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Comment by aunterste | Hacker News Reader

This would have been a great opportunity to regulate and prohibit massive data collection on mobile phones, by writing a law that requires the platforms (iOS,android) to architect differently and police this aggressively. Takes care of a lot of the TikTok worry and cleans up ecosystems from location tracking/selling weather apps as well.

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There's no compelling argument or evidence of data collection with TikTok, to my knowledge. Theres more evidence of data collection and aggregation with American platforms than TikTok. Additionally, TikTok is operated independently within the USA and hosted on American servers. I think if there's any opportunity to regulate data collection, TikTok seems to have positioned itself defensively and seems to be distant from being used as an example. The only thing that seems to matter with this ban is that TikTok is mostly owned by a Chinese company.

I'd love to be corrected, but I haven't been provided any evidence or information that suggests this ban was justified at all.

I met someone who did some high-level work for ByteDance. I asked them what they thought of the worries that TikTok was a CCP spying instrument.

They said ByteDance is as disorganized as any other big tech company, and it would be approximately impossible for them to discretely pull that off.

It's easy to see "CCP" and think bogeyman, but it is interesting to think about how achievable it would be to pull off something shady at Google or Facebook, and apply that same thought process to ByteDance.

Given the Cambridge Analytica scandal, why wouldn't it be achievable at Facebook, let alone TikTok.

The CCP could mandate that the TikTok algorithm display certain types of political content, then further mandate that any criticism of the CCP be limited, especially discussion of the said censorship. Most users wouldn't know about it and leakers at ByteDance wouldn't be able to change that. It's not the US - they are punished in China in a way that doesn't happen in the US.

> The CCP could mandate that the TikTok algorithm display certain types of political content

Who couldn't? Do we have a proof?

> It's not the US - they are punished in China in a way that doesn't happen in the US.

Do you have a comparison graph? You seem to be knowledgeable

Chinese laws allow for more direct state control of tech companies, even more so than the US. They must legally turn over any data they have, and have to have CCP members installed in their companies.

> ByteDance is as disorganized as any other big tech company, and it would be approximately impossible

I've worked for AT&T, and letmetellyou about disorganization and corporate ineffectiveness.

And yet: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A

No evidence? You’re seeing what you (and TikTok) wants you to see. Any business and I mean ANY business at its core should act in its own self interest of survival. TikTok could have easily gone public in the USA to protect the company and employees. But they didn’t. Unless you can give me a reason why they are allowing the company to die, instead of survive, you have all the evidence you need about how suspicious the company is at its core.

> No evidence?

> You’re seeing what you (and TikTok) wants you to see.

No, they can show me anything, but I decide to click or not to click on it - just the same thing as HN.

Not every company should be a public one. Valve is not a public company, so what?

Yours is speculation, not evidence.

> TikTok could have easily gone public in the USA to protect the company and employees.

So is this. There is no reason to believe the government attack would stop if this happened

I’d love to see that happen as much as you but it really is irrelevant for this case. The truth is that this case is about which government gets to brainwash the masses. By far and away the greatest threat Tiktok poses to the US is a foreign government having that ability to control public opinion en masse.

None of the litigants proposed that, and neither did the act in question. The court doesn't usually address matters outside the controversy in question, so it's no surprise that they didn't here.

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