US to ban transactions with ByteDance and WeChat in 45 days

I don't get it. It's US companies standing to loose their stronghold (near monopoly) on social, advertisement, and other forms of monetizing the web if the US creates a precedent for "national security" in this way, as in "we're welcoming social networks and free speech as long as it benefits the US and can be searched without warrant." Quite predictably, governments all over the world will be pressurized to question why they should give US companies (bred by teethless US antitrust) a free pass to destroy their publishing industry. Publishers themselves will put this onto the agenda in their own best interest. The French are already on the fence to create new digital tax legislation after EU/US negotiation have been aborted by the US side. Maybe hurting Google, Facebook, Twitter & co is seen as desired collateral damage?

Regardless of how I feel about this particular company or transaction, to me this is a bad overreach of presidential power. I guess it&#x27;s merely a reflection of the incompetence&#x2F;inaction of Congress to study the matter and do something about it, as is their responsibility.<p>Why do I say so?<p>1. The justification for this is that it&#x27;s a &quot;national emergency with respect to the information and communications technology and services <i>supply chain</i>&quot;. Supply chain? Are you kidding me? The permissions given to the executive to declare emergencies for critical goods and services such as related to war time -- these extend to a voluntary communications app? Strains belief, and however you feel, this is not a good precedent to allow.<p>2. CCP is censoring &#x2F; monitoring &#x2F; scraping users&#x27; data, so this is a national emergency.... but not for 45 days and then also ok if we can buy the company on our terms.<p>This is yet another thing I guess time to throw up your hands and say, this is how we live now. One throw-it-against-the-wall proclamation after another.<p>Even if you&#x27;re somewhat ok with it, are you really ok with this principle being applied, when someday it may not go how you want, for something you care about?

None of these Chinese companies would have grown to what they are today without intense government-enforced protectionism at home, and until China agrees to compete on a fair playing field I&#x27;m perfectly fine with them all being banned outside of their firewall.<p>Would China ever agree to let Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Snapchat, WhatsApp, Messenger etc. or any new startup operate freely and make money there? It should never have had this one-way economic benefit to begin with.

Some people here are wondering about the implications of this. What this means IMO is that all Chinese investments in SV need to be liquidated at fire sale prices in the next 45 days. Regardless of how people here feel about China this is a huge escalation. The US is inflicting huge losses on Chinese companies for no clear violation of US laws on their part. The pandoras box is now open.<p>Do countries get to do this to each other whenever they feel like it now ? Can China force Tesla to sell its Chinese operations because Teslas data gathering poses a national security risk ? China has some pretty serious means available to it for escalation. China can ban Boeing from China forcing the US taxpayer to incur serious losses in keeping the company afloat.<p>The whole thing is pretty stupid overall. Most people don&#x27;t realize that during the 2008 crisis it was Chinas 500 billion dollar stimulus that kick started demand and pulled the world out of a depression. China and the US are interdependent and hold up the global system upon which global growth depends. If China slows down as a result of all this that reduces global growth. Pushing China to the wall can make them take extreme steps like undercut the entire dollar based financial order leading to mass instability. The US might come out victorious anyway but its not worth the risks. Not to mention a war which if it breaks out could lead to WW3.<p>Previous attempts to contain China were much more tactful with things like the TPP and the Iran deal. Right now the world is hurtling towards the abyss and most people here don&#x27;t even realise it.<p>A meta point I&#x27;d like to add is that currently 10 % of the earths population in the &quot;Westosphere&quot; controls 60 % of the worlds wealth. This is untenable in the long term and all this flailing about will not stop a reversion to a more balanced world. Its better that this happen gracefully than in a violent fashion.

This is sad, we in the US are losing the little high ground we had and no longer lead by example to bring the world closer together by encouraging free markets and free people. I&#x27;m against this protectionist nationalism, it only leads to future conflict.

