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Comment by TechBro8615 | Hacker News Reader

The result of this will be millions of American teen girls learning how to "sideload" apps onto their device. Of course, a significant percentage of them will end up sideloading malware onto their device at the same time.

The funny aspect to me is that the senators pushing to "ban TikTok" are the same senators pushing for an "open App Store" bill. But I don't see how you can have it both ways.

Sure you can sanction TikTok. Are you going to jail every middle schooler who "does business" with them by downloading the app from unofficial sources?

Or perhaps you want to force ISPs to drop connections to TikTok servers?

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> The funny aspect to me is that the senators pushing to "ban TikTok" are the same senators pushing for an "open App Store" bill.

There's also a lot of overlap between the politicians who want to ban TikTok over concerns that user data might go to China and politicians who block proposed data privacy laws that would stop US companies from selling similar data (or worse, such as ISPs selling browsing data) to data brokers.

Ban TikTok and anyone in China can get similar data on US citizens by just buying it from US data brokers.

Making it impossible for them to operate a business in the US ought to be more than sufficient.

How so? That would make it so that the cost per US user is negative since TikTok would not be getting revenue related to US users but would have hosting costs for them.

But if TikTok really is as useful to the Chinese government to be the threat that the politicians trying to ban it make it out to be, surely the Chinese government would be willing to eat those costs to keep it going here.

No app that would be banned from app stores is likely to be successful in the long term.

Without revenue in it, and influencers on it, only few would jump through the insane hoops to sideload an app nowadays.

I assume by sanction OP means you can’t do business with TikTok which means TikTok won’t have any ads to show for these people and make no money from it. Pretty sure they’ll stop supporting US market when that happens.

> funny aspect to me is that the senators pushing to "ban TikTok" are the same senators pushing for an "open App Store" bill

They're both about open markets. China is not only a closed market, it's threatening our open-market allies.

> going to jail every middle schooler who "does business" with them by downloading the app from unofficial sources?

If they download the app from unofficial sources and then send it money, somehow, or get money from it, somehow, yes, they'd be treated like someone trading with the Taliban. If they're just using the software, no, that's like using open-source code written by an Iranian.

Block it at the backbone like they're doing with Kiwi Farms.

That's not quite right. You can still access KF if your ISP isn't peering with CenturyLink which recently gave in to a pressure campaign. There's not a single court order or law in the United States forbidding an ISP from routing packets to them.

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