• ComradeSharkfucker@lemmy.ml
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    9 months ago

    But china doesnt claim to be a paragon of freedom unlike the united states. No one cares that china banned american social media becuase its expected. People care that america bans tiktok because its hypocritical.

    Besides, tiktok isn’t even “chinese”, their government only has a 1% stake in the company while foreign investors(mostly american) hold 60% IIRC. Y’all can fact check me on that. This is an attempt by the American bourgeosie to force bytedance into being publicly traded so that Americans can have more sway over the companies decisions. This allows them to silence an alternative news source that often conflicts with their interests or make a shit ton of money if they give in and opem up to public trading.

    The American bourgeosie is nervous about actually facing competition on the online market place. They’ve dominated it so long thanks to silicone valley and they got used to it.

    • TempermentalAnomaly@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      I wholly agree with you first paragraph.

      But the 1% stake the Chinese government has in ByteDance is a golden share.

      From The Economist:

      More stunning are the terms of these investments. ciif’s 1% stake in a ByteDance subsidiary gives it the power to appoint one of three board members in a unit that holds key licences for operating its domestic short-video business.

      To what extent the CCP will exert control or what ByteDance has agreed to is unclear. And who knows if any of that matters.

      • bouh@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        Ah yes, the famous “you’re free as long as you obey me”. Totally not imperialism.

        • QuaternionsRock@lemmy.world
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          9 months ago

          What freedoms granted by the Constitution have ever applied to foreign legal entities? And since when did sucking off 200 billion dollar corporations become part of the leftist playbook?

          • Bartsbigbugbag@lemmy.ml
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            9 months ago

            https://www.forbes.com/sites/danielfisher/2017/01/30/does-the-constitution-protect-non-citizens-judges-say-yes/?sh=c8b4d9f4f1de

            The same way it applied to enemy combatants held at the U.S. base in Guantanamo Bay in a 2008 U.S. Supreme Court decision, *Boumediene v. Bush, *which held that the basic right of habeas corpus to challenge illegal detentions extends even to non-citizens on foreign territory.

            Unless otherwise specified, the rights granted in the US constitution apply to all people of the world regardless of where they are.

            If corporations are people as defined by citizens united, then these protections apply to foreign companies also.

              • Bartsbigbugbag@lemmy.ml
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                9 months ago
                1. One can only speak for themselves. Is extremely weird to say “we support X now?”. I’m not a we, and neither are you.
                2. Nowhere did I say I supported it, the question was since when do foreign companies get rights, and my answer was merely showing a way in which they would under our current precedents.
          • bouh@lemmy.world
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            9 months ago

            I’m not sucking any corporation. Many people here are licking USA ass though. In support of a shameless imperialist move.

            • QuaternionsRock@lemmy.world
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              9 months ago

              Idk, I’ve looked through a lot of comments here, and there seem to be three prevailing opinions:

              1. “No social media company is a good social media company, let it burn”
              2. “I don’t actively want to see TikTok banned, but there are literally thousands of more important things to worry about than the legal troubles of an—again— $200,000,000,000 corporation
              3. ”Nooo u force ByteDance to sell TikTok that is hypocrite and liturally the same as the Great Firewall” (it isn’t, by the way; the U.S. will never block the website no matter what happens)