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Utterly ridiculous to allow TikTok to continue to operate in the current geopolitical climate. China is a surveillance autocracy and has been engaged in adversa

Utterly ridiculous to allow TikTok to continue to operate in the current geopolitical climate. China is a surveillance autocracy and has been engaged in adversarial conduct against the West for years - including extensive psyops. Shut it down, yesterday. Build a local clone so that people can get their fix or whatever. China sure as shit doesn’t allow its citizens to cough up their personal information for algorithmic consumption to Twitter et al.

Tenoke 4y ago
I don't think it's that ridiculous. The default should be not to ban entertainment, and it's not so clearcut whether the danger outweighs the benefits much more than for many other legal forms of entertainment.
- lm28469 4y ago
  > The default should be not to ban entertainment It's only entertainment if you're completely blind. They're using our tolerance as a weakness, while themselves having absolutely 0 tolerance for western bs/propaganda in their home country This is next level "turning the other cheek"
  - Tenoke 4y ago
    It's obviously entertainment. It could additionally be other things, how Top Gun is both entertainment and propaganda or bar drinking is both entertainment and has health risks. The math might come to the risks being higher than the benefits but pretending people aren't entertained by it ironically suggests that you might be more radicalized or brainwashed than TikTok users supposedly are.
    - _aavaa_ 4y ago
      Just because the end user in the US sees it as entertainment doesn’t mean that the CCP treats it as such.
    - lm28469 4y ago
      > It's obviously entertainment. it's not obvious to me at all, in France it's used by islamist organisations to push for communitarianism and separatism, I don't call that entertainment https://www.lefigaro.fr/actualite-france/de-youtube-a-tiktok-ces-influenceurs-musulmans-qui-prechent-l-islam-integral-et-branche-20220823 https://www.lefigaro.fr/actualite-france/de-youtube-a-tiktok... https://www.mediapart.fr/journal/france/111122/ados-en-abaya-sur-tiktok-ces-videos-qui-ont-mis-le-gouvernement-en-ebullition https://www.mediapart.fr/journal/france/111122/ados-en-abaya... https://www.lemonde.fr/pixels/article/2019/10/23/de-la-propagande-pour-l-etat-islamique-detectee-sur-l-application-tiktok_6016607_4408996.html https://www.lemonde.fr/pixels/article/2019/10/23/de-la-propa...
      - Tenoke 4y ago
        By that logic paintings aren't art because the Soviets made some for propaganda purposes.
        lm28469 4y ago
        ISIS decapitation videos aren't cinema, yet they're videos, the medium doesn't matter, what matters is the message. Unless you want to show ISIS decapitation video at Cannes ? If you want to play on words we can do that all day long, the problem is that it doesn't change the reality, and the reality is that like any other medium it's used for nefarious things, the second problem is that modern technology enables a small amount of people to have an increasingly greater reach and larger audience with fewer and fewer restrictions If you can't see the difference between a soviet era propaganda painting and a 24/7 tool behing used 45 to 90 minute every single day on average by millions of kids/teenagers in their formative years I just feel sad for you to be honest. I can kill someone with a fork, I can kill someone with a 100mt nuke, will you argue they are the same ?
      - lzooz 4y ago
        I'd blame France for their immigration policies more than I would blame a platform full of user-generated content
        4y ago
    - throwaway4aday 4y ago
      > It's obviously entertainment. It could additionally be other things, how Top Gun is both entertainment and propaganda I think you're proving the point here. Yes media can be more than one thing or serve more than one purpose. A good question to ask is how much is it entertainment vs how much is it propaganda? I'd wager that there is a lot of content on TikTok that is mostly propaganda, even if it isn't produced by state actors. Social media has given rise to a new form of propaganda that is self-perpetuating, individuals can gain social clout by repeating the propaganda they hear and adding their own flavor to it (even if they don't add content). Maybe call it Performative Propaganda. Social media algorithms help match up the people producing to those who are susceptible to consuming it and provide a selection mechanism to promote the most effective content. This is all that's needed for "memes" (in the original sense) to behave like their namesake genes and undergo rapid reproduction and evolution. Is any of this state controlled? Maybe a small amount but I would ask does it even need to be state controlled? There's enough folie à deux out there in the world, all you need to do is provide an easy way for it to spread and you could severely damage other cultures.
    - moneytide1 4y ago
      > how Top Gun is both entertainment and propaganda The recent conscription of Mr. Cruise to showcase air superiority is an insight tactically granted at the behest of American government as a reaction to international upheaval. A reminder. After the success of "Star Wars", Mr. Ford fulfilled a similar role in a film about infrastructure sabotage (hydroelectric dam and bridge - Force 10 from Navarone). I always appreciated the Top Gun franchise because there are many scenes showing a large group of people enjoying each other's company.