According to Sam Dean (LA Times): &quot;Video game companies owned by Tencent will NOT be affected by this executive order! White House official confirmed to the LA Times that the EO only blocks transactions related to WeChat.&quot; [0]<p>So that clears up at least a little of the ambiguity.<p>[0]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;SamAugustDean&#x2F;status&#x2F;1291576813685108736" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;SamAugustDean&#x2F;status&#x2F;1291576813685108736</a>

So does this ban transactions with <i>all</i> of Tencent or just those in relation to WeChat? <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.whitehouse.gov&#x2F;presidential-actions&#x2F;executive-order-addressing-threat-posed-wechat&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.whitehouse.gov&#x2F;presidential-actions&#x2F;executive-or...</a><p><pre><code> Section 1. (a) The following actions shall be prohibited beginning 45 days after the date of this order, to the extent permitted under applicable law: any transaction that is related to WeChat by any person, or with respect to any property, subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, with Tencent Holdings Ltd. (a.k.a. Téngxùn Kònggǔ Yǒuxiàn Gōngsī), Shenzhen, China, or any subsidiary of that entity, as identified by the Secretary of Commerce (Secretary) under section 1(c) of this order.</code></pre>

Is there any precedent for a president to do such a thing? I am completely astonished and dumbstruck that everyone is ok with this.

The (US-HQ&#x27;d) company I work for has a small but significant office in China. We are not a household name, even within tech, so I doubt we&#x27;d be a target of any retaliation by China.<p>However, my worry is this: Whilst we have a lot of really good people in China, we don&#x27;t do any business in China (and there&#x27;s no realistic prospect of us doing so). So at this point operating in China seems like a huge exposure to risk for relatively little reward in the long term.<p>But I don&#x27;t see an alternative for us. Pull out of China and business continuity would take a huge hit; stay in China and accept the risks &amp; uncertainty.<p>Basically, I&#x27;m torn about the whole situation.

I am going to ignore value judgment over whether it is fair, or whether it even makes sense and am going to jump straight to enforcement framework and EO interpretation.<p>EO appears to single out two entities WeChat ( Tencent subsidiary ) and TikTok ( ByteDance subsidiary ). EO appears to indicate that the restrictions will be governed by sanctions framework.<p>Tencent owns a fair amount of gaming outfits so based on ownership, for example, Grinding Gears could be affected since Tencent owns 80% stake there. Gears seems to interpret the order in an optimistic way leaning heavily on phrase &#x27;any transaction that is related to WeChat&#x27;, but ignores &#x27;with Tencent Holdings Ltd.&#x27; and how it is likely going to be interpreted by the banking. In short, Tencent interpretation right now is &#x27;it applies only if it only blocks transactions related to WeChat.&#x27;<p>I personally have less generous read, but if a lawyer could actually weigh in, that would work:P<p>Original text:<p>Section 1. (a) The following actions shall be prohibited beginning 45 days after the date of this order, to the extent permitted under applicable law: any transaction that is related to WeChat by any person, or with respect to any property, subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, with Tencent Holdings Ltd. (a.k.a. Téngxùn Kònggǔ Yǒuxiàn Gōngsī), Shenzhen, China, or any subsidiary of that entity, as identified by the Secretary of Commerce (Secretary) under section 1(c) of this order.[1]<p>[1]<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.whitehouse.gov&#x2F;presidential-actions&#x2F;executive-order-addressing-threat-posed-wechat&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.whitehouse.gov&#x2F;presidential-actions&#x2F;executive-or...</a><p>Diclaimer:<p>I am not a lawyer yo. Don&#x27;t be an idiot.

The entire western world should treat China exactly the same way China treats them.<p>Western companies have a difficult time operating in China, but Chinese companies have zero problems operating in western countries. It’s completely unfair and if we follow this to conclusion, the future will be one of only Chinese international corporations.<p>Would WeChat or TikTok even exist if the Chinese market were open to existing western chat and social media software?? Unlikely.<p>If China wants their companies to be able to access western markets then they must allow western companies to access their markets.<p>Quite frankly, the entire western world should be banding together to oppose this nonsense from China. We should outright ban any goods or technology that originates in China until China changes its behavior and opens its economy.

