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DuckFeathers · 3 years ago
Just a reminder that China banned Facebook in 2009 when riots were happening in Xinjiang and Facebook refused to block activists from communicating with each other or reporting it to the Chinese government.

Similarly, Google was banned in 2010 following disputes over censorship of search queries, that the Chinese government wanted but Google refused to oblige by.

UncleMeat · 3 years ago
Yes. China is an authoritarian state and their policies should largely not be emulated.
badrabbit · 3 years ago
Retaliation is not emulation. If they did that domestically and the US also did that domestically it would be emulation. This is similar to tariff wars, if they impose a tariff on something then you retaliate proportionally.

We have an unequal trade with China where they ban western companies but their companies do what they want even while being state controlled under a hostile regime. This alone is a good reason to ban any Chinese social media company

edmundsauto · 3 years ago
You don’t think tit for tat is a good strategy in this situation?
barrysteve · 3 years ago
I agree, so stop letting TikTok advertise to young adults and reward certain views with attention.

Pushing a China-centric view on the populace and allowing the option for data gathering to influence TikTok rewards, can end up with a political outcome at the ballot box.

Facebook did sway votes in the 2010s. Let's not emulate China's authoritarian state policies and close the option for that to happen.

Laying the groundwork now to keep westerners separate from the social credit system, will likely be useful to prevent behavioural capture of economic activity.

seanmcdirmid · 3 years ago
Google was banned in 2010 from what I remember because they shut down their Chinese google site in protest of Chinese agents hacking gmail accounts in Hong Kong. So google.cn was redirected to google.hk until it was blocked. Fun times.

Twitter was blocked because the American embassy was tweeting accurate air quality numbers which was embarrassing the Chinese government (who up until that time refused to acknowledge that the air quality was really bad). Or so we all thought at the time.

I don't see a really good reason to ban tiktok in the USA, first we don't really ban things nor have the infrastructure for it. The best we can do is pollute some DNS records maybe, or maybe we can buy GFW technology from China to accomplish this? Second...tiktok is used mostly by teens, who will be all over anything that is officially banned by old people. We would just be making tiktok really popular, and there is no good infosec reason to do that.

freemanon · 3 years ago
US companies have been doing the same thing all over the world. Outside the west, everyone can see the hypocrisy. Ban it by all means, but you will become just like China: a state that censors information and speech from its citizens because the government is scared of it.
pictureofabear · 3 years ago
Countries outside the US are free to ban US-owned platforms, and many countries do. It's not hypocrisy.

One of the CCP's goal is to destabilize the Western Liberal order. This is, of course, bad for the West. It's not unreasonable to take actions to prevent this.

Spivak · 3 years ago
I really don't think the west needs any help destabilizing itself. I wouldn't really worry even if we fuck ourselves politically, as long as the US military continues to playing in an entire other league and the ever-present threat of either side escalating to nuclear weapons out of desperation there's not a whole lot of realistic risk.
yucky · 3 years ago
Which leads us to the very uncomfortable fact, we want to ban TikTok for the same reason they ban the likes of Facebook, Google etc - because governments (including ours) uses it for citizen data-mining and mass crowd control.

We know how dangerous TikTok is in their hands because we know how valuable Facebook, Google etc is in ours.

8note · 3 years ago
The question is whether what you care about is the order's power or the order's values

If you care more about the values, it makes no sense to drop the values to retain the power

JohnFen · 3 years ago
> but you will become just like China: a state that censors information and speech from its citizens because the government is scared of it.

There are several legit arguments against banning, but this isn't one one of them. Banning Tiktok is not censoring information and speech, let alone doing it because of fear. If it were, then they'd also ban all of the numerous other methods by which people can talk to each other.

bequanna · 3 years ago
This isn’t a free speech issue.

This is an enemy foreign government collecting information on US citizens.

schwartzworld · 3 years ago
Then we should set strict laws about what kinds of data apps can harvest from their users and hold all of them responsible, not just the ones from scary china.
Spivak · 3 years ago
So to be consistent here, every country outside the US should ban all software originating in the US that collects user information.

If the answer is yes then by all means, but I think it makes for atrocious foreign policy relations.

nh23423fefe · 3 years ago
> enemy

seems like the characterization is doing all the work for you

macinjosh · 3 years ago
Why are they our enemy? They are our most important trading partner.
badrabbit · 3 years ago
Are you saying there is some speech allowed on tiktok but banned elsewhere?

Outside the US there are a lot of envious people that scream hypocrisy and act anti-US at every opportunity so what you're saying isn't surprising. Americans shouldn't care what "the world" thinks when it comes to trade policy.

Personally I couldn't care less if the US is like or not like China. Xi's regime is very anti-us and any state controlled companies can get bent.

The nerve on some people. They want you to apologize for banning a service controlled by the CCP which is talking about actual war against the US.

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egourlao · 3 years ago
China bans platforms because they give access to information that embarrasses those in power. The US, here, is planning to ban a platform because it's a propaganda vector, and because its popularity has gotten to a point where we - as a society - at a serious risk of propaganda campaigns. All the information on TikTok is still available elsewhere - but we mitigate the opportunity for the Chinese Communist Party to mold what information is serviced to our constituents, and how that information is shaped.

I just don't think those two are the same.

_-david-_ · 3 years ago
>US companies have been doing the same thing all over the world. Outside the west, everyone can see the hypocrisy

It is not necessarily hypocrisy. I haven't paid too much attention, but does the US say China banning Facebook or Google is anti free speech?

If not, then the US is not being hypocritical. Perhaps, double standards or something like that is more of what you were looking for?

>Ban it by all means, but you will become just like China

China builds roads. If the US builds roads it will become just like China.

>a state that censors information and speech from its citizens because the government is scared of it.

You think Europe is doing this when they banned RT, right?

Melatonic · 3 years ago
Or pass meaningful regulation on what social media companies can do and what data they can harvest
mrkramer · 3 years ago
Essentially they can "harvest" whatever you give them but the question is how are they going to use it as well as for how long they are going to store/archive it. I agree this things should be regulated; my thinking is something in the veins of banking industry akin to regulations regarding what banks can and can not do with your private information and for how long they should or should not store your transactions.
_v7gu · 3 years ago
I believe this argument can be extended to Facebook/Instagram/Twitter/etc for other countries. And considering that; yes, let’s do it!
srcreigh · 3 years ago
Ban google outside US! I’d love for each country to build their own
jacooper · 3 years ago
OK! Don't complain and scream free marker when other countries limit or ban American big tech.
partyboy · 3 years ago
As if they don't already? Banning Tiktok is like retaliation for what China has been doing to American companies for literally decades.
jacooper · 3 years ago
I said other countries, not only China.
angryasian · 3 years ago
... written by a conservative that borders on fascist beliefs. thanks
joenot443 · 3 years ago
You’re going to have to be more specific. Noah’s posted here all the time and is fairly well received. What opinions did you find troublesome here?
macinjosh · 3 years ago
Paranoid xenophobia

Dead Comment