All other democratic countries should join India in banning Chinese apps
Don’t allow Chinese apps until they open their own market to freely allow foreign apps like Google, Facebook, Youtube etc to function
India bans TikTok, WeChat, and dozens of other Chinese apps
101–110 of 847 posts
Re: India bans TikTok, WeChat, and dozens of other Chinese apps
#102India 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...
Going from what currently seems to be popular: huge botnets that carefully try to curate "real" users from random accounts. Rolling your own (Network that is, like FB or TikTok) seems pretty unlikely regarding initial investments, user base etc.
Re: India bans TikTok, WeChat, and dozens of other Chinese apps
#103India 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.
Very interesting. I would like to know more about this thought.
Is the problem, let's say, with:
- the country of origin, so if this was the exact same app from US it would have been less harmful, or,
- the amount of time people spend on it, so if people spent time on something like facebook it would have been less harmful?
Re: India bans TikTok, WeChat, and dozens of other Chinese apps
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a common sentiment: distrust in the US government. Given that 30% of income goes to the feds, might be time to change the government to be more trust worthy. Good thing elections are coming up.
>This is a common sentiment: distrust in the US government. No, this ain't just it. Even if I trusted the current US government (which is already a shaky premise to begin with), I cannot be sure I will trust the US government that will be in place in 10 years or 20 years. And once you give them that power, there is no easy way to put it back in the box. So, for me at least, it is less about distrust and more of a "fr…
This is the same argument I'm hearing from people who refuse to wear masks. Unfortunately, the freedom of some is a security risk for others.
Any government is only as good as the trust people place in it. A trusted government invites trust-worthy candidates, is held to a higher standard of transparency, etc. If you want a government that you can trust, you may want to write to your congress-people and ask, for instance, that they ban corporate funding of elections (through those ridiculous dinners), Super PACs, etc. By the people, for the people, after all.
Re: India bans TikTok, WeChat, and dozens of other Chinese apps
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
Overnight, I agree. But I think the decoupling will happen. The outsourcing to China took about 10 years (mid 90s to mid 2000s). It will likely not take a lot longer to decouple. 10y is very rapid.
We in the U.S. should have partnered more closely with India in the first place. India is democratic and hold values closer to our own. The CCP not so much.
International Partnerships are not based on values or Democracy/*cracy. China moved to market based economy earlier then India and being an autocratic country the move was swift and efficient. US wanted to befriend China against Russia in 70s/80s. India started late and kept struggling internally because of the democratic values.
If values were such important, Saudis wouldn't have been your best buddies.
Re: India bans TikTok, WeChat, and dozens of other Chinese apps
#106I hope many countries to follow this example, not by banning and censorship but actually banning the botnets that are no good and just for mining data.
Re: India bans TikTok, WeChat, and dozens of other Chinese apps
#107So if WeChat is basically the only messaging app allowed in China, and WeChat is not allowed to be used in India, is there any widely available platform that Indian citizens can use to chat with Chinese citizens? Making it impossible or at least very difficult to communicate with people in another country seems like it’s only going to make any divide even worse in the long term. Think of the fallout of Facebook filter bubbles but to an extreme, by making it very difficult to even communicate with someone in a different culture with different viewpoints.
Re: India bans TikTok, WeChat, and dozens of other Chinese apps
#108I'm absolutely against banning things but TikTok should be banned until we figure out how to protect ourselves from bad actors like the CCP.
Re: India bans TikTok, WeChat, and dozens of other Chinese apps
#109Earlier 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.
If India (or any other country for that matter) would be in an armed conflict with the US, they would probably also consider banning various US controlled services.
I asked about the algorithm thing--that's what I'm curious about. Where specifically does that belief end.
Re: India bans TikTok, WeChat, and dozens of other Chinese apps
#110It has everything to do with current border skirmish. Also, 44% percent of tiktok users are from India.
Source on the demographics? That’s really interesting.