  - CyanBird 4y ago
    > It's only entertainment if you're completely blind "I don't like it so it should be banned" That's such a low level engagement with the matter at hand, sadly these days is the level of discussion here in HN, sad to say that it seems astroturfed, but again, at this point what isn't, right?
    - lm28469 4y ago
      I don't like it and it has measurable negative effects while providing 0 value besides brain washing teens * Then they'll come crying because they don't understand why teenagers depression skyrocketed exactly at the same time as these types of social medias flourished There are plenty of things people like which are banned, that's like the whole basis of living in organised societies....
  - angio 4y ago
    It's not a huge conspiracy theory. TikTok moderates content based on the country's law, the US values free speech and so anyone can post anything they want on TikTok (and facebook, twitter). China has strict censorship laws, so content there is moderated. If you don't want to see that type of content on TikTok, then ask the US governemnt to start censoring internet.
soup10 4y ago
Not sure that US really wants to set a precedent of protectionism when so many large US technology companies operate globally.
- mc32 4y ago
  We're among the least protectionist -not to say we are not protectionist, but comparatively. Others have set the precedent for us. They need no examples or encouragement. That said, yes, the 1A implications are thorny.
  - 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
    1A was not written so that hostile foreign governments can flood your zone with shit.
    - mc32 4y ago
      It's interesting question. We have VoA or whatever. Would the FCC allow a VoRussia or VoChina radio transmitter in the US whose sole purpose was to push Chinese or Russian propaganda? Probably in a war declaration we could shut them down, but what about peacetime?
      - pjc50 4y ago
        > Would the FCC allow a VoRussia or VoChina radio transmitter in the US whose sole purpose was to push Chinese or Russian propaganda? I'm sure they already do? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RT_America https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RT_America was operating right up until the imposition of sanctions.
        mc32 4y ago
        Yeah, but that was more akin to the BBC or even Xinhua. I mean a specifically propagandist station like the VoA or RFE. But that said, looks like all the Biden admin needs to do is set up some sanctions (for whatever reason) and put TT under that umbrella and voila!
weego 4y ago
The US is a surveillance pseudo-democracy. The problem here being this time they can't insert themselves into the surveillance pipeline. They're not better or worse (unless you're fine with your own Govt surveilling you but not another state), just not the status quo.
- dahfizz 4y ago
  This is absurd, frankly. "The US government collects taxes on US citizens, why not let China collect taxes on US citizens? Its the same." "The US government throws US citizens in jail, why not let Chine throw US citizens in jail? Its the same." Yeah, it would be great if the Federal government turned down their surveillance. That doesn't make it okay for China to run psy-ops against us.
  - pozdnyshev 4y ago
  - pjc50 4y ago
    https://www.newsy.com/stories/american-athlete-shares-experience-being-detained-in-china/ https://www.newsy.com/stories/american-athlete-shares-experi... (and obviously if you're a US national in China you'll pay Chinese and US taxes, because of the weird extraterritorial taxation of the US)
    - dahfizz 4y ago
      Yes; you are pedantically correct, and missing the point entirely.
      - CyanBird 4y ago
        But you don't have a point, you just said "x thing is absurd" then proceeded to write a bunch of strawmen arguments which are not applicable
  - encryptluks2 4y ago
drcross 4y ago
Trump tried this and had to back down due to it being an unpopular decision. https://edition.cnn.com/2020/08/06/politics/trump-executive-order-tiktok/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2020/08/06/politics/trump-executive-...
- marcusverus 4y ago
  To clarify: Trump issued the ban, but it was Biden who backed down and rescinded it. https://www.theverge.com/2021/6/9/22525953/biden-tiktok-wechat-trump-bans-revoked-alipay https://www.theverge.com/2021/6/9/22525953/biden-tiktok-wech...
- mmmlinux 4y ago
  I cant imagine how unpopular it must have been to make him back down on something.
- sleepymoose 4y ago
  Anything Trump did was an unpopular decision. If this starts to move forward under the current administration people would be more receptive to it purely based on the fact that it's the other side now.
  - yamtaddle 4y ago
