8 ms·

White House backs bill that could give it power to ban TikTok nationwide

39 points by mindracer 4y ago

tayo42 4y ago
Im not a tiktok user or really care. Part of me thinks it would be fun to watch what happens if tiktok got banned in the US. it just seems ridiculous, the reasons for it seems like something out of a tv show. There's another part of me that falls for a slippery slope, it could be a bad precedent to start banning foreign stuff, like we could end up having a US only internet
- csa 4y ago
  > There's another part of me that falls for a slippery slope, it could be a bad precedent to start banning foreign stuff, like we could end up having a US only internet The balkanization of the internet has been a thing for a while (e.g., China, online poker/gambling, region restrictions for streaming, etc.). I expect this to continue, and it may get to levels of “ridiculous tv show”. All that said, I think that there will be a tacit understanding that tech savvy people will almost always have work arounds, and that will be conveniently overlooked by most powers-that-be.
- rasz 4y ago
  > ridiculous ... something out of a tv show. "Many countries have banned or temporarily limited access to Facebook. Use of the website has also been restricted in various ways in other countries. As of July 2022, the only countries to continually ban access to the social networking site are China, Iran, North Korea, Uganda and Russia."
dabei 4y ago
How much does project Texas help mitigate the risk of getting banned?
metadat 4y ago
Why should the government be able to control which apps people in the United States install and use on their own personal phones? What happened to "personal liberty and freedom"? Are they going to ban particular websites next? And what exactly is so threatening about TikTok to make it a legitimate national security threat? Is China going to simultaneously track what Walmarts users shop at and implant Manchurian Candidate messages into the users brains? At best, this is an extreme and short-sighted proposal. Political posturing, wasting time and attention while solving no real problem. What an uncomfortably Orwellian move.
- csa 4y ago
  > Why should the government be able to control which apps people install and use on their own personal phones? The theoretical argument will be national security and “protect the children”. > What happened to "personal liberty and freedom"? Flies out the door for the causes mentioned above. Reasonable? No. Reality? Yes. > Are they going to ban particular websites next? This already happens at some levels. Note that The Guardian website was not accessible on DoD computers during the Snowden revelations. There was a practical reason (mass spillage is a PITA for folks who diligently report and process the reports of such things), but it was also a futile exercise of control. > And what exactly is so threatening about TikTok to make it a legitimate national security threat? 1. Lots and lots of tracking data. 2. Lots and lots of real time on-the-ground info. 3. The ability to shape the discourse and mood within certain groups via the algo (assuming that the algo can be influenced by the PRC government, which folks widely believe it can). You may not believe these things are significant, but I encourage you to chat up some sigint (esp. analysts) and psyops folks to see what they have to say about this type of data and medium.
  - john_the_writer 4y ago
    I don't mind if a site or app isn't visible on "company" computers/hardware. It's not yours. Same as a bus driver taking the bus home for the night and driving around his mates. BUT I wonder how the sigint would feel about having their bug/issue tracking software open to a foreign governments alterations? If they have an issue with it, they need to stop using Jira.
- kkoncevicius 4y ago
  > And what exactly is so threatening about TikTok to make it a legitimate national security threat? Competition for US-based companies.
  - moremetadata 4y ago
    The US tech companies are psychologically weaponised platforms, in my experience TikTok isnt.
twelve40 4y ago
That's cool, considering banning apps now for regular citizens. On a technical note, I wonder how this will be implemented. China was probably a pioneer in this with the Great Firewall. Russia created a shitlist of websites in 2012 that gets passed down to the ISPs that want to keep their license (for now easily bypassable with VPN, but I'm pretty sure that can be tightened if needed). So I wonder how this is going to work. Will Google Play, AT&T and them receive a regularly updated list of apps and websites that citizens are censored from seeing? Kind of like OFAC for the banks? Will there be any consequences for people who decide to ruin national security by bypassing this garbage and sneaking some tiktoks into their lives?
- midoridensha 4y ago
  >Russia created a shitlist of websites in 2012 that gets passed down to the ISPs that want to keep their license (for now easily bypassable with VPN, but I'm pretty sure that can be tightened if needed). I don't see how. To prevent citizens from visiting websites, you'd have to ban VPNs, since ISPs have no visibility into VPN traffic. Banning VPN use could be done, but it would have a lot of economic effects since businesses use VPNs a lot for security purposes. You could also make a special government-approved VPN with a backdoor for the government, and only allow citizens to use that. Or, you could require citizens to install special spyware on their devices. All of these solutions to the VPN problem would be rather cumbersome and difficult for a government to implement and enforce, however.
  - twelve40 4y ago
    > You could also make a special government-approved VPN with a backdoor for the government, and only allow citizens to use that This one could be done. Order ISPs to filter out VPN-looking traffic to anywhere that's not approved. Yes, it requires effort, but overall sounds doable (unfortunately)
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
vgatherps 4y ago
Currently living in Hong Kong and the whole “we have to ban <foreign media X> to protect our ’national security’ and citizens from subversive ideas from the scary foreign adversaries” bears a striking resemblance to the national security laws the CCP enacted in HK and used to effectively end press freedom and democracy. You could replace some specifics and have a plausible ccp/hkgov press release
elmerfud 4y ago
