It'd be better if Chinese companies could freely operate in the American market and American companies could freely operate in the Chinese market.

But China blocks American companies from their market, or extracts unfair concessions from them. So the US should do the same until they change their practices.

It's similar to how countries that want peace still need militaries -- that isn't a contradiction because militaries can help achieve peace. Similarly here, if you want free and open markets, you need to punish bad actors, like China, through things like sanctions.

The US does in fact do the same. It limits the high-level IP transfers so that China cannot develop and compete higher up in the technology chain. You think the fact that they manufacture the world's plastic crap and assemble iPhones is an enviable position?

The reason why we're stepping it up is because China has shown that they can domestically grow successful tech and social media companies that can penetrate the US market. It's not so much national security that's the issue more than it is insecurity in our fundamental beliefs that our system is inherently superior because they're now crossed the barrier higher up in the value chain. We gave them manufacturing just like we gave domestic immigrants the "dirty" jobs that no one wanted.

This is a minor issue in the TikTok war.

#1 is national security. #2 is trade, level playing field i.e. tit-for-tat policies.

Secondary issues are:

a) As you say, competitive fears - but TikTok is not a threat in that sense.

b) Trump's personal ambitions and elections. TT users apparently screwed up his GOP nomination event. Likely nothing at all to do with CCP, but Trump is an emotional guy, and I think this is 'him getting back at TT' on some level.

But #1 and #2 are legit and the first-order issues. There need be nothing else to legitimize this.

#1 can be used to justify anything. It also sets a dangerous precedent for other countries to start blocking / severely limiting US social media companies.

#2 Blocking apps used for the dissemination of information is a free-speech issue. China blocks information because that's what they believe in. US blocking information is fundamentally against our beliefs. If China jumped off a bridge would we do so as well?

#2 however is the true reason. We're getting insecure about our dominance in certain industries and are applying more "tit-for-tat" policies—even if they contradict our core beliefs.

If China wants to block US social media companies that should be perfectly fine. They get less domestic competition, and lower quality social media services should develop (in theory at least). We should welcome their competition despite this because competition breeds innovation and a healthy competitive landscape. However in reality we're resorting to tit-for-tat tactics because we're insecure about the fundamental superiority of a free and competitive market's ability to develop market-leading businesses and innovation.

> Blocking apps used for the dissemination of information is a free-speech issue.

I think there is an argument to be made that TT is not an open forum. The only party that speaks through the app is the Chinese government.

You have missed both points entirely.

You're assuming that there are 'free market' conditions here (i.e. competition) - there are not. Not even close.

'Free market' ideals such as 'competition and innovation' are not the issues here, because a) there is no 'free market' and b) we're talking about mass media, which is really not about 'innovation'.

#1 is a very legitimate issue. To control the mass media, is to control a nation, this is not a 'new world order' concept, it's as old as time.

The CCP maintains it's power in China due to it's control over the media, not the army. By suppressing any and all information against them, and controlling all of the messaging people hear, and of course limiting outside access, you can effectively control people.

Media is a protected industry everywhere. Tell me who owns the main media outlets in Sweden? Germany? UK? USA? They are almost universally domestically owned and operated - when they are not (Rupert Murdoch) even then it creates problems.

The very existence of the BBC, CBC (Canada), ABC (Australia) speaks to this.

Imagine if the CCP itself wanted to buy NBC News. Would we allow that? No.

It's not a lite argument to say 'security' can be used for anything, after all any excuse can be used to validate something.

#1 is real.

As far as #2 - you're crossing streams.

China has a completely 'unlevel' playing field vis-a-vis the US in many markets. CCP controls monetary policy, industrial policy, major banks and most major industry players. This is 'not allowed' in free trade, because it means the CCP will do things like 'require large banks to subsidize solar panel makers to produce surplus to dump on US markets and put US players out of business'. This is not a hypothetical - it happened.

China doesn't allow foreign competitors in so many markets: foreign entities must be 51% China owned. They must have CCP officials working at the company to force CCP oversight. They must censor information, provide data to the CCP. Foreign entities must hand over IP to the CCP so they can give it to competitive entities. China puts up all sorts of non-market barriers to competition.

So when we talk about 'number 2' - the US, in order to provide a 'fair trade' scenario, should effectively apply the very same policies.

