US bans WeChat, TikTok from app stores, threatens shutdowns | Hacker News Reader

US bans WeChat, TikTok from app stores, threatens shutdowns

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252 pointsdsavant288 comments

Banning a speech app should trigger strict judicial scrutiny for first amendment infringement in the same way that banning a newspaper would:

1. Is it necessary to a "compelling state interest"?

Maybe they are CCP surveillance apps, but that needs be shown in court, not merely asserted.

2. Is it "narrowly tailored" to achieving this compelling purpose?

This seems narrowly tailored to two apps.

3. Does it use the "least restrictive means" to achieve the purpose?

Like demanding that they change the apps rather than banning them.

That test (strict scrutiny) is applied by a court reviewing the action; US courts generally don't provide advisory opinions.

PSA: If you have an Android phone, you can download WeChat directly from wechat.com. You don't need to go through the Google Play store because your OS supports your freedom to some degree to install whatever you want on hardware that you OWN.

If you have an iPhone, sorry that your phone company's CEO is pretty much a dictator and is complicit in restricting the freedom of Americans.

How come the argument "you can just buy an android phone" doesn't apply to iOS users in the same way "you can just sideload an APK" does to Google play store users? This isn't a rhetorical question, I'm genuinely curious about how people think of these distinctions.

For one thing, buying a new phone, buying all your apps again for a different app store, and transferring all your data isn't a trivial task.

Sideloading is free.

sunk cost fallacy. If you have an iPhone you're probably deep into the Apple ecosystem and migrating to another platform is painful.

Money spent on apps you don't use anymore may be "sunk costs". Likewise, money spent on apps with an equivalent, free alternative on Android.

Resistance due to money (and effort) that would need to be spent to migrate to Android is not the sunk cost fallacy.

Technically, you can on an iPhone too, just not for free and not anywhere near as conveniently. There were various tools in circulation while there were no decent Jailbreaks. One that springs to mind was iReSign - according to its github page it's for re-signing app bundles with enterprise keys, but that's not what it was used for back then. People captured the .ipa files and signed them with developer keys and all sorts of unfortunate things happened after that.

TL;DR: "sideloading" for iOS = Free: no. Convenient: no. Possible: yes. Out of reach of most people: absolutely yes.

Uh? I'm not sure I understand your question. The argument doesn't apply because we're talking about the quality of the phone, not the generic freedom of its users. Of course the users are free to use a different phone. Actually, they might be forced to because the phone they bought will refuse to do what they ask it to. Which sucks.

Because the former requires replacing everthing else on the phone and the phone itself, whereas the latter, as far as I can tell, has no negative effects beyond the sideloaded APK possibly being malicious, ie no negative effects artificially imposed by the phone maker.

Personally, it's a bit like if I purchased a Mercedes but found that I could only drive it on certain pre-approved roads, subject to varying partnerships and licensing agreements. Someone telling me, "you can just buy a scooter" seems predicated on the assertion that they both belong in the same category of "means of transportation," but ignores the fact that they operate very differently in several ways. It also ignores the fact that I've paid for the Mercedes (and possibly invested time and money into skills and tools to repair it), and can't necessarily recoup those costs.

Fundamentally, it ignores whether freedom of movement should be infringed in such a way. One can currently sideload an APK on Android, but what's stopping Google from taking the same hard line as Apple?

Note: I am using the hyperbolic analogy above for rhetorical reasons; I don't think Android phones are perfectly analogous to a scooter. We use Android at work precisely because of Apple's lockdowns, and while I actually like the OS well enough I think I would find it frustrating on a personal phone.

The message you're replying to argues that a car that refuses to go on certain roads is exactly equivalent to a car that does, because its owners are free to buy the other car. This is a complete non-sequitur, and I am surprised someone is debating it seriously.

Cars have less built in switching costs than phones. You can only have one phone at a time and there is an entire ecosystem of services and apps are carried forward when you buy a new one.

A better metaphor might be renting a home. Imagine if you could only fill it with furniture and appliances that have been approved, and you can only park certain types of cars in the garage. You could always move, but then you have to buy new everything.

You don't have to "jailbreak" your Android because it wasnt in jail to begin with. Sideloading works straight out of the box.

You do need to turn off signature checking in the security settings, so not completely out of the box.

Given that the application store can be changed to blacklist a certain app, it is not unlikely that the next step is similar changes to the apk installer.

It should also be noted that there are no guarantees that signature checking is optional in all future builds of Android. While there are differences between the iPhone and Android business models, they should also not be overstated. My personal guess is that they will drift closer over time rather than farther apart.

You can side load on iOS - quit spreading misinformation

Care to provide a URL?

Or well, I looked it up and this is 1 way: https://jilaxzone.com/2020/04/20/complete-guide-how-to-sidel...

It's a hacky workaround that needs "maintenance" every 7 days, but I guess you can call it "You can side load on iOS"

Use altstore - it doesn't require jailbreak or maintenance. It autorenews your certs for you and you can even add alternate store sources to increase the apps available in the store.

I have a bunch of apps sideloaded and they work great.

Regardless, the point is you can sideload.

They should GPL the app. Play the PGP card and print the source in a book.

That would not help iOS users.

> Maybe they are CCP surveillance apps, but that needs be shown in court, not merely asserted.

If TikTok sued the US government under this theory, the government might need to make the argument in court to defend the lawsuit. There’s no requirement for the government to preemptively make a showing in court before it does everything.

Why would that not be abused as a means of political oppression? You could just sue your opponents and it would be guilty until proven innocent.

Suing and the associated guilty until proven innocent threat absolutely are abused in politics and in every day life.

Good points. It's crazy the level of power I'm learning our executive branch has... Government is dangerous without checks and balances.

Much of government was designed with expectations of certain norms being followed that are now being violated. There are a lot of checks and balances (e.g. impeachment) that could be executed if a branch of the government was willing to cooperate.

Checks and balances all break down in the presence of ideologically aligned parties. Its a miracle its lasted this long, but it was inevitable.

> There is an opinion, that parties in free countries are useful checks upon the administration of the Government, and serve to keep alive the spirit of Liberty. This within certain limits is probably true; and in Governments of a Monarchical cast, Patriotism may look with indulgence, if not with favor, upon the spirit of party. But in those of the popular character, in Governments purely elective, it is a spirit not to be encouraged. From their natural tendency, it is certain there will always be enough of that spirit for every salutary purpose. And, there being constant danger of excess, the effort ought to be, by force of public opinion, to mitigate and assuage it. A fire not to be quenched, it demands a uniform vigilance to prevent its bursting into a flame, lest, instead of warming, it should consume.

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Washington%27s_Farewell_Addre...

This seems narrowly tailored to two apps.

Doesn't that make it a Bill of Attainder, which is unconstitutional? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_of_attainder

A bill of attainder (also known as an act of attainder or writ of attainder or bill of penalties) is an act of a legislature declaring a person, or a group of persons, guilty of some crime, and punishing them, often without a trial.

That part of the Constitution applies to Congress. They can not single out individuals (or individual corporations by Amendment 14) for punishment by legislation. Punishment is the role of a court trial.

>is an act of a legislature

Seems pretty clear that this does not apply to actions of the commerce department because they are not a legislature. They are not finding China / the apps guilty of a crime or punishing them for that crime.

Even if Congress issued this ban, Congress has the explicit right to regulate commerce in the constitution. Trade embargo and sanctions are a very well established power of the government and does not include "declaring a person or group of people guilty of some crime".

Also this kind of action may intersect with constitutional foreign policy powers, which I think are far less familiar to regular people than other constitutional concepts from the Bill of Rights, etc.

The Bill of Rights limits Constitutional foreign policy powers.

the commerce department because they are not a legislature

The Commerce Department operates as a proxy for Congress. They were set up to fully codify and implement the broader regulations enacted by Congress.

Congress can't create a proxy that has the power to do things that the Congress itself doesn't have the power to do itself.

If you want to pretend that this isn't being done under the aegis of Congress but rather the Executive, you're going to have to point to me the enumerated power that gives that branch the power to regulate commerce at all.

They are not finding China / the apps guilty of a crime or punishing them for that crime.

That's the same legal silliness that our law enforcement folks like to use to justify asset forfeiture. I was under the impression that the consensus around here is that it's BS.

