• slumlordthanatos@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    There’s compelling arguments either way. On one hand, this is a pretty naked attempt to hit at China and control the flow of the US government’s desired information.

    On the other hand, the legislation isn’t technically a ban, but a forced divestment of a corporate asset. The power of the government to force the breakup, dissolution, or divestment of corporate entities is the basis of US antitrust law, and is well established.

    It’s an interesting case.

    • riodoro1@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      The power of the government to force the breakup, dissolution, or divestment of corporate entities is the basis of US antitrust law, and is well established.

      Unless of course the monopoly holder is an american corporation. Then it’s a good monopoly. We’re living in the next gilded age simply because people “forgot” monopolies are bad and those laws remain unused against giants like google, amazon, meta and many many more.

      • HelixDab2@lemm.ee
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        6 months ago

        Are you forgetting that there are currently antitrust lawsuits going against both Amazon and Google? The current administration is absolutely in favor of breaking up monopolies, regardless of where the company is.

        • riodoro1@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          the current administration will go and somehow big corpos will prevail. The politicians only do what the rich allow them to do. The US even has legal corruption.

          • HelixDab2@lemm.ee
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            6 months ago

            If the current administration loses in November, then yeah, it’s pretty likely that Apple, Google, and Amazon will continue to amass more power.

            Sounds like a pretty solid reason to vote for retaining the current administration, yeah? Some check on power v. no check on power?

    • Rusty Shackleford@programming.dev
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      6 months ago

      I imagine that our (U.S.) government’s case resides primarily on the premise that the state may exercise the ability to force divestment of a company with foreign ownership.

      These powers are granted by the National Defense Authorization Act which seeks to prevent imminent national and private security vulnerabilities being exploited by foreign adversaries and agents; the actors here would be specifically the CCP and their intelligence and military apparatus’ shell companies and PMCs.

      The precedents set by U.S. Anti-Trust laws support their position, but the primary argument in the state’s defense are the powers granted by the NDAA.

      I’m only speculating.

    • eldavi@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      On the other hand, the legislation isn’t technically a ban, but a forced divestment of a corporate asset.

      this reminds me of how democrats marketed don’t ask/don’t tell as a “compromise” when in reality military policy already mandated that any and all hints of “non-hetero-ness” on service members must be investigated and dishonorably discharged if they were discovered to be lgbt.

      like don’t ask / don’t tell, the forced divestment is true, but it’s not the reason and the devil is hidden in the details.

      in case you don’t already know: force divestment isn’t a real option because 1) the american government already knows that the chinese government block it and 2) bytedance uses the same algorithm across all of their social media companies so giving away the secret sauce to a competitor is a bad idea when tiktok in the united states makes a relatively small portion of bytedance’s revenue.