>"It’s the first company to be headquartered in China, designed in China, but popular in the US," said Greylock investor Josh Elman. "Finally we’re seeing talented people who live in that ecosystem in that world and actually transcend it and build products in the US."
One cofounder worked full time at SAP in SF bay area for several years before and after musical.ly was founded. The other says on his LinkedIn that he was working in Santa Monica for several years on either side of the founding. They lived, worked, and founded the company in CA.
>Primary Office 16/F, No. 127 Guodao Road, Yangpu District, Shanghai China
musical.ly appears to have always had its head office in Shanghai until the acquisition. The fact that it also had significant operations in California doesn't make it a US company. Only those operations are subject to US law and would have to be divested due to disapproval by CFIUS.
"Musical.ly Inc. was founded by longtime friends Alex Zhu and Luyu Yang in Shanghai, China."
If it's a Chinese company, why is TikTok saying that China has zero jurisdiction over the app?
Besides that, the US can require that Bytedance peel off TikTok / Musical.ly. If Bytedance wants access to the US market with that app, it will have to play by US rules. That works similar to how China blocked the Qualcomm - NXP acquisition. Neither Qualcomm nor NXP are Chinese companies. If the combined entity wanted access to China they had to obey China's position on that acquisition. And given China's extreme behavior on restricting US Internet companies from their market, this is more than fair game.
ByteDance is trying very hard to run TikTok and Douyin (抖音, the Chinese version) as separate companies that happen to share the same code but not data. For one, this is because they're well aware that Western governments are suspicious of foreign companies having access to their citizens' data. Secondly, having Chinese and international users on a shared platform also makes it more difficult to maintain the narrative mandated by the Chinese government, as each cross-border interaction is a potential hole in the Great Firewall.
After the lack of data separation effectively killed Grindr, they can only hope that they've done enough and won't suffer the same fate.
Except that the US always complained about this behavior from the Chinese government, but now it wants to adopt it as normal. It looks like the Chinese way of doing things is winning...
If Bytedance wants access to the US market with that app, it will simply relocate servers outside of USA. That's it.
He makes the point that US consumers become subject to Chinese censorship policies when using the platform while China outright bans or heavily restricts American companies from operating (eg google search, Facebook).
Shoe's now on the other foot.
America et al also don’t like certain things being published on social media and try stop it from existing on those platforms too.
Their censorship algorithm must be broken.
No, you're subject to corporate censorship policies. Let's not pretend that individual platforms regulating content is the same as government censorship. Please show me how their policies are related to "the American governments stance on human sexuality".
Also, doesn't Canada have a few laws on the books regarding how people are allowed to address other people, specifically, LGBTQ people?
The theoretical point is true enough, that American content restrictions would generally wind up being exported abroad. The key difference is, however, that we do not actually have Chinese-style content restrictions.
Facebook removed LGBT pages because the American government forced them? Do you have a link?
Google and Facebook not being in China is not necessarily a bad thing. Both the companies are massively popular in India but make no profits off Indians yet. On other than their popularity has made Indians value these companies a lot as employers and every third Google/Facebook engineer in Mountain View is an Indian person. Google or Facebooks adventures in India (and China) if at all are nothing but a huge subsidy being delivered to these upcoming markets at the expense of American consumers.
Say China opens up its markets for Google and Facebook like tomorrow would you be fine with that ? Both Google and Facebook are then going to borrow money from american to build massive data center networks in China spending billions of dollars which may or may not be recovered in near future.
Xenophobia and divergence from free market principles in USA have made other countries better potential successors to Silicon Valley. In near future we will see more and more companies coming up from China. What USA has done with Tiktok is essentially a child like tantrum to scare other investors and chinese companies but very likely US government will end up with an egg on its face.
FCC is actively pursuing removal of Huawei and ZTE equipment under a threat to national security.
Probably in reference to this: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/01/business/dealbook/huawei-...
Business is business.
They kept mentioning infinite scroll, and that everyone was supposed to be thinking about how to incorporate that into product.
After zuck discussed TikTok directly recently, I’m not surprised google and fb lobbyists would press for this investigation.
One question I have, is the real-time interests of millions of 16-24 yo Americans reported back to the Chinese government a national security concern?
Initially Lasso only supported registering with a Facebook account, defaulting to exposing your real name to the world. TikTok let you browse anonymously and register with just a phone number or email account, letting users protect their identities much easier. Lasso now allows you to register with an Instagram account.
Lasso has much worse video quality-- seemingly SD vs HD, presumably to save bandwidth, but it makes videos much less appealing since they're noticeably blurrier. This may be because Lasso decided to show me Spanish videos for no apparent reason (or maybe that's where their users are?), and most Spanish-speaking countries have predominantly Android phones which have worse video quality.
