Nationwide Ban on TikTok Inches Closer to Reality | Hacker News Reader

Nationwide Ban on TikTok Inches Closer to Reality

gizmodo.com

144 pointsarkadiyt180 comments

> The app has already been banned on state-issued devices in 28 states and is facing a blanket ban across all federal employees that would prohibit them from using or downloading TikTok on government-owned devices.

Is it just me, or does this sound completely reasonable and not at all newsworthy? Why were government employees, with government-owned devices, allowed to install any third party apps (much less social media apps) to begin with?

I don't need any security clearance for my job yet my employer MDM-managed device only allows about 10 work-approved apps to be installed.

> Is it just me, or does this sound completely reasonable and not at all newsworthy?

It's not even you. You seem to find it notable that government employees were allowed to install social media apps at all, so you must find it baffling that they banned TikTok and didn't ban the others.

well, most government have a social media presence. it seems easier to reach people that way. why wouldn't they allow these apps on employees devices, or at least some employees?

It is reasonable to ban all social media of any kind of on an employee phone in my opinion.

The government deciding that you can use set of social media apps but not another one is not as reasonable.

(Somewhat depending on what classifies as social media, where I would put "hooking up sites" in a different category)

It is not unreasonable for governments to require all apps be published by US companies

So I shouldn't be able to install an Australian banking app on my US phone?

It's not unreasonable for the US federal government to ban employees of the US federal government from using Australian banking apps on work devices issued by the US federal government.

It is a separate conversation if any of those variables change.

If by "US phone", you mean "work phone issued by the US government", then that's right, you shouldn't.

If you’re a government employee, installing an app for a foreign bank account on your work phone may be the least of your roadblocks in that regard. Foreign financial influence is a serious concern.

What counts as a US company? TikTok Inc is based out of California.

The beneficial owners are the CCP, via Bytedance.

Go interview there. At a high enough level everyone you interview with is in mainland China.

They are a Californian company only in name. The guys running the company are in China. They don’t even do a good job hiding it.

Then US should make it a law that companies must be owned by americans (other countries have this kind of law) otherwise it's just racism and you would'n't mind if the company was ran by Swedish people

Trying to make this about race is lame. A weak straw man.

(Reasonable and educated) People in the US don’t care about the race of TikTok upper management, they care about the influence of a hostile government that is openly waging a fourth-generation war with the US. Sweden for example is not.

TikTok posing as an independent California company when we all know that is not the case is not helping them.

Reasonable and educated people in the US should be more critical of their own government which wages wars all around the world. China isn't a saint either but let's be real.

This seems like a non sequitur, although I do agree that more people should be more critical or at least cautious to support actions by the US abroad. The parent comment didn’t compare the US and China (foreign policy or otherwise). For instance, there was no discussion of any US big tech involvement in China.

They did, however, compare Sweden and China, both with respect to the US.

This seems like a somewhat bad faith response given that the parent comment described the people as “in (mainland) China,” not “Chinese” or something else that could denote race/ethnicity along with nationality.

Does not sound legal nor within the Constitution/free speech. Hope we don’t go down a road like this.

Government institutions get to decide what goes on government devices.

Ah didn’t read past the headline. Was assuming this was personal devices.

The headline seems to describe the rest of the story. A bill was introduced to ban TikTok nationwide, and according to the article there is "increasing pressure" on the executive branch to introduce a nationwide ban.

This does not go against free speech if there’s government data on your device.

That's not how free speech is defined or works, legally.

> Why were government employees, with government-owned devices, allowed to install any third party apps (much less social media apps) to begin with?

Communicating with the public can be part of their job. In some cases they write and send tweets themselves. In other cases they might have a whole team handling their social media.

In 99% of cases they should be fired. Sure, if they are an ambassador or US congressman, they are expected to be public figures. If they are influential and expected to influence and have a high up role, then maybe they should have some ability to influence given that they are influencing their department.

The idea that somebody working for the government that has an opinion should naturally be given any kind of voice whatsoever is ridiculous. If it's not part of their job they need to be fired immediately.

Social media communication by the government is hugely advantageous for the public.

From youtube streams of meetings to twitter and facebook posts of government news (ex. weather/disaster alerts, public health issues, traffic accidents, voting date reminders) to vimeo uploads of police body camera footage.

The amount of easy transparency and important information delivered directly to citizens in a way they can choose to engage with is a big step in the right direction.

Before you basically had some traditional media (ex. radio/newspaper/nightly news) or you were required to have the free time to attend government functions yourself.

You might say "Then why not use official websites?" but there are many thousands of government websites for each agency/department/committee/public figure and while they have very useful information they are not good at what social media does.

Right now there is a thing (hashtag?) called BookTok on TikTok, where teens share recommendations for books. Its apparently big enough that librarians notice that there is a run on these books when they break.

Given that, unless TikTok is banned in general it would be a very hard case to make that a librarian shouldn't be using BookTok, when it measurably gets teens to read.

Sure you could make arguments against social media in general, and national security issues with TikTok specifically, but that is not the job of a librarian.

If you work in a library and find out one of your direct reports have installed Instagram on her government phone and is sharing stories about book recommendations or better ways to you use the library, and it is having an effect, then you are a bad boss if you do not support her.

