TikTok is just the straw that broke the camel's back.
The US was never going to perpetually entertain a lop side trade relationship with a wealthy country that had the kind of human rights and foreign policy situation the west traditionally only ignores if you're poor.
It just so happens that the current administration is not run by political professionals so it comes across like a toddler throwing a tantrum and obviously many people take significant issue with the specific policies presented (i.e. this whole TikTok debacle).
Make no mistake, regardless of who's in the oval office next February we are in for cooler trade relations with China. This has been a long time coming and there's bipartisan support. The left is no fan of off-shoring industry to places with more lax worker and environmental protections. The right is no fan of doing business with a bunch of reds who hate religious freedom. Neither side is a fan of either of those things coming at the expense of working class Americans.
> a lop side trade relationship with a wealthy country that had the kind of human rights and foreign policy situation the west traditionally only ignores if you're poor
I have a hard time believing the US actually cares about human rights abuses in other countries, when they are the beneficiaries. They won't put their money where their mouth is when it comes to ethics and trade.
I think the only way you can influence China to change is to reinvent how trade works. Rather than trade deals, the US could simply have a set of rules that cause increases in tariffs. Forced labor? +80% to all goods. Won't let international observers monitor your elections? +20%. No elections? +50%. And then enforce these rules strongly, and make no exceptions. That would put ethics into the equations of trade, and reduce trade with countries who are not ethical.
But that's a pipe dream that will never, ever happen.
I've often thought we should introduce tariffs based on wages paid in the source country. The goal would be to prevent goods from being artificially cheap due to exploitative labor practices..
And then some big low-wage country answers with tariffs based on, say, the number of people employed and paid above the poverty line, and argues that it's bad to produce goods using just a few obscenely well paid people and a lot of robots, and that this badness should be counteracted using tariffs.
Well... I expect farmers do, and Harley Davidson employees, and Boeing employees, and, well, really anyone with a job that involves selling goods or services abroad.
If you look through entire USA history, they do seems to care about human rights abuse. Americans still heavily debating to this day about the Japanese internment. It pales in comparisons to what British and Chinese did consistently throughout their history. Even American Indians are given their own "Nations" within USA. Show me which countries are doing that.
No other countries outright fought a war to emancipate slaves and enshrined that in constitutions. No countries willing to go fight consistently in foreign lands for the idea of freedom. No countries on earth allows a slave minorities became president. No countries on earth has peace corp and fund United Nation operation more than USA. Even WHO is largely funded by USA. No countries without the need of signed Montreal Protocol and achieve it. USA is probably terribly shitty by any metrics if you judge it individually. But as a nation overall, it is simply the greatest nation on Earth and human history until now. Americans do believe largely in manifest destiny. That phrase alone say a lot about USA. You should read up more and diversify your readings.
You can't change how trade works. That is international. At best you impose sanctions. Trade changes won't change a country behavior. If it can, Obama would be greatest true Peace Nobel laureate having change Iran, Libya, SA, Iraq, China, Russia, NK for the better.
> You can't change how trade works. That is international.
I'm arguing in favor of exactly this. I believe nations should give up on trade deals in their present form, and change to a simpler model whereby the tariffs imposed on other countries are purely a function of the ethics of that other country. And as I said, a dream at best.
But maybe with the rise in fascists who believe in protectionism, there is an opportunity soon for such a system to be put in place. It appears existing trade deals are going to be ignored or broken at the whim of the POTUS without warning anyway.
> Trade changes won't change a country behavior.
Then why does the US bother with sanctions? If they won't influence change in a country's behaviour, what's the point? By that logic, we might as well all open up trade with North Korea, right?
> I have a hard time believing the US actually cares about human rights abuses in other countries, when they are the beneficiaries.
