It definitely mirrors the kinds of restrictions China puts on US companies with joint ventures, censorship of sensitive topics, and keeping data on Chinese servers.

However, I think why this feels unsettling even if it just mirrors what China's done is because up to now there was a sense that the US has a stronger economy, society, and culture than China, and these restrictions China put on US companies reflected their weakness and insecurity. But now the US is doing what China's done for decades. It shatters that aura of American superiority, implies that China's been right all along on matters of national security, and foreshadows a future where previously sacred assumptions of American democracy become obsoleted by new technology. I'm reminded of hand weavers smashing machine looms during the dawn of the industrial revolution.

Great point, the US should take the high road and allow the free flow of information regardless of the host of that info (friend or foe)

To give some push back:

Currently the US is in an election year and both the left and right are concerned about foreign interference.

Being said Tik Tok is a Chinese based company and following priority Chinese law. Couldn't they propogate direct election interference under the precived guise of being a US private corporation bc of US public's consumption and get away with it?

A counter point could be made for an actual US corporation doing the same thing, but a nation state doing it would be a different issue entirely.

Or maybe it just implies that the Golden Rule still exists?

The US seems to have been fine shrugging off the Golden Rule and giving China a pass for decades because it felt like it was the bigger man. Now, we're seeing the US admit that the gap has closed.

Maybe the gap is indeed closed

"An eye for an eye" is not the Golden Rule!

It sort of is, if you think of it as "don't poke out other people's eyes if you don't want them to poke yours out".

The "do not do...what you would not wish done" variant is actually called the Silver Rule, no joke.

Just consider this: You have FB and other stuffs and can influence the world with it. They are very valuable propaganda channels and political tools and you can push whatever message on them to influence hundreds of millions of people.

Now someone else banned those channels so that you lose the edge. Not only that, the other guy also creates something similarly popular and wait -- it is not under your control!

What would you do?

This has the potential to backfire hard if other countries decided to use the same reasoning against FB to demand data, feed algo, management and employee localization in country.

> Could this be the same as a tit for tat measure like with tariffs?

It certainly hopes to provoke a cycle of retaliatory escalation, because it's an election year stunt looking to distract from, well, a whole lot of other things with a manufactured international crisis to create a rally-around-the-flag effect.

It will probably fail as a political strategy somewhat less spectacularly than “let’s avoid having a national strategy to control the COVID-19 pandemic and behind-the-scenes obstruct state efforts because the early impacts are in Democratic-governed states and we can leverage the impacts for political gains by blaming the governors.”

And what will be the retaliation? China has already banned just about every major US equivalent. It's mind numbing how many people are crying about trade reciprocity finally reaching China.

non-amp link: https://www.news18.com/news/tech/china-forces-apple-to-take-...