[raverbashing]

Eff really fumbled this. Maybe not badly but they fumbled

Starting with calling it a ban

I really don't know if the naivety is willingly or comes from too much academicism honestly (I'm not blaming them, but it's like a quant trader trying to use statistics on a rigged street game)

1 - Might be a worthy conversation to be had, though I think both problems exists

2 - Right? Right? "Oh but GDPR is bad, no?"

3 - I think very few people are arguing that Meta/Twitter etc should take out their filters for violent content, free speech still doesn't mean your content needs to be prioritized and pushed to everybody (especially as it is not "evident" tiktok is doing the editorializing of it).

4 - it was done to Grinder

5 - Yes but to let China off the hook because somehow we need to take the high path is just naive. China is free to unban western social networks first before playing the victim here

[throwaway4good]

It is a shakedown and a repeat of Trump's ban 4 years earlier.

An attempt to force a sale at a suppressed price to politically connected US investors.

Funny thing is that if the US allowed TikTok to IPO in the US, Bytedance probably would be happy to do so.

Only it would be at a price closer to that of Meta than that of Reddit.

[positr0n]

What is preventing TikTok IPOing in the US? Are there rules against foreign owned companies or something?

[hn_acker]

> Starting with calling it a ban

It's a threat of a ban of a medium of US users' speech. Is calling a threat of a ban a ban too much academicism? Perhaps in certain cases, but in this case here's the law text [1]:

> (1) PROHIBITION OF FOREIGN ADVERSARY CONTROLLED APPLICATIONS.—It shall be unlawful for an entity to distribute, maintain, or update (or enable the distribution, maintenance, or updating of) a foreign adversary controlled application by carrying out, within the land or maritime borders of the United States, any of the following:

> (A) Providing services to distribute, maintain, or update such foreign adversary controlled application (including any source code of such application) by means of a marketplace (including an online mobile application store) through which users within the land or maritime borders of the United States may access, maintain, or update such application.

> (B) Providing internet hosting services to enable the distribution, maintenance, or updating of such foreign adversary controlled application for users within the land or maritime borders of the United States.

An alternative to getting banned is divesting to a US company. You might think of that as "getting banned is an alternative to divesting to a US company", but I think that's the wrong framing in consideration of US TikTok users, who by default have a First Amendment right to use TikTok as long as TikTok willingly continues offering service to the US.

> 2 - Right? Right? "Oh but GDPR is bad, no?"

What does the GDPR have to do with a US ban of TikTok? The EFF is referring to US lawmakers, probably Congress in particular.

> 4 - it was done to Grinder

After the forced sale of Grindr, the US should've passed a privacy law to ban nonconsensual collection of personal data by first party services and ban nonconsensual distribution of personal data by first party services to third parties (including both non-goverment parties and government parties) and from those third parties to other third parties (the way data brokers do). Anyway, I'm not entirely convinced that the way the US government forced the Grindr sale passed the First Amendment.

> 5 - Yes but to let China off the hook because somehow we need to take the high path is just naive. China is free to unban western social networks first before playing the victim here

The EFF's appeal to morals is not very robust in the context of China. I think it's still important to consider the legal angle that the EFF didn't bring up: What China does to US social networks has nothing to do with the First Amendment of the US. National security can override the First Amendment, but "other countries do XYZ too" doesn't.

[1] https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/7521...