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billfruit
albacur
> Chinese policy seems to have not significantly changed in the last 5 years towards the US, but on the other hand US seemed ever more keen and eger to pursue a hostile attitude towards China.
For decades, China has blocked U.S. companies from fair competition, reneged on trade deals when it suits them, backed out of industrial partnerships after extracting the IP it deems useful, and generally been a bad trade partner.
I agree that the president shouldn't have authority to arbitrarily block a product or company (and ultimately he doesn't, he'll need broader support among elected officials), but it's absurd to suggest that the U.S. should blindly accept hostile behavior for decades on end without reacting, or else itself be labeled "hostile."
hajile
Look over the US bills for 2020. The only ones passing both Democrat House and Republican Senate are either coronavirus or China. The level of concern is so big that the Democrats basically did a rather public 180 on China during an important election year.
As far as the company, the President seems fully allowed to place restrictions on companies as foreign policy. If you're talking about the "American" part, it is owned by foreign entities, so the case still seems pretty good. Chinese spying on US citizens on US soil is definitely a foreign policy issue.
Obama's administration was known to walk up to companies with a rubber-stamped order to do whatever (usually spying on US citizens) and the place a gag order on the company so they couldn't even tell their users what was happening to them. If that was never challenged, I doubt this would be as preventing spying is certainly more moral than doing the spying.
wildrhythms
The rationale in your comment is unconvincing to me. If Tiktok is breaking the law, that should come to light and be actioned like any other company breaking the law; likewise TOS violations on respective app stores. I haven't seen any reports to suggest that Tiktok is breaking U.S. law, have you? And if the rationale is, as you suggested, a retaliation against 'bad behavior for decades', what precedent would banning Tiktok set for other non-U.S. owned apps and services?
albacur
My comment wasn't specific to TikTok, but rather OP's assertion that the U.S. is a hostile actor, whereas China is just being China.
Regarding TikTok, foreign-owned companies must follow U.S. laws, which are subject to due process. Additionally, they must not pose an imminent threat to national security. For better or worse, the government tends to be tight-lipped about matters of national security and isn't compelled to divulge details to the public. Normally, this is acceptable because we trust our government to act responsibility and in our best interest. Is TikTok a legitimate threat to security? I don't know, and with Trump's tendency to make everything look like a publicity stunt, my trust in the government to use its power responsibly is not very high.
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shrimpx
It’s not about laws, it’s geopolitics.
ddevault
I haven't decided how I feel about the TikTok debate yet, but just to offer a better rationalization: foreign relations is the President's domain. Apps are one way that a country projects its soft power, and as such this might be applicable.
If TikTok was not a foreign-owned app, I don't think that Trump would have a leg to stand on, but because it is, I'm not entirely certain he doesn't.
ksec
I am reading a lot of comment that assumes Free Trading on the Internet. ( And to an extend that may be true )
I am guessing everyone working in the Software and Internet Industry are so used to Absolute Free Trading, where you could have someone using your SaaS from any parts of the world, with Discovery And Distribution Channel infrastructure in the whole world half sorted out. No one realise Importing and Exporting of real products and services have gazillions of restrictions.
US can stop the import and export of certain products or services from certain countries on any grounds, due to protection ideal ( These deals has always been in place ) Whether that is Food, Steel, Raw Materials or even Services. Using either Standards, Safety Policy, Tariff or other means necessary, or in other words, excuses. The same is true to EU, and especially China, who has been playing this game may be better than anyone.
That would be akin to US ( or in fact any countries ) working in China are required set up a Chinese JV. ( You can read up on what is happening to ARM China CEO ). So this is a policy change not a change of law. And even that is not entirely true, because under the current policy there are different rules to State Companies, and Chinese company can no longer prove they are not a state company. ( May be that is the part they break the law )
And in case someone ask why you have one specific set of policy for China? I would have answered would you expect to have the same policy for everyone including North Korea?
I view this as a trade issues, and China are no longer welcome to trade with US in many front, including its internet services. And in all fairness no one should be blaming US about it.
quotemstr
The problem here isn't TikTok being banned. I couldn't care less about TikTok. The problem here is singling out an individual entity for punishment outside an established framework of laws just because we don't like it. You can be tough on China without becoming China.
Nobody is suggesting that China's trade policy go unchallenged. What I do want is a policy including evidence, recourse, and the possibility of compliance. I have seen no explanation whatsoever of why TikTok is so urgently terrible that we can't deal with whatever it is that the company is doing using rules --- and this strange silence is coming from people ordinarily keen on that old "government of laws, not men" principle. Everything is weird these days.
realusername
> The problem here isn't TikTok being banned. I couldn't care less about TikTok. The problem here is singling out an individual entity for punishment outside an established framework of laws just because we don't like it. You can be tough on China without becoming China.
Even without talking about morality or Chinese laws, TikTok could just be banned as trade retaliation. It's very common outside of tech, if a country closes down their market, they generally face retaliation on their foreign markets.
But yes I do agree with you on that, it should be done using an official retaliation policy, not just tweeted by the US president...
hhsuey
> You can be tough on China without becoming China.
Honest question. Do you know how this could be done? I'm not too familiar with foreign affairs.
Thorrez
> but it's absurd to suggest that the U.S. should blindly accept hostile behavior for decades on end without reacting, or else itself be labeled "hostile."
That's not absurd at all. Just because your enemy behaves badly doesn't make it acceptable for you to behave badly.
albacur
It makes it acceptable to defend yourself. If you want claim the president shouldn't have sole authority to ban foreign companies or products, that's fair. And I don't know that he actually has that power, it could all be bluster. I mean, he also said he would make Mexico pay for a border wall.
tguedes
This is geopolitics, not grade school.
c3534l
I'm sorry, but "we're merely acting as bad as the Chinese government here" does not seem like a very convincing argument.
speleding
The US left the moral high ground some time ago. (About 4 years ago)
cma
Sounds exactly like how the US developed:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Slater
Otherwise we would be trading beaver pelts and providing cheap labor.
Trump is banning TikTok because a bunch of teens pranked his rally using the platform.
apatters
It's exactly how South Korea and many other countries developed (and continue to develop) as well.
The difference here is that China is positioning itself as a political rival to the United States. America is under no obligation to help its rivals develop.
Prior to Xi Jinping's belligerent foreign poljcy America was considerably more welcoming to Chinese companies. You reap what you sow.
praveenperera
That’s why India banned them too right? They just love Trump so much?
billfruit
Not just broader support among elected officials, but it needs to be in line with the constitution too. Even with full on bi-partisan majority and popular support, unconstitutional measures cannot be executed by the Federal Government.
barry-cotter
> Even with full on bi-partisan majority and popular support, unconstitutional measures cannot be executed by the Federal Government.
And the fact that the US Constitution only allows the Federal Government to regulate interstate commerce is why Wickard v. Filburn was decided for Filburn. Growing wheat to feed your own pigs is obviously not interstate commerce so the Feds can’t tell you what to do.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wickard_v._Filburn
Obviously that’s not what actually happened. Equally obviously the constitution constrains the government exactly as much as it wishes to be constrained.
learc83
Well Congress can definitely ban foreign owned companies from operating in the US under at least 2 sections of the constitution that I can think of.
And Congress has delegated part of that power to the President.
albacur
The Constitution applies to independent foreign enterprises and state-owned enterprises that aren't under direct control of the state.
The Constitution does not apply if a foreign government "exerts sufficient control over [the enterprise] to make it an agent of the State." I don't know if it can be argued that ByteDance falls in this category, but there have been many allegations that the company works closely with the CCP to provide surveillance and disseminate propaganda on Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok.
dirtyid
The ongoing deterrence hole when it comes to US-China relations in variety of domains has been acknowledged by China watchers consistently in the past 10 years.