> The Commerce Department operates as a proxy for Congress.

That's how the government works. Congress writes the laws and the executive branch executes the laws... That doesn't make the executive branch part of the legislative branch.

"In the United States, the Department of Commerce is an executive department of the federal government concerned with promoting economic growth. This organization's main purpose is to create jobs, promote economic growth, encourage sustainable development and _block harmful trade practices of other nations_[1]". The department of commerce is literally a part of the executive branch. Of course they operate with the support of Congress, they are implementing the laws that Congress writes. That's how the government works. I don't know what point you're trying to make.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_...

> Seems pretty clear that this does not apply to actions of the commerce department because they are not a legislature

Right. The executive declaring guilt and imposing criminal punishment would just be a violation of the 5th Amendment due process clause. But this isn't declaring guilt and imposing punishment, it's, superficially at leaat, making a finding delegated to the President by Congress under law designed to regulate foreign trade for the purpose of protecting national security.

Whether it comports with the detailed requirements of the authorizing law, whether the law as a whole or this specific action citing it violate the Constitution, and a number of other things may be reasonable questions, but this whole “bill of attainder” thing isn't on a number of levels.

How does that apply to all other economic Sanctions? Like the sanctions on Cuba? If Cuba made a product that can arguably "enable free speech", would it be able to bypass sanctions?

We’re not banning all trade with a particular national, we’re banning a particular app from a nation we import more from (in terms of dollars as of 2019) than any other nation.

This kind of unilateral decision strikes me as short sighted and more politically motivated than anything.

Not all sanctions ban all trade, and a lot of them are targetted at a whole nation. And they are always politically motivated.

Now I have no clue if this particular sanction is warrented, or if it'll have negative impact, etc. So maybe it is short cited, maybe it's not. I'm just saying apart from the higher profiles being sanctioned here, this seems similar to a lot of other sanctions.

Can you name some examples of other sanctions it’s similar to?

For example, ZIMBABWE MINING DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION is sanctioned by the US, so it cannot participate in business transactions with any American company. Another one is Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A. an oil company from Venezuela.

You can read more about it here: https://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/0410/countries-s...

The important bit is this:

> The U.S. sanctions countries that sponsor terrorism or perpetrate human rights violations on their people. The U.S. can sanction an entire nation or specific individuals or entities within that nation.

I am focusing on WeChat only with this comment.

It is not narrowly tailored or least restrictive. Narrowly tailored means the law must be precisely written to minimize the 1st Amendment impact. In this case, this order prevents millions of Americans from using their primary (and oftentimes only) method to communicate with family in China. There is no practical alternative to WeChat as all other similar apps are banned in China, so this order is extremely restrictive.

Can you provide a solution that has less 1A impact about Chinese app ran on Chinese servers? I don't think that USG could achieve the goals of Chinese not being able to intercept US communication with anything less than a ban on some level.

Yeah, I can provide an alternative solution: ban its use within the government for sensitive uses, but allow its use by citizens. Issue a public notice to citizens that any wechat communications may be known by the chinese government.

If there's an actual national security issue with private citizens using the app, they should air it and give it a chance to be addressed, or succeed in court on its merits.

> I don't think that USG could achieve the goals of Chinese not being able to intercept US communication

Frankly, that shouldn't be a goal of the us government for private citizens. The us government can protect government communications all it wants, but private citizens should be free to use chinese services if they want. I know someone learning chinese in an american college, and one of their resources is using weibo (a chinese twitter clone basically, definitely hosted on chinese servers). If US private citizens using wechat is "china intercepting us communication", than this person using weibo and emailing chinese students to learn would count too, right?

It seems like a clear violation of the 1st amendment, and the justification seems very flimsy, at best.

The issue is not strictly limited to 1A issues or concern over intercepted communications, though. There's a much larger elephant in the room: a social media app, wildly popular with easily influenced young people, that the Chinese Communist Party has, effectively, editorial control over. That's, imo, the most concerning issue here. Imagine what you could do with this power.

(I ask that question a bit tongue in cheek, because we should also be asking it of Facebook/Twitter/Google et al.)

Imagine what you could do with a newspaper where the editor has editorial control. Oh the horrors!

I’m not sure what point you’re trying to make. Are you admitting that TikTok and WeChat are essentially “news” apps that CCP has editorial control over?

It is also violation of free association, because social apps have a community aspect.

> Yeah, I can provide an alternative solution: ban its use within the government for sensitive uses, but allow its use by citizens.

Use by citizens is already allowed; the order doesn't address it at all.

Honest question: Can you just use email?

Yeah, and if I ban you from using postal services, you can just rely on using pigeon carriers for mail.

If what I said sounds ridiculous, that's exactly how your email proposition sounds to people who are used to WeChat. We can argue semantics and details, like "but it isn't the same, because this and that, etc.". But, at the end of the day, if email was even close to being as convenient as WeChat for the purposes that most people use WeChat for, people would've been using email already.

It just seems strange that there's only one option available. In the US there are so many options that I find myself using an app just to talk to a specific friend, e.g. to talk to John, I'll use Twitter DMs, but I'll use Facebook to talk to Mike. Maybe this is a lesson to not consolidate literally every function of daily life into one superapp?

I think a lot of the issues on that front stem from the Chinese side where the CCP has placed vast restrictions on internet and application use.

And if for example Facebook messaging is banned you will then have to talk to Mike using Twitter DM which may be an big pain in the ass, maybe Mike isn't on Twitter or can't use it.

>Maybe this is a lesson to not consolidate literally every function of daily life into one superapp?

Sure, the thing is, people in China didn't choose to consolidate it all in one app, their government made that choice for them.

Your examples with Twitter and FB are perfect here, because both of those services are blocked in China.

And whose fault is it that "all other similar apps are banned in China"?

Given that context, without overwhelming evidence that there's absolutely no connection between the Chinese government and WeChat, this is fair play, and the only valid arguments against this move are tactical rather than legal.

>And whose fault is it that "all other similar apps are banned in China"?

I'm not sure that 'China is doing it too' has any bearing on the lawfulness of US government action.

>without overwhelming evidence that there's absolutely no connection between the Chinese government and WeChat

I think the burden of proof goes the other way.

If the argument was restricted to a claim that the technical details of the ban should be slightly different, you might have a point. But the Constitution is not a suicide pact. Something along these lines has been compelled by geopolitical game theory for years, as soon as it became clear that the preferred no-retaliation tactic was not going to work here. Laws will be updated as necessary to adapt to the strategic imperative.

As a Chinese person, I'll take this over internment camps any day of the week.

edit: To downvoters: I lived and worked in Shenzhen and Beijing in 2011-12. I aspired to do work there that was useful to humanity as a whole, both inside and outside of China, and it was already perfectly obvious then that I'd need to make use of my work not require any trust in the Chinese government. Not because of an existing law, but because of common sense regarding how much the rest of the world was going to continue putting up with. So I open-sourced everything that mattered, and that work did in fact go on to become trusted by professionals on both sides of the Great Firewall. Perhaps I'm still setting an unreasonable standard, but it's not one that I didn't try to meet myself.

> I'm not sure that 'China is doing it too' has any bearing on the lawfulness of US government action.

But that's essentially the basis for the other side of the argument in this case, namely that because China only allows certain apps which are hosted and monitored within China, America must too allow those apps which are hosted and monitored within China.

> In this case, this order prevents millions of Americans from using their primary (and oftentimes only) method to communicate with family in China.

Didn't look that way to me? The order prohibits services from providing the application or updates to it via an "online mobile application store in the US", it prohibits services from doing any payment processing for WeChat, and it prohibits services from providing hosting or content delivery for WeChat. But while it's doing its best to make it difficult for Americans to obtain WeChat, (1) it does not actually prohibit them from doing so, and (2) it very much doesn't prohibit anyone from using WeChat. (Except for monetary transfer; that's prohibited.)

> But while it's doing its best to make it difficult for Americans to obtain WeChat

By banning WeChat on the app stores, this will eventally restrict the entire general public's access to their platform of choice for 1A protected expression, because their access is subject to never buying a new phone, never resetting their phone, and praying WeChat never issues a required update. As time passes and the above situations occur to more and more users, the 1A impact continues to grow until it encompasses all users. The courts are quite capable of seeing how today's ban will affect tomorrow's free speech.

