[bryananderson]

What about the principle of reciprocity?

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.

[simonmysun]

> 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.

[johnchristopher]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hobson%27s_choice

[ospider]

You are comparing oranges to apples here.

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.

[ajmurmann]

I think Xi himself even calls it "rule by law" (as opposed to "rule of law")

[simonmysun]

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.

[whatshisface]

The orange grove is being cut down, sadly:

https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/26/politics/social-media-disinfo...

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.

[ospider]

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.

[andsoitis]

> > 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.

Read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_of_Twitter#China

[mrkramer]

>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.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragonfly_(search_engine)

[wildrhythms]

Rest assured agencies in the U.S. can (and do) do all of that and more to U.S. Google today with a simple warrant or takedown notice.

[op00to]

> with a simple warrant

See the difference?

[wildrhythms]

You are putting a lot of faith in the police and judges that issue those things.

[thoroughburro]

Just a little bit more than my faith in “no oversight whatsoever”, yes.

[rvnx]

and there is no transparency needed, warrants don't have to be public in most countries.

[ceejayoz]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSA_warrantless_surveillance_(...

Not really?

[Forbo]

See also: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction

Americans have way more faith in America being the good guys than is warranted.

[mrkramer]

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?

[wildrhythms]

>how much information is censored on Google.com if any?

Is this a serious question? Google removes all sorts of content from its index.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_by_Google#:~:text=G....

[mrkramer]

Majority of those removals are safety removals not ideological censorship based on some socialist or whatever ideology.

[Geezus_42]

And Google gave the NSA direct connections into their data centers in order to spy on US citizens in secret.

[teknologist]

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.

[echoangle]

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

[LinuxBender]

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.

[EncomLab]

Well in theory one of those countries is "free" - it's why you could buy Pravda at news stands in NYC but could not buy the New York Times in Moscow.

[votepaunchy]

But we didn’t allow Moscow to edit the New York Times.

[AlexandrB]

> What about the principle of reciprocity?

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?

[whatshisface]

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.

[pydry]

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".

[Applejinx]

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.

Speech?

[grajaganDev]

So many people think the freedom of speech means a right to your speech being amplified.

It does not.

[Reason077]

There is no First Amendment issue here. The Supreme Court already determined that:

https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/24-656_ca7d.pdf

[umanwizard]

The Supreme Court also determined that Long Island isn’t an island — that doesn’t mean they’re right.

[pydry]

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.

[UltraSane]

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.

[whatshisface]

The first amendment applies to US citizens using TikTok to communicate.

[lcnPylGDnU4H9OF]

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.

[naravara]

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.

[cynicalsecurity]

You shouldn't care what China or Russia say. The first amendment works only for American citizens, not for foreign subversion agents.

[dredmorbius]

It's more nuanced than that.

Foreign nationals have at least some First Amendment rights in the US. Foreign agents or countries may have restrictions on some other grounds.

<https://www.freedomforum.org/non-citizens-protected-first-am...>

<https://firstamendment.mtsu.edu/article/aliens/>

TikTok tends toward foreign country / agent as I read it.

[DaveMcMartin]

Yeah sure, let’s copy the censorship tactics of a dictatorship