This sums up how I feel about the whole tiktok/huawei thing as a European. An interesting part of it not mentioned in the article is how the USA also pressures European countries into applying the same rules. And never for the reason "China has some horrible concentration camp problems that we, as a western country upholding ideals of freedom, want them to change and we need more pressure" but just for their own vague "national security" which to my eyes means economic reasons.
I wish Europe would have the guts to play hardball with China as well as the US. Why should we allow a Chinese social network when the Chinese market is closed for foreign companies?
Particularly American social media companies. Until the EU bans these, I don't think there is much hope for European social media companies which actually respect EU laws and regulations (American social media companies obviously have nothing but contempt for these regulations and will dig in their heels for every inch they're dragged.)
Just ban them already. Hobbling these corporations would help Americans too, for whom legislative reform seems like a pipe dream. Anything that harms these corporations abroad will negatively impact their ability to lobby American politicians. That might not be much, but it'll be better than the status quo.
"will dig in their heels for every inch they're dragged" - if you owned your own business, would you be welcoming regulation that reduced your chances of survival? So this is clearly written by someone who doesn't run their own business. Fair enough - there are always going to be many more people who receive salaries than those who pay them.
"Hobbling these corporations would help" - same as above, zero empathy for people who are trying to pay your salary. Fair enough - it sucks to work hard and watch your employer get rich off of your work.
The filthy rich often don't care about the social externalities of their corrosive businesses because their wealth insulates them from the harm they cause. Don't waste your empathy on Facebook executives.
Sure, there is a certain number of people out there with more money than is perhaps justifiable. So go ahead and address that.
That has nothing to do with imposing regulation on everyone. What does being filthy rich have to do with running a small business, working really hard to make ends meet, and then having to pay $10k to comply with GDPR? What a wonderful idea - let's stick it to Facebook by requiring millions of small businesses around the world to comply with something that most small businesses cannot accomplish on their own. And no, 99.99999% of those businesses are not selling anyone's data, but instead they are simply selling and shipping physical goods using... you guessed it - their customers' personally identifiable information [0], which is so horrible and should be strictly regulated so we can sue those businesses and force them into bankruptcy lest they spend time and money working on this "filthy rich people" trap.
[0] https://www.pitneybowes.com/us/shipping-and-mailing/case-stu...
"You may collect much of that data digitally, but the minute you print it on a piece of paper and mail it to a customer, you have to make sure you have the customer’s permission to communicate about that information with them, and that you’re adequately protecting their data in the process."
The chinese internet is closed, not their entire market. Even if the internet was open, imho it would be a hard market to dominate as there is a cultural gap that is not easy to fill
Meanwhile, europe and china have great trade relationships in just about everything, china invests in europe (especially in european countries that cant find investment elsewhere) and europeans invest in china.
I have increasingly the impression that China is a security threat to the US, but its not seen as such in europe.
> The chinese internet is closed, not their entire market. Even if the internet was open, imho it would be a hard market to dominate as there is a cultural gap that is not easy to fill
For some things, maybe. But I had the good fortune of experiencing Chinese Google before it was banned, which was orders of magnitude better than its Chinese competitor (Baidu).
> Why should we allow a Chinese social network when the Chinese market is closed for foreign companies?
One reason could be because that better fits our ethics. We might not have to lower ourselves to their level to have a competitive economy.
I'm not saying we have to be passive but "playing hardball" is usually a way to suggest the most extreme measure possible and I'm not sure this inequality is that bad. I'm much more worried about things like child labor and other issues China still has.
>One reason could be because that better fits our ethics
What "ethics"? This is Europe, of the conquest of the Americas, the colonization of the world, WWI and WWII, and so on up to 2020, we're talking about, not Mother Teresa. The same countries who still keep colonies, run things in post-colonial neo-colonies, and fought wars until the 1960s to keep their grabs...
This doesn't automatically invalidate things like healthcare, consumer rights and protections, environmental protections, free/affordable education, etc that are strong in Europe and people generally care about (to varying degrees though). There are no perfect countries, and you could argue e.g. New Zealand is setting the standard pretty high nowadays. But it isn't like those ideas aren't in some way useful - not just to Europeans, but also for other countries to cherry-pick or iterate on.
Anyway, pretty off topic, but the argument bad things = everything is tainted doesn't hold for me, especially since people born after the 1960s now includes 50 year-olds and below
> you could argue e.g. New Zealand is setting the standard pretty high nowadays.
Only until you look closely. NZ has very high levels of inequality (children living below the poverty line, and Maori and Polynesian people are incarcerated more, receive less medical care, and have poorer health and shorter lives than the colonisers and recent immigrants.
More qualitatively they are also systematically discriminated against both by government institutions and by employers.
Me, I'm a child of Dutch immigrants in the 1950s, so I just see this among friends, it doesn't affect me personally.
>This doesn't automatically invalidate things like healthcare, consumer rights and protections, environmental protections, free/affordable education, etc that are strong in Europe and people generally care about (to varying degrees though).
No, but China has those too in some degree -- and improving in some of those aspects.
But the original argument was that we European somehow have more ethics than others...
Does the EU even have the legal tools to ban TikTok? It's a media company that largely complies with applicable laws, banning it because "it's from China" would be a major abuse.