The issue is whether current admins' China-hawks tough on China approach is smart and good for long-term US interests or merely counterproductive electioneering / domestic distraction which is... characteristic of behavior when it comes to managing other foreign relations so far. Nvm US has been quietly undermining China with Asia pivot for 10 years - many people are consumed by Trump/Pompeo and previously Bolton/Banning grievance politics because publicly clapping back feels good. Same ppl have no problem recognizing US foreign policy everywhere has been catastrophic for US interests in the last 4 years, but go full smooth brain cheering leading mode because it's China. Like holy shit, it's Pompeo. Folks can pretend/hope broken clock is right twice a day or realize people with bad history of foreign policy is maybe just bad at foreign policy. These are individuals who have no problem shaping America into the enemy it wants to fight.
seanmcdirmid
Not that it justifies our behavior, but I can’t help but cringe a bit when considering how China locks American companies out of its market but expects better access for Chinese companies in the American market. America-Chinese relations started going downhill in 2009 when China thought it prudent to start blocking most Americans services, America just took a decade to follow up with similar bad behavior.
brightball
Agreed completely. The degree of pressure that China applies outside of software is also very unsettling. The latest episode with the NBA allowing players to promote social causes on their uniforms for example...unless you’re supporting Hong Kong or Taiwan. It’s appalling.
pm90
America applies diplomatic pressure too, for the things it finds important. This is how international politics work.
jcadam
What's an NBA?
But seriously, I'd like to say I'm boycotting professional basketball, but I never really watched it anyway.
billfruit
Really this move seems nothing related at all to US companies not having sufficient access to China. If then why this 10 year gap from action to reaction. Many here seems to take this particular view of this move being a retaliation of some sort, but I feel that is a naive view of what US is doing here and how it will be perceived around the world.
Put in specific data protection/privacy laws and regulations applicable to all players, not hound a single company without being able to prove any wrong doing in their part, or offering them a fair, due process.. it seems all arbitrary, discriminatory.. wrong in principle.. yet seems to cheered on by some, merely because it gives a semblance of going one up over a perceived adversary.
Retaliation or not, it is essentially arbitrary act, insufficiently justified in an open society.
International politics being driven with the ethos of a school playground.
the8472
> If then why this 10 year gap from action to reaction.
Perhaps due to a change in administration to one that is willing to engage in retaliation because globalisation is less popular with its voter base.
> Put in specific data protection/privacy laws and regulations applicable to all players, not hound a single company without being able to prove any wrong doing in their part,
The argument here is that china's protectionist trade practices should normally be addressed through the WTO but that was seen as ineffective because any compliance efforts were in name only.
TPP might have addressed some of this, but that was also dropped due to public opinion.
manfredo
Politics moves slowly. 10 years is barely more than 1 presidency.
China bans Facebook despite the company offering to comply with censorship/propaganda rules (and Zuckerberg even offering Xi to name his child). The ban is unambiguously due to strategic concerns over a foreign company having access to user data. The change in US policy towards Chinese apps is not retaliation, it's just the US coming to the same conclusion as China that letting rivals foreign powers control media companies is unwise.
benchen70
China can do whatever it wants, US can do whatever it wants. Whatever a country wants to do has nothing to do with how it governed, law or not. Law is a set of communally mutually agreed upon rules, so a society can function. However, the key is the word "communal", as in - which community is agreeing upon this law. China can complain that the new laws in the US is illegitimate, but the laws are made by Americans for Americans. Of course the law is not going to extend outside US, for example, they do not dictate what some Canadian company operating in Canada can do. But, in the US, these laws are there for Americans, for American soil, under the territory that the US government formally rules over. Of course, the US makes these rules, because it is its sovereign right to do so. China has no authority over how or why this law is made. Just like the US has no authority to say how Chinese government creates laws.
But then again, China likes to say “Do not interfere in our internal matters”; the US can say the same thing.
I am not American by the way, so have no beef in this.
So hey, I am all popcorns on this at the moment. The next few years are going to be interesting.
justicezyx
Us corps have access to Chinese market. Otherwise they wouldn't have been so courteous to Chinese pressure and sentiment. For example, Apple draw > 10% from mainland China.
There is a common misconception that corps like Google Facebook were banned without legitimate reason. The truth is that China has outrageous internet law that Google Facebook would violate their meal standard in order to operate inside China. Google claims Chinese government hacked their corporation data centers.
Nuances ate everywhere...
toomuchtodo
How else would you negotiate with a bully like China? America is a bully too, but without Uighur concentration camps, fleets of fishing vessels farming the sea to extinction, outrageous claims over the South China Sea, etc.
You can only turn a blind eye so long to a competitor’s unreasonable actions (in this scope, IP/trade secrets and the like). As a US citizen, I endorse any actions intended to remove or subdue CCP influence, power, and control (domestically or internationally). None of this comment should be construed as a sleight against the Chinese people in aggregate.
DiogenesKynikos
Trump's top advisor on China is a complete nutjob who knows nothing about China: Peter Navarro, author of "Death by China."
Navarro doesn't speak Chinese, and before he joined the Trump administration, he had hardly even been to China. In recent months, he's been promoting anti-Chinese conspiracy theories about CoVID-19. He's an ideologue who believes that the US is in a death struggle with China.
So if you're wondering why US policy has changed, looking at who's in office is a start. The scary thing is how successful the Trump administration has been in promoting its views on China among the public.
x86_64Ubuntu
It's not related to anything China has done over the past years. It's the fact that TikTok users embarrassed Trump, so sympathetic conservatives are looking for any and every Trump-free reason to support the president unilaterally banning something. Mind you, these are the same people that scream about "free speech" when YouTube or Twitter deplatforms Nazis and other right-wing white supremacists.
getmeoutofhere
China's actions are actually legal under 1. WTO rules which allow developing nations to have some sort of protectionism to foster their own industries, and 2. Their own laws, which companies can choose to abide by.
Google and Facebook were never wholesale banned by China. You can see this with the fact that Google tried to re-enter China with project Dragonfly (a China-law compliant search engine), until it internally became politically unfeasible. Note that Microsoft operates Bing in China, and Yahoo as well.
seanmcdirmid
Google trying to re enter China has no bearing on whether or not they were banned or are banned.
And actually, I was living in China when Facebook stopped working, and I was living in China when google.com stopped working, and when google.cn stopped working. And you are right, they were never officially banned, China would never admit to that, they just used the GFW to make them stop working and commenced a lot of work to make VPNs troublesome to use as well.
Yes, Microsoft operates Bing. But you can’t access gmail through it.
nsporillo
At what point is China no longer considered a developing country? I think the argument is since they're now at least the second largest economy in the world, they no longer deserve all the special protections.
chrischen
Because we believe in the free market and they believe in a controlled market?
I mean, are you suggesting we also move the planned economy model because China is right? It’s not like we adopted a free market model for the benefit of foreign interests... it’s simply a better model (in our belief) for creating a healthy economy.
arrosenberg
> Because we believe in the free market and they believe in a controlled market?
We pay lip service to the free market, but in practice we believe in controlled, privately owned markets and China believes in controlled, state owned markets.
mcji
While US corps predominate，free market is better. Otherwise, controlled market is better. /s
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cblconfederate
They also offer the US access to cheap workforce, which is kept unbeatably cheap via the action of the chinese state. I thought it was a tit-for-tat relationship.
