U.S. Judge Halts TikTok Ban
npr.org
npr.org
Rather than having some law that can be used to force TikTok and other companies to respect user privacy and store data safety. The US has basic no laws (with teeth) and doesn't care at all when a company like Equifax or Facebook leaks tons of data which includes foreign governments. But when one company is under the thumb of the CCP, the US freaks out. Meanwhile, the activities of the NSA and FBI in using telecoms and US tech companies to spy are no different, in an abstract sense, than what China does.
Essentially, If I'm a user not in the US or China, I don't want either the US or the CCP to be able to abuse/spy on me. But it's insane for US to claim the moral high ground when the legal barrier to the government using private data is literally just they have to pay a private company to do it [1]. That's not much different than the government directly owning shares in a company. Either way money flows from the government to the company in exchange for user data.
Sure the CCP is worse in that it prevents/breaks encryption, inspects packets but the US doesn't enforce the use of good security practices and really doesn't care when companies get hacked. We freak out that the TikTok app might be tracking us but we don't even notice that 20 other American apps on our phone collect & sell data.
The only real path forward is decentralizing the platforms such that E2E encryption is mandatory.
[1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/federal-agencies-use-cellphone-...
There are a lot of people in the Whitehouse who are looking for ways to pick a fight with China for their own reasons plus TikTok's young users were often mocking the President. I don't think there's much more to it than that.
It's as if we learned absolutely nothing from Snowden.
> America's goal is not to protect Americans' privacy. It is to protect its own monopoly on violations of Americans' privacy.
Is a gross overstatement, though.
Same with WeChat.
The wealthy in the US don't care, because they can and do invest in chinese tech companies.
The US government doesn't gain anything by banning TikTok. China can get most of the same data by scraping from other sources. I'm sure the US government can also get the data from Chinese companies if they want.
US tech competitors don't benefit from the TikTok ban because it shakes confidence in the laissez-faire attitude the US has had toward tech.
US citizens don't care because their interests are currently being represented by Facebook. I think I'd rather have China own my data than Facebook.
It all seems very confusing, until you recall that the TikTok ban happened because a bunch of kids organized on it to mess with the pre-registration for a Trump rally. https://www.stanforddaily.com/2020/08/03/tiktok-ban-trump-is...
There is no pro-US or pro-democracy policy making happening. This is really just trying to graft meaning onto the actions of a childish narcissist with a lot of power.
US influence in China will wane because the US can't really compete the way that US companies have done in other markets; hence, what can the US do but try to blunt/dent/hurt the growth of Chinese companies e.g. by interfering with TikTok (since we're not going to out-compete them or win out in the marketplace)? These are flea bites, not fatal blows, but it's all that the US can muster for now from a "policy" perspective. And keep in mind, the US may not have a grand strategy here, but China certainly does.
Or, to condense it into a thought experiment, think about what it would take in some alternate future timeline (which may not be so far-fetched), that would make it more likely for Alibaba to one day acquire Amazon, then for Amazon to acquire Alibaba... We may already be headed to that future.
People in the West ridicule it, because they already have their own credit card systems.
But think about it. With just a picture of a QR code, anyone can transfer money to you, via their smartphone.
No more need for a fancy credit card swipe terminal. No more credit card insecurity. No need to use the credit card chip which often doesn’t work.
No more worrying that some company got hacked, and your credit card number is floating around out there, just waiting to be harvested, and your identity stolen.
Since it was you, that authorized the purchase with your smartphone. And you get immediate confirmation of the transaction.
The processing technology of Alipay got offloaded to your smartphone, and the internet, specifically 4G cellular technology.
And plus, the credit card companies, Visa and MasterCard, are just leaches anyways. They get to charge an insane 20% APR, which is far higher than mobsters can charge, and the credit card companies are legally allowed to do so. If the mafia was smart, then they should just start a credit card company, instead of breaking some poor schmuck’s arm for repayment.
Credit Card companies are the epitome of a debt trap. Once you get stuck, you forever fall into their quicksand, with fees, late fees, over draft fees, etc. And here is the screwed up thing: all of it is legal. It’s absurd that Congress allows these credit card companies to exist. Oh wait, who am I kidding. The bozos in Congress own stocks in these credit card companies, that’s why they allow this highway robbery to exist legally.
The fact that credit card companies charge 3%, just means that everything is 3% higher.
The cash spenders are subsidizing the credit card swipers. And the cash back rewards programs are a complete gimmick. Since you’re totally paying for the rewards itself just from the increased 3% fee on everything.
Anyways, the sooner that something else comes along to eliminate these dinosaur credit card companies, the better off the world will be. But who am I kidding? That’ll never happen.
What makes you think TikTok / China would abide by such a law, if there was one?
In reality the CCP would be incapable of adhering to the law since it conflicts with their own laws about being able to review and monitor communications. But the difference is our objection would material and apply broadly rather than the case by case depending on the mood of the Executive branch.
If the law existed, the sale of Musical.ly would have never happened at least in the same manner. Most likely it would have been strong armed into Reddit/Tencent arrangement where it's only an exchange of capital & equity.
