If Facebook, Google, Twitter, et al are not allowed to operate in China, I see no reason why we should allow chinese social media companies to operate here. It would give Chinese companies a huge competitive advantage if they were the only ones allowed to operate in both markets. It's roughly equivalent to China enacting a 100% tariff on American goods, and the US continuing to buy Chinese goods with no tariff at all.

> If Facebook, Google, Twitter, et al are not allowed to operate in China, I see no reason why we should allow chinese social media companies to operate here.

I think the Great Firewall is bad in China and would also be bad in the US. If you want to make this about actual business presence, financial transactions, etc. that would fall under trade, then sure. But how are you suggesting to "ban" a Chinese website or app, other than erecting our own Great Firewall? And would you suggest using that firewall to ban all requests from China? Or just "social media" requests?

Thank you for bringing the Great Firewall into the discussion, because it is pretty important that we have that context. I think this is actually a lot more relevant to the conversation than any notion of seeking to negate a competitive advantage.

Recently, it occurred to me that the Great Firewall could be more of a tool for foreign policy, not domestic policy. If China for instance wanted to attack US's critical infrastructure, they could do so without damaging their own. Russia has recently employed such a system for their country's internet services, if I recall correctly.

It may very well be that this is what is motivating the TikTok madness here in the US. Left to their own devices, perhaps the fear is that China will weaponize TikTok against its US users, with no way to "great firewall" ourselves from those outcomes. Since we cannot use this strategy without angering the rest of the world on the "open internet" we have to resort to different measures.

There was an argument that TikTok was already weaponized for the election. The suppression of voices that are against the CCP or in the case of the US TikTok could upplay or downplay voices that it wanted heard. I.e. meddling in foreign elections.

In what way? I went through a TikTok phase a few months ago. The most salient thing I noticed was the total absence of political content, relative to Facebook/Twitter.

A trade ban would be enough to dissuade them from operating in the USA. It would basically be equivalent to a narrow trade sanction w/ a tariff or tax for any leaks.

If we really want to be part of a modern world with freedom of access to information, there needs to be some way for people in the United States to communicate with people in China. If US social media companies are banned in China, that means the US needs to allow Chinese social media companies to operate in the US.

Completely removing all the ways for less-tech-savvy people in the US and China to communicate feels like setting the US back to before the global internet. It's not protecting US interests, it's breaking apart friends and families who have no other way set up to stay in contact.

> If US social media companies are banned in China, that means the US needs to allow Chinese social media companies to operate in the US.

Actually lol'd at this. "If they're not willing to play fair, then _we_ must play fair."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

Isn't "If they're not willing to play fair, then _we_ must play fair" the core of of US philosophy? It certainly seems to be the standard imposed on US civil rights leaders and the central message of the big speeches in superhero movies.

I'm not sure I completely understand your point, sorry.

I'm saying that it makes no sense to lose on purpose just to say you "played fair".

The United States likes to say (or at least pretend) that it is a moral society, that it is through staying true to moral standards of truth and justice that the US will ultimately prevail, and that if the US fails to uphold those moral standards than the enemy has already won. US pop culture heroes (from X-Men to courtroom dramas and everything in between) constantly espouses this perspective.

From that perspective, the most important thing the US can do is keep an open communication channel with people in China so that they can ultimately see the error of their ways and come around to a US way of thinking, and cutting off communication with people in China is making the US more like China. It may be a self-righteous, egotistical, or even completely delusional way of looking at things, but the officially stated goals of US foreign policy frequently are.

I think the real underlying principle behind the United States is that the US says one thing and does another. Believing that the US has principles, etc. instead of just realpolitik in 2020 is naive. You have access to the all the information in the world.

The burden for allowing contact between the US and China fall on both countries. If China wants to ban all social media companies from the US, it's only fair for the US to do the same.

I’ll be honest, I don’t use tiktok. Do you know if that’s actually the case? Is US made tictok content available in China?

Phones work. Email works.