Also, before someone makes the "sideloading" argument, consider that on iOS it is effectively impossible for the general public. On Android, it is cumbersome and confusing enough that it presents a significant barrier as well. The courts will not ignore that.

Translated to a more familiar medium, the analogy would be: “bookstores can no longer sell that title, but that’s ok because people who already own a copy can still read it.” I’m not a constitutional scholar, but this seems like a pretty weak counterargument to me.

I agree with your analogy, and I agree that this is a terrible move.

But for the demographic mentioned ("this order prevents millions of Americans from using their primary (and oftentimes only) method to communicate with family in China"), I find it vanishingly unlikely that any of them doesn't already have wechat. The order has essentially zero immediate effects on them.

On the contrary, I think it's vastly more consequential than the corresponding argument wrt a hard-copy book or CD-ROM. A single OS upgrade can render an application completely inoperable. Had this ban been timed slightly differently, the recent iOS 14 update could have shut down every copy running on iOS devices. Every typical iOS user (and many Android users) are "N days" from total failure of the app on their device, for values of N ranging to a few hundred.

As apps become more and more integrated part of people’s live and livelihood, it becomes very pressing to have collective voice of app users across the globe to deal with arbitrary bullies from governments ...

Which is what the ACLU is saying.[1] "Selectively banning entire platforms violates the First Amendment and harms freedom of speech online." Expect a lawsuit in days, if not hours.

[1] https://www.aclu.org/news/free-speech/dont-ban-tiktok-and-we...

I tend to agree with them here, but the thing that always gets me is how many people will support these same actions if, instead of being done by the elected government, they're done by unelected internet companies that hold monopoly power.

I get why that may be more of a problem legally, but not why so many people agree with it morally, because they come from people not otherwise inclined to agree with the proposition that a monpolist's business decisions are somehow above scrutiny.

That's definitely a concern, but the more pressing concern is allowing the government to hold this power – something I think we can all agree shouldn't be allowed (without due process).

Because first amendment is to limit government power. Private companies are not obliged to give you right to free speech. In theory private companies compete against each other but government has a monopoly on legalized violence.

Yes, that's the legal claim. What's the moral claim?

TikTok takes down content it doesn't like on a regular basis. It's pretty well known if you use tiktok. Not saying they shouldn't be able to do that, its part of how they got their For You page so popular.

Whether a website wants to display tiktok or not is the same thing - it'll do whatever it thinks will get more users.

The last point I made is the moral argument "in theory private companies compete against each other but government has a monopoly on legalized violence." Government must be constrained because you can't get away from it.

Now it is true commercial monopolies can also exert coercion on their customers, so we have antimonopoly laws. These laws likely need updates to deal with natural monopolies coming from the strong network effect in the internet era. And the interaction with free speech right in social networks will be an extremely challenging issue.

It seems to me that you agree that morally, companies shouldn't be exerting monopoly power in this area, otherwise we wouldn't need updates to the law, so I won't quibble.

The moral claim is private companies maintain private property for the benefit of their customers.

It's also worth noting that at least for TikTok, its audience is young and left leaning. It is wildly popular with young people. It was where individuals organized buying up tickets to Trump rallies to inflate expectations during the pandemic [1], something which is known to have angered Trump.

Something as targeted as this ban seems like Trump deplatforming his critics under the excuse of national security. Plus, it's happening right before the election.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/21/style/tiktok-trump-rally-...

I dont think you have to show that in court if its national interest then all you need is congressional approval no? You cant have a court hearing on intelligence information or am i missing sonething?

We see another side effect of app stores: gives governments easy leverage to tell you what you can do with your computer.

Bingo. Wonder how all the Apple defenders like John Gruber are gonna spin this one.

App Stores were always a mistake. Walled gardens were always a mistake. The people arguing that they were good because of security or whatever were arguing on behalf of a red herring. It's security theater. iOS has had, what, like 6 critical vulnerabilities in the past 5 years? What was the point? Quite literally only to limit what you can and can't run on your own device.

For all it's worth, I'm thrilled the Microsoft Store is dying a painful death and that most Windows apps continue to be installable via NSIS or MSIs.

I grew up before the mobile 'revolution' and I miss the days when just getting a setup.exe from a friend on a floppy disk and running it to install a piece of software did not feel like high treason.

App Stores were not a mistake, having only one App store allowed like Apple does is a mistake.

I hadn't even thought of this.

What if WeChat was a traditional installer (.msi, .app, .exe, .run) that you download from some sever and which is mirrored all over the place?

Does the same authority apply? Can the government say "it's illegal to have this binary executable?"

Or is this only possible because there's one central repository for these platforms, and the government can simply compel the platform (legal and ethical questions aside) to remove them?

They can issue the order, the question is how diligently would the order be fulfilled. Check file name? Check hash? Do a heuristic analysis a la antivirus? Filter network traffic for app signatures on to of this?

You actually can, there's a desktop version.

Yes, there is, but it requires you to scan a code with your mobile phone before you can use it!

Sure, they can, but they won't bother. The average American isn't going to download software on a PC. They have an iPhone or Android device as their primary computer. Banning the app stores is enough to get the manipulation of the masses that they want.

From what I understand, China does the same. Ban the easy things, only bother to crackdown on the harder things (like VPN or cryptocurrency) when they start to get out of control.

you can get a VPN to bypass the Great Firewall. You can't get anything to bypass the App Store

I’ll buy a non iPhone, easy

I’m genuinely curious what the perceived threat is here. Is it as simple as “China is going to read everyone’s stuff and use machine learning to figure out what the cool kids are doing and then brainwash them?”

General election interference, manipulating public perception by constantly suggesting pro-CCP propaganda, aggravating the general public to turn on each other, tracking vocal anti-CCP individuals and potentially targeting them while traveling abroad. That's a few off the top of my head.

How is Google/Twitter/Facebook any different? Lemme guess your answer: well, they're on our side because it's an American company, and we can control them!

It's been 10+ years of these companies and no meaningful oversight has been exerted, at least not on behalf of users. Not after:

1. Self-admitted election interference https://www.vox.com/2017/4/28/15476142/facebook-report-trump...

2. Tracking and targeting individuals' political speech in the US https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/31/20837448/social-media-dhs...

3. Tracking and targeting individuals' political speech in autocratic nations: https://www.npr.org/2019/11/07/777352750/how-saudi-arabia-us...

4. Paid to suggest pro-CCP propaganda! https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/08/technology/china-facebook...

I don’t think we can control them, I do think we could ideally introduce sensible legislation and hopefully the bad actors would at least be incentivized to benefit their own country to some extent. Also, sorry if I somehow insulted your home country, was only trying to make the point of why Americans would want a Chinese company ran out of town.

I don't think google/twitter/facebook are any different than tiktock. Honestly, I'd love to see something done with these companies too, since it's clear that making microphones available to anyone, whether they are a human or a script, just leads to noise that overwhelms any expert level signal on world events or domain knowledge. I'm not sure what can be done at this point, though, it's like pandora's box has been opened. Now that the playbook is there, the internet is legitimately polluted for good. There will always be some other social network to trivially exert manipulation on, since humans are just wired to give into this tribalism as a species at the end of the day.

Oh Lawdy, people are saying things on social platforms I disagree with!

> General election interference, manipulating public perception by constantly suggesting pro-CCP propaganda, aggravating the general public to turn on each other

You mean what's happening everyday on Facebook and Twitter often being instigated by Chinese and Russian actors?

Pretty much and I hope they pay for it. It would be nice if those companies be actually held accountable where it makes sense. They might as well be operating from China! :)

US interferes in elections in many countries[1]

[1]https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/07/the-us-has...

and it shouldn’t be a thing.

>US interferes in elections in many countries

Sure, and I totally understand if those other countries decide to take steps to prevent that interference from happening. It is perfectly reasonable for them to want to do so, just like it is for the US.

Propoganda, election interference, tracking of people in the US for unknown purposes.

But I think it's primarily just deserved reciprocity to how the CCP is behaving in general. The US and the west have bent over backward for like 30 years and all we got was just more totalitarianism, hacking, IP theft, etc. Why play?

Because the majority of the people using Wechat and Tiktok are not CCP?

Does banning CCP controlled businesses not push back on the CCP because there is collateral?

I guess for now it's just a power game.

