Why are the Hacker News comments on this so different than when this topic came up a few years ago?
I feel like a few years ago this site was inundated with posts arguing largely "Anyone anywhere on earth should be able to do business in the U.S. and own U.S. subsidary companies, no exceptions."
My opinion is still the same. If TikTok represents a threat, let the DOJ or FTC or whoever look into it and present a case to the courts and to the American public. Congress can get the voters on its side by writing a bill requiring stronger privacy measures on iOS/Android for example. But they won't because this would adversely impact Google and Facebook. A government ban is an authoritarian move that will inevitably expand to non-TikTok apps.
As for a broader change in opinion, I'd say that since 2022, American businesses have been happy to rally around protectionist policies in general (especially after the end of ZIRP) and that attitude feeds through to HN'ers that put a disproportionate amount of stock in things that people like Musk say.
For example, here's Musk admitting that Chinese EVs will dominate global market share without trade barriers:
To be clear, we haven't been asked about it. Besides the framing of the question ultimately begs the response.
Q1: Is it ok for China to control what Americans watch?
Q2: Should companies have free association?
Q1 and Q2 determine the same decision, but express different values and ultimately different responses. You have to be honest that the framing begs a particular response. That's the part that's not unbiased.
Answer to Q2 is easy: no. Nobody thinks that companies should be allowed to pledge allegiance to whoever they wish, there are already lots of laws in every country against pledging allegiance to terrorists or being owned by terrorists etc.
I absolutely love the way you are engaging with this problem, and really appreciate how you’re trying to make discourse about the fundamental issue rather than the knee-jerk ‘murica “unrationale”.
Personally I support the authoritarian measure against TikTok from a “general” standpoint since I firmly believe the nature of warfare lately has shifted to a more cultural front and thus is a matter of national security; Everything about this would be perfect if not for the glaring issue that is clear favoritism, and not addressing the root problem.
Social media and its corresponding ad-tech at large is a publicly available propaganda engine that can be wielded by the highest state backed bidder via direct ads, or the highest spending intelligence actor via artificial accounts and discourse.
LLM tech has only exacerbated this threat and in a perfect world this legislation would be the first of many steps to curtail the threat before it undermines the country any further.
Now that I’ve said my controversial bits I would love to hear what your thoughts on the matter(s) are!
If the choice is who are we going to make in charge of feeding us propaganda then the game is fixed. We play this trick on 4 year olds to make them do what we want and when done to adults it's paternalistic.
Fifteen year old me was right on this one. It's better to burn it down than pick the lesser of two evils. We always reserve the right to create our own options if what's presented to us isn't honest.
Sure the game is rigged so that someone will be feeding us propaganda, that much is a given in today’s society. I don’t believe however it is in any citizen’s best interests to allow a foreign nation to control that propaganda due to the invariably detrimental incentives at play.
The American government is more likely to produce propaganda that promotes an increase in GDP. The increase being won by sacrificing individual autonomy or quality of life is something that is at least in your control (emigrating, voting, lobbying, etc) which makes it the lesser of two evils.
As to burning it down and picking a third option… I agree in principle but recent history rarely supports that path; modern technology and weaponry renders any kind of organized revolution a nonstarter, while other means of subverting the status quo (economically, culturally, etc) have been set up to incentivize those capable of doing so to be completely apathetic in the face of obscene wealth tied directly to upholding said status quo.
Put simply we are in a social construct that is resilient to any significant change in course (or destruction) while still under threat from a foreign social construct that wishes to subvert our society to the benefit of its own.
CCP doesn't control any of those, so they aren't national security issues.
Edit: And in non American countries where US influence is a national security issue they are already adding similar laws or putting in similar pressure to ensure USA can't influence their people as much.
Nothing? Meta is owned by an American, that person probably don't want to see America get destroyed. Other nation states however has an interest in seeing USA get destroyed, so that makes things very different.
