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Comment by egorfine | Hacker News Reader

I live in a country where such a ban on certain "enemy" social networks was implemented a few years ago.

What will happen is this.

Teens will download a shit ton of VPN applications, the vast majority of which are specifically produced and marketed by the enemy to circumvent said ban. Then all users' phone traffic gets routed via the enemy VPN instead of just the social app's requests.

Win-win for both sides:

- the government gets populistic approval from the eldery population; - the adversary gets way more US users' data than they ever dreamed of.

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Meanwhile nobody is speaking about the real enemy here, which is data-brokers who will gladly sell any data of US citizens to evil countries.

We would be better served by a total ban on user tracking technologies.

'Evil countries' sounds so propagandized, but at least the pinnancle of democratic government won't do it. Oh wait. [1].

1- https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/apps-are-selling-you...

There are two types of countries in the world:

The ones with the companies that buy all the data and give it to the government without the users ok. The others, which don't do that with a company but rather a government institution.

Can't tell which is the evil one.

data brokers like who? and what the hell would China even do with my data? or which countries is my data supposedly sold to?

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/15/opinion/intel-data-broker...

> will sell data on anyone in their database, including current address, phone number and arrest records

I see. My current address, my phone number and something called my (public) arrest records are being sold to evil China at $10/pop. My phone number must be selling like hotcakes!

One thing Xi and Putin want to do, is to manipulate you to vote for their favorite future president (or future dictator) in the US. (Don't know if you're in the US though)

That would be a pretty considerable malinvestment considering the divisions of power and how lobbyist/special interests/ultrawealthy influences shape the American political discourse and outcomes. The whole process is a sham. It's all a very public sham, and has been, and I'm sure it's very salient to our geopolitical "opponents", and particularly those seated in the highest echelons.

However, what would make sense is sewing discord amongst the plebs and fraying the few little ties that bind which would drastically shift the US stranglehold because it would invariably lead to schismogenesis and a legitimately fractured nation with dramatic reallocation of power and character. This may be affected to some extent by bitter rivalries in the body politic, but that would be secondary to breaking the nation.

But really it just reads like the Red Scare banter all over again.

Do you not believe that the governments of Russia and China will pursue their interests at the expense of the United States? Of course they would, and it seems bananas to me that we should pretend otherwise.

no, no way. I will never let those miscreants manipulate my vote with videos of funny cats, it's not like I'm brainless! My vote is safe in the firm hands of Fox and CNN.

Snowden: "Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say."

that's a very non-answer answer to the question of why would China pay $10+ or whatever for my address and my location in the US. To sway my vote? How does this make any sense?

I always assume that I'm not the smartest person in the room/world. There are 'unknown unknowns' everywhere, and people far smarter than me dedicate their lives to creating more of these unknowns for their own purposes, the purposes of their employers, their governments, etc.

I know this type of data can be misused in a variety of ways. Despite the fact that I can't exactly articulate how it might be misused in this instance, I choose 'default deny' because it reduces attack surface and the amount of unknowns that I have to contend with.

It seems you operate on a 'default allow' rule when it comes to this stuff, and you're welcome to choose that for yourself, but this is a minority position in today's distrustful world. It is very optimistic!

Them: I have nothing to hide.

Me: Ok, what is your salary?

Them: uhh... let's change the subject

My wife is an 8th grade social studies teacher at a public school in Texas. I spent yesterday in her classroom as the resident technology expert and answered questions about semiconductor manufacturing, neural networks and cryptocurrencies in discussions about trade-offs with technology.

For one, the kids don’t really use TikTok that much and use a handful of apps. Different cliques used different apps more than others. They understood the geopolitical issues with TikTok and very few cared enough about TikTok in particular. They would all just use Reels or some other app more often.

This may be the case for the subset polled but TikTok is wildly popular with teens and for good reason, it’s the most “organic” feeling social media app with an addictive algorithm. Also TikTok allowed the expression of a lot of speech and ideas that had previously been more suppressed on other social media outlets because of political reasons, for example. YouTube and instagram are far more moderated in favor of American bias compared to TikTok, and it shows by how careful YouTube creators are with what they say. Instagram was found to suppress political speech of, for example, Palestinian rights activists during the removal of Palestinians from Sheikh Jarrah by Israeli forces.

