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Comment by CalRobert | Hacker News Reader

When I started using the internet in the mid-90's this would have been the accepted normal view - obviously we should be free to view any publicly available website (barring situations where the site itself is hosting content like sexual abuse against minors, etc.), it's absurd to think otherwise. I detest the CCP but still think that it's horrifying the US wants to ban tik tok, even if it _were_ foreign propaganda you should be allowed to see it if you wish.

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"People should be allowed to see whatever they want, but if they are attracted to influences controlled by the boogeyman, then the government knows better and should cut off your access, for your own good."

This has been a common justification for CCP's censorship on Internet and other media. Considering how magnificent CCP's censorship machine has grown into today, the slope is not that slippery.

It's not only what you can see on the platform. It's what the platform puts on every device the viewer uses to access. Spyware that scans the rest of the device for data, that streams information back to Chinese servers, and more.

Perhaps we should ban the app, while allowing the web site.

I'm all for banning apps that carry spywares (either by app store policies, or privacy laws), but I see no reason why such ban applies only to apps published by Chinese companies, rather than all apps.

Outside of spyware we should also consider the fact that Tiktok tailors it's algorithm to serve educational content in China and nuclear waste-grade garbage to the West. That should provide some guidance here. We need to move past the black-or-white thinking and add more nuance to the discussion.

China wouldn't allow a social network to abuse Chinese children, but in the US the only social networking business model is shoveling crap into the mouths of children and teenagers. Their crime is identical to Youtube's, and nobody is considering banning that.

I could get behind that. We need better privacy rules in the US in general.

> This has been a common justification for CCP's censorship on Internet and other media.

This is the justification for censoring China's official government media in the west.

It's absolutely bizarre that they can censor China's government media on the grounds that it might contain messages from the Chinese government. We're long past the slippery slope; we're not even coherent. It's so dumb that we have to pretend like the government of China is a revolutionary terrorist organization in order to convince people not to question the logic of suppressing the speech of designated enemies.

I might be out of the loop, but I thought the original plan was just to force China to sell the assets to a company based in the US, not actually ban tiktok.

That was originally what Trump was trying to do but for some reason it ran into judicial challenges.

I think Oracle was the frontrunner to acquire it.

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