"it's not authoritarianism when it's something I want"
Nothing should happen, limitations are deliberate
Meta aside we're already here, by the way. The military and VA do this to themselves.
Recruitment strategy is commercials and Call of Duty games, while we see what really happens through our families. Half-ass postings on the Internet aren't even close to the problem.
Tldr: Don't like the news, fix it/make your own. Pray we don't have to rely on the draft.
As the other person replying to you said: yes. In the eyes of Congress, the answer is obviously and unequivocally yes, because Facebook, Twitter and Google are American companies.
It is if credible evidence of such a threat could be provided. The FTC investigated and fined Facebook $5bn for its breaches. The DOJ investigated and fined Binance $4bn and cut off its USD off-ramps, effectively banning it for US residents.
Why should TikTok not be investigated similarly?
What Congress is proposing is banning an app without first providing any evidence that the app conducts activities that are illegal under US law.
It seems like the argument against TikTok is one of potential abuse, not that a specific illegal action had been taken by ByteDance.
So, for the same reason that you can't find someone guilty of a crime that you believe they will commit in the future, the DOJ and FTC don't really have any standing here to press charges or levy fines.
I still hold the same stance today, but I am just tired of arguing for it on HN.
I noticed the same thing with the prevailing opinion on the issue changing on HN as well. However, it wasnt because there are better arguments for the ban now or some new relevant info got discovered that would affect it.
Nope, it literally devolved into tit-for-tat arguments only, except this pretty much makes the US lose any high ground here. For people who dont see how maintaining the high ground in this specific scenario[0] is very advantageous and cheap for the US, I don’t have much to add that wasnt already discussed to death in all the previous HN threads on this.
P.S. It sucks I even feel the need to say this, but no, I dont support the chinese government and have zero affiliation with it whatsoever (at least none that I am aware of lol). I do have a lot of respect for the country itself and their people. However, my respect for the country and their people is not relevant to my opinions on absolutely anything related to policymaking.
0. No, I dont believe in this approach for every scenario ever involving the US and China. Of course, I do believe in reciprocal trade sanctions and tarrifs. I dont believe in those nearly as much when it comes to the digital realm, and especially not when it is something like TikTok.
That's not quite right. Always defecting is game theoretically optimal.
However, under realistic conditions, where many agents are predisposed to cooperate but some do not that's where a tit for tat strategy can work incredibly well.
That people are predisposed to cooperate is an assumption you have to make, it cannot be derived from the rules of the game itself.
Opinions change as the situation in reality changes. Especially with the rising geopolitical tensions and the Ukraine war, not to mention now with Palestine, there's a fair portion of people who might have been more neutral that are now more hawkish.
My perspective is that if one truly cares about these ideals of freedom or such, would they be better fulfilled through keeping US Congress in line or a dominant CCP? If the CCP "wins", if they establish economic hegemony, just like we see with the censorship with Taiwan, whatever talk about defending freedoms right now against ourselves would be irrelevant at that point to an external adversary.
> Why are the Hacker News comments on this so different than when this topic came up a few years ago?
* Tiktok competes with FAANGM (MMANGA?) type companies, which happen to be heavily represented here, and those people may have pointed thoughts
* apropos of FAANGMs, China recently banned or set strict rules for FAANGM companies in China. If they're not going to play nice + make dubious demands, why shouldn't the US behave similarly?
* GPT is a thing... and was then, too. all available bot power may be focused on elections / Trump trials / Israel / Ukraine / etc., when it wasn't before, and rapid changes to viewpoints may reflect that; the 50 Cent Party has bigger fights to pick, etc.
* sort of a corollary to the above, it's an election year, a big one in several ways, and that drives the (real, human) commenters out in droves
I feel like a few years ago this site was inundated with posts arguing largely "Anyone anywhere on earth should be able to do business in the U.S. and own U.S. subsidary companies, no exceptions."
These seem largely absent today.