Or vendors that currently sell cases and repair screens will then offer a service to sideload such apps for teens and install who knows what other stuff on phones for a fee from a customer and malware vendors.

The Prohibition did now work back then and only made the Mafia rich and made them push drugs when it was lifted.

Exactly. This is what happened here.

Except prohibition did exactly what it was designed to do. At the start of prohibition, alcohol consumption dropped to 30% of what it was before, and even after people figured out the loopholes and tried working around it, alcohol consumption peaked at like 65% of previous consumption, which was massive.

If the actual goal was to improve safety, health, and quality of life in perpetuity, I’m skeptical that it did what it was designed to do. A law that simply imprisoned everyone might also improve some metrics, but at great cost. The argument is presumably that the juice isn’t worth the squeeze.

Isn’t this like banning Tsingtao but leaving literally everyone other brand of beer, wine and liquor on the shelves?

Our teens aren't this determined t use a banned platform, don't bet on them suddenly buying VPN services just to use TikTok. It's like saying "oh look Elon bought Twitter and suddenly the select few of our special users will flee to Mastadon as a result and Twitter is dead." Just a bad bet. Convenience is king.

Nobody is expecting teens (or any other user in Montana) to pay for a VPN...they'll use a free one.

TikTok is a far more inviting & engaging platform than Twitter at the end of the day.

At least in this case, the 'enemy VPN' can just be a different US state. Not the case for your country though.

Fair.

IMO this sounds a bit more like an argument for banning the "vast majority" of VPN apps on the Google/App stores apparently re-routing all traffic to enemies (though I'm skeptical) and less of an argument as to whether or not TikTok should be banned.

So it’s bans all the way down? Maybe prohibition will work this time.

It's always been weird that the US border is legally 100miles thick around the USA, for customs and immigration, but the Internet cables don't have borders.

quite different though.

The ban in china is a full Qing-dynasty-style suppression of free speech and the organizing of large-scale protest.

The ban here is due to concerns about data privacy because the users are not tech-savvy enough to consider that.

I don't think the later will force the users to resort to a progressive solution like vpn.

Nah, I'm not in China.

I think that censorship in China is a whole different and quite unrelated story.

OR, only some teens will use VPN, others will look for alternatives such as Instagram reels.

This wouldn't be one-for-one; most would be stymied by the higher barrier to entry or would already be using a VPN for other reasons.

Good excuse to crack down on VPNs that don't provide backdoors next.

TikTok is evil. Let’s stop with the whataboutism

What is the definition of evil when it comes to TikToK?

Massive data collection being funnelled directly to the benefit of an adversarial totalitarian state.

Often coordinating to target intelligence and political targets.

It’s a technological wing for a totalitarian intelligence department. That’s what it is. It also has social media functions, but it also has an intelligence function.

If you think “well the US does it too” well I invite you to move to Shanghai and live the rest of your days there and tell me you feel just as free as in New York City.

Also, two wrongs don’t make a right.

> move to Shanghai and live the rest of your days there and tell me you feel just as free as in New York City.

In what ways would your freedom be impacted in Shangai vs NYC?

Because I know or a fact I'd able to live a normal life in Shangai. Work, grow kids, go out and enjoy entertainment, have good healthcare and so on.

Is it the ability to vote your president that makes or break "freedom" for you? Well apparently ~40% of USAmericans have given that up as the average voter turnout in the US is ~60%. The vote you are offered in the US is a Hobson's choice, it's a choice between bad and worse.

> In what ways would your freedom be impacted in Shangai vs NYC?

if that's actually what you believe in, no difference. To most people the differences are obvious.

> To most people the differences are obvious.

Hence no argument that you can actually explain, just a gut feeling driven by ignorance of what life in China is.

I'm sure whatever I write, you will find a straw man to vindicate your own feelings.

It must be hard to have opinions so fragile that they can't stand a discussion.

There you go. You have way too much time, reply to every comment. Typical.

Personal attacks. Typical.

If you mean that I have 1 minute every few hours to come check here if you answered me, yes I do. The same is true of you.

