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Comment by mrtksn | Hacker News Reader

I'm very concerned that the US government will set a precedent for regulating what apps citizens are allowed to use.

I definitely agree about the risks and banning it from the devices of the govt officials makes sense but banning access to an app screams "the Chinese/Russian/Turkish way of governing has won, freedoms are no more".

I hope the US takes the EU approach and regulates what data is collected and transmitted where instead of walking the totalitarian route. In case you haven't notice, FB/Instagram/Twitter etc. are the same as TikTok from the perspective of Non-Americans(>%90 of the world) and TikTok just happen to be a first for Americans.

I've been living in Turkey for some years now and I promise you, it's not fun. Do you know that it has been 2 weeks since Turkey banned country's most popular(and earliest, dating back to 1999) social media for no other reason that they suspect anti-government activity by the operators because they think it is not natural to have concentration of anti-govt views? That's where you are headed.

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>Do you know that it has been 2 weeks since Turkey banned country's most popular social media for no other reason that they suspect anti-government activity

After seeing how the Patriot Act was passed then abused, one should be very weary of any free speech limiting precedents being set.

Whose speech would be limited if the US banned TikTok?

TikTok users. Tens of millions of them. Notice that TikTok is a social media app which created a numerous new art and social movements. That's why TikTok videos are actually dominating Instagram too. There are many people who got famous on TikTok.

Techies often forget that the numbers in the analytics screen means human beings. "The tech" is deeply psychopathic industry unfortunately, they can't grasp the pain their actions can cause on people.

Without TikTok, I don't have speech?

You're arguing in bad faith, the point is that limiting access to speech platforms is not in the interest of citizens and only serves the government.

That's not bad faith. Your argument is bollocks -- free speech in action. And it was not impacted by using or not using TikTok.

Were TikTok to be banned, that comment would still exist.

Likewise, I'll post a video about it... to youtube, to vimeo, to wherever.

This made me wonder, is a conference's choice of which speakers to schedule an act of free speech by the conference organizers?

Is regulation of access to a public square a violation of free speech? What about shutdown of a given public square, knowing there are other squares?

They have enough tanks to squash as many people they'd like in as many town squares as they have, just like everyone saw them do in Tiananmen square.

mine.

Users of facebook and whatever other US-government sanctioned communications platforms continued to be available.

What if I, an American citizen, choose to publish an application that happens to have the same source code as TikTok. Is this not my speech?

I mean, China can find one citizen willing to publish their app for them. If a citizen chooses to publish an app they believe in, is this not speech?

> Whose speech would be limited if the US banned TikTok?

Yours. TikTok will be just the beginning.

You will have the right to speak. But not using "those apps" and not using "those words".

But, who am i preaching to /s

All the American TikTok users' speech.

The government doesn't get to ban speech in the park just because they allow it at the beach.

> "the Chinese/Russian/Turkish way of governing has won, freedoms are no more".

Ever heard of PRISM ?

I’ve heard, what about it?

He's providing a counter to your claim that censorship and surveillance are somehow more associated with foreign governments. The reality is that the US has long engaged[0] in the same kind of suppression that is portrayed to it's citizens as something that only exists in it's "enemies".

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_the_United_State...

It doesn't follow here. PRISM did not censor anything.

Well, that's a strawman argument. I specifically pointed out that whatever TikTok is to USA, FB/Instagram/Twitter etc. is to the rest of the world. This obviously includes all the spying and manipulation, thus the risk and as a result the need for data collection and access requirements. TikTok is nothing special.

> I'm very concerned that the US government will set a precedent for regulating what apps citizens are allowed to use.

This wouldn't be nearly as big of a problem if Apple & co. didn't have full remote control over what software you are or aren't allowed to run on your device that you paid for and supposedly own.

The technocrats in Belgium are really leading from the front across industries when it comes to rational, forward-thinking, and - most importantly - both pro-competitive and consumer friendly regulations.

Agree with other comments that GDPR isn't perfect, but at least its a start! I work in Finance, and their regulation around things like Open Banking (e.g. PSD2) is great. Of course they have their bad aspects, but overall they level the commercial playing field and protect consumer freedoms. I worry the US is letting legacy industry dominate the development of our financial (and other industries') infrastructure for short term incumbent gain but long term societal and commercial detriment.

I’m not fully aware of Chinese and Turkish cases to comment on authorities there, but in case of Russia, some USA based social networks are banned not because they’re spreading the “truth and freedom”, but because when Russia implemented pretty much word to word laws as in EU about necessity to store personal data of Russian citizens of such networks inside Russia, the answer was basically “fuck you”. More of it, those networks were caught in suppressing one point of view but amplifying another, that suited interest of USA government in Russia. USA based social networks are for many years a propaganda tool and their hunt for Tiktok and other foreign services is just a clear example of censorship and intention to dominate social media to spread USA narratives and suppress any opposing voices.