TikTok, however, like every other private entity operating in the US does need to abide by laws for the protection it afforded under the law or should they face consequences.
Think it rationally, if there is any slight hint of that happening, you think Trump would not release it and amplify the claim 10x?...
If there are no laws in place at all, what’s the punishment for.
So yeah, it is not the same for CCP to have data on me or NSA.
So you've got a point, but nowadays it's like you're comparing the risk of crossing a street blindfolded on a highway during the day vs. a 4-lane expressway in the middle of the night. One is a lot safer than the other but let's not pretend that either one is rational or advisable.
And of course there's HN favorite wikileaks...
> The message stated, "it's time to speak up before another 17,000 people are dead," according to member station WFSU, citing the probable cause affidavit.
> As the agents enter, one points their weapon upstairs. Jones says the agents pointed a gun at her and at her children.
It's hard to convince me that we're the "good guys" when we're pointing guns at children because their mother spoke out against the official government position.
I'm sure she'll get off without a conviction after draining her life's savings to defend herself. Hopefully it launches her career, if there's still a democracy left. At least they didn't execute her.
you don't actually, people shitpost on the Chinese intranet like crazy. Some social media company might try to filter what you post but we're not in Mao's era.
Also it's kind of circular and meaningless to elevate the US above China simply by holding up American values. Someone in China could say the same, "hey look over there they can openly mock the president and spread conspiracies on the internet, they've turned into idiots, you can't equate China with the US!"
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/06/technology/china-ant-grou...
Jack Ma is not punished because of his speech. His speech is a reflection of his perceived punishment of "innovation" which is really just a amplified version of the financial insanity already happened in US.
And Jack Ma actually can challenge the main stream rhetoric, can you say that 911 at least in part was a result of US foreign policy?
Jack Ma’s Ant Financial was doing some really shady business practices.
Like keeping essentially 0% money on their books for collateral.
And they filed to go public, in 2 months. Which is incredibly fast, that nobody had the time to review what their business was all about.
And even when they got approval at the lower levels, the higher levels didn’t get to think it through yet. So they decided to pause Ant’s IPO at the last minute. With the requirement that they have 30% of the money held back as collateral.
The Ant business model had a serious possibility of destabilizing the entire financial system of China, and possibly the world.
Nobody really cared when Ant was private. Make all the money you want. But being a public company is a whole different ball game.
I think China dodged a bullet here. It’s better to be safe, than sorry.
There is a strong argument these adversaries have built domestic terrorist cells who have been running around in gangs threatening people, razing buildings, and engaging in nonsensical political discussions about disposing with government services, and they are using a social media company owned by a foreign state with stated military objectives to organize. Whether you want to view Antifa or Trump supporters as the terrorists, or TikTok, Twitter or Facebook as domesitic or foreign companies is a matter of perspective.
The fact is weapons of psychologcial warfare do not differentiate between targets and may yet proove to be as deadly as any WMD.
The reason Section 230 is under attack by the current regime is that astroturfing exercises on boards like this one to force perspective change and create sounding boards for corporate political policies has become a well documented business model as the recent deposition of FB and Twitter's CEO infront of congress showed.
The real insanity is that any CEO would ever think messing with people's brain chemistry without knowing what you are doing in order to make a buck was ever a good idea.
E2E solves none of the above.
Welcome to 2020.
Ah liberals, the undisputed champions of whataboutism.
Imagine my disdain for China is a crime and 10 years from now I go to Beijing for work and face prison. No thank you
The move to ban tiktok is a signal to US investors to not invest in Chinese tech companies which are making good progress. Sadly, this strategy may not work unless USA is able to bring the entire democratic world with them. I do not see that happening either.
Then why was it caught spying on clipboard data? Remember the shenanigans that ensued just before this controversy blew up?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRSWdtoUAjo
Most of the apps in your home screen did it when the beta came out from NYTimes to Google News to Chrome to AccuWeather etc.
TikTok shows a pop-up preview of the TikTok link you have in your clipboard when you open TikTok. It might be that, it might be more. But it's certainly not more special than other apps.
Why are you so sure of that? The CCP has whole military divisions dedicated to pinging every server on the planet for any possibility on getting access to them.
* let trump claim headlines about being tough on China while rolling over for China.
* got trump cheap attention while distracting from real issues he can't be bothered to solve
* created some volatility and maybe let a donor snap up a deal on a growing tech company.
* was basically meaningless to 99% of his supporters who don't use tiktok or understand what it is and so wouldn't be upset or ask any questions
It achieved all of these and more, whether it worked or not.
can you clarify this? in what ways did he roll over for china?
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-10-29/trump-s-c...
No action on jobs, no progress on IP infringement or tech transfer, no action on currency manipulation or subsidies, trade deficit remains huge.
And that's without mentioning the TPP or South China Seas or treatment of minorities or Hong Kong and Democracy or basic human rights or Covid.
China is a huge issue. The huge issue of the next decade. Its the only thing I agree with Trumps manifesto about. But on all these fronts, trump has at best achieved nothing and at worse looked weak, weakened the Web of alliances that made China hesitate and make the US look weak and ineffective.
