I wonder how much ByteDance got from the incoming administration to pull that stunt. Super shady. "We voluntarily shut down our service in your country (er, I mean, we HAD TO, for real!) but don't worry, a true hero is soon arriving to save the day!"
Haha fair. But I don't think any company should be strong-armed by another nation into selling. Meta would never be allowed to sell their "Chinese arm" to a domestic Chinese entity...part of the reason there isn't one
China doesn’t allow US social media companies to operate there—why should the US unilaterally allow Chinese social media companies to operate here with no reciprocity?
Continuing to play cooperate over and over when the other player keeps playing defect is not smart.
> China doesn’t allow US social media companies to operate there.
This statement is not entirely accurate. It is possible for a US social media company to operate in mainland China, provided it complies with local regulations, including hosting its servers in China and adhering to censorship requirements. For instance, LinkedIn operated in China until August 2023. However, it may ultimately prove unfeasible due to factors such as user preferences, the volume of censorship requests, or even perceived unfair competition. Since at least 2010, when Google faced demands for compliance with Chinese censorship regulations, the requirements for foreign companies to operate in China have been clearly outlined.
No comment on these policies, but it is undeniable that businesses operating in foreign markets must comply with local laws. However, by intervening in business activities, undermining corporate property rights, and contradicting its own stated principles of free market economics and international trade rules, the U.S. has demonstrated economic nationalism. I can't tell who is playing defect in this case.
Basically, there are 2 legislation in the world, legistlation and the China legislation. In China, there are laws on the surface and there are rules underneath. For example, the government never admitted that the GFW exists, yet it keeps blocking more and more sites. The government never bans online forums, yet it never grants license to open a online bbs, since like ten years ago.
During some political sensitive times, the government would send secret requirement to local companies like ByteDance and Tencent on how to censor the social media. Back when I worked at ByteDance, when the 19th Communist Party congress was open, the auditors would be in a war room, just for making sure that no negative news or comments would be released. American companies also work with the government on censorship, more or less, but that's another story.
It's very common for Chinese people who have been fooled by the government to say that, these western companys left by themselves. But it's not the laws that on the surface drives them away, it's the rules underneath.
I'm not against your ideas in general, but I have to point out that I have several friends in China running small online forums despite the obstacles. Yes, it is rather difficult to get the licenses; Yes, they have to censor themselves; Yes, they have to temporally shut down during congress.
My point is that China isn't selectively banning websites from a single country. I wouldn't criticize if US apply the reasons of banning TikTok to all foreign websites.
The US is taking more control over social media, more than the government ever had over traditional media. This is similar to how the switch to the digital medium has been used as an opportunity to weaken the fourth amendment.
I agree that the US is going to the wrong direction. I was just saying that what China did is a bad example, not a justification for other governments.
> > China doesn’t allow US social media companies to operate there.
> This statement is not entirely accurate. It is possible for a US social media company to operate in mainland China, provided it complies with local regulations, including hosting its servers in China and adhering to censorship requirements.
>This statement is not entirely accurate. It is possible for a US social media company to operate in mainland China, provided it complies with local regulations, including hosting its servers in China and adhering to censorship requirements.
Read about Google's search engine project in China aka Project Dragonfly[0]; it was a totalitarian dystopian nightmare where CCP wanted to know everything about people who use Google, like their queries and mobile phone numbers and plus they demanded from Google that millions of websites/webpages must be censored (removed from Google's China index).
Project Dragonfly was like Stalin's manifestation of perfect surveillance and propaganda tool.
US is liberal democracy, China is not and how much information is censored on Google.com if any? And did US government use Google to target individuals or ethnic groups within US?
Western companies operating outside China are often forced to agree with China's censorship requirements too. Look up the "great cannon" on wikipedia. Many such examples.
It is possible for a US social media company to operate in mainland China, provided it complies with local regulations, including hosting its servers in China and adhering to censorship requirements.
From experience I can tell you that also means handing over all encryption keys which is a violation of most companies compliance requirements. That means creating an entirely separate org for compliance in China with entirely different b2b and end-user contracts, terms, etc... I know of a few companies that get around this only because they are more totalitarian than China and have their own circuits bypassing the great firewall. Not naming them.
This sounds good on the surface, but China and the US have very different regimes. Full reciprocity would mean turning the US into a China style dictatorship. For instance, if China censors western press in their country should we be censoring Chinese press here?
