It's so ironic that mainstream opinions in the US are nowadays so ideologically charged that TikTok is assumed, without proof, to be 100% controlled by the Chinese government and therefore this forced takeover is justified one way or another.
You see arguments all the time that start with "CCP is evil, X is Chinese, therefore...", which would basically justify any and every action against all Chinese entities.
Meanwhile, if you have even close to a clue about what's going on in China you'd know that ByteDance is bending over backwards trying to position itself as a multinational corporation with independence from the Chinese government, all in utter futility of course. That action actually drew the ire from the mouthpieces of the party.
Some rumors say that the reason TikTok announced the potential deal so fast is to make it so that the Chinese government won't intervene and turn it into another Huawei situation. Well, that kind of reasoning seems to be based on a purely fictional assumption that the US government is still operating on principal or in good faith.
There is no way to prove beyond doubt that ByteDance isn't having their data watched by the CCP, or that the CCP won't forcibly take their data in the future. That's just part of dealing with a company based in a country like China. You don't need proof that ByteDance is controlled by the CCP. You just need to see the way CCP deals with companies in its country, and the powers they have over companies within their borders.
Note: Yes, the US gov can do the same thing to US companies to some extent. But this about ByteDance and the CCP. And I think the assumption that you can't trust a Chinese based comapny (because of the CCP) is justified.
I already addressed this in my comment. This decision is about the US government acting in the best interests of the US government. I was making the point that from a foreign interference perspective, the decision is justified.
No, you didn't even attempt to. You addressed a concern about US government monitoring of Microsoft (which seems to be based on the same false premise that intelligence services only monitor domestic entities).
My point, which you did not address, is that transfer to a US owner doesn't somehow mean you have a guarantee that the PRC intelligence apparatus isn't monitoring it, just as it currently being owned by a Chinese entity doesn't provide a guarantee that the NSA isn't monitoring it.
So your argument is that any data that exists in the world might be monitored by the PRC, therefore we shouldn't be more wary of companies that operate inside the PRC because the PRC could be spying on everything everywhere anyway? Weak argument.
By that logic, you also can’t trust a US based company because of the US military intelligence community, which makes a Microsoft-run TikTok no more or less safe than a ByteDance-run one.
Which gets us back to square one about comparing the danger of each.
> You don't need proof that ByteDance is controlled by the CCP
Well, there is a counter proof. One of ByteDance's app (com.ss.android.essay.joke) was shutdown by CCP in 2018. Bytedance is a victim of governments bullies.
> Vulgar content on the Neihan Duanzi app had “caused strong dislike among internet users,” a brief notice from the State Administration of Radio and Television said. The company was told to clean up its other platforms, too.
That's actually not a counter proof. It shows that they couldn't stand up to the bully. We don't have to question the Tiktok leadership's intent, just the CCP's intent and its ability.
I'll speak for myself only, but if the choice is between the US gov't (or any Western gov't) having my data versus China having it, I'll pick the Western countries.
Not necessarily. For example, if your data contains something that is embarrassing but not illegal, a foreign government is more likely decide to use that to blackmail you into committing crimes (say, industrial espionage) on their behalf.
I mention this in my comment. The same can be said for US companies. But this is the US government making a decision about TikTok. And obviously the US government is okay with their own companies seeing the data. This isn't about that. This is about the US Gov assessing the risk of data being collected by the CCP. And I'm saying that the decision is justified based on the CCP's track record.
Correct. And so when the government assesses my risk when going for a clearence or job application, they will look at whether I have a history of theft, a criminal record, etc. We can see the CCP's track record when doing the risk assessment of TikTok.
Which is not the same comparison. That would be that kids have a track record of stealing from their moms, and since you're a kid you don't get clearance.
If ByteDance is letting the Chinese government use their other app, Douyin, as a propaganda platform for the CCP and banning entire races from using it in their native language on their direction: https://www.codastory.com/authoritarian-tech/xinjiang-china-...
This may seem like a tragic misattribution, but I think the more widely this is understood the clearer it is how much of a pure practical liability an oppressive totalitarian regime is (in addition to the pure evilness of it in Carse’s infinite game sense).
If you are trying to build a business not liable to be exploited by CCP, you have to build it elsewhere. Considering regime specifics, namely nonexistent freedoms and checks as far as government intervening in corporations’ private business, CCP can be pretty much considered a “parent company” of any business, and it has eroded trust in itself for some credible reasons.
And sadly, that might be the only practical way companies will be disincentivized from doing business with China. I sincerely hope that this happens, and then maybe China will be forced to show more respect for human rights and the rule of law, again not out of any fundamental change of heart, but purely for economic reasons.
Can you elaborate on how ByteDance is trying to earn independence from the Chinese Gov? I'm genuinely just curious, to educate myself. From what I've read, they have a deep CCP governance and partnerships with Chinese state-owned media organizations.
But in any case. I did not say ByteDance is substantially moving towards independence from the Chinese government (what does that even mean, should it disobey laws in the country it's operating in?) and I'm not privy to any inside information as to how tightly integrated it is with the party. I'm just saying that it is trying to position itself as such.
What is TikTok doing, other than selling its international operations, that would prevent it from having to provide foreign users’ data to the Chinese government at their request?
I think there could be some reasonable guardrails. For one, its servers could be fully hosted in the US (if it's not already the case today), and it could be subjugated to US laws and regulations that require user information be protected. Its data infrastructure and code could be audited and if found breaching such laws it could be punished accordingly.
On a side note, neither Google or Facebook could comply with the Chinese law that require their servers to be hosted inside China. But I'm not saying that justifies TikTok's business in the US either.
> and it could be subjugated to US laws and regulations that require user information be protected
Do laws exist that prevent US companies from providing data to foreign law enforcement in the other countries where they operate? Because from my limited experience with Chinese passport holders, if the Ministry of State Security asks you to do something, you do it. Unless they're planning to remove admin access from every TikTok employee with a Chinese passport it doesn't really matter where the data is hosted.
This is a good question. I assume that any company with operations in a foreign country is going to cooperate with local laws. I suppose you could limit data requests to domestic users only, but I have no idea if that would fly.
Isn't that the onus of the US government and congress? Regardless, since TikTok is considered a potential national security risk, I'm sure plenty of existing laws would cover it if not others already.
> TikTok is assumed, without proof, to be 100% controlled by the Chinese government
All companies operating in China are 100% controlled by the Chinese government, because there is nothing the Chinese government is actually prevented from doing, and with regard to access to information, the PLA can essentially ask for anything for any reason without appeal. The legislature is more of a propaganda ritual than an actual legislature.
One need not prove that TikTok is particularly controlled by the Chinese government.
All these arguments are strange, all companies operate within the law of the country they are in. All countries have an national security letters/demand
Let’s call it as it is, Americans don’t want China to have there data, but meh not my problem for the Rest of the world when it comes to Facebook and Twitter data
>You see arguments all the time that start with "CCP is evil, X is Chinese, therefore...", which would basically justify any and every action against all Chinese entities.
You know they're running concentration camps directly comparable to Nazi Germany right? Like they're mid-genocide right now.
Yes any and every action against all Chinese entities is justified. Total economic blockade is the least the rest of the world should be doing.
>Meanwhile, if you have even close to a clue about what's going on in China you'd know that ByteDance is bending over backwards trying to position itself as a multinational corporation with independence from the Chinese government
This seems kind of tonedeaf to say when you consider what is happening to Hong Kong right now. Why should anyone believe that ByteDance, a mere 100B dollar company, can have independence from the CCP, when that same government is seemingly itching to have to tanks rolling down Hong Kong?
Position. Like I can position myself to have the starting pose of a master martial artist... and just be completely bluffing my further competence in whatever technique you're thinking of.
The fact that something, anything, can be declared a national security risk without offering any proof for it whatsoever should worry everyone.
Pretty sure EU car manufacturers like Daimler or VW would like to buy up Tesla's European operations for cheap. Just need the government to simply declare them to be a national security threat and force them to sell or lose access to the largest market on the planet.