My take is that in this context the human rights argument is not emotional or humanist, but refers to the practical implications of competing against a regime for which human life holds no importance and has no meaningful value. It's impossible to compete with a regime which treats workers as slaves and disregards even basic health and safety measures.
censorship and spying by the CCP is an important issue, but i don't understand why anyone should let chinese apps operate in their market when china doesn't reciprocate.
the trade issue alone is enough for me to support banning it the rest is just noise.
Because it implicitly buys into the Chinese framing of cyber-sovereignty which is that a country that is not in control of its citizens' communication platforms cannot properly be considered sovereign in the same way that a state that would let a foreign private company decide how its border policy worked would also not be a fully sovereign state. The US has been going around the world saying it's totally fine that the algorithms affecting the information diet of every non-US, non-China citizen is under the control of a few American regulated private companies that have limited accountability to that country's government.
If, as soon as a non-American company has the same leverage over American citizens, the US government immediately starts freaking out, then it significantly weakens the integrity of that argument.
For example, Facebook misinformation was a significant catalyst for the persecution and massacre of the Rohingyas. It wasn't until, I think, last year, that Facebook finally got around to hiring a policy expert on Myanmar and only because of the bad Western press it got, not because of any action the Myanmar government itself could have initiated. America's do as I say, not as I do attitude is going to push more and more countries to require some form of cyber-sovereignty as a market condition for access now that the US has laid the precedent.
I predicted last year that cyber-sovereignty was going to be one of the defining issues in tech for the next decade and we're about to start seeing whether some of the predictions I made will come true: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19824699
> (..) as soon as a non-American company has the same leverage over American citizens, the US government immediately starts freaking out,
"Freaking out" is a loaded term that employs weasel words to make believe that it's silly for a nation to be wary of outsider's influence. It is far from silly. It's the most basic of precautions.
Considering that on the other side there's China's totalitarian dictatorship, not only are these precautions very basic but also absolutely necessary.
I'm no fan or Trump or general US foreign policy, but how these stories are being spun as the US being the bogeyman and a censor when China literally filters the foreign internet and dictates which apps are available for use in the country.
It's absurd we should allow apps with deep CCP interests on our networks and devices when they veraciously block & censor any access to their people.
The point is we do allow apps with deep USA interests.
USA propaganda, censorship, and surveilence is not "good".
There is universal, unalienable, human rights. Governments do not own their citizens. They do not have absolute control over them. Govs "rights" end where ours start.
Routinely forgotten when people get fear mongered or try hard waving the flag.
So it's bad when China censors free speech and restricts apps like Facebook in their country (because the US is using Facebook to spy on Chinese citizens), but it's good when the US does it?
I swear, it's like people aren't even capable of logical thought anymore.
China absolutely allows American apps to run so long as they adhere to the law. Google, FB etc voluntarily pulled out of China because they took moral objection to said laws.
However, this is unprecedented as the US isn’t giving TikTok a law to adhere to. It’s just a ban.
I have seen people posting this exact same comment almost word for word in every tick tok thread.
It’s absurdly disingenuous.
1. China has many industries that outright ban US company participation.
2. “Adhering to the law” involves giving a Chinese company 51% control of the joint venture and forced IP transfer so that your company can be replaced ASAP.
3. China arbitrarily and capriciously enforces the law to the extent that “following the law” is impossible.
China has often punished western companies for doing things outside the country for which there is no law to violate. Just look at what happens if your parent company lists Taiwan in a drop down on their website (outside of China).
Facebook was banned after they refused to identify rioters who were using Messenger to communicate. Google was banned because they wouldn't comply with content restrictions.
As a person outside US I think the truth is more simpler,
the China economic war is the topic Trump uses to win the election, is the exact thing with the immigrants and the wall.
TikTok is just the next step, I am expecting that all the bad things and Trump failures(no wall, COVID) will be blamed on China and after Trump will make China pay it will rain with money.
As someone also outside US and China I have found this saga really entertaining. As stated in the article, TikTok doesn't capture more info than Facebook, whatsapp or many other American companies. And as shown by Snowden, those companies happily share that data with the US government.