I don't want reciprocity between limitations on the rights of Chinese citizens and the rights of Americans. Our government should be defending our freedoms, not imitating Communism.
We're supposed to be a democratic republic with safeguards for our rights, not a mercenary war machine that can be reprogrammed at will by a few people lucky enough to influence policymaking.
Does China have a first amendment restricting the abrdigment of all press and ? Was there are special carve out in the American first amendment for issues of reciprocity or for foreign media? No.
My biggest fear isnt China or Russia (like Im told it should be) but becoming like China and Russia. It's happening faster every day.
When the first and the fourth amendments are shredded then Putin and Xi Jinping get to say, with increasing truthfulness, "America is no better than us".
Things get a little weirder when they're mass media. A lot changed when the 'fairness doctrine' got thrown away… essentially you're arguing that adversarial powers should get to run mass propaganda operations with all the technological means we've learned, on the grounds it's 'speech'.
No citizen has comparable power to influence (and hide their tracks/sources) no matter how manically they post. It's rapidly becoming 'giant computer farms full of AI following scripts' and that still counts as 'speech', but rather than an individual's opinions it's targeted influence operations towards indirect goals.
It can be as close to 'crying fire in a crowded theater' as you like, except it's methods to coordinate teams of people all crying fire, knowing there's no fire, but intending to cause a mass casualty event through their actions.
The supreme court ruled that banning it because of "the risk that user data stored on American servers might be exfiltrated" didnt fall under the first amendment.
The head of the FBI (among many others) said the ban needed to happen because China could use it to spew propaganda.
When Russia is heavily critical of what one of its media outlet says and then bans it because of tax irregularities or something, only Putin supporters are under any illusions as to why it happened.
The 1st Amendment does not apply to Chinese companies operating in the US.
And even if it did it isn't a suicide pact that forces the US to do very stupid things like let the CCP use TikTok to manipulate US citizens to the benefit of the CCP and detriment of the US.
The first amendment applies to the communication of US citizens. If TikTok is found to be unlawful for non-free speech reasons and its distribution is outlawed, 1) Americans can still use it for communication and 2) Americans can use any number of other things for communication.
It wasn’t even the manipulation that was the NatSec concern, it was the amount of sensitive data they were pulling of not just TikTok users but any friends or family of theirs that they had in their contacts. This means they have data on people who work in sensitive departments, military bases, etc. and they had already been established as providing that data up to the Chinese Government. It’s the same reason India banned it, it was being used as an espionage tool.
Now the other problem is that Meta will sell much of the same data to anyone who is buying. We need to do something about surveillance capitalism from private industry too.
You know that there is no Facebook in China? The same for Instagram, Twitter and YouTube.
Even Google Search is not available in China.
And not because those companies didn't want to work in China, simply China forbade them to do it.
Funny thing, even TikTok in China is blocked... Chinese audience have Douyin from ByteDance.
So it isn't like this that "bad US is doing something to poor Chinese company"
There is no Facebook in China for the same reason there will be no TikTok in the United States. Both Meta and ByteDance won't let another country run their business. Facebook was given the chance to operate in China if they complied with China's rules
The Chinese don't really use facebook in the first place do they though? And facebook's utility to China is the same as TikTok's, just less direct: manipulating Americans and other non-Chinese users of Facebook. It seems like people want to be manipulated though.
Word, I imagine there are all kinds of shenanigans at play, I'm just not spending that much effort thinking about it. We'll never know the complete story on any of this stuff. Maybe in tens of years, if ever.
This message about Trump saving TikTok is just wishful thinking from TikTok.
1.) It's pointless, TikTok is officially banned in US. Even if trump decides to find a US buyer for it, it will go under strict ownership investigation. So there's no way Chinese government has any influence anymore.
2.) This means that any future Chinese apps that get popular will get banned, and no need to go through any court challenges since there's precedent and law
3.) A lot of people already left TikTok and will not come back - why would they when they know the app could be gone at any minute? The traffic from the original TikTok will just keep getting split and syphoned, until the magnificent seven claims most of it
I think 3 is a weak point. I've left multiple social media platforms several times and got sucked back in days or months later. That was when I was actively trying to not use them.
Edit: I think all it needs is a link from a friend to some TikTok content and they are back in.
I read the message as more as being an ego stroke to someone that everyone else is ego stroking right now - seeing as Trump has a lot of influence over people further down in his party's org chart, there might be enough reason.