I think messenger apps work as well.

For one, I don’t think we should strive to be more like China. Second if we are going to ban TikTok at least make up some law they are breaking. For all it’s issues, at least there are laws the Chinese can point to for banning Facebook and google. And there are also remedies they can point to to return to China.

Because we don’t have a policy of censorship as a geopolitical economic tool?

So this isn't about the data/privacy at all? You just don't want Chinese companies operating here, because "they did it first"?

Something to be said about an eye-for-an-eye leaving the whole world blind.

then it should be argued as a trade problem, and with conditions laid on table, instead of a trade problem disguised as a security and privacy problem where its implied to be nonnegotiable.

> If Facebook, Google, Twitter, et al are not allowed to operate in China

Isn't that because they refuse to ( or are not allowed to ) follow the rules/laws in china?

> I see no reason why we should allow chinese social media companies to operate here

But doesn't tik tok abide by our rules here?

> It would give Chinese companies a huge competitive advantage if they were the only ones allowed to operate in both markets.

They already have a huge advantage as their market is much larger than ours and will only continue to grow.

> It's roughly equivalent to China enacting a 100% tariff on American goods, and the US continuing to buy Chinese goods with no tariff at all.

No. It would be like facebook not having to abide by chinese laws while tik tok has to abide by american laws.

Essentially what you are saying is our companies should be able to do whatever they want, wherever they want. Don't think that's going to work out too well over the long run.

Chinese regulations are designed to ensure that the domestic Chinese market is dominated by Chinese-owned companies. Whether or not Facebook can follow Chinese law is irrelevant; if they could successfully compete, the rules would change to ensure that they don't.

The US, on the other hand, at least pretends to have rule-of-law that preempts attempts to use government power to determine economic winners and losers.

> Chinese regulations are designed to ensure that the domestic Chinese market is dominated by Chinese-owned companies.

All regulations around the world are designed that way. All markets are national security issues and all major powers protect their own turf. China isn't special just because you have something against them. From britain to japan to korea to india to mexico and even canada, they all cater their laws/regulations to protect their own companies.

> Whether or not Facebook can follow Chinese law is irrelevant;

It is relevant. Just because you decide something is irrelevant doesn't make it so.

> The US, on the other hand, at least pretends to have rule-of-law that preempts attempts to use government power to determine economic winners and losers.

You mean other than tik tok? Other than subsidies for boeing, etc? Other than the bailouts of car companies? And that's not even taking account of all the wars we've engaged in to further the interests of our companies. Our invasion and colonization of china for much of the 19th and 20th century doesn't count right?

1. As of 2020, Facebook and Google make billions of dollars a year in China.

2. Google is allowed to operate in China. Have you forgotten project Dragonfly (It's internal effort to create a china-only service compatible with China's laws? It wasn't sunk by the CCP, but by employee activism.)

3. Many economists believe that protectionism that locks foreign competitors out is only harmful to your own people.

4. If China enacted a 100% tariff on US goods, let them. It is only robbing its own people - which is no concern of anyone who doesn't live in China.

I think you don't get how trade works. There are two parties to a transaction, and by definition of agreeing to a trade, both benefit. Ergo it's impossible that blocking a trade only hurts one side.

> There are two parties to a transaction, and by definition of agreeing to a trade, both benefit.

1. So, what you're saying is that banning imports hurts ourselves.

2. The parties who benefit from a trade are not necesarily the countries involved, but a handful of individuals in the countries involved. Foreign policy should not be set for the purpose of maximizing their comfort. It should be set for the purpose of maximizing overall welfare.

3. If China wants to export useful goods, in exchange for worthless pieces of paper that they can't buy anything with because of tariffs, that sounds very much like 'not our problem'.

Either way, this is all a complete tangent from my original point - that Google, Facebook, etc, do operate in China, and can operate in China, when they adjust their local operations to comply with local law.

