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Comment by nixcraft | Hacker News Reader

I understand why they banned it. However, I also know western apps are closed to work in the Chinese market. So I get privacy and security are reasons to ban the TikTok app at the school or government level. However, I would like to see the same tight control for every app that invades privacy regardless if it was made in the EU, USA, China, etc. Is that too much to ask? Or is lobbying so intense from Google, Amazon, Meta, Apple (who is now getting into the Ads business too), and co that it is next to impossible to have tight privacy control with these apps?

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It's more that China represents a national security threat and it's OK to special case logic for hostile foreign entities. Notably China isn't the only entity called out in this bill, also North Korea, Russia, & Iran.

The privacy conversation IMO is a separate conversation entirely. If consumers want privacy, they have options (like, don't use apps which track you). Banning the collection of data on government employees to be consumed by hostile foreign entities is more about the USA Federal government not being OK with hostile foreign government's abilities to track its employees. And not all foreign governments - only the ones named in the bill.

Couple of linkedin data breaches should definitely put them on the nope list for government devices.

It's Microsoft, so never going to happen.

Personally I don't want US companies to have power over me any more than I want Chinese companies to have it.

Also China can and will just make shell companies in the USA with apps that track people. Tiktok is a breakout success but it seems plausible that they have the resources to make other popular apps. Going forward they will launch them through US firms to evade bans like this. The only long term solution is to implement real privacy, and face the fact that US companies built their businesses on surveillance and must change.

We've already seen how US companies like Facebook will let any foreign entities with money use this data however they see fit.

It makes no sense to single out TikTok or China. Pass stiff data hygiene regulations that make this sort of abuse impossible to begin with, rather than playing whack-a-mole with individual actors.

Like the GDPR? “Process the data at home, allow backup, non-assisted export, and delete within reasonable time without the user asking”?

You should care at least a little bit. I know it's not super popular but there's a wild difference between Google, a private company operating under US Law, accountable to the people (and in aggregate, you) by way of democratic rule and a foreign government that has openly attempted to interfere with strategic deterrence of your country, presumably to gain an advantage in a future nuclear exchange with the country you live in.

This is not to excuse Google, but suggesting in any way that they are the same as the CCP is a bit of a bruh moment.

A couple of things. I am not suggesting they are the same. I am saying that regardless of their differences I do not want either of them to have control over me.

> Google, a private company operating under US Law, accountable to the people

My understanding of the FISA Court, warrantless wiretapping, and NSA mass surveillance is that the data these companies collect may not all be used in accordance with US law in a way that involves accountability to the people. And that is precisely the reason why I do not want them to be able to collect it. Google does not have to be the same as China for me to want neither of them to surveil me. And it is still the case that these big US companies are very likely doing shady things with our data with no accountability. As someone born and raised in the USA and shocked by the Snowden revelations, I no longer trust that the deep and secretive parts of our government have any sort of the moral compass we are raised to believe they have.

Don’t often hear Snowden mentioned these days. https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2022/12/18/the-trouble-wi...

He is fully in the hands of the Russian government because he had to flee to a US-hostile nation. I don't think anyone can blame him for not putting his life at risk a second time.

I think his choices are not quite aligning with a hero and a martyr he made himself out to be.

He had risked freedom and possibly his life for a cause. Having accomplished the goal his next most important task would be to save himself. That is what he did and I do not think he should have a slightest concern whether you or anyone else like it or not. Playing martyr would be foolish and I do not think he does that.

I don’t know what you’d expect him to do, he’s literally trapped in Russia and speaking out against Putin would almost certainly mean prison if not death. None of this changes the facts he revealed.

Just to be clear, whatever I said here - I have not said anything in defense of the information he made public and my issue is not with that.

This is a pretty terrible take when you literally had Facebook attempting to interfere with elections.

Technically, there’s a difference. Practically, as a consumer / that difference doesn’t matter to me.

Only one of those two countries has used their espionage agencies to perform a soft coup where I live, so I'm not really seeing the difference.

I would say the power Google welds is an order of magnitude more dangerous to Western society and values than CCP. Unelected billionaire oligarchs and executives with a clear and legal obligation to maximise profits and market power is just as big a national security threat.

You’re taking about unelected billionaire oligarchs as it’s a bad thing and saying Google is more of a threat than the CCP? That’s interesting.

As someone who lives in neither China or the US. I'm much more concerned about US companies and the data they collect.

China isn't much of a personal threat to me. The US on the other hand has a fondness for extraditing foreign nationals. Last I heard you still have a really nice Cuban resort for some of them.

Yeah, I agree with you actually. I’ve learned that people here are so unable to hear that message I have to tone it down a bit, but you’re right that the US aggressively pursues surveillance, and covert and overt military action against everyone on Earth.

TikTok is also a private company operating under US law.

At the moment at least it’s hard to make a similar argument for any of those companies posing a US national security threat.

How you can't put Meta in that same group astounds me considering that they have a significant history of this.

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