I don't think this is an isomorphic situation. Chinese companies are different from EU/American ones because:
(1) The CCP is a secretive, authoritarian government with an established disregard for human rights.
(2) China already imposes draconian restrictions on American (and EU!) companies, far in excess of the proposed restrictions on TikTok, e.g. forced "joint ventures" with Chinese firms resulting in wholesale theft of IP.
(3) Unlike the EU, China is involved in a wide-reaching and pre-existing geopolitical power struggle with the US.
Okay, right now/recently China is sterilizing millions of muslim refugees and placing them in "re-education" facilities. While pretty much wholesale taking over a territory that had much more freedom.
I'm not sure there are recent examples of US actions that even compare in scale or scope.
-- edit:
This also doesn't even get into the scale of the nation state cyber espionage activities. If you work in any government agency, or work with the government, your networks are under constant attacks.
> right now/recently China is sterilizing millions of muslim refugees
Big claims like that's require evidence? Do you have any? The UN human rights commissioner has been repeatedly invited to Xinjiang for years yet still hasn't gone.
Why are a large group of Muslim countries publicly supporting China's efforts in the region to reduce extremism?[1]
The more you look past the sabre rattlers the shakier all this supposedly common knowledge looks. Trace it back far enough and it all leads to Adrian Zenz, whom the BBC called a "world leading expert on Xinjiang", except Zenz can't read or speak Chinese, he's an Evangelical missionary whose "scientific" paper on Xinjiang that's so often quoted by the media contains strange Bible references, his published books are on how to survive the coming rapture and contain lot of bigoted statements against homosexuals.
Most of this is white supremacist propaganda has already been disproven the rest I suspect will also be disproven in due time. Even the Turkish president taking refugees says is in the scope of thousands not millions.
Secondly IRAQ war or Afghanistan regime changes kill MILLIONS. Gitmo. Hypocritical at best. CIA has funded guerilla efforts to sabotage BRI if you want to know what that truly is about
> They also used depleted uranium, which is banned by international law
Uh, no it's not. It's not even covered by one of the treaties banning weapons that the US hasn't signed up to (such as the cluster munition or landmine treaties).
While I strongly disagree with my country's preference to not sign up to international treaties on the basis that it might find itself on trial, as I pointed out, this doesn't even fall under the case of such a treaty.
If you disagree with me, please cite precisely which clause of which treaty prohibits the use of depleted uranium in weapons.
While you're right that depleted uranium specifically isn't covered, it's interesting to me that you focus on the legal status as opposed to the horrific effects of the weapon on the civilian population. There's also a pretty strong case that it falls under existing laws prohibiting superfluous injuries or unnecessary suffering.
He's focusing on the incorrect statement you made. The straightforward thing to do here, if you think the rest of your argument is more important than your mistake, is to concede the point and move on.
While I've already acknowledged that it's not explicitly covered, I've linked an article explaining that it's in a gray area at best and falls under existing laws prohibiting superfluous injuries or unnecessary suffering.
I think this comment is a bit too downvoted for how well-referenced it is. Can people who disagree comment instead of downvoting? I'd be interested to know if some/all of the claims are untrue, but driveby downvoting doesn't help discussion.
A few of them are untrue (I pointed out one claim in my sibling comment), or at the very least, written in such a way as to give an impression that is not true.
The downvoting here is, I assume, largely because it's sanctimonious whataboutism. And in general, you're combining two logical fallacies (both the sanctimonious part and the whataboutism), and many such lists can tend to delve into "I'm cherry-picking only the evidence that I want to see and ignoring anything that disagrees with my viewpoint."
It is amusing to me what is not on this list. I'm surprised there's no mention of Smedley Butler's War is a Racket, or Noah Chomsky's well-known views on the Vietnam War and the US media's involvement with it. I'm especially bemused by the lack of any mention to the drone assassination program, most tied to Obama--perhaps because every media mention of it inevitably criticizes it, so it doesn't work well as a "your government is doing evil stuff that you don't know about" example?
Saying whataboutism is simply trolling and not a form of argument. Claiming a country does X implies that what it's doing is somehow an outlier, and that "good" countries don't use such tactics. Nobody is refuting the points about China, however those have to be seen in context of what other countries, such as US are doing. When it's not in any way abnormal behaviour then singling out China is just pure hypocrisy, and it's a disingenuous argument.
The context of discussion here is the parent comment asking whether there are recent examples of US actions that even compare in scale or scope. So, it's a little weird to screech about whataboutism when those examples are provided.
Meanwhile, it would take multiple books to list all of the known US atrocities, so I just picked a small sample there.
You can very well make the argument that all the cameras in Tesla's cars can be used for surveillance and hence, pose a threat to national security. No evidence needed - the precedence has been set.
Here is the secret: Teslas factories already are built out of machines mostly out of the European car manufacturing ecosystem. Tesla is already a European success, quite the opposite of being a threat.
A lot of things are considered national security risks despite lacking what you might consider proof of wrongdoing.
It’s quite frankly baffling that people can’t see why one of the most popular social media platforms wouldn’t be considered a national security risk, especially after what we saw during the last presidential election.
Off-topic, but if you're inside a building or outside the 1/2 mi central radius, you won't be vaporized. At which point you want to make sure you are protected from the fireball which is coming; ideally you go inside a solid structure. This will protect from 3rd degree burns from the fireball, from the air pressure wave coming afterwards (hence solidity to prevent collapse), and from the highest radiation.
Wasn't it shown that TikTok (and LinkedIn to be fair) was accessing camera and/or clipboard when it didn't need to?
I have no dog in this fight, but isn't there at least a little evidence that TikTok may be collecting data on a large scale? I haven't been following it all that closely, but I thought that's what the original bans for military members was about.
Edit: So, yes, but that’s ok because others were too.
> Wasn't it shown that TikTok (and LinkedIn to be fair) was accessing camera and/or clipboard when it didn't need to?
There's a gigantic list of apps that were revealed to be accessing things like the clipboard in iOS 14. I just installed the beta, and I found that my credit union's app reads the clipboard every time I open it. My third-party reddit app does the same thing.
TikTok doing it isn't really even news. There are dozens to hundreds of apps doing it, and it's likely a bug.
Given how this administration behaves, it's just occurred to me that it's also equally likely that TikTok is being singled out because it was used to coordinate the bogus Trump rally ticket reservations.
Any time a firm, app, or organization does something to offend or inconvenience the man, he launches an attack against it. There's certainly a pattern of this behaviour.
This is what I think it really is. Tiktok was used to embarrass Trump. Tiktok is now a national security target. @jack @ Twitter was his target for a week once they tagged his posts as noT factual.
Many apps are doing that (Tik Tok for sure is too), I have recently analysed a lot of apps on android.
But it's nothing new really, just happened to become a "mainstream headline" now. Another thing that most people don't even realise, is that on android, every app can access the clipboard. Many apps do it continually, even in the background.
I think I have some past comments here on HN explaining more about how I restrict this type of behaviour if you're interested.
Well, the user can only control the bare minimum by default. On first launch (on Android), TikTok also reads the Sim Country Iso, a list of the available sensors, the network operator (ISP), a list of installed applications, the wifi BSSID and the Android ID.
It is kind of easy to build a user data profile on Android because the user doesn't even know that all of these datapoints can be gathered without any permissions. The actual implememtation of the permission system really is more "for show" imo.
I still don’t understand what Microsoft is thinking. Facebook, Google, Twitter, and to some extent Apple have had to deal with content moderation headaches on their respective platforms. Especially when it comes to politics, it seems like un-winnable battle. Do nothing and you’ll get blamed for helping spread hate and propaganda. Do something and you’ll get blamed for violating free speech and censoring conservatives.
As far as I know, Microsoft has so far avoided being on that hot seat. So why, now, get involved in the shit show that is social media? I still don’t understand why Trump has a beef with TikTok specifically, but if the rumors are true that this is payback for the prank they pulled on his first political rally, isn’t this whole thing political in nature? What if TikTok users continue to mess with Trump? I can imagine Trump now set his crosshairs on Microsoft. I don’t understand why you’d willingly put yourself in the middle of a controversy to buy a company that doesn’t exactly align with your current businesses. What am I missing?
