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Comment by annexrichmond | Hacker News Reader

I think it's easy to say the ban doesn't make sense when it is perhaps a preventative measure. We have seen social networks take over others many times in terms of popularity.

If TikTok and WeChat's usage becomes more widespread in the voting population of the US, they would have a lot of influence by controlling what kind of content its users sees; e.g., FB has been criticized many times for this, namely performing psychological experiments on its users

I recall this quote by former KGB informant Yuri Bezmenov:

> The main emphasis of the KGB is not in the area of intelligence at all. Only about 15% of time, money, and manpower is spent on espionage and such. The other 85% is a slow process which we call either ideological subversion or active measures ... or psychological warfare

The difference between TikTok and WeChat and FB/Google/Twitter is obvious: the former are to some degree controlled by China and the latter are private entities.

I understand there are services part of WeChat that are essential to users, so I would hope there is a good compromise here. I don't see why the communication component of the app can't continue to exist but WeChat is a lot more than a chat app.

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> The difference between TikTok and WeChat and FB/Google/Twitter is obvious: the former are to some degree controlled by China and the latter are private entities.

The irony is that we were just about to witness US govt forcing said "private entities" to ban specific applications.

Only in US though.

Thought control is fine, as long as I’m in control.

>The difference between TikTok and WeChat and FB/Google/Twitter is obvious: the former are to some degree controlled by China and the latter are private entities.

to some degree? No, they are completely controlled by China.

> "WeChatApp spies on the content that all users send to each other, including Americans. The results are fed into their censorship of Chinese users" [1]

Key findings rom the Citizen lab research report, which is quite comprehensive [2]:

> Documents and images transmitted entirely among non-China-registered accounts undergo content surveillance wherein these files are analyzed for content that is politically sensitive in China.

>Upon analysis, files deemed politically sensitive are used to invisibly train and build up WeChat’s Chinese political censorship system.

[1] https://twitter.com/jsrailton/status/1258391908319137797

[2] https://citizenlab.ca/2020/05/we-chat-they-watch/

> to some degree? No, they are completely controlled by China.

This is a matter of perspective.

Do you think the question is "if the CCP tells Tencent to do something, will they do it?", or "does Tencent do anything the CCP doesn't tell it to do?"?

And at the same time FB/Google/Twitter are controlled by US government. If they do something "wrong", they get called to Congress to talk and change their mind. This is not what a truly independent company would do. Truly independent company would tell Congress to mind their own business and not bother them.

Can you point to any changes whatsoever that any of these companies made as a result of showing up for an episode of congressional theater?

Congress can't actually tell the companies what to do. They can call them to testify, and they are obligated to show up, but they can stonewall or spout PR, and Congress can't do anything.

Congress can make laws that directly affect said companies, hardly not "anything".

Ah. Bunch of 60+ ppl trying to figure out how tech works and then think of laws governing the said tech which should appear to be fair and useful. Sweet.

There has never existed a time that ''truly independent businesses'' existed. The closest we got was the Gilded Age and it was an absolute mess, with child labor here and rampant exploitation of people there. Companies simply cannot be trusted to do what is right or to prioritize anything except making money for their shareholders, so they most definitely should be restricted by democratic institutions.

"The difference between TikTok and WeChat and FB/Google/Twitter is obvious: the former are to some degree controlled by China and the latter are private entities."

I think that difference is not that wide as people believe. Throwing money into advertising on any platform will get you close or beyond ideological subversion or active measures.

All you have to do is look at the radicalization and the polarization of left and right in the US and you will see you don't need a state controlled entity at all.

I agree, these are problems. But at least in the US we can continue to pass legislation as we learn more about how to properly regulate these platforms

It is much easier to enforce laws on a US-based company than a foreign one.

In the US we pass legislation in favor of these big corps to continue to grow, but its all good since they are US companies, they should decide our laws. What a joke. We don't control the policy makers, they are owned by your big corp. Yeah, super easy. I'd rather the state decide laws and not your entitled CEO. Delusional democracy.

> But at least in the US we can continue to pass legislation as we learn more about how to properly regulate these platforms

Continue is the wrong word. Nothing is done by legislation or these companies themselves to properly regulate these platforms.

There is also nothing preventing foreign influence on U.S.-based company platforms, which is already happening, and has been happening, unchecked.

I have used WeChat daily for over three years. There is not a single instance in which I have been unduly influenced. I use it to message, video chat, and pay for things. That simply is not true for YouTube, Twitter, Google, Apple, etc. I can't even go to YouTube without having unremovable, unhidable ads for Trump. We also have a situation where the sitting president has rented out the YouTube homepage for an entire week prior to the election. It's naivety, and frankly delusional, to think the U.S. is somehow at threat by WeChat and not the multitude of sly behavior going on with U.S.-based companies.

