# You can’t play on both sides of the Great Firewall

Source: https://restofworld.org/2024/exporter-tiktok-ban-us-china-firewall

## Summary

The U.S. is close to banning TikTok, with the House having passed a bill and the Senate vote still pending, and the author argues that the logic behind a ban reflects a drift toward digital mercantilism, with private companies used as resources in great-power conflicts. Lawmakers' core concern is that ByteDance runs social networks in both China and the U.S., and there is no guarantee that Chinese censorship and legal access procedures for Douyin won't spill over onto TikTok. The article notes that Google's abandoned Chinese search project, revealed by a whistleblower in 2018, suggests it is difficult for online services to operate on both sides of the Great Firewall.

## Article

The U.S. is once again on the cusp of banning TikTok. After last week’s House vote, TikTok is just a Senate vote away from being barred from operating in the U.S. — pending a sale, of course. Passing the Senate is no easy feat: The RESTRICT Act was introduced in the Senate just last year and never made it through the chamber. But it’s still a real threat, and the biggest one ByteDanceiByteDanceByteDance is a Chinese internet technology company that owns TikTok and Douyin, a Chinese version of TikTok with a successful e-commerce arm.READ MORE has faced from the U.S. government since Trump was in charge.

I’m not going to rehash all the arguments for and against a ban: Sen. Warner made a good case for it in our interview last year, and Max Read has a more recent piece from the skeptical side. But whichever side you favor, you should take note of how the logic of a ban is settling into a kind of digital mercantilism, using private companies as resources in the ongoing great-power conflicts.

For lawmakers, the problem is that ByteDance is operating social networks in both China and the United States

Few people are honestly arguing that TikTok is inherently damaging — or at least no more damaging than smartphones and social media generally. Even within U.S. intelligence briefings, the risks presented in favor of a ban are “not unique or specific to TikTok,” according to some briefed lawmakers. If there were a specific problem with how TikTok is operating, the platform might resolve things with a security plan or some other half-measure — but that doesn’t seem possible.

But for lawmakers, the problem is that ByteDance is operating social networks in both China and the United States. Running Douyin in China requires specific censorship and legal access procedures, and there’s no way to guarantee those procedures won’t spill over onto TikTok. Social networks are powerful and opaque by their nature, and in the context of Chinese censorship and surveillance, that power is hard for U.S. leaders to accept.

The larger lesson is that it’s difficult for an online service to operate on both sides of the Great Firewall. In the long run, it may even be impossible.

Silicon Valley has been slowly learning this lesson for decades. It’s been 15 years since riots in Xinjiang sparked China’s nationwide ban on Facebook. The next year, Google pulled out of mainland China, although it’s never been clear how final the decision was. By 2018, the company was developing a search engine that would abide by Chinese censorship rules, revealed by a whistleblower inside the company. It’s hard to say what would have happened if the project hadn’t become public — but once it was public, it was quickly abandoned as politically unworkable. It now seems unlikely that Google will ever operate in mainland China, and both the U.S. and Chinese governments seem comfortable with the freezeout.

There are still U.S. tech companies operating on both sides of the Great Firewall, but they tend to be delicate about it. Apple and Tesla’s China sales have taken a haircut, as I wrote last week, but they’re still selling billions of dollars worth of products in mainland China every month. Facebook still makes millions selling ads to Chinese companies. China isn’t banning any of the companies outright, but the government is actively encouraging local alternatives and competition will only get tougher in the years to come.

But whether the Senate lets the TikTok ban through or not, it’s hard to miss the writing on the wall. The forces that once pulled the markets closer together are starting to cleave apart. And once the unwinding starts, it’s hard to control how far it will go.

## Comments

**rvolz.eth**: TikTok is web2, would social media popular with web3 be so different, eg drakula.app? 

**timdaub.eth**: I might be missing something, but I don't think there's anything decentralized about the Drakula app. Their value prop is that you can earn money via tokens, and that is enabled by the EVM.

**macbudkowski.eth**: I guess if you operate a client, you'd have to follow the country's laws. 

So, if TikTok was a decentralized protocol and the most popular US client was ran by a Chinese company, I think they'd face the same problems. And the Apple-Google duopoly could probably ban all the alternative Chinese clients.