The argument is also used a-la-carte: It's decades since the first time google pulled out of china, yet there was no relatiation then. And it does not apply to other countries which are often blocking google/facebook/youtube like russia or turkey?
toxik
If tiktop were Russian and accused of spying and or pushing propaganda, I believe the response would be the same
DarthGhandi
Which companies are locked out? Last I looked China is packed full of American companies, far moreso than the other way around. Apple, Walmart, Nike, Coke(61% marketshare), P&G, KFC, McDonald's, GE, GM, Boeing (50% marketshare), MS (99% marketshare) all make billions each year on the mainland, many make more there than in the US.
It's frankly quite disturbing how something so completely wrong constantly ends up the top of HN comments on these tiktok threads lately. 2 of the top 3 comments say this and it's not true whatsoever. It's just plain jingoism.
Since you've raised the issue can I as an Australian, sell my lamb to US consumers unhindered? We have a free trade agreement, take a guess about our market access in certain farming sectors? Even with shipping I can sell for far better prices than domestic farmers so your government sets up tariffs and sanctions to stop that happening. Ask some South American corn farmers about their market access too while this topic is hot :)
The US is so blatantly hypocritical and that's the real "cringe" here. The ultra-nationalist sentiment in this place is laughable.
Tiktok was a risk and I don't really have much of a problem with the choices made but the online justifications are unreal to listen to.
cm2012
More specifically to TikTok, all American social networks are locked out. (Facebook, twitter, YouTube, etc.)
thereare5lights
Your comment boils down to they did it so why can't we?
That flies in the face of the supposed moral leadership (of the world) of our country.
Jweb_Guru
America's morality has always come down to "might makes right" and it's quite clear that many people believe that's a perfectly satisfactory state of affairs.
seanmcdirmid
I started my comment out with “ Not that it justifies our behavior” and referred to similar actions by both China and America as bad behavior. Bad doesn’t justify bad, and only provides a measure of irony.
orbifold
No-one, not even your allies believe that the US is a moral actor, not since the Korean War or Hiroshima probably.
stale2002
Rules are only good if most countries follow them.
If you let someone get away with breaking the rule, without retaliating in kind, then you put yourself at a severe disadvantage to them.
slim
if the user is the product, the situation is better described as "blocking a foreign company from mining it's resources"
dkobia
As much as I agree and being from a "third world" country myself, I can still remember China banning Facebook and Google in 2009/2010. Everyone has had to bend over backwards to gain access to the Chinese market while giving them free reign to the rest of the world.
_6fmb
No they didn't, both Facebook and Google decided to quit themselves. Remember Dragonfly? Google just tried to get back into China THIS YEAR and was blocked by the US government. It's the US that's closing access to China not the other way around.
albacur
Wrong, Facebook was blocked in China following the July 2009 Ürümqi riots because Facebook refused to release information about Xinjiang independence activists.
In March 2009, China blocked access to Google's YouTube due to footage showing Chinese security forces beating Tibetans. Access to other Google online services was denied to users arbitrarily.
The search engine remained operational under the condition that the government could filter the search results. In January 2010, Google announced that, in response to a Chinese-originated hacking attack on them and other US tech companies, they were no longer willing to censor searches in China and would pull out of the country completely.
Also, the government didn't "block" Dragonfly. Google terminated the project after its own employees protested it and politicians criticized it.
(All the above from Wikipedia either as direct quotes or paraphrased for brevity.)
georgeburdell
> Remember Dragonfly? Google just tried to get back into China THIS YEAR and was blocked by the US government.
Could you substantiate this claim? Regarding China and Dragonfly, I only remember there being employee and governmental criticism, but no outright ban from doing business in China: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2018/11/27/google-...
andrewPP
Facebook and Google quit China because they didn't want to obey the speech control policy which not as democratic as in the U.S. They could have continued to operate in China had they chosen to follow the rules set up by Chinese regulators.
With the TikTok it is a different story. They are willing to obey all laws of US and the Trump admistration still wants to ban it without sound reason.
This is ridiculous from my point of view because the authoritarian Chinese government allows the US companies to operate in China when they follow their rules, but the democratic US government doesn't allow Chinese companies to operate in the US when they do obey US laws.
The only explanation to me is that the president is thinking in a way similar to curing COVID with disinfectant injection.
fennecfoxen
How facile to compare the situations of companies "when they follow [China's] rules" and "when they obey US laws" as if they are equivalent.
America is being arbitrary, capricious, and unfair, in contradiction to the neutral and generally applicable law in America. But China's legal system has been arbitrary and capricious for decades, and is rotten to the core, consistently elevating the whims of the ruling party over rights and due process.
To use nonsense numbers: the US is designed to be 0% arbitrary but is being 20% arbitrary here. China is designed to be 90% arbitrary all the time. Clearly means China can keep out all the firms and be virtuous, but when the US keeps out any firms for any reason they're unfair and wicked!
scoot_718
> Banning something which hasn't broken US laws, on arbitrary grounds shouldn't be possible.
Of course it should. They control their store fronts. This is an extremist position you are taking.
> Also dictating which apps an individual can install/not install shouldn't be the job of the Federal Government.
They aren't doing that. Install the app from an APK if you care so much.
Protecting their citizens from hostile state actors is very much in their purview and mandate.
> At this point US is seemingly acting like a dictatorship with very less transparency.
Nonsense. TikTok isn't a US citizen. And they need to obey regulations. Ensuring US infrastructure and the private data of their citizens is protected is the sort of thing a democracy does.
> Chinese policy seems to have not significantly changed in the last 5 years towards the US,
I agree actually. They've been pulling this shit for more than a decade now. War on all fronts except military. I'm glad the world is starting to wake up to it.
young_unixer
This. I am from a mediocre country and had always admired how Americans defended freedom (specially freedom of speech and right to bear arms). But now they seem not to care anymore. Just throw all our freedoms out the window because China is spying on us.
Even in this forum, the general sentiment is that it should just be banned.
MangoCoffee
American withdrawal from the global stage. It does not start with Trump but Clinton. After Cold War, little by little American is retreating from the world stage and letting go of its "leader" position. Trump just speed up this process.
You can see it in WHO. Every president before Trump have neglect it. It will be an interesting time when American completely exit the world stage.
javagram
Clinton established the WTO and signed NAFTA. He also saber rattled against China during the taiwan straits crisis, bombed plenty of foreign countries, went to war over Kosovo in violation of the UN charter, and various other actions. I don’t really see how that’s “withdrawal from the global stage”
x86_64Ubuntu
What's your reason for dragging Clinton into this?
jchw
As a United States citizen, I don’t agree that we’re obligated to play fairly with someone who brazenly refuses to do so for us. That’s all I really have to say about this.
chrischen
What is “fair”? We believe in a free market economy. There is no way to “game” it because by definition a free market has to be free and what arises from it is what is supposed to be.
China has a planned economy. They pick and choose what happens economically and they have a heavy hand in manipulating it.
It honestly sounds like we want to have our cake and eat it too. The free market is the best way to develop a healthy economy, and it does not require the generosity of foreign players to function.
Fundamentally we’re just being rattled by the economic rise of China which is shaking the beliefs of some free market capitalists.
albacur
The U.S. doesn't have purely free market economy; it's regulated to prevent abuse from bad actors and it enters into trade deals to advance its strategic interests. This is true of all countries.
I have mixed feelings about TikTok, but the claim that the U.S. can't protect itself from a hostile trade partner or a security threat because it "believes in a free market economy" is utterly baseless.
manfredo
The US being a free market and China tightly controlling it's markets is precisely what's unfair. Think if it like a tariff. When a country establishes a tariff, most other countries set up their own tariffs in response. This is fundamentally the same thing. China banning Facebook, Twitter, et al. is effectively a tariff on US tech companies. Now the US is setting up its own tariffs in response.
jchw
It would not be having our cake and eating it too to show the CCP the door. They don’t need to give us access to their market and we don’t need to give access to ours.