Our state (KY) has not passed a ban yet, but there are 2 bills to do so and I expect them to be passed next week when the legislature resumes. The state IT dept is already blocking TikTok's website.

The way the bills are worded, the network ban will also include public libraries, schools and universities from being allowed to access the website.

0 - Senate Bill 20. https://apps.legislature.ky.gov/record/23rs/sb20.html

1 - House Bill 124. https://apps.legislature.ky.gov/record/23rs/hb124.html

Ya’ll are missing out on tiktok. I’ve been curating videos since 2019.

Educational (404 vids): https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTRs5Wvf1/

Physics (91): https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTRs5TykN/

Mathematics (104): https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTRs5gPKy/

I challenge you to sit through 10 of these — pick any you want. You’ll feel your distaste for tiktok melt away.

If tiktok is addictive, then HN is too, and largely for the same reasons. It’s full of interesting, fascinating, long tail content that only hand curation or ML algorithms can provide.

If tiktok goes under, it takes these with it. People will migrate to whatever’s next, but if the rest of the world doesn’t, it’ll be our loss.

The West is butthurt that China produced an app that their kids love more than homegrown ones.

Companies like TWTR, FB, IG are probably secretly pushing this ban.

Some years ago, France tried to enforce some law that at least 75% of the content available on the internet in France had to be in the French language.

The day Tiktok is banned in the USA, that's the day the American decline starts.

on the other hand China has banned Twitter, Google, Amazon, Facebook, Twitch etc etc so it’s only fair game to ban one of theirs

Nobody is making the claim that the ban is unfair.

It would be a sad day if we are judging our laws by China's. We have different structures and values.

> on the other hand China has banned Twitter, Google, Amazon, Facebook, Twitch etc

They weren't "banned". They simply refused to comply with chinese laws and chose not to operate in china. Tiktok is complying with american laws and yet still are facing a ban. Apples and oranges.

But considering twitter, google, amazon, facebook, twitch, etc are part of US intelligence, it should be banned in china and most of the world. And I think we should ban tiktok because it's part of the chinese intelligence apparatus.

I hope this is the beginning of a fracturing of the tech world which will lead to a burgeoning of tech in europe, japan, china, russia, india, etc. Can you think of a single good reason why europe, japan, china, russia, india, etc shouldn't have their own apple, netflix, facebook, google, amazon, etc?

I hope the "inter"net will truly be a network of networks. Where each major nation/region has their own protect technology ecosystem, networks, programming languages, social media, etc.

I still believe in "inter"networking, but not where a single country "owns" the entire network/stack. I even hope this leads to tech fracturing in the US. We are too silicon valley centric. The northeast by itself is large, wealthy, talented and populous enough to host 2 or more "silicon valleys". Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon should have been east coast companies.

We have a serious lack of competence amongst politicians worldwide when it comes to tech.

> But considering twitter, google, amazon, facebook, twitch, etc are part of US intelligence

Can you cite credible sources for this?

Look up "The Twitter Files by Matt Taibi".

Twitter uncritically and submissively followed directives from FBI and CIA.

I read some headlines that Meta/FB too uncritically and submissively followed the same directives.

That's certainly the narrative Taibi attempted to portray, however it wasn't borne out in the evidence he provided.

There are emails from Adam Schiff directly asking for specific citizens to be censored. No surrounding narrative needed.

There are emails from me to Twitter directly asking for specific citizens to be censored, it's called a report.

Twitter is free to do whatever it wants with those emails, of course, which is why the "Twitter Files" were massively overblown.

Are you sending those emails while on the job as an elected state representative chairing the house Intelligence committee? If you were, that would be an example of a government trying to censor it's citizens by abusing their power and a few of us object to that behavior. You may too one day when it's your voice they are trying to silence.

What's acceptable here as an individual is different from what's acceptable as an elected official with power over the entity you're asking for favors from.

I personally couldn't care less if TikTok is banned or not, but you have to be naive to think those big tech companies are not involved in the same activities, especially after PRISM.

PRISM was done under warrants or on non-citizens, and never with the consent of the companies involved, so no they're not involved in anything resembling the same way, as far as we know (unless you have specific new information to share from a credible source).

Yes. The actions of chinese, russian and american governments.

All major corporations are state corporations. Especially media companies. It's why china, russia, etc are keen to "protect and control" social media. It's why we are so keen to "protect and control" social media.

Why do you think we are so keen on taking down tiktok? Why do you think the chinese, russians, etc do?

Can you cite any "credible" source that tiktok is part of chinese intelligence? Other than "credible" sources like US intelligence/think tanks/propaganda outlets? It's self-evident that tiktok is, just like every major US tech company.

Do you really need "credible sources" to tell you that major tech/media companies are part of the state apparatus? After what we went through during covid, ukraine war and the anti-china propaganda campaign of the past few years, are you unsure of the role tech companies ( especially social media companies ) play?

I will need to see specific, concrete evidence from a credible source before I start believing conspiracies and "dark world" theories, because I understand how easy it is to fall into a pit of cynicism, presuming everyone is out to get you or that everything is "rigged" or proactively manipulated by a small, covert group of people.