Microsoft tried to build a YouTube competitor (Soapbox). Microsoft tried to build a Facebook competitor (Socl). Microsoft bought Yammer. Microsoft bought LinkedIn. Microsoft did build a Slack competitor that seems to be doing well (Teams), after failing to buy Slack. Microsoft bought and ran a Twitch competitor up until just recently (Mixer). Microsoft still seems to have hopes that its Xbox social features are competing as a Facebook or Twitter competitor for very narrow niche of gaming-related sharing.
Microsoft hasn't been immune to social media fever, it's just been somewhere between unsuccessful and unlucky. (Which maybe makes it "lucky" for not being on that "hot seat" you describe, but certainly not for lack of trying. Parts of Xbox have been and are on that "hot seat", though.) If Microsoft is thinking anything about TikTok, it's probably that it could get a good deal on a strong competitor in an actively highly competitive social media space. (Whether or not that can translate to success or luck, given Microsoft's track record to date is another question entirely.)
I think Microsoft has a lot of products that can be complimentary to and tie into a broad social media product like TikTok. Some thoughts:
* Bing / Ads / AI: Microsoft used to power FB ads after they invested in 2007. GPT-3 has shown that there's a lot that is probably happening within the AI division of these large tech companies. Adding a consumer social media product like TikTok will probably help them test models + gather information to train their models.
* LinkedIn / GitHub: Microsoft has two social websites targeted toward the professional crowd. Adding a consumer product may allow them a higher % of coverage of social activity that starts to rival FB and even surpass Google.
* Xbox / Minecraft: Consumer brands that have been reasonably successful under Microsoft. Some good tie-ins with TikTok could help boost all three brands.
I mean they have the money and a stock that's nearly doubled in a year, quadrupled in 5 years. A stock and cash deal for a chance at making the next $100B social network doesn't seem all that bad
The goal is data collection. Even if they do absolutely nothing with TikTok, they are still getting a massive amount of data on TikTok users through the purchase.
We have seen this with Skype and LinkedIn. They are acquiring an exisitng user base and the data that goes with it. Microsoft was even on of the early investors in Facebook at a point when Facebook had no proven business plan, but had many users.
It is arguable Microsoft has been trying to transform into a data collection company. Aside from these acquisitions, we see them aggressively pushing their Windows users to accept telemetry, automatic upgrades and a view of MS software as a subscription service.
Some would argue that Skype was a controversial company when Microsoft acquired it. One could argue that MS solved a problem for those who were uncomfortable with the growth of Skype. After the acquisition, Skype was no longer controversial (except perhaps to a small number of technically savvy users who disliked the architectural changes MS made).
Perhaps the same could be said of TikTok. For some, TikTok is a controversial company. If MS acquires it, will TikTok continue to be controversial? Let's wait and see.
When Microsoft aquires a company it does not necessarily mean that whatever the company has been doing will continue. For example, the company behind the T-Mobile Sidekick, Danger, was perhaps the first cloud-syncing smartphone and its founder went on to create Android at Google. Microsoft acquired Danger. It did not then become a MS product. Most people have never even heard of Danger. The OS, which was NetBSD-based, was something MS could not work with. Did we get a next-generation NetBSD-based phone from MS? No, we got s series of successive failures to create a Windows smartphone instead.
Microsoft as a dependable steward of technology created by others is still unproven. Look at Internet Explorer, originally created using the Mosaic code from the U. of Illinois. After so many years of work developing it as their own browser, they now abandon it for Chrome.
Perhaps this is why their acquisition of Github has some people concerned.
Yes. This deal is amazing. Snapchat and Twitter stock trade between $25-35B these days. To buy them, you’d need to offer a premium. Say close to $40B TikTok for less than double that is an absolute steal. Not that even $100B would be an issue or fair price.
Say Microsoft buys it for $80B. Even if TikTok peters out and Microsoft gets back half that in profits, they’ll benefit in other ways through that time and the remaining loss is the cost of taking a well calculated risk. There’s no downside to this deal at all if it will cost close to the rumored $60B price tag.
To your point of competing in ads. They’ll still be far from FB and Google, but it should solidify them as a strong number 3 alongside LinkedIn, Bing, and their properties. Followed by Amazon before a drop off for Verizon, Twitter, and probably something I’m forgetting. Maybe Iac if including all their property spin offs (assuming they have stakes in them).
A man can dream. This gives a tiny bit more potential for a Google Adsense competitor. Still waiting for FB and/or Microsoft to try it. Yep I remember Yahoo failing. I think Yahoo tried Analytics too. Wouldn’t mind Microsoft Analytics against Google’s (when you need an industry standard analytics to show traffic)
Do you think, from a large company's point of view, being "on that hot seat" is not worth the potential profit of a successful social platform? From what I can see, these company's have taken very little actual damage from that controversy. The moral complaints do little to their bottom line, and government talks tough but does nothing. Pragmatically, I think it seems like owning one of these platforms has more pros than cons.
Sure, but headlines are still going to be "TikTok bans...", or at most "TikTok, which is owned by Microsoft, bans..." I doubt controversy related to TikTok is going to have much spillover on Microsoft. For the average person, Microsoft is still synonymous with Windows, Word, Excel, and maybe they've heard of this new thing called Azure.
Likely a defensive acquisition for Microsoft. Facebook would probably be rejected from the deal for anti-trust reasons so it basically comes down to Google and Amazon that could acquire. So its probably Microsoft denying either of these companies the opportunity to improve their own social network brand while finding a way to pose future competition to Facebook.
Sorry but can we back track and just go to basics. Facebook throws off a tonne of money. Yes, people get angry about the political nature of their content decisions, but at the end of the day these social networks can be enormous revenue streams. MS can pick this one up at a massive discount, and even if they later decide that they don't want to be in that business they can spin it out for a hell of a lot of money because they won't be under the hammer of being banned.
Strategically the fact that Microsoft isn't political is one of the advantages - everyone knows Facebook is the living emobdiment of a psychopath. But trying to convince people that those nerds who sell Office are secretly pushing a political agenda is going to be a tough sell. Microsoft isn't like Google, Apple or Twitter- they're not advertising a political ideology as part of their company image.
I wonder how many really think that about Facebook. I’m sure a lot, but the exaggeration around techie sites sometimes seems like people believe it.
I’ve never had a problem with Facebook any more than Microsoft in the 90s or Google or Amazon for the past decade+.
I find Twitter and Snapchat worse [at times] personally. Jack and Ev screwed over Noah Glass so egregiously. Jack being the worst of it. Then they attempted to white wash over the history. Jack had a made up story of how he came up with Twitter. The rest have lied for so long about other aspects even though Noah is the one that began the initial proper work of Twitter on his laptop. That sort of personal behavior and to never make any sort of amend for it.
I find that to be worse than anything Facebook or Zuckerberg have done. I always find these sort of personal cruel behavior to be the worst. Related examples are the Snapchat founders screwing over the third, Larry Ellison + Steve Jobs screwing over people including not giving stock to many first employees. Jobs doing it in Pixar and Apple.
I'm not saying that Facebook have or haven't done better or worse than other companies in reality. What I'm saying is that their public reputation is atrocious at a level where the average person can understand it. Everyone's seen "The Social Network", people tune in for him testifying to congress (which he did this week, and I'd encourage you to just check out how he comes across visually compared to the others), emails saying he'll destroy other companies if they don't sell, and the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
Your second paragraph is scary. It essentially says that a private organization should make business decisions that doesn't upset the king. We have entered faux democracy
As someone who has been close to acquisitions of this size, "not upsetting the king" is always a factor - whoever the president is. At least at the companies I've worked at, it basically falls under public relations/political risk. Even if a deal is really profitable, you might kill it if you think you're going to get the gov't breathing down your throat either for legitimate reasons or just because the company you're acquiring is a good whipping boy for the gov't.
Most observers are convinced this “king” is on his way out. I think the parent was arguing that he’ll still be around just long enough to potentially cause problems for Microsoft.
