Hacker News Reader

Comment by Polylactic_acid | Hacker News Reader

Rather than blocking a single app, they should bring in GDPR style laws that make apps like tiktok banned by default unless they change to be strongly privacy protecting.

View on HN

that'd probably kill every American social media app on the app stores as well, not sure they're ready to do that.

Nope. Only specific instances. And in this case POTUS has the power when it comes to foreign entities. It is enshrined in the constitutions. By the way, India and China are even doing this without even a single judicial recourse. USA simply is the best country that has been setup to allow and disallow this kind of things some hundreds years ago.

The powers that POTUS has over international trade (including tariffs, blocking imports, blocking transactions) were actually granted by Congress through various pieces of legislation.

> And in this case POTUS has the power when it comes to foreign entities. It is enshrined in the constitutions.

No, it's not. The power the President is asserting might be authorized under statute, though that's actually one of the questions in dispute.

Yes!

Shut em all down !

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook–Cambridge_Analytica...

https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2019/09/ftc-s...

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/04/03/599069424...

If you can't give a shit about the security of your user's personal information / safety , you shouldn't exist.

I agree with the activist spirit! But you have to realize that the incentives of legislators are to first create a strong economy and to maintain the dominance of the US tech sector. If you come to them with a plan that will seriously harm their operations then you won’t even get a meeting.

I'm dreaming here, no regulation will take place.

You need to self regulate though and assume all data you give these companies will be sold. At this point unless it's ride sharing , apps don't get my location. If they means I can't use the apps, that's fine.

It wouldn't be the worst thing if tommorow Social Media was effectively banned. It's done enough wrong in the world

If you start making everyone suspicious of doing business with US, that dominance will slow fade away as each market tries their home grown alternatives.

Yes they will suck during the first years, get barely enough customers to survive, but eventually they will get there with enough perseverance.

The current administration is only making everyone aware that the globalisation days are over.

This requires long term thinking.

Neither the companies (Q-on-Q) nor the politicians (4-6 years ) have long term incentive to do lasting change by pushing unpopular policies.

Has GDPR killed social media in europe?

nope, but neither has it killed tiktok. (which was the proposed point)

Yes but only since it's very poorly enforced. I can't count the occasions I see the GDPR is violated a day. Like, almost every website I open.

And therein lies the true motivation for blocking TikTok. This has nothing to do with privacy and everything to do with politics.

That doesn't generally align with America's approach to these sort of things. A law like that would have made the internet itself very hard to develop.

No, it would have made targeted advertising on the internet be very hard to develop. The internet existed before targeted advertising, with site-specific advertising based on the interests of a site. Stalking users across sites for the purpose of targeted advertising is a much newer development.

I agree that this doesn't align with the US's general approach to this sort of thing. That is a fault with the US's general approach, not with privacy protections.

Targeted advertising is a major reason for the Internet’s success. It has allowed many companies to become extremely wealthy and invest back into the ecosystem.

To create more targeted advertising companies. Huzzah!

Targeted advertising on the internet as a general practice did not start until the mid to late aughts, long after the internet was a success. Targeted advertising is not a reason for the Internet's success.

The internet in the mid to late aughts is not considered a success by today's standards.

I agree with you, but we probably have different opinions as to which internet should be considered a success :-)

Personally I'd rather the internet be less successful and more useful/less hostile.

> Targeted advertising is a major reason for the Internet’s success.

It's the major reason for social media's success, not the internet. The internet was successful long before social media.

> It has allowed many companies to become extremely wealthy and invest back into the ecosystem.

What? It monopolized the ecosystem. Not the same thing.

What do you mean by "monopolized the ecosystem?"

I mean much lower-level things.

Email's early versions weren't strongly privacy-protecting.

If other government owns the data, no laws can be applied to them in war times or from preventing to gather intelligence.

I think that's the best thing to do for the general public.

Most social media already obey GDPR for European users (I suspect TikTok included), so having this law in the US will benefit every user everywhere by forcing companies to treat everyone uniformly with a higher level of protection by default due to the majority of their userbase being covered by such laws.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com