I think TikTok is a garbage app that numbs the mind of the already willfully ignorant people, but I absolutely do not support the idea of banning it. The US is supposed to hold itself up as a beacon to other countries on the core ideas that people are free to express themselves and as function of that expression choose which peoples to listen to, even TikTok trash. Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. As much as I distain TikTok as an aggregator and disseminator of information it should easily fall under the classification of the press. It's clearly speech and an assembly of the people. Unfortunately the same twisted minds that established the FCC and said "on a radio (iphone of the day)" you do not have freedom of speech but only freedom to listen to government licensed actors will likely be able to use their evil ways to ban TikTok. Which effectively means that all content on the internet can be arbitrarily regulated FCC style. This is a massive step towards the US adopting Chinese style information suppression policies. Every US citizen should be aware of the UN and adopting. While these do not carrying the force of law they were written in modern times and they absolutely express the sentiments of the founders of this nation around many issues. This is very clearly detailed in article 19. Article 19 Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.
- orwin 4y ago
  I'm not from the ticktock/insta/snapshat generation and do not care about it, but, having a little sister and a young coworker : Ticktock is almost as good as YouTube and way, way better than most social media to learn stuff. History, science, but also cooking techniques (my sister worked at a starred restaurant and still learned from it), tech and CS tips. Actually it seems better than YouTube on that last point as you don't have to watch the full 20 minutes to find the code example. Still inferior to text, but Ticktock 'numbing the mind' : less than most other social media apps, as much as YouTube.
- tablespoon 4y ago
  > I think TikTok is a garbage app that numbs the mind of the already willfully ignorant people, but I absolutely do not support the idea of banning it. The US is supposed to hold itself up as a beacon to other countries on the core ideas that people are free to express themselves and as function of that expression choose which peoples to listen to, even TikTok trash. > Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. The Constitution also says "the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." The Chinese are people and tanks are arms, but that doesn't mean the Constitution protects their right to drive a column of tanks up to the White House. The Constitution is not a suicide pact, but broad and literal readings of certain sections would make it so.
villgax 4y ago
Shouldn't every other country also just go about nuking WhatsApp, Instagram & Facebook as well?
- perryizgr8 4y ago
  Many countries do block such apps, or some features within the app. For example, Whatsapp voice calls are blocked in UAE.
- midoridensha 4y ago
  Facebook is banned in China. Banning TikTok in the US wouldn't be anything new or different from what's already been done in many other countries.
  - guilhas 4y ago
    Except for the hipocrisy of years stating that those countries are oppressive regimes for censoring the web and people
    - villgax 4y ago
      Exactly
    - midoridensha 4y ago
      There's nothing hypocritical about refusing to allow a foreign business to operate in your country. Countries do this all the time. If TikTok wants to open-source their source code and let Americans run it themselves on their own hardware, and the US government prevented that, then you'd have a point. Do you think it's "oppression" if the US government won't allow VW to sell emissions-test-cheating cars in the US?
john_the_writer 4y ago
I heard it had something to do with this.. "US officials have raised concerns that the Chinese government could pressure ByteDance to hand over information collected from users that could be used for intelligence or disinformation purposes." Oddly Atlassian/Jira has the same issue. Australia has something called assisted access. So a developer at Jira could alter the encryption or face jail. And they wouldn't even be able to tell their boss about the "order". No idea how these two things are different in any way.
- amadeuspagel 4y ago
  Yes. And of course in most countries, it's not even necessary for there to be an explicit law to that effect, if the government orders a company to add a backdoor, they'll do it.
- midoridensha 4y ago
  >So a developer at Jira could alter the encryption or face jail. And they wouldn't even be able to tell their boss about the "order". How exactly would this work? dev: "Here's a merge request, please approve it." team lead: "Why are you changing the encryption? What is the purpose of this? And why are you working on this task when it's not part of our sprint planning? Where did you get the idea for it?" dev: "I can't tell you that. You have no right to read this code change! You need to approve this MR now, or else!" team lead: "See me in my office. We need to talk to HR."
  - brokenmachine 4y ago
    That sounds ridiculous, but in reality I would think the govt would probably approach a C-level exec, and then serve all the people they need to silence from there. Working from the top down.
    - midoridensha 4y ago
      I was just going off of the previous comment, that the govt would force some random developer to make changes in a company's codebase. Such a thing would be ridiculous for the reason I pointed out: there's no way to keep it secret. Even if the govt approaches a C-level exec, I don't see how this would be kept a secret. The codebase is generally available within a company to everyone who has access, which for a large project is many people. Are they going to somehow swear all the devs in a department to secrecy? How do they enforce this? If the devs had security clearances and this job required keeping state secrets, that's one thing, but that's not what we're discussing here. If I were working in a civilian (non-clearance) job and the govt forced some nefarious changes into the codebase I was working on, I wouldn't feel any obligation to not inform the press.
alexander-wilms 4y ago
Looking forward to it.
subjectsigma 4y ago
Yes, do Facebook and Instagram next
ldehaan 4y ago
[dead]
CommanderData 4y ago
I don't like the Government is controlling what social media app users can use. This is as much as information control than anything else. But I'm torn, I think banning this app will be a positive for hundreds of millions of attention spans across the world.
- krapp 4y ago
  To me, it's not even difficult. It shouldn't be illegal for an app to be mindlessly entertaining. Almost all American pop culture is, literally every thing that comes down the pike is the dawn of Idiocracy until the next thing. And as far as propaganda, emotional and psychological control, manufacturing consent, etc. go, Tiktok has nothing on the incestuous relationship between American social media and the incentives of data capitalism, and the military industrial complex. Meanwhile, the government of Texas wants to censor the internet to make access to information about abortion illegal. We don't have to posit a slippery slope scenario for this, shit's already sliding. The precedent created by letting governments ban access to social media and create ideologically-driven silos of information is much worse.