What a doomer outlook. Living in one of the best places run by a brutal, genocidal autocracy isn't so bad you guys (assuming you're in the ingroup, stay in line, ignore meatfisted policy implications, etc.)!

Doomer? Hundreds of millions getting out of poverty in China is all the hope I need.

Being afforded the opportunity to choose between a bad and a worse government gives me no hope, and apparently many feel the same in the so-called liberal democracies.

Just check this graph[0] at page 27. Am I the doomer or are about 40% of the world voters feeling doomed?

> brutal, genocidal autocracy

Brutal how? Genocidal is false as the whole Uyghur genocide has been proven over and over to be bullshit.

> assuming you're in the ingroup, stay in line, ignore meatfisted policy implications

lol, try to be openly communist in the USA and see what happens to your career.

.0: https://www.idea.int/sites/default/files/publications/voter-...

As 'evil' as FB is for example form my EU perspective.

So? We should allow one and not the other?

What about this false equivalency between China and the US? Even in a worse case scenario, data being taken by US intelligence is given SOME form of oversight. If you believe the US and China are similarly free, I invite you to tell me if you feel like you’re as free in New York City and San Francisco as Shanghai or Shenzen.

If you don’t think living in those two locations is equivalent, then why do you argue the data collection is the same.

Internationally, the US has burned, bombed, tortured, and assassinated the idea of equivalency out of existence.

If the problem is the behaviour of social media companies in general, legislate against that. Take note that it's not the conversation that's being had and that the people steering it have made their agenda, and ignorance, rather clear.

China didn’t coup my country or bomb neighbouring ones or invade a bunch further away.

You’re right that there isn’t an equivalence though, the US is far worse.

TikTok being evil is not the main point of OP. Is the society best served with banning evil things, would be a better framing. Banning is a knee-jerk reaction, and an attractive revenge fantasy for many, but when we're talking about society (or raising children), banning without other actions doesn't make the thing go away. For examples, look at the attempt of banning alcohol, drugs or sex work.

I don’t see the equivalency, since an American or European company can copy TikTok.

You can get your digital cocaine as long as it’s safely sourced.

They’re not banning TikTok style companies (which would be similar to your analogy) they are banning TikTok specifically due to its origin and actions (intelligence collection).

Are you suggesting that other countries should ban Google, Facebook, etc?

The pot calling the kettle black.

That's subjective and it doesn't matter.

You want to take away a first admendment right (imo) then you need definite proof that it's harmful

Let's say establishing policies to reduce the use of TikTok in the population is the right move. What policies would you suggest?

The more I think about it during the last years the less idea I have of what could be a working solution.

Would also depend on the reason you want to reduce it.

Privacy? Data? Attention? Propaganda?

Ban advertising to minors

Huge fines for being caught knowingly serving ads to minors

What would be the specific harm of TikTok? Is it because of China, or because of this style of social media apps?

If it's because of China, then ban TikTok and subsidize a competitor app - but be serious about it. Be ready to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on keeping the app free and servers up for years, sponsoring hundreds of content creators, dragging celebrities in to produce exclusive content, burning tons of money on all kinds of loss-generating marketing bullshit, like "publish a video from $concert, best 100 videos win a Nintendo Switch", for each concert in the state/country for the next few years.

Point being, if you can provide a TikTok alternative and make it extremely attractive, even if by literally giving away hundreds of dollars to each new user, then kids won't care about using TikTok anymore.

Now, if it's not about China but teenage use of social media?

Put an absurdly high tax on smartphones. Like 200%-1000%. That will make sure they become unavailable to a typical teenager.

Beyond that? I don't think you can do much about it directly, or in the immediate term.

It's a hypothetical. Hypothetically suppose we all agree that TikTok usage should be reduced. You are a state legislator. What do you do?

Make using it a criminal offense with minimum mandatory sentence of 5 years in prison.

I would like to make the modest proposal that a more effective way of reducing usage would be to make it punishable by summary execution.

Oh no. The US isn't some kind of totalitarian country to do summary executions for petty crimes.

Why waste the free labor?

Let's punish every act that we don't want to see with death (or, at a minimum, cutting off a hand), that will solve world's problems for sure.

