Trump says he will ban TikTok through executive action
cnbc.com
cnbc.com
I can't make any sense of that, it seems wrong at so many levels...
He's likely to issue some kind of executive order forcing bytedance to divest tiktok to continue operations. We may see some DoJ or FCC enforcement action that's effectively a "ban" (for users) while only being legally a temporary disruption of service pending compliance (for lawmakers, judges, enforcement agencies, etc to be okay with it). As we have learned over the last 4 years, the president has near absolute control over all federal actions.
I think the safe bet is a bunch of saber rattling that ends with some US entity buying tiktok.
It depends upon what you mean by "can't."
If you mean legal authority to block a specific app, no.
If you mean use his authority to influence & effectively make it happen, he can.
In other words, it is very much a threat with teeth. It would just be a roundabout path for implementation.
This is the #1 mistake people have made over and over with Trump. “He can’t...”, “He won’t...”, “He wouldn’t...”, “He’ll never...”.
He doesn’t play by any rules. You have to assume anything and everything is on the table. If he really wants to ban TikTok he’ll either get it done or scorch the earth trying.
Do you really think once someone says, “Mr. Trump there’s no mechanism for you to legally ban TikTok” he’ll be like, “Oh yeah my bad, I better get back to work on helping America through this pandemic.”
He knows he can say whatever he wants and strongarm whoever he wants. That is his literal playbook!
What Trump does have is the power of government, which will make it awfully easy for Apple and Google to do it for him.
Any notably the power the executive branch holds, which the US classically prided themselves on being strictly limited in scope - as directly opposed to the monarchies the founding fathers resent, has exploded in power since 9/11 under Bush, then later even more so under Obama.
People had been critiquing the power grabs at the time for this exact reasons, knowing that they won't just be used to fight 'terrorism', which was always the pretext.
The fact almost every controversial thing Trump has done outside of congress has been using national security powers is not surprising. That authority was handed to them long ago and was always open to abuse.
The very broad national security laws in the US are the root source of the centralization of power. Simply changing who the president won't stop this train either. A lot of other country's presidents/prime ministers gained tons of power under the guise of counter-terrorism - including Canada and the UK.
Nordstream 2 is a great example. Sanctioning a country that was literally the wall between you and the East is such an extremely stupid move. Just confirms Merkels sentence: "Europe can not rely on the US any longer".
German here and I have to, say: You lost me there, buddy. Even though I despise Putin and all what he stands for, I would now vote for polititians, who take a hard stance here, get the project done and take countermeasures or even sanctions against the US. Mind your own business! You have several catastrophes at home going on, maybe do something about that? We will buy our gas whereever we want to. Thanks for asking, we are doing fine here. So if you don't have a better deal for us kindly leave us alone.
It seems kind of absurd to just ban one of the most popular apps in the world over night like this, especially with a US company about to buy it. On the other hand, I agree that China has had an unfair advantage in terms of banning US apps. But an overnight ban? This could have been played better.
The interesting question is: What's the end-game here? Europe seems to be heading in the same direction. We obviously want global social networks, and no country is happy with a winner-take-all where they're not the winner. So my (optimistic) guess is that we'll end up with federated (or otherwise distributed/decentralised) networks.
Given that even the Biden campaign has prohibited their workers from installing the TikTok app, there isn't likely to be much of a partisan fight over this issue.
I mean here in France when the government or the assembly trie to pass a law that is potentially unconstitutional there is an emergency review process by the "constitutional council" that can veto all or parts of the law that infringe.
This process just happened recently because our president tried to pass a "hate law" on social media that was deemed unconstitutional because it had too many unpredictable side effects on free speech principles.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Emergencies_Act
2. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jul/20/trump-john-y...
I know that the US does have the legal framework to deem the app a security threat based on its foreign ownership. Grindr, the gay hookup app, essentially had a forced sale from its Chinese owners [1].
However, if TikTok is sold to MS, and all user data is held in the US, I don't see any rationale that gives the government the power to ban the app, and MS certainly has the resources to challenge any attempted ban in the courts.