    I'm about as libby a lib as ever lib'd and Trump's action on China was maybe the single thing I agreed with him on. Neoliberal free-trade-over-all-other-concerns policies are actually pretty unpopular among voters in both parties, but are very popular with the donor and policy-wonk class, with the result that both parties typically favor it and have since the 80s, despite their voters mostly disliking it. One of the notable things about Trump's candidacy and presidency was his breaking from this (unpopular) long-standing norm, which fit with the rest of his messaging in that he mostly ignored whatever was ordinary or standard and instead picked the kinds of positions you'd hear talking to a Republican trucker in a diner ("They ought to just build a wall" is straight out of those kinds of conversations, for instance). Oh, wait, one other thing I agreed with him on: leaving Afghanistan ASAP. The whiney push-back he got on that and the way the military managed to sand-bag the effort until well into Biden's term and still fuck it up, was straight-up embarrassing. Heads should have rolled.
pjc50 4y ago
sigh can we not have targeted-by-nationality bans and instead have .. rules? If Tiktok the app is performing surveillance, ban surveillance by apps. All of them. Or make it technically impossible to escape its little sandbox, and let people have their entertainment.
- bheadmaster 4y ago
  But what about national security? Surveillance by _our_ guys is necessary!
- dylkil 4y ago
  >ban surveillance by apps if only
- samatman 4y ago
  We should have rules that include forbidding any Chinese company from selling SaaS or social media until CCP takes the Great Firewall down. They've made a pariah internet and they should stay there. Suit you? Suits me.
  - pjc50 4y ago
    What about Russian social media (I think vk got sanctioned but not livejournal)? What about, given the other thread, Qatar? Should Orkut (Brazilian) have been allowed? My point is that the rules should target what it does rather than simply "China=Bad", since that offers a way back into compliance with the rules. However unlikely that actually is.
    - cscurmudgeon 4y ago
      > Brazilian Nobody is calling for blanket bans of foreign apps. This is a straw man argument.
    - vajrabum 4y ago
      Orkut by the way was created by a Stanford trained engineer at Google. It wasn't Brazilian. Rather it had a Brazilian community.
throwaway0x7E6 4y ago
>including extensive psyops american social media should be shut down yesterday everywhere in the world then - including the US, lmao there was a really good example really recently with japanese twiiter, where trends were dominated by the diarrhea of progressive politics, and then suddenly stopped when Musk had fired a ton of dead weight. now it's all anime and games. some journo even complained that the stories they submit no longer get promoted and wondered why
clashmoore 4y ago
So I'm an American who uses TikTok for entertainment. I don't think it's utterly ridiculous to allow TikTok to continue. Even hearing these threats that China is possibly surveilling me - what do they get that other social media apps like Instagram get from me? From the FBI it sounds like the national security threat is that China may use it alter my feed to influence me or take over the control of my Apple phone? Has Apple warned users that TikTok will take control of their phone? As far as I'm concerned, I'm just watching short 60 second videos and could not care less if China has my birthdate.
- piva00 4y ago
  You are oversimplifying the issue. It's not about having your birthdate, it's about capturing data about your tastes and preferences over time to feed into a profiling model. It's a way to capture data to use inference models to understand who you actually are, your tastes and personality. Yes, Instagram/FB/Meta do the same, Google does the same, the difference is that Meta and Google are not the government or, worse, an adversarial government from your nation that could weaponise such data. Tailor-made suggestions and recommendations already work pretty well for adtech, tailored suggestions of content with aims to slowly shift cultures and perceptions is much more dangerous than serving compulsive consumption. And yes, very likely the US government has some access to FB/Instagram/Meta/Google profiling data, I also believe that's dangerous (even more that I'm not an American citizen, nor live in the USA and still am probably surveilled by its government) but in a different degree and level than what TitTok and China might be able to.
  - clashmoore 4y ago
    The article mentioned the company sharing birthdates which is why I used it myself. I'm just failing to understand why China using whatever data TikTok has on me to understand my tastes and personality is a national security issue for the United States. The fear seems to be that China could tweak a US citizen's feed, based on their profiling, to inject Chinese propaganda?
    - piva00 4y ago
Cthulhu_ 4y ago
I mean the US is just as guilty of that, with e.g. Facebook and companies using it manipulating global politics; see for example Cambridge Analytica and the list of elections they influenced [0] through nasty means. There's also the Snowden revelations that revealed the US security services have free access to social media; if you want surveillance, that's the one. And let's not even start about the psyops that the US has been doing for decades, pushing the narrative that they are the saviours of the world and all that through media and Pentagon-approved movies. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambridge_Analytica#Elections https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambridge_Analytica#Elections
- p0pcult 4y ago
  Cambridge Analytica, while problematic, isn't a government, which makes your analogy extremely weak. Cambridge Analytica, while problematic, doesn't have control over FB/its algorithm, which makes your analogy extremely weak.