Trying to argue about legality is unlikely to hold much sway given how other legal issues ended.
That's a lot of confidence, you must know something I don't. I'm but a bystander Canadian without much of a dog in this race, but it's a pretty serious allegation to suggest that tomorrow's World's Most Powerful Man is on the ByteDance/TikTok payroll.
Is it, now? He’s a corrupt convicted felon who brags about lying, which despite that was elected president. Do you think he gives a shit about anyone’s allegations? He’d sell your mother for a pack of peanuts. And why not? From his point of view he can do anything he wants and there will be no serious consequences.
I recently learned, thanks to another HN comment, that more than half of the USA population has a literacy level below the 6th grade. Suddenly it answered so many questions.
> (a friend on Facebook pointed out that 5% of Obama voters claimed to believe that Obama was the Anti-Christ, which seems to be another piece of evidence in favor of a Lizardman’s Constant of 4-5%. On the other hand, I do enjoy picturing someone standing in a voting booth, thinking to themselves “Well, on the one hand, Obama is the Anti-Christ. On the other, do I really want four years of Romney?”)
People have been accusing Trump of this or that for almost a decade, but where is it? 90% of lawyers are partisan democrats who have hated Trump from day 1 because he is a threat to the professional managerial class. They have been digging for nearly a decade to find something to use against him.
> 90% of lawyers are partisan democrats who have hated Trump from day 1 because he is a threat to the professional managerial class.
That is clearly a conspiratorial statistic taken out of nowhere.
> He was convicted for paying with his own money to pay a pornstar to hide an affair
He was convicted of falsifying business records with intent to defraud and conspiring to “promote or prevent the election of any person to a public office by unlawful means”.
> That is clearly a conspiratorial statistic taken out of nowhere.
95% of law firm contributions in 2019 went to Biden: https://news.bloomberglaw.com/us-law-week/snubbing-trump-law.... This support wasn’t out of economic interest. The overwhelming majority of lawyers are ideologically captured and hate Trump at a visceral and irrational level for not subscribing to that ideology.
> He was convicted of falsifying business records with intent to defraud and conspiring to “promote or prevent the election of any person to a public office by unlawful means”.
Why quote the statute instead of the facts, which aren’t really in dispute? After he had already won the election, he reimbursed his lawyer for paying off a pornstar through his family business, and booked the reimbursements as “legal expenses” instead of “pornstar payoffs.”
Brilliant minds came over from top law firms to fit those facts into to a clever legal theory. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carey_R._Dunne. They figured it out, just like the figured out how to make Google’s profits magically all materialize in Ireland. But the underlying conduct remains a politician covering up an affair. That’s the best the legal industry could do after eight years of digging.
Let's back up a bit. Ancestor comments are saying "I wouldn't put it past Trump to take money to bring TikTok back." That's what's being discussed here. I'm not sure why you're on some personal crusade to make Trump seem unjustly persecuted. It's a bit strange, even, since that wasn't even the main contention here.
Yes, that's what's being discussed, and the argument that's being made in this discussion is that Trump has so far apparently never done anything like that before.
Yes but 34% of adults lacking literacy proficiency were born outside the US. It seems to me that this is more a reflection that the US has the highest percentage of immigrants of all countries on earth.
Edit: The parent comment completely changed what it said, making all replies look out of context. I’m leaving my original reply, which includes a verbatim quote of the parent, below.
> It may be you who lacks the critical reasoning skills. Did you happen to think about the fact that 23% of the population is actually younger than age 12, meaning they wouldn’t even be in 6th grade yet?
This is incredibly ironic. It’s 54% of the adult population, which is abundantly clear by the provided link (in a bullet point, it’s hard to miss). It only takes a minimum of good faith and critical reasoning skills to:
1. Realise that of course the statistic will not include people younger than the level used as the threshold.
2. Click through and at least skim the link to steel man someone’s argument.
They completely changed their post after the Tronno reply, which made the replies look out of context.
Their original post, quoted verbatim in my other comment¹, was:
> It may be you who lacks the critical reasoning skills. Did you happen to think about the fact that 23% of the population is actually younger than age 12, meaning they wouldn’t even be in 6th grade yet?
It's hard to find definitions of payment which don't relate to money. There's no doubt in anyone's minds that geopolitical positions benefit some states over others, it's a completely different premise to prescribe real direct compensation.