If you don't have any credible evidence to support the specifics of your claim, you should probably just say so. No shame in speculation, but lots of shame in misidentifying speculation as absolute truth.

As for a credible source that TikTok is a threat, I believe FBI Director Chris Wray when he, "asserted that China could use the app to collect data on its users that could be used for traditional espionage operations."[0]

I also believe Aynne Kokas, professor of media studies and the director of the East Asia Center at the University of Virginia, when she says, "...it's part of a larger Chinese government effort to expand extraterritorial control over digital platforms. So the Chinese government has allowed for and has encouraged Chinese firms to actually engage in national security data audits of any data that's being gathered by a Chinese firm."[1]

Do you have a similarly credible source confirming your claims?

[0] https://apnews.com/article/technology-china-united-states-na...

[1] https://www.npr.org/2022/11/16/1137076864/fbi-says-china-cou...

Do you really honestly think the FBI is a neutral source that can be trusted when it comes to US - China relations.

If I showed you a Chinese government official claiming Google is a threat to Chinese security, would you take that seriously.

I believe the FBI and UVA and NPR and AP, and do not believe a hypothetical Chinese report when it comes to protecting US interests and reporting credibly.

If you could produce a statement from a Chinese official about Google however, I would be interested in reading it. I suspect you will not find one that says what you claim.

If you're gonna take the US governments word at face value then there's nothing I can say will convince you otherwise

When it's in alignment with many other credible institutions, even mistrust of the US government is hard to justify without specific evidence of collusion.

> They weren't "banned". They simply refused to comply with chinese laws and chose not to operate in china.

If you visit twitter.com or facebook.com in china what do you see?

I don't have a strong opinion about TikTok one way or the other, but as an European I find this discussion interesting. I always found China's decision to ban foreign applications backwards and a setback to an open internet. And now USA is trying to do the same for largely the same reasons (to fight against foreign influence, basically). I'm not saying the countries are remotely comparable, but I just hope it won't become a new normal.

> The day Tiktok is banned in the USA, that's the day the American decline starts.

TikTok's availability in the US is your metric for the success of the American experiment?

When American innovations are banned in countries like Iran, Russia, France, and China, we laugh at them.

If the shoe fits...

Who laughs at them? That’s not the sentiment in any groups I belong to or participate in…

> Iran, Russia, France, and China

One of these is not like the others.

You'd be surprised at how protectionist France is. Especially when it concerns content in English.

Some of us agree with the bans of American weapons of mass destruction as well as their equivalents promulgated by another world power. They should all be banned.

Huwaei first and now tiktok. It is an indication that american tech is starting to be outpaced by chinese tech. Which shouldn't be too shocking considering china recently has overtaken the US as the top producer of scientific research ( both in quality and quantity ). And this trend is only going to accelerate in the coming years/decades.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/aug/11/china-overtake...

Banning huwaei and tiktok shows a lack of confidence in our ability to compete. The same thing happened with japanese car manufacturers in the 70s and 80s. In the 50s and 60s, we laughed at them but once they started making better cars, there were calls to ban japanese cars. The exact same rhetoric used against china today was used against japan back then. But since japan was an "ally", we forced them to transfer/share technology ( especially management/production techniques/technology ) with US manufacturers and move their car production to the US.

I don't think we are going to be able to strong-arm and bully the chinese like we did the japanese. But ultimately, I think banning tiktok is a good thing because every nation should control their own media ( traditional or social ).

The Huawei ban, as I recall, was mostly about 5G equipment for which the primary competitor is Ericsson (based in Sweden). There wasn’t really a viable US alternative and the ban wasn’t protecting some US-based company.

I largely agree with you but

>The day Tiktok is banned in the USA, that's the day the American decline starts.

is one of the most absurd statements that I have ever heard.

I watched a few of the videos at random. Take the "perfect powers" with the guy with a banana pointing at a white board. Did I know that information before? No. Did I learn anything? Kind of but it's essentially trivial knowledge acquisition. I won't remember it in X hours, days, weeks. It's a waste of time.

And I especially won't learn anything from it after scrolling on to 20+ more videos all with their own hot takes and fun facts.

Another example: https://www.tiktok.com/@_hypedad/video/7079486996883983662 This is definitely pointless information and he concludes with an assertion that every film has been made already. If you look at the comments, the guy who made the tiktok is fighting with everyone.

This is that guys latest TikTok video: https://www.tiktok.com/@_hypedad/video/7193505278887808302

> I watched a few of the videos at random. Take the "perfect powers" with the guy with a banana pointing at a white board. Did I know that information before? No. Did I learn anything? Kind of but it's essentially trivial knowledge acquisition. I won't remember it in X hours, days, weeks. It's a waste of time.

I'm an educator and content creator. Can I ask what kind video content you do want to see? What content do you find most useful for knowledge retention, and how do you prefer it to be delivered? 5m video? 15m? 5h?

For it to be retained I think it needs to be part of a learning stream or process. E.g. I am purposefully learning about unique number properties and the "perfect powers" video is part of that.

Edit: I just checked out https://upload.academy/ on your profile. Content looks awesome. Well done!

Thank you so much for your feedback. How do you feel about written materials?