- hokumguru 4y ago
  Facebook did not intentionally share information with CA. That was a data breach and was corrected after made known.
derefr 4y ago
“Build a local clone” — the obvious answer is that both Instagram and Snapchat already have; and that nobody wants to switch. If only the US blocked TikTok, that’d just mean there’d still be a TikTok that every other western country has access to except the US, full of content interesting to Westerners. People with Android devices would just sideload it, and use VPNs to access it if necessary. The less-obvious answer: TikTok is the local clone, in a sense. It’s a separate app from the Chinese Douyin app. Personally, I’d suggest copying China’s own strategy here: tell ByteDance that if they want to operate in the US, it has to be through a contract with a non-owned US company staffed by US citizens. Essentially making TikTok into an American company that just happens to license some Chinese software IP.
- josefresco 4y ago
  > nobody wants to switch There's no reason to switch now. Ban TikTok and people will switch.
  - tenpies 4y ago
    Will it? Part of Tiktok's genius is that you don't even need an account to view content, or even the app - the browser experience is quite good. Now compare the friction between wanting to see a Tiktok right now, versus trying to see one of whatever Snap's equivalent is, or Facebook and Instagram's. Tiktok is absolute butter, on browser or app.
    - spookie 4y ago
      Maybe that friction exists cause western companies follow some pesky regulations about user data. And, they want to make sure they can monetize their content by blocking unlimited access to those who have not accepted their terms and conditions. Maybe tiktok doesn't follow those to begin with...
  - notpushkin 4y ago
    Both TikTok and Instagram are banned in Russia, and yet people use still them. You're underestimating the “network effect”. (Is there a proper name for that?)
glitchc 4y ago
You know not what you ask for. You are giving up freedom for safety. How do we cut the app off? Remove it from the app store? People will post apps disguising a Tiktok connection. Block connections to servers in China? Doing that means creating a great firewall controlling what sorts of connections are made to American clients. If we get there, China will have proved that their method of government is better than ours. They will have already won.
standardUser 4y ago
"engaged in adversarial conduct against the West for years - including extensive psyops." And the US has an extensive and well-documented record of doing exactly this to other nations (and far, far worse). If we start a new Cold War every between every two nations that try to undermine each other we'll quickly run out of trading partners, which isn't going to work out too well for a preeminent trading nation (or it's people).
- _fat_santa 4y ago
  I read an article the other day that argued that TikTok should not be banned on the basis of free speech. The argument is, while American's have the freedom to say whatever the hell we want, we have an arguably even more freedom when it comes to what we consume, with only very select content (CSAM for example) being illegal to consume. Yes there might be targeted misinformation there, but it's up to individual Americans to decide if they want to consume that content, government should not be in the business of curating content.
  - clcaev 4y ago
    The government should be concerned about protecting its citizens, as well as its political and economic environment. If a product is unsafe, it should be regulated; if the producer does not comply, it should be banned.
SkyMarshal 4y ago
> Build a local clone so that people can get their fix or whatever. Seems like the perfect startup and perfect timing for all the recently laid off Twitter folks.
k_paleologos 4y ago
Why should the government decide which apps a user can install in their device?
OnlyMortal 4y ago
As a counter point, the US actively tries to hack UK security networks. Source: My job was to prevent that. I’ve no doubt we do the same to the US.
unity1001 4y ago
> China is a surveillance autocracy and has been engaged in adversarial conduct against the West for years - including extensive psyops. CIA and its satellites have been doing that for decades, and on top of that it has a habit of kidnapping, jailing and torturing other countries' citizens. Even the episode of 'rendition flights' could totally delegitimize any complaint from the US, leave aside its cooperative satellites. Projecting problems and criticism to outside, imagined or concocted enemies and veering the attention away from the plague inside their own society are things which prevent the Western public from addressing the enemy in their midst. That behavior pattern is why the West has been tumbling downhill for the last 40 years.
zkid18 4y ago
It’s bizarre to see such comments on HN. Short-term it get that gains on the geopolitical storm, long-term I feel that will e very bad for the developers community.
SighMagi 4y ago
Have you been on TikTok? All I see on it are large breasted women, NASA stuff and dog rescues. I do wonder if there’s any lobbying going on from Facebook or Google to help bolster their Reels and Shorts products, both of which seem to be garbage and miss the point of TikTok (the two way interaction).

