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Under what authority? A dozen paragraphs in the article and not one questioning whether he can actually do this. What would such an executive action look like?
by akersten 6y ago
Under what authority?
A dozen paragraphs in the article and not one questioning whether he can actually do this. What would such an executive action look like? An EO to Apple and Google to de-list the app from their stores? Why should they comply?
What's he going to do when ByteDance uploads the .apk somewhere?
Sick of media treating this man like a zoo exhibit instead of the advanced persistent threat to US democracy he is.
- randomfinn 6y ago> What's he going to do when ByteDance uploads the .apk somewhere? I don't think most Android users know how to install an apk, and as far as I know a similar distribution model is not possible on iOS.
- akersten 6y agoFortnite was a widely successful mobile application for a long time, distributed outside of the app store and with the same audience as TikTok - it's not as hard as it would seem to teach people to sideload.
- untog 6y agoTeens would be able to figure it out within minutes. It’s not difficult, it just isn’t required knowledge for most users (yet?)
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- adelpozo 6y agoWhich VPN company is public traded? ;)
- yushuf 6y agoI know for iOS you can change the location of your account and have access to download apps outside the US. I wonder if Tik Tok users will do this and download/use the app anyways
- whoisjuan 6y agoIt wouldn’t matter. To make it effective the FCC would likely ask all the ISPs and Carriers to block TikTok IPs at the network level.
- robotbikes 6y agoI don't think the FCC will move that fast to do something this drastic but I could be wrong. This whole move will likely anger a lot of people and feel authoritarian because they aren't use to the government censoring the media they consume.
- whoisjuan 6y agoFCC is completely aligned with this administration policies. I think they would totally act fast if asked.
- akersten 6y agoHave US ISPs ever been asked/told to block IPs (or even DNS) before? I don't think it's something the FCC could do, especially since they've abdicated most of their authority over the internet to the FTC. Even still, I doubt they have the authority to do it or the means to impose penalties for noncompliance. Even if they could - what is a TikTok IP? I'm confident their US endpoints are AWS or Google Cloud - good luck blocking those.
- whoisjuan 6y agoI’m pretty sure that at TikTok level you need operate with a VPC and have your own range of IPs. Also ISPs and Mobile Carriers have their own blocking and network redirection methods, like url filtering with transparent proxies, that are used to re-lane traffic based on bandwidth usage. a.k.a putting Netflix on the slow lane
- justinzollars 6y ago> advanced persistent threat to US democracy We are a Republic.
- casefields 6y agoEven more Article 4, Section 4 of the constitution: >The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government https://constitutioncenter.org/interactive-constitution/interpretation/article-iv/clauses/42 https://constitutioncenter.org/interactive-constitution/inte...
- barrkel 6y agoThis was probably more necessary when "democracy" usually referred to Athenian democracy, which obviously doesn't scale much beyond a city state.
- stygiansonic 6y agoIf we are being needlessly pedantic, the traditional US definition of a "republic" is a democracy, but just not a direct democracy (I'm not aware of any modern countries that are), which I suspect is what you were trying to point out: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representative_democracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representative_democracy
- sfkdjf9j3j 6y agoIn this context, "democracy" is used in the broad sense, meaning the codified national value of self-government by the population. The distinction that there are elected representatives rather than direct votes isn't relevant.
- barrkel 6y agoRepublics are democracies. They're just not direct democracies. This might also help: https://mises.org/wire/stop-saying-were-republic-not-democracy https://mises.org/wire/stop-saying-were-republic-not-democra...
- ve55 6y agoChina is likely considered by many to be a threat to democracy, which is part of the reasoning behind this
- akersten 6y agoGreat, but that doesn't answer my question: What authority does a US president have to tell a US-based software company to not distribute code from its US servers?
- ve55 6y agoTiktok is not a US-based software company, they're a private company from China: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bytedance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bytedance There's been precedent set recently with e.g. Huawei: https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/15/18216988/white-house-huawei-china-equipment-ban-trump-executive-order https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/15/18216988/white-house-huaw..., but also keep in mind we have dealt with much stronger things in the past: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Export_of_cryptography_from_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Export_of_cryptography_from_th...