And thank you! There's a big change coming to how we deliver our products, which will have a very strong focus on 1-2-1 mentoring and a private community and streaming content.

Not them, but I prefer written to video.

I can ctrl/cmd+f to search for what I’m looking for.

If you’re focusing on video, maybe having the content also written would help to find the video too thanks to having the text written and then it’s indexed better by search engines.

KhanAcademy is ideal for me.

Interesting. So you like the way Khan Academy delivers content via a continuous playlist of videos? I assume having the ability to "jump around" is attractive to you also?

I like the structure, the way it keeps track of the subjects I've gone through, the tests, and the slower paced lecture style that builds on previous videos. A lot of things that would be hard or impossible to do in a TikTok

Thanks for that feedback. Appreciated :-)

I wish more content creators would just write down what they want to teach. Instead of making videos.

It's much easier to absorb at your own speed (videos are usually tailored to the slowest viewer so it's toe-curlingly frustrating for me), easier to skip explanations of things you already know, and easier to jump from place to place without losing track of the overall narrative.

I do not agree with this. It's nice to have cheat sheets created, but video learning materials specifically exist along side text materials. If you're looking for text then you'll find plenty of it on google. Not sure why you'd want people to stop making videos. I like video learning.

That's true, they can coexist. I just don't like the way that video is seen to be the only way to provide learning content now. It's the most accessible to mainstream users but it's not the most effective for people with existing background imo.

My method is to use video to tell the viewer why they should care about the thing I'm about to teach them, and simply when a video demonstrates the idea clearly, such as running commands or using dashboards. Other than that, text is king on so many levels.

>15m but <1h IMO

Thank you.

Thanks for sharing. I wonder why these content creators aren't publishing on YT? Maybe YT's recommendation algo is bad at surfacing this kind of content? Btw, this is a great collection. Bookmarked.

Most of successful ones are and try to nudge, as much as TikTok TOS allow them, users to subscribe to them on YouTube, because Yt is pretty much the only platform where it is possible to make some money from the views, as opposed to paid promotions and partnerships.

As for the reasons TikTok is more popular, IMO it is both recommendation algorithm that is crazy good and UX where the next video is just one swipe up away.

Thanks. While this sounds reasonable at first glance, it still doesn't quite answer my question.

1) YT pays by views. TikTok doesn't. So why not publish on YT?

2) TikTok is more popular as reported by whom? If self-reported, then we can disregard those stats. If reported by app store, well, that can be gamed.

Just wondering how TikTok got so "popular".

> I challenge you to sit through 10 of these — pick any you want. You’ll feel your distaste for tiktok melt away.

We don't dislike TikTok because the content isn't compelling. It is an arm of a foreign state intelligence agency that is used against Americans.

I tried to make it through 10; managed through 4 TikTok videos (or rather the majority). I did this on the TikTok website because I'm not going to download the app. The results:

Odd Results of Geometry on a Sphere - interesting video, I don't know why the results are 'odd' though. I would have liked to see a formal proof involved rathe r than a quick sketch and a 'believe you, me'.

Doors or Wheels - 2 minutes or so of time spent talking about people that are contemplating if there are more doors or wheels in the world. Just an overall waste of 2 minutes.

Your Bible is Worthless - was a 'neat' video about how your family bible has no value to a collector, which I would have guessed anyway. The website kicked me into a video before the video was done; will try again just to see if it was a fluke.

Making a circuit board - someone that just learned how to make a schematic on a computer and then print it out shares their learning experience. They are super excited about it which is nice to see, but they kind of annoyed me. The website also kicked me into another video before the video was done; second time.

What HN doesn't do is kick me to one thread while I'm looking at another. If TikTok didn't do this I would have gone through the 10 videos, but I already feel animosity towards most software these days, so in my leisure time I'm not going to put up with it.

Oof. I agree with you that that’s an especially frustrating experience. For what it’s worth, the website is a weird alternate not-TikTok universe in that sense. The app wouldn’t do that to you.

It certainly has flaws. I’m just uncomfortable with the notion that it’s entirely worthless and that a nationwide ban is fine. It seems mistaken, and it could be a costly mistake.

The US government isn’t banning it because it is worthless. This isn’t about the content in any way. It is about the collection of data by a major foreign power and the use of that data to feed specific propaganda to US government personnel.

My take on it is unless the US government is willing to formally show proof it is direct foreign propaganda they should not be allowed to ban it and the bar for that proof should be HIGH.

Slippery slopes and all..

What keeps the next president from declaring CNN or Fox News or Google or the AP “propaganda” and pretty soon government devices will be a stupid shitty battleground for cheap political points and not safe work devices.

1) The CCP 2) They are, but they wont be, because they helped him win.

Its an uncomfortable thought but the media and kings have always had parasitic relationships.

We dont need to get into the forced organ harvesting stuff too do we? You know, THE THING that happens when you say "no" to one too many times to the CCP or become more famous then whinne the poo?

They could just ban the collection of private data, but that would hurt Facebook and Instagram.

I don't think people disagree with legitimate content, just the huge amounts of spying the Chinese gov does. If anything it highlights that Google needs to take privacy seriously and close the same doors they and other companies use to exploit our digital information. I wish we had better consumer protection laws.