Tenoke 4y ago

I don't think it's that ridiculous. The default should be not to ban entertainment, and it's not so clearcut whether the danger outweighs the benefits much more than for many other legal forms of entertainment.

lm28469 4y ago
> The default should be not to ban entertainment It's only entertainment if you're completely blind. They're using our tolerance as a weakness, while themselves having absolutely 0 tolerance for western bs/propaganda in their home country This is next level "turning the other cheek"
- Tenoke 4y ago
  It's obviously entertainment. It could additionally be other things, how Top Gun is both entertainment and propaganda or bar drinking is both entertainment and has health risks. The math might come to the risks being higher than the benefits but pretending people aren't entertained by it ironically suggests that you might be more radicalized or brainwashed than TikTok users supposedly are.
  - _aavaa_ 4y ago
    Just because the end user in the US sees it as entertainment doesn’t mean that the CCP treats it as such.
  - lm28469 4y ago
    > It's obviously entertainment. it's not obvious to me at all, in France it's used by islamist organisations to push for communitarianism and separatism, I don't call that entertainment https://www.lefigaro.fr/actualite-france/de-youtube-a-tiktok-ces-influenceurs-musulmans-qui-prechent-l-islam-integral-et-branche-20220823 https://www.lefigaro.fr/actualite-france/de-youtube-a-tiktok... https://www.mediapart.fr/journal/france/111122/ados-en-abaya-sur-tiktok-ces-videos-qui-ont-mis-le-gouvernement-en-ebullition https://www.mediapart.fr/journal/france/111122/ados-en-abaya... https://www.lemonde.fr/pixels/article/2019/10/23/de-la-propagande-pour-l-etat-islamique-detectee-sur-l-application-tiktok_6016607_4408996.html https://www.lemonde.fr/pixels/article/2019/10/23/de-la-propa...
    - Tenoke 4y ago
      By that logic paintings aren't art because the Soviets made some for propaganda purposes.
      - lm28469 4y ago
        ISIS decapitation videos aren't cinema, yet they're videos, the medium doesn't matter, what matters is the message. Unless you want to show ISIS decapitation video at Cannes ? If you want to play on words we can do that all day long, the problem is that it doesn't change the reality, and the reality is that like any other medium it's used for nefarious things, the second problem is that modern technology enables a small amount of people to have an increasingly greater reach and larger audience with fewer and fewer restrictions If you can't see the difference between a soviet era propaganda painting and a 24/7 tool behing used 45 to 90 minute every single day on average by millions of kids/teenagers in their formative years I just feel sad for you to be honest. I can kill someone with a fork, I can kill someone with a 100mt nuke, will you argue they are the same ?
    - lzooz 4y ago
      I'd blame France for their immigration policies more than I would blame a platform full of user-generated content
      - 4y ago
  - throwaway4aday 4y ago
    > It's obviously entertainment. It could additionally be other things, how Top Gun is both entertainment and propaganda I think you're proving the point here. Yes media can be more than one thing or serve more than one purpose. A good question to ask is how much is it entertainment vs how much is it propaganda? I'd wager that there is a lot of content on TikTok that is mostly propaganda, even if it isn't produced by state actors. Social media has given rise to a new form of propaganda that is self-perpetuating, individuals can gain social clout by repeating the propaganda they hear and adding their own flavor to it (even if they don't add content). Maybe call it Performative Propaganda. Social media algorithms help match up the people producing to those who are susceptible to consuming it and provide a selection mechanism to promote the most effective content. This is all that's needed for "memes" (in the original sense) to behave like their namesake genes and undergo rapid reproduction and evolution. Is any of this state controlled? Maybe a small amount but I would ask does it even need to be state controlled? There's enough folie à deux out there in the world, all you need to do is provide an easy way for it to spread and you could severely damage other cultures.
  - moneytide1 4y ago
    > how Top Gun is both entertainment and propaganda The recent conscription of Mr. Cruise to showcase air superiority is an insight tactically granted at the behest of American government as a reaction to international upheaval. A reminder. After the success of "Star Wars", Mr. Ford fulfilled a similar role in a film about infrastructure sabotage (hydroelectric dam and bridge - Force 10 from Navarone). I always appreciated the Top Gun franchise because there are many scenes showing a large group of people enjoying each other's company.
- CyanBird 4y ago
  > It's only entertainment if you're completely blind "I don't like it so it should be banned" That's such a low level engagement with the matter at hand, sadly these days is the level of discussion here in HN, sad to say that it seems astroturfed, but again, at this point what isn't, right?
  - lm28469 4y ago
    I don't like it and it has measurable negative effects while providing 0 value besides brain washing teens * Then they'll come crying because they don't understand why teenagers depression skyrocketed exactly at the same time as these types of social medias flourished There are plenty of things people like which are banned, that's like the whole basis of living in organised societies....
- angio 4y ago
  It's not a huge conspiracy theory. TikTok moderates content based on the country's law, the US values free speech and so anyone can post anything they want on TikTok (and facebook, twitter). China has strict censorship laws, so content there is moderated. If you don't want to see that type of content on TikTok, then ask the US governemnt to start censoring internet.

