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Comment by twelve40 | Hacker News Reader

it is not about them, its about why should there be some entity out there that censors my information and decides what I'm allowed to see and what I'm not allowed to see? why does the government here feel like it must interfere with me, censor and babysit me?

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The proposed ban on TikTok is not about you. No one cares to babysit you. They want to punish china for the perceived injustice (and security risk).

China has an asymmetric market, and it’s bad for US businesses but good for Chinese businesses. The US wants to send a message to china that it can also punish businesses that it doesn’t like.

They don't want to babysit you - they just want to block stuff that you use because it's better for business! (they think)

yeah but it amounts to straight up censorship. Someone in the government decides what is safe for the citizens to see. How do you even ban it, does the US have mechanisms in place to enforce a government ban on a web site/app?

It’s incidental censoring. The content can and will move elsewhere, so it’s not preventing speech just limiting where it can go.

Yes the US has a mechanism to ban a company and that should apply to that company’s app. It’s just trade restrictions like with Huawei. Banning a website will be harder, but by banning advertisers from paying for ads it’ll destroy the profitability of serving American consumers.

Apart from what vineyardmike mentioned, there's a few additional levers, like having the app removed from app stores. I don't know what the current state of their traffic and DNS filtering capabilities, but if they really wanted to go nuclear they have jurisdiction over the com TLD. Wouldn't be the first time they've seized a domain on "national security, etc." grounds.

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