Microsoft and Bytedance Put TikTok Talks on Hold After Trump Signals Opposition

Well, This is what HN posters want. As evidence by the numerous downvotes I get about not wanting the government involvement in tech. Even after the dog and pony show with the CEO’s last week where one representative grilled Zuckerberg about Twitter’s treatment of Don Jr.

Perhaps they are waiting to allow government policy to create a better negotiating position.

On the other side, politicians have always obeyed to corporations desires.

Even more pronounced is the silence of life long legislators who were always opposed to this kind of strong man government all along.

Ps: I side with Trump on this one. Just hate the fact that no Republican opposes him anymore.

But it is under a framework of laws and regulations.

All governments, including the US, have the legal right to ban companies and block mergers/acquisitions on national security grounds.

Each company has different issues hence why the idea of it not being discretionary doesn't make sense.

It's not likely they would give you an offer to be perfectly frank. In a very real way, they can't even know if they will have their own jobs in a month.

Tiktok users did boycott the Tulsa rally. I think that annoyed him, and this may well be petty retaliation.

Why would a media company be special. This type of thing happens all the time, for example the US government banned a Chinese company from purchasing Lattice Semiconductor, the third biggest FPGA company (and really a much smaller player than the big two).

Mergers are blocked all of the time for competition and security reasons.

And the President has the right to ban companies on national security grounds as well.

The legal basis for both is very well founded with plenty of precedent.

It should be challenged in court. This is a country of rule of law.

I don't see how with that arrangement they could guarantee the app is also not collecting and uploading data in addition to the data saved on Microsoft's servers. It would come down to trying to prove a negative which is not really possible outside of trivial cases.

The only way to make that arrangement work would be to give Microsoft access to the source and ability/responsibility to review the source/releases. Not exactly a great Setup for either party.

I thought Trump already said no to that plan.

Every single piece of law granting the US government authority on national security grounds has enjoyed bipartisan support for a very long time. I'm only surprised it hasn't been used like this earlier.

The new thing is the explicitness of the political motivations. There are plenty of countries where if you want to have a sufficiently large business, you have to pay off all the people with their hands out, right up the chain. And that's what this is.

(The fact that this is illegal in the US and even for US companies to do abroad under FCPA will, I suspect, be rendered irrelevant)

If the government wants to restrict the ability of Chinese business to grow in the US, that's fine, but it should be under the existing framework of law that we follow. This should be passed through Congress and the SC as a law, not an executive order.

We have Checks & Balances for a reason.

Whatever is wrong with China, and there is plenty, the US and particularly the president's behavior is dictatorial here.

Perhaps the administration could outline the new intel that has come to light in the last month that has made this such an urgent issue right now, as opposed to any other time in the past year.

Otherwise, as a layman, I might think that the humiliating "million ticket reservation" prank of the president's Tulsa, OK rally that adolescents orchestrated on TikTok is what triggered it.

Rule of law is not conditional on reciprocity, societies strive to give due process even to literal murderers.

The US should respect it's own laws and deal with chinese companies fairly. The actions of the chinese government should have no bearing on this.

> 1. China doesn’t play with the same rules ...

> 2. They don’t allow ..., why should we let them to?

Because, as you said in your first point, we play by different rules. Do you want everyone to start playing by China's rules instead?

You’re skirting around the argument. The parent’s argument is that no single politician should have this power. It isn’t an argument for or against the government stepping in here—it’s an argument against who’s doing it.

I don't think it matters whether China is a democracy or not. The US has been a malicious player for the past few years -- Canada has similarly been labeled a threat to national security.

What does matter is that China is starting to become strong enough to be a regional power, which is a threat to American dominance in East Asia

Sadly this splitting of tech into China and the West is a huge trend, one which we are not going to stop.

In the future tech will bifurcate into two camps and we'll have a new cold war.

Easy to say that a country doesn't play by the rules when you make up the rules as you go along.

That was my initial line of thinking as well, until someone reminded me of some government list that TikTok could be added to which would require that they’re pulled from the app stores.

I understand your question, but I'm sorry, that just sounds bush league to me. So you have to change your business to suit every political party that comes to power? That's a lot of unpredictability. How can you run a business like that?

Plus, what if elections are "postponed until a more appropriate time"? I mean, the environment would just be riddled with so much uncertainty that I'm not sure how an honest business would be able to engage in cogent decision making?