soup10 4y ago

Not sure that US really wants to set a precedent of protectionism when so many large US technology companies operate globally.

mc32 4y ago
We're among the least protectionist -not to say we are not protectionist, but comparatively. Others have set the precedent for us. They need no examples or encouragement. That said, yes, the 1A implications are thorny.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
  1A was not written so that hostile foreign governments can flood your zone with shit.
  - mc32 4y ago
    It's interesting question. We have VoA or whatever. Would the FCC allow a VoRussia or VoChina radio transmitter in the US whose sole purpose was to push Chinese or Russian propaganda? Probably in a war declaration we could shut them down, but what about peacetime?
    - pjc50 4y ago
      > Would the FCC allow a VoRussia or VoChina radio transmitter in the US whose sole purpose was to push Chinese or Russian propaganda? I'm sure they already do? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RT_America https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RT_America was operating right up until the imposition of sanctions.
      - mc32 4y ago
        Yeah, but that was more akin to the BBC or even Xinhua. I mean a specifically propagandist station like the VoA or RFE. But that said, looks like all the Biden admin needs to do is set up some sanctions (for whatever reason) and put TT under that umbrella and voila!

weego 4y ago

The US is a surveillance pseudo-democracy. The problem here being this time they can't insert themselves into the surveillance pipeline. They're not better or worse (unless you're fine with your own Govt surveilling you but not another state), just not the status quo.

dahfizz 4y ago
This is absurd, frankly. "The US government collects taxes on US citizens, why not let China collect taxes on US citizens? Its the same." "The US government throws US citizens in jail, why not let Chine throw US citizens in jail? Its the same." Yeah, it would be great if the Federal government turned down their surveillance. That doesn't make it okay for China to run psy-ops against us.
- pozdnyshev 4y ago
- pjc50 4y ago
  https://www.newsy.com/stories/american-athlete-shares-experience-being-detained-in-china/ https://www.newsy.com/stories/american-athlete-shares-experi... (and obviously if you're a US national in China you'll pay Chinese and US taxes, because of the weird extraterritorial taxation of the US)
  - dahfizz 4y ago
    Yes; you are pedantically correct, and missing the point entirely.
    - CyanBird 4y ago
      But you don't have a point, you just said "x thing is absurd" then proceeded to write a bunch of strawmen arguments which are not applicable
- encryptluks2 4y ago

drcross 4y ago

Trump tried this and had to back down due to it being an unpopular decision. https://edition.cnn.com/2020/08/06/politics/trump-executive-order-tiktok/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2020/08/06/politics/trump-executive-...

marcusverus 4y ago
To clarify: Trump issued the ban, but it was Biden who backed down and rescinded it. https://www.theverge.com/2021/6/9/22525953/biden-tiktok-wechat-trump-bans-revoked-alipay https://www.theverge.com/2021/6/9/22525953/biden-tiktok-wech...
mmmlinux 4y ago
I cant imagine how unpopular it must have been to make him back down on something.
sleepymoose 4y ago
Anything Trump did was an unpopular decision. If this starts to move forward under the current administration people would be more receptive to it purely based on the fact that it's the other side now.
- yamtaddle 4y ago
  I'm about as libby a lib as ever lib'd and Trump's action on China was maybe the single thing I agreed with him on. Neoliberal free-trade-over-all-other-concerns policies are actually pretty unpopular among voters in both parties, but are very popular with the donor and policy-wonk class, with the result that both parties typically favor it and have since the 80s, despite their voters mostly disliking it. One of the notable things about Trump's candidacy and presidency was his breaking from this (unpopular) long-standing norm, which fit with the rest of his messaging in that he mostly ignored whatever was ordinary or standard and instead picked the kinds of positions you'd hear talking to a Republican trucker in a diner ("They ought to just build a wall" is straight out of those kinds of conversations, for instance). Oh, wait, one other thing I agreed with him on: leaving Afghanistan ASAP. The whiney push-back he got on that and the way the military managed to sand-bag the effort until well into Biden's term and still fuck it up, was straight-up embarrassing. Heads should have rolled.

