You can’t claim this is unfair to China, when China requires foreign companies enter into joint ventures which give the Chinese partner majority voting share.

The US is simply reciprocating.

I don't think it's unfair to China, I think it's unfair to European countries, Canada, Australia, and the rest of the world that uses TikTok who are watching the U.S. demand it is entitled to run and control TikTok.

Then Europe should grows some balls and ban TikTok. China is literally a foreign invader not just a foreign adversary, aiding in Russia’s conquest of Europe. And trying to destroy Europe’s car industry via state subsidized EVs

India literally banned TikTok overnight when China killed Indian soldiers in 2020

India still depends on Chinese imports and technology, regardless of how it feels about the country. The TikTok thing was an easy political stunt.

If banning Tik Tok is an easy political stunt then why has this spawned a couple several thousand comment posts in the last 48 hours alone?

Because if there are two subjects HN cannot resist pontificating on at length, it's social media/the modern web and Sinopolitics. Add a dash of red team/blue team sniping and it's the perfect storm.

Easy in India. I’m sure they also debated it at length there. But they went through with it and it largely did nothing.

Since we all live in democratic regimes, maybe, just maybe, the will of the people should matter here at least a little bit? Banning TikTok is a deeply unpopular idea, across all party lines. It's only popular among the anti-democratic elites, from Trump (who first got this ball rolling), to Biden, to European leaders playing their "high-level" games.

This is simply false, at least in the US. A small majority favor banning it. It's not huge, but it's not a "deeply unpopular idea".

Here is a poll showing only 42% of Republicans and 24% of Democrats supporting the ban:

https://eu.usatoday.com/story/tech/news/2025/01/15/tiktok-ba...

I was a bit wrong in calling it deeply unpopular across party lines, but it's certainly quite unpopular overall, and deeply unpopular among Democrats.

You're lumping "not sure" in with "oppose the ban". You could just as easily lump "not sure" with "support the ban" and conclude that not banning it is deeply unpopular.

Here's the actual poll: https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/09/05/support-f...

If you're trying to argue that a majority favors banning it, then, obviously, all opinions other than "favor banning it" have to be lumped together as "don't favor banning it"

You're really not going to enjoy history class when it comes to American empire

I think most Westerners would prefer the US remaining dominant than ceding that position of power to China, regardless of the US's foreign policy monstrosities over time.

And for those Westerners who do not, I think it would be useful to ask them why they think a country like China (or Russia, or North Korea) would be better for their interests than the US, even with someone like Trump in power.

I’d prefer if there wasn’t any dominant powers. But that goes against human nature it seems.

Sure, that would be great. But we live in a world where that kind of thing is probably inevitable.

Why do we assume that would be great? The last time we had no dominant power it lead to ww1…

If anything, WW1 happened because there were too many empires rather than a lack of any dominant powers.

Unless you’re suggesting that what the world needs is a single dominant empire? Which would be an odd position to take because history has proven that monopolies are much much worse for abusing power.

Maybe if/when we colonise other planets we can think of the Earth as a single government with countries acting like states (kind of like the EU but with less sovereignty for each state). However that’s only going to happen if we work together and generally cooperation is viewed as counterproductive to empire building. So we come full circle back to my original point.

Sounds like what a rapist would say about their victims

> I think most Westerners would prefer the US remaining dominant than ceding that position of power to China, regardless of the US's foreign policy monstrosities over time.

I can't speak for most Westerners, but I fully believe the United States to be an empire in decline already. Who will take up that mantle once we're fully gone is an interesting question, I think China and India both could make a solid case for themselves.

> And for those Westerners who do not, I think it would be useful to ask them why they think a country like China (or Russia, or North Korea) would be better for their interests than the US

I don't really think about it in terms of "my interests." My ideal incoming superpower would be any superpower that's ready to deal with existential threats to our species like climate change, along with our global social ills like over-reliance on social media and the year over year alienation of everyone from everyone else. If that country comes with me needing to learn Mandarin then that's what has to happen.