The waters get pretty muddy if we're willing to suggest that American presidents are "paid" by other nations to enact policy which benefits said nations, it's not unreasonable to ask for clarity about such claims.
Money is simply debt; an IOU to hand in for something of value in the future. If it helps to have the money abstraction in mind, imagine the debt being called immediately, whereby the thing of value is delivered immediately.
> Most people I know treat money as fiat, something concrete and exchangeable.
Exactly. Money is the decree – the concrete representation of debt. A recognizable token that can be given to someone that says "I owe you something", which can subsequently be exchanged back by the recipient to get the something of value that they are owed. Which you already know if you've ever used money before, and no doubt you have.
But, as it pertains to the topic at hand, in cases where there is no reason to delay delivery of the actual value, you can skip holding the debt. You could go through the motions of receiving money, and then giving it right back in exchange for the thing of value that you are owed, but there is no practical difference between that and cutting money out of the picture and simply accept the thing of value as payment.
> What I think you’re describing is political favor
Money might be a tool used in offering political favor, I suppose, but that is well beyond the content of my comment about the function of money. How did you manage to reach this conclusion?
I think it's fairly obvious, no? The originally presented case was that Trump had received payment for assuring TikTok's survival. I've noted a few times in this thread that this is a really poor framing, and that it's more likely his actions were motivated by politics, not fiduciary gain.
Trump has displayed a disturbing pattern of changing his opinions and actions after meeting with monied or powerful people who have vested interest in said change.
Often this is accompanied by a public message of flattery or a donation to his "political" coffers.
Totally agree on that, public flattery's a very common tribute in international politics. So I'll ask again, are we of the opinion that Trump is being paid by actors, foreign or domestic, to enact change here?
So, just to make it very clear what I implied, yes. I believe he and his organisations receive benefits, directly or not, in money or other forms, for him steering policy towards what’s convenient to whoever is paying.
An easy way is for TikTok to just promise to algorithm away any criticism of him in the US.
> Do you think Trump's being paid by ByteDance to lift the ban?
There is never a need to be that direct. Republican and Democrat donors tell politicians what positions to take. Trump doesn't need to take money directly from a company. He takes it from his donors, who in turn take it from the company in some form.
In this case, the theory is that billionaire Jeff Yass (an investor in Tik Tok) has "persuaded" Trump to flip his position.
rbanffy's comment was exactly as direct as I specified, and I'll reiterate their comment for posterity - "I’m sure they expect the issue to be resolved by paying the incoming president".
My understanding now is that now we've shifted from "ByteDance pays Trump to flip" to "American businessman Jeff Yass meets with Trump and convinces him to flip"
I hope you can understand that as a non-American observer I see a lot of distance between those two claims and find myself confused when they're treated with equivalency.
How out of touch with general politics are you? This is how things are done, globally, in every democracy, since forever, you just need to look close enough. I can see similar type of corruption all over Switzerland for example where I live, mostly in public projects and decisions. Locals mostly don't see anything, so everybody is happy. You just have to have a keen eye for corruption, which is easy for somebody coming from eastern Europe since there its ingrained in the system(s) and permeates every aspect of societies.
Non-democratic places have more direct path for bribes but otherwise its same.
I’d say I’m generally fairly in touch with global politics, it’s a bit inflammatory for you to ask, truthfully.
I think that local level corruption in my small town in Canada or in yours in Switzerland is pretty markedly different from what’s been originally presented, which is that DJT was paid directly by ByteDance to adjust his position.
I said that ByteDance expects that paying Trump will make everything go away. From his comment on an executive order, it seems clear he’s willing to go over a law passed by the Congress.
It doesn’t even need to go through Jeff Yass. It can just be a new Trump resort and casino getting expedited approval in Hong Kong, or some other place. Imagine the business opportunities being POTUS will bring to him and his family. The possibilities for corruption are endless.
It doesn't take much imagination; he spent 4y as POTUS and most people agree it was to his personal benefit. I'm not aware of this leading to expedited approvals for Trump resorts in other countries, but it seems you're more familiar with his dealings than I am.
I'd still love your clarification though - do you still stand by the claim that Trump is being paid to reneg on his position re. TikTok, as per https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42755872 ?
Edit: it looks like we've had to warn you about this kind of thing more than once before, e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26742673. However, the good news is that it seems to be rare in your otherwise very good commenting history (for which, thank you!) so it should be easy to avoid in the future.