pjc50 4y ago

sigh can we not have targeted-by-nationality bans and instead have .. rules? If Tiktok the app is performing surveillance, ban surveillance by apps. All of them. Or make it technically impossible to escape its little sandbox, and let people have their entertainment.

bheadmaster 4y ago
But what about national security? Surveillance by _our_ guys is necessary!
dylkil 4y ago
>ban surveillance by apps if only
samatman 4y ago
We should have rules that include forbidding any Chinese company from selling SaaS or social media until CCP takes the Great Firewall down. They've made a pariah internet and they should stay there. Suit you? Suits me.
- pjc50 4y ago
  What about Russian social media (I think vk got sanctioned but not livejournal)? What about, given the other thread, Qatar? Should Orkut (Brazilian) have been allowed? My point is that the rules should target what it does rather than simply "China=Bad", since that offers a way back into compliance with the rules. However unlikely that actually is.
  - cscurmudgeon 4y ago
    > Brazilian Nobody is calling for blanket bans of foreign apps. This is a straw man argument.
  - vajrabum 4y ago
    Orkut by the way was created by a Stanford trained engineer at Google. It wasn't Brazilian. Rather it had a Brazilian community.

throwaway0x7E6 4y ago

>including extensive psyops american social media should be shut down yesterday everywhere in the world then - including the US, lmao there was a really good example really recently with japanese twiiter, where trends were dominated by the diarrhea of progressive politics, and then suddenly stopped when Musk had fired a ton of dead weight. now it's all anime and games. some journo even complained that the stories they submit no longer get promoted and wondered why

clashmoore 4y ago

So I'm an American who uses TikTok for entertainment. I don't think it's utterly ridiculous to allow TikTok to continue. Even hearing these threats that China is possibly surveilling me - what do they get that other social media apps like Instagram get from me? From the FBI it sounds like the national security threat is that China may use it alter my feed to influence me or take over the control of my Apple phone? Has Apple warned users that TikTok will take control of their phone? As far as I'm concerned, I'm just watching short 60 second videos and could not care less if China has my birthdate.

piva00 4y ago
You are oversimplifying the issue. It's not about having your birthdate, it's about capturing data about your tastes and preferences over time to feed into a profiling model. It's a way to capture data to use inference models to understand who you actually are, your tastes and personality. Yes, Instagram/FB/Meta do the same, Google does the same, the difference is that Meta and Google are not the government or, worse, an adversarial government from your nation that could weaponise such data. Tailor-made suggestions and recommendations already work pretty well for adtech, tailored suggestions of content with aims to slowly shift cultures and perceptions is much more dangerous than serving compulsive consumption. And yes, very likely the US government has some access to FB/Instagram/Meta/Google profiling data, I also believe that's dangerous (even more that I'm not an American citizen, nor live in the USA and still am probably surveilled by its government) but in a different degree and level than what TitTok and China might be able to.
- clashmoore 4y ago
  The article mentioned the company sharing birthdates which is why I used it myself. I'm just failing to understand why China using whatever data TikTok has on me to understand my tastes and personality is a national security issue for the United States. The fear seems to be that China could tweak a US citizen's feed, based on their profiling, to inject Chinese propaganda?
  - piva00 4y ago

Cthulhu_ 4y ago

I mean the US is just as guilty of that, with e.g. Facebook and companies using it manipulating global politics; see for example Cambridge Analytica and the list of elections they influenced [0] through nasty means. There's also the Snowden revelations that revealed the US security services have free access to social media; if you want surveillance, that's the one. And let's not even start about the psyops that the US has been doing for decades, pushing the narrative that they are the saviours of the world and all that through media and Pentagon-approved movies. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambridge_Analytica#Elections https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambridge_Analytica#Elections

p0pcult 4y ago
Cambridge Analytica, while problematic, isn't a government, which makes your analogy extremely weak. Cambridge Analytica, while problematic, doesn't have control over FB/its algorithm, which makes your analogy extremely weak.
hokumguru 4y ago
Facebook did not intentionally share information with CA. That was a data breach and was corrected after made known.