Btw, right now we have a very good example in Georgia, where their parlament tried to implement a word for word copy of the law about foreign agents they got from USA or a softened version, and both USA and EU demanded this law to be rejected. And government there just wanted to let their citizens know what mass media or public figures are funded by foreign governments and NGO’s.

> I hope the US takes the EU approach and regulates what data is collected

The US and the EU have different goals. EU's goal is to protect their control of propaganda within their borders. Ours is to control propaganda within our borders and protect our social media companies from foreign competitors. There is a reason why the government attacks on tiktok coincides with youtube shorts, facebook reels, instagram reels, etc. EU doesn't have a social media company to champion so they don't have that extra burden of protecting market share.

> I've been living in Turkey for some years now and I promise you, it's not fun.

Tiktok isn't going to go away. Too many companies have invested in tiktok for it to be simply banned. Tiktok is most likely going to be "confiscated". Tiktok parent will most likely be forced to sell tiktok to a US based company.

No country should allow foreign social media to spread propaganda within their borders. Every country should nationalize social media within their borders. It's insane that only the US, China and Russia seem to be protecting their social media space. I just don't get it. Social media can be used to brainwash, divide and destroy any country. It's almost like most of the world's leaders are incompetent.

> I hope the US takes the EU approach and regulates what data is collected and transmitted where instead of walking the totalitarian route

Even if they do, how do you enforce it? The way I see it all paths of enforcement lead to a ban. I would bet a lot of money that tiktok is already in violation of several of the patchwork of laws that protect US online privacy.

And it's not just tiktok it's the thousands of shity games/apps owned partially by tencent.

I don't see why this couldn't be regulated in the same way that HIPPA protects our health information.

Onerous regulation and business-killing fines have the added bonus of making the collection of personal data extremely unappealing. This is a case where the threat of regulation and enforcement has a strongly positive chilling effect on an industry.

And, if you're in an industry that must collect personal information for whatever reason, it's still possible and legal.

The core issue is their use of data, if you enact laws to curb that behavior then that covers not only tiktok but the "thousands of shity games/apps owned partially by tencent". If they continue to break the rules then you ban them and any other that is not complying; including domestically owned companies like facebook that harvest your data and use it to influence elections undemocratically.

No more regulations like the EU please.

Instead we should just make a deal with China: You allow all of our apps in China and we'll do the same. If not, we'll ban your apps.

The first thing people should think about in trade is fairness. Let's not pile up more ungodly regulations hamstringing everyone and the problem still wouldn't be solved. Chinese apps will continue to skirt the loopholes of any law we can enact barring complete ban.

China would simple threaten big Western capital in china, and Wall Street will run to Washington crying about antiasian hate or whatever strawmen of the day. China gave some auditing book to PCAOB after decades of request only under threat of forced delisting from western markets [0] in difficult times for china. Worry not CCP is changing its regulatory framework to keep "strategic secrecy" (retaliating) to ban Big 4 to operate on the country [1]

Remember that china still claim developing status at WTO to keep getting a lot of perks meant to equalize global competion like subsidized parcel shipment. Perks China obviously dont need

[0]https://pcaobus.org/news-events/news-releases/news-release-d...

[1]https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-02-22/china-urg...

[1]https://archive.fo/nXPRg

My state's legislators are upset about the content of what appears on TikTok. While they complain about "security" in public, when they are in the chambers talking with other legislators, their dialog changes to them being offended at "youth today" posting content that makes them look bad.

Our state's legislation bans all traffic to TikTok on state networks - such as watching the videos via browser. This seems to be a non-issue until you realize that libraries, public schools and state universities are affected by this legislation.

https://apps.legislature.ky.gov/record/23rs/sb20.html

they are more offended at the algorithm of tik tok. And one need just to confront the chinese and Global algo of Douyin to undersand why. It is a digital addiction machine, with "probably" some top-down interference. Hoping it become a step to regulate the whole social media industry as more sideffects to their damaging practices are surfacing[0]

[0]https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/01/social-media-linked-t...

Wait until you hear what the advertising industry gets up to...

> they are more offended at the algorithm of tik tok.

They may be offended but they (Google for ex.) started to copy the UI

> I'm very concerned that the US government will set a precedent for regulating what apps citizens are allowed to use.

Totally different topic, but it was said the same about covid regulations, how we were becoming like China, how lockdowns were supposed to limit our freedom etc.

We're basically back to the same old, and our freedom is "back".

I believe that the US government for the first time is really challenged by something and they don't know how to regulate it, because it goes fundamentally against the doctrine of freedom of speech etc. "The West is now blocking apps?"

EU regulations are nice and all, but GDPR is so easy to break, and from time to time you pay the fine, all good. In the meantime, tons of data about your citizens go away. Can you ask for that data back? It's gone. That's why this is so hard to regulate. And the right to be forgotten, well, prove it...especially in the cloud, if the application servers are hosted in a cloud provider owned by or government-friendly.