So imagine:

1) Chinese companies cannot operate in the US unless 51% US ownership. 2) They must employ GOP/CIA/FBI internally in order to effectuate US strategic policy, censorship. 3) Chinese companies must hand over source code and IP, so the US can give it to local companies while the US 'holds up' Chinese competitor in red tape. 4) US government takes control of the Fed, major banks, and provides massive subsidies to Cisco, and subsidizes Ciscos sales internationally with extremely good financing terms. 5) US government uses industrial espionage to grab Chinese IP and invest in local companies, for example, stealing all Huawei's designs etc., copying them, and creating a company to compete with them etc..

Those would be 'tit for tat' policies implying 'fair trade' between the US and China.

Your comments about 'concerns over competitiveness' are actually way, way further down the pile of issues.

As I say, 'national security' is reason enough for the ban.

After that, there are a host of 'fair trade' issues that should be applied.

Only then does it even make sense to start worrying about the more strategic competitive issues, because until then there is no market based competition.

> #1 is a very legitimate issue. To control the mass media, is to control a nation, this is not a 'new world order' concept, it's as old as time.

And trying to control what media platforms are allowable... You sound like a communist Chinese official here.

Totally upside down.

Disallowing platforms that are controlled by totalitarian regimes like the CCP would be the rational result of any reasonable data protection policy like a 'slightly better GDPR' for example.

Protecting people's interests and basic national interests is not what the CCP is doing.

> But China blocks American companies from their market, or extracts unfair concessions from them. So the US should do the same until they change their practices.

Maybe that is true. I'm not sure. But if this is the real reason and national security is a fig leaf, then it is contrary to the rule of law and the constitution.

> But China blocks American companies from their market, or extracts unfair concessions from them.

This is largely untrue. First, American companies have a far larger market presence in China than vice versa. Second, American companies have made massive returns on investment in China. They're in China because it's profitable for them.

There's a view that developing countries should immediately open their markets to complete, 100% unfettered access by all foreign companies. That might be great for foreign companies, but it would be terrible development policy. The host country would risk destroying any domestic industry it has. Developing countries benefit from some level of protectionism. There's nothing unfair about that - advanced companies from developed countries have enough of an advantage that they can still compete. Asking for 100% market opening on day 1 is like asking to eliminate weight classes in boxing in the name of fairness. That would be great for the heavyweights, but not so much for the featherweights.

> But China blocks American companies from their market, or extracts unfair concessions from them.

Then this is a case for WTO, which was successfully used in the past to resolve those kind of issues.

> But China blocks American companies from their market, or extracts unfair concessions from them. So the US should do the same until they change their practices.

This needs a little more motivation. 19th-century China (and indeed, early 20th-century China) systematically broke the feet of all upper-class women, preventing them from ever being able to walk normally. But I don't think the primary reason we don't do that is that China stopped doing it.

The US is a democratic government with the rule of law, as seen in this very example with a judge blocking the order.

The US tries to keep up the outward appearance of that, but underneath it is or is quickly becoming a fascist police-state oligarchy.

It seems that the US has the rule of law only in cases where the rule of law is not in conflict with the military dictatorship.

In the cases where the military dictatorship wants to jail a journalist (Assange) or has some protesters for a photo op, law no longer rules and instead the military just does what it wants without consequences.

I have seen very democratic arrests going on as well, pity that the person getting arrested can't testify any longer.

Nevertheless, attempts to censor media should be concerning, no?

Seems like the judge is agreeing with your parent poster.

Note there is a difference between saying one thinks TikTok is a national security threat to the USA, and saying one thinks the U.S. government should ban it (or so on). It's tempting to base your opinion of whether TikTok is a threat on how much you (dis)like authoritarian responses, but that's a logical fallacy.

That's fair.

Imagine, for example, an extremely convincing book is authored that convinces anyone that reads it that the United States government should disolve itself and its citizens should pledge fealty to China.

Quite credibly, the book could be described a national security threat to the US.

However, I would still argue that the book should not be banned, and that any country that wants to honestly describe itself as "free" could not ban the book.

Being a free country means giving citizens the right to engage with ideas that might not be aligned w/ the interests of its government.

I don't think a social network is like a book. It's more like the postal system. TikTok is not saying anything themselves. They are transmitting communications that other people are saying to each other (in the form of short videos).

Their algorithm is their speech.