In the future? Who knows what might happen if this sets a precedent. Seems like a slippery slope to me if the US government is allowed to just selectively ban communication channels on the grounds of "security".

My understanding is that there are quite a few perceived threats, but all of them apply to large US corporations as well.

If you collect enough information on people, they can be manipulated to certain beliefs or actions. This is the same information that Facebook and Google use for advertising purposes, similar information to the Cambridge Analytica events, and the risk is China (or a nefarious actor with this information) using it to "meddle" within the US.

Apps collecting sensitive information (which maybe TikTok content counts as?) can also be used for blackmail, especially when owned by a foreign government which wouldn't even blink at blackmail.

There are other more paranoia-centered concerns around essentially-real-time location data being used to "know where in the country to attack".

Basically there are definitely legitimate concerns around large-scale data collection, but the "National Security" concern definitely seems to be "China is less trustworthy than any American company".

This is just my understanding, and am open to being proven wrong here.

Update:

I forgot to mention that I do believe there is a legitimate concern around a foreign government having what is effectively editorial control over a platform which is used by a rather-easily-influenced group as a "news source". Whether or not social media should ever be considered a source of news is a different discussion, but if a large section of the US population is believing what they see on TikTok as fact, and the content on TikTok is editorialized by a foreign state actor, it is a legitimate concern.

Hmm, why just foreign governments? The last 3.5 years (if not more) the US government doesn't seem to have been acting in your or my best interests, unless you're of the "Koch brothers"-class elite.

Meanwhile it's not the government, but Instagram hides unfavorable "related hashtags" when you search for Trump-related hashtags, but doesn't do the same for Biden: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/instagram-relat...

Viva la democracia! /s

To put it more bluntly: People have studied how to weaponize Facebook, and are have finally got around to make sure others can't to them same to them. It's the classic two sides of intelligence and counter intelligence.

I would expect the big IT companies to be treated more and more as intelligence assets over time, if we aren't already there.

Summation: Censorship by US is good, if it keeps you from hearing things the current administration does not want, such as ways to troll the presidents rallies.

I agree that the argument for perceived threat is not great, but I can't say that I feel too bad for ByteDance or Tencent given that they are de-facto extensions of a government who has spent a lot of time imposing ridiculous restrictions and conditions on entering their markets, mainly forced technology transfer.

Also, if you think banning a chat app is more of a government restriction on free speech than requiring filmmakers to censor their movies and require Chinese government minders to be on the set in order to be screened in China then I would disagree with you.

So, separate from the Trump Administration's actual motivations (which I think are at best vague and at worst petty retaliation), I thought this NY Times editorial made a pretty strong case in favor of banning these platforms:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/18/opinion/tiktok-wechat-ban...

TikTok and WeChat benefit from being the only social networks that can be accessed from all of the largest internet markets in the world. And the only social networks that can do that are... the ones from China. When the US is permissive, and China is not, China gets to write all the rules.

This gives China the ability to effectively export their restrictions on speech around the world, as they have shown an eagerness to do. If you want to be a global social network, you have to play by China's rules, globally.

I'm not personally convinced that banning these platforms is the right move, but I think the case is legitimate, and it's certainly a major problem.

Imagine that Russia bans Facebook because of those reasons. Do you think that would be a good move?

Considering that China already did ban Facebook along with quite a few other US-originated apps, I'm not sure what your point is here.

Doesn't Russia have VK, and isn't it the most popular site in Russia? FB is certainly popular in Russia, but it's not like people there wouldn't have another place to go if FB were banned.

The sort of people that use Facebook in Russia know their way around a ban.

I agree. I too am not sure that these sorts of bans are the right move, but China's relentless restrictiveness vs. most of the rest of the world's openness cannot be good for the rest of the world.

I agree with this, social media is most often won by the service reaching the most users. Wechat is the only app you can use to chat with people living in China, and to (easily) chat with home when in China. So why have two apps installed, when one works everywhere?

It's bad enough that the Chinese market is already a bubble (foreign companies need a Chinese partnership to enter), yet the Chinese companies can freely operate in the western world.

Nobody disputes that China is already playing this game.

That is true in many areas. The questions is what a liberal democracy should do.

Cui bono? This sets up the current president and spy agencies to approach US tech companies with both a carrot and a stick - look what 'America first' can do for you, and look what I can do to you if you get in my way.

This sort of erosion of due process and international law serves the current administration well (government by fiat is now the norm), but I don't think it serves the US itself well at all. We're about to discover just how resistant the US republic is to such attacks on free speech and the rule of law.

> This sets up the current president and spy agencies to approach US tech companies with both a carrot and a stick

This has already happened? It’s weird to have these conversations as if the Snowden revelations don’t exist.

The threat is that China is, step by step, getting bigger than the US, and the US has no real mean to stop it so they try anything to slow it down.

Zoomers organizing!

My take on it is that it's a distraction tactic. The current administration is pissed off at China for a variety of reasons, and wants to punish them, while also taking attention away from intelligence reports about Russian election interference.

It’s probably retaliation for this https://www.forbes.com/sites/jemimamcevoy/2020/07/07/tiktok-...

No. Social networks are a mass persuasive tools. If you control the information flow, you can control public opinion. Or even worse, if it is unchecked these darn people can even start to organize and think for themselves.

Remember that this all started when a bunch a kids used TikTok to play a prank and sank a Trump rally: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/21/style/tiktok-trump-rally-...

My biggest issue is the brainwashing aspect. Saw another commenter say that it's exporting Chinese censorship. You can get banned for what you say. Pro-China and anti-American articles spread, anti-China gets banned.

Facebook and Google does tracking, but I can post as much anti-Trump material as I want. Try putting anti Xi material on WeChat and see what happens.

it's about posturing, appearing to 'take a stance' , whatever.

A lot more data is exported to china through the cheap IP cameras.

US Government just provided another case study in why we need to be able to side load apps.

Funny, I was thinking the exact opposite. It’s the perfect way to isolate China from the rest of the world, and unless they start going after allies then I’ll be cheering them on.

This is also why 40%-Tencent-owned Epic Games have been attacking Apple non-stop ever since they purposely got themselves banned from the App Store to mount a PR lawsuit campaign to try to force Apple to allow third-party app installations, which coincidentally happened right after Trump signed an executive order that would ban Tencent’s WeChat.

Ban is a heavy word. Can Google issue command to android phones to stop running some particular program? For example as a security measure to stop malware? I think that Google have that ability, even if that malware was side-loaded. Apple definitely can do that on Macs. That feature could be abused to prevent running any forbidden program and side-load won't help you.

Android is still better than iOS in that regard, because it's open source and you can disable anything. Just side-loading might not be enough.

There should be an option to opt-in to side loading, and opt-out of remote app deletions.

Bury them deep in settings, have a ton of recurring confirmation prompts, etc., but we should have laws to ensure these options are available on the devices we own.

I guess they could include it in the anti-malware checks they run but I've never seen or heard that remove apps before.

Wouldn't surprise me if it could though.

The best option would be AOSP without google bits included.

It seems like WeChat access is pretty hard to get in the US currently if you don't know anyone that uses it. I registered an account to try and get support for my Ender 3D printer(nightmare). After a few fields the app asked me to have my sponsor enter my number and I wasn't able to progress further so I uninstalled.

Wait what? You need a "sponsor" to use WeChat?

To use the Chinese version of WeChat.

To use the version of WeChat I downloaded through the Play store.

Sponsor is perhaps a strong word. You need another WeChat user to verify your account by scanning a QR code displayed on your app using their app. You need to do this when you create an account, and also if you haven't used your account in a while. I assume this is some sort of anti-spam/anti-bot feature.

Note that the above is just for the chat feature. You have to jump through more hoops if you want to make payments using the app.

Not only is it an anti-spam feature, but a single personal connection gives substantial insight into a person's social graph.

https://share.busheezy.dev/gVeb8W.png This is what I see.

I ran into this as well. At some point I was able to sign up using a facebook login. I subsequently deleted facebook, but WC still works.

Wechat has an inherent advantage that in order to chat in China or too chat with anyone living in China, you must use wechat.

No American or European chatting app has this same benefit. And since chatting apps and social media in general tends to gravitate to the service with the most users, this puts wechat in a great position. Why use wechat to message your friend in China and WhatsApp to message the rest of the world, when you can just use wechat for both?