The infinite scrolling feels worse because videos fade in from black instead of displaying their first frame while scrolling into view. The feed isn't actually infinite, but refuses to load past a certain point. You can't swipe right from the feed to view a user's profile.
Regarding censorship, I'm not convinced ByteDance's Chinese style "ban anything contentious" censorship is actually a downside for most teen users. Instagram has _very_ loose censorship policies, which easily allow the feed to become very sexualized. I expect this makes younger users feel less comfortable posting publicly-- Instagram is where the bikini models and their followers hang out!-- while TikTok's more carefully curated space feels age-appropriate. That may all be network effects, though, with social networks as always being colonized first by the young.
Yes. They are kids today, but they might be a Senator, CEO, or President tomorrow.
Or they might grow up to be an average person, but with a sensitive job and a Chinese intelligence officer needs background on someone to flip them.
They don't need sensational information, just insight on how their target can be influenced.
Perhaps not, but the influence of a nebulous "algorithm" controlling what comes up next certainly can reinforce a message or way of life that line up with China's cultural norms
They beat SnapChat, FB and Instagram on experience.
Censorship is something serious to consider, but these are mainly kids making music videos. They aren't using it to organize campaigns.
I think that's a dangerously naive interpretation of the platform (or any platform really), particularly when it involves children and young adult minds.
If I had a teenage daughter, I'd feel much more comfortable with her using the Chinese tik-tok than whatever tabloid-level trash Snapchat is pushing these days. Some of these American media companies have just gotten weird
* Songs glorifying violence
* Songs about drugs
* (Partial) nudity
* Songs "belonging" to controversial groups and movements.
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/14/tiktok-has-mountain-view-off...
The US controls its domestic market - just as China controls their domestic market - and when it comes to going back and reviewing the TikTok / Musical.ly combination it can dictate terms across the app stores which are all US controlled.
The US can say: we're going to ban your combined entity from all global app stores by forcing Google and Apple to comply with our position on that merged entity (TikTok + Musical.ly).
Google and Apple resist? Say hello to national security based sanctions. They will immediately comply, no more questions asked.
The US can instantly, globally kill TikTok, for all intents and purposes. TikTok would disappear from most global app store availability within a week, from Canada to Australia. It would probably only exist in China.
It's unfair? Tell Qualcomm - NXP that. That was blocked solely out of spite by China. This is an economic conflict with China. When China lets US Internet companies have proper, full access to their market maybe the US will relent and start playing 'fair.'
These ridiculous double standards from China are not free trade, and we should stop pretending it is.
Your argument veers unreasonably so into nationalism; there's no reason they shouldn't instead start investing money in Europe, or one of the dozens of other countries that could use US funds well in Asia.
Complaining that American companies can't invest in China is strange, given that until fairly recently, the flow of investment was almost 100% in that direction. It's only in the last few years that Chinese companies have begun investing significantly in American companies.
As for "operat[ing] in China," American companies have a massive presence in China. Where are you getting the idea that American (or foreign) companies can't operate in China? It's the most important market for all sorts of Western companies. The restrictions on tech companies, specifically, have to do with political censorship. Companies that censor have access.
Or are you claiming that foreign investment into local companies hurts local companies? If so, please justify our past three decades of policy towards Asia, Africa, South America, and the post-Soviet Eastern Europe. Foreign investment into those countries owns a lot of key businesses and infrastructure, but for some reason, very few firms originating in those countries have significant investments in the US.
If openness to foreign investment is a good thing, why do you care about making it quid-pro-quo? If it's a bad thing, why do we push so hard for it?
There are a few instances where that's true (there are also a few instances where Chinese companies are not allowed to acquire U.S. companies or operate in the U.S.) but you said "I would support a wholesale ban on Chinese acquisitions of American companies". So again are you insinuating that at this moment, no American companies are allowed to acquire Chinese companies or operate in China?
Company - Sales in China - Share in China
Apple $44.8 billion 19.6%
Intel $14.8 billion 23.6%
Qualcomm $14.6 billion 65.4%
Boeing $11.9 billion 12.8%
Micron $10.4 billion 51.1%
Broadcom $9.4 billion 53.7%
The list goes on. S&P 500 firms had nearly $160 billion in sales in China in 2018.1. https://www.marketwatch.com/story/trade-war-watch-these-are-...
To avoid said double standards.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Committee_on_Foreign_Investm...
If you'd review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and make your substantive points more thoughtfully when posting here, we'd appreciate it.
It seems like the Chinese could be successful in duplicating SV even in a non democratic context.
