[HN Gopher] Yes, of course we should ban TikTok
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Yes, of course we should ban TikTok
Author : jseliger
Score : 35 points
Date : 2023-03-20 15:43 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (noahpinion.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (noahpinion.substack.com)
| DuckFeathers wrote:
| Just a reminder that China banned Facebook in 2009 when riots
| were happening in Xinjiang and Facebook refused to block
| activists from communicating with each other or reporting it to
| the Chinese government.
|
| Similarly, Google was banned in 2010 following disputes over
| censorship of search queries, that the Chinese government wanted
| but Google refused to oblige by.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| Yes. China is an authoritarian state and their policies should
| largely not be emulated.
| badrabbit wrote:
| Retaliation is not emulation. If they did that domestically
| and the US also did that domestically it would be emulation.
| This is similar to tariff wars, if they impose a tariff on
| something then you retaliate proportionally.
|
| We have an unequal trade with China where they ban western
| companies but their companies do what they want even while
| being state controlled under a hostile regime. This alone is
| a good reason to ban any Chinese social media company
| sacnoradhq wrote:
| Reaction in kind is emulation. Full stop.
|
| State-level censorship of apps the public can use should
| not be entertained in a free and open society.
| badrabbit wrote:
| No, it is a response to a hostile act, it is not
| emulation because the scope is limited to that country.
|
| > State-level censorship of apps the public can use
| should not be entertained in a free and open society.
|
| Yes it should. The government is reponsible for
| regulating commerce, especially by foreigners. The whole
| point of the ban is that tiktok's owners are not in a
| free society and cannot take advantange of the benefits
| of a free society while escaping its responsibilities and
| their country being openly hostile/
|
| Even within the US the government can block and ban
| facebook if facebook is in violation of any laws or is
| acting in aid of a foreign hostile government.
|
| You don't understand free speech or liberty. They both
| come with responsibility and commerce is a regulated
| privilege. Tiktok can become a non-profit app and sniff
| all your data all it wants. In a free society, a hostile
| foreign government has exactly zero rights.
| sacnoradhq wrote:
| A free and open society gives people the choice to use
| whatever they want within sensible bounds. I don't think
| you appreciate the nuances between a totalitarian regime
| like China, a nanny state like the UK, and an open
| society like the US.
|
| In an open society, people are free to use apps
| regardless of who may or may not be behind them. That's
| the price of freedom: bad actors, unpleasant words,
| unpopular views, and the freedom to be a jerk.
| 8note wrote:
| It's silly for the same reason tariffs are. The benefit of
| the freedom and the cheap goods is with the consumer of
| them more than the producer.
|
| You have unequal trade - china gives you stuff for free, to
| your benefit. It's nice that you're worried about the
| Chinese consumer getting to benefit from access to US
| social media, but the benefit of that access is to the
| Chinese customer
| edmundsauto wrote:
| You don't think tit for tat is a good strategy in this
| situation?
| sacnoradhq wrote:
| "An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind."
|
| And competitive brinksmanship, xenophobia, and walled
| isolation aren't useful unless you're running DPRK.
| ClapperHeid wrote:
| [flagged]
| permo-w wrote:
| is it me that's being stupid when reading "hold[ing] up the
| ban" as the inverse of his intended meaning?
| Melatonic wrote:
| Or pass meaningful regulation on what social media companies can
| do and what data they can harvest
| mrkramer wrote:
| Essentially they can "harvest" whatever you give them but the
| question is how are they going to use it as well as for how
| long they are going to store/archive it. I agree this things
| should be regulated; my thinking is something in the veins of
| banking industry akin to regulations regarding what banks can
| and can not do with your private information and for how long
| they should or should not store your transactions.
| ulucs wrote:
| I believe this argument can be extended to
| Facebook/Instagram/Twitter/etc for other countries. And
| considering that; yes, let's do it!
| srcreigh wrote:
| Ban google outside US! I'd love for each country to build their
| own
| freemanon wrote:
| US companies have been doing the same thing all over the world.
| Outside the west, everyone can see the hypocrisy. Ban it by all
| means, but you will become just like China: a state that censors
| information and speech from its citizens because the government
| is scared of it.
| pictureofabear wrote:
| Countries outside the US are free to ban US-owned platforms,
| and many countries do. It's not hypocrisy.