In that hypothetical I identify the federal policy I think would be effective and vote for the US rep, Senate and presidential candidates I think are most likely to enact that policy. As a state legislature I probably have some sway with my constituents, so I also publicly endorse that policy and candidates.

What I’m getting at is this isn’t an issue for the state level.

Sometimes people say "you only hate TikTok because it's a foreign company doing it better than American social media". Maybe that's right, maybe TikTok is just doing it better than American social media platforms, but what have we been saying about American social media for the last decade? (generally not positive things)

Maybe at some point this was all going to hit some kind of threshold where it is just no longer reasonable to call the effects of social media a net good. Maybe TikTok has passed that threshold. We can give them a trophy for that, but then plan some ways to finally restrict social media's addictive and anxiety-provoking qualities.

So restrictions on infinite scroll, or require the user to actually press a button before the next video starts. I'm sure there are a lot of ideas, and people more qualified than me to suggest them, but I think these two alone would be reasonable restrictions.

It disturbs me that TikTok being a Chinese company is being used right now as an excuse as to why these social media platforms shouldn't be made to change their deliberately addictive designs.

In a free market a ban should be enough for competitors and replacements to arise

That assumes zero barriers to entry. Social media apps are pure network effect, making them the opposite of free market. You can't compete directly with TikTok without quickly matching its userbase and content volume.

Well, in a free market there’s no ban. Is the reason for the ban “dur dur China?”, or performative political theater?

Montanas politics are such that they you can’t find an OB to deliver a baby anymore, so any “free market” competitor needs to consider what random event will put them out of business.

Is it a free market if such a ban exists in the first place?

Yep. Free markets don’t mean unlimited power to corporations.

Free markets only exist in econ textbooks. It would be more productive to discuss actually-existing markets.

> If it's because of China, then ban TikTok and subsidize a competitor app - but be serious about it. Be ready to spend hundreds of .....

Domestic competitors have already published their equivalents though, no subsidied required. It's not a very complicated app - they had clones up in months. Most popular Tik-Tokers already repost their content on these anyways.

Why do we need to subsidize naything? This already exists.

> Why do we need to subsidize naything? This already exists.

Because the problem presented here is: government bans TikTok, teenagers become experts at using VPN apps to work around the ban.

Social media apps live on network effects - it's near-impossible to compete with a well-established giant directly. But this also means that, if you manage to pull a critical mass of users over from your direct competitor, most of the rest will quickly switch too.

Therefore, the solution to teenagers overcoming the ban with VPN is to prop up a domestic competitor fast - pump money into it until it becomes more attractive to the kids than jumping through VPN hoops to get to TikTok. Once you get there, the problem solves itself.

(This is ofc. only for the scenario where the problem is China, not TikTok-style social media.)

Your argument rests heavily on "teens WILL overwhelmingly become VPN experts"

I don't understand why it can't instead be: banning will make domestic alternatives more attractive since now you don't even need a VPN to access it.

Sure some teens will use a VPN and continue to use TikTok, but I'm not sure it'll be to such an extent that we'd be forced to concede that banning was the wrong call.

Also you can do both: ban and subsidize.

> Your argument rests heavily on "teens WILL overwhelmingly become VPN experts"

My argument rests on "social media is sticky due to network effects".

Which is why "banning will make domestic alternatives more attractive since now you don't even need a VPN to access it" if and only if the domestic alternatives are so good in comparison to figuring out VPN, that a critical mass of domestic users switch over. Ban alone won't make it happen - TikTok is too sticky for that.

Those are teenagers we're talking about. They're resourceful, motivated, have infinite free time - learning how to use a VPN app will be trivial for them, especially that "VPN" here doesn't mean Wireguard or ISO/OSI hokus pocus, but rather a turnkey app that requires about three clicks to make your US Internet connection look like it's coming out of Somalia. It's not hard for them - and will be even easier if a ban on TikTok makes VPN companies target the teenager market directly.

> Also you can do both: ban and subsidize.

That's exactly what I recommended.

OK, you've changed my mind and I've updated more towards "banning alone is likely to be net negative to our goals if we don't also subsidize alternatives"

I think given I don't use TikTok at all I am bad at intuiting how powerful its network stickiness is.

