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Comment by shawnz | Hacker News Reader

What do you consider to be a real security concern? Isn't it enough that they already have a long history of abusing the rule of law and coercing all businesses into following the party's wishes?

I would argue that, given their history, removing the opportunity of the CCP to make a political play is a valid security concern.

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I found the lack of discussion of TikTok compared to the amount of heat Twitter and Facebook have been getting before and after the election surprising. Do people disregard it because they think it’s just dance and funny videos on there? There is a lot of political content if you go down that rabbit hole, and it’s ready to be seen by a much more young and impressionable user base compared to FB and Twitter’s.

Russian run '5 minute crafts' clickbait farm tipped their toes into political manipulation on both FB and YT, and it seems nobody picked up this story?!?!?

https://www.lawfareblog.com/biggest-social-media-operation-y...

Forbes even ridiculed the idea completely 2 years ago https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2017/09/22/these-two-...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvqa8dsBtno

To be clear, I'm interested in the real reason they're doing it, not their ability to backfill a rationalization.

If that's the real reason, well enough. But I am somewhat skeptical that it is. I'm also not sure that the President's power ought to extend to hypothetical, remote concerns like this -- we'll have to see what the courts say.

I don't think it's possible for such a drastic action to be taken just based on a political rationalization or a security rationalization alone. It could only be a combination of factors which allows an action like this.

The security rationalization had existed for a long time already, but only when the political rationalization came into the picture as well was it possible to actually make a move. Does that mean the move was wrong or unjustified?

> I'm also not sure that the President's power ought to extend to hypothetical, remote concerns like this -- we'll have to see what the courts say.

I'm not sure it does. Like you say this is currently being challenged in the courts and TikTok is online right now in the US. The legal process is working, although it was initiated in a messy way in this case.

> The security rationalization had existed for a long time already, but only when the political rationalization came into the picture as well was it possible to actually make a move. Does that mean the move was wrong or unjustified?

It depends on the strength of the various components in the making of the decision, I guess. Again, if the main reason was political or economic, and the presence of the security reason is a fig leaf, then that's not so good.

> I'm interested in the real reason they're doing it

It is as simple as Trump, personally, saw a TV pundit at 6am that said TikTok was bad and the president should do something about it.

Did someone at Facebook PR plant that story in the pundit's program, which is for sale? Sure. I don't know, who do you think gives a single fuck about giant companies fucking each other? Not a single normal person.

What will courts say? The matters could all be resolved in 10 minutes. They're just going to say that if there's a problem, it's with the way the order is written - Trump could issue another order. They articulate no legal problem with the order, because there is no legal problem with the order.

Truthfully, the court's resolution of the matter is the least interesting part here.

The president's power is being used to affect a corporate acquisition. You can go have a debate about mercantilism, it's settled. Nothing of substance to normal people will change because 100% of the spending inside social media apps is surplus, they could disappear tomorrow and absolutely nothing of value would be lost. People would just buy ad inventory elsewhere, as they always had for all of history.

Mark Zuckerberg personally met with government officials to "warn" them about tik tok

That we're banning TikTok, but not Chinese-manufactured chips and electronics and whatnot, indicates it's a heavily political play.

While I agree dependence on Chinese semiconductors/electronics is probably a bigger security risk overall, what other choice do we have in that industry?

Banning TikTok was only a "heavily political play" because there are strong political forces in place preventing any action from being taken against China. Anything which is able to overcome those forces is bound to be "heavily political". That doesn't necessarily mean the action was the wrong thing to do.

Tiktockers pranked tickets to a Trump rally. Got the Evil Eye after that.

Real in the sense that there is some sort of evidence of actions that have crossed the thresholds of legality as per American laws. The data security/privacy community, I think generally don't see TikTok for example as any much more egregious an offender than Instagram for example.

> Isn't it enough that they already have a long history of abusing the rule of law and coercing all businesses into following the party's wishes?

Was this intended to be directed at the CCP? It seems to apply to the US Republican Party to some extent as well [1].

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d22Y7p3tER0

No surprise that China has already banned US social networks then.

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