The only reason why there is so much ruckus is because it is another government doing it.
But this type of censoring is equivalent to what the China is doing with the great-firewall. All in the name of national security and preserving g the country values.
As an outsider user of technology, one has to accept that most applications are going to share whatever you put out there. And when you really want to share things privately, you should use encryption methods or meet I real life.
I ve learned to avoid any expectation of privacy online.
As yet another person outside of the USA I see the apps as being basically the same, all based on psychological research related to attention and how to get and keep it. I don't use any of them and block a number of them on my network at home so as to keep my daughters from becoming hooked.
I do see a difference between the way these companies interface with their respective governments, as far as I know there is no USA equivalent of the Chinese version of the Soviet Nomenklatura. Especially since Xi Jinping came to power the CCP has been taking strides to reinforce its control over business [1], backed by a number of laws which mandate companies to assist the state when it so demands.
So what do I do? I blocked TikTok a while ago, I blocked Facebook more or less forever. Instagram and Twitter are unblocked for now, the first because my 15yo daughter uses it, the second because nobody here uses it personally nor has any inclination of doing so while it is often used by others as a news distribution channel. We don't use Google directly but get search results through a local Searx instance which includes - among others - Google Search. We don't use Google Maps [2] , that task is relegated to ~OsmAnd (for navigation and mapping) and some local mapping sites. No Gmail, I run my own mail server. No Zoom, again using our own video conferencing (Jitsi Meet) and chat (Nextcloud talk) servers. No Google Docs, Libreoffice Online in Nextcloud works fine. In short we use no external services when we can avoid them, keeping nearly everything in-house and under our own control. A private VPN makes sure our data stays ours even when using public Wifi. While this may sound elaborate and in some ways probably is elaborate it makes it possible to reap the benefits of the 'net without ending up being milked dry by all those data herders out there, whether they're driven by profit maximisation or intended as tool in geopolitical power plays.
[2] ...which has the added benefit of not having to suffer through bouts of stupidity like Google's latest regressive piece of systemic racism where they start marking the skin colour of business owners when they're sufficiently pigmented: https://twitter.com/googlemaps/status/1288850928632832000
IMO is not national security or economics that precipitated this, it was some prank some users on TikTok don on Trump. The guy already was preparing his campaign on how deflect his incompetence(no wall, COVID) so he was working hard on blaming China, I am expecting US will be hit harder economically then China where they handled the virus better so there is a plan to blame it all on China and promising people that China will pay (very similar with the imigrants and the wall and who will pay for the wall and for other stuff).
My prediction Trump electoral propaganda will have the word "China" at each 2 sentences.
In my opinion, Trump is doing this so that on September 16th (or whatever the date is now) he can proclaim how good of a business man he is, how he is such a deal maker and can bring companies to the USA. He won on that moniker the first time, he realizes he isn't going to win on the "best economy ever".
They listed these quotes as coming from the author:
- "Oh man, it’s kind of sick how much joy I get out of being cruel to old white men.” - "Caucasians were “only fit to live underground like groveling goblins.”" - "Dumbass fucking white people" - "#CancelWhitePeople"
I watched Enchanted several years ago with a child who was disappointed that it didn't follow the clear-cut good triumphs over evil happily-ever-after fairy tale tropes.
I bet that no-longer-a-child would rebel if they, at the age they are now, were forced to consume fairy tale fare instead of more plausible plots.
> The executive order is instead better understood as an attempt to bully companies into regulating speech according to the government’s tastes.
Hmm. But what if the Chinese use Tik Tok or other social media companies to spread anti-American or pro-Chinese dystopia propaganda? We've seen how susceptible people are to disinformation, so should we trust an opponent (let's not pretend China isn't since we already tried to work with them) with social media applications in the US or west at large?
