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It looks like the federal government has banned software from federal devices via a mix of executive orders, Federal Acquisition Regulation, defense appropriati

It looks like the federal government has banned software from federal devices via a mix of executive orders, Federal Acquisition Regulation, defense appropriations and other laws passed by Congress [0](non-exhaustive list). Many of these prohibitions target specific platforms, companies, and hardware so actions like this are not unprecedented. That being said - one of the reactions I've noticed to the "we need to ban TikTok" movement is that we should target behavior instead of specific companies. The issue with that is many companies and platforms owned by "friendly" companies would also be impacted by increased security and privacy protections provided to all US residents - not just those employed by the federal government. [0] https://cmmcinfo.org/2021/01/20/list-of-hardware-software-and-services-banned-by-us-government/ https://cmmcinfo.org/2021/01/20/list-of-hardware-software-an...

jen20 4y ago
> The issue with that is many companies and platforms owned by "friendly" companies would also be impacted by increased security and privacy protections provided to all US residents Doesn’t sound like an issue to me. Anyone tracking or profiling is inherently unfriendly, regardless of national origin. Ban the lot.
- ajross 4y ago
  > Doesn’t sound like an issue to me. Anyone tracking or profiling is inherently unfriendly, regardless of national origin. Ban the lot. I think that's somewhat strained. "Tracking or profiling" for the purpose of advertising when applied generically to all users in a reasonably anonymized way is... simply not in the same class as "tracking or profiling"[1] applied to target specific journalists in order to suppress coverage of inconvenient newsworthy facts. It's just not. Not remotely. TikTok got caught doing something way beyond the pale. And at this point[2] I think it's very reasonable for people to view their future behavior as inherently suspect. As a large actor, I can have very little trust in ByteDance's future behavior. But Facebook and Google and Amazon... quite frankly they've proven pretty trustworthy with the same kind of data so far. I think continued trust isn't unwarranted. [1] The more common term of art in this context is generally "espionage" [2] Until last week, I was absolutely in the "let them sell their app, they have the same rights anyone does" camp. But now? Sorry, they burned the bridge. You don't get three strikes once you're caught spying.
  - jen20 4y ago
    It doesn’t have to be equivalently bad, just bad. Similarly to how murder and assault are different, but both still illegal.
    - ajross 4y ago
      "Ban the lot" certainly seemed to trying to equate them. Spying on journalists is bad in ways that selling me tailored junk is not. You don't ban companies for selling somewhat embarassingly appropriate junk. You do ban them for spying. What you absolutely don't do is ban the junk selling because someone else spied.
      - jen20 4y ago
        It doesn’t equate them. It establishes a threshold that both exceed by different margins. For clarity, Tik Tok is worse than Facebook, but Facebook itself is sufficiently bad to merit banning even absent the existence of Tik Tok. Again, ban the lot.
2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
"Target behavior instead of apps" seems like such a massive regulatory hurdle that it's meaningless. How would you even write such a sweeping law and get it passed? How long would it take? I think this crowd knows it's impossible so they get to sound smart while nothing changes the status quo and TikTok still avoids a ban.
- dmix 4y ago
  Having an ocean of interpretation in between reality<->process won’t necessarily stop a proposed set of laws from becoming policy. Unless, you know, there’s time to consider such factors. When it fails you just say it wasn’t interpreted properly and what’s important is that it was well intentioned. “There was [bad guy] or [bad thing] so we didn’t have time to figure out the details” (repackage and repeat x1000). 4K page mega bills have zero incentives not to do this as often as possible. And you can be sure Reddit/Twitter/media will be full of cheerleaders in the early days defending it and those challenging it can be called out as mere supporters of [bad guy/bad thing] acting in bad faith. It’s almost a perfect recipe.
- pbhjpbhj 4y ago
  So you're saying it's impossible to define what TikTok is doing wrong? Why does TikTok deserve a ban but not other major suppliers of short-form video that are tracking their users, etc. It sounds like you want to do away with rule of law and just have politicians ban apps they don't like? It seems either it is too hard to differentiate what TikTok are doing wrong from what the other companies are doing wrong, or it's inconsistent treatment? ISPs already gather a ton of information it would be nice if they used it to help us (would require legislation). For example it should be easy to get a report from my ISP "top ten entities to which I uploaded data this month". I should be able to clock through and see how much data, what days and times, the company who control the domains in use -- for example from pihole use I know MS get a deluge of data from my home. With that information a user should then be able to privately compare it with a log from their phone and, 'hey look, whenever I have GPS on Facebook receives data' or 'whenever I use $app my uploads go up, but it doesn't need any uploads to work'. That data then socials be used to prosecute GDPR breaches (it seems it could almost be entirely automated).

