[dauertewigkeit]

> Why should we throw open our digital borders to Chinese influence campaigns?

Because we are not China and our institutions are built on presumption of freedom of speech and freedom of thought and democracy. If we start emulating China, we will become China. Our institutions are supposed to be robust enough to handle local and foreign propaganda and if they are not, then censorship is certainly not a solution that would be compatible with the liberal democratic values that we are supposed to hold.

[WillPostForFood]

US Citizens still have the same freedom of speech and freedom of thought and democracy. Those rights don't extend to foreign adversaries. If you want to relay Chinese or Russian or Ukrainian or Israeli or Hamas propaganda, you are completely free to do it, without censorship. Limiting the ability of any of those countries to project it within the US is reasonable stance.

[grecy]

You're limiting the information US Citizens can get from the outside world - therefore you are limiting their freedom of thought and access to information.

I think it's a dangerous road to go down, the US is already extremely inwards facing and suffers from not knowing much about the outside world. I've had hundreds of US Citizens talk to me face to face who don't know what language we speak in Australia, don't know we use different money, not know the seasons are backwards, not know it's a 15 hour flight, not know we don't have a president, etc. etc. (this list is endless). US Citizens are not very well educated about how things work in other countries, clearly to their own detriment.

Just yesterday I was talking to a friend in the US saying my friend has 18 months fully paid maternity leave and he almost fell over. His wife got 10 weeks. Many countries do things better than the US, and it's dangerous to limit US Citizens learning about that, else they will have no notion things can be (and are) better elsewhere, and should be improved.

[JumpCrisscross]

> limiting the information US Citizens can get from the outside world

Nothing is being censored. TikTok.com will still work. This bill limits TikTok’s distribution, not existence nor even access to Americans.

[grecy]

> This bill limits TikTok’s distribution, not existence nor even access to Americans.

Wait for it.

[JumpCrisscross]

By that logic we shouldn’t have speed limits because it’s a slippery slope to banning cars.

[TulliusCicero]

Free trade should go both ways.

It's ridiculous to let Chinese apps and websites operate in the West when China blocks so many Western sites and apps: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_websites_blocked_in_...

[tzs]

Free trade generally does not mean you have to let foreign companies operating in your country do things that domestic companies are not allowed to do.

Most of those sites are not in China not because China says that they cannot operate there but rather because China say they would have to obey the same rules Chines companies do. That generally involves things like storing data on Chinese citizens only on servers in China, censoring things the government wants censored, and giving the government easy access to information including identifying information to unmask anonymous posters.

[coupdejarnac]

This is post hoc nonsense. China blocked US tech companies so that they could copy what the US companies do without any threat of superior competition.

[contrarian1234]

The basic benefits of free trade (based on comparative advantage) do not require both parties to engage in it

They make a superior dancing video app, so then engineers in silicon valley can go work on something else instead

[TulliusCicero]

The point is that they get to access the Western market with their dancing video app, but Westerners aren't allowed to access their market with the apps they make. That gives those Chinese companies an unfair advantage in potential market reach.

[contrarian1234]

And it turns out that that's irrelevant in terms of net benefit to the citizen of a country

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_advantage

Resources are reallocated elsewhere

[zone411]

A simplistic economic model that overlooks hundreds of important factors may provide a basic Econ 101 understanding but it does not reflect how the world truly operates and proves nothing.

[contrarian1234]

Sure it's a simple model. But the burden of proof lies with the person claiming that free trade needs to be bilateral. That's not some inherent property of it, or something immediately obvious. A basic look at it past "It's not faaiiiiiir" actually shows quite the opposite

[lancesells]

Where is freedom of speech involved with changing the ownership of a company?

[rwmj]

That's nice, but you have to defend democracy from people who wish to overthrow it. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance)

[dauertewigkeit]

Is every heterodox narrative immediately "intolerance" in your view?