TikTok to Sue U.S. over Ban
npr.org
npr.org
Due process is a bedrock of American law. It means government officials can't just "do what they want" and make arbitrary decisions with specific targets -- which is exactly what the TikTok ban is.
You want to ban TikTok? Great, you need a specific law from Congress that outlines under what circumstances companies may be banned in the US, and then prove the specific company meets those standards.
None of that has been done here. The president is not a dictator. TikTok should absolutely sue.
Note: this is regardless of anything TikTok has actually done privacy- or security-wise. The point isn't whether they're dangerous, the point is whether we can meet some standard of showing that they're dangerous. If they're dangerous, we need to establish how and why legally. This is what separates the rule of law from dictatorship.
What matters is the way it's banned. And why. And the current process feels every bit as wrong as TikTok itself.
What the US needs is proper data protection laws. And then it should enforce those laws equally against US and foreign companies. Just arbitrarily banning one thing because you realise that what you always allowed for US companies, is suddenly a problem when it's a Chinese company, is absolutely wrong.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23634138
Please provide a source.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/tiktok-tracked-use...
Their actions are not justified by what other apps do. Regardless of whether GP's comment included speculation or was merely using hyperbole, the sentiment is reasonable. At this point, I think it would be irresponsible to defend TikTok.
See also:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23634138
Also how is this different than Twitter that was getting a list of all installed apps until Apple tightened down on the method they used and everything that FB and Google does.
Congress can hardly control the three letter agencies violating amercian rights on a massive scale or blatantly lie under oath in testimony
Don’t think a foreign company is going to allowed to actually proceed with a suit involving national security as the administration is going ton claim
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tiktok-cfius-exclusive/ex...
A) Foreign owned companies are subject to all sorts of other criteria and trade rules.
B) The issue cited is 'national security' in which case there is a wide latitude for tolerance.
'Suing the government' is not 'good' - it's a canard.
What Congress needs to do is ban all Chinese companies and activities wherein US companies of the same kind are not allowed to operate in China.
That China won't allow social networks there, but the US allows them here is bonkers ridiculous.
It would be like Canada saying 'We're banning aluminium imports, but demand that we can export to the US'.
All of this before 'security' even enters the equation.
Now, due process has to start focusing on increasing the federal structure of state’s power and the power that comes with their senators / house / etc.
There is a specific law, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which specifies when and how a president can ban economic exchanges with foreign entities. I think you will be disappointed to find out that under this law there is no real due process required. The president only needs to declare a national emergency in regards to the ban and then send a report to Congress detailing why the declaration and ban are justified. If Congress disagrees it is justified they can pass a resolution overriding the ban.
But we use a ton of Chinese tech software and hardware outside of Tiktok, are they gonna ban them all?
And tablets. And routers. And smart TVs. Which basically encompasses pretty much all of the network-connected appliances in the average home.
(And even if a "a lost" of the rest of IoT devices don't, would you want to bet your data security on it?)
The point out preferring one's data in the hands of a regime that doesn't have jurisdiction to send jack booted thugs to kick in one's door still stands.
I think you vastly overestimate 1) how much a functional human in modern society actually needs any of this garbage and 2) how much of that data and metadata is meaningful in regards to someone's privacy.
My point was, if I have to be concerned about privacy (in fact I actually am, see above) why should I fear about a foreign government while my own one is without any doubt more interested in knowing what I think? Of course should one day I become an important public figure, or a key person in some critical environment, all the data about me would suddenly become gold; that's a very valid point by another commenter. Of course my post was from the point of view of someone who doesn't plan, nor could even choose, to become one anytime soon.
(1) hence my comments where very often I argue about closed device drivers and blobs, which are the best possible place for planting spyware.
you just posted this to a social media site
If they have enough leverage over you (or access through you to your secure systems), they will use it.
But I think it's possible you aren't thinking of all the contingencies that are created by a foreign government having info about people in this country.
For a moment think: your data goes to China. China learns over the years about you, including something that can be used against you. At some point in future you are in a position at a company or have a government position where China has an interest in you, at that time it can use the data collected over the years to compromise you.
If you think that will never be the case, let’s go further, what about your spouse or even further your kids when they grow up.
Governments play the long game.
No, because that isn't the solution to the problem being addressed. The administration doesn't want to protect privacy. It wants to ban TikTok.
He's saying "TikTok should not gather invasive data ... neither should US-based company".
If you oppose that, then you're basically saying "the US wants to have cake and eat it too". I guess every country for itself "works"... for a certain definition of "works".
Let's avoid regression to Chinese standard please.
It's not just a fair playing field war between US and China, but between China and rest of the world. Even India, whose companies are not allowed to operate in China under fair play rules banned TikTok only after the Chinese incursion across the LOC.
I really don't know what to make of this.
Besides, this move isn't coming from the actual concern for citizens' and residents' privacy. It comes from the idea that economy and pandemic and terrible polling numbers for Trump mean he needs a distraction, as per his usual pattern. It was TikTok but it could have been catalytic converters or grandmothers or anything, just to get people talking about something else.
The US' international economic dominance is predicated on a (1) pronounced lead in certain industries and (2) a simply massive economy, which combine to (3) let the US set the rules of international "fair play." The US is where you find the thing you want to buy, and the people you want to sell to. You want access? Play by our rules - everywhere.
Tik Tok does not just threaten US data. It threatens our lead in a critical industry (1), and comes from a country that minimizes the impact of US economic might (2), meaning that China can set their own rules of "fair play" (3). Banning Tik Tok isn't to protect US data; that's totally missing the point. It's to protect the American ability to set international norms.
From that lens, this is certainly hamfisted, and I certainly don't believe views it like this, but you can damn well bet the policy nerd drafting this EO is thinking this way.
I don't agree with this just on fiat from Trump, but the USA is in its rights to give Chinese the same sort of treatment that they give the USA. If you don't play by China's rules you can't be in their market, and those rules are set up to benefit China only.