If users had to address their videos to each other and they were delivered FIFO without priority, I would agree that they would be neutral.

But TikTok (and all social networks) are using algorithms to promote some content and demote others. This algorithm is an extremely powerful voice.

In 2016-2018, everyone was concerned about foreign countries influencing the election by running bots/ads on Facebook. Following the election, there were many policies put into place to try to prevent this bad behavior [1]. Fast forward to 2020 and there is documented proof of a foreign country controlling a social media algorithm and we aren't concerned?

[1] https://about.fb.com/news/2018/12/inside-feed-coordinated-in...

I think the it's a bit different to compare the medium of a book. It's a one directional medium with ideas. In America, we treasure speech and don't fear ideas.

But in a two directional medium, that allows an entity to soak up information .. well that's already a problem in the US. Europe saw it as so much of an issue they implemented GDPR (for better or worse) and California has similar legislation.

Information is way different, and we've already seen cases where TikTok has been caught reading clipboards (could just be to scan for tiktok links, but it could have also been harvesting additional data).

The US does not allow certain things to be imported/exported to other nations. We've seen that for decades with Cuba and various other embargo. If you get a book from an embargoed country, it's not illegal to have to distribute it (granted it doesn't contain illegal/obscene content). The Federal government can legislate foreign commerce.

It's magical thinking to believe that there could be a book that convinces people of something despite being wrong.

People cannot be convinced of things by reading a book if that book is factually incorrect? That sounds like magical thinking.

Yes, that's why he said "imagine".

> Note there is a difference between saying one thinks TikTok is a national security threat to the USA, and saying one thinks the U.S. government should ban it (or so on).

In this case, I'm not convinced there is - the nature of the alleged national security threat is very different from security threats in the past.

From recent actions in Hong Kong, it has been evident that the CCP will arrest and imprison people for criticising the CCP. If the suspicion is that the app gives the CCP access to vast amounts of information (including people's political views via their posts) on individual members of the public, including on the Chinese diaspora (placing relatives at risk in China or they themselves if they visit them) that is a different category of "national security threat". It's not just that it makes political or military strategy harder, or even that it foments domestic dissent (foreign propaganda of the past). The allegation is it directly puts civilians in jeopardy.

If the conclusion is that the app is such a threat (puts civilians in jeopardy to a foreign government), it would be odd to support its presence in app stores, used in playgrounds, etc.

That's really far fetched though. Consider this: the CIA kidnaps and tortures people. They can look at Facebook activity. Therefore, all countries should ban Facebook because it might lead to their citizens being kidnapped and tortured by the CIA. That's equally far fetched and I don't think anybody is seriously arguing for it.

> Consider this: the CIA kidnaps and tortures people

You're clearly a lot more invested in this than I am. I'm not aware of any CIA kidnappings; I am aware of news headlines on HK media executives being arrested and am aware that the Chinese government is heavily invested in monitoring the views its diaspora express in a way that the US government isn't. (If an American called Trump a goose, they'd probably get upvotes. If someone called the Chinese leader something they might have more problems.)

Knowledge gaps can be filled: https://www.ecchr.eu/en/publication/cia-extraordinary-rendit...

Yes, the quantity is different, the quality I'm not sure about. Are Chinese internment camps worse than Gitmo or Abu Ghraib?

The Chinese have apparently kidnapped people off the street as well, but not in Western states to my knowledge. That's different with the US, though maybe they haven't kidnapped anyone in China or Russia.

China censors the Internet to prevent public information from getting in.

The US Government is attempting to restrict the activities of certain Chinese companies to prevent private information from getting out.

>The US Government is attempting to restrict the activities of certain Chinese companies to prevent private information from getting out.

OK so one country... mildly contained. Now finish the job and do the other 193 countries.

Indeed and Europe should do the same against US ones.

In fact we should start a movement to migrate away from any US based OS or programming languages, cleaning our IT stack from foreign interference.

It’s possible that the United States will resemble China once its population reaches a comparable size. China may simply the next evolution of what the US will become, and if it happens slowly enough, no one will do anything about it. Conway’s Game of Life on the scale of a nation state, where the US is currently in late-stage capitalism.

Late-stage capitalism, per Wikipedia:

> Since 2016, the term has been used in the United States and Canada to refer to perceived absurdities, contradictions, crises, injustices, and inequality created by modern business development.