American companies need to go though Chinese entities to do business in China. Why not the reverse?
whoevercares
China “planned” its tech industry? You gonna be kidding me
katzgrau
> The President shouldn't have authority to ban anything at all let alone an app available through privately operated app stores.
If it's a matter of national security, yes, he should. Whether it's ultimately seen as an abuse of power can be decided later in courts or via election.
vkou
TikTok is not a national security problem, no more than Whatsapp or Telegram or Skype is a national security problem.
The last time I asked folks here to explain to me why they think its a national security problem, I got a list of arguments that were just a little bit less plausible then those for the existence of Santa Claus.
Just because Trump says something (while providing no proof) does not make it true.
bladegash
A straight forward argument that comes to my mind is TikTok being used in the manner Cambridge Analytica used Facebook. Except in this case, it is being done by a State sponsored entity with vast resources (monetarily and people-wise). Further, instead of it being used to help a candidate become elected, it's purpose would be to influence foreign opinions of China/the PRC.
That doesn't sound implausible to me.
dpkonofa
That's pretty naive, in my opinion. TikTok has access to your microphone, even on an iOS device where it's far more limited than Android, which means that the Chinese government has access to ultrasonics. This means that China can create maps of infrastructure for hardware devices (Cisco IP cameras, for example) and create aggregated profiles of things like what products people shop for, what TV shows they watch, and even what commercials they've seen. Yes, Whatsapp and Telegram potentially have the same access to that information. The difference is that they are not owned by a state agency and especially not of a country that has shown, time and again, that they do not have to play by shared rules.
katzgrau
I said if it's a matter of national security.
> TikTok is not a national security problem, no more than Whatsapp or Telegram or Skype is a national security problem.
Yeah, you don't actually know that. What we don't know is the most consequential for us. China is ambitious and is clearly engaged in a long game against the US.
We should watch our backs, no apologies necessary.
manquer
Grindr was a national security problem . The precedent is there.
ergocoder
> TikTok is not a national security problem, no more than Whatsapp or Telegram or Skype is a national security problem.
Yes, TikTok is potentially a national security problem. Sending a lot of citizens' personal info to an opposing super power is a national security problem. This is especially true when we are in disputes on many fronts like Taiwan, Hong Kong, islands in South China Sea
Telegram, maybe, but the founder makes it clear that he escaped from Russia, and Russia wants to imprison him(?).
Whatsapp and Skype are US companies, so they send info to US. There's not much security risk here. Their founders are US citizen or in a country that is aligned with US.
> Just because Trump says something (while providing no proof) does not make it true.
There's never proof in any geopolitical issue/scandal. At best, you have expert hearsay. Maybe CIA's opinion from wikileaks.
If we had to wait for proof for any geopolitical issue, US would probably already collapse for being incompetent long ago.
Now are you trying to say TikTok will never ever send personal info to Chinese government (if China requests)? I hope you're not. We know this isn't true.
Saying US and China having no tension against each other is just very strange; The tension is blatantly obvious for decades. I'm not sure if you aren't truly aware or you just pretend you don't know.
partiallypro
> Ultimately I feel that it is US who has been more to blame (contrary to much of Western media coverage) for the deteriorating US-China relationship, and drumming up the chorus for a new coldwar. Chinese policy seems to have not significantly changed in the last 5 years towards the US, but on the other hand US seemed ever more keen and eger to pursue a hostile attitude towards China.
In what universe? The Chinese global stance has changed drastically over the past 5 years, and they have continued to deteriorate western companies and forced companies to appease their government, or the CCP will ban those companies, steal their IP and clone then. So far not a single soul has stood up to them, for fear of losing out. They've expanded their power in the South China Sea, laying claim to land and passages that aren't theirs at all and never have been. They fund North Korea as a satellite state to antagonize its neighbors, and turn in people that escape back to NK so they can be put in slave camps. The new security law gives them reach beyond their own borders to crack down on people that criticize the CCP. Not to mention they have literal concentration camps where they are harvesting organs, hair, using them as slave labor and stealing their possessions. Ask other Asian countries how they feel about China's slow and steady encroachment of their authoritarian regime that is anti-freedom.
nobody0
> In what universe?
I don't know, maybe the one where the U.S. constantly suprises the world in the last few years.
partiallypro
Strangely another account with few comments/karma, but almost all defending China. At least on HN, this is a recent phenomena.
getmeoutofhere
> Not to mention they have literal concentration camps where they are harvesting organs, hair, using them as slave labor and stealing their possessions.
If you dig into this deeper, this is literally fake news. The sources for these claims are either the World Uighur Congress, a NED funded organization, or Adrian Zenz, a Christian fundamentalist who believes in the rapture, is Anti-LGBT, and praised the Nazis.
If you are so inclined, you can actually visit Xinjiang yourself and ask Uighurs there about the situation. China has been actively been encouraging foreign inspectors to visit Xinjiang to see the situation.
Given that America was wrong (or blatantly lied) about WMDs, Iraqis stealing incubators, Iraqis murdering babies in Kuwait, and is a geopolitical rival to China, Im doubtful about some of these claims.
wadkar
> If you are so inclined, you can actually visit Xinjiang yourself and ask Uighurs there about the situation. China has been actively been encouraging foreign inspectors to visit Xinjiang to see the situation.
Oh that sounds news to me. I was under the impression that no foreign media was allowed to freely roam and report in Xinjiang.
Can you please share your sources and any instances of foreign to China (and perhaps non US like say EU/India/Australia/Arabic etc.) media coverage in Xinjiang?
partiallypro
[flagged]
volgo
The interesting thing is that these platforms come and go. One year it’s Vine, another year it’s Snap, now it’s TikTok. ByteDance bought musically for $1B in 2017 and turned it into Tok.
3 years later, it’s grown like crazy because it’s the latest fad and would be smart for them to cash out before the next new thing hits
The whole divestment thing is probably a godsend for ByteDance, “forcing” them to liquidate their stake, but in reality let’s them cash out on an overhyped app that’s easy to copy
Must be laughing all the way to the bank
kerng
I think you underestimate the popularity and potential of TikTok and ByteDance at large.
It's like Facebook, maybe around 2010-2012, with enormous upward potential - they might even dethrone Facebook and their offerings in the coming years. For the core Facebook app, I wouldnt be surprised if they did that already in a couple of countries.
philsnow
The promise of "upward potential" of every one of these social media fads is that it could be the "last" one, the Big One that websites and captures every following generation.
Do you think that TikTok is The Big One, that will still be growing at the same rate in ten years' time? I don't.
Myspace and Facebook are shrinking. Some of the users leaving are going to TikTok, sure, but I don't think that means that it's better, it's just hotter right now.
spideymans
Of course TikTok won’t be growing at the same rate in 10 years time. That doesn’t mean it won’t still be a huge platform, however.
In fact, I’d wager that, it TikTok plays their cards right, the platform could be bigger than YouTube within five years or so. I know it sounds crazy now, but there is nothing that dictates that YouTube’s model is the best for delivering democratized video publishing to the masses.
I find that a lot of these Gen Z kids don’t have the patience to sit thru a five or 10 minute YouTube video (and I can’t really blame them; how much time have you wasted watching YouTube videos that ended up being clickbait garbage?). They’d rather have the information condensed down into a 90 second video, and TikTok is perfectly designed to serve those viewing habits.
I know the popular perception of TikTok (from those that don’t use it) is that it just hosts trendy dance videos, but TikTok creators are publishing essentially all the same genres of content we see on YouTube. You can find everything from dance videos to home improvement tutorials on the service. Furthermore, more and more YouTube creators are moving over to TikTok. I view the service as the single biggest threat we’ve seen to YouTube since it’s rise to popularity.
