New York City bans TikTok for government employees | Hacker News Reader

New York City bans TikTok for government employees

engadget.com

213 pointsmikece139 comments

Wouldn't it be more accurate to say that TikTok is banned on government-owned devices?

The nuance matters; there's a significant difference between banning the app on government devices and extending that ban to personal devices owned by employees. The headline suggests a more extensive ban, but it's specifically about government-owned devices.

Furthermore, I'm puzzled as to why TikTok would be on government-issued devices in the first place. Shouldn't a standard MDM block non-essential apps by default? Why would they need TikTok on work devices, aside from perhaps a PR representative with an official presence there?

For precisely the reasons you listed, this entire article, but especially the headline, are safely labeled click bait.

Everything about it is technically accurate but it's carefully designed to be misleading so passersby think "that can't be right" and click to seek more, or worse, become furious and click to figure out who is responsible.

There's also the knock on effect of someone seeing the headline in one of their various feeds, and forming an opinion one way or another, without having clicked at all.

"Clicks" are not the purpose. Advertising is. It's ad-bait.

Click-bait is the common term though so it's stuck around.

The title is the bait to get you to click through to the article. Without the click, there are no ads. So clickbait seems apt.

Edit: reworded for clarity

Probably clickbait, but increasingly I wonder whether things like this can be chalked up to the fact that most online publications are pretty much amateur hours these days. They might have just genuinely not thought about the difference, or picked up on it. Saying it's clickbait implies a level of sophistication I'm no longer sure most newsrooms possess. If it were only that the headlines were misleading, I'd say it was an irresponsible editorial policy, but you see so many basic mistakes in the copy as well that, at the very least, it would have to be a combination of bad ethics and incompetence.

Most of the time I'd agree with you. But this is the Engadget. They're just too successful/savvy and established for this particular instance not to be deliberate.

There is a lot of truth in much of what you said, but headlines specifically aren't really a product of the newsgathering process. They're kind of a microcosm of journalism and treated completely differently than the rest of the article for a variety of reasons, historical and modern.

More to the point, in the admittedly small number of newsrooms I've been in, the headlines were hand crafted by fairly senior editors.

In any case, the truth is probably somewhere between disingenuous and negligent, but the outcome is the same: more traffic.

The industry has evolved toward blacklisting over whitelisting on devices. It reduces IT burden significantly should problems arise, and you should index toward trusting people to do the right thing.

Overall, this approach is better. When I started in engineering back in 2000, it was still a debate as to whether developers should have admin on their own machine.

Expect this to debate to come back with the growth of cloud-based IDEs

Oh it’s still a debate. IT would have it so you can’t install brew if they had their way.

We in cybersecurity know that you need to have brew/pip/npm/whatever installed and you need admin access, but it still absolutely _horrifies_ us.

Treating a dev box as anything other than a permanently compromised piece of hardware is a recipe for disaster, and that applies to our machines where we have to run those tools.

For us, it feels like our development is a loathed distraction from your quest to implement the platonic ideal of a secure machine, free from any indulgences like networking, external drives, and a fan given the chance to wind-down between the anti-virus stomping on the CPU.

I particularly like joining a new company and being expected to write and memorise several distinct, secure passwords before having the computing and network freedom to use a password manager. Having to tell my new manager I forgot my password is a riot.

Look, I'll make a compromise with you.

I'll give you no AV/EDR/XDR/Mountain DewDR that'll use up your CPU if you'll grant me no external I/O ports at all on your computer. In fact, I'll throw you a bone -- no input devices on a fresh install and you can have all the output devices you want. And no input means no need to remember passwords!

You wanna hear some horror stories from the field?

I need to do development regularly for our workflow systems. That includes a NodeJS based process, so npm has to work, I backup code to gitlab, need to use Postman/Insomnia to test APIs, whatever.

I don't have admin rights on my windows machine, because that's obviously unsafe. All the software on my machines is outdated, as I need to open a ticket for each and every update of VS Code and whatever I'm using and answering those tickets can take some time. Also I feel dumb doing that.

After "securing" the systems even more, IT changed the proxy server. npm didn't work from one day to another. They had to debug it for a week and finally gave up and just whitelisted it and whatnot. Will probably only survive until the next update.

gitlab doesn't work anymore, as basic auth is not supported by the proxy server anymore. I don't have the time (nor the rights - ha!) to fiddle around with that all day to get it working, so there's no versioning happening and "backups" or collaboration are based on local file systems or sending mails with the code attached, too.