People cheered that the government was finally getting more involved in tech when the House had the dog and pony show. This is the ultimate result. We already saw Cook kiss the Golden Ring with photo op he did with Trump at “Apple’s manufacturing facility” (that wasn’t really Apple’s). Just to keep the President from punishing Apple with tariffs.
Especially when it comes to politics, it seems like un-winnable battle. Do nothing and you’ll get blamed for helping spread hate and propaganda. Do something and you’ll get blamed for violating free speech and censoring conservatives.
And the media has glaringly obvious bias when it comes to all they delude themselves into seeing as "competitors". They'll display past acquisitive grammar on police while murdering all logic to make multileveled impossible and insane demands "Block all crime and piracy without looking at user content at all while paying both the user and content creator!"
Facebook, Google, Twitter all get heat from a very small portion of the population for not moderating their platform enough that is true. What is also true is that as far as I know we have no proof that these accusations have any impact on their bottom line.
Facebook is the big bad social network that was caught playing with its users' feed to see how it would impact their mood. That is straight evil yet I would be willing to bet it never had any significant impact on their ad revenues.
My aunt won't stop being on Facebook because of some controversy, the same way that my younger siblings don't care if you can see some alt-right content in a dark corner of TikTok.
> Facebook is the big bad social network that was caught playing with its users' feed to see how it would impact their mood. That is straight evil yet I would be willing to bet it never had any significant impact on their ad revenues.
Yeah maybe my words weren't nuanced enough, I don't have strong feeling regarding that particular event, but it caused outrage yet I'm sure there wasn't any significant impact to the revenue of Facebook.
The study itself was portrayed as evil by most mainstream media that covered it. That's what I meant and my perception of it doesn't matter to the point I was making.
I suspect that Microsoft wants to buy TikTok as a favor to the US Government. I view this as possibly a repeat of Ebay/Microsoft buying Skype as a favor to the US Government.
If moderating TikTok is too much of a hassle, they'll probably just mismanage it into irrelevancy (having already accomplished their primary objective of satisfying the American government that TikTok isn't a threat to American interests (either commercial or national security.))
None of that supports the claim that Microsoft bought skype as a favor to the US government. It’s mostly a bunch of silly conjecture. Removal of supernodes does make it easier to intercept, sure, but that doesn’t mean it was the motivation for that change, and it definitely doesn’t mean it was tied to requests by a government.
Now that they have the capability, they would have to comply with court orders, like every other communications company based in the US.
Frankly I think you're naive, unless you're getting hung up on "favor." If you expect me to believe that Microsoft would never cooperate with the American government like this, you'll have to do better than name calling.
If common sense doesn’t convince you otherwise, have fun. Their purchase had absolutely nothing to do with the US government. Business with the US government just does not work the way you seem to think it does.
Indeed, they would not cooperate “like this”, (they’ve been suing them to shield customer data, in fact) but they obviously would comply with US law.
I don't understand the negative response to this comment which is just summarizing the US Government's official public statements on the matter. Trump Admin doesn't want Chinese companies dominating US commerce or exfiltrating data, or at least wants to be seen as wanting that.
I understand (and even support) the government not wanting foreign companies exfiltrating data for national security reasons. But why this one specific company? Why only the Chinese government? Why now? Why not address the wider problem and protect all of our data from exfiltration by all foreign companies? Or regulate and monitor companies that do?
I’ve never used TikTok and I’m really not a fan of any social media company but the way this whole situation is being handled feels decidedly un-American and frankly unfair to TikTok/ByteDance.
Because China is a big threat to our future security and economy and there are ongoing and historical issues that have never been addressed? They are a human rights nightmare?
I’m not “siding with China” I’m siding with due process and fair and consistent application of the law. If China is a major threat why isn’t the government forcing Tencent, Alibaba, and Huawei to spin-off and sell their American operations to US companies, too? Tencent has to have just as much data as ByteDance. Probably more. And their relationship with the Chinese government and willingness to assist in Chinese government surveillance is well documented. Better than any rumored evidence against TikTok.
I’m not saying TikTok should be allowed. I’m just wondering why, if Chinese surveillance is such a clear and present danger to our national security, we’re only talking about TikTok.
I’m suspicious of any government action in the name of “national security” and I’m infinitely more suspicious when that action is specifically targeted without any logic or reason that can be articulated beyond “national security”.
And not once have human rights been mentioned with respect to TikTok so we both know that has nothing at all to do with it.
To be perfectly serious: because Donald Trump is mad at Tik Tok because he thinks kids on that platform pranked his rally last month by "buying up all the tickets" and leaving empty seats.
You're absolutely right about the mess MS will face wading into the sludge of social media content. But that aspect of this aside:
Forget about Trump's dislike of TikTok for that prank, and instead think in terms of national security: TikTok was literally copying keystrokes on peoples phones and, presumably, using it for some purpose. It's not far fetched to think it was sent "home" to the parent company, which is obligated to turn data over to the Chinese government.
Making Microsoft in charge of it in the US solves that issue. This obviously introduces the issue of MS's data collection on users, but we already have that issue with TikTok, only with the downside that it may benefit a hostile foreign government.
Trump will likely be seeking other opportunities in a matter of months, and is not a long-term concern. TikTok is a social network, and social networks, for all that they are a pain to run, make money.
Microsoft is not a technology company at its core. You have to look at it as a conglomerate similar to Berkshire Hathaway except MSFT focuses on investing in technology companies. The reason why this works is because their cap cost is one of the lowest and they are able to use its shares to more or less retain talent at a steep discount as a result.
Microsoft big purchases outside media ones that have mostly if not completely been divested are aQuantive, Skype, Yammer, Nokia, Mojang, GitHub.
- Many of their big 90s acquisitions like Hotmail and Vision were part of their core products.
- Nokia, Danger were for their phone business.
- aQuantive was a response to Yahoo, Google buying up advertising properties
- Yammer was for their central enterprise moves
- Mojang along with a number of other gaming purchases like Rare Obsidian, and backend companies are for their strong gaming division.
- GitHub fits in with their Azure and developer focus.
- Skype could’ve fit in better and did try and was for their cohesive enterprise and all in one attempts. It fits too.
- LinkedIn is the only one you can really say was a big purchase without the same level of synergy or drop in support to the company.
Microsoft is as far from a conglomerate as you can get.
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If you want tech conglomerates, look at Tencent. Their portfolio is absolutely absurd. Even SoftBank outside the vision fund is a tech conglomerate.
Interfering with business M&A using just a threat of action then asking for a piece of the $$ for the treasury dept sounds like something a Soviet/command economy would do.
This is how you can tell when a right leaning group is significantly more authoritarian over liberty. Which is a divergence from many recent right leaning administrations in America (see: tea partiers) and the rest of the western world.
Not to mention its oddly similar to the thing they are accusing the Chinese of doing.
Tiktok at this point should also sell their India business to Microsoft. It would make sense for Microsoft because their are millions of people in India who want TikTok back but don't want China associated with it. Also, I don't think Indian government would have any issue if it's Microsoft.
More money in the US Tik Tok audience to be perfectly frank. MS has to be reasonably certain they will get their investment out plus some profit. Not only that, but sometimes the MS's of the world won't even buy if the profit they will make is not large enough.
I would think some Indian firm might want Tik Tok? Not really sure why no deal has been made there?
CFIUS doesn't apply here. It governs US companies selling ownership stakes to foreign entities (the FI is for "Foreign Investment"). For example when Lattice Semiconductor wanted to be acquired by a Chinese company and CFIUS blocked it.
This is the opposite situation: TikTok is a foreign company that's considering a US company as an investor/acquirer.
Actually it does, the CFIUS has jurisdiction over any foreign company doing commerce in the US. Which is why it has oversight over ByteDance's acquisition of Musical.ly, both Chinese companies.
That seems to apply to foreign investment in the US. It is not obvious that it would apply to a foreign company selling its US operations to a US company. Maybe it depends on the form of payment--if the payment includes stock in the US company than maybe it counts as in investment?
