The TikTok ban and the openness trap
unintendedconsequenc.es
unintendedconsequenc.es
Arbitrary action such as this is a sign of weakness: of economic weakness, and the fear to no longer be good enough to be the single biggest winner of free trade the US was for most of the 20th century. It's also a weakness of the law: of institutions competent and empowered to specifically define and litigate harmful behaviour, within the existing confines of law, such as due process. Instead, it's executive fiat, directed against foreign companies that have no lobby powerful enough to protect them, and coming from an office where nobody bothers to ask for reasonable explanations, because (last weakness) the guy is incapable, uninterested, and really just completely devoid of any understanding of the rule of law.
Americans already are losing as much as China is from this action. But its only in mindless entertainment that people won't complain about because they fear being mocked for enjoying such things. But if it works, the hits will start creeping closer, and you now need to make sure to stay not just on the right side of the law, but also the far-right side of politics.
Meanwhile, China isn't going to change for economic reasons: countries from cuba to North Korea to, for the longest time, the USSR have not budged in the face of sanctions. A country in the process of cutting off the lifeblood of its status as a superpower of science and entrepreneurship, just because people in rural counties that have never seen a foreigner have decided they don't like them, should really be in a good position to understand how powerless economic interests are against ideology and jingoism.
If we were talking about repatriating manufacturing and electronics, you could get me on board.
At least currently, AirDroid is a FAR greater threat to global security than TikTok is.
Up weighting/down weighting content that exacerbates a rival nations problems or promotes the virtues of its own
But AirDroid gives you full remote access to your Android device through a web browser. Including messages (reading/sending/receiving), camera (taking photos/videos, and accessing existing photos/videos), and full access to files. It's used widely (even by corporate IT) to transfer files between Android devices and PCs over Wi-Fi.
It's a very functional app with remote access to millions of devices, and just like Huawei there are of course a steady stream of major security vulnerabilities. These may be plausible-deniable "bugdoors", or just sloppy practices introducing major vulnerabilities than happen to be exploitable by independent researchers and nation states.
The issue is that it's developed by a company based in China and thus very closely linked with the Chinese Communist Party and given what we know about the CCP, it's almost certainly regularly being used by the Ministry of State Security and People's Liberation Army for to exfiltrate specific highly valuable files eg, private messages, VPN and SSH keys.
It seems strange there's no debate on banning AirDroid when it poses a far greater immediate threat than TikTok.
I could only see it like that, I'm sure that the reason of this banning if you can see is that Trump and US administration is just like a thug that were hired by some company to hinder/destroy the rising company.
Regarding security, your claims are unfounded. AirDroid has published official statements outlining a pretty robust setup for security and privacy. They explicitly talk about using end-to-end encryption for remote access, HTTPS/SSL for data transfer, and they clearly state they don't sell user data. They also specify that access to your device is only based on the permissions you grant.
> Another ACLU tweet: “To truly address privacy concerns with companies like TikTok, Congress must ensure that ANY company that services US consumers cannot hand over our data to any government without a warrant or equivalent. Letting the president selectively ban platforms isn’t the solution.” That tweet seems to be in favor of the ban and a process for banning other companies as well.
Seems pretty clear what the ACLU stance is. Banning TikTok is a political move that curbs free speech and has nothing to do with protecting speech. This is because we have domestic apps that not only can, but are, doing the same thing (Instagram silently dropping kamalaharris.info messages for violating "Community Standards").
If we ban the techniques that curb free speech instead, seems more in line with the argument of protecting free speech.
The underlying fear is the impact that a foreign entity will have on our political and social fabric (because America has never done that before). It's a valid concern, especially after Cambridge Analytica. But TikTok falls into the same regulatory challenge forces that can impact change through social media platforms. Building a better framework is a long term solution that encodes into law American values, transparency, and constraints by the legislative branch, not precedent set by the executive branch.
At the same time, every time there is a major hearing against big tech, it's always disappointing.
The point about China R&D is a good one, and of course something to consider for other companies now and in the future. After all, he explains that Google was not banned in China, until Google put some operations into the country.
I think the article isn't trying to cover all the basis, but rather highlight that there are many difference ways to look at this problem.
Seems like Weibo users are just as inflammatory and insufferable as Twitter users. Probably just as irrelevant too.
have to feel bad for the guy
he basically was taking over the world
And now he's getting kicked out of the biggest market on the planet
But I think it's still missing the point:
* There isn't a legal process of banning TikTok.
* The current process is overly politicized.
It's not that there isn't legitimate reasons to motivate banning TikTok. It's that such reasons cannot legally justify such action.
Of course there is presidential executive power to do that. But that should be used as a less common mechanism. Not on this minor issue.