Although this is very reactionary and targeted, I hope it eventually spurs a structured process to handle issues like these, ie:

a) Clear criteria for what constitutes an app national security risk

b) An actual government process to evaluate, respond, and enforce against all potential app threats (not just based on popularity, though scale is a factor in prioritization)

I'd rather they not institutionalize this. More bureaucracy isn't going to be meaningful if this is the model, the bureaucracy will just exist to whitewash this stuff in the future.

I also prefer "less authoritarianism" to "more reasonable authoritarianism".

Why does the rest of the world tolerate American bullying is beyond me. At least in Europe, we should ban every Facebook app immediately. This would have the added benefit of letting regional apps emerge.

One big reason is that America controls the SWIFT network for settling international transactions. If you hate American commercial bullying, perhaps the biggest thing to be excited about is Europe's SWIFT-alternative, INSTEX.

The world is so reliant on SWIFT currently that America can grind your commerce to a halt if you don't refuse to do business with entities it doesn't want you to.

(I realize this current TikTok action is domestic-only and unrelated to SWIFT, but I'm speaking more broadly).

"SWIFT" is already in Belgium and INSTEX isn't a SWIFT replacement.

This isn't a technical problem (one can transfer money other ways as well, for example). If an entity does business with Iran it risks being put on the US Entity List (think Huawei) or other sanctions. US influence currently is still far reaching and many businesses don't want to risk (future) complications for little gain (Iran isn't that large of an economy). The calculus changes if it is a market as large as China, though.

Germany just offered to invest $1.2 billion in LNG terminals if US allows them to continue with Nordstream 2.

https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Germany-O...

Thanks for the link, that's an interesting read.

The media is trying its darnedest to paint China as the biggest bully, except it doesn't even compare to US in real world.

So we’re ignoring the fact that Germany basically backstabbed Ukraine with that deal on purpose? Germany did not want to get involved into the Russia / Ukraine conflict because of Russia’s gas dependence, but they knew that Ukraine could force them to take a stance because of their pipeline. So Germany screwed them over and started a pipeline directly with Russia. Germany here is just as much of a scumbag as the US.

Really? South China Sea? Tibet? Or even an island dispute with Japan?

It's way worse than any worst business deal.

In international diplomacy these days you either have to tolerate bullying or be the bully yourself, and often both. For instance, the EU bullies American tech companies through 'litigation'.

China bans half the internet, the US bans two Chinese apps, therefore the EU should retaliate against the US? I am all for fighting back against the influence of Facebook in Europe (especially WhatsApp), but I don't see why we should care about this case at all.

Most US "bullying" that we experience in the EU is just Silicon Valley absorbing our top IT talent (after _our_ tax payers have bankrolled everyone's university education in full). There's no need for actual bullying because we don't even have any killer apps, much less our own hardware or operating systems that the US could possibly ban.

Because you haven't seen what China has done with territory disputes.

South China sea, Taiwan, Vietnam, Phillipines, Tibet, India, Japan.

China literally builds a fake island to claim the territory.

China doesn't aim to trade with us. They just want to take the land.

When US wants to install an army in these countries, they at least make a business deal that has expiry date.

---

Europe and US are in a very strong relationship. They can work out whatever dispute they have. Europe and US generally want a win-win situation with each other.

Can we say the same about China? Nope.

When China does not allow foreign companies to operate in their land (Facebook, Amazon, and a host of other companies) then why should we allow their companies to exist here?

Any concern about apps accessing data is a great argument for sandboxing apps completely from the rest of your phone (e.g. no shared file access, no shared camera roll, no genuine GPS data, 2-way logged/firewalled network access, etc.)

WeChat ban is just evil, no justifiable benefit. Almost all the users in America are overseas Chinese who use it to talk to friends and family in China and send money.

I mean if the Send money feature is what triggers it then isn't it already banned prior to this ban?

There are also many non-Chinese that use wechat.

> There are also many non-Chinese that use wechat.

Are there?

If you have a Chinese supplier or have Chinese friends, you probably have wechat.

> WeChat ban is just evil

Yes, they do some evil spyware things, but so do many US apps as well.

> no justifiable benefit.

Maybe to you, but this does not apply to everyone. This is supposed to be a free country, but projecting one person's idea of benefits on everyone is exactly the opposite of a free country.

> Almost all the users in America are overseas Chinese who use it to talk to friends and family in China and send money.

Well yes, people need a way to talk to their family, and we shouldn't be taking out country politics on civilians' basic human needs, including both visitors and US citizens with family in China. As a free country we should be respecting the needs of the overseas Chinese and overseas everyone-else who is here.

While I do support apps not being evil, I don't think the right answer is to ban WeChat. Rather, the right answer is better and stricter privacy controls on phone OSes that prevent these apps from doing evil things, like arbitrarily scanning your Wi-Fi networks, which both WeChat and Google do.

LineageOS (Android fork) has a good set of tools for this and can run WeChat just fine while spoofing fake data to their servers for most of these spy attempts.

Parent said that ban is evil, not that app itself is evil.

Calling the ban evil is a bit hyperbolic IMO, or maybe just incomplete. Phones with the software could easily be compromised. Users with the software can be profiled and tracked by the Chinese government pretty easily. The Chinese market bans most of America's social media software, and we're entering a trade war. All these are real, legitimate reasons to ban it.

Retaliatory action in a trade war is probably a good idea, but the government may not have a legal tool to block the app for that reason. Hence the need to come up with a security threat.

I’m skeptical of the security issue. If China wanted to inject spyware into American’s phones, there are so many apps to choose from, including lots of apps with millions of installs from no-name developers that could easily be compromised. If the US wants to protect citizens against these threats, they can have entities with infosec skills like the NSA or CISA work with Apple/Google to help detect threats in the app review process. My guess is that programs like this are already in place. Blocking just a couple of economically significant apps doesn’t seem like the way you’d go about pursuing that goal. It smells like a pretext for firing a few more shots in the trade war.

> Users with the software can be profiled and tracked by the Chinese government pretty easily.

This is true of all apps coming out of the US with the NSA. Should Google, Facebook, Netflix be banned in Europe?

> and we're entering a trade war.

The trade war started a while ago and I'm pretty sure China is winning it.

> Should Google, Facebook, Netflix be banned in Europe?

The EU historically has depended on alliance and trade with the US. If that corrodes, then it would make sense for them to ban those at a certain point. I doubt we're there yet though.

> The trade war started a while ago and I'm pretty sure China is winning it.

That's irrelevant to what I said.

From a user security standpoint, absolutely. But given that Europe relies on the US for military protection and trade, it’s unlikely to happen.

> From a user security standpoint, absolutely. But given that Europe relies on the US for military protection and trade, it’s unlikely to happen.

Military protection from whom? Russia? Russia is not in a place to attack Europe. And the US can barely protect themselves from Russia. Who do you think the US is protecting Europe from? Because the saviour of Europe seems to be Turkey and their willingness to keep all the refugees at their border instead of letting them flood into Europe.

And I don't think Europe relies on the US for trade. They export more to Swizterland and the UK than they do the US.The US are a massive trading partner, but to say they rely on them is a flasehood.

And let's remember the EU has banned American products before. Apple is the main contender for those bans.

> Should Google, Facebook, Netflix be banned in Europe?

Is there a decent European alternative to Google and Facebook?

If they banned them one would pop up real quick.

You make it sound like the main reason Europe still doesn't have a viable Google/FB competitor is the fact that their citizens have access to Google/FB.

I have a strong feeling that it might not be the case at all, given that Russia also has access to Google/FB, and yet they have their own viable and massively popular competitors (Yandex for Google, VK for Facebook).

> You make it sound like the main reason Europe still doesn't have a viable Google/FB competitor is the fact that their citizens have access to Google/FB.

This sentence seems wrong on multiple levels. One it implies that Europe has been trying to build competitors and failing. Europe hasn't been, Europe has been trying to tax and control Google and Facebook. Which they've been doing rather well.

It implies that Europe can't build these. Which is really messed up since both those companies have multiple offices in Europe. And that both those companies are largely built by non-us born people.

It fails to understand or at least tries to frame away from the value a site like Facebook has, which is its user base. Even for it's users the value is the other users. Nearly everyone is on Facebook, even if they don't use it regularly.