I'm highly disillusioned with both the "West" as an idea (which can include any number of countries depending how racist the speaker is feeling at the moment). I still believe in Democracy, representative or otherwise, but I don't see any of those in your "West" anymore. I see a collection of ailing, aged empires full of greedy old men stealing as much money as they can so they and their families can coast out the collapse they have engineered. I contrast this with China, which certainly has problems too, and the CCP gets up to some nonsense, but their ability to exude top-down control also makes them more able to actually solve problems instead of endlessly bickering about them. And with respect to the notions of individual liberty and freedom that I do want to see in the world, it's clear that the West is too focused on maintaining the rights of the individual to do what they so please, and not enough on maintaining the planet upon which they would do it. How free is anyone if we can't leave our homes due to smog or unlivable temperatures/weathers?

Not saying it's an overall improvement. I am saying that the U.S. is on it's way out, and China is the likely incoming global superpower. We can do precious little to change this if we even want to, and I'm not rushing for a fire extinguisher here.

> Who will take up that mantle once we're fully gone is an interesting question, I think China and India both could make a solid case for themselves

With the exception of the USSR, every superpower’s decline in history has involved a burst of violence. China or India won’t take over if America collapses because America collapsing (versus slow fading over lifetimes) almost guarantees nuclear war resetting the table.

It's not very clear, but the US version is more freedom plus killing more people, and the Chinese version is more servitude plus killing fewer people.

I think people who have seen one up close claim to prefer the other (but thets meaningless) while people who have seen both start to lean toward servitude, unless they are highly religious.

> China is literally a foreign invader not just a foreign adversary

TikTok ban is not about vengeance on China, it's about violations of own citizens' freedoms.

> aiding in Russia’s conquest of Europe

Russia right now is weaker and has the least potential to conquer anything than literally ever before.

Every state to a different degree subsidizes its automobile industry.

Living in Australia now with access to Chinese EV's is eyeopening. It's great for the consumer. To the extent you accept EV's as a solution for reducing GHG's, the cheaper prices are making it easier to end our reliance on oil. Americans don't realize what they are missing out on.

Better than Tesla-quality vehicles for half the price.

Why exactly are they half the price? What are the externalities of Chinese EV manufacturing. They may be half the price, but I doubt they are half the cost.

Does the law said it has to be sold to a US entity? I think it just can't be run by "adversary"

You do realize many US companies are not practically allowed to operate in some European jurisdictions? Uber and Amazon come to mind.

That has nothing to with them being US companies. Or are there any jurisdictions where Bolt/(other local company) is allowed to freely operate but Uber is banned?

Aren’t they for a different reason, like workers law protection?

Those are just examples. Whatever the reason for each, sovereign jurisdictions don't allow free access to their resources/markets just out of spite. That includes Europe.

That’s only partially true though. I don’t think Uber itself is not allowed to operate anywhere. Rather it’s business model is illegal in some cities/areas. Usually you can still use Uber to hire actual taxis there.

However exact same rules apply to its European competitors like Bolt. Make it entirely unrelated to this situation.

But if the EU or Canada or Australia bought it, that would fulfill the terms of the law.

It does not say they have to sell to the US. Only divest as to no longer be considered controlled by a `foreign adversary` of the United States.[0] The bill also gives this power to future administrations.

It was literally called Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act.

Not, All your app are belong to us.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protecting_Americans_from_Fore...

What is your opinion on India's ban of TikTok a few years ago?

More fair would have been a restriction based on some framework like...

+ Public forum or utility

+ Userbase greater than 1% of the adult population

= Majority Ownership of corporate division and management, plus regulatory oversight, must be held within country OR a security partnered country (the easiest criteria for that might be they have an obligation to fight along side 'our' troops in some way).

That way it isn't specific about any given platform or company, and it allows anyone trusted as an ally to comprise the ownership or legal jurisdiction.

That's almost exactly how the law was written. Only the userbase was specified in absolute numbers (1 million MAU).

EU countries are asleep at the wheel on matters of national security and sovereignty. Spotify is not a matter of national security. TikTok, and social networking in general, has been one for some time now. Misinformation, conspiracy theories, actual conspiracies to overthrow govt, etc have all found renewed vigor thanks to social networks.

