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Social Networks China Government

What Happened to Other China-Owned Social Media Apps? (cnn.com) 73

Posted by EditorDavid from the history-lessons dept.
When it comes to TikTok, "The Chinese government is signaling that it won't allow a forced sale..." reported the Wall Street Journal Friday, "limiting options for the app's owners as buyers begin lining up to bid for its U.S. operations..."

"They have also sent signals to TikTok's owner, Beijing-based ByteDance, that company executives have interpreted as meaning the government would rather the app be banned in the U.S. than be sold, according to people familiar with the matter."

But that's not always how it plays out. McClatchy notes that in 2019 the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. ordered Grindr's Chinese owners to relinquish control of Grindr. "A year later, the Chinese owners voluntarily complied and sold the company to San Vicente Acquisition, incorporated in Delaware, for around $608 million, according to Forbes."

And CNN reminds us that the world's most-populous country already banned TikTok more than three years ago: In June 2020, after a violent clash on the India-China border that left at least 20 Indian soldiers dead, the government in New Delhi suddenly banned TikTok and several other well-known Chinese apps. "It's important to remember that when India banned TikTok and multiple Chinese apps, the US was the first to praise the decision," said Nikhil Pahwa, the Delhi-based founder of tech website MediaNama. "[Former] US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had welcomed the ban, saying it 'will boost India's sovereignty.'"

While India's abrupt decision shocked the country's 200 million TikTok users, in the four years since, many have found other suitable alternatives. "The ban on Tiktok led to the creation of a multibillion dollar opportunity ... A 200 million user base needed somewhere to go," said Pahwa, adding that it was ultimately American tech companies that seized the moment with their new offerings... Within a week of the ban, Meta-owned Instagram cashed in by launching its TikTok copycat, Instagram Reels, in India. Google introduced its own short video offering, YouTube Shorts. Homegrown alternatives such as MX Taka Tak and Moj also began seeing a rise in popularity and an infux in funding. Those local startups soon fizzled out, however, unable to match the reach and financial firepower of the American firms, which are flourishing.
In fact, at the time India "announced a ban on more than 50 Chinese apps," remembers the Washington Post, adding that Nepal also announced a ban on TikTok late last year.

Their article points out that TikTok has also been banned by top EU policymaking bodies, while "Government staff in some of the bloc's 27 member states, including Belgium, Denmark and the Netherlands, have also been told not to use TikTok on their work phones." Canada banned TikTok from all government-issued phones in February 2023, after similar steps in the United States and the European Union.... Britain announced a TikTok ban on government ministers' and civil servants' devices last year, with officials citing the security of state information. Australia banned TikTok from all federal government-owned devices last year after seeking advice from intelligence and security agencies.
A new EFF web page warns that America's new proposed ban on TikTok could also apply to apps like WeChat...
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What Happened to Other China-Owned Social Media Apps? More

What Happened to Other China-Owned Social Media Apps?

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  • EFF has lost its way (Score:4, Insightful)

    by voights ( 919055 ) on Saturday March 16, 2024 @09:58AM (#64319949)

    A new EFF web page [eff.org] warns that America's new proposed ban on TikTok could also apply to apps like WeChat...

    And that's a bad thing why? WeChat is about the last platform one would think of as a bastion of free speech or privacy.

    It's also notable that the linked EFF page completely skims over the utility of TikTok as a propaganda tool. Yeah, let's fight for the free speech of state actors! Woohoo! Righteous, maaaan.

    • Yea, I don't get it. Shouldn't we ban all the proprietary social media platforms that harvest user data and are utterly devoid of transparency? The hypocrisy right now is we should be taking down Instagram, Snapchat, X and FB as well. In favor of open standards, interoperability, and can be audited for privacy.

      • Re: EFF has lost its way (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Baron_Yam ( 643147 ) on Saturday March 16, 2024 @11:17AM (#64320111)

        At the citizen level, that should be desired.

        At the state level, the concern is not about corporations datamining you; it's about one country using the system for espionage against another.

        There's a significant difference between domestic and foreign issues.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by HiThere ( 15173 )

          Not just espionage. They have explicitly used it for lobbying. (They were lobbying against the bill requiring its sale.)

          OTOH, when I tried to find the story that reported that, I couldn't. I can't remember the site, either. Reportedly it had a dialog asking people to call their Representative and protest the bill to "ban Tiktok". and gave the zip code specific instructions as to how to do that.

          • >Not just espionage. They have explicitly used it for lobbying.

            I actually like that, it's honest - at least as a method of persuasion.