In this case TikTok is getting the same treatment US tech giants have. If that is not "fair play" I don't know what is.
https://www.businessinsider.com/nba-china-feud-timeline-dary...
In one way, it's existential: the march of authoritarianism is undoubtedly accelerated by nation-states manipulating social media.
But in most others, I wouldn't get too worked up: it's more about mundane garbage ("preserving the spirit of financial disclosure processes in the context of international capital market access") - nerd sh*t.
It’s why Microsoft and Apple are available in China.
Here is a Google example from when I lived in China: Google was at the time competing with Baidu over the search image market in China. My home internet was fast and with great quality. Only Google image search results had very often problems loading image previews. Its not that it "didn't work". It just failed "a little", maybe half the images in the results pag didn't load. So Google image search wasn't really blocked. It could have been total coincidence that it was like that for years and only for Google image search. The site that was coincidentally competing over the lead in the Chinese search market against a Chinese company. After some weeks, I started using Baidu image search, even though their result quality was worse. But at least it worked. I am sure many people in China did. That's "competition" in China.
They just relinquish certain strong hold to a sovereign nation, like they have to host their data center inside China (both politically important, and economically beneficial). And they also risk their data being stolen (or so they claim).
Imagine, if a Chinese company wants to operate in US but refuse to comply local regulations, what will happen to that company?
Fb, Google and others are banned from China because they refuse to cooperate. What about Tiktok?
If they can ban tik tok, they can ban signal or briar because those also might send your encrypted data overseas or because their use among "violent" protestors is a risk. How about VPN apps that siphon your personal data to china and russia! Haha
Here's the thing, US bigtech complies (in secret) with US intel community just like tik tok complies with CCP's MSS. Matter of fact, I happen to know with certainty and with first hand accounts that the US intel community offensively uses american made apps and services to spy against naturalized law abiding americans on american soil just as they would with a foreigner working for the CCP in China.
You might say, China bans US media companies so US should as well. And I will say to you that's absolute nonsense. China is a totalitarian orwelian nightmare state and the US is supposed to be a beacon of liberty and freedom in the world. The US can ban tiktok's usage amongst US government and military and anyone that does business with them. But by what right do they get to restrict communication, an unregulated non-financial interaction between americans and anyone else?
If americans want to be spied on by China in exchange for being able to use tiktok it's their right and this activity is beyond the reaches of any elected government. Even if there is a law allowing congress or the president to ban tiktok, this law is overriden by the bill of rights that restricts the government from making laws that constrain speech and communication between citizens and anyone,and that guarantees tiktok due process and a trial before being found of any wrongdoing. Congress can however restrict commerce, as in financial transaction and for profit activity with tiktok and advertisers, what congress or trump have no authority to do is to tell americans and tiktok they cannot communicate with each other. Freedom of speech is meaningless if no one is allowed to listen to you.
This needs to be done right. Do not throw away your rights by creating a precedent set by the supreme court that lets government restrict your speech. These sneaky bastards will always worm their way into slowly taking away rights from the people in order to preserve their social order.
I don't like tiktok and if you care to go back far enough into my posting history you will see how much I hate the CCP.
What is given can be taken away (if your right to communicate with a foreign entity is given by the government). And if they can ban one app,banning others is a matter of legal mental gymnastics.
1. Libel
2. Slander
3. Treason
4. Certain threats / incitement to violence (like hiring a hit man)
5. Obscenity
You lost me here. That spying can have disastrous results for security and economic well-being of USA (daughter of top Intel engineer or President's top adviser for example is wiretapped by CCP) so the state has extremely legitimate reasons to watch out for the best of all. Our Congress and our courts decide if the President overstepped the line, not China.
The clock is tiking....tik-tok will get due process, meaning lawyers will be able to represent them and that's it. Maybe the whole case will be sealed and the judge can hear classified info privately.
Your courts and congress will decide if he stepped over the line. But if they fail to do so, you lose a ton of rights. He then gets to ban "antifa" apps and democrats get to ban "alt right" russian apps. A supreme court precedent can't be challenged in court when they apply the same logic for something else. This isn't about tik tok, this is about every other app the US government can't controp or arm twist because they are not based on the US.
What does China want to know from millions of Americans that work in engineering, military, universities, politics? See the difference. Like China cares that its company was fined by FTC for $25 million for not respecting privacy
Americans can mount free 4k cameras with hd audio in everyroom in their house that streams directly to china snd they cannot be stopped from doing so based on the fact that the government does not approve of the information being transmitted.
I think you're argument breaks down here. I don't think that handimf over information to a foreign government is a right. I was unable to Google for a definitive answer, but maybe a more knowledgeable person could chime in. The US already has export restrictions on knowledge ( for example encryption ) to foreign governments.
And normally people on this site deride such things as ridiculous (and actively worked around bans on exporting encryption), but when they find out Big Bad China might see their dance videos and lip synching suddenly they're happy to crush the free exchange of information.
It's not just that China has peoples' dance videos.
The app has complete adoption by the teenage generation. When many high-profile hacks begin with simple social engineering, all it takes is blackmail attempts on the sons and daughters of diplomats and CEOs threatening to reveal/promote to friends either private or falsified(deep fake?) data/videos to get at least some percentage of compliance.
Of course we should protect encryption and be smart and diligent when protecting our liberties, but I'm scared of TikTok, and I don't think that fear is unjustified.
Don't sacrifice my liberty to alleviate your fears.
If we follow your logic let's equally apply the law and ban telegram,facebook/whatsapp/instagram,google and snapchat as well. And please,let the US cease all commerce with China if they are a hostile enemy government, let's stop financing them. Unless of course like always this is about american greed and not security. Injustice is not tolerable even if security is at stake. If you claim this is just and lawful, apply it equally to all other foreign and domestic apps that can be abused similar to tiktok both by domestic and foreign forces. I have no reason to fear China more than a domestic political party that is eager to start race wars and concentration camps. The law must be fair and it must be applied equally. That is a fundamental concept where it's violation means invalidation and collapse of all legal and legitimate goverment and legal activity.