1. https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/6/21168079/grindr-sold-chine...
Wonder if WeChat is next. That would be fairly effective in prevent overseas Chinese from communicating with the mainland and a lot of mom and pop businesses that operate through Wechat like the students who buy products for people back in China and advertise and transfer money using WeChat.
We'll be back to buying calling cards and dialing telephones, but I guess this is the era of decoupling one way or the other.
Maybe people will have to invent some kind of transformer software, like you plug a western chat app on one side and it passes messages through a third party relay to a chinese messaging app.
Yes, now it's the US doing desperate acts of authoritarianism out of weakness.
That's what XMPP and matrix is. Self host your own Chinese instance to communicate with people there.
It's the next generation that will truly suffer, because they will belong to neither country and be looked at as potential fifth columns by both.
An American-Chinese Pacific War is a projection of American insecurity.
In the long run, without its 19th and 20th century grievances, the Chinese do not care about America. Full stop.
One day the Chinese GDP per capita (currently 8,000 USD) will reach the Taiwanese GDP per capita (about 25,000 USD), the Chinese GDP will triple and nothing America does will ever be interesting to the Chinese again. Except for a Pacific War, which brings no benefit to the Chinese, outside of a few small satrapies.
If we Americans recognize the Chinese tendency is towards isolationism, a tendency with historic precedents, there will be no armed conflicts down the line.
Somewhat OT, but nothing has changed there. Phone plans minutes also become useless after a while.
TikTok is getting mainstream in US.
That is the difference
So as a matter of principle, at least, I'm fine with it. I can't say I feel great about the wisdom of banning Tiktok in particular, but I won't let that confuse me into disagreeing with the underlying principle.
Haven't the most egregious erosions of civil liberties (Patriot Act for example) been implemented using the same argument? Not commenting on the validity of your position specifically, but your reasoning for it seems like it could be applied to just about anything regardless of how well it fits into the idea of a free and open democracy
The app will be banned from the stores, advanced users could still install the app by getting the APK.
It's possible for this to completely backfire though. Suppose Microsoft pays tens of billions to ByteDance to acquire TikTok's US operations and then the app tanks in popularity or fails to reach profitability. This seems especially possible given how new TikTok is and the faddish rise and fall of many other video-based platforms (Vine, HQTrivia, Pariscope, etc.)
Twitter, FB, Alphabet excercise absolute control over censoring people they do not like(who are most likely wrong but that is not the point). Saw what happened with those docs video that Trump retweeted?
Open internet is long gone.
In a way this gives Chinese apps an immediate advantage (as some are indirectly calling out in this comment section). If you want to reach out to someone in China, you have to use a Chinese company's app. Since social media is mostly a winner take all (or at least has a major snowball affect), this helps the Chinese social media company's grow even bigger. Now you already have one social media app for contacting people in China installed, why not use that app for contacting others?
The West has always said that the Chinese bans to Western social media and tech companies were authoritarian and antidemocratic. How is this less so?
Bans per se aren't antidemocratic, we already have plenty of banned stuff. The only thing that can be antidemocratic is their purpose.
None of this is to say that I think the executive action is a good idea, but there is a middle ground between “a bad idea” and “literally the same as the CCP”.
Also, countries aren't people and can't have friends. Countries have allies and opponents. This colors every interaction.
I’ve never heard of it described that way. I’ve heard it called “anticompetitive” or “protectionist”.
I mean, the US bans Kinder Surprise eggs, but I wouldn’t call that “authoritarian”.
It was never a reason of moral. There are all sorts of gates like that in many us industries which favor us compagnies
In the literal sense for a TikTok ban to be democratic it only has to be voted on. We can call it 'democratic' if a democratically elected politician can legally prohibit the app.
China is openly show everyone that they'll censor and force state-backed monopolies in every area they have control over. There is nothing wrong regarding morals if means help to stop totalitarian system from spreading.
The US will read all your messages; but you can say what you like in them. The ban isn't for authoritarian reasons; it is a fairly pure economic/geopolitical play. You can say whatever crazy stuff you like as far as the government is concerned.