People have raised the same issue regarding Trump banning TikTok and the legal basis seems to some national security law from the 80s?
I believe governments should not be able to ban TikTok.
Well, the Chinese have some historical reasons to be cautious as they had been invaded a few times by the Europeans, whereas they hadn't done the revervse themselves...
Plus the whole "colonization" thing, which included Europeans invading and running 2/3rds of the world (including putting the pressure on Japan and China).
> China has some horrible concentration camp problems that we, as a western country upholding ideals of freedom, want them to change and we need more pressure
I mean, it would be ironic if they would give this reasoning, considering the fact that the US currently has its own version of concentration camps which we, as western countries upholding ideals of freedom, should want to change.
I'm not actually aware of the USA having concentration camps specifically. I know of some human rights issues, though, so for the sake of argument I'll assume this is a thing. Nevertheless, hypocritical or not, it would be better (from a worldsuck perspective) to decrease these issues in China than to not do that. And isn't the issue much more widespread in China than in the USA?
Looking for "concentration camp USA" on DDG, just to make sure we're talking about the same thing, it comes up with some site about customs and border patrol stations where refugees are imprisoned in for-profit facilities. Is that what you are referring to?
I guess GP is talking about Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib like prisons. While you can argue if you call that a concentration camp, it’s strange how fast people forget.
I know of Guantanamo but did people have to work there? From my impression it was a prison, not a labor camp, but it has been a few years so I might be fuzzy on the details.
> Concentration camp in China = your race and religion mean you get a free invite you just can't say no to!
Seems pretty similar in the US for black people, being 12% of the population yet 33% of the prison population while white people are 63% of the population and only 30% of the prison population. [1] Are all 12 million Uyghurs in camps? Or is it also a disproportionate amount like in the US? Estimates say about 3 million are in camps, so about 25%. So, statistically anyway, the US seems a bit worse so far.
> Concentration camp in America = break the law by entering the country illegally and need to be processed before you're deported.
A concentration camp is a concentration camp regardless of the justification.
The national security concerns are of course real and massive; imagine what you can do if you can reach every single individual of another country with personalized content, and collect the most insanely detailed information on each of these individuals.
This is the next level, superseding many/most other means of power.
What "insanely detailed" information are you concerned about?
Are you as concerned about this "insanely detailed" information being collected by US companies? If not, what differentiates your concern when the information goes to foreign companies?
I am equally concerned about data collection by any and all companies and governments - these are being discussed regularly.
The potential international/cyber warfare aspect seems to have been ignored so far.
"Using our arsenal of forward deployed apps, how would population of country X feel if we took back that piece of land that is ours, and how could we make them see things our way?"
>Because the US govt can be trusted but the Chinese govt can't. America is a liberal democracy seeking world peace.
A democracy still has the full capacity to do the worst damage to foreign countries for their national interests. We know that all the way back to the Athenian Democracy. It's "democracy at home, fuck the others to advance our well-being abroad".
The US had bombed, invaded, toppled governments, supported dictatorships, etc. countries all over the world, not sure where it got the moral upper hand.
Heck, using the name "HenryKissinger" as if it's a good thing, says it all. If it's irony, then, well, you already know my point.
>For the record, I have a college degree, I'm in my late twenties, I was raised in a liberal household, I'm a liberal, I have no religious beliefs, and I'm voting for Joe Biden.
Which means squat. Democrats have been as bad, if not worse, offenders as Republicans when it comes to foreign wars and furthering US interests.
Has it ever occurred to you that your picture of the world is absolutely black and white, yet there’s no such thing as absolutes in nature?
This isn’t snark by the way, I’d just like to encourage you to take off your star-spangled glasses sometimes...
How might this work? Could you detail what information the People's Liberation Army might collect, and how they might use it to enact your fears? Please be as specific as you can.
> For the record, I have a college degree, I'm in my late twenties, I was raised in a liberal household, I'm a liberal, I have no religious beliefs, and I'm voting for Joe Biden.
I'm curious to know what you think that clarification achieves for you.
> imagine what you can do if you can reach every single individual of another country with personalized content
Are you sure you're not talking about google.com here? Way more people across way more ages use that than tiktok and it also does tracking for the purpose of personalization.
Your reasoning would result in banning Google products (from the Play Store controlling most mobile computers across the planet to Gmail and YouTube) from all countries except the USA, and to a lesser extent banning Facebook products, Apple products, etc. Tiktok barely makes it onto the radar compared to those.
No need to imagine, US companies and the NSA have been doing this for years. You've pretty much described the business model of major "Social Media" companies.
> This sums up how I feel about the whole tiktok/huawei thing as a European. An interesting part of it not mentioned in the article is how the USA also pressures European countries into applying the same rules.
The US has a treaty obligation to protect (most) European countries militarily, particularly from Russia but to a lesser extent from China and other countries in Asia. This is a partnership of course, and America's European friends contribute, but the bulk is still borne by the US for obvious reasons (gigantic military budget, global deployment, desire to preserve peace between France, Germany and the rest of the continent).
All of that is to say, for better or worse, the US feels that it can apply pressure. Brussels may not like it, but Washington knows Europe will choose America to Putin's Russia or Communist China most of the time.