> I have a strong feeling that it might not be the case at all, given that Russia also has access to Google/FB, and yet they have their own viable and massively popular competitors (Yandex for Google, VK for Facebook).

Facebook got into its dominant position not because other countries didn't have viable competitors. It's that all the competitors were bought up by companies that ran them into the ground.

Russia like China is a country that doesn't aim to be best friends with the US and has propaganda to boost it's own countries offerings, while actively trying to build its own offerings. Russia has more investment into its own services. The US also has lots of investments into offerings from the US. While Europe doesn't really match up. And there isn't even really a specific EU silicon valley competitor, London and Berlin both seem to be in the mix.

My original point is, if Facebook and Google aren't there, there would be a replacement extremely quickly. The revenue these companies make show it's clear there is value in building these service and if the current providers don't exist other companies will want to take that revenue. The technical know-how of how to build these is there. The desire and a realistic chance of success of competing with established companies are not.

Yandex and VK /s

> The Chinese market bans most of America's social media software, and we're entering a trade war.

America is not China and should not frame its policies based on China's policies. While, I agree there is a need to retaliate but 'be like China' is hardly the way to do it.

I agree that the US shouldn't justify acting like an autocratic state because China does so, but on the side of punishing an autocratic state there is precedent all over the place. The question we should ask is more how the US ever allowed China such exception in the first place, when Cuba for example has a full on total sanction against it, and so do many other autocratic states. So how did China get away without that for so long?

> So how did China get away without that for so long?

Cheap labor for US manufacturing

Unfortunately, Cuba values its citizens' lives more than China does, hence it turned out to be more profitable to keep manufacturing at America's biggest rival, all while Cuba gets stuck in middle income gap. Just an addendum.

What way do you think is the right way to do it?

No this is not "be like China", don't flatter yourself. When Facebook and Twitter was banned, there were imminent security threats as these platforms were used for organized crimes in China, and these companies simply ignores the requests from Chinese government to remove certain accounts. Google decided to not comply with local rules and left China by itself.

US didn't even bother to find a plausible excuse

Organized crime like... complaining about the government? Free speech?

I'm not going to defend thr Tiktok thing, but its basically equally dumb, its just that here teens dunking on the government isn't a crime.

If these policies work, then why not use them?

Except that it should frame its policies based on game theory if it ever plans to survive against China. Which is exactly what it's doing. The time to take the high road against bad actors is over.

> Except that it should frame its policies based on game theory if it ever plans to survive against China. Which is exactly what it's doing. The time to take the high road against bad actors is over.

I don't think the time "to take the high road against bad actors is over", but the time to take the complacent and hopeful road definitely is over.

If US govt really cared about OS-level security vulnerabilities from malicious apps, a better strategy would be to require Apple, Google, and Microsoft to make their OS 100% source-available (non-duplication) and encourage serious industry criticism of their codebase. Current strategy of selectively banning Chinese apps and products is just bullshit.

No. It is evil, just as the Chinese bans on Facebook etc are evil. There is no real, legitimate reason to ban any software meant for communication. Payments I accept, but general communication should not under any circumstances.

Just because some people want to turn the US into a mini PRC doesn't mean we have to embrace their noxious, evil value system.

Nobody is seriously proposing that the US ban successful Indian companies, or that India ban successful US companies (the pushback against Free Basics did not rise to anywhere near that level). This is strictly about global retaliation against PRC Internet policy that is practically forced by geopolitical game theory at this point.

That's because the CCP has banned non-CCP apps, they're getting a taste of their own medicine.

Yeah, let's follow CCP practices in the US, that'll show 'em!

> Yeah, let's follow CCP practices in the US, that'll show 'em!

To a certain extent, yes. A lot of foreign relations is about reciprocation and self-interest. For many, many years the US tolerated CCP polices that hurt its interests with the hope that, over time, that would cause the CCP would liberalize. That hasn't happened, and it's clear it won't happen anytime soon.

Of course, reciprocation is always the answer.

We should also reciprocate CCP's oppression of Uighurs in concentration camps by ramping up our oppression in ICE camps, right?

The parent didn't say reciprocation is always the answer. Stop putting words in people's mouth and derailing the conversation. In this case it makes sense to do a tit-for-tat ban to hurt them.

That's a strawman argument.

Who’s “they” here?

The CCP.

There is at least a dozen apps to chat with your friends: from Telegram to FB messenger. Why banning one of them is evil?

I wonder what would happen if WeChat/TikTok opened up their protocols and let people connect with arbitrary software, including self written and open source stuff.

The malware vector concerns would be gone. They could still spy on communication that wasn't E2E encrypted or impersonate users but that concern arises with essentially every communications service.

I doubt that realistically it would make any difference.

There being open source alternative apps to consume a service means exactly nothing to the officials pushing for this ban.

The action seems to be politically motivated, and technical details like "the protocol is open" are not going to be understood by politicians.

Months before the executive branch took notice there was widespread outcry in computer security circles about tiktok, including on HN.

Tiktok was a toxic malware vector, until the executive branch took notice, then it suddenly became a poor victim of political persecution.

It wouldn't make a difference if only client code was open-sourced, sure.

But if the entire system was open for Americans to peruse and operate their shards of, that might be a different story. Not saying that is practical, but I've never seen an objection on nationalist grounds to the fully open-source code I wrote from China while employed by a Chinese company in 2012-14.

Is WeChat even useful in the US? Is it used at all?

I'm guessing you don't have many Chinese friends, if you do I would recommend asking them how important it is for them.

It is an essential form of communication for the large community of Chinese citizens in the US. If you have any Chinese friends I can promise you their families are worried about how they are going to keep in touch. It's also heavily used for intra-US communication in various Chinese communities. In the NYC area there is almost an entire other city available to WeChat users.

It's a big, and I do believe intentional, 'fuck you' to the Chinese community.

It's a big pain, but surely they'll find another way to keep in touch, though?

What do western people do in China to keep in touch with their families back home, when all the western social media apps are banned?

It's hard for me to believe that a state-backed communications app is the only option available to Chinese expats.

I assume most expats living in China use VPNs to get around the blocks.

The blocks are mainly there to keep Chinese citizens in line; from what I understand non-citizen residents seem to be mostly left alone, as long as they don't interfere with censorship and blocking intended for citizens.

> What do western people do in China to keep in touch with their families back home, when all the western social media apps are banned?

They change the country of their app store.

Huh? It's not just apps are banned from the store but you can't get out of the Great Firewall even if you have the apps.

You have to get the apps to use them, the rest is a VPN or something similar.

There are many immigrants in the USA who use it to communicate with family.

What was the point of selling TikTok to Oracle if it's just going to be banned anyway?

It wasn't, the deal was never completed; the point of the ban is to coerce them into selling.

There is no talk of TikTok selling to Oracle. The public proposal is a data agreement (basically, Oracle would be storing TikTok data in the US).

Some details are here: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/16/technology/tiktok-oracle-...

What really makes me afraid is that the USA Gov is so scared of a foreign social network app, they must really know how powerful are these apps. How would I trust the social networks under the American Gov?

> How would I trust the social networks under the American Gov?

Presumably a country probably wouldn’t if they are an enemy of the western world.

Such as China (see: Facebook, Youtube and Instagram).

You wouldn't. It's not what tick tock would do, that can be achieved just as easily on any other social network as is routinely done, it's that you can't pay tick tock to do whatever you want to do like with an american company.

> Users, meanwhile, face a security “nightmare” because they won’t be able to get app updates that fix bugs and security vulnerabilities, he said.

This is because people who already have the app will be able to continue using it, just without updates.

So we can probably expect to see a mad rush of new users downloading the app over the weekend before it gets banned - and then keeping an outdated, insecure app on their devices without any security updates...

I saw people selling iPhones with Fortnite installed with some premium. That story might be repeated.

When will Apple and Google come out and say "no" to this? What is the legislative mechanism that gives the Dept of Commerce control over what code (speech) is transmitted on their app platform?

Calling it a "transaction" is a stretch - using that logic, Department of Commerce could ban any online download they wanted. That's clearly not a good outcome, and not an interpretation we as technologists should accept.

Can't they? Aren't there bans on open source contributions between Iran and the US?