Don't be melodramatic. You sacrifice your liberty for the sake of security all the time, and it isn't necessarily a bad thing.
> You need to educate your fellow citizens or pressure appstore owners (google and apple) to delist tiktok.
This is an unconvincing solution because of the subversive nature of the power of TikTok. We already see that people brush this off as "not my problem. I don't care if China has my data".
You don't have to trust domestic parties to agree that there is a legitimate security threat from Chinese controlled TikTok which must be addressed.
> If you claim this is just and lawful, apply it equally to all other foreign and domestic apps that can be abused similar to tiktok both by domestic and foreign forces.
This is ostensibly the point of the "clean network". Whether or not that particular solution is adequate or even appropriate remains to be seen, but it certainly seems aimed at exactly that problem.
This isn't what they even care about. It's all the telemetry and spying the app does, like copying your clipboard consistently (seriously how this is allowed anymore by iOS or Android is beyond me). What if you selected some proprietary information and later your kid opens up TikTok cause they love using your phone, and voila some proprietary information is copied on there, going to who knows where. Something like TikTok makes corporate espionage quite possible given its popularity. I can't imagine what other things the app is doing.
Those things are definitely used for speech, and banning them all would likely be an issue. But banning a brand of pens because you don't trust the chemicals in them as safe or routers because you're concerned about potential spy ware, seems reasonable.
In that sense, TikTok is just one of many alternatives and if the motivation isn't to regulate speech, it feels like it could fit with other bans that seem reasonable to me.
I'd assume the claim here would be that it presents national security risk, though of course I think that's probably not why the ban is really happening, and it makes sense for it to be challenged.
Banning the pen is legitimate as knowingly harming people is a crime.
Banning the router isn't the same. At most they are guilty of false advertising, and even that can probably be made legal in the license provided. Besides, I may have reasons to want a router with spyware on it.
The same would apply to TikTok, but I think they're trying to say it's also "aiding our enemies" making it akin to a light form of treason.
Yeah, but they lack the authority. National security does not override anyone's rights. They don't get to do this regardless if their intent. This sets a precedent where if they can claim any entity is a national security risk they can restrict communication with that entitiy. Totalitarian regimes do this exact thing when they ban certain social media or VPNs!
It's diffrent from banning a brand of pens because you're banning commercial activity and the danger is a chemical not speech. Here you're sayiny speech itself is too dangerous to be allowed. A clear line preventing the government from doing this for a reason.
This statement confused me, probably because I'm not from the US and am missing some cultural dogma/context. But the way I think about it, "rights" are not encoded in the laws of physics. They are social constructs. Therefore different societies can come up with a different and even conflicting set of "rights".
depending on what country you are from, you could be from a country that has a set of civil laws, as opposed to a country with a set of common laws.
common law countries tend to have enumerated rights that the government cannot take away, while civil law countries tend to have rights that because of the way that particular society is built, you have these rights.
The u.s. is the common-law state because of our declaration of Independence and Constitution that speak about how all men are created equal (before God) and thus since the government rules by the consent of the governed, the laws eumerated in things like the Bill of Rights are things that are just off limits to the US government, with limited scope contextual restrictions to non-negotiable absolute rights depending on their wordings.
But regardless of origin, a constitution defines what the country is made up of. Constitutional rights are a contract where the government is allowed to govern and secure the people if and only if they secure those rights and follow the articles of the constitution.
There's a long history of reasoning (i.e. logic) from first principles how to best establish communities, for example Rousseau's 1762 work, The Social Contract.
Some key arguments that Rousseau expounds:
* force does not create right; we are only obligated to obey legitimate powers
* everyone is free (because we each give up the same rights and have the same duties imposed, e.g. around property rights)
* absurd for someone to surrender freedom for slavery
There are underlying commonalities between Rousseau's work and intellectual artifacts from other cultures, such as "reciprocity" expressed by Confucius in Analects: "do not do to others what you would not want others to do to you". This concept of reciprocity is also echoed in the Christian doctrine of the golden rule.
> Therefore different societies can come up with a different and even conflicting set of "rights".
Do you not think that there are universal human rights?
For example, those enumerated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights - https://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/
I know attempts have been made to come up with "universal rights". But to my point, not everyone agrees with them. For example, the convention on children's rights has not been ratified by the US.
The poster I first responded to, has since clarified that he meant something like US law working as a blacklist of what is forbidden (as opposed to a whitelist of what is allowed). So the discussion about universal rights was a bit of a red herring, sorry.
"Rights" do not really make sense if you're the only human around.
The idea that our rights come from god, not the government, is enshrined in the founding documents of the US, and the idea has been discussed in philosophy for centuries before that. It's part of why US conservatives get so bent out of shape when progressives say things like "everyone has a right to healthcare".
I agree it doesn't make much sense. It's also worth noting that 75% of the men who signed that document owned slaves.
Signal isn't sponsored by foreign governments, so it is immune to this sort of attack. It looks like Briar has German funding. The encrypted and decentralized nature of both of those apps makes them much lower concerns for espionage and (election) interference, and of course neither provides content directly from foreign governments, so they cannot be called into question for campaign interference.
Signal and Briar were examples. Ok, telegram, it's russian so should it be banned? Espionage has to di with state and national secrets. A foreign government spying on americans with their knowledge and consent is not espionage. How is facebook literally recording without consent not a bigger issue? Please ban facebook before tiktok. Google and Amazon have home assistants spying on americans which is magnitudes of order worse thab tiktok!