That's aside from, well, if you're going to ban and restrict US companies from spreading free speech then I just don't see why we should let China use our strength against us. Idk why people think that anybody (Americans included) will just always "choose Democracy" or w/e - we're clearly susceptible to mind infections and herd mentality toward really dumb ideas. China can use free speech in the US against us. We do need to protect against that.
At a minimum we need to make Chinese companies store their data about Americans within the US and it needs to be routinely audited.
>China can use free speech in the US against us. We do need to protect against that.
It's a bit bizarre how frequently I read comments like this about the whole issue. This is a big part of China's reasoning for not allowing "western imperialist propaganda" in their country.
I am curious about you and other people that have this opinion if you're all aware of that...? They believe their people are susceptible to western dystopic "democracy" propaganda and to protect them they regulate content. I just didn't think people thought the US needed to be protected from outside propaganda in the same way.
I think protect against it is different than banning it. Think about it like this, a protection would be having a source label that the content comes directly from the Chinese Communist Party. In that case you still have access to the content, but you know who it is coming from.
I think it's also been clearly shown that disinformation campaigns (which can include ideological disinformation - capitalism bad, Chinese communism good) have a real effect.
To your more broad point about China I think the issue that is at the heart of so many complaints is that the Chinese Communist Party doesn't engage in competition with free ideas. In a sense, they are saying, Western ideals can't compete here, but we will export ideas to the West and see how many we can win over.
I'm willing to bet that (and this was the whole point of us opening up to China in the first place) if China didn't censor or block Western companies, then we wouldn't have this same issue. If the Chinese were exposed to "Western propaganda" and Americans were subsequently exposed to "Chinese Communist Party" propaganda due to free-flowing of ideas then what's there really to complain about? Most Americans would surely see this as a fair exchange.
I think it boils down to this:
"They get to do stuff to us, and we can't do stuff to them, so let's make it so they don't get to do stuff to us unless we can do stuff to them".
Americans listen to propaganda every day. Do you really think FOX News has the best interests of Americans at heart? No, it’s just another one of the propaganda outlets millions of Americans use every day.
In the end this order is just a reflection of Trump’s xenophobia and blatant disregard for justice. He never once attempted to engage TikTok in discussion, he dismissed everything the company said outright, and now he is forcing a sale of the company to the US.
Yea but even Fox News isn't anti-American. I certainly disagree with most that would come out, but they aren't against free markets, free speech, freedom of religion, etc.
> In the end this order is just a reflection of Trump’s xenophobia and blatant disregard for justice. He never once attempted to engage TikTok in discussion, he dismissed everything the company said outright, and now he is forcing a sale of the company to the US.
Let's not forget that the China issue has bipartisan support in the US. I also don't think there is any discussion that needs to happen with Bytedance or TikTok. What are we supposed to talk about? Did the Chinese have similar discussions with Google?
We played nice and gave them the opportunity to join us in the world community and they decided to be adversarial. These are some of the consequences of that.
And yet they are still a propaganda platform, which is the point.
Whether they are anti-American or not is debatable. At the most I would say they do not care for Americans, only their profits. Their downplay of COVID has undoubtedly contributed to the deaths of thousands of Americans.
> I also don't think there is any discussion that needs to happen with Bytedance or TikTok. What are we supposed to talk about?
You do not believe in due process? TikTok has stated that no data is overturned and all data is stored in the US.
At the very least a discussion around this would involve third party audits prior to a ban.
Furthermore, a sane and reasonable leader would pass laws for TikTok to adhere to prior to a ban, but there was no discussion about what steps TikTok could actually take to assuage these fears. Just baseless accusations.
> Did the Chinese have similar discussions with Google?
Google and Facebook were free to operate in China so long as they adhered to the law. Both companies chose to pull out as they found the laws objectionable. Other companies - LinkedIn, GitHub - adhere to the law and are free to continue operating in China.