My local environment of our workflow server can't connect to the app store to update the integrated apps. Something with the proxy, I don't know. So I'm developing against outdated versions of everything...

Want to connect to external APIs? Need to create a ticket so something besides Outlook and the browsers can connect to the outside world. Sometimes it doesn't work, so... you guessed it... make a firewall/proxy exception. Just takes a day or two.

Also updates in core infrastructure like proxy and firewall are not communicated. So you come into the office monday morning and everything is burning and nothing works anymore. "Yeah, we changed the proxy on Saturday..." Fuck it.

Final thing: One of my biggest projects is to provide a public API to create an easier onboarding experience and one standardized way to place orders with us... IT wanted to do it with their software partner, no other ways possible. We already had something ready we could have bought, deployed and customized in 3 weeks time. Now it's half a year later and the test version is ready. Endpoint URL looks like hell and _every single user_ needs to have his IP whitelisted to connect to the API. Even for the testing endpoints. For security reasons obviously. I'm just done with it.

edit: Yeah, slightly off-topic but had to vent somewhere. Thanks for your patience.

If this isn't a government or a bank then run like hell because that company is ripe for being disrupted.

Nah, it's just that our company is part of a larger group (2k+ employees in Europe), so the IT tends to focus on the other companies more. Also my whole e-commerce stuff is very unique to us which reduces reusability for anything they set up for me. From there on it's just a short way to "this will only help him, that will help dozens of people" and your projects get pushed another quarter...

To be fair: Most of the people don't really need much more than SAP, Excel and Word and that's... "uncomplicated" to run with some proxy and firewall config etc.

I don't think anything you said alters my point, but I wish you luck. That's an awful environment.

I recall someone in a similar situation who was able to convince IT to whitelist a cloud VM for testing website deployments. In addition to the website, this VM also hosted a wireguard server running on ports that happen to be commonly used for databases.

> Furthermore, I'm puzzled as to why TikTok would be on government-issued devices in the first place. Shouldn't a standard MDM block non-essential apps by default?

This has been my question every time one of these articles about another entity banning TikTok comes up. My locked down corpo-phone only whitelists like a dozen apps for me to choose to install, largely online banking apps for the big guys, not a single social media style app.

> Furthermore, I'm puzzled as to why TikTok would be on government-issued devices in the first place. Shouldn't a standard MDM block non-essential apps by default? Why would they need TikTok on work devices, aside from perhaps a PR representative with an official presence there?

Government-owned != government-administered. I'd imagine that in many cases petty cash or OpEx allocated on a program/office/business unit basis is spent indiscriminately at the end of the fiscal year to avoid losing it in the next one. Since the equipment is purchased with a credit card and goes through Accounting (who probably doesn't have the wherewithal or care to tell the IT department about the iPad line item on that Best Buy receipt) it isn't CapEx and therefore escapes the IT department's line-of sight. These devices probably then get used as an end-run around draconian IT restrictions at work and/or as de-facto personal devices for the employee and their family (the latter of which is probably justified by the employee's belief that this is a "perk" that compensates for their low compensation or reward for some perceived moral good that arises from their work).

I'm speaking completely hypothetically, of course, and personally don't think this is appropriate. I bought a refurbished iPad with my own money last year for use exclusively at band practice.

MDM might be of two tiers, where those distributed by IT are full MDM and those under a "bring your own" policy have more limited access (i.e. email/calendar/contacts only). For example the iPhone issued to me as a "pager" doesn't even have the camera app.

> Why would they need TikTok on work devices

Because it's an information source..? Just about every other media app copied the format, but they won't be able to copy content.

there's no government employee that needs information from TikTok to do their job

Someone who's in a communications or social media position likely does, and they should have a dedicated device purely for that function.

They don't. There was a time when government eschewed social media entirely even though it was available. They're not private businesses and I see no reason for them to be using social media in any official capacity. There are plenty of ways to communicate with your voter base that doesn't involve Twitter battles or ridiculous Facebook propaganda posts.

Also government usage of social media aids the flow of misinformation, by blending info from trusted providers (the govt, in theory, lol) with info from untrusted providers.

There's a reason the .gov domain exists.

That’s like saying they don’t need ears. It’s a place to see what people are talking about. It’s a place to see how people are talking. It’s a place to gauge responses to certain events. It’s increasingly a place to see news happen before it is shared via any other medium. You go where the people are, you don’t tell them where to go and then get upset when they’re not there.