Tencent is a particularly interesting selection given their stake in Riot Games, Activision Blizzard, Epic Games, Supercell, and others. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;Slasher&#x2F;status&#x2F;1291565115670695936?s=19" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;Slasher&#x2F;status&#x2F;1291565115670695936?s=19</a>

What is his motivation for this right now? Is it just the distraction of the week or was there a specific incident recently that triggered this?

Didn&#x27;t Pompeo say something this week along the lines of banning China Mobile servicing telephone calls to the U.S.? That means if you carry a cell phone from China to the U.S. you can&#x27;t get roaming service anymore?<p>I am surprised Lenovo hasn&#x27;t been singled out yet. They supply enterprises throughout the U.S. a lot of corporations that hand out laptops to their employees all use Lenovo.

The ongoing anti China circus through executive orders is arbitrary and draconian to say the least... and while I&#x27;ve been mostly ignoring it so far, a lot of Americans live in China and have money on Wechat. Are they now violating this week&#x27;s &quot;law&quot;?<p>The actual executive order: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.whitehouse.gov&#x2F;presidential-actions&#x2F;executive-order-addressing-threat-posed-wechat&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.whitehouse.gov&#x2F;presidential-actions&#x2F;executive-or...</a><p>It&#x27;s quite short and just adds a lot of FUD

An important note that nobody seems to be reporting on: this is only possible because Apple and Google have control over which apps are permitted on your device.<p>The US government has no legal authority to ban publishing (including apps) in the US. They do, however, have the ability to regulate trade between the operators of the App Store (Apple) and the Play Store (Google), and app publishers, which is what they&#x27;re doing here.<p>Ban the business relationship, and they&#x27;ve effectively banned the publishing. It&#x27;s an end run around the US constitution, and everyone should be up in arms about it: not just at the US government, but also at Apple and Google for creating a legal chokepoint for mass censorship by the US federal government.<p>This would not be possible if end users actually exercised control over their own devices. This is how the web works, and it&#x27;s how everything else on your device should work, too.

I agree 100% with this. I mean, there are other developing economies with serious tech sectors like India which operate according to the rules based open market system we have in place.<p>If the US doesn&#x27;t take action against Chinese protectionism, why should other countries abide by the rules and give US access to their markets? The US provides China it&#x27;s market even though China closes it down for everyone.<p>I think US being soft on China sets a bad precedent.

Wow this is huge if Tencent is out of the game in the US. What happens to their stakes in companies like Reddit and Riot Games?

Instagram Reels is launching at a &quot;convenient&quot; time.. . . ..

For WeChat, how much impact will this have on Americans? As an American, I tried signing up to communicate w&#x2F; someone in China, and I couldn&#x27;t get through the verification process.<p>Obviously TikTok has a big USA presence.

Rather than every nation deploying their own internal version of X, surely the sane endgame is open source software.

Since TenCent is huge:<p>&gt;Video game companies owned by Tencent will NOT be affected by this executive order!<p>&gt;White House official confirmed to the LA Times that the EO only blocks transactions related to WeChat<p>&gt;So Riot Games (League of Legends), Epic Games (Fortnite), et al are safe<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;samaugustdean&#x2F;status&#x2F;1291576813685108736" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;samaugustdean&#x2F;status&#x2F;1291576813685108736</a><p>I guess Chinese users will resort to Chinese IP VPNs, there&#x27;s already some to get around geofenced mainland content.<p>E: much downvote

Here&#x27;s a diff between the two orders, if anyone else is curious about the specific changes. I used the TikTok&#x2F;ByteDance order as the &quot;original&quot;, so removals and additions are relative to changing that one into the WeChat&#x2F;Tencent one: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gist.github.com&#x2F;Deimos&#x2F;8fcb95ec4017cf1a28e32f6057a91e01&#x2F;revisions" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gist.github.com&#x2F;Deimos&#x2F;8fcb95ec4017cf1a28e32f6057a91...</a>

So does this mean Apple will have to remove WeChat from the App Store everywhere in the world including China?<p>If Apple does this, what will it mean for their huge business in China?