- akersten 6y ago> Tiktok is not a US-based software company, they're a private company from China It doesn't really matter, because the app code is repackaged at the Google/Apple level. At that point, it is from US-company to US-consumer. There are no "import restrictions" or customs on code (speech) like there are on hardware.
- remarkEon 6y agoWhat point are you trying to make here? That the US Government does not have the sovereign authority to determine what companies operate within its borders? Edit: Yeah, instead of downvoting this into oblivion, how about making an argument that the US Government doesn't have the authority to determine what companies operate within its borders.
- onetimemanytime 6y agoMy guess: National security as in Huawei https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/15/18216988/white-house-huawei-china-equipment-ban-trump-executive-order https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/15/18216988/white-house-huaw... Let's be realistic, if an app was doing what is alleged here, they should be banned and I'm sure they are provisions to do so without a vote of Congress. Biden campaign was also told to delete TikTok from phones, maybe NSA knows something.
- akersten 6y ago> if an app was doing what is alleged here, they should be banned Yep, I also believe that would be in violation of Google/Apple ToS and they would be happy to ban it. > I'm sure they are provisions to do so without a vote of Congress. I highly doubt it, and I am waiting to be shown otherwise.
- onetimemanytime 6y ago>>I highly doubt it, and I am waiting to be shown otherwise. I showed it to you, Huawei. USA gives a LOT of power to the President, sanctions, bans etc etc.
- akersten 6y agoPreventing the purchase and import of physical equipment into the US is a lot different than preventing the import of code/speech. I fully understand the former is allowed, but I highly doubt the president possesses the authority to do the latter.
- iso947 6y agoThe US prevented the export of code/speech for decades, in fact I’m fairly sure it’s illegal to import recordings of certain speech.
- busymom0 6y agoThis has been the case since the launch of the App Store. It’s not new. When uploading an app to Apple App Store, you have to do disclosures about cryptography exports.
- jmcgough 6y agoThere's a good discussion of his different legal options here: https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/07/24/trump-cant-ban-tiktok-free-chinese-apps/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/07/24/trump-cant-ban-tiktok-f...
- billfruit 6y agoSummary of which seems to be that in general there is not absolute authority available for banning TikTok, but there are some novel/emergency measures possible to put some restrictions on ByteDance, but which are all rather new and untested, some of whose adminstrative rules/regulation are yet only being formulated(they many not be ready for implementation for many months if not weeks), mostly all of which will expose the federal action to be scrutinized by courts if ByteDance decides to goto court.
- mindslight 6y agoIf ByteDance goes to court? How about when Apple and Google go to court... A president unilaterally shutting down a foreign business would destroy trust in their centralized app stores. I can't imagine both companies will just nod their heads and roll over. So does Trump really expect TikTok to just disappear like COVID, or is the actual play here to give Trump a strong talking point to fire up his remaining supporters? He'll undoubtedly group constitutionality-litigating Apple/Google with "the left", like everything else that conflicts with his 1850's world view. FWIW TikTok may be problematic, but it's only slightly more problematic than all of the US-based spyware that has apparently been acceptable for the past decade. The rest of the world has just had to live with the US being able to surveil most of their citizens' digital activity. Now there's a whiff of symmetry and the panic bells are going off.
- floatboth 6y agoApps like TikTok are way less problematic than, like, messengers. If the app is all about publishing things, why is anyone talking about privacy?!
- dependenttypes 6y agoUnder the Bernstein v. United States ruling software source code is protected under the 1st amendment, I do not know if this holds true for binaries as well though. I guess if TikTok distributed only its source code and it was compiled by the user the gov would be able to do nothing about it.
- ISL 6y agoIf TikTok distributed its source code, people would have a much clearer understanding of things that the app does and doesn't do. One could not inspect the data flow after it left the client, but it would still show far more than we normally see from major social-media vendors.
- tossaway69 6y agothey could just block the servers, no?
- zelly 6y ago> What's he going to do when ByteDance uploads the .apk somewhere? This is a social network which gains from network effects / usage. A social network only accessible to Android users is a ghetto. The vast majority of young people in America use iPhones. The last time the majority of internet users managed to disobey the government was the heyday of torrenting and Megaupload. That's not going to happen with today's users and today's walled gardens.