It wasn’t. It’s a knee jerk because of the legislative grandstanding on the topic.

Once South Dakota banned it, a gotcha question for a leader is “why do you allow Chinese spies to steal government data?”

It’s stupid and performative, but that’s how it works.

> Shouldn't a standard MDM block non-essential apps by default?

Yes.

But there are some (big) assumptions here:

* The MDM (or EDR for desktops) is well managed. * People with admin access aren't circumventing it.

A lot of government workers use their issued phones as their full time phone for personal use and they do not lock down those phones to the extent you suggest. I can’t speak for New York city government specifically but the phones work ecosystem is locked behind an app similar to a Microsoft 365 login

The common sense interpretation is that the rule applies to work devices.

You can’t expect journalists to not make up clickbait headlines. This is 2023, and we’ve seen what they did with LK-99.

Perhaps a controversial opinion but I can’t wait for an LLM that directly feeds off of the source: like AP news, or Arvix, and automatically provides an RSS feed of non-clickbait headlines with substantive articles if I decide it’s worth reading. I cannot wait to get this profession out of my life, and I will happily pay to make it happen.

"from government devices" seems important to the title

Edit: also, this article simply re-reports a Verge article: https://www.theverge.com/2023/8/16/23834579/nyc-tiktok-ban-n... Props to Engadget for citing their source, but just think that the Verge deserves that shout-out here too.

Banning non business critical apps from corp/org devices is just good security hygiene. Would probably not even be PR if the MDM policy was pushed and when people asked, IT said "no non business apps."

Yeah, this seems completely reasonable IMO.

Government devices should be boring, so I hope they also ban facebook.

The Verge is a better source and has a more accurate title.

Thats the onvious interpretation, clued by the word "employees". Headlines don't include every bit of context.

Here they just rewrote a Verge article titled "NYC bans TikTok on city-owned devices" and made it inaccurate. Why they would go out of their way to make the headline they copied from wrong and also slightly LONGER is super weird.

Honestly, it wouldn't be a terrible move to ban all social media apps (or other apps that track movement or activity) from government phones.

I'm surprised government-owned devices are allowed any non-essential apps at all.

E.g. the story about government / military facilities being exposed via army using Strava to track running routes (effectively creating a map of the facility)

I agree with you.

However, one thought I had is that you want to make sure government business happens on government phones, and maybe people are less likely to do that if they habitually using their personal phones during the work day? I'm not saying that was the calculation, just thinking this through.

Yea, the ban would be ineffective if it resulted in gov employees simply carrying 2 phones everywhere, 1 tightly restricted and 1 unrestricted.

Probably better to have 1 phone that’s semi-restricted.

No sandbox is ever going to be truly secure. An enemy nation's app on a work phone with access to sensitive, maybe even classified data? No no no.

MDM can be set up to allow access to government resources solely through employer-owned devices, reducing the utility of personal phones for work tasks. If employees intentionally bypass this, they may warrant disciplinary actions, just like any other breach of workplace policies.

It seems like once a government employee attains a certain rank they create a set of alt email and social accounts to conduct off the record business, so two phones is required.

Maybe phones should have a hypervisor and multiple VMs (or VPs?) to support this without having to cart around additional hardware.

Same, I used to work for a large aerospace company and I wasn't allowed to install anything that wasn't approved and it had to be work related in an obvious way. I was surprised it even had a browser.

If you ban too much stuff, people will just carry a second device. (The strava thing could have or maybe did happen that way).

Regardless, as an employee, putting social media on your subpoena-able and hopefully defeatured work device is a bad idea.

>> If you ban too much stuff, people will just carry a second device.

Good! People are free to purchase a personal phone and do whatever they want on their personal device.

Not good if the 2nd device is always carried, and exposes tons of stuff the first doesn't.

> Not good if the 2nd device is always carried, and exposes tons of stuff the first doesn't.

There are three concerns here:

Concern 1: Government employees being paid to do work, but instead spending time on TikTok. -- yes, a 2nd device makes this worse, but certainly banning government devices are a necessary (though not sufficient) step here.

Concern 2: Confidential government data obtained by apps with broad permissions -- solved by moving TikTok off government device and onto personal device, as the personal device shouldnt have government data on it (e.g., tax records, health records, personal records of citizens)

Concern 3: ALL data exposed to foreign governments via TikTok and other apps - still, banning government devices are a necessary (though not sufficient) step here. NYC doesnt have jurisdiction over all citizen behaviors, and this needs to be decided federally realistically.