Policy A: "Any social media platform that refuses to censor opinions the government doesn't like is banned"
Policy B: "Foreign social media platforms are only allowed to operate in our country if our own social media platforms are allowed to operate on the same terms in theirs"
Can you see why Policy A is antidemocratic but Policy B isn't?
One reason why is that Policy B is viewpoint-neutral – the ban has nothing directly to do with what viewpoints the social media platform allows or disallows, it is simply demanding regulatory reciprocity ("We won't ban yours if you don't ban ours"). Whereas, in Policy A, the ban is part of the government trying to control which opinions are allowed to be expressed, which is anti-democratic.
(I haven't heard a clear explanation from the Trump administration of what their reasons for banning TikTok are. It is possible those reasons include Policy B, it is possible those reasons are completely unrelated.)
The Chinese internet censorship isn't only censorship, it is also protectionism under disguise.
There is no reason to offer market access to the Chinese companies when China refuses to reciprocitate
Let's just stop beating war drums.
Of course things have changed a lot since the East Indian Trading company, kings and what not. So maybe protectionism works better in a global market interconnected. Maybe the Chinese model is simply the future for us, but probably not.
Personally I hope for a more GDPR styles approach to social media in general. There is no doubt China is spying through TikTok, and that’s bad, but I don’t really want Facebook or Google to sell my information either.
I notice your use of the past tense there; it did work well for the West but the situation in China is very different - they have been able to leapfrog to a Western level of technology without having a free and open society. So the rules are different now. The real test is now, starting at the same level, who can sustain it and who can pull away.
I'm surprised more people haven't mentioned GDPR. Yes, it was a huge amount of hassle and a lot of work (inspiring many memes). However, it did make people realise how much of their data was being used.
GDPR's implementation was pretty poor. Like how every website is legally required to tell users they use cookies, which is pretty redundant as there are many ways to track users and cookies are just one of them. It made very little difference to likes of Google and Facebook, who know where you are, who your friends and colleagues are what you like, what you like to buy and even what you are thinking at times - now that scares me!
GDPR had a lot of potential but it has been lost in it's current form. Cookie warnings seem like something a politician would do, not something someone with any real understanding of data security. Very little has changed especially for the big players. Hell Google Chrome was recently caught collecting data when in incognito mode. A Google spokesman stated "Incognito mode in Chrome gives you the choice to browse the internet without your activity being saved to your browser or device" - that doesn't make it ok to collect the information and send it to themselves. It's pretty deceptive and this is recently, long after GDPR was introduced.
PS: The comparison to the East India Company (EIC) is a good one. The CCP is very much like the EIC (ironically it was the EIC supplying the opium for the opium wars). They have their own military, have a huge amount of power politically, openingly admits to using underhand tactics and breaking laws to enforce monopolies, as they are virtually untouchable.
It’s weird to point out this double standard but then apparently take the side of both countries banning foreign media companies.
The debates around Facebook, Twitter and so on regarding political speech and misinformation is bad enough, and those companies at least don't have malicious intents and are criticized mostly for their inaction. With a company operating under Chinese law this is a whole other can of worms.
The defence budget of the US is in large part the gov's R&D budget and national economic programme. 'National Security' is now its headline for its international economic programme.
https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dict...
Now the West also needs to ban <X> (in this case, a social media platform) to function and is no better than its rival. If anything, this would prove the CCP was always right when it applied such measures in the past.
This sets a scary -albeit interesting- precedent.
It does no such thing. China was given market access under the precise promise of the Chinese would likewise open their own markets. They did not do that. Then they explicitly started banning American companies, conducting unfair trade practices, and more. All we're seeing now is a long await readjustment to reciprocity. Your logic is bizarre. If two parties were in a Mexican stand off, and both agreed to put down their guns only for one to not actually put them down, then the other party that put their gun down can pick it back up just fine. That other party IS better than it's rival because it acted in good faith, and it was it's rival who was deceitful.
