India's TikTok Ban Is a Cautionary Tale for the U.S.

https://www.wsj.com/world/india/india-tiktok-ban-cautionary-tale-us-congress-e014fc28

by Leary • 2 years ago

32 73 2 years ago

sschueller• 2 years ago

They're right to be angry at their government: freedom of communication is a human right they've had taken away from them. I'd be angry too if a US president made it illegal for me to read HN. I'd be very mad if TikTok pundits were making influential videos advocating HN be shut down—so I can't imagine writing HN comments arguing the reverse, that's the symmetry principle that underpins civics, equality. The right of a TikTok viewer to watch content I dislike is equal to my right to read HN—their anger is the same as my anger.

In the Indian context, their TikTok ban is adjacent to a wide variety of internet censorship targeting the incumbent government's political detractors. It's gone to the extent of even regional internet shutdowns. I can't help but thinking this all functions as a slippery slope: the more people tolerate temporary emergency measures, the more they become permanent, and pervasive—like India today. Censorship is an attractively abusable power.

It's a cautionary tale from more angles than the WSJ article considers.

SanjayMehta3• 2 years ago

In the Indian context, Tiktok was merely one of dozens of Chinese apps which were banned following an attack by the Chinese military on our borders.

ramshanker• 2 years ago

This. Plane and simple. And from my limited interactions with teenagers, no one is missing it. YouTube and Instagram now offer everything needed.

Nothing like freedom of a speech, government oversight etc. etc. the article is trying to portray.

exceptione3• 2 years ago

They're right to be angry at their government: freedom of communication is a human right they've had taken away from them.

Freedom of communication is freedom to express oneself for individual humans. It is not the right for a totalitarian state to promote itself and weaken democracies.

TikTok works completely different in China vs other countries. Outside of China we have to deal with a highly addictive algo that promotes content of extreme right nuts, anti-vaccination hustlers, and content that over paints any negative information about China.

---

Totalitarian states fear their constituents, as they could rise to take their destiny in their own hands. A rule based order and the existence of successful democracies are always a threat to any dictator circle, because their iron fist is fragile.

ignoramous2• 2 years ago

because their iron fist is fragile

Authoritarians have been relentlessly strengthening their fists as technology (dogs) gets increasingly good at herding the masses (sheeps).

SanjayMehta3• 2 years ago

It’s my understanding that Tiktok does not work in China. There’s an equivalent called Douyin. Having used neither, I don’t know what’s the difference, if any.

archagon2• 2 years ago

I have the right to ingest that communication if I want to. Reading and distributing Pravda is not, and should not, be a crime.

Moreover, this is always a speculative argument. There is no direct evidence I'm aware of that TikTok’s content is directly controlled by the CCP. If you can’t prove it with a paper trail, you basically have carte blanche to censor software from any country you happen to dislike.

fragmede2• 2 years ago

It's an interesting thought experiment to look at if the government were trying to ban HN, but the underlying issue is the ownership of TikTok by China and not a ban of the app itself. If YC and HN was officially owned and operated by CCP party members, I imagine there would be similar concerns.

it's the substance of the content on TikTok that's the issue. If TikTok was seen as wholesome and promoting education in children, which it could, then we'd be having a different discussion, but the underlying belief, that there's a guiding hand on their content algorithm to make the United States dumber and more divided is the problem.

Of course, capitalism's job is to sell you more crap, so Facebook's algorithm is "benign" in comparison.

a_random_canuck• 2 years ago

This has nothing to do with your right to view content. Your right to view whatever content you like does not give foreign dictatorships the right to manipulate and attack our societies.

If HN was under the control of the Chinese Communist Party and its algorithms and moderation were manipulated in order to influence the narrative on China, then absolutely yes HN should be banned completely. Hostile foreign powers do not have any right to publish content within our borders.

Fuck them.

bhoops• 2 years ago

I dont understand. If China does not allow foreign internet companies to operate on its soil, why should India or US or any western country allow chinese internet companies to operate within their jurisdiction ?

perihelions3• 2 years ago

China blocks the world-wide internet because it follows a totalitarian ideology. The US has a free and open internet because we're a liberal democracy.

nindalf• 2 years ago

Don’t know why it’s so difficult for some people to understand the paradox of tolerance. Allowing your media to be controlled by a foreign totalitarian adversary is a quick way to having your institutions and society undermined by them.

hayst4ck3• 2 years ago

we're a liberal democracy.

Liberal democracy is not something you are, it is something you do.

It is the sum set of beliefs, actions, and understandings of the country that results in the state of its governance.

Freedom is not an inevitable result of "being" a democracy.

Freedom is an aggregate result of the way individuals act.

China blocks the world-wide internet because it follows a totalitarian ideology.