The TikTok ban has nothing to do with lack of compliance with local law, and everything to do with an arbitrary executive order, not approved by congress, issued by what is now a lame-duck president. (Which is, ironically, the very same kind of capricious behavior that folks accuse the CCP of.)

You don't want foreign social media companies operating in the US? Fine. Pass a law banning that. Get ready for the world to reciprocate, though. I'm sure there are Indian, German, French, and British startups chopping at the bit, waiting for an opportunity to move into the space that banning Google/Facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn/Yelp would do in their countries.

The US has everything to lose, and nothing to gain by getting involved in this war - because it has a monopoly on exporting social media. By your logic, for example, Germany would lose nothing from banning US social media platforms, because it has no social media platforms that are being exported to the US market, and thus, a reciprocal ban would have no effect on them.

Because when CCP is influential enough (through all the seemly benign companies it controls), you, as a citizen of US, will be forced to not to speak anything bad about it, an authoritarian country now and a totalitarian-Empire-to-be.

Personally, I'm agnostic about the issue because I don't have the necessary data to evaluate it.

If there are legitimate concerns by intelligence agencies that the CCP might use TikTok to influence users or spy on them on a large scale (which is very well possible), then I'm entirely for the ban and the question whether other intelligence agencies do the same is irrelevant. I don't think "it's okay because everybody does it" arguments are sound. However, if there is no evidence for such behavior, then I'm against the ban.

So far I haven't seen any evidence, but it's unfortunately not hard to imagine how the Chinese government would abuse a large social network for their purposes. They certainly do that domestically.

One problem is the current administration has very little credibility. To say “we have a tonne of evidence, we just can’t show you. Trust us”, just doesn’t cut it anymore because we know how much this administration lies.

This isn’t an attempt to make this political. But credibility matters and being able to claim the moral high ground matters.

Because the surveillance by the CCP is far more extreme than that of FB or Google. FB and Google as powerful as they are at least are lead by proponents of democracy, social justice, etc, meanwhile the CCP is responsible for many human rights violations.

Because the ban is an admission of the influence that a company with nothing but troves of data can have, and thus is a step towards actually addressing the issues of Facebook, Google and the like.

But what we really need is a US version of GDPR

You'll never get enough credit for that statement. It's exactly why there is a large pushback from the other data collection companies. Once the DOJ can set precedent on one "low hanging fruit", it can start tackling the rest. Sort of like when RICO was first proposed and used. It was a huge issue, but once legitimized in the courts, many organized crime families started to crumble. While org crime is still a problem as it adapted and evolved, they're arguably less influential on a national scale as they used to be pre-RICO. Faang doesn't want the same thing happen to them.

The Tiktok ban is predicated on national security concerns. I guarantee that whatever precedent that sets will be deemed to not apply to FB and Google.

They are two of America's richest and most powerful companies, and politicians tend to let those 'self-regulate' so as not be accused of interfering with market forces. It also helps that they both hand over a good amount of data to the US Government.

How's gdpr working out? Seriously, I'm in the US and have no idea what's going on with it.

Since GDPR came out, the two companies I worked at have been more cognisant about how we stored user data for EU customers (e.g. making more fields optional, giving user deletion options). And we also undertook a review of how we stored data for California customers for CCPA.

Because government is the ultimate monopoly.

If China is using TikTok against the interests of US citizens (which legally is 100% a matter of foreign policy, and therefore at the executive branches sole discretion) then celebrating the demise of one "monopoly" (tech) by the hands of an agent of another (a foreign govt) isn't principled capitalism/free-trade/etc, it's traitorous/patriotic, depending on perspective.

> which legally is 100% a matter of foreign policy, and therefore at the executive branches sole discretion

I don't think the executive branch has sole and arbitrary discretion over foreign policy? For one thing, there's the treaty clause, and the foreign commerce clause of article 1 section 8. This judge apparently agrees.

Maybe "ultimate" is a more accurate word than "sole," but in general, short of declaring War, foreign policy power eventually falls on the executive when tensions exist between branches.