            As the lobbying effort itself doesn't contain falsehoods and deception, I'm 100% fine with this. People (and by extension the companies people run) should be allowed to have interests and explain why they want you to support them.

        • Ban TT before November and you run a very real risk of handing the election to Trump. And frankly all TT has to do is start the viral campaign that Biden will ban TT since he's said he'd sign a ban, and an important but notoriously fickle voting block evaporates.

          Whether or not TT is a nat sec threat, that is a far far worse nat sec threat.

          TT also had it's growth go *negative* last quarter. It's reached mass saturation. linky [businessinsider.com]

          • I get it. Young people aren't going to show up to vote if they can't power selfies of themselves with an "I VOTED" sticker. Shutting down Tiktok will wipe out the Youth vote that the Dems depend on. And I'm not even joking. Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, etc depend on young urban voters to go Blue. Because without them those states are projected to go Red. And that's pretty much all the GOP needs to win this time, regardless of how Wisconsin, Arizona, and Nevada turn out. Flipping both Georgia and North Caro

            • >Young people aren't going to show up to vote if they can't power selfies of themselves with an "I VOTED" sticker.

              There are 4 kinds of young people politically speaking. If you map them on a 2x2 grid, the first axis has "have their own informed opinions", "parrots someone else's (most likely their parents)". The second axis has "passionate" and "indifferent" on it.

              WAY too many kids are indifferent, and of the passionate ones way too many are ill-informed.

              I want them to vote, it's their lives that will

              • I'm in my 40's and I think way too many people are indifferent about a lot of things. And most people I run into have some fundamental gaps in knowledge when it comes to the details of their own country's government. I think most people don't really want democracy badly enough to actually keep it.

        • I'd like a more comprehensive defense against spying and cyber warfare than waiting for Congress to ban businesses obviously under the thumb of an adversarial government. Who is to say that any number of data warehousing businesses in the US don't have Chinese agents copying the same sorts of data or worse?

          Certainly big brand names like TikTok make for great click bait articles. That's how the news media works. Grab people's attention with familiar dangers, hype it up if you have to, and wait for the views

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      I stopped donating to the EFF when they joined the court of public opinion against Richard Stallman. Lawyers should know better.

    • And that's a bad thing why? WeChat is about the last platform one would think of as a bastion of free speech or privacy.

      WeChat is how American maintenance personnel speak to their Chinese manufacturer counterparts. Yeah, let's make that type of communication impossible.

      You mean actions have consequences? Yep. Maybe we shouldn't be so incestuously related if we are not really up to the whole incestuous relationship thing?

  • Honestly... "Well, duh" (Score:3)

    by Baron_Yam ( 643147 ) on Saturday March 16, 2024 @10:08AM (#64319971)

    >the government would rather the app be banned in the U.S. than be sold

    Does anyone still doubt the CCP is even deeper in Tik-Tok than the various US local, state, and federal agencies are in American social media companies?

    • We are honorable, unlike the Chinese, we have government presence in every US telecom and a legal framework to do warrantless wiretaps on nearly any international telephone call.

      • While I'm not in the official loop on how the US does it, my understanding is it's pretty much "we have a warrant, give us access to the data it authorizes us to access" when they're playing nice, and "we have a secret warrant, you'll go to jail somewhere unpleasant if you even mention it to anyone, and we'll look at whatever we please even if it's not covered because you can't tell anyone anyway" when they're not. But outside of that, the companies are typically driven by mercenary greed and not fear of g

        • In China, the CCP tells you what you're going to do and you do it.

          I thought we learned from the Twitter files this is also exactly what happens in the US.

      • Re: Honestly... "Well, duh" (Score:4, Insightful)

        by jacks smirking reven ( 909048 ) on Saturday March 16, 2024 @11:07AM (#64320091)

        a legal framework

        We don't have to like it but this is a vital distinction. The law that gives the government this ability (FISA) passed Congress, was signed into law and survived judicial review, all through the process, all public record, and we passed a reform bill last year and famously there have been numerous Senate and House investigations into its uses.

        Does this make the law "good"? Probably not but that's subjective. If your job is foreign intelligence you probably think it's very good. Point is we passed it ourselves through our elected representatives and can elect news ones and undo it if we so choose and most people actually cared about the issue (most people don't).

        Point is do we have anywhere close to even that level of representation and public knowledge in China? Do citizens have recourse like they do in the US?

        I'm not here to defend this US program, it's every Americans right and responsibility to point out problems in our system but that should not be used to equivocate the US to China and we shouldn't put up with it either.