Not good idea.
It is not about fairness it is just about power.
It always struck me how people in one nation can apply a single issue to defend his nation when there are many other issues that invalidate the argument about the fairness of his own nation actions.
Adding an extra wrong on top, doesn't make a right.
If it stops Chinese corporations getting an advantage great. But it seems ublikely to happen while US companies have the advantage, and once they start to lose it, it will probably be too late.
Even splitting doesn't help. You can try to split the main social network off from some other profit-generating activities, but they would probably start those up again, after some time. You can't split the social network, because then users of the smaller parts just join the bigger part again.
Currently we don't know how to do it, except encourage new companies to rise.
Lack of reciprocity is one of the weakest, I think.
If you want to talk to someone in China, you have to use WeChat and have your entire conversation mined by the CCP. There’s no encryption and no alternative. The writing has been on the wall for years that the US will be left with no choice but to blacklist Chinese apps in the same manner.
Thus it may make more sense to ban TikTok than WeChat. And always assume the CCP is listening to unencrypted communication. In fact, they are probably mining our comments in Hacker News.
Seems to me that it's not banned at all, they just release a region-specific version for a specific market.
They're not.
Bing has been in China forever.
Western platforms could always compete in China if they assent to domestic censorship laws like every Chinese platform. That's "fair" considering how onerous and costly compliance is. Western platforms simply have not invested in the necessary mass human moderation until the last few years, after confronted with the same violence that forced Chinese platforms to lock down post 2009 minority riots. Hence why Facebook and Google was open to engineering Chinese compliant versions after improving their moderation infrastructure following failed revolutions, genocides, mass shootings.
The reality is TikTok operates in US under US laws like how Bing operates in China under Chinese laws. There's nothing inherently unfair. The issue is asymmetric vulnerability due to fundamentally different governance systems. US could never leverage even western platforms operating legally in China to undermine China due to Chinese content controls - see China deleting diplomatic tweets on Chinese social media. But China can potentially leverage TikTok operating legally to undermine US. But instead of transferring TikTok to US ownership, which is merely anticompetitive, Trump decides to ban via executive action which is... upright undemocratic. That said, it's totally justifiable on security basis. But just remember China-hawks in current admin have no problem becoming the thing they wish to fight. That's what Americans should fear.
They get the best of all worlds.
The Chinese are relegated to using whatever is available in their country whereas western citizens can use whatever is best in the world.
So yes, it’s extremely unfair on the Chinese people.
(These ideas are from Henry Kissinger's on China, Destined for War by Graham T. Allison and The China Dream by Liu Mingfu)
And people have been living in Europe for thousands of years too. The "4000 year history" is a CCP thing they sell to the populace to make their dictatorship seem more legitimate. It's pretty stupid, most cultures have been around for at least 1000 years.
What "real chaos" has "China" (which is, by the way, nowhere homogenous) seen that we have not seen?
EDIT: I suppose the Great Leap Forward was an example of "real chaos", to an extent we haven't seen in the West. But where was China's 4,000 years of history to stop the deaths of millions of their own?
Genuinely asking and want to remain open-minded about this.
0:https://www.gadgetsnow.com/slideshows/10-popular-apps-and-we...
1: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.news18.com/amp/news/tech/ch...
However, I think why this feels unsettling even if it just mirrors what China's done is because up to now there was a sense that the US has a stronger economy, society, and culture than China, and these restrictions China put on US companies reflected their weakness and insecurity. But now the US is doing what China's done for decades. It shatters that aura of American superiority, implies that China's been right all along on matters of national security, and foreshadows a future where previously sacred assumptions of American democracy become obsoleted by new technology. I'm reminded of hand weavers smashing machine looms during the dawn of the industrial revolution.
To give some push back:
Currently the US is in an election year and both the left and right are concerned about foreign interference.
Being said Tik Tok is a Chinese based company and following priority Chinese law. Couldn't they propogate direct election interference under the precived guise of being a US private corporation bc of US public's consumption and get away with it?