U.S.-based companies and culture have long been driven by highly concentrated special interest groups, from Hollywood to Wall Street to Silicon Valley, and all of this amounts to undue influence and control upon the American people, who have been manipulated into playing the game.

I wonder why are you being downvoted. Uncomfortable truth, I guess

How will passing laws help us when our own government is breaking privacy laws for their mass surveillance programs?

With chat programs, the concern is over monitoring. The US can issue warrants to get your chat records from Messenger/Hangouts. Those warrants are obtained a bit too easily due to FISA/Security Letters, but that's another due process issue/policy issue. With Chinese companies, they don't even need the illusion of warrants or due process.

FB/Twitter/Tiktok are different because they control WHAT you see. None of them show things chronologically. Their algorithms show things that are popular, and the weights they use are trade secrets. Being able to influence ideas takes classic advertising, or even targeted advertising, to an entirely new level. It has an entirely different set of legal and ethical challenges.

Tencent/WeChat also control what you see in your feeds. I often notice when I share information/pictures related to Hong Kong/Xinjiang then my posts doesn’t always appear in my friends feeds (because the image hash/phrase cause the post to be shadowbanned). Their approach is quite evil because it will make you think people might not like your post (since they don’t “like” it) when in fact they simply can’t see it.

To bypass the filter then I slightly modify images to change their hash, or record video of the video/image/text. Maybe soon they’ll start making fake likes from friends so that people can’t use inactivity as a way of detecting shadowbans, or maybe they’ll make the posts only visible to a small subset of friends.

Interesting. For Facebook/Twitter, if you don't interact and only post occasionally, few people will see your posts (which the opposite of someone in real life who rarely talks; when they do, people tend to listen). I wrote a post about it:

https://battlepenguin.com/tech/facebook-and-the-silent-bob-e...

Exactly, that is how Chinese gov take control of your mainstream media and social media, it's much cheaper easier than building aircraft carriers, and more effective.

Your McCarthyist fear and paranoia and the President's cynical manipulation of the same don't trump people's First Amendment rights. The court upheld that principle, thankfully.

This is 100% the US foreign policy community saying we want 100% control over what US persons see. They've been waging a similar assault on RT. If you think Google, Facebook, et al aren't deeply intertwined with the US state and consult regularly with the pentagon, you haven't been watching the news.

Believe it or not, US foreign policy people put out enormous amounts of propaganda and they got the US to repeal a ban on importing news from state regime change news like Radio Free Europe in 2012.

Personally, I am suspicious of all of these corporations, but I'd rather all of them be allowed than the USG be able to dictate who is allowed to say what. That always works out so well. Foreign government news agencies and companies are much more likely to criticize the (obviously insane) USG on grounds that fundamentally disagree with policy direction rather than the tactical disagreement you find in the US mainstream press.

There's a very good (but LONG) documentary you can watch about the FP community called "A Very Heavy Agenda". Part 2 covers how the US FP community responded to the Ukraine presidential election crisis and Russian interference in 2014-2015. https://averyheavyagenda.com/

Considering RT is the propaganda arm of the Russian government, I don't blame them. That's like saying Russia is bad because they want to hamper Voice of America or the Ad Council.

It is, but at the same time the US government is so easy to criticize that much of RT's coverage is simply stating things that aren't widely disseminated because they are embarrassing and make fools of the people running US foreign policy. I won't say that RT coverage of Russia specifically won't have a slant, but foreign coverage of your country has the chance to be more honest in some regards because they are not under the same power structure.

The fact that we regard their coverage as propaganda and not ours is quite telling given the entanglements between government and the media here, the ownership by a small group of large corporations, and the ability of larger corporations to yank ad dollars when they hear something they don't like.

The only honest position imo is to allow all comers to state their viewpoint, which is the foundation of liberal democracy and enshrined in the first amendment. Just keep their viewpoint in mind when watching as you would for an American network. Also, don't just accept something because someone authoritative said something, it has to fit into a logical picture of the world.

We're not at war with Russia lol and god help us if we were. They have nukes!

If you want independent coverage of American events look at, say, Al Jazeera. Russia Today isn't any better than Fox News.

I don't know if you get to have it both ways without trampling on WeChat's first amendment rights as well as those of their users unless you pass data privacy laws for US citizens/persons (which might have first amendment implications anyway) and deal with WeChat through whatever mechanisms this newly-passed (and yet-to-be created) privacy law contains.