The president can unilaterally leave treaties, arguably universally. SCOTUS has said that as head of State, even the recognition that other countries exist and/or are legitimate falls upon him.

Yesterday's SG argument at SCOTUS brought up many of the reasons why the judicial has historically, and should continue, to stay out of foreign policy matters.

Foreign commerce clause is a better argument, but I'd say regardless, here the President is operating within the laws and framework as Congress has legislated under that authority.

Whether the judge agrees is sort of circular logic here, not affirmation.

> Yesterday's SG argument at SCOTUS brought up many of the reasons why the judicial has historically, and should continue, to stay out of foreign policy matters.

If there is anything generically less convincing to me than a lawyer's presentation of arguments favoring their client's point of view, I can't think of it.

> Whether the judge agrees is sort of circular logic here, not affirmation.

So, I'm not clear on whether you're claiming that the president in fact does have the powers you're ascribing to them, or if you're saying they ought to, or if you're saying they have historically.

If you're saying the president does have that power, well, that's is the contested question. The most recent update we have from the entity that has the power to decide -- the judicial branch -- is that the president does not. If you're saying they ought to, well, that's just like, your opinion man. :) If you're saying they have historically, I confess some ignorance on the matter, but I'm not familiar with any recent examples of retaliatory expropriation like this in the United States.

>The most recent update we have from the entity that has the power to decide -- the judicial branch

My point is that for most foreign policy matters, the judicial branch doesn't have the constitutional power, or even any congressionally granted special jurisdiction, to decide these things. (Except for very specific exceptions spelled out by Congress, which is what yesterday's case was about.)

I brought up the SG's argument bc of the case law he cited is closely related, not because his argument was applicable to this case. They argued whether a case fell into a niche congressional explicit exception. And both sides recognized that, in general, courts don't have a role in most of these foreign policy arguments.

Import/export control on software isn't an exception, and in fact is explicitly allowed by statute.

I don't think anyone is arguing that the executive lacks the power of instituting import/export control over software that 1) is owned by a non-US entity, and might be either 2a) weaponized by a foreign adversary or 2b) used in a way that compromises national security.

They've already done it for years, including the infamous encryption export controls. Those didn't make much sense, but no one really argued the president couldn't do it.

Those decisions are political ones, not judicial ones.

And judicial precedent recognizes that, and defers to the executive, despite what this judge has ruled.

The US embassy moving to Jerusalem brought up many of the same issues, if you want to explore how this likely plays out. Even in the face of some congressional directives (I think via funding) explicitly not allowing the move.

>So, I'm not clear on whether you're claiming that the president in fact does have the powers you're ascribing to them, or if you're saying they ought to, or if you're saying they have historically.

All of the above :)

>retaliatory expropriation

Whether retaliatory or not, import/export control or tariffs aren't a constitutional taking, and so isn't expropriation any more than taxes are.

There might be some more interesting arguments to be made re:equitible treatment under the law if it were owned by an American company (and I suspect this is where your thoughts are), but it's not, and if it were, many of the underlying issues would be mooted.

> China is using TikTok against the interests of US citizens

Evidence other than Donald, the Mr.Credible’s claim?

It's a political policy judgement call, not a criminal trial.

By definition it falls upon his discretion, not evidence or a trial verdict. This isn't "innocent until proven guilty" TV drama.

No one said it’s innocent until proven guilty.

But shouldn’t the leader of the free world make “policy judgment calls” based on evidence?

Why wouldn’t they?

Very fine piece of evidence

If the US is doing it, then China must be doing it too.

The US isn’t doing what China is accused of because they lack the ability. They definitely would if all corporations were state controlled.

Snowden documents clearly show the US corporations cooperate with NSA by providing backdoors. We don't know for sure if they do this because they are being forced to, bribed, or just nice to the government agencies, but the end effect is the same: they do whatever the US agencies tell them to.

