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Comment by gernb | Hacker News Reader

Curious what this app does that other apps don't. In other words, applying the same criteria to other apps what other apps should be removed from the store because they do the same things?

You post video in it so the app gets camera and mic access, assuming you give it permission. Can you use it without giving permission? IIRC Apple requires apps to work without permissions?

I tried installing it and it requires an account so uninstalled. Not really into TikTok but was able to view in a browser without an account.

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I think the only thing this app really does is upload all the data to Chinese owned company instead of an US owned one.

And that can be enough to trigger national interest concerns from US.

The US supports free market capitalism for everyone+.

+ ~7.9 billion people may be excluded.

China banned almost all US social networks, this is fair play

Well, at least China didn't ban MySpace

Balkanizing the internet sounds great, honestly.

The way I see it is that TikTok is basically a psyops app. We can argue all day whether it is controlled by the Chinese government, by advertisers, by both, whether it is intentional, what its purpose is, etc. But anything that is free and funded by ads is at the end of the day trying to sway the mind and behavior of its users, that is the name of the game.

So to answer your question, it doesn't /do/ anything that other apps don't. But what it does it does rather effectively, and it isn't controlled by a company that is ultimately beholden to the US government. So from the gov's perspective, TikTok somewhere between a nuisance and a threat to national security.

> it isn't controlled by a company that is ultimately beholden to the US government.

The issue isn't so much that TikTok isn't beholden to the US government. The issue is that TikTok is beholden to the Chinese Communist Party. If TikTok were Japanese or Korean or something, this wouldn't be a problem.

remember toyota? Remember what happened to alstom?

No. What happened?

>So to answer your question, it doesn't /do/ anything that other apps don't.

I was under the impression it did quite a lot of spyware behavior that is rivaled by few if any apps on the store.

That's kind of the value add. TikTok's recommendation system is miles ahead, I mean incomparably better than any social media competitors. This is largely responsible for its market growth and staying power, but ultimately it relies on extraordinarily in-depth understanding of user behavior.

I would say that their recommendation algorithm and speed of delivering content is so good that it's almost dangerously addicting. I can't trust myself to have the app installed on my phone because I'll scroll it endlessly. I wouldn't be surprised if you could measurably impact the behavior of American teenagers with some clever content weighting... though one might be able to say the same of Facebook with the middle-aged.

The psychological profiling that can be done with the data is likely somewhat scary, and the feds are going to be doubly terrified considering Beijing is ingesting all that data. The latter is probably the primary motivator of a ban.

People are using this app to doxx the supreme court judges after the anti-abortion ruling. Hence the sudden and hasty desire to block the app on "privacy concerns"

See the commissioners twitter answer and you will see. It's right there in the article.

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