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Comment by bdd8f1df777b | Hacker News Reader

The US bans TikTok citing the same reasons China bans foreign social media, to avoid influence from foreign adversaries (people below says that China never official bans it, but China is inconsistent on that). It is only fair from a business perspective, but it also means that China's ideology wins over American in the end.

The China's own social media is full of posts ridiculing people like me who have believed in the American ideology, espoused the virtues of freedom of speech and rallied against the GFW. They call us naive and credulous. And I can't refute them.

When I was young, I was taught in China that China lost its superpower status after it chose to isolate itself from the rest of the world. And then it isolated itself. I was taught by the US the importance of freedom of speech. Then it ditched it. My education was a lie.

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This is a really poor argument. You are equating banning one social media app with the GFW, which is obviously a huge hyperbole which has nothing to do with reality. The Great Firewall operates by checking transmission control protocol (TCP) packets for keywords or sensitive words. That is a violation of freedom of thought at the infrastructure level. As an American, you are still free to visit Chinese hosted websites and drink whatever propaganda you want. You just can't use TikTok to find it anymore.

Plus, freedom of speech is about protecting American Citizens from being censored by American Government. Banning an ungovernable, foreign owned business does not stop you from freely expressing yourself on the internet.

Your education was not a lie, but you should still get a refund on your failed education. You clearly did not learn to think critically.

Say what you will, but I won't be able to espouse the virtues of freedom of speech in China anymore. The distinction you make isn't going to convince any one.

Nothing you can't do before has been affected, given that you were never able to post anything on TikTok that would be seen in China. It is not accessible in China, as Bytedance only operates Douyin there. The two systems are completely separate content-wise.

You misunderstood me. I was not talking about doing on TikTok, but on China's own social media and when conversing with other Chinese offline.

I don't follow your argument. In what way are you affected now and why? My understanding is that 1. You moved from China to the US yourself willing since some time ago and 2. There is no US equivalent of the GFW and this legislation doesn't change that.

I just don't see how this law will affect your ability to converse with others on Chinese social media.

OK, let me reword. I still can converse with others on Chinese social media, but I will have a harder time convincing them that GFW is a bad idea or that the China's government is wrong restricting speech. Because people not already convinced will point to the US banning TikTok and ask me how China's actions are different. The distinction between the two is subtle, and frankly, while the US actions do not violate the First Amendment, it does breach the underlying principles. I have no convincing argument for them.

Ok, that's more clear on what your point is. The US is not banning TikTok technically like the GFW, they are just de-platforming it so it is no longer commercially active.

This is very different from the GFW, and many orders of magnitude less restrictive.

This issue isn't about speech and censorship, but media ownership. These rules has always been in place in many Western countries precisely because of the impact it has on society (even beyond geopolitics).

> and many orders of magnitude less restrictive.

That's true, but when I had a hard time convincing them when the US were the *perfect* model of no speech restrictions, it's much harder when US is just less restrictive. They will just dismiss such difference in quantity as cultural difference, rather than different principles when China and US had qualitative differences.

Yes, I understand your point, but it is also moot, because even with the first amendment in the US, Free Speech is not absolute. There are limits to freedom - i.e. the right for you to swing your fists ends at the tip of my nose.

> as Bytedance only operates Douyin there. The two systems are completely separate content-wise.

This is what most people don't know, that TikTok itself is banned in China.

>Say what you will, but I won't be able to espouse the virtues of freedom of speech in China anymore.

The real reason you can't "espouse the virtues of freedom of speech in China" is because they will arrest you. Let's not mince words here. The Chinese government would shoot their citizens before they would let them protest or speak their mind freely.

No, they don't arrest people for such abstract concepts. They do arrest people who tangibly threatens the government, like exposing the shenanigans of high officials, or organizing labor protests over the Internet.

Well, there you have it.

Haha, you would think that these cases count as enough evidence for the government not to have any power over speech. Nope. The Chinese people just oppose those specific cases, and in a small percentage of them, the government reversed course and then the masses are satisfied.

After those happened, they still think that the government intervention of speech is a good idea. The only problem is that a small group of officials not handling the regulating power correctly. But if they were to adopt the American model, how could they be protected from the evil influence of foreign adversaries? You know, like me, an agent of US propaganda. Or Tencent, whose major shareholders are actually not Chinese.

I really can't maintain a straight face hearing Americans repeating that same argument.

> freedom of speech

Freedom of speech applies to humans living within US borders not to entities controlled by a foreign government.

(Unless China is within US borders, freedom of speech argument doesn't stand).

If we talk about law, that is probably true. But for the principles, I don't think so.

We want freedom of speech because we can never know that our opinions are the ultimate Truth, so we need to ensure that everyone can speak their mind, and so can the real Truth be propagated and preserved. And that everyone includes foreigners and foreign governments.