He rolled over on trade, the deficit jobs and ip in his failed little "trade war". He rolled over when he supported Xi over protestors. He's been too busy making hay and fucking up to properly question why zoonotic viruses keep coming out of China so he's rolled over on that too.
Failing to ban tiktok is yet another example of how poorly he's done.
Seriously, reasonable people on all sides agree that China is an issue. No one can say trump has made any progress on China.
To me TikTok and fair regulation of how to handle user data the hammer that finally can crack the surveilance advertisement monopolies of Facebook and Google.
I think the Great Firewall is bad in China and would also be bad in the US. If you want to make this about actual business presence, financial transactions, etc. that would fall under trade, then sure. But how are you suggesting to "ban" a Chinese website or app, other than erecting our own Great Firewall? And would you suggest using that firewall to ban all requests from China? Or just "social media" requests?
Recently, it occurred to me that the Great Firewall could be more of a tool for foreign policy, not domestic policy. If China for instance wanted to attack US's critical infrastructure, they could do so without damaging their own. Russia has recently employed such a system for their country's internet services, if I recall correctly.
It may very well be that this is what is motivating the TikTok madness here in the US. Left to their own devices, perhaps the fear is that China will weaponize TikTok against its US users, with no way to "great firewall" ourselves from those outcomes. Since we cannot use this strategy without angering the rest of the world on the "open internet" we have to resort to different measures.
Completely removing all the ways for less-tech-savvy people in the US and China to communicate feels like setting the US back to before the global internet. It's not protecting US interests, it's breaking apart friends and families who have no other way set up to stay in contact.
Actually lol'd at this. "If they're not willing to play fair, then _we_ must play fair."
I'm saying that it makes no sense to lose on purpose just to say you "played fair".
I think messenger apps work as well.
Something to be said about an eye-for-an-eye leaving the whole world blind.
Isn't that because they refuse to ( or are not allowed to ) follow the rules/laws in china?
> I see no reason why we should allow chinese social media companies to operate here
But doesn't tik tok abide by our rules here?
> It would give Chinese companies a huge competitive advantage if they were the only ones allowed to operate in both markets.
They already have a huge advantage as their market is much larger than ours and will only continue to grow.
> It's roughly equivalent to China enacting a 100% tariff on American goods, and the US continuing to buy Chinese goods with no tariff at all.
No. It would be like facebook not having to abide by chinese laws while tik tok has to abide by american laws.
Essentially what you are saying is our companies should be able to do whatever they want, wherever they want. Don't think that's going to work out too well over the long run.
The US, on the other hand, at least pretends to have rule-of-law that preempts attempts to use government power to determine economic winners and losers.
All regulations around the world are designed that way. All markets are national security issues and all major powers protect their own turf. China isn't special just because you have something against them. From britain to japan to korea to india to mexico and even canada, they all cater their laws/regulations to protect their own companies.
> Whether or not Facebook can follow Chinese law is irrelevant;
It is relevant. Just because you decide something is irrelevant doesn't make it so.
> The US, on the other hand, at least pretends to have rule-of-law that preempts attempts to use government power to determine economic winners and losers.
You mean other than tik tok? Other than subsidies for boeing, etc? Other than the bailouts of car companies? And that's not even taking account of all the wars we've engaged in to further the interests of our companies. Our invasion and colonization of china for much of the 19th and 20th century doesn't count right?
2. Google is allowed to operate in China. Have you forgotten project Dragonfly (It's internal effort to create a china-only service compatible with China's laws? It wasn't sunk by the CCP, but by employee activism.)
3. Many economists believe that protectionism that locks foreign competitors out is only harmful to your own people.
4. If China enacted a 100% tariff on US goods, let them. It is only robbing its own people - which is no concern of anyone who doesn't live in China.
1. So, what you're saying is that banning imports hurts ourselves.
2. The parties who benefit from a trade are not necesarily the countries involved, but a handful of individuals in the countries involved. Foreign policy should not be set for the purpose of maximizing their comfort. It should be set for the purpose of maximizing overall welfare.
3. If China wants to export useful goods, in exchange for worthless pieces of paper that they can't buy anything with because of tariffs, that sounds very much like 'not our problem'.
Either way, this is all a complete tangent from my original point - that Google, Facebook, etc, do operate in China, and can operate in China, when they adjust their local operations to comply with local law.
The TikTok ban has nothing to do with lack of compliance with local law, and everything to do with an arbitrary executive order, not approved by congress, issued by what is now a lame-duck president. (Which is, ironically, the very same kind of capricious behavior that folks accuse the CCP of.)
You don't want foreign social media companies operating in the US? Fine. Pass a law banning that. Get ready for the world to reciprocate, though. I'm sure there are Indian, German, French, and British startups chopping at the bit, waiting for an opportunity to move into the space that banning Google/Facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn/Yelp would do in their countries.
The US has everything to lose, and nothing to gain by getting involved in this war - because it has a monopoly on exporting social media. By your logic, for example, Germany would lose nothing from banning US social media platforms, because it has no social media platforms that are being exported to the US market, and thus, a reciprocal ban would have no effect on them.