CFIUS is a creature of executive action. And in 1988, the Congress passed a law saying “all foreign investments that might affect national security may be reviewed and if deemed to pose a threat to security, the President of the United States may block the investment” [1].
I think the President can ban Tiktok by executive order on the ground of national security, in the same way he acted against Huawei.
Only this time American business interests told him that there was money in Tiktok so that it would be profitable for them to get their hands on it instead of killing it outright.
And so... They have made Bytedance "an offer they cannot refuse". From the Godfather to international geopolitics it's all the same.
Edit: This will bring back very bad historical memories to the Chinese.
He can’t tell you what apps you are allowed to have on your phone directly, but he can blacklist a business for US businesses, so Apple and Google would be forced to remove the app from their stores.
No easy sideloading on iOS, so if it is removed from the store you can’t have it on your iPhone.
A very quick and easy google turns up the “Exon–Florio Amendment”. It was actually created because they were worried about Japanese investments in the 80s.
The president can review foreign investments and determine if there is a nation security risk. The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) does the reviews.
Is it just me, or has there barely been a peep from the CCP about TikTok? When it came to Huawei or ZTE, China's gov't regularly engaged foreign gov'ts, but it seems that they don't care much for TikTok. If that is the case, and not just a case of it not being reported as prominently, I would put my conspiracy hat on:
1. TikTok is actually not cooperating with the Chinese gov't (and maybe this is the CCP's way of showing them that it goes both ways).
2. The CCP is allowing the US gov't to destroy its own credibility and moral high ground. These threads are usually solidly anti-China but there is a clear stream of discomfort now, with the realization that if national security can be used to override the law, and everything can be a national security threat, then how strong is the foundation of law?
EDIT: A few of the replies have suggested 3) TikTok is simply not that valuable. Which makes all the ruckus being raised by banning it, whether by the US or by India, even sillier?
> The country’s top media regulator on Tuesday ordered the company, Bytedance, to shut down its app for sharing jokes and silly videos. Vulgar content on the Neihan Duanzi app had “caused strong dislike among internet users,” a brief notice from the State Administration of Radio and Television said. The company was told to clean up its other platforms, too.
I'm pretty sure that when OP talked about cooperating with Chinese govt. He was talking about what is hinted by trump, that they are doing massive clendestine surveillance on US citizens on behalf of CCP.
(Which incidentally, we now know that some US companies are doing exactly that for the US govt.)
Another theory (mine, as a TikTok user in Asia) is that American TikTok is not worth much compared to the rest of the app’s ecosystem, and therefore being “forced” to sell it is a windfall exit opportunity for Bytedance.
I think there is also a third option (might be a variant of #1): they are cooperating with the CCP, but the CCP does not value what TikTok provides them very highly, and so they don’t care enough to do much
Or CCPs interest in what they get from TikTok doesn't provide much value internationally speaking. They may be more interested in domestic control in their "social credit" system to catch dissenters... where internationally, they would find less valuable information that they can act on.
Just my own conspiracy minded pov. Also, most government and related businesses have already taken the steps to advise their employees don't use the app, and don't have it on devices that come into their offices.
Genuine question: If China's priorities are in the right order, then why is the US giving the social network so much attention, going so far as to label it as a "national security threat" (whatever that means these days)?
Also wouldn't that open US services like facebook and snapchat to the similar treatment by other governments? Why would the US jeopardize their industry like this?
The cynic in me sees this as a win for the CCP. Maybe this was to set an example for Chinese companies: refuse to play ball with the party and the Evil West that you idolize so much will break your toys.
The current administration has demonstrated how enormously corrupt they are, and we have seen a little bit of circumstantial evidence of "cooperation" between the CCP and the first family. But who knows just how deep that rabbit hole goes?
This is exactly what the general public in China are jesting ByteDance about right now, mocking it as an out-of-favor American lap dog. The CEO actually got labeled as traitor for his past liberal comments.
> if national security can be used to override the law, and everything can be a national security threat, then how strong is the foundation of law?
I don't see the POTUS doing anything that is outside the law. I haven't seen it happen once. Heck, even an impeachment investigation didn't even find any broken laws.
I think I see the point of separation of understanding.
The House conducted a House investigation to determine if there were grounds for impeachment. They concluded there were, and they drew up articles of impeachment.
The next step is the actual impeachment trial, where the Senate has the authority to compel witnesses to testify under oath under threat of contempt. The House lacks this power over the other branches of government (i.e. as White House counsel explained, they would not comply with any members of the White House staff being called before House committees).
But since the Senate chose to call no witnesses, no witnesses were compelled to testify under oath in an impeachment trial.
I believe that since there was no support for the impeachment from the House minority, the Senate majority was justified in their action. If the roles were reversed for all parties, I would not find the outcome any less expected.
There's certainly precedent for impeachment to break along simple party lines (for both parties; a similar thing happened with Clinton), but that doesn't mean it's not abrogation of responsibility when it does.
There's a reason Congress has the approval of only 1 in 4 Americans polled.
Well that sure improves Microsoft's negotiating position.
They've actually been in discussions to purchase for months now. But the U.S. government comes along and says, actually, you better complete it soon, or the value of the U.S. business will be zero.
It's totally fucked up. By the same reasoning ("national security"), any country that hasn't already can and will now sooner or later ban US-dominated social networks, especially when networks as they exist benefitted from US antitrust turning a blind eye towards large scale purchases. The EU court of justice has just ruled against "safe harbour" arguing that personal data can be turned over to US authorities without due process. Pulling a "deal you can't decline" also won't exactly help mutual investments.
I believe the gravity of this hasn't been appreciated yet.
I'm talking about the same thing. For example, it's illegal for the NSA or CIA to harvest emails between American citizens. But it's not illegal for the UK to do so, and it's already understood how they did it in the past to Google users by tapping inter-datacenter connections (https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nsa-i...), then feeding that data back to the NSA as a FiveEyes partner.
I'm honestly starting to ponder more fundamental questions here. The behavior of MS and ByteDance is not right currently.
Your idea that MS gets a stronger position is a bit orthogonal to what may be the real hold up. Insofar as your idea assumes both that ByteDance cares, and that MS wants Tik Tok, then your idea is sound.
But I'm no longer certain either is true. Is ByteDance a business? Or an out of date intelligence front that their people are simply winding down? Does MS want Tik Tok? Or has Trump decided that's the best outcome for him, and pressured MS to buy Tik Tok?
Is it time to consider the very real possibility that MS doesn't even want Tik Tok? And never really did?
Also, MS is being a little naive here as well. We are in uncharted territory, but did they think they would get away with tap dancing for a few months to pacify Trump and then coming back and saying, "Sorry we can't get it done"?
I thought I had seen reports MS has been negotiating with ByteDance for purchase of TikTok for months?
TikTok has a huge amount of use, right, it is hugely popular? Microsoft in general is known to be trying to get into "social" more, for obvious reasons. You can make a conspiracy story about anything, but I think the occam's razor answer is that, yes, Microsoft actually wants TikTok. Doesn't it appear to be a very valuable property matching MS's known acquisition strategies? Why wouldn't they want it, there's nothing odd about them wanting it that needs some other mystery explanation, is there?
I'm confused about something and hope someone here can clear it up. A threat of stopping the sale unless the US gets paid "a substantial amount of money" sounds like extortion to me. Is there any precedence for the US getting cuts of acquisitions?
See you're doing the same thing every other replier is doing. You appeal to de jure definitions and argue over semantics but you still can't provide a single specific example of them this blatantly ordering their companies around. At this point I think you're doing it on purpose. It can't be that hard can it?
Your position is that even though China claims to be a communist country, somehow through the back door they have introduced a free market but they keep it on the down-low?
You cannot run a large company in China without being a member of CCP.
Sir, may I request you to read the intelligence law in depth before you comment?
Didn't ZTE deliberately violate known Iran sanctions and hide their involvement? They were also judged guilty in a court of law.
There isn't even a need for any court or judge - any security and state official may do the below and not just to Chinese citizens or corporations.