        • Do you seriously think the US citizens have any influence on any of this? Who voted for the spying on the US citizens? Who voted for all the crap in Snowden revelations? And most importantly, where on earth do you get the idea that you have any chance to get rid of this all? Go on, take the recourse you have, and put a stop to this. You are buying every single bridge in the US here...

          • Who voted for the spying on the US citizens?

            American's did. Example; Patriot Act passed in 2001, we had two Congressional and a Presidential election in the next 4 years and look what we picked. I was alive then, American's were clamoring for "security" and action.

            Where you are going wrong is thinking any majority of Americans have this as a top issue, much less a top 10 issue so the parties aren't going to make it a priority .

            https://www.pewresearch.org/po... [pewresearch.org]

            Not understanding how the system works is not a good reason to say the system doesn't work

            • Did the public get a vote on the Patriot Act though? And were they explained what they were gotten into, when it was voten in for them? The Act had been written in 1995 already as the Omnibus Counterterrorism Act. But the people back then would not have taken it, so it was waiting on the desk for the right moment when it was possible to manufacture the consent for it. 9/11 provided just that, but it was going to happen sooner or later no matter what.

              But the issue is more than just the Patriot Act. The Act i

              • I'm not saying that I have something better than democracy to offer, but I am saying that democracy, like every other form of government has not solved the problem of getting honest people with integrity to work in the public office in the public interest.

                And yet like the famous quote says, whoever actually said it, democracy has still gotten more that actual work done than any form of government in human history, bar none. Democracy is agreed compromiuse0

                If there is a recourse available, it's just that there is no way to ever make it happen, is it really there?

                Yes, there is but it's hard and it's slow and you rarely if ever get exactly what you want. The mere fact that the law was passed in the first place shows how the system operates and back in 2001 people really demanded action even if they fully comprehended the outcomes of that action but we can apply tha

                • I'm not saying that democracy does not work. But I am saying the US current political landscape is pretty much as far as you can get from fulfilling the conditions for democracy to work.

                  Back in the day the US did elect FDR, and that was pretty much the best thing that could happen. This goes to show that democracy can work. Roosevelt built up the country for what it was at it's greatest. But in the last 50 years the US has been getting pretty much the same government whatever the party in the office - destr

                  • Yeah unfortunately the system as designed by the founders is not perfect and right now, in my opinion, a big issue is we something of a tyrrany of the minority with both the Electoral College and the Senate doing a double number on implementing policies the majority of Americans agree with.

                    It's just reality that big events tend to precede big changes. Civil War and Reconstruction led to several important amendment. The Great Depression led to the election of FDR. WWII and it's aftermath was the precedent

                    • Stewart is definitely right on that, and I was definitely one to advocate for his presidency back in the day. The sad nature is that something being right does not mean it's going to happen.

                      I guess Bidens minimum wage, union and student debt work is better than nothing. Then again he added more to Trump Wall, which tbf should probably be called by some other name, Trump just did a 9% expansion to it. Children are still in the cages on the border. Guantanamo is still open, drones are still blowing up brown p

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by HiThere ( 15173 )

            If you're saying the US is too much of a police state, I agree. That doesn't make it the same as China. The US still has the trappings of a working non-police state. But if we want to have any chance of getting there (not great, I admit) we need to "secure the borders against foreign powers". I don't like foreign propaganda during US elections, or, frankly, even between them.

            People should be able to go looking for foreign opinions, but not have them thrust in their faces. And when they go looking, it s

            • Is the US the same as China? Obviously not.

              Now ask yourself about a 2nd Trump administration gov't. "Dictator on day one" "Project 2025" are things very very very much in line on moving towards an autocratic system. One that will use our vast government system of powers for *its* desires, not ours.

              Now ban TT, have the youth stay home, and that reality becomes eerily likely.

              • The US was moving the direction of an authoritarian police state long before Trump, it's also going to move that way with or without Trump being the next president, and it's going to move that way until it's there. There is nothing the people can do to stop it, it's a bipartisan matter that is never going to be part of electoral politics, and the police have been already armed to the teeth with army gear to be ready for it if it should be tried to change by other means. If anything, the horror of Trump is b

                • And that attitude pretty well guarantees it will happen.

                  Dems have faults and no system is remotely perfect. But they *aren't* at all trying to destroy the system of gov't.

                  The GOP loves people who throw up their hands and say "It's all bad, not worth it". They want you to walk away so they can take over.

                  • Seriously, man. The US does not have a party of good and a party of evil. It has two parties of evil. One of them plays the good cop and the other plays the bad cop, but when the push comes to shove, both of them are out there to get you.