If there are legitimate concerns by intelligence agencies that the CCP might use TikTok to influence users or spy on them on a large scale (which is very well possible), then I'm entirely for the ban and the question whether other intelligence agencies do the same is irrelevant. I don't think "it's okay because everybody does it" arguments are sound. However, if there is no evidence for such behavior, then I'm against the ban.
So far I haven't seen any evidence, but it's unfortunately not hard to imagine how the Chinese government would abuse a large social network for their purposes. They certainly do that domestically.
This isn’t an attempt to make this political. But credibility matters and being able to claim the moral high ground matters.
But what we really need is a US version of GDPR
They are two of America's richest and most powerful companies, and politicians tend to let those 'self-regulate' so as not be accused of interfering with market forces. It also helps that they both hand over a good amount of data to the US Government.
If China is using TikTok against the interests of US citizens (which legally is 100% a matter of foreign policy, and therefore at the executive branches sole discretion) then celebrating the demise of one "monopoly" (tech) by the hands of an agent of another (a foreign govt) isn't principled capitalism/free-trade/etc, it's traitorous/patriotic, depending on perspective.
I don't think the executive branch has sole and arbitrary discretion over foreign policy? For one thing, there's the treaty clause, and the foreign commerce clause of article 1 section 8. This judge apparently agrees.
The president can unilaterally leave treaties, arguably universally. SCOTUS has said that as head of State, even the recognition that other countries exist and/or are legitimate falls upon him.
Yesterday's SG argument at SCOTUS brought up many of the reasons why the judicial has historically, and should continue, to stay out of foreign policy matters.
Foreign commerce clause is a better argument, but I'd say regardless, here the President is operating within the laws and framework as Congress has legislated under that authority.
Whether the judge agrees is sort of circular logic here, not affirmation.
If there is anything generically less convincing to me than a lawyer's presentation of arguments favoring their client's point of view, I can't think of it.
> Whether the judge agrees is sort of circular logic here, not affirmation.
So, I'm not clear on whether you're claiming that the president in fact does have the powers you're ascribing to them, or if you're saying they ought to, or if you're saying they have historically.
If you're saying the president does have that power, well, that's is the contested question. The most recent update we have from the entity that has the power to decide -- the judicial branch -- is that the president does not. If you're saying they ought to, well, that's just like, your opinion man. :) If you're saying they have historically, I confess some ignorance on the matter, but I'm not familiar with any recent examples of retaliatory expropriation like this in the United States.
My point is that for most foreign policy matters, the judicial branch doesn't have the constitutional power, or even any congressionally granted special jurisdiction, to decide these things. (Except for very specific exceptions spelled out by Congress, which is what yesterday's case was about.)
I brought up the SG's argument bc of the case law he cited is closely related, not because his argument was applicable to this case. They argued whether a case fell into a niche congressional explicit exception. And both sides recognized that, in general, courts don't have a role in most of these foreign policy arguments.
Import/export control on software isn't an exception, and in fact is explicitly allowed by statute.
I don't think anyone is arguing that the executive lacks the power of instituting import/export control over software that 1) is owned by a non-US entity, and might be either 2a) weaponized by a foreign adversary or 2b) used in a way that compromises national security.
They've already done it for years, including the infamous encryption export controls. Those didn't make much sense, but no one really argued the president couldn't do it.
Those decisions are political ones, not judicial ones.
And judicial precedent recognizes that, and defers to the executive, despite what this judge has ruled.
The US embassy moving to Jerusalem brought up many of the same issues, if you want to explore how this likely plays out. Even in the face of some congressional directives (I think via funding) explicitly not allowing the move.
>So, I'm not clear on whether you're claiming that the president in fact does have the powers you're ascribing to them, or if you're saying they ought to, or if you're saying they have historically.
All of the above :)
>retaliatory expropriation
Whether retaliatory or not, import/export control or tariffs aren't a constitutional taking, and so isn't expropriation any more than taxes are.
There might be some more interesting arguments to be made re:equitible treatment under the law if it were owned by an American company (and I suspect this is where your thoughts are), but it's not, and if it were, many of the underlying issues would be mooted.
Evidence other than Donald, the Mr.Credible’s claim?
By definition it falls upon his discretion, not evidence or a trial verdict. This isn't "innocent until proven guilty" TV drama.
But shouldn’t the leader of the free world make “policy judgment calls” based on evidence?
You can make the same argument to ban Facebook because of its use by the GRU, and it would be equally silly.
FB is a American owned an operated, but clearly if state actors have access (as they did at Twitter [0]) it hardly matters.
[0]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/former-twit...
Find actual abuses by the application or its data and then there are credible arguments. Simply alluding to some notion of evil-by-association is a dangerous game for the US to play given PRISM, FISA warrants, etc.
And let's be real -- you're typing on your made in China computer full of components made in China, your data traversing made in china routers and relays, etc. This never had anything to do with any imagined security risk, and had to do with the corrupt manchild targeting a platform for carrying content unfavorable to him. It is just another demonstration that the US doesn't "stand for" much [1].
[1] - The only saving grace right now is effectively the so called "Deep State". The career judges and civil servants who don't twist every norm and rule and precedent because of this corrupt tinpot dictator and his pathetic army of deplorables. They may not be enough, though.