US on the other hand now has its social media controlled by oligarchs, not much better maybe.

If that’s your position, then you would be fine if EU countries were to pull out all US telco infrastructure because of their previous abuses towards European citizens?

> would be fine if EU countries were to pull out all US telco infrastructure because of their previous abuses towards European citizens?

If I were the EU, I would. We hacked Merkel.

Well yeah, but she was totally asking for it.

I'd be mindful that having a NATO partner be able to spy is maybe better than having Huawei spy if you have to choose, but yes, I think it's a risk that EU countries should be aware of and probably are more aware of than with social networks.

Well, that's pretty much how China behaves with respect to foreign companies operating in China. They all need to be joint partnerships with owners in China.

The world is more than just China and the United States. That was the point of my original comment. The United States here feels entitled to own and run an app used on every continent of the world. No other country could get away with demanding this.

India banned TikTok a few years ago. Brazil banned X until it agreed to take down posts in violation of Brazilian law. The European Union fines US-based tech companies frequently.

"Entitlement" in the context of nations is irrelevant. Nations exercise power in accordance with their interests.

The latter two, in theory, apply to local companies too. The TikTok bans specifically apply to “foreign adversaries”.

Domestic adversaries don't own any companies, for obvious reasons.

I would disagree…?

> The United States here feels entitled to own and run an app used on every continent of the world.

This isn’t correct. The US law only applies to the services provided within the US.

ByteDance could spin out the US userbase while retaining the rest of the userbase. Many US companies already have to do exactly this for their Chinese userbase. Spin it off to a JV with a Chinese partner.

I’m not aware of anyone doing this, but you could even have a content syndication model whereby the global TikTok and the US TikTok share a common pool of content and username reservations so that both services appear global to their users, but with separate companies controlling distribution of their own apps and the recommendation model used to serve content.

That's false. The US law requires TikTok to be sold to a non-adversary. A US company could buy it, or some German or Spanish company, and either would fulfill the requirements to avoid a ban in the US.

> No other country could get away with demanding this.

TikTok is already banned in India. Brasil banned Twitter for a while until they caved to Brasil's demands.

> The United States here feels entitled to own and run

It doesn't have to be the United States. It just has to be anyone other than Iran, North Korea, China, and Russia.

Well.. SAP could buy it. Or some other European tech company that could afford it..

> The world is more than just China and the United States.

But this particular situation is not. A Chinese controlled company that operates in the US. If you want access to $CC market you are subject to $CC's rules. Other countries do exactly the same thing (aside from China, GDPR comes to mind) so it's unclear what the basis for your complaint is here.

They aren't demanding a sale. They are just saying they can't operate in the country if they don't sell.

They have a choice to leave the country or follow the rules.

Let us cannibalize your app because it's so successful at doing X that we can't compete with you. It's a bizarre ultimatum for the owners of the app.

Seems like the policies used by the Chinese government for decade are becoming more internationally popular (for better or for worse..).

I can’t really feel bad about when it’s the same deal they offer Western companies. Well.. to be fair Google or FB couldn’t even get anywhere close to where TikTok is.

Where you launch in a place where the government actually controls your company, well, that's a decision you made.

They’re not. Why are you making that assumption? The US is saying that in order to access the US market they have to divest. They’re free to sell at a fair market price - including to European buyers. They can also choose not to and leave the US market and keep operating elsewhere. They can also just sell the US business and keep everything else the way it is.

To be fair being legally mandated to sell significantly reduces that “free market price”. Technically it’s certainly not “free” anymore..

Because it deals with an actual enemy pumping propaganda into your country's citizen's ears. It's a legitimate threat to national security. And no, not just the US does this. (I assume you mean free countries, not dictatorship like China, Russia or North Korea that ban everything they don't like).

Europe banned Russian propaganda outlet RT a couple of years ago, on security grounds. It's just that US prefers the soft-soft approach. Don't ban them, let them "divest". No. It doesn't work. It should be banned end of story. I guarantee a genuine competitor from the US or an allied country would make an alternative quite soon. Would be so addictive and equally brain rotting? Probably not, so people who enjoyed it before would complain. Fine, let them go join Douyin or other Chinese platform and see for themselves how "freedom of speech"looks like in China.