I suspect TikToks next big move will be into YouTube’s bread and butter: official music videos. Their user interaction model lends itself extremely well into music discovery.
Also, most fundamentally, there’s only 24 hours in a day. Every hour spent on TikTok is one hour not spent on YouTube or a competing service.
zanny
Importantly its because kids don't want to be a part of the "old" culture. They actively reject entering places with an older established demographic because they want to define their own spaces.
Tiktok by its nature cannot maintain the momentum it has with kids 14-18 now with the kids that are currently 8-12. They will reject it no matter what Tiktok does because thats how kids are conditioned in the west to behave.
mgraczyk
Facebook is shrinking in some countries, but globally it is still growing in both usage and activity. Check out their recent quarterly results.
albacur
The pet rock was a fad.
Online companies, like brick and mortar companies, rise and fall. And even if Facebook's best days are behind it, I'm not sure we can call a business that grew for nearly 15 years and is now used by billions of people a "fad." Regardless, it generated unfathomable wealth for its founders, and made thousands of employees financially set for life.
If TikTok could capture that, it doesn't matter if it lasts five years or ten years, the people at the top will become very, very rich.
So I think both commenters above are correct: it has huge potential upside that investors are willing to gamble on, and it probably won't become the next Facebook so it might be worth it for the current owners to cash out now.
kerng
They can still grow by about 10x (at least I'd say). Wait until they focus or reach other demographics.
patrickaljord
TikTok is not overhyped, it is here to stay, that's why they want to ban it. It's still growing like crazy and is way way more entertaining than any other social network by a long shot.
dkersten
> it is here to stay
That's what I heard about plenty of social platforms like this. Everyone thought Vine was here to stay too. Everyone thought Myspace was here to stay. Snapchat was huge at one point and now I no longer know anybody who still uses it. Maybe it will be like Facebook, but there's a big chance it won't. It's huge now, but its still relatively niche appeal in the grand scheme of tings. These things appear to be fickle. We will see.
trca
Just because you don't know anyone that uses Snapchat doesn't make that an authoritative source on popularity of a company. Snap's user base has grown consistently and show's no signs of slowing down, even against increase competition in the space (https://www.statista.com/statistics/545967/snapchat-app-dau/). TikTok is the "Vine replacement" since Vine was bought by Twitter and shutdown. Vine wasn't a "fad" that faded away, it was actively shutdown by its parent company, likely would still exist to this day in a non-insignificant way had that not happen.
moscovium
> Everyone thought Vine was here to stay too.
Vine was loved and was shut down by a part time CEO.
> Snapchat was huge at one point and now I no longer know anybody who still uses it.
People under 25 still love and use snapchat.
Tiktok has 80 million MAUs, and is becoming the tool of cultural influence in the same way the Instagram did. I wouldn't underestimate the staying power of tiktok.
op03
They are fickle sort of like a Hurricane. Feels like over the last 20 year we have learnt how to scale things up quick i.e. spin up a hurricane.
What the hurricane does after its created or whether its controllable at all no one really knows. Making room for the type of characters who will claim they can control hurricanes. Expect these people to show up and disappear as these hurricanes spin up and fizzle out.
That said, I just hope figuring out whether hurricanes can be controlled doesn't take too many more years, and happens without too many more unpredictable side effects.
odyssey7
> Maybe it will be like Facebook
Speaking about Facebook the website (separate from Instagram and WhatsApp), I'd give it 50/50 odds that a major decline in market position will start by 2030. If it doesn't happen, it will be attributed to very strategic leadership.
m3kw9
The type of entertainment TikTok provides is getting tiring. Is like fb videos on turbo. Sugar high can only last so long
akhilcacharya
I'm 24 and my iPhone tells me I spend 2 hours on TikTok a day. This is up from about a year and a half ago, when i consumed it exclusively in YouTube compilations.
Their targeting and algorithmic curation is extremely, scary good.
Kelteseth
Maybe you are just not the target audience here? YouTube also has videos like TikTok and it still has a bazillion users...
hourislate
It exposes the level of mental illness in America and around the world.
You have teens threatening to kill themselves if it gets banned. What will all these girls do if they can't get some attention and a dopamine hit every few hours. Woman are taking to Tik Tok and posting farewells crying and dancing. Some are even threatening the President.
The app is poison but perhaps it's no worse than Insta, Twatter and FB and all social media.
How many lives this shit ruins everyday, little by little is unimaginable. People living in the digital world instead of the real one.
CPLX
The most successful global consumer-facing company in world history sells sugar water.
rvz
The problem is with this specific demographic is they will grow out of TikTok and eventually stop using it due to fatigue or strange reasons like their parents joining in.*
This happened with Snap, Vine, YikYak, etc. They will just move on to the next social network craze that doesn't have their parents, grandparents or their next door neighbours friending you. Rinse and repeat.
* The exception to this rule is unless your parents is a Kardashian / West, Musk, or an Obama or some other famous celebrity.
shigawire
YikYak killed itself with changes that no on wanted or needed. Vine was killed by Twitter.
Otherwise I agree in principle but your examples aren't good.
cscurmudgeon
> TikTok is not overhyped, it is here to stay
The only constant in social apps is that the "apps that are here to stay" do not stay.
enricozb
> it's here to stay
Would you be surprised if it just disappears in a year or two, like Vine, Orkut, Myspace, and other "giants" of their day did? I personally wouldn't because these things just come and go. I think it's really hard to make the claim that "it's here to stay".
untog
Couldn’t you have said the same about Snapchat a few years ago? Not that it’s about to shut down, but it’s definitely not the white hot app it was hyped to be.
skohan
Snapchat is a very different use-case. Snapchat was built on being a sort of anti-social-media. It's all about ephemeral content, and not making it easy for content to be shared widely. TikTok has a lot more going for it in terms of intrinsic properties built around bringing more users into the platform. Snapchat is about having a more low-pressure online presence, TikTok is a "look at me" platform.
TikTok is a lot more analogous to Instagram: where Instagram used filters to allow normal people to create much more appealing photos, TikTok's music licensing allows average users to create videos with a much stronger emotional appeal than they can get on other platforms.
patrickaljord
I've tried Snapchat, never felt the same thing I'm getting with TikTok. TikTok is not being hyped to me, I genuinely get a good laugh out of it everytime I open it. Never had that with Snap or really any other social network. This is huge.
seppin
It will suck eventually, politics and boomers will arrive and ruin it.
xparco
Ok stop lying
meddlepal
> an overhyped app that’s easy to copy
If only I could have a nickel every time someone on HN says something like this.
This site sometimes... smh
Sivart13
I heard people say this about Facebook for years, that it was just the next Myspace and it would be gone in a year. Platforms are temporary until they're not.
oblio
The thing is, people really mistake the Wild West days of a market with the mature days. People were saying the same thing about Windows, for example, back in the 1990s. Stuff like:
"Back in the day we had Commodore and Amiga and many other platforms that slowly died, Windows will go their way. Unix will outlast it and kill it off."
30 years later and you could base a Fortune 500 company off of Windows, alone.
Same story with Facebook. People are comparing things to the pre-Facebook days without realizing that social media is a lot more mature now. They're presenting Snapchat as a failure when it's still growing (in users and revenue), Orkut as an example of a rise and fall when it was only popular in Brazil, while Tik Tok is global.
Tik Tok seems to have carved a niche in a pretty mature market. That's hard to do.
AlexandrB
So is Facebook temporary and TikTok is going to take over or is Facebook here to stay and TikTok is temporary? This seems like a zero-sum game for the most part.
patrickaljord
It's not, Facebook is mostly email with pictures and is here to stay. TikTok may be eating Instagram's lunch though.
jmcgough
This isn't laughing, it's desperation. Either they get bought now or they lose everything. India already banned them and they're terrified of a repeat.