Every time China's governments (including the past ones, like the Qing Dynasty) rejects the idea of freedom and democracy, it demonizes them by painting them as plots of foreign governments trying to overthrow and destablize China. So you can see why I am so wary of the argument that it is OK to silence the words if those come from a foreign government.

> But for the principles, I don't think so

Smart philosophers have studied this. You may not like the answer.

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

> we can never know that our opinions are the ultimate Truth

Oh yeah, but we can easily spot propaganda/bias from CCP from miles away.

For the principle of freedom of speech to survive, it can never be absolute.

> Oh yeah, but we can easily spot propaganda/bias from CCP from miles away.

The same way how the Chinese people can smell the propaganda of capitalist reactionaries.

I'm being sarcastic. You share the same school of thought with CCP.

Also, TikTok has never intolerant. CCP is quite intolerant of its own people's views, but it strictly segregates TikTok and Douyin to avoid trampling on the toes of non-Chinese. Therefore the argument of "tolerance of intolerance" isn't applicable.

>Plus, freedom of speech is about protecting American Citizens from being censored by American Government. Banning an ungovernable, foreign owned business does not stop you from freely expressing yourself on the internet.

As far as I know, tiktok's services are deployed on Oracle servers in the United States and are subject to supervision. It was banned just because it comes from China. Look how many times the CEO of Singapore was questioned if he is Chinese. Maybe the Congressman thinks Singapore is also a part of China.

> Look how many times the CEO of Singapore was questioned if he is Chinese. Maybe the Congressman thinks Singapore is also a part of China.

74% of Singaporeans are ethnically Chinese. The Congressman's questions are not unreasonable in questioning if the CEO has some ties with mainland China.

> Your education was not a lie, but you should still get a refund on your failed education. You clearly did not learn to think critically.

I read both Chinese and English, and I read both the opinions of within GFW and without. If anything, I've critically analyzed every idea from both sides. I can't fathom the hubris of someone who has ever lived on one side yet believes his truth is the ultimate truth and anyone disagreeing must not be thinking critically.

China is preparing a wat with Taiwan, just see it's military buildup the last year's.

It's ignoring international laws with neighbors, instead of using weapons, it's using water cannons against fishers and Philippines coast guard.

China is a "friend without limits" of Russia, who started a war on European soil lately.

I think it's safe to say that the west is decoupling from China.

It has nothing to do with "freedom of speech", most voters agree with that decoupling.

I have never heard of a pro China argument before from a politician party and it seems that most democracies nearby China think the same, even with the BRI initiative.

( Note: I'm not from the US)

I'm not debating that China is bad or not, or if it is an adversary to the US.

My deeply held belief is that we should allow speech from even the most hostile foreign countries. Do you know that every administration of China, starting from Qing Dynasty, resisted the idea of freedom and democracy by painting them as plots of foreign governments to destabilize China?

I am being called a sock puppet of China here, and I have been accused of being agents of US propaganda in China. That is how the future holds. Every thought deviating from mainstream is labelled as propaganda from a foreign government, ergo not subject to the protections of freedom of speech.

I'm not calling you a sock puppet of China here, your username indicated a Chinese background though.

The tracking/propaganda dangers of TikTok are unrelated to freedom of speech, as banning TikTok doesn't affect freedom of speech.

People can spread their opinion on any other app.

Note : I'm responding and sharing my opinion for the following you mentioned:

> The China's own social media is full of posts ridiculing people like me who have believed in the American ideology, espoused the virtues of freedom of speech and rallied against the GFW. They call us naive and credulous. And I can't refute them.

Here's my take on your recent comments, as a mainland Chinese who immigrated to the US 10+ years ago. There is no point arguing with other mainland Chinese online. I guess this is true for most online arguments but particularly so for debating politics with other Chinese since they are far too influenced by propaganda to be convinced otherwise. Furthermore, if you find yourself arguing with friends who can't even tell the blinding difference between Chinese censorship of the Internet (with zero transparency, against CCP's own constitution) and this legislation (passed by both houses of democratically elected representatives and signed into law by elected president), it is time to move on and make better friends. Good luck and hope I don't meet you in real life.

I say that you're not thinking critically because your arguments are very weak and you don't provide any inference or evidence to support your conclusions. It's irrelevant that "you read both Chinese and English" or that you think "you've critically analyzed every idea from both sides" if you're not using any of those in your logical argument, which you're not. In fact, it's an obvious logical fallacy to use "I have read more about this than you" as evidence that you're right.

> China's ideology wins over American in the end.

Influence operations aren't about "winning" or even convincing anyone anymore. It's about flooding peoples screens with untold amounts of toxic garbage.

Next level sock puppetry!

I was called a US sock puppet on Chinese social media and then a Chinese sock puppet here. I guess people everywhere are the same, doing ad hominem attacks whenever they see people having an opposite opinion.

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