See: https://github.com/1995parham/github-do-not-ban-us

I think there's a legal difference between declaring an entire country and its citizens subject to these sorts of restrictions (which is allowed), vs. singling out specific companies.

But unfortunately the executive has been granted a lot of ambiguous and murky power under the guise of "national security" and things like that, so I wouldn't be surprised if these actions are indeed legal, but the root of the legality is something other than ITAR or OFAC.

I think this would be better rephrased as: "When will @akersten(me) come out and say "no" to this?"

The app stores are on your phone, the apps you should install on your property should be your decision and no government or company should have any say on this.

Its a matter of right, its a matter of freedom, and we should not just have the sad option to choose the one who we will abdicate our freedom for.

We should not fall for this false dichotomy of choice where by picking any of them, we loose our freedoms anyway, only having the freedom to choose who will pick for us.

Why should Apple and Google say no to this?

HN is usually in support for government interventions against big cos. We are told that the government is expressing the will of the people. Why should we encourage Apple and Google to counter the will of the people in this case?

I really hope there is more to this story than the public is privy to, and I hope we find out about it soon.

On the flip side maybe Fdroid will take off. Is fdroid open source repos only? If Bytedance was gutsy they could release an open source version of tiktok. They could keep their algo as closed off either as compiled code or for the app to make API calls?

The rest of the code base, everyone could see.

> On the flip side maybe Fdroid will take off. Is fdroid open source repos only?

FLOSS repos I guess, but they are 'opinionated' in which open source software they allow on f-droid which this statement goes against the entire idea of FLOSS. Even if the software is open source and free software [0].

As you said, Bytedance must essentially do the same thing as Telegram and relicense it as GPL3 [1]. That includes everything.

[0] https://www.f-droid.org/en/2019/07/16/statement.html

[1] https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.telegram.messenger/

> If Bytedance was gutsy they could release an open source version of tiktok. They could keep their algo as closed off either as compiled code or for the app to make API calls?

Hence the above, I don't see this happening.

f-droid clients support multiple repos. the main repo is just one. in the f-droid forums you can find others which employ different policies.

So, we are supposed to have a congress that deliberates and passes laws. This is the notion that we are a society of laws.

However, here, we have a president that acts by decree, similar to a dictator. No deliberations. No industry consultations. Nothing. Just some vague excuse that this is a national security issue, so no further questions are allowed.

Welcome to the new Totalitarian States of America.

China bans WhatsApp. The U.S. bans WeChat. Great, no I have no official app besides good old text and phone to communicate with my fiancée who is still banned from reentering the U.S. despite still having a job here.

The U.S. has simply become an authoritarian state of a different color. My fiancée is prevented from returning and we are prevented from using our primary communication method simply because the so-called president wants to personally gain from these actions (i.e., swindle a re-election).

And what am I supposed to use to pay for things when I visit China now if WeChat is removed from AppStores?

Freedom my ass. Facebook, Google, and the others all collect the same if not more data than these apps, and those companies have shown time and again they do not have the American people’s best interests at heart and abuse the data collection and their power. So what are we doing here?

Instead, I suspect there was collusion between Facebook and Trump’s cronies for them to have released Instagram Reels when they did.

I thought the border restriction was just about having been in China in the last 14 days. Couldn't she get back into the US if she went to a different country first for 14 days?

No. The U.S. refuses to even process visas. Early on, the U.S. initially held her passport (a foreign one at that!) for over a month, preventing travel to countries she had valid visas to. When she eventually did once the passport was returned, the U.S. canceled her appointment, forcing travel back to China. Such foreign visas have now expired. The U.S. continues to allow appointments to be made at embassies and consulates and then cancels them right before. She actually falls into one of the conditional allowances that should get her back, based upon lawsuits from large employers, but the U.S. is not keeping appointments and not processing visas. So whatever they claim is allowed (which is not much), they are blocking that and more on a procedural level, just like they were doing since January before any bans were even in place. They don’t care.

H1Bs and others (at least from China) are banned at a minimum until January 2021.

That’s rough.

We are in a similar situation. She’s got a tourist visa though, and while we think it would technically be possible for her to enter the US, we’re kind of afraid to try.

> because the so-called president wants to personally gain from these actions

I sympathize with your wife's predicament (I know people stuck in similar situations) but he is not the 'so-called' president. He is a duly elected leader of the American people. Perhaps this type of obnoxious attitude by us liberals towards half the country is what caused this mess to happen in the first place.

> China bans WhatsApp. The U.S. bans WeChat. Great, no I have no official app besides good old text and phone to communicate with my fiancée who is still banned from reentering the U.S. despite still having a job here.

FYIW you can use HelloTalk to talk / call each other, as they need to censor their users so that the ones interested in learning Chinese can talk to the much larger mainlander population that's learning English.

Also I'm pretty sure that LinkedIn operates in China. The messaging system is decent with even support for group chats. I'm just not sure if DMs are allowed if one party is a foreigner and one isn't.

Under what analogy might the United States be justified in doing this?

duplicate thread of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24515540

This has nothing to do with free speech and everything to do with foreign policy.

China doesn’t allow US social apps. For historical reasons to do with attempts to establish trust, the US has allowed Chinese social apps.

That trust is arguably no longer reasonable to hold.

It is entirely reasonable for the US to want to trade with China on an equal footing.

It’s notable that China is the worlds largest economy, and proclaims the superiority of their socialist system over western democracy.

Obviously the US claims to be the worlds largest economy, and proclaims the superiority of western democracy over socialism.

Regardless of who is right, there is no legitimate argument supporting a continued imbalance in the playing field.

Trump may be doing a stupid and clumsy thing here, but the motivations seem reasonable.

For a country to purport itself to be about freedom...

Isn’t this just an embargo? The fact that it is on software is new but embargos have been a thing in just about every western democracy

Shutting We Chat is pretty huge for the diaspora.

What happens when the next one comes along ? Does that just get banned too?

It wouldn’t really been hard to imagine they take almost the same codebase rebrand and relaunch.

I'm confused: How does the executive branch have the right to unilaterally edit app stores? If Trump says "I'm sick of Barron playing CandyCrush at the dinner table, let's just ban it" can he do that? How? Shouldn't this require legislation?

As an American, this seems very... "unamerican".

I have been trying to figure this out as well. I am just guessing as I haven't found anything specific, but since this is being issued by the department of commerce, I would assume that downloading an app from the Google Play or App Store would constitute a transaction, even if the price of the software is free, and the government can order that these are products that constitute a national security risk.

I agree. We're basically implementing the American version of the Great Firewall of China, which previously was heavily criticized.

Well, since US fails to compete in other ways...

What? The U.S. failed to create competing social apps?

You realize the only reason WeChat exists is because China didn't let western companies compete, right?

I wouldn't say it's the only reason. WeChat is more than just a chat app; it's also a social networking and payments app. For digital payments, at least, the US is far, far behind the ease of use and merchant buy-in that apps like WeChat offer.

I know people in China and other Asian countries who rarely pull out cash or even a credit/bank card, and handle nearly all of their payments through apps.

Think of it like Venmo, but all merchants accept it directly, and you can complete transactions in the middle of a chat session (with a merchant or a regular person) without having to switch to another payment-dedicated UX.

> You realize the only reason WeChat exists is because China didn't let western companies compete, right?

I think blocking LINE was a bigger factor. For a time it was growing rapidly in China and it ultimately won in Japan and a couple of other Asian markets.

You realize that the only reason for US threats toward WeChat is because it's taking the market share from US companies, right?

This, I'm afraid, is purely Trump's vindinctive revenge on tiktokkers as a million of them wrecked his rally by booking tickets to it and never showed. Isn't abusing his powers and dishonouring the Presidential Office an impeachable offence anyway?

Trump attacks a children's app because he is unable to do much against China otherwise.

US apps from Facebook and Google collect far more personal data and use it more malevolently.

> US apps from Facebook and Google collect far more personal data and use it more malevolently.

Source? What 'malevolent' use has Google made of your data?

[redacted]

Who ? Thiel ?

[redacted]

That's a long way from your claim that Trump was elected in large part due to Thiel.

Yea but if the citizens of the US don't like it they can call on their representatives to introduce a bill limiting that power or whatnot. The president also theoretically has the power to just unilaterally start a war or even drop a nuclear bomb on another country. But this isn't a Trump issue, we've increasingly turned to look at the president as the government instead of elected representatives.

