[ferest]

In short, only American companies can have access to the brains of Americans.

There is no law to prohibit an app of being used in US, and there is no evidence TikTok broke any existing law operating within US. All the talking point being so far is because it's a chinese company.

This is literally how black people was treated.

It's interesting to see how protectionism change the country brand of equal business opportunity and spirit of the law.

[colordrops]

The analogy would only make sense if black people were a foreign economic and nuclear powerhouse that have been blocking US apps with even more prejudice.

Tit for tat restrictions are standard practice with international trade and not evidence of racism.

[russli1993]

It would be equivalent if Tiktok is banned in the US and only in the US. But this forced sale of Tiktok would definitely include TikTok's non US business as well. The intention from the U.S. government is to not allow Chinese nationals to own any impactful business or technology not only in the US but internationally. Huawei's case was 5G, tiktok and bytedance is social media.

Bytedance is incorporated in the Cayman islands. Yes it is founded by a Chinese national, but it also have non-Chinese people on its board and in the management. And Chinese people do not all agree with the government, or ccp's ideology push.

Bytedance has a Hongkong subsidiary to manage mainland China business, one of them is douyin. And U.S. subsidiary to manage Tiktok. Douyin and TikTok are separate products, no data is shared between them. The U.S. subsidiary is managed by Americans and employs American. Content regulation is managed by Americans, Data is stored in the U.S. Tiktok is planning for outside review of the data security and algorithms for recommendation system. There is no way Chinese government can force their censorship on to tiktok. Why would TikTok employees agree to Chinese government's demands? They are Americans living in America. How will Chinese government enforces their demands? The only thing they could do is force shutting down Douyin in China or arrest the Bytedance's management in they reside on Chinese soil. But if that happens it would be another news story. There is no legal means for which Chinese government can exert control over Tiktok. Therefore I don't think Tiktok being forced to censor speech or hand data to Chinese government is really realistic.

Source: https://www.bytedance.com/en/ see corporate structure

[tomp]

> There is no way Chinese government can force their censorship on to tiktok.

Really?

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/sep/25/revealed-...

> TikTok, the popular Chinese-owned social network, instructs its moderators to censor videos that mention Tiananmen Square, Tibetan independence, or the banned religious group Falun Gong, according to leaked documents detailing the site’s moderation guidelines.

Stop with this propaganda please.

[colordrops]

It doesn't necessarily have to be the case. Uber was sold off in china without selling off operations elsewhere.

[ferest]

fwiw china didn't block US apps, it's china blocks apps decide not to follow the chinese law, regardless if it's US app or from any other country.

If tiktok has child porn or some other illegal stuff, i'm totally fine with blocking it. But in this case, the only evidence so far is, it's a chinese app, not because it's breaking any law.

[colordrops]

That is absolutely not true. China has blocked and shut down plenty of services that are following the law simply for protectionist or narrative control reasons. When twitter clones started popping up in China they shut down 11 services and chose a single one to survive, that being Weibo.

[sanxiyn]

China does not block US apps.

[colordrops]

That is one of the most ignorant things I have ever read on HN. Pretty much everything out out by Facebook, Google, and Twitter does not work in china. It's common knowledge.

[ferest]

yea that's how media made the headlines

[SwSwinger]

Protectionism arises when there is not equal business opportunity between nations and when nations have knowledge of unethical government campaigns using related corporations. I don't see how this is similar to treating black people. Maybe you meant Uighurs?

[ferest]

> hen nations have knowledge of unethical government campaigns using related corporations

NSA has pretty bad records of spying all over the world, and all US companies have to work with US judicatory system under the court permission. In that convention, all over the world should have blocked US companies.

> I don't see how this is similar to treating black people

Because their skin is black, not because there is evidence of any law breaking, they are treated differently.

I don't want to get into uighurs talk, "reeducation camp" could as well be a more restrict boarding school under different context, but this is not related.