Now, if the 2nd decide is a government device also, then no problem! TikTok is already banned on the 2nd device also. As will be for the 3rd and 4th government device.

If the 2nd device is a personal device with government documents, you have a much different problem of why that is the case.

Consider how handy it would be for a foreign intelligence service to know where 75% of cities law enforcement agents are in essentially real time. That's the sort of vector I'm thinking about.

It's a fun spy-movie idea, but none of our foreign enemies are robbing banks and such.

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/two-arrested-operating-illega...

Which has nothing to do with tracking the movements of law enforcement.

It's literally Chinese nationals in NYC spying on US citizens, who were shut down after being found by law enforcement.

That's a problem that has to be solved for separately anyway, so driving your employees to have personal devices for personal activities doesn't make it materially worse.

That's... the point. Personal stuff goes on your personal phone, work stuff goes on your work phone.

Not all that many government employees even have government-issued devices. Almost no one in the military does. The Strava thing was from letting people run around with it on their personal devices that they happened to use on military facilities. Typically, this kind of usage is forbidden, but it's kind of playing whack-a-mole to even know what apps are out there tracking and mapping location in the first place without simply banning military personnel from having smart phones at all, at least on site, which is exactly what happens at sufficiently sensitive facilities. I actually recall a reminder going out that no augmented reality or mapping applications were allowed on company property when Pokemon Go first came out and I was working for Raytheon, though even that only applied to the parking lots and lobbies as you couldn't bring a phone into the actual workspaces anyway.

For what it's worth, as far as I recall from when I was in the military, which is getting to be a while ago but at least Facebook existed, social media apps were definitely not allowed on government-issued mobile devices. Unit PR offices did maintain Facebook pages, but those were updated from PCs using the web interface, not via app. I guess it's a small consideration, but something to consider for companies that decide to release some web service only as an app.

The Strava example isn't the best, but point well taken.

This is more like people with fitbits or other activity tracking devices, not their government-provided devices. I mean the only way to make it not show up is to ban ALL devices (personal and otherwise).

Call me cynical, but I think the Tik Tok banning efforts are an example of such a successful lobbying effort from the part of US-based social media companies. It has yet to be brought to my attention what behaviors/patterns Tik Tok employs which set them apart from their US-based competitors, and I am in awe of how META/Alphabet have some nicely created this wedge based on their nationality to use as a cudgel against one of their biggest competitors. It smells to me a little bit like the LIV/PGA thing, where the Saudi Arabia connection was heavily publicized for the upstart tour as a reason to fight against the potential rival to the PGA. Then, of course, they merged. Interesting to see what the endgame will be for Tik Tok's case.

> what behaviors/patterns Tik Tok employs which set them apart from their US-based competitors

Isn't it based on concerns that TikTok could be spying for China?

Based on what? The practices of all these social media companies seems the same and is dictated by the capabilities of devices and by the market.

I think it's sort of assumed that most large companies in China, if not totally controlled by the government, are at least heavily involved with it.

So even if Meta or Google are collecting info, it's not for the Chinese government (and being US based, the US Government has a bit more say in what they do.)

People raise the same objection about American tech companies given the open door relationship that seems to be between going from the intelligence community to being in a position of power in those companies. Should every other country ban American tech?

It depends on how much you view the government as a "bad guy". Being an American, I would say other countries have less to worry about than with the Chinese government.

Of course I don't really know and have no strong opinion about places banning TikTok. In general I think it's a pretty silly policy.

Sure, but this is a question about an American government banning services. Clearly, American governments are not concerned that they might be leaking data to their own intelligence services. They're doing that on purpose. There is nothing out of the ordinary about a government banning foreign espionage even though they carry out their own espionage. That is basic statecraft, not really the gotcha some people on Hacker News seem to think it is.

Except there's no credible espionage from china through TikTok, but Twitter was used to destabilize middle-eastern governments which lead to a refugee crisis in Europe.

> Should every other country ban American tech?

Every american tech? No. Every american social media, yes. Especially the major countries. Why india hasn't banned foreign social media is beyond me. What's the point of banning tiktok but not facebook, twitter, etc?

I think those are the boilerplate concerns. The real concerns are that TikTok is a dopamine manipulation system that’s better than anything Meta et al could even hope to dream up, and this system can be/is used to influence public opinion and general societal preferences.

>It has yet to be brought to my attention what behaviors/patterns Tik Tok employs which set them apart from their US-based competitors

Which of their US competitors voluntarily provide unfettered access to their data to the Chinese Military?

https://www.nationalreview.com/2023/03/new-report-reveals-ti...