As for anyone who might come and say "they're not doing anything wrong". They are and you're naive for not seeing it. Every company in China is an arm of the state. As an example see how Bytedance released an ebook reader in the US with an AI assistant that tells you things like "nothing happened in 1989 on Tiananmen square", there is no genocide in Xinjiang, it is inappropriate to question and critique the Chinese communist party, China never attacked anyone,ever but it's perfectly fine to criticise every other single country on earth and it is ready to give you a litany of misdeeds any other country on earth ever did. Except China. Do you think a company like that owning what's essentially a monopoly on news for the young people is good? No it is not, and any sane politician would ban it long time ago. The fact Trump did this move worries me for his other decisions in future .

Fox News, Twitter and Meta are far worse influences on American society than TikTok.

And every big US platform is just a big siphon for the NSA when it comes to non U.S. persons.

The stupidity and hypocrisy of this ban and unban is hilarious.

It's the tech policy analog of the Iraq War (on the level of stupidity, loss of standing, inevitable consequences etc).

Not saying this ban is equivalent to a decision that killed 1M+ people, lead to ISIS, and created the migrant crisis and more

> The stupidity and hypocrisy of this ban and unban is hilarious.

Your adversary does not care about morals, but will leverage yours in his favour.

> Europe banned Russian propaganda outlet RT a couple of years ago, on security grounds.

As a citizen of a non-NATO nation, I found American media deluged far more propaganda than RT. The reason why RT was banned was due to too many inconvenient truths being exposed.

All media has propaganda. But if you objectively look at what Russia is doing in Ukraine, and then look at RT's coverage of the war, you must be pretty brainwashed to trust RT any more than American media.

There are plenty of corruption and issues in EU, some of which RT may have covered legitimately, but at least we're not intentionally massacring civilians and sending our poor and minorities to die as cannon fodder in an useless invasion. There's a reason why all European neighbours of Russia have or want to join NATO, and that is its imperialistic and aggressive policies.

You should come visit us in Finland or maybe our neighbour Estonia and really see what ordinary people have to say about Russia. Real people, who actually live next to them.

Surely this is sarcasm?

Yes absolutely. China.

You have to give away 50% of your local subsidiary just to operate there.

And why do you think Google and Facebook don’t even offer their services there?

> You have to give away 50% of your local subsidiary just to operate there.

I'm not sure how generally you meant to speak, but this is no longer true as a general claim.

"As of November 1, 2024, China has removed all restrictions on foreign investment in the manufacturing sector, allowing foreign investors, including Americans, to own up to 100% equity in Chinese manufacturing enterprises."

True. I missed that. Operating an online social network has nothing to do with manufacturing though.

And investments into various telecommunications related areas are still restricted or outright banned. So foreign founded/owned TV stations like Fox News could never exist in China (for better or for worse).

What's your source on that? Apple, Microsoft, Tesla and Amazon all operate in China and I don't believe they had to give up 50% of their local subsidiary. Google withdrew from China because it didn't want to comply with local laws (e.g. censorship).

They changed it last year. Prior to that you generally could only have a 50% stake manufacturing companies (obviously doesn’t apply to Apple cause they never did any).

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_list_of_foreign_inv...

Passenger cars were removed in 2021.

However:

> .. (ii) news agencies, (iii) editing, publishing and production of books, newspapers, periodicals, audio-visual products and electronic publications, (iv) all levels of broadcasting stations, television stations, radio and television channel and frequency, radio and television transmission networks and the engagement in the video on demand business of radio and TV, (v) radio and television program production and operation as well as (vi) film production companies, distribution companies, cinema companies and the introduction of films are still prohibited.

So good-luck to any Australians and Brits who want to operate Fox news style networks in China.

There are other telecommunications related areas which are restricted and not prohibited.

Not sure where would TikTok fall into exactly but it’s probably bot manufacturing.