So either WeChat, Facebook, and whoever can facilitate protected speech among their users (in this case you're protecting the users specifically) or the various platforms are treated as publishers which still wouldn't allow the US government to prevent or compel speech (protecting the organization).

It's possible they can get away with banning the payment portions of the app but the outright ban appears to be prior restraint of free speech by the government.

> trampling on WeChat's first amendment rights

As a non-American, my question is why does WeChat have first amendment rights? It's not an American company.

American citizens that use WeChat have first amendment rights

What about WeChat censoring your speech, is 1st amendment okay with that?

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

Note the subject.

So yes, the First Amendment is okay with any censoring of information by a foreign government or company.

UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights:

"Article 19.

Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers."

I don't see any mention of government there. Why limit the interpretation of free speech to the US constitution? How do you reconcile ideologically or philosophically that it is not ok for US Congress to limit speech but ok for other powerful entities?

> Why limit the interpretation of free speech to the US constitution?

Because that's literally what the grandparent asked. You appear to have a completely different question.

But they can't exercise the right with this tool.

Sure they can. They communicate using it. They have rights.

Yes. The supreme court has found consistently that pretty much anywhere the constitution says "people", it refers to all people regardless of citizenship, given that it also calls out "citizens" in many places.

>> why does WeChat have first amendment rights?

> Yes.

We might also observe that the only mention of "people" in the first amendment gives them the rights to assemble and to petition the government.

Freedoms of speech and the press are phrased as restrictions on Congress, not as rights given to anyone (and this is probably the main justification for extending first amendment rights to foreigners, which appears to be a popular but not universal viewpoint).

Julian Assange's right to Free Speech has been denied.

of Free Speech is arbitrarily granted, then it's not free speech, and that violates Prior Restraint, at least, if the Courts are not also arbitrarily deciding who's free speech deserves to be protected.

The bill of rights treats rights as existing in morality (whether based on natural law philosophy or religion) prior to and outside of written law. It does not purport to grant rights, but to prohibit the government from violating them.

In that framework, the US government is not to violate anyone's freedom of speech anywhere in the world. That doesn't seem to be what's at issue in this case though; the case was brought by a group of US-based WeChat users on grounds that the ban would restrict their freedom to communicate with people in China who are unable to use other communication services.

Trampling on WeChat users' first amendment rights would be a violation. Many of the users are American citizens, like myself. I'd like to talk to my grandparents and cousins in China. They don't or can't use other social networks, so WeChat it is.

I am not sure it is 1A issue to begin with. US prohibiting US companies to work with overseas entities is commercial problem. A lot of gambling websites were shut down by court order and a lot of domains seized by FBI. So there is a lot of precedents about restricting US citizens access to foreign parts of the internet.

Well isn't that convenient? Whenever it's a commercial problem it cannot be a speech problem, according to you.

Not at all. But in this case they attack the apps not the speech on them. Otherwise gambling sites will be immune if they have IRC chat running.

You can shut down anything with sufficient justification, the issues is this app is primarily for speech and the bar is correspondingly high. It would be the same if it were a newspaper or a conference, rather than a casino, where surely speech also takes place.

Overseas Chinese users can still use the chat function in Alipay to chat, no problem. As well as a host of other services like skype, facetime, etc.

Also, the Chinese communist party/government has recently decided to tighten the noose on its private companies: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/17/business/china-communist-... which makes wechat a national threat.

>The difference between TikTok and WeChat and FB/Google/Twitter is obvious: the former are to some degree controlled by China and the latter are private entities.

It is documented fact that FB, Google and the rest are tapped by US intelligence agencies. Anyone remembers Snowden? We know for fact that pretty much every single global US network works with the US government, but when comes to TikTok and WeChat something yet to be proven(I am sure they do but the evidence is weaker than the evidence if US internet companies working with the US government on surveillance). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(surveillance_program)

EU was trying to fix this through GDPR and such but US seems to desperately wanting to embrace the Chinese model and with US cultural lead, this will inevitably open the way to other governments ban FB, Google and the others because if TikTok is a national security risk to the USA then obviously Facebook and Google are to them. Probably Amazon and all other ad networks too. Anything that can be started from a dorm room will no longer be able to go global.

This will lead to a world where if you want to do a global project you will have to incorporate in every country you want to operate. It is even possible that internet to break up in patches and operating even a forum website becomes like Coca-Cola opening a plant in another country.

It is a very bleak future for humanity if you ask me. Can be good for local businesses though.

I wish the US went the EU path(regulating data handling) instead of Russa/China path(banning) so we could still have global networks and kids in their dorms could continue creating products with global impact.

What a shame.