derefr 4y ago

“Build a local clone” — the obvious answer is that both Instagram and Snapchat already have; and that nobody wants to switch. If only the US blocked TikTok, that’d just mean there’d still be a TikTok that every other western country has access to except the US, full of content interesting to Westerners. People with Android devices would just sideload it, and use VPNs to access it if necessary. The less-obvious answer: TikTok is the local clone, in a sense. It’s a separate app from the Chinese Douyin app. Personally, I’d suggest copying China’s own strategy here: tell ByteDance that if they want to operate in the US, it has to be through a contract with a non-owned US company staffed by US citizens. Essentially making TikTok into an American company that just happens to license some Chinese software IP.

josefresco 4y ago
> nobody wants to switch There's no reason to switch now. Ban TikTok and people will switch.
- tenpies 4y ago
  Will it? Part of Tiktok's genius is that you don't even need an account to view content, or even the app - the browser experience is quite good. Now compare the friction between wanting to see a Tiktok right now, versus trying to see one of whatever Snap's equivalent is, or Facebook and Instagram's. Tiktok is absolute butter, on browser or app.
  - spookie 4y ago
    Maybe that friction exists cause western companies follow some pesky regulations about user data. And, they want to make sure they can monetize their content by blocking unlimited access to those who have not accepted their terms and conditions. Maybe tiktok doesn't follow those to begin with...
- notpushkin 4y ago
  Both TikTok and Instagram are banned in Russia, and yet people use still them. You're underestimating the “network effect”. (Is there a proper name for that?)

glitchc 4y ago

You know not what you ask for. You are giving up freedom for safety. How do we cut the app off? Remove it from the app store? People will post apps disguising a Tiktok connection. Block connections to servers in China? Doing that means creating a great firewall controlling what sorts of connections are made to American clients. If we get there, China will have proved that their method of government is better than ours. They will have already won.

standardUser 4y ago

"engaged in adversarial conduct against the West for years - including extensive psyops." And the US has an extensive and well-documented record of doing exactly this to other nations (and far, far worse). If we start a new Cold War every between every two nations that try to undermine each other we'll quickly run out of trading partners, which isn't going to work out too well for a preeminent trading nation (or it's people).

_fat_santa 4y ago
I read an article the other day that argued that TikTok should not be banned on the basis of free speech. The argument is, while American's have the freedom to say whatever the hell we want, we have an arguably even more freedom when it comes to what we consume, with only very select content (CSAM for example) being illegal to consume. Yes there might be targeted misinformation there, but it's up to individual Americans to decide if they want to consume that content, government should not be in the business of curating content.
- clcaev 4y ago
  The government should be concerned about protecting its citizens, as well as its political and economic environment. If a product is unsafe, it should be regulated; if the producer does not comply, it should be banned.

SkyMarshal 4y ago

> Build a local clone so that people can get their fix or whatever. Seems like the perfect startup and perfect timing for all the recently laid off Twitter folks.

k_paleologos 4y ago

Why should the government decide which apps a user can install in their device?

OnlyMortal 4y ago

As a counter point, the US actively tries to hack UK security networks. Source: My job was to prevent that. I’ve no doubt we do the same to the US.

unity1001 4y ago

> China is a surveillance autocracy and has been engaged in adversarial conduct against the West for years - including extensive psyops. CIA and its satellites have been doing that for decades, and on top of that it has a habit of kidnapping, jailing and torturing other countries' citizens. Even the episode of 'rendition flights' could totally delegitimize any complaint from the US, leave aside its cooperative satellites. Projecting problems and criticism to outside, imagined or concocted enemies and veering the attention away from the plague inside their own society are things which prevent the Western public from addressing the enemy in their midst. That behavior pattern is why the West has been tumbling downhill for the last 40 years.

zkid18 4y ago

It’s bizarre to see such comments on HN. Short-term it get that gains on the geopolitical storm, long-term I feel that will e very bad for the developers community.

SighMagi 4y ago

Have you been on TikTok? All I see on it are large breasted women, NASA stuff and dog rescues. I do wonder if there’s any lobbying going on from Facebook or Google to help bolster their Reels and Shorts products, both of which seem to be garbage and miss the point of TikTok (the two way interaction).