Trump is not giving TikTok a law to adhere to. That is why this is different, unprecedented, and unjust.
The US was never going to perpetually entertain a lop side trade relationship with a wealthy country that had the kind of human rights and foreign policy situation the west traditionally only ignores if you're poor.
It just so happens that the current administration is not run by political professionals so it comes across like a toddler throwing a tantrum and obviously many people take significant issue with the specific policies presented (i.e. this whole TikTok debacle).
Make no mistake, regardless of who's in the oval office next February we are in for cooler trade relations with China. This has been a long time coming and there's bipartisan support. The left is no fan of off-shoring industry to places with more lax worker and environmental protections. The right is no fan of doing business with a bunch of reds who hate religious freedom. Neither side is a fan of either of those things coming at the expense of working class Americans.
I have a hard time believing the US actually cares about human rights abuses in other countries, when they are the beneficiaries. They won't put their money where their mouth is when it comes to ethics and trade.
I think the only way you can influence China to change is to reinvent how trade works. Rather than trade deals, the US could simply have a set of rules that cause increases in tariffs. Forced labor? +80% to all goods. Won't let international observers monitor your elections? +20%. No elections? +50%. And then enforce these rules strongly, and make no exceptions. That would put ethics into the equations of trade, and reduce trade with countries who are not ethical.
But that's a pipe dream that will never, ever happen.
No other countries outright fought a war to emancipate slaves and enshrined that in constitutions. No countries willing to go fight consistently in foreign lands for the idea of freedom. No countries on earth allows a slave minorities became president. No countries on earth has peace corp and fund United Nation operation more than USA. Even WHO is largely funded by USA. No countries without the need of signed Montreal Protocol and achieve it. USA is probably terribly shitty by any metrics if you judge it individually. But as a nation overall, it is simply the greatest nation on Earth and human history until now. Americans do believe largely in manifest destiny. That phrase alone say a lot about USA. You should read up more and diversify your readings.
You can't change how trade works. That is international. At best you impose sanctions. Trade changes won't change a country behavior. If it can, Obama would be greatest true Peace Nobel laureate having change Iran, Libya, SA, Iraq, China, Russia, NK for the better.
I'm arguing in favor of exactly this. I believe nations should give up on trade deals in their present form, and change to a simpler model whereby the tariffs imposed on other countries are purely a function of the ethics of that other country. And as I said, a dream at best.
But maybe with the rise in fascists who believe in protectionism, there is an opportunity soon for such a system to be put in place. It appears existing trade deals are going to be ignored or broken at the whim of the POTUS without warning anyway.
> Trade changes won't change a country behavior.
Then why does the US bother with sanctions? If they won't influence change in a country's behaviour, what's the point? By that logic, we might as well all open up trade with North Korea, right?
My take is that in this context the human rights argument is not emotional or humanist, but refers to the practical implications of competing against a regime for which human life holds no importance and has no meaningful value. It's impossible to compete with a regime which treats workers as slaves and disregards even basic health and safety measures.
Except the parties representing those two sides.
the trade issue alone is enough for me to support banning it the rest is just noise.
If, as soon as a non-American company has the same leverage over American citizens, the US government immediately starts freaking out, then it significantly weakens the integrity of that argument.
For example, Facebook misinformation was a significant catalyst for the persecution and massacre of the Rohingyas. It wasn't until, I think, last year, that Facebook finally got around to hiring a policy expert on Myanmar and only because of the bad Western press it got, not because of any action the Myanmar government itself could have initiated. America's do as I say, not as I do attitude is going to push more and more countries to require some form of cyber-sovereignty as a market condition for access now that the US has laid the precedent.
I predicted last year that cyber-sovereignty was going to be one of the defining issues in tech for the next decade and we're about to start seeing whether some of the predictions I made will come true: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19824699
"Freaking out" is a loaded term that employs weasel words to make believe that it's silly for a nation to be wary of outsider's influence. It is far from silly. It's the most basic of precautions.