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-03-17/new-zealand-bans-tikt...

TikTok provides unfettered data access to the US military?

You've been fooled if you think that Facebook, Google are the ones who would be selling the data. Of course it's not them, it's the data brokers who get all the data from all the other US companies who are tracking every other thing we do. They will sell the data to anybody with money, including China. Even if the data brokers said they would never do that, I guarantee China can just set up a company in the US and straight up purchase the data outright.

So what your saying is the USA social media companies behave completely differently?

Ah hah. But you see as long as there is one layer of indirection or more it's completely different. Somehow.

So you've got proof of Facebook selling copies of your private videos and pictures to third party data brokers? Ignoring the fact it would be violating their own TOS, I have no doubt the government would be extremely interested in that information. Source?

Since you seem so well-versed, why don't you explain more about these "data brokers"?

Your model, if I'm understanding correctly, is that "data brokers" harvest data on Americans, and then illegally sell this back to FAANG companies? Where'd you read about this?

The issue is not what they are doing but who is doing it.

The scale and scope of applications like TikTok means that China can broadcast a message to basically all Americans 16-24 or so. And not just an announcement… they can use the algorithm and the feedback they receive to create groupthink for whatever they want.

This would have been an absolute nightmare scenario during the Cold War. Imagine the US decides to start a war with China over, say, Taiwan. China will undoubtedly try to use TikTok to spread anti American sentiment and turn the youth against their own government.

Sounds like Vietnam…

> Imagine the US decides to start a war with China over, say, Taiwan.

This is such a weird phrasing. The only people threatening to start a war is the leadership of China.

It’s really not. The US has a little bit of a history of starting wars.

Also, I’m not sure if you’re aware, but you might want to look up what the US is doing in the Pacific right now. It not out territory. It’s not our fight. We should be minding our own business focusing on our own citizens, not militarizing the Pacific and denying a billion people access to advanced microchips every way possible.

So people in Taiwan have no say in what happens to them?

> We should be minding our own business focusing on our own citizens,

Yes, and part of that includes highly overdue reciprocal actions against a nation that has denied our citizens' businesses from flourishing there.

In a real sense they do not have a say in what happens to them.

The is plenty of aggressions from both sides to go around. Everyone wants this eventually, the only dispute is when it should go hot.

> Everyone wants this eventually, the only dispute is when it should go hot.

"Everyone"? A likely outcome in a war between China and the US most of us reading here will end up dead or worse. I don't understand what has happened. It is like the elites have become mad and people have just stopped caring and shut their eyes.

> So people in Taiwan have no say in what happens to them?

This is just hiding behind Taiwan unless you're so naive that you think that state actors help other states out of the goodness of their hearts.

Is it the US calling the shots or not? If so then no, Taiwan clearly doesn't have a say since everything hinges on the US' power.

> state actors help other states out of the goodness of their hearts

In democracies, politicians have to care about what the public thinks. Americans as a whole are extremely judgmental about moral issues, and any president that stands by and allows 25 million Taiwanese to be crushed under the boot of the CCP will go down in history as the biggest coward since Neville Chamberlain.

By and large yes, I do think democracies tend to operate (highly imperfectly) out of the goodness of their hearts (as they perceive it).

> In democracies, politicians have to care about what the public thinks.

The US is not a democracy for 90% of Americans (Princeton study).

> Americans as a whole are extremely judgmental about moral issues, and any president that stands by and allows 25 million Taiwanese to be crushed under the boot of the CCP will go down in history as the biggest coward since Neville Chamberlain.

Sure. Except America will support “bad guys” and oppose “good guys” according to what suits them (like natural resources). Like how Saddam Hussein was an ally of the US until he went against their interests.

The American people protested Reagan's interference in Latin America. That made them stop doing it. Right? No. They just went clandestine.

> By and large yes, I do think democracies tend to operate (highly imperfectly) out of the goodness of their hearts (as they perceive it).

Every post-WWII president up to 2003 (at least) could be indicted under the Nuremberg principles if they were upheld.[1]

It's easy to have good intentions according to yourself when there are no one else around who can challenge your worldview.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BXtgq0Nhsc

You would have to be more naive to attribute omnipotence to US and zero agency to Taiwanese citizens.

Do use hyperbole to dismiss my point in lieu of making an actual argument. That's fine.

“So people in Taiwan have no say in what happens to them?”