Which workarounds you suggest around the Great Firewall of the United States of America?

&quot;Threat&quot; aside, it does seem fair for the West to reciprocate bans on Google&#x2F;Facebook etc, but not sure the best way to communicate with family in China now if the western messaging apps are banned there and vice versa

This also potentially has many ramifications in different industries. Tencent (owner of WeChat) is a big investor in media and entertainment companies. One side effect, for example, is blocking financial payments to Riot Games, Epic Games, Fortnite, and half the gaming industry.<p>Has anyone seem any details on what exactly it will cover?

What a bizarre and interesting turn. I&#x27;d give a lot to be able to sit in on the meetings between TikTok and Microsoft right now.<p>I wonder if FB will come over the top with a bid.

This is how war festers. You lose the common communication mediums. It becomes easier and easier to see the other guy as BarBar-speaking barbarians.<p>Fuck the fuckers that would rather punch back than uphold their own integrity.<p>You can&#x27;t call the other team an asshole for cheating, and then go right ahead and cheat in the exact same way. It makes you even worse than they ever were, because you ever presumed you were better.<p>How absolutely sad.<p>We deserve to choke on the toxic fruits these seeds may bear.

Are we witnessing the end of free markets? Or the growth of decentralization? These sorts of moves are making a very strong case for decentralized platforms.

Also wonder if this affects wechat pay, it&#x27;s gotten pretty huge in Canada in the last few years. But we have much more mainlanders. The knock on affects will be interesting.<p>And if wechat allows web only, will US ban the service from browsers GFC style? Seems like a different can of worms than blocking apps.

I don&#x27;t see why the executive order can&#x27;t simply be to compel Apple and Google to display warnings on the download page, or one when the app launches. They already do thisshould you dare to install something that originated outside of their walled garden.<p>Let the consumer make the choice whether to use it or not.<p>The case against Huawei at least has merit; protectionist policies against threats to strategically important industries (telecom infrastructure) has numerous precedents.<p>This just seems like a favour to Zuckerberg after he gave the all-clear to unfettered lying in political ads. Surely that would have no impact on &quot;national security, foreign policy and the economy&quot;.

Every step they take to distance the population from Chinese products makes the next steps towards heightened conflict easier for the government. China isn&#x27;t an enemy of the US people, only of our elites. Part of what they&#x27;re doing is protectionism for US buisness, which is funny because when US business is strong they promote zero trade barriers so that the &quot;free market&quot; means total domination by US interests. Part of what they&#x27;re doing is creating a foreign enemy so they can blame the grotesque failures of the government on external enemies in an election year (both Rs and Ds).

I haven&#x27;t seen any discussion about how other non-China non-US countries feel about TikTok being forced under American ownership. For example, I understand that TikTok is quite popular in the middle east, and I imagine that some countries there might not be happy with American intelligence services having access to their citizens data, at least if they are also subscribing to the beliefs that short video clips are a national security matters. I suspect those countries wished that Bytedance sold just their US operations, but it appears they are instead selling _all_ non-China operations.

Wouldn&#x27;t there be some value in decentralizing social media? Surely, countries where most of their users are communicating via Facebook puts them at extreme disadvantage, especially if they need FB to comply with some sort of subpoena. We don&#x27;t really have global central news networks, so why would we ever think global social media platforms would ever work? Plus decentralizing social media could possibly help with bot&#x2F;hatespeech&#x2F;fakenews problems, or at least localize them a bit more to reduce the speed and scale problem.

I can understand the US decision of banning huawei reasoning for national security, but case against TikTok is not something I grasp understandable. Even India(where I live) banned Tiktok. At first I believed,its just temporary and will be lifted in few days but it didn&#x27;t.<p>These types of actions will not benefit anyone, just toss name of china with other country in above scenario. It will be something like,<p>- EU banning Tesla because of its USA origin<p>- US banning Reliance&#x2F;Tata because of its Indian Origin<p>- Russia banning google&#x2F;facebook to favor their local companies<p>- etc.<p>This is something that should never happen,but sadly it is.