What you might not have considered is that if a foreign power is able to influence your fellow citizens, those fellow citizens might be weaponized against you. Before America was a republic it was part of a monarchy and individual citizens became convinced it was worth fighting to change. That was a good change, but citizens might just as easily be convinced that maybe fast results and less bureaucracy and rules are what we need and it's worth putting a strongman into power for faster results: https://snyder.substack.com/p/the-strongman-fantasy

Freedom is also the freedom to be ignorant. What happens if too many people are ignorant?

Freedom is also the freedom to do the wrong thing. What happens if too many people do the wrong thing?

Freedom is not a pure concept synonymous with "good." Freedom can bend, but it can also break.

Jaxkr2• 2 years ago

Because the U.S. is not a country that censors its internet. Free access to the entire internet is a right Americans have always enjoyed.

In my opinion, banning foreign websites/apps is just as bad as banning foreign literature.

YetAnotherNick2• 2 years ago

Tiktok is not censored in India as well. They just show that it is not available in your country due to government order.

Even without blocking, countries could ask to seize operation and block them from accepting payment effectively killing it.

mlindner• 2 years ago

We're not in the era of "the internet" anymore. It's a bunch of firewalled devolved internets that are entirely within a single corporation. For example if the US banned access to all Chinese websites I think that would be bad. However explicitly banning major Chinese companies from selling directly to US consumers with an intention to mislead them I think is beneficial.

Just pass a law of automatic recipricol action for any country. If any country bans "X category" then ban anything coming FROM that country with the same category. If China wants tiktok to operate in the US then they must allow twitter, facebook, and all of the other applications to operate within China. That's the entire point of globalism. It's not a one way street.

true_religion• 2 years ago

That’s an unusual stance.

Trade restrictions are usually levied reciprocally, and trade agreements made to enforce equal market access or even outcomes. (E.g. you can sell Japanese cars in the US if Japan makes those cars with US steel ).

RandomLensman3• 2 years ago

Even the US views certain content as illegal, so I'd say that right you stipulate is already limited.

Dalewyn2• 2 years ago

Free access to the entire internet is a right Americans have always enjoyed.

Unless you're freeloading off of public and open wifi networks, every single person in America is paying someone (who reserves the right to refuse service to anyone) for the privilege of accessing the internet.

2Gkashmiri• 2 years ago

cue presstv.com

berkes2• 2 years ago

You aren't allowed to access many websites in the US. Many of whom went to the dark web (.onion). Many of whom are perfectly legal in other countries and even operate on the clear web in those countries.

Why is it different now?

SanjayMehta3• 2 years ago

This is not true. There are several websites not reachable from either the US or Europe.

South Front and Strategic Culture are two such examples.

Russia Today etc are not reachable from most EU countries.

tivert2• 2 years ago

Because the U.S. is not a country that censors its internet. Free access to the entire internet is a right Americans have always enjoyed.

That's total bullshit, and if you don't know it you have your head stuck in the sand. There are all kinds of things that are censored, usually for legitimate reasons.

Nothing will happen to your TikTok access if it's sold to an acceptable buyer. It's fine for the US to ban it if that doesn't happen, just like it's fine for the US to ban some Chinese company per-positioning antiaircraft missiles and tanks on US property that it happens to own.

I suggest you focus your efforts on ByteDance to encourage a sale.

devnonymous7• 2 years ago

Perhaps because most countries do not want to be like China ? You can apply your reasoning to almost any Chinese policy internal or external but that doesn't justify the policy.

cageface• 2 years ago

I’m confused too why this issue needs to be any more complicated than this. Are there any other product categories where allow imports from a country that completely bans our exports?

slowmovintarget• 2 years ago

Especially when TikTok is a known propaganda vector for China. China has weaponized TikTok in the West and it's past time to respond to what is actually a threat. There's a reason the TikTok equivalent in China is tightly controlled by the government and looks more like PBS than the cesspool foisted on the rest of the world.

smitty1e2• 2 years ago

The great lesson of Prohibition was that minorities trying to boss around a majority are always a dodgy play.

Minorities wielding power, like teens exploring sexuality, excel at not learning such lessons.

The correct answer to a perceived threat such as TikTok is to provide a superior TikTok.

MezzoDelCammin• 2 years ago

Could You please be more clear on how the last sentence relates to the first?

If You think Prohibition (of alcohol) is somehow related to prohibition of TikTok, then corollary would be "correct answer to alcohol threat is better alcohol".

cylemons3• 2 years ago

I guess you could argue that the "better alcohol" would be something that is as pleasant but without the intoxication, whatever that would be

smitty1e2• 2 years ago

Restated: don't outlaw; offer better.

idiot-savant• 2 years ago

Here it comes... the great dancer recession!