A counter point could be made for an actual US corporation doing the same thing, but a nation state doing it would be a different issue entirely.
Now someone else banned those channels so that you lose the edge. Not only that, the other guy also creates something similarly popular and wait -- it is not under your control!
What would you do?
It certainly hopes to provoke a cycle of retaliatory escalation, because it's an election year stunt looking to distract from, well, a whole lot of other things with a manufactured international crisis to create a rally-around-the-flag effect.
It will probably fail as a political strategy somewhat less spectacularly than “let’s avoid having a national strategy to control the COVID-19 pandemic and behind-the-scenes obstruct state efforts because the early impacts are in Democratic-governed states and we can leverage the impacts for political gains by blaming the governors.”
This is only about hurting China and TikTok and NOT improving safety of US users.
If the US cared it would just change legislation to require rights be protected for social media companies - but that would impact Facebook so that's not going to happen.
I (an individual) would be happy to see TikTok banned, along with Twitter/Facebook/Instagram/etc, because I see them as vain wastes of time with a sinister twist. But I've also met teenagers, and even been one! So I can guess how they might respond to a government-imposed ban on a new and interesting vice.
And I (a citizen) am deeply suspicious of being told that I must not know something. It smells like corruption and tyranny. The belief that knowledge should be free is tattooed on my soul (and my skin).
Tit-for-tat only works in the absence of moral imperatives.
but a PWA wouldn't stop this. Most of the mobile APIs aren't available on PWA and if the site is blocked via route it won't help
Being ignorant of the special area of law that is “Presidential emergency powers regarding trade with foreign nations” isn't necessarily being really weak on US law generally, though that narrow area of law ends up contravening a lot of what you might correctly understand elsewhere when it is triggered.
It's not clear exactly what the content of the order will be, without which we can't really begin to assess whether he has the power to issue it, but there are certainly, at a minimum, things he could due to obstruct their ability to fully interact with US markets under Presidential emergency powers. Given that Trump's I formal descriptions preceding executive actions have not been a particularly good guide to the details of the actions, I don't know that any deeper analysis wouldn't largely wasted.
I'm a huge proponent of regulating big tech companies, but all regulation needs to done under the framework of public and universal rules established in advance, not randomly banning individual apps without proof of wrongdoing or a way to mount a defense.
The state absolutely can order parties not to participate in any way with trade prohibited under it's Constitutional power to regulate international trade.
Which includes Presidential directives issued under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.
He's not talking about banning the TikTok app narrowly, but banning TikTok from operating in the USA (which, assuming he's acting under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, could also including either preventing or directing and compelling sale, transfer, etc., of any of their property — or any property in which any foreign person holds an interest.)
Does anybody did inspect the binary and found a back door in the app?
In am working in video and I find that the tool they did develop allowing kids to remix video succeeded were previous startup failed...
Got it from this reddit thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/fxgi06/not_new_news...
It'd be awesome if the reverse engineered code was on Github or something. I found this repo but wasn't able to look deep into it yet, so take with a grain of salt: https://github.com/augustgl/tiktok_source
penetrum has this nice white paper:
Penetrum_TikTok_Security_Analysis_whitepaper.pdf
This is their conclusion:
"After extensive research, we have found that not only is TikTok a massive security flaw waiting to happen, but the ties that they have to Chinese parties and Chinese ISP’s make it a very vulnerable source of data that still has more to be investigated. Data harvesting, tracking, fingerprinting, and user information occurs throughout the entire application. As a US company, we feel that it is our responsibility to raise awareness of this extensive data harvesting to TikTok’s 1 billion users."
There is bad coding in the app but is that enough for the ban?
They also seems to get telemetry data, who does not :-)
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-facebook-stake/peter-thie...
And GoogleBook aren't using data collection in service of major world power that is, in many senses, an antagonist to the western world, and we have avenues for oversight/reform available to us that we don't necessarily have with tiktok. That's not to say I think we should ban tiktok, but that contemplation of a ban doesn't bring with it the implication that GoogleBook would need the same treatment.