Today it is just a way for me to burn 15 minutes, but I see plenty of potential and make the concerns of censorship and ownership valid concerns.
It's still super easy to skip by them.
Not to say that TikTok doesn't have any revenue at all, they have ads.
Why was it shuttered? It seemed like such a short-sighted move. Vine had such cachet and was fun to use & create on it. RIP
I suspect (b) can be explained primarily through ignorance.
They see a fun app, they play with it. If they're even aware of censorship issues or geopolitical power games, that seems very distant from some app that amuses them for a few minutes a day.
Everyone knows the stuff they buy is manufactured in China, and the old timers holding weird grudges from the 1970s are long gone.
There is no economic incentive for anyone to bring this up at any time during any transaction.
I've found sites that do "made in america" generally, but ideally I'd like a site that allows something like "sort by distance to manufacturer" - I'd like to preferentially support businesses proportionally to how geographically local they are.
Would also be interested in sites that have some sort of curated directory of companies that have good labor relations, quality controls, environmental impact, etc.
Unless other nations began to intrude on their daily life people don't care what those nations do so they may as well not exist. Part of why China has been in the minds of (some) Americans lately is its becoming obvious they are trying to apply their censorious nature to US citizens on US soil, sometimes using US companies.
And, yeah, I'm well aware that the US does similar things to other countries. And some people in other countries on this site complain about that too. It doesn't mean they're just grinding some political axe though.
Do you think people in Hong Kong and Taiwan feel like nations are "all but obsolete"? South/North Korea? Tibet? Crimea? This idea of nations being obsolete feels like a fairly privileged position.
It's long been my opinion that you simply cannot destroy the west without mutually assured destruction, so nukes are out. You can't invade and subsequently operate because Americans will never acquiesce to foreign rule, and we are individually armed.
The only way to undo the US/west is to have it undo itself. Seed dissent and promote divisions and hatred among its people. Maybe I was shielded from this as a kid, but it seems these divisions are hatred are sharply on the rise as of late, and it's not outside the realm of possibility this is due to foreign influence via social networks.
I myself had no idea they were Chinese, despite working in the space. I wouldn’t expect any average teen to know they are Chinese either
(B) How would the average consumer know it's Chinese? They totally rebranded it from their mainland product and in fact the social network itself is totally isolated, so you can't even find Chinese people on it.
TikTok is a better app than Vine was. It has far more features (visual effects, etc) and does a good job of making them easy to use. This all translates into better growth and retention.
TikTok was also very well marketed. Lots of slick online ads that went straight to their target demographic. I'm not sure if Vine ever knew quite what it wanted to be.
Facebook probably had a dream of becoming a global political influence broker and sell mandate to the highest bidder but I think the people who control the guys with the guns are not especially thrilled to play this game.
And likewise, those US companies have also drawn similar regulatory attention.
I absolutely do not understand why there is so much hate for Chinese people, Chinese companies, or the Chinese government. Literally everything has flaws, and Western Europe and USA have plenty of them.
If you are not willing to say "China does xyz but actually also my country does something similar to xyz too, and it's definitely bad"...
...then at the very least, please do not act as if your statements about Chinese nationals are 100% true for every individual. Humans are humans, they differ in meaningful ways but they also deserve dignity and respect.
Your comment seems to conflate all of that criticism with “hate for Chinese people,” which seems unfair and disingenuous since I and presumably many people opposed to the CCCP feel that way because of the fate of all the people currently in China’s borders and subjugated by the regime.
But I would really like to understand why there is a double standard in the minds of "my fellow Westerners".
Boeing, Raytheon, Booz Allen Hamilton, Halliburton, Lockheed, and the whole Washington aparatus in general have been (in)directly responsible for the deaths of millions of innocent people in the Middle East, yet I am still happy to use Instagram and Whatsapp and Youtube.
Similarly I will use TikTok concurrently while understanding that the Chinese government has locked 1 million Uighurs in a concentration camp. Surely, not every Chinese citizen voted for this idea. So we shouldn't make assumptions about what "Chinese people" are like
> please do not act as if your statements about Chinese nationals
I think it's misleading to bring up the Chinese people in this way: the "hate," if it can even be called that, is for the Chinese government and the CCP. The real or imagined influence of the CCP over Chinese companies is causing the latter to be viewed with greater suspicion.
The Chinese people/Chinese nationals as a group aren't being viewed as antagonists (though unfortunate abbreviations like using "the Chinese" for "the Chinese government" do confuse things sometimes). If anything, I'd bet most people who are critical of the CPP, etc. would see the Chinese people sympathetically as closer to victims than anything else.