The Intelligence Law, by contrast, repeatedly obliges individuals, organizations, and institutions to assist Public Security and State Security officials in carrying out a wide array of “intelligence” work. Article Seven stipulates that “any organization or citizen shall support, assist, and cooperate with state intelligence work according to law.” Article 14, in turn, grants intelligence agencies authority to insist on this support: “state intelligence work organs, when legally carrying forth intelligence work, may demand that concerned organs, organizations, or citizens provide needed support, assistance, and cooperation.”
Organizations and citizens must also protect the secrecy of “any state intelligence work secrets of which they are aware.” These clauses do not stipulate that only Chinese “organizations” are subject to these requirements.
What's wrong with being connected with communist party? In Western countries IT companies like Google, Dropbox or Facebook also cooperate with governments and even give high-paid jobs to government officials.
I think that TikTok better not to sell a profitable business, or at least should not sell it cheaply.
Here is what Microsoft does (I don't speak for them, just what I would do):
- secure the purchase
- let it run independently like LinkedIn
- move cloud components to Azure
- leverage Microsoft compliance with regulators and data retention / collection plans
- let tweens and teens do their thing
How is TikTok's data policy any more acceptable if it's controlled by Microsoft? Is there a clause to change the source code and not make it tailored to the informational needs of the State?
Obviously it's easy to make Apple and Google remove it from their app stores but couldn't ByteDance just release a new app called TokTik or something similar? Could ByteDance just reincorporate as a different company if the ban was at the company level? Would the order ban apps with > X Number of users when owned by foreign investors?
Seems like this isn't something the president can actually do.
India and China, along with basically every other country, have tons of regulations around how foreign companies can set up operations and invest in domestic markets.
You cannot do business without a local partners in many industries (read: a "joint" venture in which the local "partner" will acquire your IP and eventually compete with you down the road). Foreign ownership is restricted. It was big news when China mildly liberalized its laws earlier this year and only as a gesture in the ongoing trade disputes.
This is, to begin with, essentially how operating in China works. Uber was forced to sell their Chinese operations to Didi Chuxing, AWS is prohibited from operating datacenters in China and forced into partnerships with local telecom companies, Google's services are uniformly banned. Operating in China means forming a partnership with a local company that you must turn over your IP to, before eventually you are kicked out of China so that the partner company can take your place entirely.
Uber wasn't forced to sell their operations. They were bleeding cash in their competition with Didi for Chinese market share, so they made a deal. Didi took over Uber's operations, and Uber got a 15% stake in Didi.
Only certain sectors in China have joint-venture requirements. Over time, more and more sectors are being freed from those requirements. These sorts of regulations are allowed for developing countries under WTO rules.
People are thinking about this way too much in terms of personal data. I don't think this really is about that.
Editorial control over what a significant fraction of people see is significant power over those people. Even seemingly benign editorial actions could have serious effects.
Facebook and Twitter are clearly being pressured by all political sides to favor content they want favored and disfavor content they want disfavored. What does that look like when the CCP weighs in on what American TikTok users see? Maybe prioritizing posts about protests or just petty crime (even more so than the internet tends to do by itself)?
I think there are endless ways to get creative and subtle here that could cause problems.
2) If there's bad news, say something controversial to try and jam the news cycle.
He's already had to back-peddle on claiming mail-in ballots increase voter fraud (https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.politico.com/amp/news/2020/...), probably because someone clued him in that the biggest user demographic for mail-in voting is the elderly, most of whom vote Republican.
No deeper analysis is needed because he isn't deeper. He's a man in over his head in a job he never wanted, desperately trying to save his reputation. He has no idea how to do his job (as indicated by the number of EOs overturned by the Court).
What he has is a cult of personality that sucks in the gullible. It was effective at selling sub-par steaks, but serves him less well as head of the US Executive for successfully running his office.
If you believe he's playing some kind of hyper-chess feel free to provide evidence.
Ah yes, Quora, that bastion of well-researched, trusted facts. But in reality, Trump has EOs overturned significantly more than Presidents in recent history, with over 60 adverse rulings.
More importantly, I don't know what a list of Obama EOs struck down by courts has to do with Trump's Presidency. It's entirely possible they were both bad at being President. Trump's failures are particularly interesting, to my mind, because of how often he torpedoes himself; he may have pulled off ending protections for immigrants from Haiti, Sudan, and Central American countries if he hadn't chosen to call them "shithole countries," opening up the spectre of his EO being racially motivated.
It's not 4D chess; he says what he wants and doesn't notice that a President is held accountable to his own words. it'd be funny watching his self-torpedoing buffoon act if he wasn't the President of the United States of America.
What would the deal entail? Would MS get access to all the sourcecode, the IP behind it, etc? Would TikTok effectively be forked into two separate apps that evolve independently?
>Why Microsoft though, is there other company competing for the deal?
The only other companies, in tech, that could offer to pay 100B:
AAPL, MSFT, FB, AMZN, GOOG.
Once you exit FAAMG, the next largest company is Berkshire Hathaway with a 500B valuation. I don't see Buffet paying 1/5th of his own company for TikTok.
Among FAAMG, the other 4 just got grilled by Congress over Antitrust. FB & GOOG would likely never get approved it. I don't see AAPL owning a social network, given the privacy concerns around it. That leaves AMZN, who has Twitch as a "sister" platform. However I don't see Bezos getting away with acquiring a high profile company like TikTok, as he's currently enemy #1. That leaves MSFT who has been trying to get into social media but has kept failing (most recent of which was Mixer, which pretty much funneled millions into top streamers for nothing).
I kind of wonder about this. The US Government pours money on Microsoft. The number of Windows servers in government reels the mind, and of course every desktop is Windows, with Office. They previously acquired LinkedIn, which is where a huge number of US citizens, and particularly military folks, park their resumes and roledexes. The LinkedIn social graph essentially subtracts children and stay-at-home spouses, making it somewhat denser with the type of information a foreign government might be interested in. Similarly, GitHub is of huge US national, probably Western strategic interest.
I wouldn't be terribly surprised if some folks at Microsoft were "encouraged" to pursue those deals to keep them out of other hands.
LinkedIn recently tried to get me to connect to a high school girl. This wasn't a case of a minor lying to get access to a service, her profile clearly stated that she's still in high school. Note that this wasn't her trying to connect with me, it was LinkedIn's algorithm suggesting it. My take away is that there are minors on the system and the system isn't doing much to protect them. There was nothing in her work experience that overlaps with my career or interests and we had no connections in common. Seems very odd that LinkedIn would suggest this connection.
Microsoft also has substantial Chinese operations (compared to other tech giants), so the Chinese government may have a preference to pressure Bytedance to sell to a relatively friendly company.
MSFT stock rise about 5.62% (or $100b), likely due to the news to take over TikTok in US. If this is a fair trade, one would not expect MSFT stock to increase.
A bit of an over-simplification. A fair trade could cause the stock to rise if people think it will likely be unfair, or if people think that TikTok will be run better and more valuable in MS' hands, or that there's some synergy with other MS products/users to take advantage of, or because lots of investors might not move money from American stocks to Chinese but are happy to move money from being invested in other US tech companies into MSFT, or... etc.
I think its important to note that this started November 1, 2019 by CFIUS[1]. While Trump is known for erratic behavior, he is acting on the investigation by CFIUS.
Two guesses, one for each side of the political spectrum:
1. The word "erratic" suggests that there is error, rather than deliberate behavior to make the news and to throw enemies off guard.
2. You pointed out that the actions were in fact started by CFIUS, which is a disappointment to anybody who wants to see the actions as being driven by vanity or malice or corruption or similar.
The CFIUS investigation has no basis, the acquisition took place years ago with no national security implications. Trump can’t do squat because anything he attempts will be blocked while it’s litigated far longer than the end of his only term.
> Forcing a foreign business to "sell or close" is an insult to the rule of law
These powers are precedented—-this is how antitrust law works. The U.S. has had similar procedures in CFIUS since 1975 [1][2], which is likely how U.S. would enforce this decision.