Obviously not. That’s the whole point. They are pawns. You think TSMC refuses to sell chips to China voluntary? I actually have no idea what the people of Taiwan want. But I know it doesn’t matter. They do what we (the US) want… for now.

> You think TSMC refuses to sell chips to China voluntary

Those chips aren't entirely TSMC creations.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/02/17/united-states-taiwan-ch...

> But in reality, TSMC’s manufacturing capabilities rely on a variety of critical inputs that are predominantly supplied by U.S. and U.S.-allied firms. Even

Now, shouldn't the US have a say when it provides critical inputs? Why should US allow its high-end designs to be used by an adversary?

> So people in Taiwan have no say in what happens to them?

No more than the people of the south had a say in what happened to them.

Imagine if after the civil war, china got involved and 'liberated' the south from the north.

Taiwan is entirely a US creation. And china should take it back.

Almost everywhere there is instability in east asia, it's the fault of the US. From japan to myamnar and everything in between.

As someone from India, this is false. How is the US responsible for China claiming Indian territory?

Isn't China at odds with every neighbor except for NK?

> Taiwan is entirely a US creation

Do you forget that during WW2, US supported mainland China with aid? Without US opening up its market, mainland China wouldn't have developed so fast.

In many ways that matter, current mainland China is more of a US creation than Taiwan.

Also, Taiwanese people are not puppets.

> And china should take it back

Shouldn't and couldn't. The US accepts a one-China policy. So the other way could also happen.

> Imagine if after the civil war, china got involved and 'liberated' the south from the north.

The difference is slavery. Taiwan is not going against CCP in defense of slavery.

> As someone from India, this is false. How is the US responsible for China claiming Indian territory?

Firstly, India is not in east asia. My comment was specificially on east asia. But even here we are indirectly involved due to britain using india to invade china. Funnily enough, it's called an 'expedition' rather than a failed invasion. As the 'successor' of the british empire, we are now the principal 'free tibet' agitators.

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

Also, india claims chinese territory ( once again as a legacy of the british invasion of china from india ). Frankly, india and china have the same enemy. They should really be working together, not against each other.

> Do you forget that during WW2, US supported mainland China with aid?

We supported the 'nationalists' who were fighting the 'communists'. Guess which one is mainland china and which one is taiwan.

> Without US opening up its market, mainland China wouldn't have developed so fast.

You have it backwards again. Why do you repeat the same thing in so many threads? Are you part of a pr group or something? Just so strange. It's not the US that opened its market. It was china who opened its market to the US. This is basic history. Not just in the 1970s, but also in the 1800s as well. And it's not just china that advanced, it's the US that advanced as well. Crazy how a country can advance if the US isn't trying to destabilize or invade it. Huh? One can only imagine what india, iran, much of africa, south america, etc could be if we'd disappear or simply stop undermining or destroying these regions.

> Also, Taiwanese people are not puppets.

The people aren't but the elite are. They are our worthless puppets.

> Shouldn't and couldn't. The US accepts a one-China policy. So the other way could also happen.

They can and should. Not only that, they should broaden it into a racial or regional issue. White supremacy got east asia colonized, oppressed and nuked. Maybe turn the tables on us.

> The difference is slavery. Taiwan is not going against CCP in defense of slavery.

The civil war wasn't about slavery either. The north had slave states - maryland, delaware, missouri, kentucky, west virginia.

'The Emancipation Proclamation did not free all slaves in the U.S., contrary to a common misconception; it applied in the ten states that were still in rebellion on January 1, 1863, but it did not cover the nearly 500,000 slaves in the slaveholding border states (Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland, and Delaware) or in parts of Virginia and Louisiana that were no longer in rebellion.'

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

But your point is moot since the supreme court declared secession to be illegal. We, in the US, legally do not believe in self-determination by a group of people.

Stop getting your 'history' from propaganda. My advice, go look it up and dig just one layer deeper and you'll realize most 'history' is nonsense.

> This would have been an absolute nightmare scenario during the Cold War. Imagine the US decides to start a war with China over, say, Taiwan. China will undoubtedly try to use TikTok to spread anti American sentiment and turn the youth against their own government.

But there isn't a war right now. If one were to start, TikTok would probably get banned/deplatformed as quickly as RT did during the Ukraine invasion.

Reminder: TikTok also spends on lobbying

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/03/31/tiktok-bytedance-spent-milli...

None of the US social media companies are allowed in China.