This is the thing you have to undetstand, bytedance (tiktok's creator) being cozy with ccp is not a whole lot different than facebook and zuckergerg being in bed with the trump admin or Google being in bed with obama admin ,except China is an ocean many nukes away from doing actual harm to americans and your own government is literally facilitating the death of your own citizens as we speak! Ban facebook,google and amazon because they are helping tear apart america while you're at it!
This is pure politics, sacrificing your right in fear of a boogeyman in China because the boogeyman here is on your side. You don't get to do that, if you disagree with the bill of rights have a constitutional convention and change it.
I get to to communicate with tiktok or even the chinese government if I want. And if I share my private life with them that's my right too. The government has no authority to prevent free excercise of my rights even if they don't like it.
Right now and in 2016 facebook was used to manipulate elections in the US. Shut it down because thay clearly is a national security risk if you truly believe the government policing what private information you share or consume is a good idea.
Do you also think you have a right to not wear a mask during a pandemic or not wear a seatbelt while driving?
This is simple exchange of unprivileged information between an individual and an organization (foreign or domestic).
Of course, just as with tobacco there are huge American companies which are going to oppose this sort of transparency. And of course rolling out teaching standards requires that some standardization for app privacy exist in the first place, so I don't expect this to happen fast (if it could ever happen at all).
The executive order doesn't outright ban the use of TikTok (the app), it just places a ban on "any transactions subject to the jurisdiction of the United States with ByteDance", which in essence makes it impossible for people to find the app on an App store. It's almost identical to the Huawei/ZTE executive orders. It's a bit like an economic sanction on a country, which may also include companies that engage in media/speech.
They can't ban someone from mailing you the communist manifesto for free as a book or handwritten letter, so they can't ban a communist manifesto app download or punish anyone for facilitating that transfer.
> US advertisers can be banned from doing business with tiktok but it is a free app.
In addition, App Store providers can be banned from allowing ByteDance to submit it.
> They can ban book sales or a book reading service but storage, avaipability and free transfer of information cannot be banned.
The free transfer of software information is already "banned" through copyright law. Software piracy is technically simply the capital-free transfer of bits of data, and that can and is controlled by the US government.
> They can't ban someone from mailing you the communist manifesto for free as a book or handwritten letter, so they can't ban a communist manifesto app download or punish anyone for facilitating that transfer.
The argument is not whether they can ban someone from mailing you a copy of the communist manifest, it's whether they can ban an American retailer from receiving copies of it from a sanctioned supplier. That's what the executive order appears to be targeting.
Sure they can. Look at HIPAA, COPPA, government classification, etc. I could call a family member up at an intelligence agency and ask what kinds of stuff they're investigating, but they'd surely be committing a crime by sharing that information with me, regardless of whether or not money changed hands.
The other counterargument to this is that ByteDance only has commercial intentions with the data it gathers on users. It's not a non-profit trying to feed or clothe the needy, it exists purely as a commercial enterprise, meaning that any and all information they gather will either directly or indirectly used for commerce.
I am not against banning bytedance's commercial activity. But, the reasoning needs to make it clear that the app is not banned, sharing the app is not illegal and what is restricted is bytedance's ability to engage in commerce. You can ban their commercial exploitation of information but you cannot ban the app itself or americans's ability to transmit information to them. You can revoke theie business license and ban commercial activity with them.
This technically isn't always true either. I write software for a company and even though it comes from my brain, I still don't own it and I can't share it. I'm sure in the case of TikTok, users probably don't own their data either, the company does.
> You can ban their commercial exploitation of information but you cannot ban the app itself or americans's ability to transmit information to them.
What would be the point of ByteDance even keeping the app up if they can't monetize it? The act of users transmitting information inherently adds data to TikTok's database, which has financial value. It doesn't make sense for a company to just keep an app like that up and running while promising not to make money off of it. The compute costs alone must be enormous for an app like TikTok since they have to optimize and cache all of that video. Why would a business agree to keep operating while promising not to profit? That doesn't make sense to me.
But even if that were the case, you can ban sharing knowledge under obscenity clauses, national security clauses, or because it incite violence.
TikTok is being banned as a threat to national security, because having your preeminent communications tool run by a foreign government is inane, unless you are or want to become a colony of that government.
For example historically the US has banned books for being sexually obscene, demeaning to a particular group, or liable to foster communist sympathies.
Nobody cares about the source code. Everyone cares about sending data back to the CCP. If Tik Tok/ByteDance wants to stop being a tool of the CCP and engaging in the persecution of Uigher Muslims, then they can go back to offering us an app with funny dances.
> They can regulate commerce but for software and crypto they can't regulate the transfer of information,they can only regulate commercial activity with that information
Crypto exports are regulated.
> They can't ban someone from mailing you the communist manifesto for free as a book or handwritten letter
Actually at one point sending pornography through the USPS WAS banned. Typically political speech gets stronger protections though.
> so they can't ban a communist manifesto app download or punish anyone for facilitating that transfer.
The issue isn't spreading the communist manifesto. It's human rights abuses of a religious minority including forced sterilization - https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/china-conducting-mass-steril...
It looks like the USA don't like a social network they can't control the algorithm.
After all many publically traded chinese companies in the US aren't actually compliant with the same laws as US companies are.
What happened to the presumption of innocence?
Also, just to be clear, this law suit isn't going to be litigated by Chinese lawyers, the lawyers are going to be US lawyers who have to adhere to the US standards. If they think that TikTok is failing to provide something to the court or are acting unethically they are obligated to tell the court of be disbared.
The problem I have with this though, is that it's not a way to get protect American interests, it's probably the first in a series of last ditch efforts to portray a certain political stance before the campaign. And the effect of banning wechat, tik tok, and tencent will stoke an already considerable flame of anti chinese perspective, which the chinese americans on our soil, have to suffer for. I say ban the crap out of all Chinese apps if that's just what it is, but let's all make sure not to throw out our own under the bus with it.