As I mentioned in a previous post, scandals concerning EU/US is just pure political BS to sell newspapers. Even if there are regulations, it's "acceptable" if from time to time a company breaches that "trust". It can even be convenient up to a certain point (but I don't work in governments etc., this is just the way I see it).

EDIT: the only time they probably did something similar was against piracy/p2p/blocking emule and all that :) but we all know money moves mountains

> EU regulations are nice and all, but GDPR is so easy to break

The good thing about it is that you give them a chance to comply and ease your concerns. If they fail to do so, you then you can ban them for actually failing to do something instead of being Chinese or making you nervous or something. This makes all the difference.

It's all about freely operating within the rule of law or leaving it to some bureaucrats gut that some app can be dangerous.

> The good thing about it is that you give them a chance to comply and ease your concerns. If they fail to do so, you then you can ban them for actually failing to do something instead of being Chinese or making you nervous or something. This makes all the difference.

That's what US is doing, if I got it right. Tiktok apparently is not playing by the rules, hence a ban. Not today, maybe tomorrow... who knows.

Which rules?

You seem to be making several points here which as far as I can tell boil down to the following:

- the COVID pandemic reduced some of our freedoms, but now they are back.

- GPDR is not perfect regulation. It has holes that let bad behavior sneak through.

RE: Your first point. This is an apples to oranges comparison. COVID restrictions were never anything unusual - the CDC has had legal authority to enforce quarantine for a very long time. It used those powers ascribed to it by law, and then stopped doing so when it was no longer needed. That's not at all what this thread is about, which is the government deciding that certain applications are unacceptable for it's citizens by fiat.

RE: Your second point. The EU has much stronger protections under GPDR than if it didn't exist. The answer to an imperfect regulation is not to abandon the regulation, it's to improve it. That's why we have a process to build new laws or change them. To solve problems. It's like saying the problem with your car is that it is low on oil, so instead of refilling the oil you decide to just walk.

> the CDC has had legal authority to enforce quarantine for a very long time.

I am not living in the US, however in Europe it was hell. And it was decided by the governments from each country. If I recall, some regulations became even EU-based, like traveling. We're still West, although a bit more east :) It was not about an application you have on your phone, true, but governments are the ones paid for seeing the long term vision: if citizens die (because of covid) or there is a national security issue (because another country is milking your citizens' data), you have to do something about it. This is why I compared those two topics, albeit different. For me there is no loss of freedom in either case, but I can understand those who feel their freedom taken away.

Regarding the second point, I love the fact there is the GDPR. And like you I agree it must be improved. The question is: what can you do in this case? We're talking about bit and bytes flowing through cables. How do users make sure that companies are respecting the laws? It's basically impossible. And that's when governments become aggressive: we need our whatsapp, ... we need to stop tiktok...and all that talk that might seem from unfortunate (fascist) times.

RE: enforcement of regulations. This is not a problem unique to digital world regulations. All regulations are essentially self-enforced. Some have a little more checking from the government than others. The answer is you put teeth behind it if a violation is found. This approach works decently well most of the time, and once in a while you need to add sharper teeth

> "the Chinese/Russian/Turkish way of governing has won, freedoms are no more"

Banning foreign apps != allowing only state controlled apps.

Not directly, but this feels like a slope that could become very slippery.

The slippery slope argument is a fallacy.

It's only a logical fallacy in the form if p then q; if q then r if then ... so on until the end point you're arguing towards. To say that history informs us that a particular hill easily becomes slippery is not a logical fallacy.

It's a fallacy whenever someone argues from it. Like the GP, they are literally arguing from a SSF and no one believes that's what it is. Beyond the pale.

To quote the original comment:

" I'm very concerned that the US government will set a precedent for regulating what apps citizens are allowed to use."

Since US law is based on precedent, it is not unreasonable to say that allowing the government to legislate which apps are available to US persons could lead to creeping powers to regulate apps more broadly. All of post 9/11 security law is practically a national park of slippery slopes.

I see the confusion. I was referring to "this feels like a slope that could become very slippery." having any meaning outside of someone arguing from SSF.

Yes, what I meant was this sort of creeping expansion of US government has historically created slippery slopes.

Exactly, that's definitionally fallistic.

No, it's an appeal to previous examples of the same thing happening.

Slippery slope is the only fallacy where people can simultaneously use it by name, and still claim, "but this time it's true!"

You also need to consider the slope and slipperiness of the status quo.

Oh okay, if they only ban a subset which you agree with it's not state controlled apps. Got it, very logical.

Other logical conclusions:

Banning LGBT apps != allowing only state controlled apps.

Banning pro-Trump apps != allowing only state controlled apps.