I watched a few from the math category and it seems pretty bad. They're all very superficial, low quality videos. Definitely don't feel any less distaste for tiktok.

The form of a short video with the mobile screen ratio is already... bleh. I don't think you can manage to convey anything interesting in the span of a minute or two.

You can get this exact experience from YouTube shorts, TikTok is unnecessary.

you know youtube shorts only exists because tiktok was eating their lunch right?

Yeah, and they executed it well enough that now TikTok, if it is a security threat, can safely be removed from the US without any loss.

We must be in different worlds. In no way does Youtube Shorts compare with the scale, quality and delivery of what tiktok is doing.

It’s the exact same content, creators upload to both now.

YouTube shorts are just as vapid and annoying as tiktok, not sure what's missing.

> If tiktok is addictive, then HN is too, and largely for the same reasons.

There are material differences:

- HN does not have a board seat for the Chinese Communist Party. TikTok does.

- HN does not have an internal CCP committee. TikTok does.

- HN is not subject China’s National Intelligence Law, which mandates corporations "support, assist and cooperate with the Chinese intelligence work". Tiktok is.

> If tiktok goes under, it takes these with it.

More than likely they would move to Shorts or Reels.

Why do you care about any of those things. What difference does it make if it's Google hoarding your data (and handing it over to the FBI whenever it wants to) vs Bytedance?

I personally hate video content. I almost never use YouTube either. The format just doesn't work for me. So I won't look at these, but I do think an open mind is useful in general, yes.

But don't forget in this case the arguments against TikTok have nothing to do with the content it offers.

> China can control the recommendation algorithm on TikTok to manipulate or influence users

> “It threatens our children’s [...] mental health

Seem to be quite clearly arguments about content, too

In the media debate yes. But the proposed bill only mentions the data leaking issues.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34575613

I think the "for the children" argument is just spin, as usual.

,, TikTok is China’s backdoor into Americans’ lives.” He added, “It threatens our children’s privacy as well as their mental health’’

At this point the legislation should just copy Chinese law: it already limits what social media can show to kids to just education, and also disallows apps from other countries.

Except the point isn't anyone's mental health or privacy, or they would've acted on Facebook or Instagram a long time ago. This is a campaign to eliminate TikTok as a competitor in the American social media market, nothing more.

I disagree. I'd say it's more of "We own American data through typical backdoor channels. China shouldn't have that privilege". As an American citizen though, I'm inclined to agree.

Not even. It's a campaign to threaten TikTok into giving censorship and editorial power to the US government equivalent to what they have on the other large social media networks, and it already worked.

Now it's just grandstanding from local nationalists.

"grandstanding from local nationalists"?

You do know China and US are in multiple global conflicts, right?

Except PRC laws has allowances for foreign operated platforms if they follow PRC data and media filtering laws - what TikTok is basically doing in US, i.e. why Google and Facebook had teams working to get back to PRC market before internal drama killed project. Efforts to get Oracle (and lol walmart) to buy stake in TikTok comes close to PRC JV model / system. Unilateral platform ban is US going beyond what PRC is doing, which is fine - not many choices now that TikTok has penetrated US market more than US platforms in PRC (which did well). It's also fine to acknowledge US is left with legislative sledgehammer option that's much more protectionist and paranoid than PRC.

> and also disallows apps from other countries

There is no such law.

Genuine question… what does TikTok do from a privacy concern that FB isn’t already doing?

Because if it’s the same, this feels like US nationalism (and the US creating its own version of the Great Firewall like China does to us).

FB will send requested data to the USA, not China. That’s really it.

I'm surprised that people don't know nor understand this huge huge difference.

Don't they know US and China are opposing global super power with multiple region conflicts like Taiwan, Japan, and etc.?

Okay, but see it this way. USA has my data vs China has my data. The odds of China having my data impacting my life in a negative way is lower than the USA doing this.

That's an assumption, but I think for most people living in the West, that seems at least reasonable to me.

Nobody cares what happens with your data. They care what happens with the data belonging someone who will some day hold a position of power.

The difference is the Chinese government has a board seat at ByteDance, not to mention soft control via broad government authority over markets. If China wants, boosting content to manipulate US elections or tracking the location of people of interest are things it can easily ask TikTok to do (and has done, apparently).

This is different from the way the US government uses Facebook, for example. It does not have power to boost or demote content, or request location data for people of interest. It can collect far narrower information about people with a warrant, and even then some data it cannot collect (eg. e2ee messaging data).

If CambridgeAnalytica is anything to go by, you can do that with US social media as well. (In terms of influencing elections etc).

True, but it’s disingenuous to fail to acknowledge the difference between that and, say, the US State Department having a board seat at Meta and directing which posts should be boosted on everyones’ feeds.

It’s not about the average individual so much as the risk to society.

Let’s say a journalist has published some anti-Chinese material. Through TikTok, the Chinese know where he is precisely.

Dumb question: are you suggesting FB doesn’t have to comply with other (non-US) government data requests?

Not for the data of US citizens, no?

I’d imagine (but don’t know) that they do for the citizens of those countries, but wouldn’t, for example, give your list of Facebook groups to the Indian government if asked. The later sounds like a major incident for FB to me but if TikTok was asked by the Chinese government we might not even know.