Avenues that seem to be working oh-so-well, with the NSA continuing to operate PRISM and hand out NSLs and gag orders?
I also believe that we need to have a healthy concern for Chinese friendly agents/resources acting in concert, even on (or maybe especially on) technical sites like HN.
But "their" isn't Google or Facebook but the surveillance agencies that are directly plugged in. Much like of what TikTok is accused of doing.
I know you don’t want to hear it, I know you think that you are exceptional and you are not like the others who ban apps and websıtes but I am going to say it anyway as a record for the future.
When Turkey banned YouTube or Twitter of course it was banned to “protect the rights of the citizens”.
Theses things always happen for noble reasons.
Welcome to the world where the government decides what app or service you can use.
I am sure that it’s necessary to keep you safe from these evil foreigners. Could have regulated user data safety but ban is the way to go.
The only downside is, we can no longer argue that in a proper democracies governments don’t ban stuff. USA was the example used to demand rights when people were protesting against totalitarian governments and it’s gone. Now the governments would ban Twitter Facebook and everything else when they feel like doing so and will say that it is for national security reason, look even the USA is doing it!
BTW, Turkey is preparing to ban Twitter again. Of course it is to preserve the rights of its citizens, it always is. China, Cuba, Iran, Russia, Turkey - the usual suspects that ban access, they also ban for the greater good. It is always for national security or to preserver the rights of its citizens.
See: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/21/style/tiktok-trump-rally-...
The US Administration is acting like a desperate regime that knows exactly what it is doing trying to generate a foreign crisis to distract from domestic political problems to generate a rally-around-the-flag effect.
Not sure where this is coming from. TikTok is being banned out of national security interests, not because it is an advanced level of technology that the US thinks it can't compete with.
Now you could argue that's a classic Dubya style ad hoc excuse designed to mask the government's true intentions with this, but I really don't think so. China's behavior is a legitimate threat for which shrugging and saying "let the free market handle it" seems an incredibly dangerous stance to take in my opinion.
"The US needs to recognize they're behind the game and behave like adults" okay so who is the adults? China? Then this IS behaving like adults as I outlined.
https://www.lawfareblog.com/tiktok-and-law-primer-case-you-n...
In short, a president has substantial powers (granted by Congress via IEEPA and CFIUS) to institute a ban or force a divestment of any company "engaged in interstate commerce in the United States", if "national emergency" or "national security" is involved. So, legally, it seems that president can ban TikTok, under certain conditions (that may not be so difficult to achieve). The link above only explains the current legal framework, not whether banning the TikTok is in itself a good or a bad thing. IANAL, so I can't judge the competence of the presented arguments, but it is written by a respected law professor.
The facts: we gain almost nothing by having tiktok around. We lose nothing by banning it, and gain a little bit of buffer against possible threats like election meddling, data mining for nefarious purposes and other things. Completely leaving politics aside, I basically support this.
We gain an outlet or creativity that's particularly fun for teens. You might as well say that we gain nothing by banning skateboards, video games, or rock music.
I would agree more with the ban of there was any evidence of nefarious data mining by TikTok. Outside of weird Internet rumors they only seem to collect basic user data and whatever you write in your profile.
What about if all non-US countries start reasoning like you and ban Youtube, Facebook, ...?
You lose freedom.
Would it be OK to also ban Burguers? They're unhealthy and you lose "nothing" by banning them.
That's bold. There used to be a principle of freedom that allowed things not explicitly banned, and banning things would require a good reason.
Is this kind of capriciousness the new normal now?
Except, you know, our rights to the government not controlling our media.
I'm not partial to tiktok at all but this is way to much of a big government move than I feel comfortable with.
Isn't this a violation of our first amendment rights?
No matter how they try to spin off or rebrand this product or abandon ties to the old parent company, I’d never trust it as much as something entirely new.
If the NSA tried putting out a social media network, nobody would trust it. If they sold it off completely and had zero official NSA employees, nobody would trust it. And rightfully so. TikTok feels the same to me.