Keep in mind, it’s not sell or close. It’s an order to unwind the Musical.ly acquisition [3] or face sanctions.
> Since when could the President singlehandedly do it?
Since 1988, when the Congress passed a law saying “all foreign investments that might affect national security may be reviewed and if deemed to pose a threat to security, the President of the United States may block the investment” [1].
Grindr was sold to a Chinese company in 2016 (without submitting the transaction for CFIUS review), and then CFIUS intervened in 2019. It's not late at all.
Similarly, ByteDance had the choice to seek CFIUS review and approval in 2017 before they closed the Musical.ly deal, but chose not to. So CFIUS is intervening now.
That seems like a sale ripe for exploitation. China would have been able to harvest data on closeted individuals and leverage them. Completely agree with blocking this sale.
> President Reagan delegated the review process to the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States
Delegating a power doesn’t remove one of that power. And CFIUS pre-dates Exon-Flores, so the Congress giving the President, not CFIUS, these powers is relevant.
We can have a discussion as to whether we like or dislike this action. (I am not a fan.) But suggesting it’s unprecedented or a breakdown of the rule of law is hyperbolic.
Congress gave that power to the president. Congress can take the power back if it wishes but it won't, not even with their showboating faux hatred for Trump. Congress hates making decisions like this one so they punt to the Executive Branch. This is not a unique situation. Over the years Congress has given away lots of its power to the president, which remains even when there is a change in office.
Not if this is the only way to protect its citizens. Not saying it's the case here but forcing a company to sale it's business to a local entity in order to proceed offering it on a local market isn't unheard of and can make sense.
People sharing funny videos on TikTok is not threatening your personal safety. Governments accessing DMs, or whatever data you have in TikTok isn’t a threat to your personal safety.
The notion that TikTok is a threat to national security is ridiculous. Truly, “national security” has lost its meaning.
Should american apps be therefore banned by the other countries? I'm talking about american apps as the issue here is china vs usa, otherwise any other country that produces apps is probably guilty of the same collection.
1) Most non-Chinese apps are already banned in China.
2) The world trusts US companies because unlike China the US is not a dictatorship, has a functioning, independent judiciary and generally abides by international law. So there is a far greater level of trust there because there are legal mechanisms to prevent breaches.
This seems to ignore the Snowden revelations. I don't think most of the world trusts US companies qualitatively more than they trust Chinese companies for these kinds of apps.
Also, the discussion was about national security and you are giving different arguments here. How is this related to national security?
Is this really true? You do not think China's actions in Hong Kong has put more doubts into China's policy on human rights compared to United States?
If you tell me you believe they are equal, I'll take your word for it. While the United States has plenty of flaws, I think they are still far more trusted when it comes to human rights.
You discount how easily and quickly it is for countries (e.g. the US) to go full retard, when the evidence is literally right in your face. That's what a blind ideologue looks like, folks.
> The world trusts US companies because unlike China the US is not a dictatorship, has a functioning, independent judiciary and generally abides by international law.
I feel like this always get short shrift in whataboutism discussions.
In China, everything is by law in service and subordinate to the Party.
And the military has already acknowledged that they have a problem with the rampant use of private devices. So any app that harvests a lot of real-time location data can be a problem.
Also if I was the Chinese government I absolutely would be analysing audio/video and capturing contacts for any phones at known military GPS locations.
First of all, you didn’t mention anything about the military in your first post. So maybe you should read up on how to make a point comprehensively before telling somebody else to read up on something. The information that you mentioned, by itself, does not affect national security. And obviously, any sort of information that one can gather on the military is helpful to the enemy. That’s why they don’t do all sorts of things that civilians commonly do.
Anyway, maybe ban the military from installing apps or using civilian phones if it’s a problem??
That article you linked to was not even about TikTock it was about some other app. So removing TikTock is not going to fix the problem.
Sure. And TikTok isn’t going to be used by China to send commandos into the US to kill you. China isn’t going to harm you with TikTok. US national security is not threatened by Americans using TikTok.
I'm glad a few people have common sense. Anybody who's even used TikTok for 1min could figure that out. There definitely brain washed racist fools that give any credence serial liar like Trump
> If China-based engineers have access to TikTok's US-based servers, they can still hand over data to the CCP (or be forced to do so).
1. That is illegal.
2. Theoretically this also currently applies to Google, Microsoft, Google (any company which has devs in China) and is a solved problem. Almost all people don't have physical access to data, and those who do need to go through access reviews to do anything.
Quite the contrary: it’s illegal to not share data with government if requested:
> Two pieces of legislation are of particular concern to governments — the 2017 National Intelligence Law and the 2014 Counter-Espionage Law. Article 7 of the first law states that "any organization or citizen shall support, assist and cooperate with the state intelligence work in accordance with the law," adding that the the state "protects" any individual and organization that aids it.
But a first step would be to get rid of its internal committee of the Chinese Communist Party. And to stop making joint venture with government agencies.
To put it in other words, if there was a dedicated spot for the US secretary of defence on the board of Google, how fast do you think other countries would take some actions against Google ?
> stop making joint venture with government agencies.
Good point, I don't know they have JVs with government agencies before, had to do some research on this.
> get rid of its internal committee of the Chinese Communist Party
This is hard, if not impossible, if you meant "党委" ("party committee") or "党支部" ("party branch"), because CCP demands any organization with more than 3 party members SHOULD have one. ("should" should be interpreted roughly as the same word in RFC Requirement Levels) And just like they usually have no problem if people chose to deny joining the party but may hassle you forever if you quit, if you try to shutdown an existing "committee" it would be seen as hostile.
That being said, most of the mid-to-large-sized startups are actively ignoring these requirements until being forced, because apparently even if you are required to do so, you have to go through a hairy application process. And the "committee" in most corps (including mega corps) are essentially an empty shell, a symbolic thing to make CCP happy, so corps usually have no motivation to change the status quo.
Yet CCP do extremely care about these symbolic stuff, it is even forcing foreign companies to do this, IIRC Disney agreed to do so.
Have you ever had to take a case to court?
What percentage of your annual income did that cost?
How long did it take to work its way through the system?
Was there a finding of wrongdoing or an out-of-court settlement?
Would you do that again?
Would you want to do that for every interaction you have with the government?
This is one of those shortcuts we use to cut out complexity, but in process, we create blind spots for ourselves.
It is not reasonable to expect things to either have opinions or not. An adult should have the sophistication to read something and understand what is opinion and what is fact. I get that many adults these days apparently lack that ability, but that doesn't excuse it.
I use it as a shortcut because I got tired of reading BS using the skills you describe. Now I don't read the opinion section at all. Once bitten twice shy.
Sure, but this is impossible to escape. Even if you're looking at a dry set of facts, there was editorial decisions made regarding what to put on that list and what to leave off. There is literally nothing you can read where you can escape the opinions of others.
It matters that we recognize patterns of unaccountability and lazy leadership. The issues with the presidency are much larger than Trump and if we ignore that it will keep happening.
Not if China don't reciprocate the openness of the market (which they don't). Only fools will let them steamroll like that. I'm no Trump fan but this should have happened decades ago.
Rule of law is very important, but part of the problem is the "law" is pretty expansive with the powers it gives to the President. So I don't necessarily think there is a "rule of law" problem in this instance, but instead a problem with the extent of powers given to the federal government in general and to the President specifically. Disclaimer: I haven't read a good legal analysis of Trump's actions as of yet.
This is a long standing problem with the size, scope, and complexity of our federal government.
One of the things I do "enjoy" about Trump is how his actions gets everyone to argue for a less powerful federal government. It would be nice if these structural arguments weren't dependent on who was in the White House, but it is nice to hear them anyway.
And working with a country which enforces that practice for over 40 years is not? (China if you didn't notice).
This is the only way to truly fight back to their own anti-competitive practices. Either that, or outright banning them from doing business until they change their own laws, and honestly I much prefer the second option, even though I can tolerate the current solution proposed by Trump.
What Trump is doing is completely within the law otherwise TikTok and its investors would simply file a lawsuit.