How does FB know if someone's an American citizen? I wasn't asked my citizenship when I opened my account.

You could be a foreign student living in America for years without becoming a citizen.

I’d suppose the onus of proving citizenship would be on the party requesting the information, to prove they have a legal right to it in their country? But I really don’t know.

They comply, their compliance just involves a whole lot of blacked out text.

I doubt they comply with any requests from the few countries they have no presence in.

Ummm... More importantly...

The government has more control over what kind of propaganda FB will spew. Almost none over TikTok.

What requested data? That I like memes? That I think Ferraris are cool? Like, what "leg up" does TikTok have on me? What's the worst they can do with that information?

I'm pretty sure they aren't able to push Chinese government fueled propaganda of any kind onto my timeline because I'd just scroll past it. If they can't brainwash me... and all they have on me is "he dislikes ___ and likes ___"... what's the big deal? Sounds like FUD

Location data alone of known US government officials (data TikTok gathers) is huge.

The US would have to subpoena Meta, and generally doesn’t because Meta would fight and win, DPRC just gets that info.

Technically you could use TikTok behind a VPN to prevent GeoIP and then disallow location access, but I get what you're saying. Very good point. I guess I was thinking from the perspective of me, an unimportant non-government official

Even you, random mid level employee at a gas company (for example) might find an anonymous email in your inbox, threatening to show your wife that you’ve been spending most of your lunches at your female coworkers house, unless you reply with your SSO creds.

Yes, countries are still a thing.

Its not he data from the app to the government that is the concern, its what the government can do with the app. Chinese government can effectively take over Bytedance and make them put out targeted propaganda on users devices. In US, this is next to impossible to do without people knowing about it.

So the complaint about TikTok isn't about anything that's actually happening, just a hypothesis?

Aside the whole Sinophobia, I used and summarily quit TikTok because it was too good at what it aimed to do.

I found myself binging for an hour here and there inanely scrolling/watching/scrolling ad absurdum. It was self-retrospection that I decided to remove the app and be done.

I think a lot of people come to this conclusion eventually. I was just in England visiting family, and my mother even said she's going to cut down on TikTok after 7pm as she's getting home from work and just wasting her evenings on it.

And yet here you are on HN (like me) wasting that same precious time...

HN doesn't forcefeed custom tailored content in a never-ending stream.

In fact, HN has optional account limiting functions to keep from the Tiktok-ification.

Sinophobia would be an irrational fear, but TikTok represents a credible threat.

A credible threat to the monopoly status of homegrown social media in the US?

A credible threat to end user’s privacy? Will they ban the other apps that have found to do similar scraping like Facebook or Amazon?

A credible threat to the U.S. Government’s control over social media? Is that constitutional for a limited government?

A credible threat to US’s privacy from a foreign government.

A credible threat of increased CCP ability to influence American society would be my guess.

Yes, we should destroy those home grown social media threats as well. If I had my way Facebook and YouTube would not exist

Not exist is a bit strong but "not exist as we know them" would be something I could get behind.

I don't think social media are essentially bad. Just the monetisation model is, and the resulting incentive to constantly increase engagement through algorithms.

A credible threat to the US Government's ability to self govern.

The biggest threat to governments ability to self govern in the entire world is the US government, not TikTok or China

Seems like a non sequitur, as it's wholly unrelated to whether or not TikTok could be used to threaten Americans by the Chinese government.

Well, if you're arguing that "self governing" is a good thing, and TikTok should be banned because of that, then you're also arguing for all of South America to boycott the US

A good start. Ban Facebook next.

It would be nice if they instead banned some software ui patterns.

* Endless scroll * Recommendation based (instead of chose contacts or topics) * Auto play of videos

A nice addition would be to ban any kind of clickbait, but that doesn’t seem plausible.

Does anyone know if Twitter is looking to revive Vine? Elon tweeted this back on Oct 30 and it created some short term buzz. But I haven't heard anything about it since. https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1586918804780630016

Seems like good timing considering he's willing to try anything to beef up revenue. Hopefully they haven't laid off all the employees knowledgeable of the codebase/platform.

Vine was so much better than Instastories and TikTok. Oh the old days when the content was created for fun not for profit by professional influencers…

Musk has fired so many people, there is no possibility that they can add Vine-like capability to Twitter. Plus, Musk has been alienating the very audience that Vine would reach in order to suck up to the right wing.

Maybe I'm too dumb to get this but as far as I'm concerned the only thing TikTok threatens is our productivity and the market dominance of silicon valley. They don't have your social graph or your personal information because they don't need it. They can serve you content based only on what you watch

How is this app a national security threat?

There is great content on TikTok. But also, TikTok has done shady things, some at the behest of the Chinese government, targeting users in the US and other countries outside China, using the information in their contact book etc.

There is no easy way out here. Banning it would mean losing lots of content, and future content creation and consumption moving to an imperfect alternative (YouTube Shorts and Instagram Reels etc).

Not banning it is a national security issue.

