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Comment by throwaway194702 | Hacker News Reader

throwaway194702

The comments here would be funny if they weren't so sad. So much thinly veiled nationalist glee about finally doing something "against China".

It's like the run up to the Iraq war all over again.

Seriously, people, you can't justify something by pointing out how other people have also done something wrong. You can't justify something by positing a principle that never existed before.

This whole story sounds like out of some dystopian bizarro fiction novel. So lip syncing teen girls are a national security risk now? What are you going to do when something real happens then?

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The risk here, if I'm not mistaken, is far from being teens lip syncing, it's the ability for a foreign actor to control the algorithm of what Tik Tok users end up seeing in their feed days after days.

This could potentially be used to stir the political discourse of a country towards one outcome or create unrest by putting groups of citizen against each others, etc. All done by controlling what users see.

I understand that, and that's exactly what I meant to call out in an admittedly slightly polemic way.

This is the argument for banning Hollywood movies in every country that isn't the US, because it gives "illegitimate influence to foreign actors" or something along these lines.

It's completely antithetical to Western values.

The downvotes without counterargument are frankly chilling given what I'm saying. But I am actually interested in dialog, so let me expand a little:

American (online or not) media, advertising and tech companies have been vastly successful all over the world, and that has - rightfully, to a large degree - been attributed to the quality of their products.

Now there's a successful tech company from China, and you're saying that means they must be banned or expropriated because they could influence public opinion? That's peak hypocrisy.

Yes, China has done similar things. But that's an unfree, communist country! Stooping to their lows makes you wrong, not right.

The other comments here pointing to how the EU could act similarly towards FAANG or Tesla are spot on. It definitely shouldn't in my opinion, but if it did I guarantee you you'd hear the same gleeful "good for you" rhetoric from this side of the Atlantic.

It would make a few people feel all fuzzy and energized for a while, but in the long term it would simply destroy the free, open exchange of goods, people and ideas that has done so much for us and that's dear to so many of us. Thankfully, EU leaders aren't (yet) that unwise apparently.

What do you expect from a predominantly American website? Most humans have a hard time putting their values ahead of their in-group loyalties. Just look at the immigration debates here, where people who profess to oppose discrimination against people based on circumstances of their birth like race and sexuality are happy to discriminate based on people's country of birth.

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