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India bans TikTok, WeChat, and dozens of other Chinese apps

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Re: India bans TikTok, WeChat, and dozens of other Chinese apps

#81

India is absolutely right in banning TikTok as it is a significant national securities threat. As long as the platforms recommendation and ranking algos are a black box, there is no guarantee that China isn’t conducting misinformation campaigns via the platform. At the very least, the government should audit the algos and make sure China can’t arbitrarily alter ranking results.

You are going to use the government to audit black box algos?

Re: India bans TikTok, WeChat, and dozens of other Chinese apps

#82
post #11

Almost all (except 1) are Chinese made. I'm sure it has absolutely nothing to do with this https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/china-has-intruded-423-metre...

I wonder whether that's intentional?

China uses a different coordinate system inside the country (GCJ-02 vs WGS-84) and it results in discontinuities whenever you try to display a map of a border region (for example, the Hong Kong–Zhuhai–Macau Bridge).

Re: India bans TikTok, WeChat, and dozens of other Chinese apps

#83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

India is controlled by a fascist, ethnonationalist party that has encouraged pogroms toward Muslims and enshrined racial hierarchies into law. They haven’t put Muslims in concentration camps, like the CCP, but I hope our “values” don’t get any closer to their leadership.

I think people abuse the word fascist these days. What makes India fascist? And how does that compare to the economic model of China? Is China fascist?

[deleted]

Re: India bans TikTok, WeChat, and dozens of other Chinese apps

#85
post #11

Almost all (except 1) are Chinese made. I'm sure it has absolutely nothing to do with this https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/china-has-intruded-423-metre...

Yeah: https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-india-china/indians-hold-f... China is basically using these apps as spyware.

I run WeChat on a separate phone with LineageOS and monitor its actions via the XPosed framework. It regularly scans my Wi-Fi network, checks the list of installed apps, randomly accesses sensors, and does plenty of other dubious things.

There was also a period of time where if you didn't give it Location permissions, it wouldn't let you login to WeChat. With LineageOS I was able to "give" it the permission but hand it fake sensor data instead of actual hardware data from the OS side.

I'd never think to run WeChat on a closed-source OS like iOS that doesn't give access to these kinds of introspection.

That said I don't necessarily think Facebook's or Google's set of apps are necessarily better in terms of spying, but at least it's possible to message people using a pure web interface without downloading anything, which WeChat doesn't let you do.

Re: India bans TikTok, WeChat, and dozens of other Chinese apps

#86

India is absolutely right in banning TikTok as it is a significant national securities threat. As long as the platforms recommendation and ranking algos are a black box, there is no guarantee that China isn’t conducting misinformation campaigns via the platform. At the very least, the government should audit the algos and make sure China can’t arbitrarily alter ranking results.

Since this is HN, what’s the easiest way to roll your own brainwashing machine like Facebook or TikTok? I mean isn’t it going to be fun to plant your own ideas on people...

Re: India bans TikTok, WeChat, and dozens of other Chinese apps

#87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah: https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-india-china/indians-hold-f... China is basically using these apps as spyware.

This. Tiktok is clearly a data vacuum masquerading as a social media platform.

Aren't all social media platforms guilty of being data vacuums?

Re: India bans TikTok, WeChat, and dozens of other Chinese apps

#88

India is absolutely right in banning TikTok as it is a significant national securities threat. As long as the platforms recommendation and ranking algos are a black box, there is no guarantee that China isn’t conducting misinformation campaigns via the platform. At the very least, the government should audit the algos and make sure China can’t arbitrarily alter ranking results.

Covid-19 is biting extremely hard in India. Handling has been very poor so far.

Stroking nationalism and pointing at foreign enemies in hard times is a tried and tested tactic.

Re: India bans TikTok, WeChat, and dozens of other Chinese apps

#89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are YouTube algorithms open? I don't really see a difference here. Nation state vs. private corporation is different on paper, but I don't see why. They're both going to react to material stimuli to increase their standings.

It’s about allies versus active enemies. There are shootouts on a regular basis between India and China, and they’ve intensified recently.

Ah right. Because the U.S. is never involved in war, it's a different story for youtube etc...

Re: India bans TikTok, WeChat, and dozens of other Chinese apps

#90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah: https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-india-china/indians-hold-f... China is basically using these apps as spyware.

This. Tiktok is clearly a data vacuum masquerading as a social media platform.

> Tiktok is clearly a data vacuum masquerading as a social media platform

For any value of "TikTok," including Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, iMessage, gmail, &c.

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