Sounds just like this TikTok fiasco.

China banning US apps and US banning China apps are for mostly separate reasons.

At very least consider China bans foreign apps because they won't help the CCP oppress their own citizens, which is obviously not the case in the US.

The situations are not equivalent at all. China blocks outside social networks so that it can control its citizens' access to information either internal or external.

What is even more concerning is that the ban seems to be widely supported even though it is used for something obviously corrupt: The forced fire sale to Oracle with its personal connections to mr. Trump and the setting up of the 5B "education fund".

Really third world country stuff where extreme nationalism is used hide crony capitalism.

I can understand this attitude in the general public but it’s completely bizarre from HN engineers. Expect more more optimism for FBI/NSA backdoors in encryption next.

It's only bizarre if you consider ByteDance as some plucky startup that is being repressed by USA. If you consider it to be under the thumb of the Chinese state then blocking it seems to be the best action to preserve free speech.

Will TikTok remove Chinese propaganda on their platform, how would that conversation even go at their offices? Can we trust that TikTok will not in future censor things that China finds uncomfortable such as Taiwan being an independent country?

Just a few months ago HN was getting exercised about the rights of Hong Kongers. I'd say it is wholly consistent with the political beliefs of the average HNer to want to see a social network operating from within an autocratic state to be banned from operating, or at least under heavy scrutiny.

And would it be equally “pro free speech” if the US went down the road of preventing we citizens from accessing propaganda websites affiliated with the CCP?

And ban “bad” propaganda movies and media from the CCP?

And ban direct conversation with known “bad actors” in the CCP?

This sounds like a really slippery slope to me.

Is this a hypothetical? I don't believe you've tried TikTok if you think scrolls are filled with Chinese propaganda.

Plenty of western companies have been forced to apologize for listing Taiwan as a country. China recently passed a law in Hong Kong that makes criticism of the regime a crime world wide. There's also the whole overwatch debacle.

China does not care about free speech, nor does it pretend to. Allowing a popular forum for speech to operate out of China is dangerous.

The CCP is waging ideological warfare on Western liberalism. And they’re the aggressor. Blocking a medium for them to wage it isn’t hypocrisy.

I have not read detailed reports, but just HN commentary and the reddit post that revealed the amount of data collected from phones.

Trump's narcissism notwithstanding, the natsec issue with these apps isn't that US citizens are communicating with others, including foreigners. It is that they are installing what may very well be Chinese government spyware on their phones, with detailed tracking and keylogging.

FWIW it would be interesting to keep an eye on what kind of permissions and access some of these PC gaming platforms have to peoples' workstations, as well.

Yes, that is another argument made against TikTok, separate from the argument I was responding to.

But it's also worth addressing.

As near as I can tell, it is unfounded; there is almost no evidence to support it. The one potentially shady thing I know of that TikTok got caught doing was checking the clipboard every second, which it no longer does. TikTok's explanation is that it was an anti-spam feature. I know of no network analysis showing they were sending back the clipboard contents, or that they are sending anything other than normal analytics.

(Also, as an aside & for what it's worth, I personally think the data collection of Facebook is far worse than anything alleged against TikTok. They require you to provide your real name, they encourage you to give tons of other personal info, & they use trackers to tie your fb profile to your browsing history on non facebook websites. Then they sell targeted access to this profile to any advertiser that cares to pay, as their primary business model.)

(As a second aside, if TikTok is somehow gaining access to more personal info than standard analytics stuff, I would view that, for iOS devices at least, as a security flaw. I'm not that familiar with Android, but I assume the same applies there.)

Lastly, if TikTok is doing something nefarious, the proper way to handle it in a country ruled by laws is to have laws against the nefarious activity and prosecute the company for violation of said laws.

The president waking up one day and declaring TikTok bad and banning it is ridiculous, authoritarian behavior.

IMO :-)

Tik Tok itself isn’t the issue. The threat is a threat from the CCP. CCP has shown they are willing to use data from Chinese assets to coerce individuals around the world.

This is the same reason why Europe should be also wary from both CCP and US administration.

> Now that the US is itself considering doing the same, many in the west have suddenly adopted the attitude that China had it right all along.

PRC blocks applications which are critical of the regime and are not openly sharing data with the CCP[1]. The US is blocking applications due to legitimate concerns[2]. I don't know how both can be the same.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_websites_blocked_in_ma...