It shows they turn over information it does not show they do the bidding of the US government. There is a legal process in the US that must be abided by while this isn’t true of the PRC. The line between corporation and state is a blurry one in China, to say the least.

Installing backdoors isn't "turning over information". And I'm not sure secret cangaroo courts match the typical western understanding of the term "legal process".

It’s not evidence it’s a legit question if the US could get away with it they would as would any rational actor.

Because TikTok is a software asset of a foreign adversary known to engage in covert activities and which is diametrically opposed ideologically with nearly everything the U.S. (however flawed) stands for. How is this so difficult for you to understand???

Well, you're not wrong, but to be fair, the US is known to engage in covert activities and it's foreign (and some domestic) activities are often diametrically opposed to what the US claims to stand for.

> Because TikTok is a software asset of a foreign adversary known to engage in covert activities and which is diametrically opposed ideologically with nearly everything the U.S. (however flawed) stands for.

You can make the same argument to ban Facebook because of its use by the GRU, and it would be equally silly.

What is the GRU? Do you understand that Facebook is in fact an American owned and operated entity?

See here: https://www.justice.gov/storage/report.pdf

FB is a American owned an operated, but clearly if state actors have access (as they did at Twitter [0]) it hardly matters.

[0]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/former-twit...

This makes sense from the US standpoint, but not necessarily for people living in, say, EU.

At this point, after four years of unprecedented corruption and ignorance-as-official-policy, it's extremely hard to see what the US "stands for". I'm saying that with all sincerity, and it is blatantly clear during the current banana-republic actions of the administration and its enablers that the US does not represent democracy.

Find actual abuses by the application or its data and then there are credible arguments. Simply alluding to some notion of evil-by-association is a dangerous game for the US to play given PRISM, FISA warrants, etc.

And let's be real -- you're typing on your made in China computer full of components made in China, your data traversing made in china routers and relays, etc. This never had anything to do with any imagined security risk, and had to do with the corrupt manchild targeting a platform for carrying content unfavorable to him. It is just another demonstration that the US doesn't "stand for" much [1].

[1] - The only saving grace right now is effectively the so called "Deep State". The career judges and civil servants who don't twist every norm and rule and precedent because of this corrupt tinpot dictator and his pathetic army of deplorables. They may not be enough, though.

If you understand PRISM, NSA, and CIA, how can you not understand the decision of banning TikTok. It is like the drug dealer tells you not to do drugs.

The drug dealer is telling you not to do other dealers' drugs.

Exactly. This drug dealer is family, what is the reason not to trust him. He knows how dirty drug can be.

You seem to be implying that a nation has no right to make policy aimed at defending itself from foreign threats (perceived or material)... because the nation has had a buffoon for POTUS for the last 4 years...?? The number of logical fallacies that you've bundled up in that statement is impressive.

Would you feel different if TikTok were software of Russian origin? I suspect you would.

While your argument may not necessarily wrong, the same logic is applied by China and some other countries to suppress foreign media, social or not, companies, and is viewed as suppression of free speech. A value many deemd defining to these United States.

I don't know why you suspect that, I don't think that Russia is quite the American boogeyman you think it is, outside of attempts to use them to make Trump look bad/worse.

I didn't imply that whatsoever. But given that the US is awash in Chinese equipment and software, using that argument for this pernicious attempt at a ban is foolish sophistry. It is a farcical foundation for a justification.

It's telling that one of the most common, and earliest, comments to justify a TikTok ban is "well China banned/blocked XXXX". It is similar to this administration repeatedly justifying super-spreader events by citing looters. Is that really the standard you are striving towards?

"Would you feel different if TikTok were software of Russian origin?"

No, I wouldn't at all. That is absurd. Russia actually has a fairly healthy software industry, including many games and even security tools like Kaspersky.

The US which in the view of the rest of the world mostly stands for financial slavery and murdering children (as long as it's abroad! Unless they're not "caucasian"). At this point in time it is fair to say not standing for "everything the U.S. stands for" is the humane option and anything else is essentially a (war) crime.