Only took a couple decades to do this. A messaging app that allows China to read everything but not other countries should be illegal to begin with. Entirely secure or not at all is the way.

There&#x27;s a lot of practices that China has that I disagree with.<p>There&#x27;s a lot of practices that US has that I disagree with.<p>China has traditionally been <i></i>very<i></i> closed and is very slowly moving to be slightly more open to other countries.<p>The US used to be kinda open, but is shutting itself in like crazy.<p>This is way so many countries are pushing so hard to reduce their reliance on the US. This can only bode badly for the US, while the rest of the world continues slowly uniting. Not _against_ the US, just uniting to work together.

No one forced American corporations to do business with China. America&#x27;s current lack of &quot;greatness&quot; is America&#x27;s own fault. There is a nonzero chance that America is going to face serious economic distress in the coming decade. Those who made poor leadership decisions for America&#x27;s economy are desperate to find a scapegoat. No one forced American corporations to do business with China.

No one seems to be asking the most illuminating remark about this situation:<p><i>The US should allow TikTok if China agrees to allow unrestricted use of Instagram in China. That should have been the deal that Trump could make to expose the assymmetry of &quot;open market&quot; that China keeps touting about.</i><p>Everything, all arguments in this thread fall apart if people are complaining, condemning US&#x27;s move to block TikTok. I agree, the justification provided by President Trump hides behind national security, it would have been far better to make a case for free trade and unrestricted access to China&#x27;s domestic market.<p>Imagine, the opportunity for Instagram to advertise to a country of 1.4 billion people. The opportunity cost is massive.

I feel like the underlying third variable in this whole thread rests in the question, &quot;Have you or your company ever accepted or considered Chinese investment?&quot;<p>I would absolutely love to know how many of these folks saying &quot;We need to uphold Western open values and not reciprocally punish&quot; have business entanglements with Chinese funds.

Does anyone know whether the ban on WeChat means WeChat will not be available on iOS in China?<p>If so, Hauwei must be very happy.

Wechat is used by a vast majority of overseas Chinese (and increasingly non-Chinese as well), and a lot of the employees would message each other about work matters over WeChat because of convenience. All these messages are routed through Tencent&#x27;s Chinese servers.

Let&#x27;s face it: it has nothing to do with &quot;treat people the way they treat you.&quot; It&#x27;s just Trump trying to win&#x2F;secure the votes from his loyal supporters.<p>Does TikTok grab user data and analyze them for ads, recommendations, etc? Sure, so do Instagram. But does TikTok send those data back to Chinese government so that it would potentially threaten U.S. national security? We need proof, but so far none. Here&#x27;s an article of French hacker Elliot Alderson (@fs0c131y) analyzing TikTok code: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;medium.com&#x2F;@fs0c131y&#x2F;tiktok-logs-logs-logs-e93e8162647a" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;medium.com&#x2F;@fs0c131y&#x2F;tiktok-logs-logs-logs-e93e81626...</a><p>So IMHO the two real reasons Trumps banned TikTok and WeChat are: 1. His supporters are mad that everything is made in China. It violates some basic economics principles but that&#x27;s fine. 2. What happened to that Oklahoma rally, Trump really took it personal.<p>This ban put hundreds of thousands of Chinese people (including those who are already U.S. citizens or green card holders) in the U.S. to a difficult position. They don&#x27;t have other ways to communicate with there friends&#x2F;families in China other than WeChat. But I guess, those people (including myself), are the least important factors Trump worries about, if he even cares at all.

Photos of the CCP community in these so called companies:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;hnjhj&#x2F;status&#x2F;1291906465775509506&#x2F;photo&#x2F;1" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;hnjhj&#x2F;status&#x2F;1291906465775509506&#x2F;photo&#x2F;1</a>

This is just the start, introducing <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.state.gov&#x2F;announcing-the-expansion-of-the-clean-network-to-safeguard-americas-assets&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.state.gov&#x2F;announcing-the-expansion-of-the-clean-...</a>

Can someone explain the motivation?