It seems appropriate that a Chinese social media company would not be allowed in the US.

Meta and X and Alphabet all would be in favor of that, sure, but that doesn't mean it's unfair.

Meanwhile, US data brokers still collect and sell all their data, and happily to state actors such as the CCP if they open their huge wallet.

The only reasonable solution is to ban all user tracking now.

100% this. Respecting user privacy makes any sort of malicious propaganda campaigns that much harder -- be it CCP, Russia, US, or private entities. Otherwise we end up just playing whack-a-mole and usually after the fact.

Yes 1000% this!

Also, TikTok and many other companies can still get user data from data brokers and credit agencies which are so unregulated that we need laws globally to ban surveillence alltogether.

This whole TikTok thing is such a waste of everybody's time and energy. And gives everybody this false impression that US social media is totally safe to use.

Does it give anyone that impression?

It gives everyone that I’ve talked to the impression that the US government is transparently bought off by Facebook and friends.

Eh, my understanding was the TikTok app collected more and different data than say, Facebook or Twitter.

I doubt they get more info than Facebook. The last time I logged in to Facebook, it was to lock down the teacking settings. I found out that GM had sold our onstar info to them without my knowledge or consent.

Facebook definitely builds shadow profiles, so they have such info on you regardless of whether you have an account.

Am I misremembering this? I thought a malware researcher reverse engineered the iOS app and said it was uniquely bad, or something to that effect.

I can’t find the link, maybe I’m crazy…

It was uniquely bad in that it didn't encrypt video in transit. It'd just send stuff over plain HTTP, making it very easy for snoopers to tell what you're watching or maybe mitm. More of a security thing than a privacy thing.

Vaguely remember this: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/security-researchers-ta...

> Eh, my understanding was the TikTok app collected more and different data than say, Facebook or Twitter.

Whatever data you think is being collected by TikTok/FB/Twit is actually being harvested for data brokers and being sold to anyone+everyone who wants to pay.

Why could the CCCP do some complicated dance with social media companies to get spotty personal data, when they can easily buy comprehensive personal data on the unregulated market?

If you're the CCCP, I think you do both, especially if Americans will just install the malware for you, doubly especially if they'll actively fight their own government when it tries to warn them about the risks.

That doesn't seem to be nearly the risk as what we have now - US data brokers providing unfettered access to personal data.

It's not really personal data if you consent to providing it, is it?

No, it is not. Public data are the details I post in a public forum. Everything else is best considered private and ought only to be distributed upon my clear, intentionally informed consent.

Sure would be nice for the US to have a comprehensive data privacy law instead of the emerging patchwork state by state solution or whac-a-mole bans like this.

That’s how the US works. The states implement policies which act as a series of test cases for federal legislation once a majority of states support the law.

Which always struck me as a nice idea in theory but of limited use if people can just avoid state-based laws by moving interstate or even registering businesses interstate. In this case however it makes perfect sense to trial it at a state level. Though I'd assume federal government agencies, especially those that deal with particularly sensitive data, would already have strong restrictions on what can be installed on government devices anyway.

>> Which always struck me as a nice idea in theory but of limited use if people can just avoid state-based laws by moving interstate

That (Federalism) is seen by many (reasonable) people as a benefit, not a drawback...

> The only reasonable solution is to ban all user tracking now.

And that would impact tiktok how? The whole reason their is extra focus on them is because we can't regulate them effective so your solution would amount to nothing.

> And that would impact tiktok how?

Well, as it stands they would fall under user tracking, and thus either would be banned or they would have to change their business model and open up to regulators.

And remember, a law does not have to be perfect to serve as a deterrent for bad behavior.

> your solution would amount to nothing.

TikTok is only the tip of the iceberg, so a broader law that bans all user-tracking (including tiktok) can certainly do a lot more than just banning tiktok.

It would mean that apps discovered tracking users illegally, would be banned and fined locally.

And that means any money leaving the US, or money entering the US, would be eaily seized to pay fines. Everything from money paid by app stores, from ads, to renting commercial real eatate in the valley, funds being transferred in country to pay employees, all of it can be seized.

And the apps can be banned from all apps stores, and even eventually a court order to prevent any version from being preloaded. Anyone providing binaries could be fined per count, IP addresses of servers banned, DNS blacklisted, on and on.

Plenty can, and will be done, because that's where all this is headed.

And I might add, the above is "being a nice guy", compared to what China does in these circumstances.

> And that would impact tiktok how?