Would you feel different if TikTok were software of Russian origin? I suspect you would.
It's telling that one of the most common, and earliest, comments to justify a TikTok ban is "well China banned/blocked XXXX". It is similar to this administration repeatedly justifying super-spreader events by citing looters. Is that really the standard you are striving towards?
"Would you feel different if TikTok were software of Russian origin?"
No, I wouldn't at all. That is absurd. Russia actually has a fairly healthy software industry, including many games and even security tools like Kaspersky.
US tries to ban 1 app that is being used to spread propaganda, farm user data, and is considered a national security threat. And everyone loses their shit over it.
Microsoft Teams, Skype, FaceTime all work in China, to name a few.
> because they want to control the content that Chinese citizens see and remove anything that is negative towards the ccp, etc.
This is true. But that doesn't mean they ban all US social media apps. If you follow their Internet laws (like Microsoft and Apple do) then you are allowed to operate.
> US tries to ban 1 app that is being used to spread propaganda, farm user data, and is considered a national security threat.
This is an assumption. Proof please, because I haven't seen any.
Don't get me wrong. I am not against a ban on Tiktok. I'm against a discriminatory ban, based on unproven assumptions, solely targeting the origin of an app.
What would be much more fair would be to state: all foreign apps have to go through a security audit to certify that no data reaches any foreign governments. That way you don't have to prove wrongdoing first, and you aren't being discriminatory either.
>Microsoft Teams, Skype, FaceTime all work in China, to name a few.
Calling them "social media apps" is a stretch. Microsoft Teams is designed to be used within an organization, so it's closer to a corporate mail server than facebook. Skype and FaceTime are public, but they don't have the defining features of other social media sites, such as a profile, UGC, or feeds: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media
But why does the exact definition of social media matter here? Let's say that Facebook follows their Internet law and becomes allowed, would you then have a different opinion?
If tiktok is a US app. And not a china app. Then any content negative towards china would not be removed. Which happens daily. Whole pro china and anti America content stays. That’s propaganda.
Everyone loses their shit over it because it's a direct example of the US government potentially violating the first amendment. They may claim that the app is being used to spread propaganda, farm user data, and is a "national security threat", but they've done very little other than raise the specter of "China" to prove that. Their claims of justification have been met with significant push back and, as far as I'm aware, they haven't provided any meaningful proof of their claims.
So yes, it's well-worth it for people to get up in arms about the US government censoring and shutting down access of US customers to a phone app. That's a hugely dangerous precedent to set and one that shouldn't be done lightly.
Have you ever actually used tiktok? How is it being used to spread propoganda?
>farm user data
LOL. Yeah, please tell me how they are doing anything different than the other billion apps you download on your phone and sign-in through google or whatever.
>and is considered a national security threat
Because of... why?
https://www.businessinsider.com/tiktok-parent-company-byteda...
That's from last year...
Have you typed 'propaganda on hackernews' or on facebook/twitter/reddit or any other social media?
Everything in the world is going to have some form of propaganda to some degree. And honestly, having used tiktok a small amount, it seems way less than most social media out here. You generally have to even work hard to find anything that is political, most of it is completely random shit that has zero agenda.
If a bad government does a bad thing a lot, it doesn't justify our government doing that bad thing even once.
In the long run, the asymmetry of US and Chinese citizen's access to each other's culture and products will work in our favor. Liberalism always seems to win, eventually.
In fact, would you want the US to be more like China?
Yes. If there is determined to be harm, I see no reason to protect them.
> Would you want the US to be more like China?
Governments fulfill similar roles across time and space. It's unavoidable that there is overlap. Please clarify what you are trying to imply.
But should the US government, given the current developments, ban Twitter and/or Facebook? That is what I'm asking.
Because they are quite literally doing the same as TikTok. Now, is TikTok spying for China? Except for a few reports, there is no proof of it. In fact, the US government would not ban TikTok if they sell their business to US companies.
So either TikTok does not spy on their customers for China, or they do, and the US government wants to have control over data illegally harvested.
Either way, forcing TikTok hand is not a move made to protect US citizens.
America has the image built. China doesn't. It's behind. China will open when their culture is at a similar standing to the US.
Of course the image built is breaking down now, but it's still ahead of the Chinese one.
The SCOTUS noted that they may need to reign-in the scope of lower-court orders, and this just adds weight to the issue.
It's particularly important because there's a practical bias. Opponents of an executive action can district-shop, while it is difficult for the Executive to file a declaratory-judgment action in a (perceived to be) favorable jurisdiction. So we end up with nation-wide judgments which differ what what the other districts would have ruled... but the other districts never had an opportunity to rule. Then... since a ruling has been issued, they are largely blocked from ever ruling.
However, the SCOTUS is is a bit of a bind, because allowing nation-wide orders works very effectively in general civil / criminal litigation. The problem has seemed to arise mostly in politically-charged issues where the government is a party.
Unfortunately transparency is a problem, as they did not state more details about the ban.
I donno why there’s so many apologists on HN. :/
I find it problematic that anything in support of China or against the US in the context of US vs China is labeled being an apologist or Chinese propaganda. It’s a good way to shut down all discussion, much like the whole “that’s heresy” from ages past.