My conclusion: The whole situation is out-of-proportional because of politics.
The Chinese government gave these companies a chance to stay, as long as the complied with the censorship laws.
Google was going to re-enter the Chinese market again with Project Dragonfly, but they backed out due to bad publicity.
Of cuz, these big corps already forsaken their US values in almost all aspects of their businesses, but they cannot put that under the focus light of China, the forbidden word...
Then there are Apple and Microsoft.
In the end, we get a living example of why GPT3 questions humans intelligence...
And if they hadn't, I would hope that this discussion we're having would include what sanctions Google should face for not backing out. I'm having a hard time following how folks in threads related to China are not seeing that this game is being played by two players with completely different understandings of the rules. Player 1 spends an inordinate amount of time with the rule book, complaining to others that player 2 isn't playing fairly. Player 2 continues taking territory knowing that by the time player 1 realizes it's not about following the rules - it's about winning - it'll be too late.
What are the sanctions?
I am not aware of firms doing business to China are punished by any sovereign nations?
> this game is being played by two players with completely different understandings of the rules
What do you mean by different understanding of the rules?
I thought here China and US do have different rules, and firms are facing different rules when they operate at these 2 nations. How and why that leads to different understanding of (the same set of) rules?
> Player 1 ... Player 2
Who are these corresponding to China and US?
I am fairly exposed to the complexity involves in the sino us relationship both economic and political. There certainly isn't systematic imbalance in terms of one government is playing by rules and the others don't.
There are none right now, that's my point. But if PRC is going to co-opt US companies as they implement other strategies to become global hegemon in 10 years time, it's perfectly appropriate to ask questions about whether or not American companies should play party to this - and whether or not the American government should do anything to stop or reverse the trend.
>What do you mean by different understanding of the rules?
>Who are these corresponding to China and US?
I'm not really convinced you're arguing in good faith if your null position is that the US and China are behaving the same way in international markets. There's mountains of evidence to the contrary, going back 30 years.
Of cuz they are not behaving the same way. But the issue is: are they behaving in the framework of law?
> Of course there is presidential executive power to do that
These contradict each other.
China was wise not to let American tech companies have free access to their markets. America would be wise to reciprocate. Data is much more valuable in aggregate than it is to individuals and keeping it in house seems like it would be worth the costs. Europe has started to adopt a similar strategy of blocking data egress (via GDPR) and that makes sense to me too.
But really the world is becoming less about money. Heck, just look at all the money printing going on demonstrates that the value of money in absolute terms is diminishing [1]. We care more about our data, ideas, who stores them and what they use it for. We care about being influenced because it affects the decisions we make and the onward impact on the societies we live in.
China is absolutely petrified of the idea that people can band together and protest against their power structure. The US is petrified that Chinese companies can be used by state apparatus. Both concerns are legitimate to those on each side of the 'fence' here.
I really hope we don't end up with walls around each countries Internet but it may be unavoidable. We're becoming a civilisation less tolerant and more suspicious.
[1] https://www.tradingview.com/chart/gYLDBzoy/ - Fascinating chart showing the US S&P 500 index divided by M2 (money supply)
What do you mean by this? Most free markets have a significant amount of dead weight loss.
This tends to be moved into "externalities" and doesn't affect the direct recipients of wealth. It does affect things like quality of life, environment, etc.
All systems have losses. Free markets will create more wealth than any of the alternatives.
Congresspeople have high approval from their own constituents. Everyone hates other district's congresspeople.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/162362/americans-down-congress-...
This has little to do with 'expression or values' - they are hardly part of he equation.
TikTok is a 'large Chinese company' which means it has deep ties to the government. TikTok users were apparently partly responsible for screwing up Trump's rally. I don't actually believe China was behind this, nor are we sure how much said users had an effect, but the fact that this is plausible is a very, very serious concern.
Authoritarian states are getting really, really good at controlling information, it's much more effective than nuclear threats.
That most of us happen to loathe Trump (who as far as I am concerned would for TikTok to ban negative videos of him if he could get away with) is besides the point.
The 'tit for tat' issues are not issues of 'values' - they are mostly issues of trade asymmetry, and there are very legit concerns there.
The notion that one state could have so much information about another state and act coherently on that in the context of a fairly aggressive, almost Imperial plan, is something we're going to have to contend with very soon.
Edit: I should add that values/freedom of expression do matter of course, but they are absolutely not the driving factors underlying this issue. Arguably not even part of the equation at this point.
This is a political and economical move, if this is how US and Trump wanted it to be, by forcing another company to sell into another local company then it would be a forced acquisition and this would make other companies to reconsidered to invest or build their company in the US.
By this rule, other country in this case China could also enforced banning on services and products into their market with the reason of "Security, Influence and State Control"