I think over time social networks have found more stable userbases. Facebook isn't going anywhere, neither are Instagram or (unless the feds intervene) TikTok. It's not like it was in the early days where everyone abandoned the old platform, because the new one was so much better.
paganel
FB has become an “over-40” thing in my country, younger people only use it now for messaging (WhatsApp is still preferred, though).
aledalgrande
The interesting thing is that US has bigger problems than TikTok right now.
dealpete
You have a gift for understatement.
iliveinchina
You are likely underestimating the staying power of ByteDance. They have a portfolio of successful apps within China, such as Toutiao, and have probably overtaken Baidu to be the 3rd most important software company in China (after Alibaba and Tencent). Unlike Vine or Snap, they have a lot of e-commerce revenue and are a major sales platform.
Should they be allowed to continue expanding internationally, something like a Facebook or Amazon peer would be the more relevant comparison.
one_electron
"easy to copy" isn't really a factor here tbh, seeing how tiktok (along with vine, snap, facebook, etc) is a classic example of network effects.
pknerd
US is doing with China what China did with them. American VCs and business men used to criticize and mock Chinese government for it. Since US is following the footsteps of China, I wonder whether Chinese will be doing what US VCs did?
RavlaAlvar
If US successfully force China to open market, that would be a win for everyone. Of course though, this situation would only occur in fantasy land.
tslling
I don't think this will make China more open, because even banning Huawei did not make China reflect on its open policy. IMO, Huawei is more close to Chinese government compred to Bytedance, and I saw much less comments from top officer or state-owned medias about this acquisition compraed to that about Huawei.
robert_foss
Thinking that US market forces will open the chinese market after decades of failing to have that effect seems rather naive.
jariel
It's not 'US market forces' that will open China, and it never was.
It was the opportunity to expand into global economic markets, with a certain perspective in mind, ballpark along the lines of Western Liberal Democracy and Economy.
The Asian countries that followed this path after WW2 were enormously succesfull: South Korea, Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan.
They are basically beacons of prosperity surrounded by economic mayhem.
China chose 'it's own path' - which is fine - and there are probably many advantages to the central planning early on (those other nations did that, Korea was an authoritarian state and then opened eventually, kind of 'part of a plan') - but of course the CCP has another agenda, they don't want to cede power, and China has a different historical view of itself which is not just a function of CCP propaganda.
I think it is literally at this very point wherein the 'advantage' of autocracy is starting to be a disadvantage, and that a degree of opening up would actually beneficial.
Basically - once you get the 'easy investments' done - like roads, bridges, and you succesfull rip off everyone else's IP and are 'to some extent caught up' - then the plan starts to falter. At some point, you have to 'lead' - and it takes a different kind of approach. At least in many areas, though we should not underestimate them.
There are no obvious economic choices for China now and their 'old plan' won't work. Putting Uyghers in jail, grabbing S. China sea, getting into pissing matches with India and Japan - none of this will bear fruits.
The 'Belt and Road' is actually one 'grand strategy' that a central power like China could have that America could never have (takes a couple decades of consistent vision) - but it seems that the heavy handedness and deep corruption of the system won't allow for it.
Geopolitically, people 'love to hate on America' in the press and in propaganda, but when 'push comes to shove' there is nobody who doesn't understand what side they would rather be on, both pragmatically and for the sake of the good of everyone.
Though Trump is a dufous and blow-hard (sorry), he is actually the only Western leader with the 'crazy like a fox' to take on China, and he's absolutely right to ban TikTok and other entities.
Basically - the West needs to apply trade rules with China that are exactly tit for tat: China doesn't allow foreign competition in certain areas - then we ban that. They don't allow ownership, then we ban that. They have a lot of controls over content, then we do as well - we ban everything remotely related to the Chinese state. They require foreign companies to fork over IP, and then give it to local champions - then we do as well.
Imagine how the world would react if the US required Huawei to give up all it's IP, held it up in bureaucracy for years, while they gave the IP to Cisco, and then the Treasury and the Fed financed Cisco and their international customers, while the US diplomatic corps acted both as a sales team for Cisco, and did economic espionage to thwart competitors outright?
That would be 'fair'.
There is a Canadian company [1] that lost a contract to the Canadian government for airport scanners - the Chinese bid was 25% lower. The complaint was that the Canadian company would never be allowed to bid on such a sensitive contract in China, moreover, there were state subsidies. How on earth is this fair or free trade? It's not. If China won't allow external bidders for airport security tools - we don't allow them either.
It's really almost a paradox to understand why even China has been able to maintain such a lop-sided advantage.
It started 30 years ago, when China was so poor that the West basically accepted the asymmetrical terms of trade. Like a frog in cool water that's getting warmer never thinks to jump out - Western entities have not been able to 'get it together' to change the terms. China has been acting very aggressively against anyone who speaks out, and of course, we have the useful idiots in the West who will proclaim that any antagonism towards China must be 'racism' etc..
It's just only right now starting to cross a tipping point wherein you see bits of world leaders actually starting to push back collectiely. Merkel or Trudeau might say one small thing, then they see the reaction, then others will say something else.
COVID and the China coverup has presented basically a catalyst for this, wherein it has been fully legit to publicly criticise China because they did act poorly and it cost ostensibly a lot of lives.
Though the Dems actually have not really been against Trump's China aggression, they may not be likely to spearhead it. They are just far to 'systematically naive'. Even if many Dems individually realise what needs to be done - they do not, organisationally, have the political will. Biden might say a few things here and there, but the momentum is unlikely to continue. It takes a certain kind of 'political courage' and consistently so - with a lot of people on board to re-articulate the relationship with China - I'm wary that Biden & his team will be able to do it. Their economic team I feel just won't have enough true hardball players and I don't mean 'jerks for the sake of being jerks' - I mean 'realpolitik' players who can apply the hard rules necessary with China, that would otherwise seem out of place in a modern world.
Have a quick glance at the difference between Obama/Trump trade advisors Froman [2] and Navarro [3]. Night and Day. (FYI I'm not saying I support either, just highlighting the difference)
[1] https://nationalpost.com/news/chinese-government-owned-firm-...
ericmay
Active versus passive approach
chenzhekl
I don't think this move has anything to do with forcing China to open the market.
peacefulhat
Making the US less open will not make China more open.
generatorguy
What if the US and allies are Less open to China, and offer to me more open again if China also is more open?
moneywoes
Can you fill us in what they did for those who are uninformed?
sushshshsh
Chinese government didn't allow people in China to use US services (Google, Twitter, FB) and instead invested and marketed Chinese "clones" of these businesses (Tencent, Weibo, Baidu).
Now that the Chinese owned TikTok is such a desirable app to use in the USA, the US government is blocking it in a similar fashion.
To be honest it's all quite petty.
temporalparts
I wouldn't call it petty; these platforms control access to information and there's a huge ideological (figurative) battle between the US and China.
hw
Wouldn't this embolden other countries to ban US made apps or tech unless they 'sell' a stake to their local companies? EU for example.
slowmovintarget
Where have you heard the US government is blocking the app? The gigantic security issues have been because the US government doesn't block apps like this.
It can forbid government workers from using it on government-provided devices. This is sensible due to the capabilities for arbitrary code execution and the full permissions to the device the app requires of the user. Amazon has done that with their employees as well. But the US government doesn't have a Great Firewall. Even if they wanted to, they couldn't ban or block it.