But okay. Let's say it's not a mathematically solid proof. Agreed.
On the other hand, there's no mathematical proof that they are being discriminatory, either.
Why is it apologetic to not assume the worst of China at every turn?
That said, there's a sharp cultural contrast between the responses to the Kent State massacre in the US and the Tienenman Square massacre in China. In the US, you can't say Kent State wasn't popularly condemned, didn't prompt change, or isn't burned into the nation's psyche to this day. In China, you can't say much about Tienenman Square, period.
FYI, I'm Chinese.
Because they view those values as inherently good, and thus opposition to those values as inherently bad. If you view freedom of religion or speech as a fundamental human good or need, then naturally a government opposed to (or seen as greatly curtailing) those values will be seen as 'evil'.
On a more human and physical level, people see, say, the Xinjiang camps and view that as reflective of the values of that government, as evil, the same way they may see the immigrant child separation in the US as reflective of its government's values, and as evil. Actions speaking louder than words of intent.
The vast majority of them want to address the privacy issues raised by such apps and companies irrespective of whether it’s the US or China misappropriating our data.
To say that they are discriminatory despite the above data, is an assumption. That assumption may be right (because the data is not mathematically solid evidence). On the other hand, it may be not. But I think accepting that assumption is in line with US propaganda.
Funny you bring up Skype because in China they get a special version that enables the CCP to surveil your "private" communications for dissent. I'm sure other communications apps are similar, or plain blocked. For example telegram is banned, although Signal is still allowed for now (maybe it's under the radar).
Do you think any one of those apps is authorized to make API calls out of China?
API calls, not phone calls yorwba
I don't know where you're getting your information about those apps' source code from, but since you were wrong about the second part, I'm going to assume you just imagined a plausible story and claimed it as fact.
Regarding the source code thing: you’re either not paying attention or you’re a CCP propagandist.
https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/telecom/security/chinas-...
I thought it was 105 foreign or US apps that got banned.
Yes, the US is allowed to have national security concerns. Yes, the US is allowed to distrust China for whatever reason. But you could draw up a law that says "ANY foreign app must go through a security audit to certify no data reaches any foreign governments". That way you don't just target China, but also targets hypothetical Russian, European, African or whatever apps that could be problematic. And Tiktok would then be able to prove innocence or fix leaks.
TikTok is just short videos. It's not like Facebook or Twitter which are more likely to be used by someone who is an adult.
"Roughly 50% of TikTok’s global audience is under the age of 34 with 26% between 18 and 24."
As a response to china's discriminatory behaviour with respect to US tech companies. Due to network effects and so on, a company that is able to operate everywhere, including china, has an unfair advantage over companies that are kept out of china. The end effect of allowing this is that you only have chinese media companies. This has a number of negative consequences, including ones for the economy, for privacy, and for national security.
In India, this is unthinkable. District courts won't go against even the state chief ministers. And the supreme court has been showing its feet of clays lately.
When the other country is in a conflict on the borders, these apps are essentially a national security threat, given how pervasive these are. People used shitty adware / outright malware like ShareIt and Cam Scanner pervasively. I don't know how much of them are actually available now. But at least there is awareness now.
Edit: Why should I care if China has my data? Everyone seems worried about it, but I can't think of a good reason. I can think of a lot of reasons why I would prefer my own government from having it, though. The only scenarios I can think of, is if I become rich or powerful, or if China takes over the US.
> The key personnel responsible for TikTok, including its CEO, Global Chief Security Officer, and General Counsel, are all Americans based in the United States—and therefore are not subject to Chinese law. U.S. content moderation is likewise led by a U.S.-based team and operates independently from China, and, as noted above, the TikTok application stores U.S. user data on servers located in the United States and Singapore.
So the US will still have your data (potentially).
Edit: Plus if that's all it takes to blackmail someone you can probably just bribe them with money or something just as easily.
Also, what kind of credibility could anyone attach to it?
Hey TikTok claims that Person A liked video B on date C. And what proof do they have? They could already just create a bunch of fake logs like this.
I hate to break it to you, but a site like reddit is 1000000x more incriminating for anyone than tiktok is.
I see no reason that they would resist the opportunity to build a social credit score of sorts for outsiders as well, and put pressure on other companies to enforce it quietly.
We've seen Zoom bans enforced globally at the behest of China because some folks got together on meetings about Tiananmen, and all Zoom had to say was "sorry had to do it".
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”
-MLK Jr.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-03-31/chinese-government-ac...
Pardons have been issued on napkins.
This is still a ticking time bomb, even if today they are only using it against malware (and apps that aid the Hong Kong protesters).
It's only a matter of time before they are forced to censor apps elsewhere, too.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/22/world/asia/china-surveill...
Joke aside, what this guy wrote is completely false. If Alibaba is state-owned enterprise, it does not need to stop the Ant group IPO. Yes, the state is trying to influence enterprises with the introduction of party councils in place of unions. It is not essentially state-owned when it is essentially not state-owned.
EDIT: typo
TikTok may be independent as a US company or more but the IPO stopping is not proof of it.