DataDaemon• 2 years ago

People are wasting time on stupid content... Why don't you see it's killing American society? Algos are made to make Wests stupid. Like drugs.

Broken_Hippo• 2 years ago

Obviously, you don't know much about folks that use drugs.

Sure, some people will act dumb when they are addicted. For so many others, you can't tell and you've never been able to - and these folks are peppered throughout society. Most aren't addicted.

Which basically means that I can dismiss the comparison, unless you meant that for most folks, it's not an issue.

Jedd2• 2 years ago

The 'but then we're as bad as ..' argument will be presented, and maybe a reference to the Paradox of Tolerance (aka the Popper Paradox).

I read a nice(r) interpretation of the paradox a while ago - loosely the claim was made that it's not an ethical standard that you (your nation state, etc) have to apply to yourself in order to maintain a moral high-ground, but works better once you think of it as a social contract.

That is, if someone / another nation state is not willing to follow the same basic rule, then they don't get the benefit of it.

doktrin3• 2 years ago

I read a nice(r) interpretation of the paradox a while ago - loosely the claim was made that it's not an ethical standard that you (your nation state, etc) have to apply to yourself in order to maintain a moral high-ground, but works better once you think of it as a social contract.
That is, if someone / another nation state is not willing to follow the same basic rule, then they don't get the benefit of it.

I agree, but is a 3rd party interpretation even necessary in this context? The original text is minimal, as in literally a one-paragraph plain language footnote copied here in its entirety :

"Less well known is the paradox of tolerance: unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.—In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law, and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal. " -- The Open Society & Its Enemies

Jedd2• 2 years ago

Perhaps.

Though once you conceptualise it as a social contract, there's no longer any paradox.

It's only if your mantra is 'maximum tolerance, regardless' that you have yourself a paradox.

(Note - I'm not suggesting Professor Popper was oblivious to this.)

hayst4ck3• 2 years ago

Few Americans have considered the rationality of the GFWC without the context of authoritarianism.

China blocks the internet because 50 years ago the vast majority of the country was illiterate and subsistence farming. You don't wake up one day equipped to critically think about statements that sound good but aren't true. You don't wake up understanding the tragedy of the commons. You don't suddenly have a historical understanding of how your country came to be and the values it was founded upon. You don't wake up having thought about the golden rule or "equality" and matched that to various situations in the zeitgeist. You don't wake up having fully contemplated that others might treat you the same way you treat them. These things come from major investments in public education.

Americans have huge amounts of privilege they aren't even aware they have. We grew up with public education, and don't understand what it means to not have public education, or have a poor literacy rate.

It might surprise many to know that while china does have great power over the GFW they choose not to enforce it for many of their educated and more well off citizens, which is why you can use VPN services to get pretty unfiltered internet within China.

The US is facing a crisis where half the population doesn't understand that in November they are going to vote to lose the right to have a meaningful vote, and so many people here haven't fully contemplated not taking that very very real possibility seriously. "Hoping" that Americans will arrive at the right conclusion is a poor strategy to continue living in a "liberal democracy." Living in a liberal democracy requires more than hope.

We are in the "if you can keep it stage" of "a republic if, you can keep it."

Letting a hostile genocidal foreign power have direct access to our countries most vulnerable and impressionable people, our children, is not good policy, especially when that foreign power has gone to great effort to make sure that what they are doing to us, is not done to them.

ryandrake2• 2 years ago

What does any of this have to do with TikTok? I've looked over my daughter's shoulder at what she's watching on TikTok. It's mostly silly kids doing silly dances to silly music. Not my cup of tea, but not exactly election-manipulation. What are they "doing to us" specifically?

doktrin3• 2 years ago

I've looked over my daughter's shoulder at what she's watching on TikTok. It's mostly silly kids doing silly dances to silly music. Not my cup of tea, but not exactly election-manipulation. What are they "doing to us" specifically?

Your last question is perfectly reasonable, and I'm interested in hearing more specifics to this point as well.

However, your primary stated basis for skepticism seems flawed. One child's usage pattern under parental surveillance is almost certainly not reflective of the platform as a whole.

hayst4ck3• 2 years ago

Rereading what I wrote, I think I emphasized poorly. America's youth in general have been on the right side of history in the US, IMHO. So I think I am wrong in the way I emphasized. I do think children are disproportionately harmed by the addictive properties of social media, but what I find primarily scary about TikTok is its potential for political malfeasance.

What are they "doing to us" specifically?

You could have asked the same question about Wikileaks. Wikileaks was (credibly) publishing information in the interest of the public, yet Wikileaks played a direct and major part in compromising the presidency in 2016.