Edit: Apologies. I mistook the unlikelihood of anything like this being effective as reason enough for no one (let alone the President) to make statements like this. I stand corrected.
rtx
I don't think primary driver for this move is US it looks like to be coming from the Indian ban. India had 120 million active TikTok users. It was one of the fastest growing apps there.
volgo
Not really. India really has very little clout in today’s digital economy. There’s a ton of users, but very little money to be made there since it’s a relatively poor country
bigpumpkin
AirBnB's business in China doesn't look so attractive anymore.
xeromal
Oh how the turn tables
ativzzz
They criticize and mock the government, yet they do what the govt tells them anyway, because money. Looks like Chinese businessmen are willing to do the same.
ktln2
Chinese always has the freedom to criticize and mock US government - as long as you are not targeting Chinese government you are fine ;-)
oh_sigh
This sounds like the tat in tit-for-tat. Would the tat have happened if the tit didn't?
brandonmenc
Future startup biz strategy:
Chinese company makes huge viral app for the US market, and lets everyone stoke rumors that it's a spying platform. US gov't tosses a huge subsidy at whatever domestic company can acquire it at any cost - in the interest of national defense - resulting in massive overvalued purchase. China pockets the profits. Rinse, repeat.
smilekzs
But isn't it more likely that said Chinese company will have little to none leverage in the talks, because the choice is between getting banned or getting bought at a token (read: undervalued) price?
Spivak
Potentially but their negotiating position is shutting down completely which would be a loss for a potential acquiring company. I'm sure that TT stole some users from YT, IG, and Tumblr but largely creators are posting everywhere so their existence just increases the size of the pie.
cma
That assumes the buyers aren't in competition with each other, and just one possible buyer is pre-chosen.
LordFast
Selling paranoia is good business these days.
nkingsy
If you can build a huge viral app, you’re already a billionaire.
MangoCoffee
Some people here think TikTok is a fad. I used to think FB is a fad but 16 years later. FB is still here. Not as shiny as it used to be but enough to make billions.
I don't know if TikTok is a fad and you don't either. If TikTok last more than 10 years. It already make back its cost and some more.
Heck, Snap is still around and it used to be a meme stock on WallStreetBets.
Latty
I'm always suspicious of anyone who says "this is a fad" who treats the thing with disdain. If you don't understand what people like about the thing, it seems unlikely you will be able to identify if that desire is going to fade quickly.
hhsuey
Agreed. Fad is a bit too much. However, maybe 5 or 10 more years. I think more and more people are moving away each year. It seems like it's my (older generation) that uses it.
schuke
I wonder if anyone know that TikTok is currently actively blocking access from Chinese users. Even with a US Apple ID, even with a VPN/Shadowsocks service, you cannot sign up TikTok as long as your phone is using a Chinese SIM card. I have to use an iPad.
What you have is something the internet has never seen: unlike Google having to censor its content within China, you now have a allegedly independent US company actively censoring the Chinese people on a social network that identifies itself as non-political, on US (or Free World) soil.
This is a type of censorship that's far worse than anything Google or Yahoo or Microsoft ever had to do. Imagine more and more Chinese-owned companies doing this world wide. This is just absolutely ugly practice that shouldn't be allowed to proliferate.
It's not only a national security issue. It's also a human rights hazard.
fermienrico
Umm...there is nothing remarkable about this. CCP wants their citizens to use a vetted service, that’s in full control and has surveillance capabilities.
They already ban YouTube, Google, Facebook, Instagram, etc. amongst many other sites.
Tiktok has a local version for Chinese users I believe and Tiktok wants to make sure Chinese users do not sign up for international version of Tiktok app.
Tiktok is owned by ByteDance which is not a US firm. It’s based in China.
Am I missing something?
chvid
Great policy. The EU needs to do the same with American big tech.
plandis
The government dictating how businesses are allowed to interact with its citizens is a statement that equally applies to both the US banning TikTok and GDPR.
bigpumpkin
What did Merkel do when the US spied on her phone?
sschueller
She said that the internet is "Neuland"...
jariel
If the EU banned American big tech, they'd be set aback 20 years. Of course where would be a populist revolution.
The difference between the EU and US on this matter, is that the EU has almost no substitutes, and they just don't - for whatever reason (there are many) have he will to do them.
And of course there's no point - what FB is doing is no different from what a EU-based FB would do.
kolinko
I've been doing tech in Poland since ~2002 and it's not true.
We had a counterpart for I think every single US-based service, but most sites didn't survive the competition. Right now only eBay failed to enter our market (they tried, but the local Allegro won out).
Personally, I'm not the fan of the local copycats - because of their local scale they couldn't really get enough profit/investment to grow the tech just as much. But still - at least in Poland, it's not true that there were no substitutes.
baby
> If the EU banned American big tech, they'd be set aback 20 years. Of course where would be a populist revolution.
Be more specific. I remember a time where dailymotion was mocking Youtube as a money blackhole due to its shitty tech. Lots of startups people in the US use are from Europe (Spotify). Lots of startups that exist in Europe don't even exist in the US, or don't get that much traction in the US (monzo, revolut, blablacar, thetrainline, toogoodtogo, etc.)
> And of course there's no point - what FB is doing is no different from what a EU-based FB would do.
there is so much wrong in this sentence. By being a US company FB is run much more differently. Control of information.
yangcheng
It's easy to create those apps when there is no external competition. China created every major internet service U.S has. EU can easily do the same. The point is FB pay tax to US, and a EU-based FB will pay tax to EU. EU actually want to copy GFW , see https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/STUD/2020/6487...
jariel
Unfortunately, all of these answers are off the mark.
A) Europe has tons of bright people and tons of technical talent - this is not the ussie.
B) Governments don't create stuff. So the 'EU' is barely a government it's not 'they' who can go and make something, or 'have it made'. Even the US gov. would suck bad at copying FB. Granted, if there were no competition, substitutes would arrive.
C) Europe does not have quite the dynamic leadership exhibited in the Valley. Maybe there would be something pop up, but it probably would be a bad clone, it might not have all the nimble features. FB advertising engine is complex, massive, they have huge ad sales division. This is the $$$ the pays for everything.
D) EU is still highly fragmented, and not an immigrant place like SV. Better to think of SV as really a 'global centre' that happens to be in America. Tons of talent from around the world, they come for the money and adventure, not so much to be 'American'.
E) Europeans value quality of life a lot, and in some things it's fine, but in some industries ... it means less competitive.
F) Europe esp. Germany, does not 'get' software in the way SV does.
So Europe has all the pieces but they are not quite aligned.
It's not at all 'easy' to fire on all cylinders and create amazing new experiences.
ByteDance et. al. have zillions of workers, working cheaply, often 7 days a week.
So Europe is good at R&D, Hardware, Lifestyle stuff, and stuff that doesn't need huge scale and major talent depth, things that don't move 24/7.
But EU is not going to build something 'better' than FB or Google anytime soon. But they discover good drugs and make good cars etc..
chenzhekl
Do you really think EU is not capable of creating similar services?
admin_account
From a technical standpoint, no. From a cultural standpoint, yes.
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chvid
Europeans don't have a word for entrepreneur.
cblconfederate
the EU would use yandex and VK. They are decent enough substitutes for google and FB , and of course the extra attention would make them better. There is enough money in the EU to buy them. There are already popular alternatives to US messaging apps, e.g. Viber.
oscargrouch
You know there is this movement called open source software right? With it not only a lot of strategical pieces of software are available to anyone to modify, but it also allowed people all over the world to contribute to them. This means that not only Europe but other parts of the world have people with enough knowledge to not only contribute, combine and use those things but also to 'push the envelope' in research and development.
BTW, a more decentralized, organic tech world, is something we should try to achieve, because as we are seeing now, there are no safe heavens for anything, anymore.
We should think more like human beings and less with nationalistic mentality, because all i've seeing til now, is nationalistic values being use not just to undermine other countries, but also undermine the nationalistic's own country.