|
| One of the CCP's goal is to destabilize the Western Liberal
| order. This is, of course, bad for the West. It's not
| unreasonable to take actions to prevent this.
| 8note wrote:
| The question is whether what you care about is the order's
| power or the order's values
|
| If you care more about the values, it makes no sense to drop
| the values to retain the power
| yucky wrote:
| Which leads us to the very uncomfortable fact, we want to ban
| TikTok for the same reason they ban the likes of Facebook,
| Google etc - because governments (including ours) uses it for
| citizen data-mining and mass crowd control.
|
| We know how dangerous TikTok is in their hands because we
| know how valuable Facebook, Google etc is in ours.
| badrabbit wrote:
| Except for the crucial fact that unlike China US law
| protects US companies from state interference.
|
| The EU for example fines US tech companies left and right
| and enforced EU data privacy law and US companies pay up or
| comply. The dispute with China and US tech companies was
| never about privacy but about censorship (censoring what
| the state tells you to), there is no such dispute between
| tiktok and the US gov.
| Spivak wrote:
| I really don't think the west needs any help destabilizing
| itself. I wouldn't really worry even if we fuck ourselves
| politically, as long as the US military continues to playing
| in an entire other league and the ever-present threat of
| either side escalating to nuclear weapons out of desperation
| there's not a whole lot of realistic risk.
| badrabbit wrote:
| Are you saying there is some speech allowed on tiktok but
| banned elsewhere?
|
| Outside the US there are a lot of envious people that scream
| hypocrisy and act anti-US at every opportunity so what you're
| saying isn't surprising. Americans shouldn't care what "the
| world" thinks when it comes to trade policy.
|
| Personally I couldn't care less if the US is like or not like
| China. Xi's regime is very anti-us and any state controlled
| companies can get bent.
|
| The nerve on some people. They want you to apologize for
| banning a service controlled by the CCP which is talking about
| actual war against the US.
| bequanna wrote:
| This isn't a free speech issue.
|
| This is an enemy foreign government collecting information on
| US citizens.
| nh23423fefe wrote:
| > enemy
|
| seems like the characterization is doing all the work for you
| Spivak wrote:
| So to be consistent here, every country outside the US should
| ban all software originating in the US that collects user
| information.
|
| If the answer is yes then by all means, but I think it makes
| for atrocious foreign policy relations.
| morelisp wrote:
| This is a short summary of the Schrems II decision, yes.
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| Well, there's definitely a strong argument that none of the
| data of EU residents can be processed in China or under
| Chinese jurisdiction, based on previous court rulings.
| mint2 wrote:
| That argument doesn't make sense as it assumes the
| governments of the other countries are equally at odds as
| China is with the US.
|
| Western Europe and US are generally wanting each other to
| succeed as friends and allies.
|
| China wants the us market but also wants the US to be
| weaker and not pose an example as a democracy.
|
| It also assumes a lot about level government control in
| each country that is highly dissimilar.
| schwartzworld wrote:
| Then we should set strict laws about what kinds of data apps
| can harvest from their users and hold all of them
| responsible, not just the ones from scary china.
| waynesonfire wrote:
| It targets all foreign adversaries.
| badrabbit wrote:
| It is not the data collection but where the data is sent
| and how it is used. You cannot enforce US laws in China but
| in the US you can. If it was an EU company, relations are
| good enough to where US companies are being fined and
| paying billions to the EU with the understanding that
| similar free trade regulations can happen unlike with
| hostile China
| 8note wrote:
| This is still regulations the US can put in. The data has
| to be sent _from_ the US.
| _-david-_ wrote:
| >US companies have been doing the same thing all over the
| world. Outside the west, everyone can see the hypocrisy
|
| It is not necessarily hypocrisy. I haven't paid too much
| attention, but does the US say China banning Facebook or Google
| is anti free speech?
|
| If not, then the US is not being hypocritical. Perhaps, double
| standards or something like that is more of what you were
| looking for?
|
| >Ban it by all means, but you will become just like China
|
| China builds roads. If the US builds roads it will become just
| like China.
|
| >a state that censors information and speech from its citizens
| because the government is scared of it.
|
| You think Europe is doing this when they banned RT, right?
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