I think that the message put up by TikTok today is already, at least in part, its own payment. "The bad guys blocked your favourite app, luckily you'll have to wait just one day for President Trump to fix this regrettable mess" is a powerful message to send to more than one hundred million Americans. Stupid as you want, but powerful. Same as for the Gaza ceasefire (which will be ignored as soon as the inauguration is over and focus has moved onto other matters).
I think it's fair to demonstrate a pattern of behavior without speculating on specifics. Similarly, Trump did not collude with Russia in secret, but he did openly ask them to help him run the election on national TV. What did Russia get for that? Maybe nothing. Maybe goodwill.
Much of Trump's decisionmaking in his first term was erratic and generally unwarranted, but I still I think it's totally fair to ask for clarification about claims of that level of severity.
To my knowledge, if I'm understanding rbanffy's position correctly, this would be the first time in history US president was directly being bribed by a foreign actor, so I still maintain it's worth seeking clarification.
Am I wrong in holding skepticism here? I don't doubt there are political points to be gained for Trump here, especially given the domestically controversial nature of the ban, but I'd really love for someone to hold true to the original notion under question that someone (ByteDance, CCP, etc.) is "paying the incoming president", as rbanffy suggseted.
As somebody coming from a third-world country, it’s a matter of fact that the people view politicians as a corrupt group. They think they are better than the people they represent, they are multiple times richer than the population and campaigns range from distorted truths to clear lies.
Proven or unproven, a claim that a given politician received bribes to influence something is not met with skepticism, but a mere “yeah, of course”!
Some say the US is a rich third-world country, or becoming one.
Why do we bother with the farce that elected representatives are better than us? They are looking for their own interests.
See the inauguration fund. Money completely unaccounted for and that his team is saying pay to get exclusive access to Trump. It’s pay to play and it’s legal (at least for Americans).
Certainly. The whole corruption setup is always done in such a way that there is never direct proof, only some more or less well hidden ones. So if you expect somebody here will post a recording of their bribe negotiations, that won't ever happen, Trump would directly order CIA to eliminate such person with extreme prejudice, and that's how it would have been done.
Look, he is crook, smart, properly fucked up man baby with issues that no psychologist could ever fix, but he is a crook at the core. These are facts. Enough evidence with few seconds of googling to condemn 10 such persons of highly amoral and sometimes also criminal behavior. And everybody knows it, even here. So folks understand how to deal with such currently most powerful person, so they do.
I don't get where your doubts come from. Facts are out there, you only need to connect few dots.
Certainly this is not the first time that's happened. Trump has been President before. What he got up to is indeed the first time in history that happened, but not because he was directly bribed by a foreign actor: that's most likely already happened. The case of Trump is entirely stranger.
What? The incumbent is on his way out, and it is the incoming guy that has the opportunity for the win by bringing it back afternoon tomorrow (Jan 20th).
This is eerily similar to the Carter/Regan hostages situation
> the “look how we made you look like the hero” aspect
They know exactly what they are doing. That message is going to be effective and the person it’s targeted at doesn’t understand that it can be spun any way the CCP wants to spin it. How does he not see how risky letting a foreign government run something like TikTok in the US?
The law does not disallow Americans from accessing this service. It only disallows Apple and Google from distributing the app on their stores. This shutdown of the service is a publicity stunt.
In which case, the question is: what were other Republicans told that they didn't sign off on this plan? It seems quite a bit like a coordinated arrangement between China and ONE guy who was running for office.
Since he was running as a Republican, why are they not also signing off on all this? Why is the completely Trump-friendly Supreme Court not signing off on all this?
And it's ironic because this is a perfect example of what the law is intended to prevent -- a Chinese-owned company boosting Trump in front of a hundred million Americans.
If that's not foreign influence, I don't know what is.
There's plenty of evidence, it's just circumstantial - but that doesn't make it any less obvious that there is something going on between TikTok and DT.
Bytedance didn’t get anything. They likely posted this message without Trump’s knowledge to create social pressure on him by setting up an expectation. It’s a manipulation technique, which is exactly why this app needs to go away.
Exactly, Bytedance/Chinese government wants Trump to look bad, if TikTok stays dark. Nevermind that Trump was the one that tried to ban TikTok in the first place. And never mind that everyone from house to senate to Biden to Supreme Court voted to ban TikTok.
And never mind that the majority of users on TikTok are far left woke democrats.
