The security implications of allowing communications on a platform that is subject to the absolute control of a foreign government, seems like a very very bad idea. That can be a lesson learned the easy way or the hard way.
People teeter-totter about righteousness and freedom of choice, but IMO we need to stop feeding the CCP with more power/$$$/influence ... NOW ... Freedom of choice is great when there is fairness and democratic values built in, when the government isn't on some Han-supremacy drug and expansionist motives.
Someone will inevitably respond with whataboutism and smear American companies into the mix as if they're expressing their understanding of hypocracy and one-sidedness. It is supposed to be one-sided. The west offered two-way street which China declined to walk on. So, now all bets are off. Equivalency with the western apps/services/goods is no longer a valid counter argument.
On fair, just, and rational grounds - I am a progressive. In unfair, unjust and irrational waters - I am a conservative.
I dont have any memory of "CCP abuses TikTok to stir unrest in USA" being reported. Is there really such evidence?
If there is evidence, then please just ban the goddamn app out of any mobile smart phone platforms. It's too dangerous to open the lid of such mass bring-washing machine. Even in the Arab-spring, it was just passively allowing the information to propagate organically. No one with sane judgement should allow these apps being used as manipulation tools by any minority group...
reference Goebbels: "I have nothing to hide, so I'm not worried"
Downplay: "They only read my emails and everything I write to sell me stuff better. Sometimes I need stuff. They're helping me!" As if it can only be used to sell and nothing else.
World revolves around self: "Well ads don't affect me." Like it doesn't matter that everyone else is affected even if you aren't.
Completely ignoring the fact that if someone can manipulate you to buy stuff they might be able to use it to manipulate you do do other things. I mean we have political ads. And Coke ads aren't there to sell you coke (they are there to make you feel better about your purchase). Frankly, to me it doesn't even matter if no one has done that yet (I'm aware of the clear evidence that people have) but that we're giving people the ability to do this in mass and in very precise ways. That just leads to a potential turn in democracy. "Just educating people" doesn't solve the problem either. Ads are still effective on smart people. So the question is "are the benefits ~~profits~~ worth the cost?" It is reasonable to think "yes", but I'm a resounding "no."
Yes, we use political ads to "manipulate democracy" and the like, but a mass statewide commercial is a very different thing than an individualized ad targeted to a specific person. At least to me these are very different (and we still have regulations on what you can say in political ads). Where do we draw the line? We talk about data a lot here and what we can model with it. What will ads look like in 20-50 years if we don't draw a line in privacy and technology continues to become more powerful? I think individualized ads will look very different. We do need to determine what level of individualization we can target with an ad, and I don't see much of that happening.
Apple’s infamous walled garden solves this problem to some extent, but introduces others because it lacks due process, leading to corruption where money can solve any problem, and so apps like Tiktok get to abuse their trust with impunity.
Essentially this is what "turnkey tyranny" is: the point at which power is consolidated to such a degree that a malevolent ruler would have the power of a tyrant.
So it has never been about having something to hide or that people aren't using a power malevolently. It is the potential for abuse and that given enough time a power is likely to be abused. Distribution makes it more difficult (but does not eliminate) to abuse power.
With HN's love for federated systems, which essentially operate under similar principles, I'm surprised this is not a more popular concept. The only difference is that we're talking about government officials instead of Moxie.
What?
It's not like this is uncommon either. The US themselves did this under Hamilton's American System and Japan did it in the late 19th century when they maximized goods and technology coming in while trying to keep as much foreign influence out. It's a reasonable strategy and particularly understandable with a historical view of East-Asia, which doesn't have the best experience with opening up to Western companies.
I never really understood where the problem is because China didn't kidnap Apple's CEO and forced them to build factories in China. If Americans think whatever China offers is not worth it they're free not to participate.
America has problems, but your order-of-magnitude calibration is way off if you think a concentration-camp operating (i.e. the real kind with over a million people who committed no crime and are held just for their beliefs and culture) expansionist (Hong Kong, Tibet, Taiwan) totalitarian (speech is monitored and punished in a "go to prison, right away" manner rather than "twitter deleted my racist shit and nothing else happened to me" way) government. So yes, occasionally ineffective democracies that value human rights and freedoms (i.e. the west) is better than the CCP government, and will continue to be better now and into the foreseeable future.
The US invaded Iraq for oil colonization.
Can't answer specifically without knowing who "ours" and "theirs" are, but I can answer generically. Governments that hold elections where more than one genuinely competing party can win if enough voters want to vote for them are better than governments that declare themselves the rulers.
Governments that defend the rights of people to express genuinely competing opinions, regardless of who agrees or disagrees, are better than governments that use or enable coercion to silence opinions they don't want people to hear.
Governments that use pervasive surveillance to monitor and punish people for thought crimes, where having or expressing forbidden opinions is treated as an actual "crime", are worse than governments that don't.
There is clearly a spectrum, and though my Chinese relatives keep pointing out how many US institutions are coming to resemble the Marxist institutions and people resemble the Red Guards they remember, the actual government of China is still far worse. "Since we, the CCP, are the People's Gov't, there is no further need for elections, and anyone who disagrees is an Enemy of The People, needs to be discovered, and deserves to be punished for that crime."
Especially a foreign government that is considered a top adversary by the US and vice-versa.
I'm sure you would argue that Google, MS and Apple are completely independent of the US government.
Yeah, they spend a fortune on lobbying - nonetheless they are very compliant with the US "national security". Keep them downvotes coming, Snowden never blew a whistle.
If I am wrong about the unfettered access, let me know.
National Security letters mean that for 95.75% of the world's population, what you just said applies to the USA.