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Comment on ByteDance prefers TikTok shutdown in US if legal options fail, sources say

It’s obviously pretty valuable. How would we feel if say, China decided Microsoft/Google/AWS/Oracle had to sell to a Chinese company on the grounds of national security? They’d rather pull out too, despite China being a very large market too. Or what happens if other countries starts demanding the same?

Pretty sure ByteDance would rather keep their IP.

And if they sell, do they keep the rights for the other countries or it belongs to the US now?

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Truth_Hurts@lemmus.org ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
They don’t let our stuff operate there. It’s only fair we treat them the same.

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- ParetoOptimalDev@lemmy.today ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  But we aren’t them… right?
  
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  - Kalothar@lemmy.ca ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Paradox of tolerance, blah blah
    
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- TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  To me this is the biggest thing.
  
  I’m under no illusions that the US is pursuing this for altruistic reasons, but fundamentally I do think it’s ridiculous that China bans western competition, yet the west rolls over and allows Chinese companies, or even the Chinese government, to buy out western companies, to enter the market and compete, and to compete using massive state subsidies or slave labour that kill domestic competition.
  
  IMO it’s entirely fair for a country to say “you’re banning our companies? Ok then we’re banning yours.”
  
  And I do also agree that China uses the data they collect for nefarious purposes. Be it training language models so they can better track and shut down dissenting voices at home, or spreading misinformation amongst other nations. I just wish the US would also clamp down on the privacy policies of domestic companies too.
  
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Yaztromo@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
AWS already had to effectively do this. AWS only exists in two regions in China because they licensed much of the AWS software to be run by a pair of Chinese-government affiliated ISPs inside China (that is, Amazon doesn’t run AWS in either of its China zones — it’s run by a pair of Chinese companies who license AWS’s software).

This is why the China AWS regions are often quite far behind in terms of functionality from every other region (they either haven’t licensed all the functionality, they don’t keep up-to-date at the same cadence as Amazon, or Amazon is holding certain functions back), and why you can’t really access them from the standard AWS console.

So in effect, Amazon did have to give their software to Chinese-government affiliated companies in order to continue operating in China.

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vinniep@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

How would we feel if say, China decided Microsoft/Google/AWS/Oracle had to sell to a Chinese company on the grounds of national security?

But no one is saying that ByteDance has to sell TikTok to a US company. Just divest it to an owner that is not beholden to the Chinese government and obligated to share any and all data upon request. Compared to the legal requirements that China puts on US companies operating in China, this is a pretty tame ask.

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- yaaaaayPancakes@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Yeah but the 5 Eyes and their friends are everywhere outside of the CCPs borders. So if they really don’t want to let the US have that algorithm, and probe the interfaces the CCP propaganda arm used to access the TikTok backend, there’s few places overall that have a reason to buy it, and can also afford it.
  
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assembly@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Except that is what China already does. Cloud providers with regions in China have to utilize a local partner company which gives access to the whole tech stack. It’s a reason that AWS China regions were always so far behind in service offerings to the rest of the AWS regions.

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Womble@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
They wouldnt have to sell their IP even just the userbase and videos would be valuable enough to let someone else plug in an algorithm. Then again, i suppose this could all just be bluster.

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