I’ll be impressed when US says we’re not depending on China to manufacture and instead bringing the big dogs like Apple and the Fashion behemoths to US.<p>We want a net export to China instead of a net import. At-least a resilient manufacturing industry.

It is fair.<p>If both sides can be in ... but now only China can be in, influence the media, use $ to buy and work with USA firm in USA etc. etc. But not USA. It is so one sided that China will win only in the arrangement.<p>Time to restructure. It is time!

Although the focus of the discussion seems about TikTok, what really should get more attentions WeChat and Tencent - this is basically the only way one can communicate in modern fashion with people in China.

This is what Monero is for. Any cryptocurrency which hides the value and participants of transactions on its chain will always have value as long as asymmetric power exists in society.

This brings to mind the US auto industry where GM and Ford kept thinking that building cars their way would win and then lost to cars from Japan that were more attuned to customer needs.<p>If WeChat is taken off Samsung and Apple phones, it would drive more purchasers to replacing their existing with Huawei, Xiaomi, Oppo, etc phones because digital payment is a way of life in China now. Overseas business users may buy 2nd phones to be able to access the China partners and markets.<p>BTW, Tencent is not going to cripple WeChat to not do transactions. They make too much money from it and can afford to ignore this autocratic request.

Theres an incredible amount of foreign propaganda in western social media anyway. Twitter took down like a million CCP accounts the other month (they made an announcement about it) and thats just the ones they know about. This is a step thats at least in spirit probably makes sense but there are more larger issues. Reddit literally has an API to comment...you think all those policial default subs are real comments? Not a chance. Reddit doesnt care because it drives engagement.

If Apple&#x2F;Google are forced to take out the apps from their stores, would they have to take them out of the US only or worldwide?

Doesn’t this eviscerate Chinese investment in SV?

Seems pretty weak to be honest. Definitely not the &quot;American Great Firewall&quot; that some were predicting.

Can&#x27;t have China influencing the election. That&#x27;s Russia&#x27;s job. It&#x27;s not like these companies are new or doing things that every tech company in the world isn&#x27;t doing. National security is clearly a pretense that&#x27;s laughable. If that was the case, we&#x27;d see Facebook, etc. banned in many countries.

This should be taken to the WTO if it wasn&#x27;t coopted by the US and allies

This feels like the kind of thing that could make sense as part of a broad portfolio of carefully analyzed actions to thwart the rise of CCP soft and hard power, but instead is a one-off poorly considered fit of pique from a self-dealing bona fide moron right before an election.

Is he trying to get Microsoft a better deal? Like, right out in the open?

Good, the US should reciprocate the treatment it receives from China.

Is there nothing between turning the other cheek and stopping to their level?<p>Ugh.

Does anyone think Facebook is requesting for this to happen? Trump and Zuckerberg are friends (on friendly terms anyways). Trump needs Facebook for reelection purposes, Facebook is losing users to TikTok. Seems like a win-win for these two to team up like this? A little quid pro quo?

This is what happens when your app behaves like malware.

Seems arbitrary and capricious to me. USA is a democracy. If foreign apps are a threat laws should be passed to protect user data privacy and maintain data sovereignty and made equally applicable to all.

Conspiracy theory: this is being spun as an anti-US move despite being totally sensible with precedent.<p>We did <i>literally</i> the same thing with Grindr. Why would we not do the same on a platform full of CP?

China is going to declare war on the US dollar.

Time to ban AWS in Europe too. Maybe cut the transatlantic cables too. I mean we ve known for ten years we are definitely being spied on and did nothing

What is it mean to the future of ADRs?

would any company bother acquiring wechats american operations or are we just letting them disappear?

Is DJI on the pending list?

time for android phones. let&#x27;s get to work community.

I wonder how the TikTok userbase in the US is going to react to this? This could galvanized teens to action against the Trump administration. On the other hand, they could just ignore it aswell.