39 points by mindracer 4y ago

Im not a tiktok user or really care. Part of me thinks it would be fun to watch what happens if tiktok got banned in the US. it just seems ridiculous, the reasons for it seems like something out of a tv show. There's another part of me that falls for a slippery slope, it could be a bad precedent to start banning foreign stuff, like we could end up having a US only internet

csa 4y ago
> There's another part of me that falls for a slippery slope, it could be a bad precedent to start banning foreign stuff, like we could end up having a US only internet The balkanization of the internet has been a thing for a while (e.g., China, online poker/gambling, region restrictions for streaming, etc.). I expect this to continue, and it may get to levels of “ridiculous tv show”. All that said, I think that there will be a tacit understanding that tech savvy people will almost always have work arounds, and that will be conveniently overlooked by most powers-that-be.
rasz 4y ago
> ridiculous ... something out of a tv show. "Many countries have banned or temporarily limited access to Facebook. Use of the website has also been restricted in various ways in other countries. As of July 2022, the only countries to continually ban access to the social networking site are China, Iran, North Korea, Uganda and Russia."

dabei 4y ago

How much does project Texas help mitigate the risk of getting banned?

metadat 4y ago

Why should the government be able to control which apps people in the United States install and use on their own personal phones? What happened to "personal liberty and freedom"? Are they going to ban particular websites next? And what exactly is so threatening about TikTok to make it a legitimate national security threat? Is China going to simultaneously track what Walmarts users shop at and implant Manchurian Candidate messages into the users brains? At best, this is an extreme and short-sighted proposal. Political posturing, wasting time and attention while solving no real problem. What an uncomfortably Orwellian move.

