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thewhitetulip

Can anyone who knows these things please tell me what good does banning an app do to a country?

India banned loads of Chinese apps, sure, "to put pressure" but is that "pressure" meaningful enough?

Will it work only if all nations decide to do so to counter China? Will that ever happen?

Are we heading towards app-diplomacy?

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Banning an app reduces another nation’s control over the culture and mindset of your country’s people. Whether this is a concern or not is less clear, but theoretically China could censor content that is critical of China, which India and US may not approve of. Or even more subtly it could nudge people in certain directions. Such as the claim that Russia is stoking the fires of internal strife within the US.

That last claim is not so much s claim as proven fact.

I'm pretty sure we weren't seeing Chinese culture via TikTok. Indian Tiktokers made lot of money via TikTok.

But does this work to nudge China?

Is Indian lost revenue big enough for China to change their style just because TikTok is banned?

The point isn't to get China to change, but for a country to have control over its own people instead of a different country having that control.

Is that's the case then I can understand. The way I hear it in Indian Media is that our supreme leader "taught China a lesson by banning apps"

people should all just bit bitorrent over i2p for all internet access. So everyone is anonymous at all time. No body should be known who they are unless they want to you.

There’s other Chinese companies such as Tencent which aren’t banned. India has more serious border and resource disputes so they are using apps as a proxy in the fight.

I think the main concern many people in the west have against tik Tok is that is is a form of social media that is directly or indirectly under control of the Chinese government and will be used as a subtle form of information warfare.

Yes, but how do we know that this is a good strategy? Is it working? How do we be certain that this is a good fight back mechanism?

As far as I understand it's applicable to all platforms be it chineese, western or even indian. These days these internet platforms are a lot used for spreading political propaganda. Simplest example is ones like quora, reddit etc. It's these days filled with right wing(from all nations) accounts spreading propaganda. The amount of reach they have in these platforms and the amount of control they have to suppress opinions is massive. I was astonished that there was an answer justifying european colonisations and when a comment was made how it was not great for colonised and how the colonisers as a whole benefited a lot form these actions immediately the comment was reported and removed. These platforms are all owned for spreading each other's political propoganda in the information warfare that's there. It's not exclusive to chineese but as you said since government control over companies are more there it's thousands times worse; but it's not exclusive to chineese it is for platforms from west too.

If anything, reddit is actually overrun by left wing spam accounts and I say this as a liberal leaning person myself. I had to drop that platform outside of reading nintendo and Star Trek episode discussions.

Reddit can get nasty very quickly if you venture out of the few remaining sane subs!

It could be something as "simple" as shifting public opinion.

And these days, it's a lot - because it's not just Indian public opinion and Chinese public opinion, it has global reach.

It also undermines China enterprises, when a big part of tech business models is economies of scale, such actions basically cut massive slices of the global market.

Even if all of this is a nudge, it's still a nudge in a certain direction.

Because the reality is that India is struggling dealing with China, and all the help they can get in the direction of slowing down China is good for them.

You see news about the conflicts in the Himalayas for small "patches of land", but a lot of the advents in the Indian Ocean are going unnoticed - China is literally expanding their territory aggressively and India doesn't have enough navy resources to stop it.

> what good does banning an app do to a country

Given the context of recent India-China issues, it is fair that India will take punitive steps. But it will not make China to correct her behaviour. I look at the banning of the apps this way:

1. Sends a message to China that India can take further steps and will stand-up to the bullying of China

2. I really doubt that banning apps is the ultimate card with India. It is a just one of the cards and reserving others when things escalate

3. If banning 100+ apps results into even growth of 10 apps India-made apps, it is a good side effect.

4. Any little trust India policymakers had towards China is gone. See [1]

[1] https://theprint.in/defence/china-wanted-no-escalation-on-ho...

Note: theprint.in is not a right-wing media outlet. I could have cited a more pro-govt sources but theprint is a centrist ones.

I agree with all your points. So this is just punishing China. Whether it works is yet to be seen

Sure, few local apps growing through this will be a happy incidence.

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