And every day governments around the world block mergers and acquisitions on competition grounds and block companies from being involved in sensitive projects e.g. Huawei.
It's not a criminal proceeding. These are arbitrary powers granted to the President by Congress. If you want to change that, lobby your Congressperson to repeal the 1988 law mentioned elsewhere in this thread.
Trump just openly demanded that the US government get a cut of the sale if it goes to Microsoft.
If I were TikTok I'd be shopping the company to europeans just to avoid any further headaches. They'd still get access to the US market but wouldn't have to deal with the headache of a sale to a US company.
There's no authority -- presidential, or otherwise -- to "ban" TikTok, nor enforce a sale of a foreign entity to an American (The foreign investment act is about selling American companies to foreign companies, not Americans buying foreign countries.), nor is there any way for the federal government to get a cut of any sale.
This seems to be a legitimate business move on the part of Microsoft. What is not legitimate is The-Donald/Twitler objecting simply because one of his rallies was oversubscribed by US Tik-Tok members. He is being a petulant toddler (ass-hat) and wants revenge.
For those who are against US retaliation to China, how do you propose competing when China forces transfer of IP, blacklists companies and people when they make public statements they do not like, and bans apps[1] when apps do not fall inline with China's unethical policies? (I'm being generous here when I say China bans apps for political reasons when they can easily ban to be anti competitive.)
Western democracies at some point need to stand up to the lopsided competitive landscapes. Its one thing if this is a small up and coming country. China being number 2 (or number 1 according to the Economist) in the world deserves push back. They can afford to let companies compete on a more equal playing field now.
The US is no victim here, it has maintained its hegemony for 70 years. Maybe it is time for something else.
I realize the people who have lived most of their lives in the US don't see the downsides of its hegemony, but rest assured that it is seen far more clearly elsewhere.
Western democracies include Australia, Europe and many other parts of the world.
I agree with you there are plenty of downsides to the hegemony. China being #2 does not need any pity either. So what's wrong with the US pushing back on China?
Pushing back is fine, or at least ok. But this mode of creating information divides will only serve to further the cultural distance between all parties.
I agree, but Trump is not putting that frame on it. I suspect he doesn't have a problem with China's 'unfair' competition policies, he just have a problem that the US can't have it's own similar policies.
A better president would use this as leverage to get China to change it's policies.
This is a missed opportunity to force China open up. Let Google, FB compete in Chinese market. Win-win all around. Forcing the sale is short sighted and only deepens the divide.
That has been tried before. Remember Google China? It was forced to follow the same draconian censorship measures as any Chinese companies, and then was forced to leave the country after a cyberattack led to massive amounts of its IP being stolen (the Chinese government denying any links to it, of course).
Put your own house order. Invest in you national infrastructure and education. Level off ridiculous tuition and gate keeping of professions that essentially forms an aristocratic class. Introduce reasonable regulation of big tech and corporations to ensure they are of a net benefit to society.
Open wide the doors of immigration to top tier talent through out the world and ensure they can settle in the U.S. if desired without waiting lists of up to 100 years.
Restore trusts between government and the people through electoral reform that ensure a more proportional representation with respects to the demographic and population changes of the last 50 years.
Why is Covid out of control? Because nobody believes anything coming out the White House. If Trump said tomorrow there is a viable vaccine how much of the population will be willing to take it?
You know. The things that made America attractive in the first place. American strength comes from within. The real story of the last 20 years isn't why China has gotten so much stronger, sure that was going to happen one way or another but it's beyond your control. What you can control and should ask is why America has gotten so weak. Why out of a nation of 300 million with such great talent, the very best that could be found for national leadership was a failed New York real estate developer?
If you try to the bottom with China you won't win.
Ok so let's say the US does all of this. China continues to force transfer of private company IP, bans apps it see fit, etc. How does the US putting its own house in order solve this?
(I am 100% in agreement with you that the US should fix its flaws.)
First of all Chinese internet and media regulations apply to all companies foreign or domestic. This is completely different from the situation with TikTok. Microsoft, Yahoo, Apple and many others have operated within local regulations in China for many years.
Second of all, TikTok is basically a Vine clone, but became more successful because of rapid innovations developed in the large and very competitive Chinese market. If the US did all of what grandparent suggested, there would not have been a TikTok to worry about in the first place because it would have been developed here.
I agree with you that TikTok was unfairly singled out. I also agree with you that many US companies have operated legally inside of China. I also agree that the US should get its house in order.
China bans apps when the Chinese government disagrees with it. What would your suggestion be for the regarding Chinese apps in the US?
I think a point of broad agreement is that the US can set up rules of market access reflective of values rather than interests -- things like labor rights or environmental protection for physical goods, or like privacy, non-censorship, clean IP ownership for informational goods -- and they should apply to the whole market.
If there are value differences between countries that truly rise to a level that can be considered existential or a threat to national security, these rules will automatically work to discriminate and protect long-term local interests in a way that isn't arbitrary. And if there are not differences, then why should anything be done anyway? Let the winners win.
At the moment there is skepticism due to the US never having consistently demonstrated the values it purportedly cares about during all of globalization, not domestically, certainly not abroad. So the fuss about China becomes one of sour grapes more or less, coming to fore because the profits are no longer justifying the loss of competitive advantage. It is an about-face built on opportunism, not strength and moral backbone. Negative reactions built on those grounds will never be as effective as positive and morally defensible ones.
If the U.S. was on top of things and firing on all cylinders I don't think countries like China would even have the leverage it has today. The reason China is "hacking your government databases", "cruising over the south china sea", and xyz other greviances is because it sees what everyone else in the world sees. The U.S. is weakening and nature abhors a vacuum. There wouldn't be margin for that to happen if the U.S. was not literally in front of our eyes blowing up in flames.
I think it's totally fine that the US is not number one. In fact, the economist using a slightly different measurement speculates that China has already overtaken the US in GDP[1].
Regardless, my question is about China continuing to force transfer of private company IP, bans apps as it see fit, not respecting copyright, etc. How do you as United States and Europe deal with it?
I completely agree with this. It is the only way to win, but too bad American hubris won't allow admitting there has been failure in anything. So only more Donalds will be elected in the future in reflection of the infantile scapegoating nature of the electorate.
The US has permanently lost China's technologists and entrepreneurs at this point. I'm seeing people in the tech industry advocating for Facebook to get secondary sanctions from China - as in, companies which operate in China are not allowed to do business with Facebook. Presumably, this would mean Apple and Google (via Android)...
I don't think it will be effective to do this secondary sanctions. If Chinese company want to sell aboard then Facebook isn't something easy to circumvent. And they can always go to Singapore to do business with it, or find agency there. It is will be hard for government to monitor such activities.
The point of this reply is not to pass judgement on this action. The point is that plenty of business is done between China and America despite the ban. Plenty of business will continue after TikTok.
Sadly, the sentiment on HN showcases the inability of people to apply objective reasoning:
The primary indicator I saw is the diminishing sentiment towards the injustice suffered by TikTok.
At the very beginning, the sentiment that TikTok were mistreated was quite popular. Or even was the minstream [1,2].
Now, the sentiment has shifted that "why MSFT buy TikTok, why not TikTok sell to FB/Google". Like what's shown here.
To this date, except the broad claim that "TikTok is owned by a Chinese company, and Chinese government will force TikTok to share private information", there isn't a single evidence that is even remotely relevant to national security.
I am seeing a lot of US company executives are preparing to break from China very unpleasantly in the near future...
You see arguments all the time that start with "CCP is evil, X is Chinese, therefore...", which would basically justify any and every action against all Chinese entities.
Meanwhile, if you have even close to a clue about what's going on in China you'd know that ByteDance is bending over backwards trying to position itself as a multinational corporation with independence from the Chinese government, all in utter futility of course. That action actually drew the ire from the mouthpieces of the party.
Some rumors say that the reason TikTok announced the potential deal so fast is to make it so that the Chinese government won't intervene and turn it into another Huawei situation. Well, that kind of reasoning seems to be based on a purely fictional assumption that the US government is still operating on principal or in good faith.