csa 4y ago
> Why should the government be able to control which apps people install and use on their own personal phones? The theoretical argument will be national security and “protect the children”. > What happened to "personal liberty and freedom"? Flies out the door for the causes mentioned above. Reasonable? No. Reality? Yes. > Are they going to ban particular websites next? This already happens at some levels. Note that The Guardian website was not accessible on DoD computers during the Snowden revelations. There was a practical reason (mass spillage is a PITA for folks who diligently report and process the reports of such things), but it was also a futile exercise of control. > And what exactly is so threatening about TikTok to make it a legitimate national security threat? 1. Lots and lots of tracking data. 2. Lots and lots of real time on-the-ground info. 3. The ability to shape the discourse and mood within certain groups via the algo (assuming that the algo can be influenced by the PRC government, which folks widely believe it can). You may not believe these things are significant, but I encourage you to chat up some sigint (esp. analysts) and psyops folks to see what they have to say about this type of data and medium.
- john_the_writer 4y ago
  I don't mind if a site or app isn't visible on "company" computers/hardware. It's not yours. Same as a bus driver taking the bus home for the night and driving around his mates. BUT I wonder how the sigint would feel about having their bug/issue tracking software open to a foreign governments alterations? If they have an issue with it, they need to stop using Jira.
kkoncevicius 4y ago
> And what exactly is so threatening about TikTok to make it a legitimate national security threat? Competition for US-based companies.
- moremetadata 4y ago
  The US tech companies are psychologically weaponised platforms, in my experience TikTok isnt.

twelve40 4y ago

That's cool, considering banning apps now for regular citizens. On a technical note, I wonder how this will be implemented. China was probably a pioneer in this with the Great Firewall. Russia created a shitlist of websites in 2012 that gets passed down to the ISPs that want to keep their license (for now easily bypassable with VPN, but I'm pretty sure that can be tightened if needed). So I wonder how this is going to work. Will Google Play, AT&T and them receive a regularly updated list of apps and websites that citizens are censored from seeing? Kind of like OFAC for the banks? Will there be any consequences for people who decide to ruin national security by bypassing this garbage and sneaking some tiktoks into their lives?

midoridensha 4y ago
>Russia created a shitlist of websites in 2012 that gets passed down to the ISPs that want to keep their license (for now easily bypassable with VPN, but I'm pretty sure that can be tightened if needed). I don't see how. To prevent citizens from visiting websites, you'd have to ban VPNs, since ISPs have no visibility into VPN traffic. Banning VPN use could be done, but it would have a lot of economic effects since businesses use VPNs a lot for security purposes. You could also make a special government-approved VPN with a backdoor for the government, and only allow citizens to use that. Or, you could require citizens to install special spyware on their devices. All of these solutions to the VPN problem would be rather cumbersome and difficult for a government to implement and enforce, however.
- twelve40 4y ago
  > You could also make a special government-approved VPN with a backdoor for the government, and only allow citizens to use that This one could be done. Order ISPs to filter out VPN-looking traffic to anywhere that's not approved. Yes, it requires effort, but overall sounds doable (unfortunately)
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

vgatherps 4y ago

Currently living in Hong Kong and the whole “we have to ban <foreign media X> to protect our ’national security’ and citizens from subversive ideas from the scary foreign adversaries” bears a striking resemblance to the national security laws the CCP enacted in HK and used to effectively end press freedom and democracy. You could replace some specifics and have a plausible ccp/hkgov press release

elmerfud 4y ago

I think TikTok is a garbage app that numbs the mind of the already willfully ignorant people, but I absolutely do not support the idea of banning it. The US is supposed to hold itself up as a beacon to other countries on the core ideas that people are free to express themselves and as function of that expression choose which peoples to listen to, even TikTok trash. Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. As much as I distain TikTok as an aggregator and disseminator of information it should easily fall under the classification of the press. It's clearly speech and an assembly of the people. Unfortunately the same twisted minds that established the FCC and said "on a radio (iphone of the day)" you do not have freedom of speech but only freedom to listen to government licensed actors will likely be able to use their evil ways to ban TikTok. Which effectively means that all content on the internet can be arbitrarily regulated FCC style. This is a massive step towards the US adopting Chinese style information suppression policies. Every US citizen should be aware of the UN and adopting. While these do not carrying the force of law they were written in modern times and they absolutely express the sentiments of the founders of this nation around many issues. This is very clearly detailed in article 19. Article 19 Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

orwin 4y ago
I'm not from the ticktock/insta/snapshat generation and do not care about it, but, having a little sister and a young coworker : Ticktock is almost as good as YouTube and way, way better than most social media to learn stuff. History, science, but also cooking techniques (my sister worked at a starred restaurant and still learned from it), tech and CS tips. Actually it seems better than YouTube on that last point as you don't have to watch the full 20 minutes to find the code example. Still inferior to text, but Ticktock 'numbing the mind' : less than most other social media apps, as much as YouTube.
tablespoon 4y ago
> I think TikTok is a garbage app that numbs the mind of the already willfully ignorant people, but I absolutely do not support the idea of banning it. The US is supposed to hold itself up as a beacon to other countries on the core ideas that people are free to express themselves and as function of that expression choose which peoples to listen to, even TikTok trash. > Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. The Constitution also says "the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." The Chinese are people and tanks are arms, but that doesn't mean the Constitution protects their right to drive a column of tanks up to the White House. The Constitution is not a suicide pact, but broad and literal readings of certain sections would make it so.