- busymom0 6y agoThe ban will most likely be network based, not just App Store. So apk will probably be useless.
- akersten 6y agoHow would a network ban be enforced? TikTok doesn't even communicate directly with Chinese servers - I block connections to China on my home network, and my kids can still use TikTok on the wifi, so I'm confident there are US servers. I even more doubt that we have the infrastructure in place to do a network-level ban (whatever that would mean) for a single app. It is much easier for me to believe Google/Apple could be strong-armed or sweet-toothed into delisting the app, if it really came down to it.
- busymom0 6y agoYour last sentence shows you are not objective. This is the same thing as Huawei being banned.
- akersten 6y ago> Your last sentence shows you are not objective. Correct, I am not objective on this topic and made no such implication. If we were all simply objective observational automatons, it would make for a pretty sterile comment section. > This is the same thing as Huawei being banned. Someone else said this earlier, and it's pretty different: one is a physical good that goes through customs where there are existing laws that allow for denial of entry. The other is code/speech for which there are no laws granting the executive branch the authority to block.
- grazhero99 6y ago> advanced persistent threat to US democracy I don't see what this has to do with our electoral system. That seems like a rather narrow and emotionally charged stance to take on this issue in my opinion.
- akersten 6y agoThe executive branch taking wild swings to impose rules that even congress would struggle to pass through constitutional review, is a threat to the democratic principles on which the US is based.
- grazhero99 6y agoWhy would congress struggle to pass it through a constitutional review? Plenty of Trump's EOs have been ruled unconstitutional. He may feel that his authority extends beyond checks and balances, but it doesn't. His attempts to abuse his power have been duly mitigated and stopped about as well (or badly depending on how you look at it) as the last few presidents, as I see it.
- akersten 6y ago> Why would congress struggle to pass it through a constitutional review? Because a computer program is an expression, and the right to free expression is a cornerstone of the first amendment. So broadly, I don't think the government can "ban" an app, no matter who wrote it. This proposition has been tested and affirmed for source code (see DeCSS t-shirt, etc.) but to my knowledge has not been tested for binaries. So, it would at minimum be a new test of whether binary code is as much a protected expression as human-readable code.
- grazhero99 6y agoOk. That's an argument for why this is unconstitutional, but not for why congress would be unable to declare it so.
- stale2002 6y ago> Under what authority? Under the authority of an executive order. > Why should they comply? Because these are american companies, who make a bunch of their money in america, and they can be fined many millions or even billions of dollars, or possibly even arrested if they don't comply with the orders of the nation that has the most powerful military in the world. > What's he going to do when ByteDance uploads the .apk somewhere? Probably just fine ByteDance, which has a US presence, and many employees/bank accounts that are in the US. Blatant refusal to follow the law of the most powerful military in the world can be followed up with arrests of employees/executives that are in the US.
- quotemstr 6y agoSo you basically reject the overarching principle of limited government? Want to go full Melian Dialogue? The strong do what they will and the weak suffer what they must? The problem with ruling arbitrarily is that it kills predictability and crushes the spirit. It leads to a state of fear in which nobody wants to invest or go out on a limb, because in an environment where you can be punished for anything, everything is dangerous. That's why I'm personally adamant about requiring a rule before a punishment and why I'm dubious on this recent "let's sanction this one random foreign guy" push.
- stale2002 6y ago> So you basically reject the overarching principle of limited government? It is a good general principle to follow, as a very high level rule. But when a country is in conflict with other nation states, that are not following the same principles as you are, then sometimes a country has to make comprises on their principles in order to not be at a disadvantage. So if China changes a bunch of their own rules, and becomes a much more free and open country, then I would support giving them the benefit of small government/free market protections. Nation states conflicts are messy. And you have to compromise on some of your principles in order to prevent others from taken advantage of you, who do not follow your own principles. > The problem with ruling arbitrarily It is not arbitrary. The USA is in serious conflict with China. And this is one such action that is at least indirectly related to these higher level nation state conflicts.