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Re:House passes bill to force TikTok sale from Chinese owner... by dauertewigkeit on Wednesday March 13, 2024 @11:20AM (#39692350)
> Why should we throw open our digital borders to Chinese influence campaigns?

Because we are not China and our institutions are built on presumption of freedom of speech and freedom of thought and democracy. If we start emulating China, we will become China. Our institutions are supposed to be robust enough to handle local and foreign propaganda and if they are not, then censorship is certainly not a solution that would be compatible with the liberal democratic values that we are supposed to hold.

Re:House passes bill to force TikTok sale from Chinese owner... by WillPostForFood on Wednesday March 13, 2024 @11:27AM (#39692487)
US Citizens still have the same freedom of speech and freedom of thought and democracy. Those rights don't extend to foreign adversaries. If you want to relay Chinese or Russian or Ukrainian or Israeli or Hamas propaganda, you are completely free to do it, without censorship. Limiting the ability of any of those countries to project it within the US is reasonable stance.
Re:House passes bill to force TikTok sale from Chinese owner... by grecy on Wednesday March 13, 2024 @11:32AM (#39692574)
You're limiting the information US Citizens can get from the outside world - therefore you are limiting their freedom of thought and access to information.

I think it's a dangerous road to go down, the US is already extremely inwards facing and suffers from not knowing much about the outside world. I've had hundreds of US Citizens talk to me face to face who don't know what language we speak in Australia, don't know we use different money, not know the seasons are backwards, not know it's a 15 hour flight, not know we don't have a president, etc. etc. (this list is endless). US Citizens are not very well educated about how things work in other countries, clearly to their own detriment.

Just yesterday I was talking to a friend in the US saying my friend has 18 months fully paid maternity leave and he almost fell over. His wife got 10 weeks. Many countries do things better than the US, and it's dangerous to limit US Citizens learning about that, else they will have no notion things can be (and are) better elsewhere, and should be improved.

Re:House passes bill to force TikTok sale from Chinese owner... by JumpCrisscross on Wednesday March 13, 2024 @11:45AM (#39692819)
> limiting the information US Citizens can get from the outside world

Nothing is being censored. TikTok.com will still work. This bill limits TikTok’s distribution, not existence nor even access to Americans.

Re:House passes bill to force TikTok sale from Chinese owner... by grecy on Wednesday March 13, 2024 @01:08PM (#39694226)
> This bill limits TikTok’s distribution, not existence nor even access to Americans.

Wait for it.

Re:House passes bill to force TikTok sale from Chinese owner... by JumpCrisscross on Wednesday March 13, 2024 @02:08PM (#39695102)
By that logic we shouldn’t have speed limits because it’s a slippery slope to banning cars.
Re:House passes bill to force TikTok sale from Chinese owner... by TulliusCicero on Wednesday March 13, 2024 @11:24AM (#39692423)
Free trade should go both ways.

It's ridiculous to let Chinese apps and websites operate in the West when China blocks so many Western sites and apps: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_websites_blocked_in_...

Re:House passes bill to force TikTok sale from Chinese owner... by tzs on Wednesday March 13, 2024 @11:44AM (#39692814)
Free trade generally does not mean you have to let foreign companies operating in your country do things that domestic companies are not allowed to do.

Most of those sites are not in China not because China says that they cannot operate there but rather because China say they would have to obey the same rules Chines companies do. That generally involves things like storing data on Chinese citizens only on servers in China, censoring things the government wants censored, and giving the government easy access to information including identifying information to unmask anonymous posters.

Re:House passes bill to force TikTok sale from Chinese owner... by coupdejarnac on Wednesday March 13, 2024 @12:54PM (#39694023)
This is post hoc nonsense. China blocked US tech companies so that they could copy what the US companies do without any threat of superior competition.
Re:House passes bill to force TikTok sale from Chinese owner... by contrarian1234 on Wednesday March 13, 2024 @11:30AM (#39692540)
The basic benefits of free trade (based on comparative advantage) do not require both parties to engage in it

They make a superior dancing video app, so then engineers in silicon valley can go work on something else instead

Re:House passes bill to force TikTok sale from Chinese owner... by TulliusCicero on Wednesday March 13, 2024 @11:35AM (#39692630)
The point is that they get to access the Western market with their dancing video app, but Westerners aren't allowed to access their market with the apps they make. That gives those Chinese companies an unfair advantage in potential market reach.
Re:House passes bill to force TikTok sale from Chinese owner... by contrarian1234 on Wednesday March 13, 2024 @11:39AM (#39692711)
And it turns out that that's irrelevant in terms of net benefit to the citizen of a country

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

Resources are reallocated elsewhere

Re:House passes bill to force TikTok sale from Chinese owner... by zone411 on Wednesday March 13, 2024 @12:44PM (#39693848)
A simplistic economic model that overlooks hundreds of important factors may provide a basic Econ 101 understanding but it does not reflect how the world truly operates and proves nothing.
Re:House passes bill to force TikTok sale from Chinese owner... by contrarian1234 on Wednesday March 13, 2024 @12:49PM (#39693926)
Sure it's a simple model. But the burden of proof lies with the person claiming that free trade needs to be bilateral. That's not some inherent property of it, or something immediately obvious. A basic look at it past "It's not faaiiiiiir" actually shows quite the opposite
Re:House passes bill to force TikTok sale from Chinese owner... by lancesells on Wednesday March 13, 2024 @11:40AM (#39692733)
Where is freedom of speech involved with changing the ownership of a company?
Re:House passes bill to force TikTok sale from Chinese owner... by rwmj on Wednesday March 13, 2024 @11:25AM (#39692432)
That's nice, but you have to defend democracy from people who wish to overthrow it. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance)
Re:House passes bill to force TikTok sale from Chinese owner... by dauertewigkeit on Wednesday March 13, 2024 @11:32AM (#39692570)
Is every heterodox narrative immediately "intolerance" in your view?