Comment by perihelions | Hacker News Reader

Comment by perihelions | Hacker News Reader

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They're right to be angry at their government: freedom of communication is a human right they've had taken away from them. I'd be angry too if a US president made it illegal for me to read HN. I'd be very mad if TikTok pundits were making influential videos advocating HN be shut down—so I can't imagine writing HN comments arguing the reverse, that's the symmetry principle that underpins civics, equality. The right of a TikTok viewer to watch content I dislike is equal to my right to read HN—their anger is the same as my anger.

In the Indian context, their TikTok ban is adjacent to a wide variety of internet censorship targeting the incumbent government's political detractors. It's gone to the extent of even regional internet shutdowns. I can't help but thinking this all functions as a slippery slope: the more people tolerate temporary emergency measures, the more they become permanent, and pervasive—like India today. Censorship is an attractively abusable power.

It's a cautionary tale from more angles than the WSJ article considers.

In the Indian context, Tiktok was merely one of dozens of Chinese apps which were banned following an attack by the Chinese military on our borders.

This. Plane and simple. And from my limited interactions with teenagers, no one is missing it. YouTube and Instagram now offer everything needed.

Nothing like freedom of a speech, government oversight etc. etc. the article is trying to portray.

There's a difference between the officially stated reason and the real one. The government still tries to keep up the pretence of a functional democracy, so it can't outright say they are banning things that they don't like.

You're free to buy the party line but at least question whether the reasoning makes any sense. Does banning a handful of apps while increasing Chinese investments and imports really aling with the official stand that this was a retaliatory action?

Even a pretending government sometimes make the right decision, even if the motivation is at best questionable.

The nasty influence of TikTok outside China has been very clear for a long time. This is part of modern warfare, establishment is only really slow to process this fact. Also because of the misplaced idea that a democratic constitution with a rule of law is something that magically was always there and will forever be there, even if we sit passively down and see people rising that promise to break that constitution down.

> YouTube and Instagram now offer everything needed.

Both Google and Meta are in cahoots (tacit compliance) with the Government after they were put through the ban hammer: https://www.zdnet.com/article/india-oks-censoring-facebook-g...

Same for Blackberry: https://theworld.org/dispatch/india/100831/blackberry-resear...

> Nothing like freedom of a speech, government oversight etc. etc. the article is trying to portray.

There's not much freedom of speech in India: Only to an extent you don't ruffle any features and/or aren't influential enough to effect any outcome. Besides, the society itself enforces a crude form of censorship on whatever is taboo or controversial or fringe.

> They're right to be angry at their government: freedom of communication is a human right they've had taken away from them.

Freedom of communication is freedom to express oneself for individual humans. It is not the right for a totalitarian state to promote itself and weaken democracies.

TikTok works completely different in China vs other countries. Outside of China we have to deal with a highly addictive algo that promotes content of extreme right nuts, anti-vaccination hustlers, and content that over paints any negative information about China.

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Totalitarian states fear their constituents, as they could rise to take their destiny in their own hands. A rule based order and the existence of successful democracies are always a threat to any dictator circle, because their iron fist is fragile.

I have the right to ingest that communication if I want to. Reading and distributing Pravda is not, and should not, be a crime.

Moreover, this is always a speculative argument. There is no direct evidence I'm aware of that TikTok’s content is directly controlled by the CCP. If you can’t prove it with a paper trail, you basically have carte blanche to censor software from any country you happen to dislike.

It’s my understanding that Tiktok does not work in China. There’s an equivalent called Douyin. Having used neither, I don’t know what’s the difference, if any.

> There’s an equivalent called Douyin. Having used neither, I don’t know what’s the difference, if any.

Here's a video about the differences:

TikTok in China versus the United States | 60 Minutes:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0j0xzuh-6rY

Douyin is much healthier. Chinese children cannot use Douyin for more than 40 min a day, and it promotes positive content like science experiments you can do at home.

American kids can use TikTok as much as they want, and so are addicted. I don't use it, but I'm almost certain it doesn't just show prosocial educational content to kids, but mostly mindless entertainment and influencer ads.

The result is the most popular career Chinese kids saw they want to grow up to be astronauts, but American kids want to be social media influences.

> because their iron fist is fragile

Authoritarians have been relentlessly strengthening their fists as technology (dogs) gets increasingly good at herding the masses (sheeps).

Sure. On the other hand, the China and Russia regimes have to invest a lot in firewalls to close of the masses to information.

And with all surveillance tech they still fear the masses. During the very rigid covid lockdowns in China people started to become more actively frustrated, prompting Xi to finally reverse his policies.

But the biggest threat to dictatorships is their own organization, as power transfer is often chaotic and violent. The workings of those states are best compared to maffia power dynamics.

It's an interesting thought experiment to look at if the government were trying to ban HN, but the underlying issue is the ownership of TikTok by China and not a ban of the app itself. If YC and HN was officially owned and operated by CCP party members, I imagine there would be similar concerns.

it's the substance of the content on TikTok that's the issue. If TikTok was seen as wholesome and promoting education in children, which it could, then we'd be having a different discussion, but the underlying belief, that there's a guiding hand on their content algorithm to make the United States dumber and more divided is the problem.

Of course, capitalism's job is to sell you more crap, so Facebook's algorithm is "benign" in comparison.

This has nothing to do with your right to view content. Your right to view whatever content you like does not give foreign dictatorships the right to manipulate and attack our societies.

If HN was under the control of the Chinese Communist Party and its algorithms and moderation were manipulated in order to influence the narrative on China, then absolutely yes HN should be banned completely. Hostile foreign powers do not have any right to publish content within our borders.

Fuck them.

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