I don't like this company, which has already started censoring foreign nationals based on what CCP allows.
At the same time, how can a single person decide the fate of a company in a different country? What will be next?
Furthermore, what if EU decides Instagram is somehow a threat and must be shut down?
How is TikTok's fate being decided by a US ban? The CCP does this all the time, it isn't uncommon to ban foreign software.
The single person was explicitly elected to speak and act on America’s behalf. The same single person is the commander in chief for America’s military, giving them quite a bit of power when interacting with foreign countries.
And they’re impacting a foreign company’s operations in the US, something which seems to fall within the powers granted to them.
In general, I don’t like what he’s doing, but the why and how in this case appear to be by the book.
> But any pushback from Congress is unlikely, as the skepticism about the Chinese Communist Party's potential ties to the country's technology companies has gathered bipartisan support.
He once again imposed tariffs on Canada using the whole "national security" excuse. It seems like he can do quite a lot using that excuse...
Further, Trump's anti-China campaign has broad political support from both parties - Congress voted to ban TikTok in federal devices just days ago.
No.
Congress creates laws. The President enforces them. This is an enforcement action--it's not unusual for Congress to be uninvolved.
> Should the president really have this power?
Multiple Congresses gave these powers to the President [1][2][3]. The current and next ones are free to take them back.
My personal belief is no, the President shouldn't have this power in the absence of clear and present danger. We need a commission, likely under Commerce and/or State, that assesses civil fines and passes prosecution recommendations to the DoJ. Furthermore, we need legislation describing (a) which countries are deemed economically friendly and economically adversarial, (b) how those determinations are made and (c) what companies from those countries can and cannot do as well as (d) how they may achieve "safe harbor" status (e.g. by locally hosting data and submitting code for periodic review).
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Emergency_Econom...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exon–Florio_Amendment
[3] https://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/international/Docum...
You make some fair points, but there is no way that I would trust a government agency to actually do code reviews and verify that a company isn't doing something wrong.
I feel increasingly unsafe because this app is being operated by a company that is beyond extradition with the USA. So if they ARE busted for doing bad stuff, who is getting jailed?
In an era where every snapdragon SoC seems rootable from any old application, and you can use machine learning to pick out key words from text streams, do we really need this app in the market?
How is this any different? The US is one of the Five Eyes countries. They routinely spy on their own people (see Snowdon et al). I see no difference between the two in this regard, other than the US has a court system that sometimes acts independently and has a Constitution that sometimes is followed.
Which is why Facebook is not allowed in China.
For example, do individuals in the US not enjoy more freedom (of speech) than individuals in China?
Isn't it worth supporting and enhancing one regime and fight against the other (at least on this dimension)?
> In addition, ByteDance on April 25, 2019, signed a strategic cooperation agreement with the Ministry of Public Security's Press and Publicity Bureau (公安部新聞宣傳局) in Beijing. The agreement was billed as "aiming to give full play to the professional technology and platform advantages of Toutiao and Tiktok in big data analysis," strengthen the creation and production of "public security new media works," boost "network influence and online discourse power," and enhance "public security propaganda, guidance, influence, and credibility," among other aspects.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_executive_actions_by...
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/50/1701
"(a) Any authority granted to the President by section 1702 of this title may be exercised to deal with any unusual and extraordinary threat, which has its source in whole or substantial part outside the United States, to the national security, foreign policy, or economy of the United States, if the President declares a national emergency with respect to such threat."
USA has given its President a lot more power over the years and decades.
Or the result is that indeed their operation is 100% independent of their Chinese parent company and no US data ever touches mainland China... which would surprise me.
That situation does not exist. Chinese law basically means that any data held in China can be accessed by the government at any time.
We're trying to roll that back apparently. I don't have a lot of hope but we'll see. These politicians are all basically under fire this november so they better damnwell hustle.
Also, FWIW, companies can release FISA statements saying they've been accessed. How much of that is actually true depends on your level of paranoia.
1. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/06/nsa-phone-reco...
In the US system, there are still miscarriages of Justice, but there is judicial supremacy and separation of powers.
The powers aren't as separated as say the French justice system, but most would say the US judicial system is mostly independent of the other branches of government.
Very few people are aware about this. The party is supreme and institutions like PLA are answerable to the party, not to the people.
Overall, I particularly enjoy this system over one that is accountable to a single entity.
If there is only one party permitted, and that one party is supreme, then how is that a party? It looks like government to me. Maybe the translation to English is just wrong. The "party" isn't a party by any reasonable definition.
The real parties would be factions within the so-called party. I don't know if they have names more descriptive than "Xi supporters" and "Xi opponents".
So basically, why should anyone trust a US company if US thinks tiktok giving data to their government is a problem?
Hard to say if it's even enough to keep it outside of China. As long as the company is under Chinese jurisdiction, they'll have a hard time saying "no, sorry, that data center is in Singapore, we won't comply".
The EU has similar issues with the US cloud providers: even if an Amazon data center is in the EU, obviously they will hand over data if a US court order/NSL tells them to. One way that Microsoft tried to mitigate that was to have a data trustee run the data centers with Microsoft not having access, therefore not being able to give anything to the government. They've stopped offering it after a few years though.
These are pretty ironic allegations considering It's all because they are Chinese owned.
People would say "China can decide what they want to allow".
Well if China can decide (which they did first) two can play this game.
Also TikTok says this ban is baseless. If USA's ban of TikTok is baseless, what base does China have for banning everything?
If TikTok wins, it means that we didn't follow our own laws. Either change the laws or follow the current ones.
You don't get world-class talent moving to your country by being a totalitarian state. You get it by valuing individual rights and freedom.