Please, how do you go from "State-owned" to "everything is tightly controlled." I am genuinely curious.
I think I have become too political recently reading hacker news. Such a waste of time. I will not participate in any philosophy/political/ideology any more. Thanks for the reply.
EDIT: We all have a habit to use logic to understand events, but many times, we can bend events to fit our logic. It is so natural, and we don't even notice it. I don't believe the world is black and white, or labelling makes it easier to understand the world. Everywhere you go is just a bunch of humans. When we are happy we take time and try to understand differences, when we are not, we attack differences. It is how we develop and survive in the wild.
Ownership is much more powerful in an enterprise than outside government regulations in any cases.
No. Not really. CCP is not a big uniform entity. There are different competing entities.
Also, ownership is different from control. I am not sure how this simple fact is overlooked.
2. No one claimed ownership is the same as control, but so it happens most of the time in the business world ownership implies control.
3. Like you said, ownership is different from control. Ant is not state owned, literally.
A state-owned company in a totalitarian empire is part of a system that suppresses freedom of speech, uses forced labour, conducts genocide, seeks to undermine democracy overseas. That’s why it’s bad.
(Alternatively, you could say that all sufficiently large corporations are "partially-state-owning".)
While there are substantial differences between the two varieties of capitalism, if you squint it can be a difference of degree. For example in the West, we do have "crown corporations", and countries often put their own companies' interests above that of the global capitalist market (for example, the USA defending Boeing and going after Bombardier). One important difference is that in the West, our crown corporations/state owned enterprises are never run purely for profit.
As for "how", it varies. The State may just own a controlling amount of shares, or have board seats.
To put simply, in the West, often it's considered anathema for policy makers to pick "winners and losers" in the market. The idea is the market should decide. This isn't true in China. The CCP is happy to pick winners and losers, and in doing so it guarantees its own position. They user their power to make or break a company to effectively own it and use it to reinforce their strength.
The late David Graeber expanded on this point in "Debt: The First 5,000 Years".
I see dictatorship as monarchy in disguise. China's leadership as observed are not passed down within a singular family or families and the succession of which have not observed militarial coup. If the dictator can't have his/hers own blood-heir to take over, where is the dicatorship in this?
Then we can’t know if a country was a dictatorship ship until a ruler dies. Also, all countries with despots ousted and replaced by others, disqualifies as dictatorships.
I don’t like your definition. I’d rather look for rule of law and signs of democracy. Both of which are very scarce in China.
Many of those despots have every intent and actions that we have observed to have their heirs assume office, only that it was stopped. It's about that they have that power in their form of government where they make all the calls, not them actually achiving it.
On the other hand, many of Xi's predecessors are well-alive, well, two of them, if they are/were dicators, what is Xi? There are three dictators at different times in China, with one in the office and the other two well and alive? I doubt dictatorship would be an accurate account for what's really going on.
Communism doesn't mean everyone gets free groceries and doesn't have to work. The CCP, for all of their faults, seriously puts a lot of time and thought into the elements of communism and how the Chinese communism compares and evolves on it as a longterm form of government. Just because someone on the internet mistakes utopianism for communism doesn't mean Mao's party isn't communist.
Communism _does_ mean - among other things - that "everyone gets free groceries", in the sense that they would not exchange money or another commodity for the groceries, but rather get them through wider collective/communal/regional/country-wide arrangements.
I don't know why this is a popular misconception. You may have ration points or communism bucks instead of dollars, but you still need a hard currency to allow interpersonal trade. You may have resources that aren't obtainable through currency (housing), but you need currency because you need to settle preference/availability/tradeoffs. You probably also even still have some taxes for consumption.
The price of all goods is not equivalent on a fundamental labor level and the preference for goods is not flat.
As soon as the state decides to prop a failing business up, it's no longer capitalism and the state gets control of the companies decision making process.
I'm not a big fan of governments paying up to rescue big companies that made billions and in the end went bankrupt because in a free market is unfair. But that's far, very far from not being capitalism. The action itself may not be the most "capitalistic" but after that the government doesn't take control, it's not an expropriation.
Not exactly a 'free market' then if they're not free to fail.
But we're also a country with medicare and food stamps and we recognize pure capitalism isn't flawless. Had a company like GM been allowed to fail suddenly then entire major cities would have seen unemployment go up 3x or 4x, and that's a lot of people who don't have jobs in a city that just lost it's primary industry. Most of those people are not white collar professionals who can hop over to SV - there are very limited jobs building cars.
As a country where we do sometimes engage in non-capitalist behavior (FDIC insurance, jobs programs, so on) it's sometimes more efficient to prop up a bad business and let it fail slowly then to entirely take a hands off approach.
Just as an example of 'not cricket', my daughter recently had very good reason to block an instagram user. Except, if that user is in any groups that you're a member of, in order to still see group messages, you must accept to still see their messages (and they yours) in those groups - or you must leave the group.
Actually being able to block other users, whether they're in a group you're in, or not, does not seem like an insurmountable technical challenge to me, so I assume it's a policy 'nudge' to discourage blocking toxic people.
