.fcc.gov/general/foreign-ownership-rules-and-poli...
But you don't need a license to put something on the internet. And Americans don't want everything on the Internet to be regulated and censored the way TV and radio are.
It IS wrong for them to determine what we can and can't be influenced by. By saying bad countries "influencing" us is bad for democracy, they are saying democracy isn't really up to us, the voters, it's up to them. And I'll never accept that.
Whether you _should_ need a license to distribute a media app in the US under certain conditions, and whether “Americans” (which ones?) really do want no limits on who controls their media, is the correct debate to be having. The person I was responding to believed the issue to be “US demands local ownership of TikTok just because it's successful and valuable” which is clearly wrong.
And yet many countries have no objection with letting their citizens use US FAANG services?
It’s not always a slippery slope. And China's use of soft power via strict governmental control of its corporations isn’t an imaginary boogeyman.
> (d) The Secretary of Commerce shall evaluate on a continuing basis trans- actions involving connected software applications that may pose an undue risk of sabotage or subversion of the design, integrity, manufacturing, produc- tion, distribution, installation, operation, or maintenance of information and communications technology or services in the United States; pose an undue risk of catastrophic effects on the security or resiliency of the critical infra- structure or digital economy of the United States; or otherwise pose an unacceptable risk to the national security of the United States or the security and safety of United States persons. Based on the evaluation, the Secretary of Commerce shall take appropriate action in accordance with Executive Order 13873 and its implementing regulations.
That is not the reason at all. I highly doubt if it was made in Europe, it would be banned.
China would never allow a TikTok equivalent to operate in China, which is smart. We should do the same.
That’s a thoroughly disingenuous spin on the reasoning.
There is no movement to prevent foreign companies from having popular apps in general. The law is narrowly targeted. TikTok could continue to be foreign-held as long as they separated from the government of a specific foreign country.
I’m amazed at how many commenters are twisting themselves into pretzels to try to make this some generic imperialist move or use whataboutism to downplay the reasoning behind this move.
A decade ago it was common knowledge on the internet that China heavily controlled and shaped internet discourse within their reach, to push government agendas in an extreme way. There is no parallel to their cultural control in the US. Did everyone suddenly forget this, or are they just ignoring it for the sake of argument?
Whether you agree with the move or not, the storylines being pushed in hundreds of comments here don’t even reflect the reality of the law, let alone the reasoning behind it.
It’s also ironic to read all of the commenters that don’t realize that China already controls social media use within their own country to a degree far more strict than this. The amount of control that China exerts over everything from Facebook to Google within their country was a well known topic for years online. Here on HN people were disgusted that FB and others were giving in to government censorship in those countries. Now it all seems to be forgotten? It’s weird to me to see all of the narratives in this comment section being built on top of imagined realities with no regard for how other countries have been operating for decades.
Look at Germany and Europe in general , they pay money to arm their aggressive neighbor, still not able to shield themselves from China. And asking US to protect Europe .
I don’t think Europe , giving the situation is in position to suggest about national interest protection. It’s like drug addict talk about healthy lifestyle
To protect Europe from who...
Let's look at where we are with cold eyes (I'm European). Russian direct energy supplies to the EU have been cut, raising energy costs, all EU industries are affected, making it more difficult to compete with China and the US. Energy, which now comes also in part through expensive ships from the US, whom -surprise- is now able to threat to cut it off, increasing influence over EU politics, energy that it is now also paid with dollar currency, at the same time EU economic resources -that should be used for the internal development- are being asked to be diverged to buy US weapons through NATO.
So I would suggest to avoid the "US saving heroes" discourse. The reality sounds more like the US elite has benefited from the war (a big industry for them), so much that should be included within the suspicious list.
What pockets planned and backed up the Maidan rise that removed the Kremlin's puppet from power? Who aimed and intended such country to join NATO along years before this event?
Because can be guessed this aimed the psychopathic Putin to increase the violence of his mafia things, maybe someones expected this violence in invasion form, or another form that would drag Europe into the same position it is in now.
> Still not able to shield themselves from China
It would be interesting to read how one country has protected itself from China's dumping, among other things, considering the massive industrial companies and seaports the Chinese government already bought around the world, including the US.
So the EU should have been more careful not to be too dependent on Russia? Maybe Germany should have avoided shutting down their nuclear reactors.
The idea that US should cut of our allies in Europe is stupid and insane but at the same time Europe made a lot of mistakes that it should learn from
> What pockets planned and backed up the Maidan rise that removed the Kremlin's puppet from power? Who aimed and intended such country to join NATO along years before this event?
No "one" planned it. It was a spontaneous grassroots movement that blew up when the authoritarian president tried to violently crack down on it.
https://snyder.substack.com/p/ukraines-maidan-revolution
> The consolation prize Yanukovych dangled before a liberal intelligentsia that hated him was the distant prospect of European integration. For a young generation in particular, “Europe” was the object of the greatest desire. In November 2013 Ukraine was expected to sign a long-anticipated association agreement with the European Union. At the eleventh hour, on 21 November 2013, Yanukovych refused.
> The disappointment was especially crushing for students, who felt as if their future had vanished; Europe would be closed to them. That evening a thirty-two-year-old Ukrainian journalist from Kabul named Mustafa Nayyem wrote in Russian on his Facebook page: “Come on, let’s get serious. Who is ready to go out to the Maidan by midnight tonight? ‘Likes’ don’t count.”
> That night Ukrainians—overwhelming students—came to the Maidan—and stayed. They held hands and shouted, “Ukraine is Europe!” At 4 am on 30 November 2013 Yanukovych sent his riot police to the Maidan to beat the students. The violence against peaceful protestors was a shock. Yanukovych, it seems, was counting on the shock to shake parents into pulling their kids off the streets. That was when something remarkable happened: instead of pulling their kids off the streets, the parents joined them there. It was a historic Aufhebung of Oedipal rebellion. Now there were close to a million people on the streets of Kyiv, and they were shouting, “We will not permit you to beat our children!”
Imperialism is a part of life-- whether it's mold in a petri dish, prides of lions or chimpanzees raiding neighbors.
We live in the wild where strength conquers. It's just that we forget that when we're insulated from reality by convenience, comfort, concrete, and naivete.
No one should be ashamed for conquering or for exercising their own strength to their own benefit. Only those unable to do so are the ones to complain. And the complaints are futile-- Resource Competition is a fact of life and it is not going away.