I'm amazed at the short-term thinking behind these moves - and the fact that HN, of all places, is cheering it
> I'm amazed at the short-term thinking behind these moves - and the fact that HN, of all places, is cheering it
Everything you said here we already know. What you don't realize is the world is going through an invisible war right now at a scale of world war 3. These first world country people have never lived a difficult life so they just think everything will be all right just because it's been all right through their entire life. When China gains its dominance by bullying the rest of the world and the rest of the world just trying to "take the high road", they will realize there's no longer anything they can do about the situation because the Chinese economy has become too strong. This is why countries like India are taking the same route already (They were the ones who banned TikTok first).
There is no permanent "ally" in the world politics. If you naively think "taking the high road" will win you allies even if it means losing your power, you should study history and learn to see long term.
How can anyone paying attention to global politics for the past 20 years claim this?
>I'm amazed at the short-term thinking behind these moves
The short-term thinking was Western companies doing everything in their power to appease the CCP in order to gain access to a huge market.
The US already has that.
> You don't get world-class talent moving to your country by being a totalitarian state
Which is why immigrants prefer US to China, banning tic tok is not going to change that.
Uber lost in China mainly because of this.
There are reasons you can oppose this ban, but this isn't a good one of those reasons.
-
The US promises certain freedoms and protections, and TikTok is saying the US is unfairly denying them those freedoms and protections.
China doesn't promise those things to anyone, so there's no grounds to complain they're not being fair.
I mean, imagine this argument applied to other things. "They don't allow <insert liberty> in their home country, why are they suing the US for denying <insert liberty>?"
The more interesting question is my eyes is who's going to benefit/hurt from all this and why - US consumers, US/Chinese tech cos, US/Chinese foreign interests? I'd love to hear opinions on this aspect.
Like another comment said, it'll be interesting to see what comes out in discovery.
Where, the company with greater market access, has greater access to profit, and then greater chances of winning. We strip away all other pretenses, it might just boil down to, S(C(us)) < S(C(ch)), which is just a consequence of the rule set. No way forward, when S(C(us)) > S(C(ch)) is the goal, changing the rule set is the only available action.
You're trying to intentionally confuse to tangential concepts, and murdering common sense and logic to do so.
Amtrak is almost entirely owned by the US Government and has taken in 10s of billion of federal dollars to operate, yet you can go out and sue it like any other company despite the protections US Government entities normally have.
Because owning something, and being that thing, are not the same thing... in case you didn't realize. That's actually one of the core justifications of most corporations
-
The Chinese government is not suing the US Government, TikTok is. Sure there's lots of fun power dynamics to dive into over who controls TikTok and so on, but if you can't get the simple fact of who's suing who, you should hush up on the topic.
China is a different jurisdiction with different legislation, different constitution and a different justice system. It's a completely different set of rules... If an American company sues China... the outcome will be decided on Chinese courts, based on Chinese legislation and Chinese constitutionality.
TikTok will fight the US in US courts, abiding to US legislation, US constitutionality, etc... In the end, it will be up to a judge or eventually the US Supreme Court to decide what happens.
I believe the national security risk argument is stronger in the case of Huawei. Since having a state run company build essential communication infrastructure is clearly a bad idea. However, I think it also applies to ByteDance. Why would you allow a foreign government uninhibited access to huge amounts of data about your citizens? Especially when that government is a hostile totalitarian regime currently engaged in serious human rights violations.
China is a dictatorship. No one doing business in or with China does so without knowing that they have to toe the party/government line and could loose everything if they don't
The US is an elected democracy with a strong respect for the rule of law both domestically and internationally (lets not start debating that - historically and compared with China it has) and has attracted foreign capital and investment because of that.
If Trump wants to protect US citizens data then it should tighten privacy law rather than playing nationalistic tit-for-tat which will undermine investor confidence in the US.
I strongly hope that your strange "tit-for-tat" doesn't extend to basic rights of people and businesses on US soil. US is supposed to be better than that, remember?
I think the issue here is that it's a foreign owned business. I know tit-for-tat might be happening in the eyes of US law makers, but many of the constitutional protections we afford citizens are only extended as a convenience to non-citizens - a convenience usually rooted in positive trade relationships.
If you had a phone that let you install software on it of your choosing then you could install whatever you want, regardless of who Apple isn't allowed to do business with. They made themselves a chokepoint, so now they're a chokepoint.
The internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around... no, your phone's only route is through the one corporation.
US restrictions on foreign trade are restrictions on Americans.
Err, foreign affairs (and thus commerce) has always been something regulated by the US government - something reserved for the president unless the legislative explicitly declares otherwise. Source: https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/article-2/sec...
Do you know any constitutional clause or SCOTUS case suggesting otherwise?
Expand on these basic rights that are violated if TikTok is banned. And since when do foreign businesses have basic rights in US or any other democracy?
This situation should've been stopped a while ago, China banned every company they wanted while the others let them operate everywhere according to the free market rules.
Exports is what you pay for your imports. It's better for US citizens to be able to buy Chinese products even if Chinese citizens can't buy us products. They can pay for it by exporting to other countries from which China buys.
Your enemy brakes rules to gain advantage, why wouldn't you.
I for long thought of this as a weakness in America.
Thousands of children of CPC's top leadership live, and study in USA, including children of Xi, Li, and Lin.
Your solution to solve your problem with China overnight was pretty much lying under your nose.
Think, not a single government employee in China can legally afford to pay for their children tuition in Harvard (which people in China jokingly call "the new Central Party School.") The salary of a government employee in China is legally capped at around CNY 32000. There is no way in hell even Chinese government ministers can pay for their children lavish lifestyles in the West from legit income.
Probably because if your "enemy" (interesting that this wording started to pop up in relation to China a lot) is a totalitarian state which abuses their people... you don't want to follow their rules and societal structure.
At least that's my takeaway as an Eastern European with a bit of experience of such regimes.
Basically foreign owned companies don't have the same constitutional rights as ones owned by US citizens - these companies operations basically being foreign commerce is where the entity list powers are derived from.