Ideally, given that ByteDance cannot be unlinked from the CCP (because that's just how business is done in China), the only other alternative would be if they could divest of their ownership of TikTok and also agree to specific conditions similar to the Twitter-FTC deal.

Would this really work? Between side loading, and VPN, this might just force an entire generation of people to learn about block avoidance

Not to mention the security nightmare of teens everywhere googling "how to sideload TikTok" and following whatever the first result says to do.

Actually, if I was China and wanted to spy on US citizens, I do this

- Release an "official" version of TikTok APK with sideloading instructions, which no longer has to pass app store scrutiny and oh, btw, make sure you allow the app to install software, so it can "update itself"

- Start a bunch of VPNs under a bunch of made up company names and pay Youtubers to vouch for them and give them away for free

Congratulations, NOW China has ALL your data!

Yeah but they have the data of the 15 guys running android who are willing to side load apps instead of the data of the 1 billion monthly active users.

Kids are smart with tech. Take away their TikTok and it won't be 15 guys anymore.

It's a win-win situation really isn't it? If the ban works young people are shielded from corrosive mind addling junk. To the extent it fails they learn to circumvent patrician censorship. Hard to see any downsides.

> If the ban works young people are shielded from corrosive mind addling junk.

Have you even tried Instagram reels or YouTube shorts? They are the same if not even worse.

What happening here is that the US tasted its own medicine of foreign tech influence for the first time. The US government always complained when other countries put limits on their companies, yet now they are doing the same, heck unlike the EU they are completely banning it!

If tiktok was american or European, no body would've bat an eye.

> If tiktok was american or European, no body would've bat an eye.

That's because most Chinese companies are subservient to the Chinese Communist Party, whom are doing all within their power to undermine the West. Influencing young people is just one part of that. Is there something wrong with calling it out and preventing it, or should we just let them manipulate opinions?

No, but don’t for a second pretend that banning a single app will shield young people “corrosive mind addling junk”.

You seem to have missed the point that TikTok is different, being effectively controlled by a communist regime. This is not about “corrosive mind addling junk”. It is about preventing meddling by a dangerous, communist regime. They manipulate their own people, so don't for a second think they don't manipulate foreigners too.

Nationwide bans do work. Tiktok was banned in India even though it was quite popular here. After ban its usage almost flat-lined within days.

I think an app like that needs a lot of mass and momentum and side-loading and VPN are limited to a very few savvy users.

It's probably good enough to shift people to competitors. When it gets that much harder to use, a lot of people will go to Facebook/Instagram/whatever, and if enough of them go then network effects will bring the rest.

The app is more of a "like to have" more than a want or need. So it would seem people would migrate elsewhere with no big loss (with exception of so called "influencers" who parallel parasitism than productivity.

I've played with some of the competitors* and nothing else has the responsive UX, or algorithm or the critical mass of creators. The only thing I haven't tried is Snapchat.

* Triller, YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels, Byte, Clash, Likee, and Dubsmash.

Merely putting chocolate milk on a somewhat higher shelf will substantively discourage buying. Making it difficult to find pirated media increases demand for subscription services. Making it so you have to follow a slightly off-beaten path to sideload apps means no company wants to do it, because difficulty works.

So it could work.. but.. what would stop another company from making another TikTok? Would you then have to ban that one too?

If it isn't a Chinese company (or Iranian, Syrian, North Korean, Cuban), the national security concern doesn't exist.

Interesting, so it would be determined that a social media app produced by one of those countries would be considered a national security threat, and for that reason, that is why it's blocked.

That still seems largely unenforceable… TikTok is a very simple app, it could be recreated over a weekend. I don't want the Chinese to have my personal data anymore than the next person, but I also think it's a fools errand to try to play whack-a-mole with these kind of things.

It will be very interesting to see how this plays out.

> TikTok is a very simple app, it could be recreated over a weekend.

No, TikTok depends on paid humans to rank videos, creating that culture to get good results isn't trivial at all.

The key is -

(1) Is this company controlled by a foreign government? (Yes, ByteDance does whatever the CCP tells them to do)

(2) Is that government an adversary of the US, and has that government used US data against the US? (China has done this many times).

TikTok cannot be recreated in a weekend, at least not at scale.

Is this a nationwide ban for TikTok on government issued devices only? Regular consumers will never affected?

My state's laws also prohibit anyone using state IT infrastructure from accessing the TikTok website. This means that public libraries, schools and universities will be required by law to block all web traffic to TikTok.

Our legislature is currently recessed, but with the emphasis Fox and the GOP has placed on eliminating any potential opposition to right wing media, I expect the bills to get advanced to voting next week when the legislative session resumes.

0 - Senate Bill 20. https://apps.legislature.ky.gov/record/23rs/sb20.html

1 - House Bill 124. https://apps.legislature.ky.gov/record/23rs/hb124.html

I'd be surprised if this happens

Because we usually are more subtle about our censorship and anticompetitive behavior

Think al azeera

What's "al azeera"? You mean Al Jazeera?

Pretty evident that’s what they meant.

gracias - i noticed my typing lately has become no bueno. maybe just trying to do too many things at once and getting careless on the keyboard.

Same man. It’s BigKeyboard™ purposely mixing up our character to get us to type more and it’s a scam in my opinion.

