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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

#241

Post by StreamBright »

ianleeclark wrote: post #57
saltedonion wrote: post #42

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.

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.

Not to mention state sponsored private firm, being private is just optics.

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

#242

Post by bad_user »

mathnmusic wrote: post #80

I think this sort of response was inevitable and will be seen in more and more nations. China bans most of the popular websites and apps (including Wikipedia). The most recent trigger was the border standoff between India and China where Indian citizens could see and read both governments' responses, but Chinese citizens were only told Chinese govt's talking points. This seems like yet another instance of the paradox…

The paradox of tolerance is bullshit though, as it's not based on empirical evidence.

It's just armchair philosophy used as justification for intolerance by intellectuals, the mental gymnastic people need to get over their cognitive dissonance.

AFAIK Plato came up with it to justify autocracy. That says it all actually.

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

#243

Post by huhnmonster »

luckylion wrote: post #201
huhnmonster wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I wonder what's stopping them. Initial investments is likely an issue for small, poor countries, but it can't be an issue for a country like India or Saudi Arabia, and the user base can be "convinced" to use the domestic thing by doing what India does: block foreign services. It seems more sustainable and much easier to work with if you have your own network, and you don't rely on US-services looking away / Twitter t…

I totally agree with you there, I was arguing from the view of a bad actor, not necessarily a government.

For a bad actor, the cost-reward looks pretty low (if we assume a high initial investment like a couple hundred million dollars to approach our goal of data collection in a shorter timeframe), but for a government that is probably totally doable.

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

#244

Post by acd10j »

kalesh wrote: post #182

I have a conspiracy theory here. Alibaba & AliExpress are missing in that banned list. This seems more like a direct hit on ByteDance rather than China. Facebook recently invested in Reliance Jio. There have been other investments from Silver Lake, Vista Equity Partners etc. TikTok is a big threat to FB, Instagram & YouTube. ByteDance apps TikTok, Vigo Video, Helo have around 300 million users in India. Facebook user…

Alibaba and aliexpress are not popular in india, hardly anyone uses them in India. May be that’s why they were spared banning.

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

#245

Post by shripadk »

kalesh wrote: post #190
chrisco255 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Our (India) data is already a public property due to security breaches in Aadhaar. What more can TikTok get?

Like your interests? Your behavior? Your realtime location? Your health issues? Your mood? Any event that is going on in your life? Like someone died, or someone is having a birthday or you are attending a wedding?

Oh you have a wedding to attend do you? Here let me show you this ad for gifts that you can purchase at 50% discount. Oh but what about the dress that you need to wear? Here, buy this suit with 20% discount. Oh wait, you need to fly to say Delhi from your current location. Here let me offer you tickets to book your flights to at 10% discount. And while we are at it, let us retarget you endlessly, wherever you go, whichever site you visit! We will follow you. Until you buy one of the above!

Do you not see how quickly one can profile with realtime access to data? Aadhaar breach did not even include biometrics. But I bet your phone (if Chinese made) with a fingerprint or face lock would not only have your biometrics but also know every single detail about you in realtime through these apps. Aadhaar data breach is pale in comparison to this! And you have been feeding realtime data to a draconian regime for the past decade. If Aadhaar data breach upsets you, you should be frightened with what data gets collected by these social media companies.

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

#246

Post by ThrustVectoring »

ianleeclark wrote: post #161
saltedonion wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> The reality is that Chinese firms and government operates together intimately No, I get this, but here's the thing: YouTube and, more specifically, it's advertisers do everything that you're accusing China of. There are material consequences if YouTube doesn't keep in line. What this means is that a status quo that pleases advertisers will be maintained. It's every bit propaganda as dropping leaflets, but you can't…

While private corporations also have incentives and private individuals bring their own biases into play, there remain extremely important differences between the capabilities of corporations and states. State actors can effectuate arrests within their own territory, deploy military assets, make territorial claims, conduct assassinations, and generally use their information-gathering and influence to support significantly more violent goals.

Like, I get that the milquetoast world advertisers want to live in is some kind of lens that colors the views and opinions presented by their platforms. It's just that the worst that happens from being influenced by it is it that you live a more boring life and consume more product. That's not nearly as worrying as being influenced to hating racial minorities in an attempt to distract from the South China Sea or something.

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

#247

Post by mcs_ »

saltedonion wrote: post #42

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.

But, if a nation can be threatened by an application, a chat, or a social network, can the ban solve the problem?

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

#248

Post by systemvoltage »

ehsankia wrote: post #232
systemvoltage wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The parent comment isn't talking about spyware. Imagine if US.app and China.app were both clean, no spyware. If China subsidizes and allows China.app to have access to their domestic market but bans US.app, while US allows China.app to rake in billions of dollars in revenue in the US - this is purely an economic fairness and global trade issue. There is no sane defensive argument against this. Chinese market is 1.3 b…

The reality is closer to "Imagine if US.app and China.app were both spyware" But India only banned the China spyware and left the US spyware roam free. If they truly cared about spyware, many other apps do similar stuff, scooping just as much data.

Even if you had no spyware, you cannot compete in China. So, twisting the topic about Spyware left and right does disservice to the the truth of the what's going on.

Spyware problem (which I condemn) is irrelevant and orthogonal.

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

#250

Post by jjoonathan »

bad_user wrote: post #242
mathnmusic wrote: post #80

I think this sort of response was inevitable and will be seen in more and more nations. China bans most of the popular websites and apps (including Wikipedia). The most recent trigger was the border standoff between India and China where Indian citizens could see and read both governments' responses, but Chinese citizens were only told Chinese govt's talking points. This seems like yet another instance of the paradox…

The paradox of tolerance is bullshit though, as it's not based on empirical evidence. It's just armchair philosophy used as justification for intolerance by intellectuals, the mental gymnastic people need to get over their cognitive dissonance. AFAIK Plato came up with it to justify autocracy. That says it all actually.

> The paradox of tolerance is bullshit though

So do you tolerate intolerance?

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