jen20 4y ago

> The issue with that is many companies and platforms owned by "friendly" companies would also be impacted by increased security and privacy protections provided to all US residents Doesn’t sound like an issue to me. Anyone tracking or profiling is inherently unfriendly, regardless of national origin. Ban the lot.

ajross 4y ago
> Doesn’t sound like an issue to me. Anyone tracking or profiling is inherently unfriendly, regardless of national origin. Ban the lot. I think that's somewhat strained. "Tracking or profiling" for the purpose of advertising when applied generically to all users in a reasonably anonymized way is... simply not in the same class as "tracking or profiling"[1] applied to target specific journalists in order to suppress coverage of inconvenient newsworthy facts. It's just not. Not remotely. TikTok got caught doing something way beyond the pale. And at this point[2] I think it's very reasonable for people to view their future behavior as inherently suspect. As a large actor, I can have very little trust in ByteDance's future behavior. But Facebook and Google and Amazon... quite frankly they've proven pretty trustworthy with the same kind of data so far. I think continued trust isn't unwarranted. [1] The more common term of art in this context is generally "espionage" [2] Until last week, I was absolutely in the "let them sell their app, they have the same rights anyone does" camp. But now? Sorry, they burned the bridge. You don't get three strikes once you're caught spying.
- jen20 4y ago
  It doesn’t have to be equivalently bad, just bad. Similarly to how murder and assault are different, but both still illegal.
  - ajross 4y ago
    "Ban the lot" certainly seemed to trying to equate them. Spying on journalists is bad in ways that selling me tailored junk is not. You don't ban companies for selling somewhat embarassingly appropriate junk. You do ban them for spying. What you absolutely don't do is ban the junk selling because someone else spied.
    - jen20 4y ago
      It doesn’t equate them. It establishes a threshold that both exceed by different margins. For clarity, Tik Tok is worse than Facebook, but Facebook itself is sufficiently bad to merit banning even absent the existence of Tik Tok. Again, ban the lot.

2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago

"Target behavior instead of apps" seems like such a massive regulatory hurdle that it's meaningless. How would you even write such a sweeping law and get it passed? How long would it take? I think this crowd knows it's impossible so they get to sound smart while nothing changes the status quo and TikTok still avoids a ban.

dmix 4y ago
Having an ocean of interpretation in between reality<->process won’t necessarily stop a proposed set of laws from becoming policy. Unless, you know, there’s time to consider such factors. When it fails you just say it wasn’t interpreted properly and what’s important is that it was well intentioned. “There was [bad guy] or [bad thing] so we didn’t have time to figure out the details” (repackage and repeat x1000). 4K page mega bills have zero incentives not to do this as often as possible. And you can be sure Reddit/Twitter/media will be full of cheerleaders in the early days defending it and those challenging it can be called out as mere supporters of [bad guy/bad thing] acting in bad faith. It’s almost a perfect recipe.
pbhjpbhj 4y ago
So you're saying it's impossible to define what TikTok is doing wrong? Why does TikTok deserve a ban but not other major suppliers of short-form video that are tracking their users, etc. It sounds like you want to do away with rule of law and just have politicians ban apps they don't like? It seems either it is too hard to differentiate what TikTok are doing wrong from what the other companies are doing wrong, or it's inconsistent treatment? ISPs already gather a ton of information it would be nice if they used it to help us (would require legislation). For example it should be easy to get a report from my ISP "top ten entities to which I uploaded data this month". I should be able to clock through and see how much data, what days and times, the company who control the domains in use -- for example from pihole use I know MS get a deluge of data from my home. With that information a user should then be able to privately compare it with a log from their phone and, 'hey look, whenever I have GPS on Facebook receives data' or 'whenever I use $app my uploads go up, but it doesn't need any uploads to work'. That data then socials be used to prosecute GDPR breaches (it seems it could almost be entirely automated).