So WeChat is likely to be banned by the US govt?

Trump doing the right thing for the wrong reasons.<p>China is creating a social credit system that exerts a ridiculous amount on control over its citizens, and spies on their every move. Who in their right mind doesn&#x27;t think that they would force TikTok to do the same on global citizens - not to mention manipulate them with propaganda.<p>Not to mention that whole imprisonment, torture, enslavement, and sterilization of the entire Turkic Uighur population. The real question is why do we tolerate ANYTHING Chinese?

I wonder if he&#x27;s actually followed the administrative procedures act; often a lot of Trump proclamations end up being stricken down by the court for not following the proper rules. That&#x27;s exactly why DACA remains in place; while the president has a lot of power over this area, there are still rules and processes that have to be followed.

Finally some good news

Explanation of CFIUS and why and how Trump can use it: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.lawfareblog.com&#x2F;tiktok-and-law-primer-case-you-need-explain-things-your-teenager" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.lawfareblog.com&#x2F;tiktok-and-law-primer-case-you-n...</a>

For once, I agree with Trump that governments shouldn&#x27;t be spying on users data. But let&#x27;s start by ending the NSA dragnet.

This is obviously just a tactic by the Trump administration to distract people from the US economy tanking because of the mishandling of covid-19. If you haven&#x27;t noticed, the US has much bigger problems. How about covid-19, the economy, lack of universal healthcare, weak education system, huge deficits, etc?<p>I am not blaming the mishandling of covid-19 solely on the Trump administration. I am just pointing out their Wizard of Oz distraction tactic and how the vast majority of people fall for it.<p>There is an economic competition between the US and China but this move is pure silly. WeChat isn’t doing anything in the US. It’s for Chinese people to talk to family in China.

Laws and law enforcement are the only sane ways to deal with espionage or whatever the accusation is. What Trump is doing here <i>must</i> be illegal, I hope it is challenged and defeated in court.

Great action, I fully support!

OK This is huge. Trump isn&#x27;t just banning TikTok he&#x27;s banning Tencent and it&#x27;s holdings too from operating in the US. To put this is perspective Tencent owns Riot Games (League of Legends) and has stakes in Epic Games (Fortnite), Ubisoft (Assassin&#x27;s Creed) and Activision Blizzard (Call of Duty). Overall Tencent owns 108 companies across media, entertainment, fintech and education. This is going to be a mess. (universal music and Spotify also owned partially)<p>Also how will impact companies of which Tencent owns less than 50%?

I know much of western people agree with Trump&#x27;s decision to ban ByteDance and Wechat, and it&#x27;s fair to me when it&#x27;s based on reciprocal. But actually, ByteDance and Wechat(Tencent Holding) was and is growing more like a US company then a company with China Communism background. A lot of employee of ByteDance&#x2F;Wechat are engineers like the engineers in hackernews. Even the CEO of bytedance, Zhangyiming, is now cursed in China for earlier friendly voice to US and western world. I mean, why hurt the companies and engineers are or was friendly to US. The recently ban action is turning friend to enemy, why not put the punishment to other unfriendly subject or entity.

After seeing some of the comments here and seeing their half-baked &quot;libertarian&#x27; views which are grounded in fantasy, I am speaking out and saying: Good job! It is about time! I fully support decisions like this.<p>There is no point in playing a &quot;fair&quot; game if the player (China) won&#x27;t follow the rules.

I realize that this is completely speculative correlation buuuut...<p>Part of me wonders if Trump was briefed on the Russian law going into effect last month :<p>Nov 2019 - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bbc.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;world-europe-50507849" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bbc.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;world-europe-50507849</a><p>&gt; Russia has passed a law banning the sale of certain devices that are not pre-installed with Russian software.<p>&gt;<p>&gt; The law will come into force in July 2020 and cover smartphones, computers and smart televisions.<p>And is literally just aping Russian policy :<p>August 2020 - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.state.gov&#x2F;announcing-the-expansion-of-the-clean-network-to-safeguard-americas-assets&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.state.gov&#x2F;announcing-the-expansion-of-the-clean-...</a><p>&gt; Clean Store: To remove untrusted applications from U.S. mobile app stores. PRC apps threaten our privacy, proliferate<p>&gt; viruses, and spread propaganda and disinformation. American’s most sensitive personal and business information must be<p>&gt; protected on their mobile phones from exploitation and theft for the CCP’s benefit.