Foreign ownership doesn't enjoy the same rights as LLCs registered in the US, ironically. For example, even though Huawei operated in the US through a US LLC, Trump still regulated its associations as defined by the foreign affairs power - as well as how corporations with US operations interacted with these foreign associated Huawei entities.
Otherwise corporate personhood would anull all trade deals in the US, and I think even the article you linked mentions their limited protections in the US.
The legal basis for the Order banning Tik Tok [1] came from Order 13873 [2]. It's...not the best.
[1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/executive-or...
[2] https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2019/05/17/2019-10...
You can argue nation security when it comes to any app that isn't doing end-to-end, especially if it's written in a way that could allow the first, or a third party, to get access to arbitrary user data with the plausible deniability that security bugs can offer.
TikTok has had security bugs that made me outright mad when I looked at an expose on some of them. The kind of comedically terrible bugs they've had not too long ago makes it absolutely certain there are many, many more. Not even checking which user is logged in when you send a message for the user? Seriously, that's embarrassing in a rarely used feature on an app with a handful of users. Core functionality on a hundreds of millions users app? That's so terrible I almost can't believe it.
Not that other apps don't have bugs, but the track record, and global spread would make a solid argument. Confound by their app appearing to spread the data over an absolutely massive number of domains, and hosts, making auditing very hard, and also attribution of blame if data gets in the wrong hand.
I'm not saying eg Facebook is necessarily much different, only what argument can be made. Incidentally, what TikTok is doing is almost certainly illegal in EU, as I have no information that they have even attempted to follow GDPR rules.
This is fallacious.
China is an authoritarian regime, not a democracy under the rule of law. There are laws in China, but ultimately a corporation is subject to the whims of the Chinese Communist Party.
International free market trade is founded on reciprocity - you open your markets and I open mine, under analogous regulatory conditions. Can US companies such as Facebook or Google operate with the same degree of freedom that TikTok does in the West?
Furthermore, and perhaps more relevantly to your question of whether TikTok has broken any US laws, it may be that it has. I have a very limited understanding of US politics and law but I do know that (a) there's a trainload of highly complex national security regulations, (b) Executive Orders provide the President a means to "steer" the application of the Law, and in this case it may be simply a way of enforcing codes that have been applied very loosely or not enforced until at all now.
I don't know if the EO will hold ground or not, but if it doesn't, I hope the US (and eventually the EU, where I am a citizen) find other ways to legally challenge the abhorrent asymmetry in playing conditions for software companies in China vs. the Democratic West.
Would you say it's kind of like the US President being able to just ban things he just says are threats to National Security? All of the authoritarian regimes have laws that specifically allow them to do what they do. They're usually authoritarian because they can and do call everything they don't like a threat to National Security.
Where is the actual proof here? Where can everyone take a look at it?
No such mechanisms exists in an authoritarian regime like the Chinese.
Read up about the countless cases in those countries. Enforcing national security laws are very, very often the reason for the most fucked up judgements. All those cases from North Korea? Yep, national security without verifiable proof of how it endangers national security.
From my original comment, which you replied to:
> There are laws in China, but ultimately a corporation is subject to the whims of the Chinese Communist Party.
Either you didn't read that part, chose to omit it, or you are being deliberately rude, questioning "what I'm on about".
The difference between those authoritarian regimes and a democracy under the Rule of Law like the US is the degree in which the law can be arbitrarily superseded by an authority, such as a Party or Ruler, breaking the separation of powers.
Comparing the legal systems and guarantees of China, North Korea or Saudi Arabia, with those of the US is disingenuous at best.
You did not address the fundamental point which is that an Executive Order can be challenged in a Court of Law - it will be, in fact.
Do you think a decision by the CCP, Xi Jinping, Kim Jong-Un or Mohammad Bin Salman would be afforded the same level of guarantees?
> Do you think a decision by the CCP, Xi Jinping, Kim Jong-Un or Mohammad Bin Salman would be afforded the same level of guarantees?
Yes, absolutely. It happens all the time. Those rulers use _the laws afforded to them_ to rule. It's completely wrong to suggest that they just do whatever the hell they want. That's just not the case at all. Please look into the topic. Those countries have laws that make it very, very easy for the rulers to justify doing whatever they want.
MBS can put you in jail for live not because he's free to do whatever he wants but because the laws are designed in a way that gives him every reason to justify putting anyone in jail - as I mentioned, usually based on national security grounds.
Those very same national security reasons that authoritarian regimes constantly use are being used by Trump.
So yes, Trump being able to claim something a national security issue without having to provide proof, without giving the accused a chance to take a look at the evidence that supposedly exists against them, without them being able to defend themselves from the accusations, that's exactly what authoritarian regimes do.
I will however leave some data, from the World Justice Project Rule of Law Index 2020 [1]. These indices measure how strong the Rule of Law is in each country:
Germany - 0.84
United Kingdom - 0.79
Japan - 0.78
US - 0.73
France - 0.73
South Korea - 0.73
---
China - 0.48
Russia - 0.47
Turkey - 0.43
There's no data for North Korea or Saudi Arabia, because they're so closed that there's not even a point in trying to judge the quality of their legal system. Go figure.
[1] https://worldjusticeproject.org/our-work/publications/rule-l...
Who are you defining as “people”? I’ve only ever seen people criticize their bans on media.
Also just maybe, they don't want that facebooks clone (Reels) now takes their place?
Maybe they don't want to be sh*t all over just cuz they are based in China and do simply not care about the conflicts the countries have?
China has censorship laws that you might not like, but you can certainly still choose to comply if you want to be in that market. Indeed, many US companies have chosen to do so and participate in that market while others feel the cost is too high and do not.
What could TikTok do to comply here and be allowed in the US? It wasn't banned for non-compliance in some tit-for-tat measure, it was banned for simply being from China.