I think the main arguments against TikTok are:

  1. They have ability to push specific agendas with plausible deniability
  2. TikTok can suck in huge amounts of data and feed it to the Chinese intelligence apparatus
  3. TikTok is "digital opium" under foreign supply and administration
  4. China has banned our apps that both inspired and compete with TikTok in their own country
  5. China has regulated TikTok in their own country because they believe it to be damaging to kids/society

> What does any of this have to do with TikTok?

The question being danced around is "should America head down the path of a great firewall or the greater path of internet balkanization?" Many here claim a firewall (banning a foreign app) is inherently authoritarian. I think a firewall is an amoral tool that can be used for good or evil. A gun can be used to defend freedom or take it. Guns are not authoritarian. A firewall is a similarly a tool of force.

Something more specific than just "because China".

But that is the core problem. The problem is not so much TikTok, which in terms of actuality is likely not different than our own medias. The problem is China. I would be orders of magnitude more skeptical of anti TikTok efforts if TikTok were owned and operated by/in the EU.

If you start to bring up Cambridge Analytica, I think that would be pretty devastating to my stance. Maga-twitter is pretty devastating to my position too. Too few men having too much unchecked power is it's own problem which is arguably much more damaging than than anything China is doing, certainly in the long run.

archagon2• 2 years ago

The US is facing a crisis where half the population doesn't understand that in November they are going to vote to lose the right to have a meaningful vote, and so many people here haven't fully contemplated not taking that very very real possibility seriously.

I agree.

We are in the "if you can keep it stage" of "a republic if, you can keep it." Letting a hostile genocidal foreign power have direct access to our countries most vulnerable and impressionable people, our children, is not good policy, especially when that foreign power has gone to great effort to make sure that what they are doing to us, is not done to them.

X, Meta, Instagram, and YouTube have far more power over our children in this regard, and also tend to disseminate more radical content than TikTok. If we're now banning social media for the sake of public health, then we should ban those first.

srvmshr4• 2 years ago

TikTok bans in India and US are very different.

India did it as a kneejerk response to the Doklam border incident of 2020. When you don't intend a full scale war,the other recourse is to hurt China economically. I distinctly remember the wave that followed of boycotting Chinese goods as much as possible. TikTok is the outcome of that.

While it doesn't do much politically, the ban was to hurt Bytedance. When 80-100 million people go dark on a certain social media platform, those numbers don't look good. When Bytedance wants MAU stats to leverage against the next expansion loans or merger (possibly), this could hurt them. Or simply revenue from ads. With the US it is pure political influence on the sly which the government is afraid of. Indians are tough audience to sway that way from my experience.

devnonymous7• 2 years ago

Indians are tough audience to sway that way from my experience.

You underestimate the power of propoganda. The fact that you think the tiktok ban was in anyway related to the attack or even if was, it served as an commensurate retaliation for the attack just proves this.

srvmshr4• 2 years ago

Your experience could vary from mine, but the average boomer in India loves having political discussion on dinner tables, stemming from what they probably read in the papers or from channel switching over the day. TikTok hardly scratches their surface. While I understand Mr. Modi has been pretty influential on media houses, there are plenty of publishers like Indian Express or Dainik Jagran (in Hindi), or TV broadcasters like NDTV, The Wire etc., who don't mind calling Modi's spade a spade. TikTok isn't the main medium of influence in India. Facebook is, and the news & views is primarily still shared there

Let me show the political influencing landscape in brief: I have lived in both the aforementioned countries and I could unequivocally feel that the average Indian is more aware of political current affairs. Even if final choices could be biased on the Hinduist/nationalist leanings (which is unfortunately a relatively new dynamics), they are not blind to what is happening. Many would call Modi a crook but do not want the alternative posed by Congress and still vote for him. Religious minority appeasing and Reservation biases have been abused so badly in last 3 decades by the opposition (which was in power) that people are now blind to the agenda people like Mr. Modi exort. Their responses are mostly reactionary to lost opportunities of work/social mobility. BJP in India has been projecting itself as savior of masses by bringing in measures, which would have been undemocratic 2 decades ago (e.g Article 370 abrogation or CAA recently). This is in stark contrast to people in US growing up leaning Blue or Red all through their lives, because their family or county has always voted that. If you ask why they chose to, the answer is almost always political party loyalty (and not the agenda). Coming November we will see this again when despite of so many legal predicaments, Donald Trump might still competing hard for presidency based on traditional loyalties. TikTok is aimed at the fence-sitters in US with dramatic immigration, crime or socioeconomic shock videos. When you have a crowd that is not in know-how of current political affairs, TikTok is enough to create disruption. If you had to do that in India, probably Facebook is the weapon of choice.

India's TikTok Ban Is a Cautionary Tale for the U.S.

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