Or maybe they just want to ban TikTok and the above conspiracy theory is BS.
Arguably it would be a violation of the Bill of Attainder Clause.
I see this as the same thing as banning Huawei.
But from a truly practical point of view, TikTok will just end up replaced by a homegrown version. The real question is, who's homegrown version will be the winner?
I believe FB and Snap are both privately working on a replacement. Not sure about others.
Also the next TikTok clone is going to be a massive succes.
Instagram has already come up with Instagram Reels. After India banned TikTok, Instagram released Reels to the Indian market within the week, and I've got to say it's pretty darn similar to tiktok, so essentially just capitalising on their already humongous user base and the ban.
https://www.businessinsider.com/instagram-reels-tiktok-compe...
On one side, there is the concern over China’s connection with Tiktok and their foreign influence on the US.
On the other side, shutting off access to Tiktok allows more domestic control over what mass communication options people have to interact with each other.
There’s something to be gained for someone(s) in both cases.
France may have a the same foreign influence concerns issue with the non-transparency of the FB news feed algo.
I welcome the continued missteps
Yes, but he has probably decided that the people who are active TikTok users AND Trump voters are not a large part of the base.
However, Iran banned Facebook merely because it was being used by protesters to share content about police brutality during protest.
So I'm not sure if that's a fair comparison.
I think governments are realizing that social networks are important strategic service because of the amount of data they capture. Before internet era countries were protecting way less data about their citizens with their teeths.
If we do introduce the legal/logistical mechanism for the federal government to be able to do that, I can assure you they won’t stop at just tiktok.
The success of the STAR market is a good start. Hope the momentum can sustain this decade, then we may see the tables turned.
But it's also clear that TikTok is under the control of the CCP, at least to the extent the CCP wants that to be the case at any given time.
"He’s now president for life. President for life. And he’s great, and look, he was able to do that. I think it’s great. Maybe we’ll have to give that a shot someday"
That's the travesty. Personally I'm okay with banning tiktok but not this way. The way matters.
During a time of such intense civil unrest, when people are letting strong emotions and groupthink guide them in lieu of reason, I have a feeling this that many will be quick to jump on a bandwagon that's unduly sympathetic to TikTok.
I think I have a pretty good idea of how the media (both social and mainstream) is going to portray this. They'll suddenly forget about the long list of legitimate reasons why TikTok is majorly problematic, and present it as being something where poor little TikTok is being unfairly targeted by big evil xenophobic Trump.
You could make a legitimate argument for why it's unconstitutional or sets a bad precedent for Trump to do this, but that unfortunately doesn't change the one-dimensional way most people are gonna see this.
People have such short memories, and media cycles are too quick. I'm the least fan of Trump, but this is truly one area that the US is taking a stronger stance on than even in my own home country (which I considered more moral, until now).
The national security angle is laughable because we have no such controls over the data held by US companies. Would be trivial for a spy to pipe data out of FAANG to the country they serve - because we have no real privacy laws at the national level. Just look at how a 17 year old breached Twitter.
If social media apps are national security concerns then we should treat them like we do typical defense contractors (background checked/nat security clearance for employees, no foreign nationals on board, control foreign investment, export limitations, etc)
I think this is a retalitory action because of its use to mess with his reelection. Brad Pascale got demoted over the Tulsa debacle and this is Trump's way to get back at the TikTok users.
While checking my facts, I noticed someone at Forbes was also thinking that its only about Trump as usual and put together a timeline.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/abrambrown/2020/08/01/is-this-t...
A dozen paragraphs in the article and not one questioning whether he can actually do this. What would such an executive action look like? An EO to Apple and Google to de-list the app from their stores? Why should they comply?
What's he going to do when ByteDance uploads the .apk somewhere?
Sick of media treating this man like a zoo exhibit instead of the advanced persistent threat to US democracy he is.
I don't think most Android users know how to install an apk, and as far as I know a similar distribution model is not possible on iOS.
This is a social network which gains from network effects / usage. A social network only accessible to Android users is a ghetto. The vast majority of young people in America use iPhones.