You may only hate the government, but you should be aware that many of those who seem to be on your side criticising the CPC do in fact hate everything Chinese. They think that not only the government, but all Chinese people are untrustworthy; that all Chinese companies are mere fronts for the government that should not be allowed to operate abroad; that Chinese people should be banned from Twitter/Facebook/Wikipedia/GitHub because they're brainwashed anyway and their viewpoints therefore invalid; and that their livelihoods don't matter because they stole American jobs.
I don't think a majority thinks like that, but these viewpoints are certainly present on HN. (Not as strong in this thread, but enough to be noticable in general.) So when someone complains about hate for China, don't think they mean your opinions, but be aware that the complaint is quite justified.
If TikTok is banned by the US because of the actions of the Chinese government, then we are no better than the Chinese government who have banned countless "American" apps, as if apps should even have a nationality in the first place.
Another example: trademarks allow superior brands to win over time. The enforcement of trademarks is "the government getting involved".
Nobody would care if TikTok were Taiwanese or South Korean.
To be clear, I don't like the idea of foreign state controlled major social platforms opaque to US oversight. I'm commenting specifically on the argument that TikTok silences Hong Kong supporters.
Not necessarily, the algorithm shows you things you are interested in. I see China, Golden Retrievers and various songs I like. You see Trump because your eyeballs got locked on the screen. So you will see more Trump.
There are a few US companies that might, but Google isn't going to be it. Social sharing isn't in Google's blood, and they've never succeeded before with their $1,000,000,000+ spent on attempts.
Youtube has done a lot of stupid things lately that really do feel like it is an external political agenda being forced on them, not an internal one being forced by misguided placation of shareholders.
"Your boy started it first. He broke mine's leg!"
"Yeah, a cracked head is not even remotely similar to a broken leg!"
Moral of the story: Broken legs are normal.
From the article, I know that the new headline is more precise. But it's much less informative, I wouldn't have clicked the article under this name.
As for whether the headline says TikTok or ByteDance, the only thing I care about is what readers will complain about least. If we make it say ByteDance, that's correct, but people will accuse us of trying to bury the lede because no one has heard of ByteDance. (Why on earth would we do that? Obvious answer: we must be controlled by the Chinese state, or some other sinister interest. How people come up with this stuff...)
The problem is that if it says TikTok, people will complain about the title being incorrect. I've flipped it the other way for now; let's see what's worse.
I don't envy your work. :)
FWIW, I didn't suspect any foul play... the ByteDance is more accurate but also totally opaque.
M5 Hosting is also known as M5 Computer Security out of San Diego.
These firms are a strange choice for a place like YCombinator to host I think.
It's a small hosting company with good support. It's a nice fit with the spirit of this community. I have no idea what alternate names they have.
In this case, the article title is in my judgment misleading—not hugely so, but enough to be worth changing. We changed it to language from the first paragraph, which is where articles typically say what they're really about. If that's obfuscating, then the article obfuscates itself.
HN sort of reminds me of China -- a dictatorship with zero transparency and a penchant for manipulation.
Edit: Can't forget the spineless bootlickers who are hopelessly devoted to the state! You know you've struck a nerve when the best 'reply' they can offer is a silent downvote.
I hope HN readers have gotten smart enough to notice how when commenters make grandiose claims like this about manipulation, they never provide links. That's because the facts never support the grandiose claim.
Curious to see what the real reason might have been, I skimmed through the last 30 or so titles with Blizzard in them and didn't find one we'd edited in this way, or even at all. Perhaps I missed it. But whatever we did with any such title, it would have been because of the site guideline: "Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize."
Outrage culture signaling with respect to language is always so fascinating.
Where is tactful diplomacy, cooperation and building mutual rapport when dealing with China?
But if just one foreign social network app manages to divert some serious attention of US teenagers from Facebook for the first time in Internet history, THAT of course is a threat to national security.
Seriously...is this a parody?
I'm not sure I'd call that "Everything's fine"
That reminds me of Soviet Union. Government choosing what kind of propaganda citizens should watch.
> He cited questions about why TikTok had “only had a few videos of the Hong Kong protests that have been dominating international headlines for months.”
Does politburo^W democratic government has a right to decide that a privately owned app must show Honkong protest videos? If yes, then what is the minimum quota of Honkong protest videos the app needs to meet? Should other apps, like dating or chess apps, show Honkong protest videos too?
> The company has said U.S. user data is stored in the United States
They should not. The data are better protected from such US senators if stored in China.
> Any platform owned by a company in China which collects massive amounts of data on Americans is a potential serious threat to our country
And what about US companies collecting data on foreign citizens?
> Chinese company may be censoring politically sensitive content
Some might call it moderation.