Banning abortion clinic apps != allowing only state controlled apps.

Banning gun related apps != allowing only state controlled apps.

Banning climate activist apps != allowing only state controlled apps.

Banning Fox news apps != allowing only state controlled apps.

How do you people even rationalise this in your head?

You have to realize the difference between state controlled and state approved. Maybe you don't think there is a difference?

We don't have a "Let's kill the president app" because it is illegal. It's not approved to exist. Does that mean all the apps we have left are state controlled apps?

I'm all in for banning illegal apps. What's illegal about TikTok?

What I say is that define what is illegal and what are the requirements to legally operate a service to address your concerns. That's regulation and means open and free market with safety.

Believing that an App can be misused by your adversaries or its against your interests and banning it is not free market. That's Chinese way of governing. Don't be China, Chinese government is not good.

What's illegal about anything? If you think there's some sort of legal essentialism in objects and actions, then we're coming at this from very different places. Natural law theory is, how to put this, naive. Legal realism too, while we're at it, in the sense that legal scientism is equally hallucinogenic.

If apps are banned solely for their nationality, and not the uniqueness of their functionality (spying, law enforcement, etc), then yeah, it kinda does.

"Only countries on our approve-list can deploy social media apps in our country."

An app being 'state controlled' is not an inherently good or bad thing. It's what the app does that is important. Does it collect data? Does it transmit data to foreign governments? Does it store data locally? Does it permit any kind of control of the device?

It's easy to say certain apps are bad. It's hard to say why they are bad and address the root behavior. This is a case where taking the easy road has obvious unintended future consequences. Taking the hard road helps every citizen of this country, and not just with apps controlled by foreign governments.

We need data security and privacy legislation. We do not need creeping totalitarianism. It's easy to see which road goes where.

Wouldn't regulating data privacy just shift the banning to business behaviors instead of consumer behaviors? It's still banning of choice to what the government says.

(Said with tongue in cheek. Help explain where the reasoning is wrong, though. The majority of people would rather get free apps with heavy surveillance attached than pay for anything in money or inconvenience, why is Tiktok different than everyone who sells the data to brokers who then sell it to everyone?)

Because the data is going to a foreign country instead of staying in America, where it's subject to American over site (see Schrems II in the EU).

Well, we already know there's state involvement in the tech sector, and I don't know of any big tech companies with warrant canaries.

From 2013 -

"Court rules NSA doesn’t have to reveal its semi-secret relationship with Google" (https://macdailynews.com/2013/05/22/court-rules-nsa-doesnt-h...)

"NSA infiltrates links to Yahoo, Google data centers worldwide, Snowden documents say" (https://perma.cc/VY62-7WX5)

"Confirmed: The NSA is Spying on Millions of Americans" (https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/06/confirmed-nsa-spying-m...)

The US doesn't want to compete on level field. It feels it "owns" modern mass data collection and surveillance, and it's more peeved that it doesn't have access to other markets' data than it cares about any purported espionage.

My bet is placed. China won't open its data to the US, so these bans will continue to escalate. However, any market that does share collected data with the US (or allows US companies to carry out this collection in their markets) will somehow "not be a threat" to privacy or national security.

> any market that does share collected data with the US (or allows US companies to carry out this collection in their markets) will somehow "not be a threat" to privacy or national security.

I'm fine with politicians coming up with some politically acceptable reason to ban Chinese apps when the real reason is tit-for-tat economics. I'm sick of China banning outside IP (and in many cases stealing it for themselves). It hurts a lot of us, including game developers.

It's tit for tat. Or tit for tok if you will. My only hope is they apply it consistently to all Chinese IP.

Neither of the mentioned China/Russia/Turkey allow only state-controlled apps. They allow everything, but ban unwanted or noncompliant ones.

What does state control look like in your head? Putin sending an email “please disregard your manager’s orders and do this instead”? Such thing has never existed because it is physically impossible to micromanage thousands of companies.

State control is monetary handouts or fines, bans and coercion under a threat of those.

Kinda like you’re staring directly at state control and can’t recognize what you’re looking at.

> They allow everything, but ban unwanted or noncompliant ones.

Banning noncompliant ones is fine, banning the unwanted ones is the problem.

The US government already controls all these apps and websites all the way up to Wikipedia. Just follow all the exposures coming out now by the likes of Matt Taibbi etc. in fact they jailed CEOs who didn’t comply with the illegal demands of the government like the CEO of Quest:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Nacchio

Look up the Church commission or Edward Snowden. Or the Hamilton files or all the exposes now of how Big Tech was doing all the censorship for the US government both in the US and even abroad to manipulate elections and do election interference everywhere (just like they censored the Hunter Biden story before the US election).

And probably the real reason that they are upset with TikTok is that the FBI etc. doesn’t have as invasive access, control and censorship of TikTok as they do with Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Wikipedia and all the others.

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