The last time the majority of internet users managed to disobey the government was the heyday of torrenting and Megaupload. That's not going to happen with today's users and today's walled gardens.
I don't see what this has to do with our electoral system.
That seems like a rather narrow and emotionally charged stance to take on this issue in my opinion.
Under the authority of an executive order.
> Why should they comply?
Because these are american companies, who make a bunch of their money in america, and they can be fined many millions or even billions of dollars, or possibly even arrested if they don't comply with the orders of the nation that has the most powerful military in the world.
> What's he going to do when ByteDance uploads the .apk somewhere?
Probably just fine ByteDance, which has a US presence, and many employees/bank accounts that are in the US.
Blatant refusal to follow the law of the most powerful military in the world can be followed up with arrests of employees/executives that are in the US.
This is the same thing as Huawei being banned.
Let's be realistic, if an app was doing what is alleged here, they should be banned and I'm sure they are provisions to do so without a vote of Congress. Biden campaign was also told to delete TikTok from phones, maybe NSA knows something.
We are a Republic.
He's ensuring msft can get them at a good price. Trump is very aware of the power of signaling whether it pans out or not.
What's the best VPN to get around this ban?
So no. VPN won't work
They do it to us.
I think it's absurd that there's an Azure and an Azure China. There's a drop-down list where I can pick Australia South East, South India, Japan West, Korea Central... but not China anything.
Chinese citizens are perfectly entitled to spin up a web server in Azure, or AWS, or GCP, any time, any country where they have data centres.
But.. oh no, we non-Chinese-citizens without a permanent address in China aren't allowed to have the reciprocal ability to create a web server in their country. That might step on the CCP's toes. It might spread dangerous information like democracy! It might compete with their government-run businesses. They might not get their beak wet, you see, and that's a problem. No can do. Gotta play the game, take part in the corruption, or no website for you.
Trump talks a lot of talk, but if he really wanted a "fair trade deal", he should just cut them off completely from the Internet. Fuck the great firewall. Fuck dragging people off to "reeducation camps" because they posted the wrong thing online. Fuck banned phrases like Winnie the Pooh.
We should all teach these people a lesson: You can't have it both ways. You can't have censorship and profit off of our freedoms. Pick one.
lived for years in China, good luck communicating with anyone outside China legally in other way than through email and some obscure (video) call apps
My top pick is -
LinkedIn (Most other U.S. social networks are already banned in mainland China anyways, then again LinkedIn is being used extensively by Chinese to do Business with outside world; So I wonder whether China would dare to pull the plug).
Or it may just ban Instagram, Snapchat in HongKong as there is no ban for such U.S. apps in HongKong currently and that technical governance differences with mainland is fast evaporating. But, I wonder whether banning apps in HK would amount to appropriate retaliation in terms of market size.
If the US does this, they'll be losing a lot of goodwill founders from other countries have about the US.
The US is uniquely thought of as a part of every country for business. If you're from third world country but you'd like to do a tech business in the US, you're free to do so without much hurdles by the government. Open competition. No other country is like that.
This is what separated the US from the rest of countries like China. You'd dream that in case your startup got big, you'd move to the US, and hire quality engineers/researchers there. You'd like American protection on free speech to protect your company. Your company would not be banned for 'hurting' people. Rule of law. This is increasingly no longer the case.
Now the US is starting to feel like China and the EU more and more. Even if China's economy was bigger than the US, the US would still be in a good position because of their appearance and rule of law. When it's going to be similar to China, why not just do business with China first altogether since they're going to be the bigger economy? China is slowly becoming more liberal to founders from 3rd world countries now. While America seems to not notice this right now, China is slowly becoming more open to competition from poorer countries. The difference is stark even compared to 5 years ago.
Maybe China might not be so much fair right now to American companies because of a power imbalance where the US is too far ahead on certain things that they feel like after their companies catch up, they want to allow open competition. And they seem to progressing to this trajectory.
How exactly is this against the constitution?
Was banning Huawei unconstitutional too?