American politicians who want to copy Chinese policies to retaliate for unfair treatment of American companies would be retaliating against American citizens for unfairly having First Amendment rights when Chinese citizens don't.

> Google said the cyber attack originated from China and that its intellectual property was stolen, but that evidence suggested a primary goal was accessing the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists.

How many Chinese human rights activists use or used Hotmail?

Google and Facebook both used to operate in China. The government of China told them to start censoring certain content. US lawmakers did not like this and warned the companies not to comply with Chinese rules. So the companies left China to keep the US side happy.

So to be clear, there was active pressure from the highest levels of US government for American companies not to build products in China that could be used for censorship.

The revisionist history is wild.

https://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/13/world/asia/13beijing.html

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2010/jan/12/google-ch...

See this is one of the advantages of having an open society. Google is not censored in the US and we can look up the history of Google being forced out of China.

> Google said the cyber attack originated from China and that its intellectual property was stolen, but that evidence suggested a primary goal was accessing the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists.

- It's to protect US tech giants

- It's Sinophobic

- Privacy laws for all tech would be preferable

These all deflect from the reason there is a hearing today- handling of US user data by a large company with ties to the Chinese communist government.

I thought we don't want a great firewall like China because you know "freedom", yet we are running down this path.

When I go to a bank here in Switzerland as a Swiss and ask to open a bank account I am asked if I have an US Citizenship. I am not asked if I have a Russian or Chinese or any other Citizenship. Why is this? Because the US has forced regulations down Switzerland throat with threats of preventing Swiss banks from using the USD.

In many other European countries there are US soldiers stationed. How many French or British military bases are there in the US?

Imagine if TikTok were owned by Russia and videos that are pro Ukraine being throttled.

Given China's history of hacking Gmail accounts of folks in the US, this is probable.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2010/jan/12/google-ch...

If it was actually about privacy or whatever, they would simply ban the privacy-violating practices, not the app itself.

Let's say TikTok becomes a fully-fledged US company.

Is that actually something under the US government's control? I mean...will the US government actually do anything substantive to reign in the privacy violations of an American company?

Yeah, right...

In other words, it's less a user privacy issue and more a national security issue.

Because that isn't remotely the case. A backdoor exists for everyone, or it doesn't exist.

Except once again, PRC doesn't ban US services, they force them to comply with PRC laws that has onerous moderation overheads. And these services refused back when SV was riding high on free speech, aka low cost moderation.

IMO US wants to ban Tik Tok because they can't implement broad content/privacy rules like in PRC. Whether due to tech lobbying, because it's politically difficult, or it's politically inconvenient - US platforms implementing elevated standards will ripple expectations and costs across global markets where they operate.

Also keep in mind that even PRC hasn't tried to force of sale US companies due to national security. Require joint ventures / ramp up costs, sure. With Oracle deal out, TikTok can't even operate in US the same way iCloud can operate in PRC.

Though it's not as official as in China, major American social networks are increasingly heavily moderated, and increasingly do work closely with govt and close-to-government entities to enact desired moderation (censorship, if you prefer) policies.

They do this "voluntarily", but it's not clear they could actually decline w/o suffering consequences.

This is perhaps somewhat less true at Twitter post-Elon aquisition. It will be interesting to see how it plays out.

The US passing legislation that would protect user data likely won't happen for a long time. The US banning tiktok seems like it may happen soon. I think most people agree the former is more ideal, but wouldn't the latter also be a good thing?

For what it's worth, I really hate most social media and the general landscape of "free" products/services that make their money by selling your data, and I do hope one day we have laws that strictly regulate who can sell what, or just ban the practice entirely. But that includes tiktok, so it being banned would be a good thing in my book.

[1] https://www.vox.com/recode/23453786/tiktok-bytedance-cfius-d...