villgax 4y ago

Shouldn't every other country also just go about nuking WhatsApp, Instagram & Facebook as well?

perryizgr8 4y ago
Many countries do block such apps, or some features within the app. For example, Whatsapp voice calls are blocked in UAE.
midoridensha 4y ago
Facebook is banned in China. Banning TikTok in the US wouldn't be anything new or different from what's already been done in many other countries.
- guilhas 4y ago
  Except for the hipocrisy of years stating that those countries are oppressive regimes for censoring the web and people
  - villgax 4y ago
    Exactly
  - midoridensha 4y ago
    There's nothing hypocritical about refusing to allow a foreign business to operate in your country. Countries do this all the time. If TikTok wants to open-source their source code and let Americans run it themselves on their own hardware, and the US government prevented that, then you'd have a point. Do you think it's "oppression" if the US government won't allow VW to sell emissions-test-cheating cars in the US?

john_the_writer 4y ago

I heard it had something to do with this.. "US officials have raised concerns that the Chinese government could pressure ByteDance to hand over information collected from users that could be used for intelligence or disinformation purposes." Oddly Atlassian/Jira has the same issue. Australia has something called assisted access. So a developer at Jira could alter the encryption or face jail. And they wouldn't even be able to tell their boss about the "order". No idea how these two things are different in any way.

amadeuspagel 4y ago
Yes. And of course in most countries, it's not even necessary for there to be an explicit law to that effect, if the government orders a company to add a backdoor, they'll do it.
midoridensha 4y ago
>So a developer at Jira could alter the encryption or face jail. And they wouldn't even be able to tell their boss about the "order". How exactly would this work? dev: "Here's a merge request, please approve it." team lead: "Why are you changing the encryption? What is the purpose of this? And why are you working on this task when it's not part of our sprint planning? Where did you get the idea for it?" dev: "I can't tell you that. You have no right to read this code change! You need to approve this MR now, or else!" team lead: "See me in my office. We need to talk to HR."
- brokenmachine 4y ago
  That sounds ridiculous, but in reality I would think the govt would probably approach a C-level exec, and then serve all the people they need to silence from there. Working from the top down.
  - midoridensha 4y ago
    I was just going off of the previous comment, that the govt would force some random developer to make changes in a company's codebase. Such a thing would be ridiculous for the reason I pointed out: there's no way to keep it secret. Even if the govt approaches a C-level exec, I don't see how this would be kept a secret. The codebase is generally available within a company to everyone who has access, which for a large project is many people. Are they going to somehow swear all the devs in a department to secrecy? How do they enforce this? If the devs had security clearances and this job required keeping state secrets, that's one thing, but that's not what we're discussing here. If I were working in a civilian (non-clearance) job and the govt forced some nefarious changes into the codebase I was working on, I wouldn't feel any obligation to not inform the press.

alexander-wilms 4y ago

Looking forward to it.

subjectsigma 4y ago

Yes, do Facebook and Instagram next

ldehaan 4y ago

[dead]

CommanderData 4y ago

I don't like the Government is controlling what social media app users can use. This is as much as information control than anything else. But I'm torn, I think banning this app will be a positive for hundreds of millions of attention spans across the world.

krapp 4y ago
To me, it's not even difficult. It shouldn't be illegal for an app to be mindlessly entertaining. Almost all American pop culture is, literally every thing that comes down the pike is the dawn of Idiocracy until the next thing. And as far as propaganda, emotional and psychological control, manufacturing consent, etc. go, Tiktok has nothing on the incestuous relationship between American social media and the incentives of data capitalism, and the military industrial complex. Meanwhile, the government of Texas wants to censor the internet to make access to information about abortion illegal. We don't have to posit a slippery slope scenario for this, shit's already sliding. The precedent created by letting governments ban access to social media and create ideologically-driven silos of information is much worse.