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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

#192
post #39

India smartphone marketshare: Xiaomi 30% Vivo 17% Samsung 16% Realme 14% Oppo 12% Others 11% https://www.counterpointresearch.com/india-smartphone-share/

Curious why can't India learn the lesson that China uses to change these statistics in 3 months? Of course, if it is related to long-term national security.

- Ban the companies for 3 months. Then allow selectively. - Reduce the tax from South Korea and Japan.

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

#193
post #5

Glad to see India understanding the threat to national security posed by these apps. I would like to see the US do the same.

banning the usage of WeChat for public officials or national defense companies and so on would make some sense, I fail to see however how TikTok is a security threat. It's just a response to the clash over the border and nothing else, and not really a particularly effective one at that.

have you ever wondered why China blocks all apps from other countries ?

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

#194
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Do you know Android tracks your location even after turning on Airplane mode?

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

#195

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.

You have a good point. But TikTok is much more risky, and as as such requires much more scrutiny given existing body of knowledge between how chinese social media / chat companies such as WeChat enforce government censorship and aid in propagating misinformation. This might be a shock to most people in the western world, but if you go on almost ANY news website in china, the headline news is dedicated to government p…

> Nearly all sizable firms have a party secretary that is involved in board level decisions, and steps in when things get political.

That's scary and still people have the audacity to compare Chinese propaganda outlets with YouTube, Google etc.

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

#196

Glad to see India understanding the threat to national security posed by these apps. I would like to see the US do the same.

while I absolutely won't allow any of those apps on my school-aged children phones and would never install one myself, it would be absolutely wrong for US government to dictate what software we can and can not use. Same goes for books and movies.

How about changing from "dictate" to "recommend or advise" for betterment of Americans?

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

#197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see a problem with targeting Chinese-made apps, given how much China blocks from other countries. Free trade has to work both ways.

China restricts the freedom of its citizens, so other countries should restrict the freedom of their own citizens in exchange?

China restricts other countries’ access to its market - other countries retaliate

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

#200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a pretty common response: just vote for the other guy. Too bad no one trustworthy is running for the executive office.

As long as there isn't a better system, voting for the lesser evil seems like the least one could do. You can continue the fight for a better system when you don't have an actively racist president for example.

I'm not proposing not voting. I'm just sick of hearing it offered as if it's somehow a solution to the increasingly obvious fact that the US government is fundamentally incapable of doing the basic things expected of it by it's citizens, like being trusted to not abuse it's power when doing things like gating access to potentially dangerous software.

Obviously it would be really REALLY nice if there was a trustworthy entity who could do that, but it's pretty absurd to suggest that if we simply vote for the other guy suddenly the US government will be that entity.

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