Somehow I'm skeptical of your scenario where teenagers flock to government-sponsored social media.

It's not "government sponsored" as in Official Propaganda Arm of the United States, but rather "government sponsored" as in every other thing in your life, such as water, electricity, telecommunications, roads, policing, healthcare, ...

That doesn't change a thing -- it's not in keeping with the ordinary practices of the US, nobody wants it, and it's almost guaranteed to fail.

That's really ignoring the network effect that you're claiming to be dealing with.

As said, you don't subsidize the app creation or use. The apps already exist. The users know roughly how to use them.

The solution would be to take the X biggest content creators and pay them Y Million dollars each to stop posting on tiktok, and start posting on the competitors. Everyone else will follow.

What does the government have to do with what apps I use in my free time? Are they also going to force me to read nonfiction instead of fiction because it's "the right move"? This sounds like some dystopian crap. What committee decides which apps are good for you or not and how long is long enough?

> What does the government have to do with what apps I use in my free time?

Because it's literally their job: Protect the citizen. They may not do a good job all the time, most times they are even very bad. But nonetheless do they try and prevent most of the worst cases. And TikTok is so insane efficient in what it's doing, the line between benefit and harm is so thin, it could easily turn into a "worst case"-scenario if people don't observe it careful enough.

It's also their job to protect the citizen from future governments by not giving themselves too much control.

The job of policymakers is to: make policy. Protecting the citizen may or may not be a part of the policy they implement.

Policies are a tool, not the goal.

What about propaganda outlets like Newsmax and OANN? Many would argue they've had far more harmful impact on the USA than Tiktok ever could. Where do you draw the line? It has to be domestic propaganda? Can you prove that those don't have foreign links?

You draw the line SOMEWHERE, just like you always do, for every right already. We already have lines all over rights, and it's not crazy to add another line somewhere and let the judiciary move it around and change it's shape. That's their job.

The PLA has published brilliant books on how to beat America in a non-kinetic war but Americans in general don't like to read.

As someone who thinks Unrestricted Warfare is one of the most brilliant books I have ever read, the idea most have not read this book in the US military is quite laughable.

Imagine people having no issue with the Soviet Union delivering a free daily newspaper to US teenagers in 1960. The level Americans have their head up their own ass is unbelievable.

> Because it's literally their job: Protect the citizen.

That is not automatically the government's job. At least not in every worldview.

And these things exist on a spectrum. Protecting people from direct external threats is pretty unobjectionable to most philosophical systems that allow governments, but there's a lot more controversy around protecting people from themselves.

Politics is downstream of culture. if we wanted to reduce social media use, we could try to change internet habits and attitudes writ large. Something like a “put down the phone and talk to people” campaign, a la anti-smoking/drinking/drunk driving efforts of yore. That way it doesn’t feel like teens in particular are being targeted by out of touch adults. At least, not as much.

Unfortunately, culture is downstream of economics and technology, so starting from the political end is going to be... an uphill battle.

It’s all a lazy river flowing in a circle. Everything is downstream of everything else.

It's not, but the analogy breaks down here anyway.

I.e. technically everything influences everything else, but some things influence others much stronger than the reverse.

My usual water-based analogy is that culture and society is like a water flowing downhill; economic situation (all the incentives people have) forms the landscape. Technology is what sculpts the landscape.

The flow of water does have its own influence - over time, it smoothens out rough edges, and can even forge its own path when the landscape is opposing water too hard. But mostly, the water conforms to the shape of the terrain. Same is with culture - it softens the behaviors of people following incentives, and can reform some aspects of the economy that just don't feel right - but mostly, the economy pretty much determines what culture develops, what people do, what people think. New technologies alter economic landscape quickly, but we don't have much control over when they show up or how the landscape is altered.

Material conditions stand above all else. Ideology withers when confronted by reality.

Let's say establishing policies to reduce the use of Fox News in the population is the right move. What policies would you suggest?

Let's say establishing policies to reduce the use of firearms in the population is the right move. What policies would you suggest?

(now, people are going to pop up with the obvious objections to those. What is it about US users of TikTok that suddenly makes the 1st Amendment and all those free speech concerns that people bring up not apply?)

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