Considering that on the other side there's China's totalitarian dictatorship, not only are these precautions very basic but also absolutely necessary.
It's absurd we should allow apps with deep CCP interests on our networks and devices when they veraciously block & censor any access to their people.
USA propaganda, censorship, and surveilence is not "good".
There is universal, unalienable, human rights. Governments do not own their citizens. They do not have absolute control over them. Govs "rights" end where ours start.
Routinely forgotten when people get fear mongered or try hard waving the flag.
I swear, it's like people aren't even capable of logical thought anymore.
However, this is unprecedented as the US isn’t giving TikTok a law to adhere to. It’s just a ban.
It’s absurdly disingenuous.
1. China has many industries that outright ban US company participation.
2. “Adhering to the law” involves giving a Chinese company 51% control of the joint venture and forced IP transfer so that your company can be replaced ASAP.
3. China arbitrarily and capriciously enforces the law to the extent that “following the law” is impossible.
China has often punished western companies for doing things outside the country for which there is no law to violate. Just look at what happens if your parent company lists Taiwan in a drop down on their website (outside of China).
The requirements may have been too steep for others e.g. source code disclosure.
TikTok is just the next step, I am expecting that all the bad things and Trump failures(no wall, COVID) will be blamed on China and after Trump will make China pay it will rain with money.
The only reason why there is so much ruckus is because it is another government doing it.
But this type of censoring is equivalent to what the China is doing with the great-firewall. All in the name of national security and preserving g the country values.
As an outsider user of technology, one has to accept that most applications are going to share whatever you put out there. And when you really want to share things privately, you should use encryption methods or meet I real life.
I ve learned to avoid any expectation of privacy online.
I do see a difference between the way these companies interface with their respective governments, as far as I know there is no USA equivalent of the Chinese version of the Soviet Nomenklatura. Especially since Xi Jinping came to power the CCP has been taking strides to reinforce its control over business [1], backed by a number of laws which mandate companies to assist the state when it so demands.
So what do I do? I blocked TikTok a while ago, I blocked Facebook more or less forever. Instagram and Twitter are unblocked for now, the first because my 15yo daughter uses it, the second because nobody here uses it personally nor has any inclination of doing so while it is often used by others as a news distribution channel. We don't use Google directly but get search results through a local Searx instance which includes - among others - Google Search. We don't use Google Maps [2] , that task is relegated to ~OsmAnd (for navigation and mapping) and some local mapping sites. No Gmail, I run my own mail server. No Zoom, again using our own video conferencing (Jitsi Meet) and chat (Nextcloud talk) servers. No Google Docs, Libreoffice Online in Nextcloud works fine. In short we use no external services when we can avoid them, keeping nearly everything in-house and under our own control. A private VPN makes sure our data stays ours even when using public Wifi. While this may sound elaborate and in some ways probably is elaborate it makes it possible to reap the benefits of the 'net without ending up being milked dry by all those data herders out there, whether they're driven by profit maximisation or intended as tool in geopolitical power plays.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/25/china-business...
[2] ...which has the added benefit of not having to suffer through bouts of stupidity like Google's latest regressive piece of systemic racism where they start marking the skin colour of business owners when they're sufficiently pigmented: https://twitter.com/googlemaps/status/1288850928632832000
My prediction Trump electoral propaganda will have the word "China" at each 2 sentences.
- "Oh man, it’s kind of sick how much joy I get out of being cruel to old white men.” - "Caucasians were “only fit to live underground like groveling goblins.”" - "Dumbass fucking white people" - "#CancelWhitePeople"
Is there a context for those that explains them?
Helpfully the tweets have since been deleted, so it's all speculation and hearsay, unless someone saved them.
Dropped. There's no way this article is not extremely biased and purposefully deceiving.
I bet that no-longer-a-child would rebel if they, at the age they are now, were forced to consume fairy tale fare instead of more plausible plots.