2. https://citizenlab.ca/2020/05/we-chat-they-watch/

It's not very surprising.

It is a reasonable assumption that the CCP, which has expressed ideological opposition to the spread of democracy, will not be using information it gathers on US or European citizens in order to defend or promote democratic rights and freedoms globally. It's a reasonable assumption that western governments, who do have an ideological intention of spreading democracy and western-style freedoms, probably would want to promote individual rights and freedoms (and that is why China was wary of them).

How you see a stick depends on whether you think the person holding it will brandish it for or against you.

>will not be using information it gathers on US or European citizens in order to defend or promote democratic rights and freedoms globally.

And when was America doing this? I seem to recall the last 15 years as being full of America attacking and occupying foreign nations to claim resources.

I really don't think it had much to do with whether they had access to Facebook...

This seems to be getting caught up in general "pro-US"/"anti-US" or "pro-China"/"anti-China" sentiments on the forum. To be honest, I'm not interested in that or getting into general political discussions, though the question of how the tech environment will evolve around the world is very interesting to most of us that read this forum. Someone claimed it was "surprising" that Americans would support their companies operating overseas but oppose alleged data gathering by allegedly foreign-government-linked corporations. I expressed that I'm not surprised by that at all. That matches up pretty well with how I imagine the American public reacting.

Likewise I do think the nature of this allegation is different to national security allegations in the past. So far as I recall, this is the first time a national security risk allegation has been about mass data collection on civilians from the regular operation of an app. Cambridge Analytica is perhaps the closest equivalent, and that got shut down pretty quickly even though it was a company run in another western country.

I'm way more afraid of the US Government than the CCP. They're actually relevant to my life, beyond a vague "politics affects us all" kind of way.

I'm more afraid of the guy holding a stick over my head than the guy a mile away, no matter what that dude is up to.

Good news is that under the current administration the usa has heavily reduced it's foreign presence

The problem with an autocracy is that they will not cease until any threat to their existence can be stamped out or controlled. Nations continued to hope Nazi Germany would just stop its expansion and placate Hitler until it was clear he had no intention of stopping.

Last week it was discovered that an additional half a million Tibetans [1] were sent to join the Uighurs in labor camps. When do the democracies of the world say enough is enough? These are vast numbers of human lives being cast into the inferno because they aren't Han Chinese.

[1] https://www.smh.com.au/world/asia/china-forces-500-000-tibet...

China hasn't fought a foreign war since 1979. I don't see the aggressive expansion you're claiming.

China has subsumed Tibet wholly and condemned its people to reeducation and labor camps. If this doesn't sound like lebensraum I don't know what to tell you.

Predatory loans on ports in Africa and their subsequent control by the CCP are by proxy tools of dominion.

China marched into Tibet in 1950, immediately after the founding of the PRC. It was part of the Qing dynasty, and the Republic of China also considered Tibet to be part of China. It's hyperbolic to say that China is expansionist because 70 years ago, it invaded a territory that every successive Chinese government for hundreds of years has controlled or claimed.

That sounds exactly like lebensraum, which if you're not familiar was an effort to create a "Greater Germany" through the annexation of ethnically German neighbors.

There are more than a million people whose only crime was they were not Han Chinese who have been sent to camps. It is an ethical imperative to make a stand.

Lebensraum was not about annexing ethnically German neighbors. Lebensraum was about the "German race" needing space to thrive and, being superior, having a moral right and "biological necessity" to conquer that space and wipe out the "inferior races" currently inhabiting it.

You are correct; lebensraum did go hand-in-hand with Hitler's Grossdeutschland. I argue that the Anschluss (the annexation of Austria) was in Hitler's eyes a test of pavement for lebensraum: for an even greater Germany. China's reconstitution of half a century old territories is evidence of this same desire.

>The problem with an autocracy is that they will not cease until any threat to their existence can be stamped out or controlled

Yes, I already said I was afraid of the US Government.

The US government is a democracy. Please give peer-reviewed evidence it is not: I know US citizens are entitled to vote in an election.

Define Democracy. If simply having a system of elections is enough, then China is also a Democracy. On the other hand, if you define a Democracy as a nation where every nation has an equal vote, then the US definitely is not a Democracy.