If the "game" is censorship and social control of citizens, why on earth would you cheer on either side in a tit-for-tat?
People are pretending this is about IP or free trade, but it's not like China is going to let people install Signal so US teenagers can install TikTok.
Best case scenario is what, a Chinese operated and moderated version of Facebook while the US administration gets to moderate TikTok in the US? Or the Great US Firewall? Or China just endorses Trump and he drops the whole thing.
There are tons of legitimate criticisms of China but if this isn't motivated by any of them the outcome is unlikely to be help.
HFGLWT!
But, as with everything, that’s just my opinion.
Forgot that was organized on tiktok. All makes sense now. If US was really interested in national security i'm pretty sure zoom would go long before tiktok
But forgetting that, can we with 100% certainty say that the Tulsa rally fiasco:
a) Wasn't an idea and orchestrated by the CCP?
b) Was some teen's idea, but then was pushed to the top for political reasons by the CPP?
If you can't say with 100% certain NO to these questions, and taking in account the US and China are in some sort of 'cold war', doesn't it make sense that the US goverment cuts the feet of an app that can change election results?
Yes, Russian interference with facebook is also a possibility, but at the end, Facebook (and twitter, etc) are US entities, and if there is indeed some weird things going on, they can be investigated, banned, etc. the US can't do the same with regards to TikTok.
(ps: Not american, have no skin in who wins the election, just pointing it as an outsider a possible reason)
No point in taking the risk of orchastrating it if americans are going to do it themselves.
And that is even assuming china is anti-trump. Geopolitically trump has been pretty good for china (at the cost of short term trade issues). I'd bet China cares more about long term gains over short term losses.
The whole discussion is unnecessary.
If someone goes and flunks an exam due to their own incompetence, does it matter what external factors can make them flunk?
Trump + other bizarre self important characters in his cabinet actually believe they know what they are doing. They don't. As to the CCP knowing what its doing is another total joke.
The moves of both sides are like watching second graders working a tenth grade problem. Its true, the tantrums the second graders throw in frustration, can be entertaining or highly dramatic. But the trap people fall into is to focus on the tantrums, forgetting whats on blackboard and whether anyone in the room has the skills to solve it.
This was all fine in the age of no information or hidden information. The game old men have learnt to play in that environment is an outdated game.
Today with data overflowing about the nature of problems, about the grade level the people in the room the game changes. And what we choose to focus on will change too.
Because those folks would miss a real conspiracy even if you hit them in the face with it, but are really good in finding conspiracies where there is none.
You mean ... shut down Facebook????
It's also weird that so many people believe this idea that people on TikTok did anything to the Tulsa rally. I don't think people know how the rally worked, so they take at face value someone saying TikTok users made Trump mad. Requesting tickets was not first come, first served, it was simply saying you might come. So at worst, TikTok users inflated the number of people who said they might go. So it likely had no affect on the number of people that actually showed up. Covid-19 probably was the most likely reason that people didn't show up in large numbers.
I'm not even aware of any evidence that large numbers of users were able to get reservations. A bunch of kids on TikTok saying they reserved tickets is not the same as actual proof.
I really wish that we could make people skeptical of all claims made by anyone. Don't just blindly believe some news story that includes no evidence, or quotes a few tweets because you want it to be true.
How is that relavent? Media claimed it was an embarrasment, trump wasn't able to spin it. Does it really matter what the kids did or did not do. Its an embarasment if there is public preception it is an embarassment. It isnt any less of an embarassment even if you are right that the story is based on something untrue (which seems doubtful to me).
I think people really want this narrative to be true, so people are reaching for any evidence to back the claim. The story sounds so much better when you can make Trump look like a crazy person who is so thin skinned he will ban an app that offends him. But a lot of politicians on both sides of the aisle believe the CCP is a threat to the US, so this action is not as surprising as it may first seem. You've also got to remember that wechat was also targeted, so this is not hitting one app, but multiple Chinese apps.
Zoom is owned by a Chinese-American entrepreneur.
China has in past managed to force Chinese abroad to spy for them by threatening their families in China.
Trump is doing so much to hurt the US image among Chinese citizens right now. His administration emphasizes the importance of the distinction between the government and the people, but his actions are only driving the two closer together. Poor strategy in my opinion.
Also, I’m really worried about the supposed Tencent ban. There’s no way I can get rid of WeChat...
Just strong network effects, or what
Whether you should side with Tik Tok or not, the above statement applies to a massive percentage of people who don't agree with the Tik Tok ban. This is dangerous thinking
They need to educate Americans on the predatory nature of TikToks software and move along.
Is that referring to the content or the company itself? I don't see how it's any more of a cesspool than any other social platform. Twitter? Facebook? Reddit? Every sufficiently large platform is filled with a very wide range of content, from great to awful.
As a company, I do agree they have shady practices, but again, don't most other social media apps such as Facebook and the gang use similar tracking and data collection? Of course that's a low bar to compare to but I don't see why they're being singled out here.
But the wait time for organs are suspiciously short. And the accusations of Falun Gong practicioners align with these.
It actually is uniquely bad.
A disproportionate amount of the content consists of the sexualization of underage girls.
The way the thing is set up, there is some kind of audio, someone does a thing (usually a dance), and then other people try to do the same thing to the same sound. The audio is generally nonsense. One of the currently popular ones is a Russian cereal commercial (mepas zoo zoo zoo). Okay, fine. But then somehow the majority of the audio clips are misogynist or misandrist. Every other one seems to contain the N-word. And they're all catchy tunes that get played over and over and get stuck in your head. It's pretty messed up.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/sep/25/revealed-...
I'm not American but I did live there a long time.
I agree the ban is some crazy stuff but:
>How any "small gov't" conservative is okay with this, while over 1000 Americans are dying of COVID per day nonetheless, is beyond me.
How is it the ban relates to people dying of Covid?