(Bonus clip: Cinderella meets a handyman prince https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQYNUwYHV1c
What do you think of that invention, Elon Musk?)
Hmm. But what if the Chinese use Tik Tok or other social media companies to spread anti-American or pro-Chinese dystopia propaganda? We've seen how susceptible people are to disinformation, so should we trust an opponent (let's not pretend China isn't since we already tried to work with them) with social media applications in the US or west at large?
That's aside from, well, if you're going to ban and restrict US companies from spreading free speech then I just don't see why we should let China use our strength against us. Idk why people think that anybody (Americans included) will just always "choose Democracy" or w/e - we're clearly susceptible to mind infections and herd mentality toward really dumb ideas. China can use free speech in the US against us. We do need to protect against that.
At a minimum we need to make Chinese companies store their data about Americans within the US and it needs to be routinely audited.
It's a bit bizarre how frequently I read comments like this about the whole issue. This is a big part of China's reasoning for not allowing "western imperialist propaganda" in their country.
I am curious about you and other people that have this opinion if you're all aware of that...? They believe their people are susceptible to western dystopic "democracy" propaganda and to protect them they regulate content. I just didn't think people thought the US needed to be protected from outside propaganda in the same way.
I think it's also been clearly shown that disinformation campaigns (which can include ideological disinformation - capitalism bad, Chinese communism good) have a real effect.
To your more broad point about China I think the issue that is at the heart of so many complaints is that the Chinese Communist Party doesn't engage in competition with free ideas. In a sense, they are saying, Western ideals can't compete here, but we will export ideas to the West and see how many we can win over.
I'm willing to bet that (and this was the whole point of us opening up to China in the first place) if China didn't censor or block Western companies, then we wouldn't have this same issue. If the Chinese were exposed to "Western propaganda" and Americans were subsequently exposed to "Chinese Communist Party" propaganda due to free-flowing of ideas then what's there really to complain about? Most Americans would surely see this as a fair exchange.
I think it boils down to this:
"They get to do stuff to us, and we can't do stuff to them, so let's make it so they don't get to do stuff to us unless we can do stuff to them".
In the end this order is just a reflection of Trump’s xenophobia and blatant disregard for justice. He never once attempted to engage TikTok in discussion, he dismissed everything the company said outright, and now he is forcing a sale of the company to the US.
> In the end this order is just a reflection of Trump’s xenophobia and blatant disregard for justice. He never once attempted to engage TikTok in discussion, he dismissed everything the company said outright, and now he is forcing a sale of the company to the US.
Let's not forget that the China issue has bipartisan support in the US. I also don't think there is any discussion that needs to happen with Bytedance or TikTok. What are we supposed to talk about? Did the Chinese have similar discussions with Google?
We played nice and gave them the opportunity to join us in the world community and they decided to be adversarial. These are some of the consequences of that.
And yet they are still a propaganda platform, which is the point.
Whether they are anti-American or not is debatable. At the most I would say they do not care for Americans, only their profits. Their downplay of COVID has undoubtedly contributed to the deaths of thousands of Americans.
> I also don't think there is any discussion that needs to happen with Bytedance or TikTok. What are we supposed to talk about?
You do not believe in due process? TikTok has stated that no data is overturned and all data is stored in the US.
At the very least a discussion around this would involve third party audits prior to a ban.
Furthermore, a sane and reasonable leader would pass laws for TikTok to adhere to prior to a ban, but there was no discussion about what steps TikTok could actually take to assuage these fears. Just baseless accusations.
> Did the Chinese have similar discussions with Google?
Google and Facebook were free to operate in China so long as they adhered to the law. Both companies chose to pull out as they found the laws objectionable. Other companies - LinkedIn, GitHub - adhere to the law and are free to continue operating in China.
Trump is not giving TikTok a law to adhere to. That is why this is different, unprecedented, and unjust.