                    The surveillance state is a bipartisan matter. No matter who is in the House or the Hill, they work to advance it. Case in point Obama renewing the Patriot Act, or this https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/... [eff.org]

                    If you see me raising awareness of what is going on as throwing up my h

                    • Over $10K in campaign donations in 2022? Entirely to Dems.

                      There are only 3 choices. A party committed to flawed but still democratic system, a party openly calling for autocracy and neither. The third choice is apparently yours. Neither.

                      Which is one less vote the GOP and Trump need to get to win.

                      So there only 2 choices. And you seem to be supporting a choice that favors the autocracy under the guise it already exists.

                    • I have no data to back up the claim that team D is committed to the flawed but still democratic system. Neither the idea that the party is committed, nor the idea that the system is still democratic.

                      First, the Democrats talk a wild talk, but the fact that they are also building the surveillance state tells me the walk they walk is in the opposite direction.

                      Second, check out this study from Princeton: https://www.princeton.edu/~dav... [princeton.edu] . If voter preference has no influence on policy, there is no democracy, w

            • My take is it's not the foreign opinion thrust in the face of the people that is the problem. The problem of the current situation is the domestic politically sanctioned opinion. The sheer volume of it drowns out any differing opinion, and the boogeyman of foreign influence is used to delegitimize any critizism of the powers that be. This is great for the higher ups, because policy has in effect been given a free reign to do whatever they want, and boy, they are using it.

              It used to be that you need to know

    • Does anyone still doubt the CCP is even deeper in Tik-Tok than the various US local, state, and federal agencies are in American social media companies?

      Personally, I don't give a crap what the CCP knows about me. I have no plans to ever visit China. Any company that has ever given me any sort of grief, either directly or indirectly, has always been US-based.

      That being said, I don't use TikTok anyway, not because it's Chinese but because short format videos are just not something I've ever been able to get into.

    • Huh? Every fucking country is doing its best to gain power over its citizens rather than serving them as they are supposed to. All software coming out of China and most software coming out of America is engineered to be spyware, not always for any particular government.

  • Yikes. Modi and the Indian government is not a good example of good governance.

    • And Indian people probably think the same of the US, especially as administrations change. Let's just look at the actions and the outcomes in and of themselves.

      • I'm neither American nor Indian. Modi is a crazy Trumpian dictator and personally responsible for genocide in Gujurat. He came to power with a coalition with the RSS, who are literal Nazi inspired fascists, and pushing for something called Hindutva which is a fascist philosophy. I don't really think you know what you are talking about and can say with certainty that I don't support fascism or fascist policies anywhere.

        • Not every policy passed by a fascist is a fascist. Not every policy passed by a capitalist supports capitalism.

          Thank you for brining up Trump as he is a perfect example of what I am talking about. Plenty of policies he did were terrible and also on the world stage many likely thought him a fascist but yet on a few things, especially Operation Warp Speed were in fact very good policies, one that should be examined and improved upon even further.

          Just like the Warsaw Pact countries saw numerous atrocities an

          • You are the one supporting banning an app and suppressing free expression on tiktok and then saying that you support fascists and their policies if they suit you. I don't think you're the level headed good guy you think you are.

  • There are a number of alternative apps that presumably aren't intimately connected to a country that is hostile to the West, so no big deal if Tiktok is banned.

    https://www.lifewire.com/alter... [lifewire.com]

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dryeo ( 100693 )

      So as long as there is one app, perhaps owned by the government, the rest can be banned?

      • >> the rest can be banned?

        The Chinese government will have to sell the app or it will be banned. Just like it is banned in China.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by dryeo ( 100693 )

          I was thinking of the American government, which is much more of a threat to my freedom then the Chinese government as one is a few miles away and the other is thousands of miles away.

          • >> the other is thousands of miles away

            Tiktok is in your hand, and is intimately connected to a country that is hostile to the West.

  • Whenever a country decides something you need the people of that country to go along with that decision. It is called pushing a narrative or spinning the news or manufacturing consent. Geopolitically, Israel is vulnerable having enemies near its border and the geopolitical-US supports their being crushed (pure geopolitical thinking can be brutal).

    According to a report published by the Wall Street Journal, one of the reasons behind the renewed urgency to pass the bill could be attributed to Washington

    • It is called pushing a narrative or spinning the news

      concerns about the way TikTok users interact with content regarding the Israeli genocide in Gaza.

      No kidding. Like reporting something as if it's true when it's a well known lie. See above.

    • Whenever a country decides something you need the people of that country to go along with that decision.

      Nobody is going to revolt if TikTok goes away.

  • All the other Chinese-owned social media apps were too small to matter, what happened to them is not significant.

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