If there's one valuable lesson history teach us, is that even the Rome empire, comparatively much powerful than anything we have now, started to fall when they corrupted the core values that served as a foundation of the Roman empire.
And nationalistic, the "we are better than everyone else", walls, stupid wars, etc..
But lets not forget an important difference here, right now all the achievements, the culture, the universities, the internet, the knowledge is widespread all over the world..
This is a pandora box effect, that once opened, cannot be closed anymore.
So even if the US totally closed itself to the world, im pretty sure the world would keep moving forward, and once this Donald Trump version of US lost it all and tried to become part of the world again, im pretty sure, it would be welcomed with open arms, and a catch up path would be offered to try to recover what was lost along the way. A sort of "Marshall plan" only that this time it would be to put the US back on their feet.
I hope the US dont keep going through this path that only leads to self-destruction..
AnonymousRider
Tired of the apologists for China. They have been taking advantage of our Western tradition of openness for far too long.
quantum_state
The government's behavior should not be allowed in a country of rule of law. We should all wake up to defend our God given right to use apps we like. Guys, please don't fall into the trap of us vs them. The governments are all bullying us, the people. They raised tariff in the name of whatever, yet in reality, they collect more tax and we pay more for goods we need. The same goes with banning apps. The reality is that we are being stripped away more and more choices and freedom. So, we the people need to wake up and stand against it!
nouveaux
Or people need to wake up to the security threat.
This is not about us vs them. No apps from Australia, Europe or Africa are on the list of banned apps. Its China where in order to do business there, you have to give the government access to your trade secrets and full server access without a warrant.
While its possible for any company to succumb to government pressure for unreasonable access, it is a prerequisite to do so in China. The world knows this.
Hong Kong's new national security law is plenty proof that China is not a genuine partner and is a bad faith actor. Your right to look at TikTok videos does not trump anyone else's right for security.
javagram
This isn’t about Chinese control, considering the President dismissed allowing Microsoft to buy the app.
Microsoft is a US company.
horsemessiah
The solution would be to pass a law akin to the GDPR then. There is no need to go through executive action.
The U.S. is not supposed to be authoritarian like China is.
0xy
GDPR wouldn't block Tik Tok's data extraction practices, nor is it effective legislation at all.
GDPR is simply EU tech protectionism, nothing more. All it gave consumers was infuriating cookie nag screens.
GDPR utterly failed to prevent data brokers from operating with impunity in Germany and other EU nations. Your cell phone location data is still openly sold when you live in the EU. It's useless.
nouveaux
As far as I understand it, GDPR is personal privacy. I believe the US concern is one of national security.
It has already been established that social media has problems with national security when the company is owned by US. It is likely to be more problematic if it is owned by a country that continues to undermine us with espionage and Cold War tactics.
I think protecting our national security is not authoritarianism.
wolco
You are the government. You made these laws to protect you. Tariffs allow key industries to remain active in countries with a high dollar.
mrtksn
As I currently recide in a country famous for blocking access to websites, I follow these developments as closely as I can.
Whatever happens, it's probably going to be a recipe on how to force all foreign providers to act the way the local government wants. These days the theme is forcing on the ant-gay stance, they managed to force Netflix a show that had a gay character in it. Besides that charade, they passed laws to control the social media in the name of national security and citizens rights. This comes after Twitter exposed and deleted a pro government troll army.
Anyway, if this happens Facebook, Google, Twitter etc. can start looking into the future of Instagram for Iran, Twitter for Turkey, Google for EU - all forced to partner with a local company and the global versions inaccessible.
I am sure that the US ban of TikTok would be well rationalised but the US could have chosen the EU approach of enforcing US data being kept on US soil. Sad that US choose the Chinese approach of right our of banning(because somehow becoming like China is the way of topping the authoritarian Chinese order). Something tells me that this is not about national security.
Welcome to the world of partitioned internet in the name of national security. A boring dystopia where the less fre world no longer has a role model.
I hope you enjoy the life where the government is telling you what you can and can't use so that the country stays safe. Brilliant system that served all kind of authoritarian regimes.
Good luck to the start-ups, from now on you are looking to a future where you will have to strike a deal with each country you want to operate.
"Your app just crossed the TOP100 mark in the AppStore, would be shame if something happens to it because of national security. Maybe you should sell it to our crony while it's still worth something"
xvector
As a US citizen, I'm incredibly saddened and disappointed in how my fellow Americans fall for the "national security" excuse every single time.
You'd think we'd have learnt by now. We do not deserve the freedom we have since we clearly don't care about it. Just look at all of the pro-ban comments in this thread.
eunos
Ironically, this future might be what CCP wished. Their practice won't be regarded as "archaic" anymore and U.S ultimate grip in tech might start to wane, however small will be.
A few days ago Pompeo warned that CCP might change "us" (outside PRC in this context). It seems, however, that U.S. might be the first to be changed.
mrtksn
I know right? And this saddens me because my whole life the USA was the role model. I was born in a communist country but it changed to be more like USA at my early childhood, so USA is the dream. Now the USA is becoming this thing that values state security in expense of individual freedoms. I am totally not amused.
edit: unfavourable opinions seem to get downvoted into oblivion. I am actually surprised by the jubilance in the tech community towards state intervention. Had no idea that people dreamed of becoming like China where the all knowing government protects them by telling them what apps can use and which website they can visit.
baybal2
Where are you from?
sukilot
The CCP is a threat to individual freedoms. Freedom to consort with an enemy nation had never been an important individual freedom in any nation.
Don't worry, US has plenty of individual freedom for Enlightening activities like spewing virus on other people.
nardi
The real reason behind this is that TikTok teens ruined his Tulsa rally and now he wants to get back at them. Simple as that.
jjcon
So why did India already ban it and why is Australia and Japan in talks to ban it?
nardi
I’m not saying there aren’t good reasons to ban it, I’m just saying that’s not why Trump is doing it.
dillonmckay
This makes the most sense, and why Zoom is not being given the same attention.
throwaway798754
Zoom is an American company founded by an American.
myspamdeli
It’s pretty clear the US gvt doesn’t care about the monopolistic practices by big tech, the privacy concerns of TikTok, or that CCP has access to user data. It’s their lack of access to the private user data of this hugely popular app they lack and are after.
Having MSFT buy it means they’ll have a back door to TikTok content immediately just like they do Skype. The US 3 letter agencies have been gunning for this ever since the app blew up, and unlike all the valley apps they have had no access to its user data.
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As someone from the third world this leaves a very bad feeling if it happens. I do expect it runs into legal hurdles before that.
Neither Apple nor Google have found TikTok problematic enough to delist them from their app stores. Neither is there charges that TikTok may have broken US laws.
Banning something which hasn't broken US laws, on arbitrary grounds shouldn't be possible.
The President shouldn't have authority to ban anything at all let alone an app available through privately operated app stores.
Also dictating which apps an individual can install/not install shouldn't be the job of the Federal Government.
All indication is that the president does not have authority to execute an outright ban of the thing.
Also what alarms me the veil of secrecy on the procedings. The proceeding of the CFIUS should be made public in this regard.
At this point US is seemingly acting like a dictatorship with very less transparency.
Policies and decisions should be debated and argued before they are executed, not merely justified after the fact. That's what US and a few oher democracies have turned to doing in recent years.
Ultimately I feel that it is US who has been more to blame (contrary to much of Western media coverage) for the deteriorating US-China relationship, and drumming up the chorus for a new coldwar. Chinese policy seems to have not significantly changed in the last 5 years towards the US, but on the other hand US seemed ever more keen and eger to pursue a hostile attitude towards China.
With the pandemic and with genral economic malice affecting much of the world, I don't think a path of increasing hostility and conflict is what the world needs.