Ok I might've been a little unclear because I received a couple replies now about privacy and that wasn't really my point, so apologies for that. This is what I said to other person: --

> Yeah these are real problems, I agree. And US citizens should continue to put pressure on their politicians to pass more privacy-related legislation

> But my point wasn't really about data collection, it was about influence and content-control. People are readily influenced by memes, ads, headlines, etc which is why such platforms are so problematic because people are not comfortable with how much influence they have and how easily misinformation is spread.

> What am I less comfortable with is leaving a path open for China to have that same kind of control in the US as FB/Google/etc, but without being subject to US laws like our private entities are.

They can be subject to US laws like US companies being subject to EU laws. That's what I mean by "I wish US choose to be more like the EU instead of China".

US can regulate the internet companies to mitigate the risk when keeping the global community intact. Make foreign services run on US servers when serving US citizens, make them disclose what and how they process the data. Then if they don't obey the laws can be enforced to obey the laws. Which law TikTok broke? There is no law forbidding being Chinese and successful, that's the US political system failing to have what they want and embracing Chinese ways of doing things. It could be also a failure of the US market to stay competitive due to monopolies, giving lead to China in innovation.

But somehow the freedom loving Americans cannot be told to wear a mask but can be told which app the can use, just like in China. It's mind boggling.

Maybe the U.S. should fund its own social network?

In the 1960s it created a government-funded television network to offer alternative programming. But television is an old medium, and less of a source of information today -- partly because it's been supplanted by social media.

This has been one of my favorite thought experiments in a while.

It seems like there's inevitably going to be a need for some kind of content moderation -- but maybe that could be handled by local librarians, local newspapers. (At least that's a solution that actually scales.)

Join the Fediverse! Join a Mastodon, Pleroma or MissKey instance, or set on up. Follow some random people and start talking. It's like 90s chat rooms all over again!

yes...and they could call it LifeLog!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_LifeLog

You have to be very wary of what defectors say, they often just make stuff up.

Also, as Snowden has shown us, the line between private and state control is very, very thin.

Nosenko was a famous defector who confused CIA and James Jesus Angleton for years whether he was "bona fide" or a double agent sent to spread disinfo as a fake defector. the number of fake Soviet defectors was so enormous that it made CIA doubt the credibility of many legit defectors, which was a great counter intel strategy on the KGB's part.

Trust, but verify.

>The difference between TikTok and WeChat and FB/Google/Twitter is obvious: the former are to some degree controlled by China and the latter are private entities.

How is for example Facebook better because it isn't somehow tied in to the US government? On the one hand the state still have access to all the data from Facebook it wants (NSA, warrants) but on the other they have a hard time protecting its users privacy rights. I'm not convinced private entities are any better. For a US citizen maybe Facebook is better as a private entity but for everyone else outside the US?

Personally I would rather put my data in a Chinese-owned Tiktok than an American one because of the extreme amount of data already flowing into US services. Even if Tiktok is used to spy on me I can't see how it would be any worse for an European than putting more data into US services.

Yeah these are real problems, I agree. And US citizens should continue to put pressure on their politicians to pass more privacy-related legislation

But my point wasn't really about data collection, it was about influence and content-control. People are readily influenced by memes, ads, headlines, etc which is why such platforms are so problematic because people are not comfortable with how much influence they have and how easily misinformation is spread.

What am I less comfortable with is leaving a path open for China to have that same kind of control in the US as FB/Google/etc, but without being subject to US laws like our private entities are.

You shouldn't think that the US laws will save the day, just remember the debacle of 2016 election, where multiple foreign organizations had access to millions of voters with the tacit consent of FB. Since then FB hasn't done anything to properly address this problem.

I think loss of control is the 'quiet part' that you've hit on in this issue. Political regimes from Latin America, the Philippines, Myanmar, have used US based social media products to organize and incite harassment and violence against critics and minority groups. This is a lucrative and powerful racket that the current US administration is leveraging in a similar way and at Chinese expense. But if US eyeballs move to a platform owned by China you can envision them turning off the attention tap to vested and opposing US interests.

The US government does things that aren't too good. But as far as having my data in Chinese or US intelligence's hands, I'll go with the country that won't put me in jail if one of my WeChats they monitor says something like "I don't like this country."

But if you live outside PRC and USA, who is the most likely (however unlikely) to kick down your door? I'd wager that in most of the world that would be the FBI or CIA. Maybe I'm reading the wrong news sites because I live far from Asia but I have heard of lots of raids where the FBI were involved (Piratebay for example) or CIA (extraordinary rendition) but never heard of a single time Chinese police were operating in a foreign country. Maybe I'm wrong but in my understanding it happens weekly with the US and never with the PRC.

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