Alice, Bob, and Charlie are in a group. Alice blocks Bob. Bob sends a message. Charlie responds to it. Alice says “what are you on about Charlie?” Because she didn’t see bobs message because she has him blocked.
Alice and Charlie work out via messaging back and forth in the group that bob sent a message and that Alice has him blocked. That’s awkward for everyone. And happens every time bob sends a message in the group.
How would you deal with that?
I abhor that underhand practice, and can't think of any reason why it is valid. If you want to tell a user to 'go away, leave me alone', you should be able to block them without having to leave your groups - it doesn't need to be secretive.
That’s reasonable for you?
I mean it’s ok if you want to just say what they’re doing sucks. But I’d find your position more compelling if you could offer a reasonable alternative.
Or with threaded conversations, you prune Bobs messages and all replies.
It might be slightly confusing, but it's better than having to leave a group entirely, or see their abusive messages, when someone is harassing you.
Not sure the legal or presidential order is the best approach. But unless handle this USA might lose in the cyberspace... and humanity might suffer from ccp.
Every intervention the US government does is a signal to other governments and entrepreneurs.
If you are an aspring developer, you can choose to make your program local, US centric, or worldwide.
The economics don't always work for third world countries or globally, so they are forced to make products that are US centric. Banning apps shift the risk and could encourage more local apps.
With more US centric programs, US citizens are exposed to new ideas and economic competition. These are good for the long term despite the short term disruption.
I don’t know why it serves anyone well to 1) believe the company’s word at face value and 2) not believe that the Chinese gov does not have backdoor agreements with the largest Chinese tech company.
The better question to ask is what information TikTok even has on someone. It isn’t exactly an app that asks for a lot of real world identity data to signup with.
IMO their biggest thing would be their ability to use computer vision to instantly process videos and match faces with real world identity databases and then to link faces and backgrounds to locations, family members/connections, interests, etc.
What you said describes literally any technology that makes decisions about what to present to the user.
Funny you mention this, because an effort to purchase tickets to a high-profile campaign rally for Trump (and not attend, in an effort to make his rally look poorly attended) was conceived and organized through Tik-Tok. Not a Trump supporter by any means, but given that Trump is much more hostile to China than Biden, doesn't that explicitly seem like a situation that could be considered "foreign election meddling"?
An intelligence agency interested in that information could just scrape TikTok's entire catalog and do the processing themselves. If it were a messaging app that would be different, but since TikTok is all about posting videos for the whole world to see, they don't really have much secret information about their users.
I guess also ignore China then pointing to the US and saying "our behaviour is fine, even the US does it."
I disagree with the way Trump targeted a single company but I think instituting a similar policy across the West to deal with China in similar terms wouldn’t be a bad idea to try to get them to negotiate a better status quo.
They are not "explicitly against that". They don't allow full access at the get-go, true, but it's a big overstatement to say that they are against the concept. If you look at what they've done in the past 20 years, you'll see that they're opening up to foreign business more and more.
For example, joint ventures used to be required. A couple of years ago, that requirement has been dropped. And now with RCEP, they're reducing tariffs for many Asian countries.
Walk down the street in China for 10 minutes and you'll see tons of western companies.
Western countries also don't fully adhere to the free trade principle. There are countries that blocked investment from China for political reasons, way before the "but China is unfair for not allowing access into their markets" started.
Granted maybe you have updated information here so open to reading about it. Claiming that “but western countries do it too” is unhelpful whataboutism. I didn’t claim Western countries don’t do crappy shit. In terms of market access and competition, that shiftiness is more about established players and regulatory capture rather than outright pseudo-fascism whereas China seems to have adopted fascism quite aggressively (ironic considering they call themselves a socialist party but I guess all authoritarian regimes end up looking very similar).
Saying “I see western logos when I walk around in China” is missing the mark when I talk about what is required of companies when they enter China (and as I said not all industries, but the ones strategically important to China somehow, especially high tech)
Many western social apps work in China. Microsoft Teams, Skype, Facetime, to name a few.
Apps are banned in China for not complying to Internet laws, not for being western.
Whether we agree with those laws is a separate discussion. Bans from anyone should not be discriminatory and should not target the origin.
Having a gigantic conglomerate in control of my supply chain is too risky.
I think that's how we need to look at Chinese companies. Are you willing to deal with the biggest company in the world?
Although most humans are not going to understand that the CCP owns 51% of every company. And if they do, even less are going to understand the implications.
As a result you can have networks formed out of ignorance.
False
Only state-owned corps have the 51% rule.
Proof is Elon's plant in Shanghai.
Using VPNs isn't even illegal. Providing VPN service without a license, is. A license can be given for e.g. business use.
What is happening is pretty much the opposite - the West doesn't have access to Chinese media (except those explicitly targeting the West), for language reasons.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A
I don’t think this argument is particularly strong.
How is that so?
Tiktok is a us Corp. Legally they are subject to China laws.
Politically they can be hurt by influence from the parent's domestic operations.
I suppose latter is what you meant?
That said, they are generally ignored when they disappear. Apple and Reddit both removed their warrant canaries in 2016, to very little fanfare, despite the implications of them doing so.