In an ideal scenario, you'd know who your state senators are, and your district representative, and when it comes to matters of federal government you go straight to them and then they vote on your behalf.

This of course means even more importantly you should know your state representatives, mayor, etc. and be active in the politics of your own community.

But instead we're lazy so we just want the president to be a dictator instead of safeguarding our republic.

>But instead we're lazy so we just want the president to be a dictator instead of safeguarding our republic.

Funny. I wrote my senator months ago about that encryption bill going around then. Just got a canned response back today, about how law enforcement should be able to access encrypted nformation, etc.

Poetically waxing about the effects of "writing your reps" is bullshit when they are entrenched with one another and, as you said, most Americans don't care enough to do it.

Maybe a better solution would be for the US to balkanize and allow localization to be more effective. Maybe a national identity more akin to the diverse regions of the US would be more like what you're describing.

Reg. balkanisation: there are already successful examples of Belgium and Canada. I think the reason it’s never discussed is that it can easily snowball into full fledged secession.

Not American, but we have a similar situation here, just with less political extremism.

I think a part of this is that many of the issues that are important to techies are either unimportant to most voters, or the voters don't understand them enough for form a good opinion. When an representative is representing hundreds of thousands of people, it's not really surprising that they ignore feedback on issues that most people don't care about.

Balkanization might help, but many states have been doing the exact opposite of that for the last 200 years because there's a lot of benefit to having a common set of laws and unregulated trade & travel over a large region.

> Funny. I wrote my senator months ago about that encryption bill going around then. Just got a canned response back today, about how law enforcement should be able to access encrypted information, etc.

So give up then? Idk what you want me to tell you. I'd rather people just not even complain about anything if they're so disillusioned with the government that they think they are powerless, why even care about any problems at all?

> Maybe a better solution would be for the US to balkanize and allow localization to be more effective. Maybe a national identity more akin to the diverse regions of the US would be more like what you're describing.

I don't disagree, actually. Local government governs best. You'll see largely the most successful governments are have smaller populations, often times more homogenous (not necessarily race, but more so culture), and I'm not sure if it's a factor but I believe population density plays a role.

> The president also theoretically has the power to just unilaterally start a war...

"The Congress shall have Power . . . To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules conquering Captures on Land and Water;" -- US Constitution, Article I, 8.11

Maybe the argument is that you don't need to declare a war to start one?

Please don't be naive.

The workaround, for at least fifty years, has simply been for the President to start a war without going through the formality of declaring one.

Congress could probably put a stop to it after the fact. We don't know this for sure, because thus far they just rubber-stamp it. Military-industrial money flows into everyone's district, by design.

> President who was elected in a large part because of a Facebook board member.

This is super naive thinking that ignores real huge issues in USA around inequality.

Inequality? What exactly do you mean?

Trump wasn't elected because of magic mind hacking by Facebook or whatever. He appealed to issues that people were concerned about, whatever you may think of those issues, and so they voted for him.

Watch the latest Triumph bit from the Colbert show to see the mentality of Trump supporters. We are living in an idiocracy now. 51% of Americans have no critical thinking skills. The "issues" are whatever you can use to trigger an emotional response from someone who is easily manipulated.

> Watch the latest Triumph bit from the Colbert show to see the mentality of Trump supporters

Colbert has built a career upon exaggerating and editorializing politics. He is an entertainer and comedian, not an analyst. He is hardly a sound source for any real political insight.

> The "issues" are whatever you can use to trigger an emotional response from someone who is easily manipulated.

I think the same can be said about both political ideologies in the US. Emotional issues are far easier to get worked up about, even if there is no easy solution to the "issue" at hand.

To claim only 51% of the country falls into this category, and to imply it's only one political ideology, is disingenuous at best. Particularly when you lead your post with something a comedian said on a late night TV show, ie. the very same emotional appeal you rail against.

I think the same can be said about both political ideologies in the US.

Definitely. So much this, that I wonder if "both" is even the right word? So much sound and fury, and somehow Congress votes nearly unanimously to give rich people trillions in response to a pandemic, while doing nothing about health care. Somehow we're spending $750B on the military every year, more than the next fifteen nations combined, with our increase this year dwarfing Russia's total spending. Somehow in the coming election we have a confused loudmouth old man from the urban northeast who likes draft deferments, non-consensual digital penetration, and criminal-panic race baiting, running against Trump.

This sentence could be true with each political faction once an entity gets to control the narrative and decide to see the views of some of the 'hardcore XYZ supporters' which then is used to reflect on how irrational an entire group of supporters are. This entity is the media companies.

Replace XYZ with EU, Brexit, Biden, Trump, and in the UK: Boris Johnson, and Jeremey Corbyn.

> Watch the latest Triumph bit from the Colbert show to see the mentality of Trump supporters.

It's a stretch to speak in complete absolutes here.

>Watch the latest Triumph bit from the Colbert show to see the mentality of Trump supporters.

Not a defense of Trump supporters here, but do we know how many were edited out that intelligently spoke on issues to form the Triumph bit? Without that, you can't really make any determinations. On top of that, the sample size is likely very small.

Editing doesn't matter. They all signed a release knowing that their recorded statements were perfectly fine in their own heads.

It’s easy to find a lot of idiots who hate Trump too. Editing matters a lot.

You misinterpreted what I said. The point I was trying to make was not that what they were saying was edited, but that the choices of people who were selected to be in the bit was chosen, for the bit. There could have very well been a majority of well informed people, but that wouldn't have made for a great Triumph bit. You cannot make generalizations based on that video.

This is the same logic used by people who insist ads don't work on them, because "I never click them!"

Give me a break. All politicians put ads on Facebook. Surprising I know but Clinton put ads on Facebook too. Obama puts ads on Facebook, he gets marketing awards. Trump does the same thing and suddenly it’s armageddon and the Russians are coming.

> Trump does the same thing and suddenly it’s armageddon and the Russians are coming.

I think the complaints about Trump's 2016 campaign are that:

1. There's an important difference between Americans spending money to influence an American election and Russians (secretly) spending money to influence an American election. (Alternatively/additionally, Russia hacked computers and used that illegally obtained data to influence the American election).

2. When targeting ads, there's a difference between using data that voters willingly give your campaign and data that was disingenuously collected about people (e.g. Cambridge Analytica's infamous "5,000 data points on every American"[0]).

The extent to which either of these things happened is subject to debate, as is the extent to which either of them changed the outcome of the election.

[0] https://www.wired.com/story/what-did-cambridge-analytica-rea...

The cynic in me wonders if the TikTok ban is just to try to drive the price down for Trump’s friend Larry Ellison.

That's a good start. Next up: twitter, facebook, instagram, ...

Even when the actions of this administration seem facially justified, I always assume they are acting in bad faith.

Just 3 months after TikTok users embarrassed Trump at his Tulsa rally, where he left visibly upset.

He's called for the repeal of section 230 because of "tech bias". He attacks news outlets for “biassed” reporting. He attacks whistle blowers. He attacks people that supported him and later changed their minds (mattis, kelly, etc). He attacks Amazon for owning Washington Post. He attacks anyone that opposes him.

I'm surprised people are taking this ban at face value.

And what's sad is that he's made it clear he would attack US tech companies if he can find a legal basis to do so. There's zero doubt in my mind that this is all about Trump silencing opposition. It's his modus operandi.

Edit: Even the sale was politicized. He came out against Microsoft owning it, and publicly supported Oracle... Ellison being one of his friends.. whom I would guess Trump assumed would make the platform more friendly to him.

> I'm surprised people are taking this ban at face value.

Yeah, it's astounding how quickly these discussions focused in on "well, what are the pros and cons of banning an app? When is an app a national security issue? What is an appropriate trade retaliation?" and completely missed the fact that - hey, the US government is, for the first time, using the Commerce department to dictate what code you can execute on your own device. It's absolutely disheartening how many people are getting distracted from the real issue here.

This is another trial balloon to expand executive power, and they're going to get away with it because "national security."

Pretty soon they will dictate how we should arrange furnitures at our own home ....

It is great to be an idealist but in the end, we will lose precepts of the Enlightenment unless we act strong and intelligently.

Love how people criticize the Chinese security state for banning websites and apps as infringing on free speech, but of the U.S. does it, it’s a smart move.

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