Government ruling what software you're allowed to run on your devices.

Import controls of foreign goods are well within the jurisdiction of government.

At the moment, the top-rated comment in this thread suggests that prohibiting apps on government-owned devices is not newsworthy.

Unless this is MY misunderstanding, that's not what being proposed. Looking at the legislation, which I OCR'd below, it looks like this is discussing banning the app "in the United States or come within the United States" or if the app "come[s] within the possession or control of a United States person".

In other words, a nationwide ban on the app, citizens and government employees alike.

That seems (a) extreme; (b) likely to engender a great deal of illwill against the government by both young and older Americans; (c) unprecedented (to my knowledge at least).

* * *

BILL TEXT:

To impose sanctions with respect to TikTok, and for other purposes.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

This Act may be cited as the “No TikTok on United States Devices Act".

SEC. 2. IMPOSITION OF SANCTIONS WITH RESPECT TO TIKTOK.

(a) BLOCKING OF PROPERTY.—On and after the date that is 80 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, the President shall exercise all the powers granted to the President under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (50 U.S.C. L701 et. seq.) to the extent necessary to block and prohibit all transactions in all property and interests in property of a covered company if such property and interests in property—

(1) are in the United States or come within the United States; or .

(2) to the extent necessary to prevent commercial operation of the covered company in the United States, are or come within the possession or control of a United States person.

(b) INAPPLICABILITY OF NATIONAL EMERGENCY REQUIREMENT.—The requirements of section 202 of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (50 U.S.C. 1701) shall not apply for purposes of this section.

(1) IN GENERAL.—Except as provided in paragraph (2), the President may exercise all authorities provided under sections 203 and 205 of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (50 U.S.C. 1702 and 1704) to carry out this section.

(2) Exceptions.—The exceptions under subsection (b) of section 203 of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (50 U.S.C. 1702) shall not apply to the use by the President in carrying out this section of the authorities under such section 203.

(d) Penalties.—A person that violates, attempts to violate, conspires to violate, or causes a violation of this section or any regulation, license, or order issued to carry out this section shall be subject to the penalties set forth in subsections (b) and (¢) of section 206 of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (50 U.S.C. 1705) to the same extent as a person that commits an unlawful act described in subsection (a) of that section.

(e) NATIONAL SECURITY AND RESEARCH EXCEPTIONS.—Sanctions under this section shall not apply with respect to law enforcement activities, national security interests and activities, and security research activities, as provided under the standards and guidelines developed by the Director of the Office of Management and Budget under section 102(b)(1) of the No TikTok on Government Devices Act (division R of Public Law 117-828).

(f) COVERED COMPANIES DEFINED.—~In this section, the term “covered company” means-—

(1) ByteDance Limited, or any successor entity to ByteDance Limited, if ByteDanee Limited or the successor entity—

(A) is involved in matters relating to the social networking service TikTok, or any successor service; or

(B) is involved in matters relating to any information, videos, or data associated with such service; or

(2) any entity owned by ByteDance Limited or the successor entity that—

(A) is involved in matters relating to the social networking service TikTok, or any successor service; or

(B) is involved in matters relating to any information, videos, or data associated with such service.

SEC. 8. REPORT ON THREATS TO NATIONAL SECURITY POSED BY TIKTOK.

(a) IN GENERAL.—Not later than 120 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Director of National Intelligence, in consultation with the Secretary of Defense, the Director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastrueture Security Agency, the Secretary of Homeland Security, and the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, shall submit to Congress a report on the threats to national security posed by TikTok, including the following:

(1) The ability of the Government of the People’s Republic of China to access, directly or indirectly, data of users in the United States via TikTok.

(2) The ability of the Government of the People’s Republic of China to use data of users in the United States, including that of members of the Armed Forees, accessed via TikTok for intelligence or military purposes, including surveillance, microtargeting, deepfakes, or blackmail.

(3) Any ongoing efforts by the Government of the People’s Republic of China to monitor or manipulate United States persons using data accessed via TikTok, including a detailed account of any data employed for those purposes.

(b) Form.—The report, required by subsection (a) shall be submitted in unclassified form, but may contain a classified annex.

SEC. 4. BRIEFING.

Not later than 180 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Director of National Intelligence shall provide to Congress a classified briefing on the implementation of this Act, which shall include a briefing on the report required by section 3(a).

Question for HN:

For those of us who support certain pro-“Sino” policies, such as the three child policy that recently came into effect, the shunning of male media celebrities that are too effeminate or just aren’t culturally good for longevity of the country/species, and of course using something like TikTok to subvert adversarial countries by soft-power influence, what are our options for websites where we can candidly discuss this without being downvoted? HN isn’t a place for this at all and we’d just get flagged to oblivion. Does anyone know of any such platform in the Western/English speaking world?

Don’t get me wrong, I completely oppose the Muslim genocide currently under way. But if somebody presented me with a list of party points like the ones I described, I’d show up to the voting booth before the polls open.

To the poster who removed their comment - the Sino part is in quotes because these policies are associated with China, but in and of themselves could have come from any country, so I’m using China as a placeholder more than anything.

I'm proud to be somewhat effeminate :3 And to be living in a country where I can be who I want to be.

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