Under what authority can he issue this order?

I’m mixed about this. On one hand the US as the most powerful country should lead and be an example of the free world. On the other hand China is playing an asymmetric game with foreign companies and has banned many US companies from entering their market.<p>Now they’re still a developing country, so this would be fine by me, except that the Chinese government is committing crimes against humanity and getting more and more powerful at the same time. This is really dangerous, and the only thing I can think of is germany pre-WWII where Hitler had huge approval ratings. Chinese people are extremely pro-CCP even in the US, this is frightening imo. And most countries are doing nothing about the xinjiang and hongkong situations. So maybe this is a good move...

And China has a massive 5th column based here already, especially in tech.

To be clear, TikTok and WeChat are quite different &#x27;threats&#x27;, both real, but it&#x27;s not clear how dangerous:<p>TikTok is aimed at a wide market, and it&#x27;s a content app - there are two worries with it, data and influence. If they are installed on a significant number of devices in the US&#x2F;the &#x27;West&#x27;, and their user data is stored in or available to Chinese networks, that data is available to the Chinese government on-demand. Secondly, if they have significant enough cultural influence, they can use that to promote&#x2F;demote certain topics or specific content, for a variety of purposes.<p>WeChat seems to have no serious ambitions beyond China and the Chinese diaspora, nowadays. It&#x27;s used by people all over the world to keep in touch with their friends and families, and to do business, with people in China, and it&#x27;s widely-known that the content is actively monitored and censored by&#x2F;on behalf of the Chinese government. Although VPNs etc are available, it&#x27;s really the only significant communication and social media platform available in (and into) China. There&#x27;s also pretty good evidence (although mostly anecdotal, AFAIK) that it&#x27;s a channel for nationalistic propaganda, government-coordinated action and similar amongst the Chinese diaspora - actively so, beyond the passive effect of censored content.<p>None of these things are to say that billions of people can&#x27;t happily use those platforms, every day, all over the world! But they also cannot be completely ignored...<p>And before anyone starts with &quot;but the American government is just the same!&quot;, it&#x27;s not, it&#x27;s really not. The Chinese government is a literal totalitarian, authoritarian, one-man dictatorship. However much Trump cosplays as a dictator, and however much authoritarianism he demonstrates, there are huge qualitative differences.

At least the Chinese Communist Party has the decency to make policy that has the effect of banning foreign businesses from operating and kangaroo courts to keep up the charade.<p>I think this is going to be tossed out in court. The President does not have the power to unilaterally decide trade policy, and it&#x27;s really hard to argue that a consumer software product has national security implications (even if I think it does, I don&#x27;t think our courts have technically literate judges who would agree).<p>If you want to provide consumer privacy protections that would prevent the alleged (and very likely) malfeasance of nominally-private businesses from China, <i>write some fucking policy</i> instead of signing an EO with no weight.<p>Another day, more disillusionment from our federal government&#x27;s ability to govern. Regardless of how much I want something like this to be in place, I want Congress to write a law that enshrines consumer privacy protection and recognizes that <i>any</i> business doing what they purport Chinese businesses to be doing is a national security threat ; be it from businesses foreign or domestic.

Forget I said anything. HN is infiltrated by propaganda without people even realising.

This is a fantastic start.<p>More people need to become aware of what China is currently doing with their so-called &quot;reeducation camps&quot;.<p>I would like to see other countries doing the same, and not just with fancy (but mostly useless) things like TikTok, but cut off Chinese involvement in anything critical where countries depend on them.<p>It has become clear they have total disregard for human rights.