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Comment by luyu_wu | Hacker News Reader

The thing that ticks me off is that there hasn't been conclusive evidence that actually justifies this ban. I'd be perfectly happy if the CIA came out with documents of how the data goes to China, but all I've seen is evidence to the contrary (e.g. servers in US, headquarters in SG etc). If I'm wrong, I'd gladly look at some linked articles of course.

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There's no evidence one way or another. TikTok's servers are in the US, but, even if we audit their entire outbound connections, or get a warrant from their ISP to confirm no traffic has ever gone out to China... There's no surefire way of saying that an employee didn't just plug their laptop into the server, download data, and then ship it off to China later on.

Both the US government and TikTok/ByteDance are unable to prove their claims, and likely, neither one ever could. Even if TikTok showed 100% evidence that they've never done that, the US government would know that there's nothing stopping TikTok from doing it at a later date.

This legislation is the US government deciding that the risks are too great, and so they're willing to take the gamble and shut down a company that's potentially done nothing wrong. "Innocent until proven guilty" is typically reserved for the judicial system, but this is a legislative decision; it'll be an interesting court case to determine if the US legislators are able to make these sorts of decisions outside of the judiciary.

Thanks! This actually makes a lot of sense to me. While I'm not sure I agree with the 'guilty until proven innocent', I understand more about the motivations.

If nothing else the ban on foreign ownership of Chinese companies alone feels like it justifies some reciprocal action. No US (or otherwise) company can operate in China, but the reverse is not true.

Exactly. It's unclear whether the primary goal of TikTok regulation is to genuinely safeguard young users or to prepare the public for further restrictions on other Chinese companies. Regardless, given China's advanced development beyond what many in the West perceive, I think it's important for western countries to start taking protective measures. TikTok is unimportant in the grand scheme of things.

> No US (or otherwise) company can operate in China

Not true taken literally, obviously; not true if taken as saying "only JVs are allowed" either. According to the Department of Commerce (https://www.export.gov/apex/article2?id=China-Establishing-a...):

> A large majority of new foreign investments in China are WFOEs [wholly foreign owned enterprises], rather than JVs. As Chinese legal entities, WFOEs experience greater independence than ROs, are allowed exclusive control over carrying out business activities while abiding by Chinese law and are granted intellectual and technological rights.

Also (https://arc-group.com/china-company-setup/):

> WFOE refers to a limited liability company that is 100% invested, owned by foreign investors, and independently operated. Almost 60% of foreign-owned companies are WFOEs, making it the most adopted business type. Famous multinational companies such as Apple, Amazon, Oracle, and General Electric are all examples of WFOEs.

I've seen this point scattered throughout the thread, and it seems quite popular. I don't particularly take issue with it since market reciprocity obviously makes sense, but I'm not sure that this bill should tag itself as national security in that case!

Small note: Many US companies do operate in China with large margins (Microsoft, Apple, Intel, AMD, NVidia, etc). There's been a Wikipedia article cited a through times throughout this thread with a complete list of blocked domains! Just a minor nitpick, thanks for the thoughts still.

There’s some research here that the NYTimes cited in an article on the topic of TikTok deplatforming certain topics

https://networkcontagion.us/wp-content/uploads/A-Tik-Tok-ing...

This report is very laughable. It looks at the number of posts with the same hashtag between Instagram and TikTok as a simple ratio.

An alternate conclusion is that Instagram is censoring topics that don't align with the "Consensus" in Washington and artificially boosting content that does. Why is there literally no content on Instagram about the Gaza war, yet I get up-to-date news and reports on TikTok?

Interestingly enough, NCRI is almost exclusively funded by pro-Israel lobbying groups.

https://www.causeiq.com/organizations/network-contagion-rese...

It's as simple as a trade war issue. They banned our social media, we ban theirs. Fair is fair.

McCarthyism is back in style.

Some ex-TikTok employees say the social media service worked closely with its China-based parent despite claims of independence https://fortune.com/2024/04/15/tiktok-china-data-sharing-byt...

Ex-ByteDance Exec Claims TikTok Gave Communist Party 'God User' Status https://gizmodo.com/tiktok-political-china-communist-god-use...

American TikTok user data stored in China, video app admits https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/06/23/american-tik...

For me, it's pretty obvious that social media is being used to destabize and weaken Western democracies like the US and Britain.

I don't believe that the lurch to the Right we've seen--Brexit, Trump, etc.--are happening naturally.

Yeah.

If this amount of effort is going into protect us from TikTok, then why not protect us from every other Social Media company that is tracking us.

There was no evidence when we banned foreign TV and radio ownership in the US in 90 years ago either. What's your point? Are you suggesting we cannot make preventive laws about mass media? If so, you should read a book because you're under informed in this area.

There isn't really any evidence of the supposed threats we've heard about from Congress. It's pretty much bog-standard sinophobia / anti-communist scaremongering.

If any ideology or regimes espousing it have earned scaremongering, it's communism.

The thing is evidence came out 4-5 years ago that CCP directed TikTok to steer engagement algorithms to further PRC foreign policy goals which tldr meant inflame US users via purposely divisive content served up via TK.

You are wrong, and linked articles from US intel community have been available for years.

Thanks for linking the articles...

Probably this garbage https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/tiktok-data-suggests-al...

Did it? Why didn’t they bring it up in the hearings? They were pretty empty handed and trying to rage people apps have access to wifi.

Maybe you mean something like this “study” https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/tiktok-data-suggests-al... which concludes with “kinda maybe looks like they could possibly favor Chinese interest”. Doing a study and putting out a headline is all it takes to poison the public opinion and exactly what I would expect from the social media companies foaming at the mouth losing market share.

The wording I have seen is congress had a internal meeting about the potential security concerns that could be involved (very likely with every app).

It did. And goes back to 2019 and earlier.

Very easy example to find: https://www.military.com/daily-news/2019/12/30/army-follows-...

One of many, hence not linking.

Every TikTok fan is demanding proof that was provided several years ago and they ignored.

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