At this point it isn't relevant. What tiktok banners fear tiktok is doing - is actually being done by data brokers.

Doesn't it make sense to deal with the actual threat before banning the imagined one?

Considering how often TT badgers you to enable access to your contacts or location, I think they would be somewhat chagrined by such a development.

Can Big Tech / Credit Agencies / Lexus Nexus / etc. sell to the PRC?

I’m not disputing you I honestly don’t know, but that would be, surprising to say the least.

I won't even pretend to care about the tracking or see it as a national security threat, I just want a big China-based internet company to get banned from outside markets. "Stones in glass houses" when they complain about it.

New York Times gets the headline right: "New York City Bans TikTok on Government-Owned Devices" https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/16/technology/tiktok-ban-new...

Not a bad idea. Most hedge funds I know also ban it on their corporate phones.

Seems like alot of people with very good knowlegde of the situation see TikTok as a very real threat to their privacy.

Why would a hedge fund trust any spyware? More like there is a political meme trash talking Tik Tok. It is some sort of virtue signaling to make a case for siding with the Good Guys in DC. I e.g. suspect a lot of big techs layoffs are virtue signaling to appease the FED. I believe that the elite operate like this.

There was an interesting article about how the US convicted a Chinese spy largely because he did some spy work on his personal iCloud and Gmail accounts.

Not a fan at all of banning this sort of thing for private citizens, but I think banning it on government-owned devices is a decent trade-off between liberty and public interest.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2022-09-15/china-wan...

Why not just ban all social media apps and pretty much anything that isn't strictly required to do their work.

What kind of nonsense is this?

> What kind of nonsense is this?

The "four legs good, two legs bad" type.

It has the potential to be Chinese spyware.

Social apps can be useful for work.

That's really sad. DSNY has a really good/interesting TT account.

It really goes to show how much value is in these phones to everyone.

Google/Apple need to have apps get full access to every ability on your phone. Companies need it. Government's want it. Users don't care unless it works/doesnt work.

Outside of hacking(which iOS is terrible at preventing), any marketing/perception of security/privacy is a charade.

It surprises me that employees can install anything at all on government devices!

Just lock them down and set the culture such that you seperate personal and government devices.

No one needs to be or should be using TikTok on a work phone, unless you are literally a content creator or social media manager of some sort.

The title seems to be an outright lie if you read the article -- it's only banned on government devices, not for government employees.

And they used to call Blackberry antiquated for selling phones without cameras to enterprise customers. Different horses for courses.

Free marketing for YouTube Shorts and IG Reels.

Not free. Guaranteed that both Google and Meta have spent a significant amount of time and money lobbying for this to (a) apply to TikTok (b) not apply to them.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/petersuciu/2023/03/23/tiktok-ba...

>"It is no secret that Facebook has been aggressively lobbying lawmakers to ban TikTok, as Meta would be the great beneficiary"

I would prefer a multi-billion dollar / euro fine(s) for TikTok instead of a ban since it is clear that TikTok was repeatedly caught and gotten a slap on the wrist for continuous privacy violations of its users [0] [1] [2] and can afford these tiny fines for repeat offenses after lying about how its data was able to be accessible from overseas [3] [4] [5] in China whilst they initially denied it.

It is not some tiny company and it is competing at the scale of Meta in the billions of dollars. There is absolutely no defense at all either from TikTok or its addicted fans to continue creating more excuses or justifications of its privacy violations and lies.

Like Meta was fined in the billions by the regulators, the same should exactly happen with TikTok. Repeat offenses should climb into the tens of billions of dollars.

[0] https://futurism.com/tiktok-spy-locations-specific-americans

[1] https://www.scmagazine.com/news/uk-tiktok-16m-fine-childrens...

[2] https://edpb.europa.eu/news/national-news/2021/dutch-dpa-tik...

[3] https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/emilybakerwhite/tiktok-...

[4] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/nov/02/tiktok-te...

[5] https://fortune.com/2022/12/22/tiktok-data-privacy-blunder-c...

I would prefer it be banned. Most countries are able to block things built by their adversaries and the US needs an equivalent

I don't care a ton about my privacy, I don't have to justify it, and I'm probably in the great majority. At this point there isn't even a lack of awareness. GDPR is just another form of protectionism via obscure standards and selective enforcement, which is classic in Europe, except we got these fun cookie banners out of it too.

When it comes to TikTok, let's be real, the only reason the US or others care is because it's China-based and we aren't friendly with them. That's fine, ban it.

It's like the red scare all over again.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com