Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

411–420 of 847 posts

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

#411

Post by unishark »

wadkar wrote: post #302
unishark wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also, in India a person managed to lead a protest, form an entire new party and become the chief minister of a state because people were behind him. That is democracy as well. Tell me when has that happened in the states in recent times. This seems like a really specific request. I'm not sure what aspect you're looking for. But for starters, here's an interesting wikipedia page for governors that went outside the m…

I think the point that GP made doesn’t have any equivalence in US two party system. The person in question really did start a new party that was not coupled with any of the existing parties and won the capital state with crushing majority. That is a sign of a working democracy in my book. I am not sure if US is one of the better version of a well functioning democracy given its two party system. I recall that it was…

Jesse Ventura wasn't affiliated with either party, along with a lot of people on that list.

The founding fathers were afraid of democracy itself and put in many explicit constraints on it, never mind undesired self-organization like the two parties. So it's easy to find perspectives from which the US isn't the archytype democracy. But what's the point? That it somehow a bit farther down the road to authoritarianism as a result? I'm not sure about that.

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

#412

Post by john_ackerman »

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.

I'm chinese and I'm glad the indian government is taking action before the US/Europe, which still haven't rstricted the spread of Chinese spyware.

1. Tiktok and wechat are bigger threats than huawei as they taken user generated data and biometric data to build a large surveillance network of not only chinese, but also folks living outside of the great fire wall. 2. The chinese government essentially bans the top 20 websites outside of china. Not seeking reciprocal treatment is the extension of clinton era illusion that somehow china will open up as they get richer.

I unfortunately can't disclose details on zoom's infringement but hope yall can figure out what going on behind the scene

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

#413

Post by kanox »

krn wrote: post #360

A reddit user, who claims to have reverse-engineered the TikTok app[1], concluded: > TikTok is a data collection service that is thinly-veiled as a social network. If there is an API to get information on you, your contacts, or your device... well, they're using it. > For what it's worth I've reversed the Instagram, Facebook, Reddit, and Twitter apps. They don't collect anywhere near the same amount of data that TikT…

> > If there is an API to get information on you, your contacts, or your device... well, they're using it. For what it's worth I've reversed the Instagram, Facebook, Reddit, and Twitter apps. They don't collect anywhere near the same amount of data that TikTok does, and they sure as hell aren't outright trying to hide exactly whats being sent like TikTok is.

I find this unconvincing and reddit comments are not trustworthy at all.

Wouldn't data collection be limited by the mobile OS anyway? I actually have TikTok on my phone and it requested no special permissions, compared to most other apps which don't even let you view content without validating a phone number.

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

#414

Post by pphysch »

secabeen wrote: post #319
pphysch wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that is usually enough to placate Westerners. Even if, say, the "different sides" are just different heads of the same snake, which is often the case. The only two political parties in the US, for instance, differ remarkably little in terms of foreign policy and labor rights. Headlines in major US media will virtually never indicate there is any significant room for debate here. The public is satisfied with the f…

> The only two political parties in the US, for instance, differ remarkably little in terms of foreign policy and labor rights. Before Trump, I would probably have agreed with you, but these days, I don't know how you can say that. Trump has made major breaks with the foreign policy establishment over the past 3 years, and continues to do so (pulling half of our troops out of Germany is a good example of this). On la…

Both parties broadly promote global US military and economic supremacy (unipolarity), draconic IP laws, corporate tax benefits, social division on immutable identity issues, anticommunism, etc. There is wiggle room (i.e. Overton window), as you point out, but the main thrust is clear and opposition is not tolerated in an institutional sense.

At best, the establishment Dems have been passive observers to the catastrophic erosion of social systems over the past 50 years.

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

#415

Post by est31 »

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…

Yeah also note that Russia has its own domestic replacements of the popular American services. They only had to resort to bots etc for influencing American elections.

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

#416

Post by dathinab »

numpad0 wrote: post #351
dathinab wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good point. But YouTube is not controlled by an authoritarian fascist-like government which has a world view in direct opposition to what you could refer handwaveingly as "western" and is currently pushing to become the dominant power in the world. If you furthermore consider how bad the "western world" (mainly Britten and the East India Company) had treated it in the past, some aspects of the Chinese culture and the…

Since you mention East India Company, what makes YouTube different from them?

Please do look into what the East India Company did, I'm in no way qualified to list out the very long list of crimes/misdeeds this company did.

But one large difference is that they had a private army and used it to force through their ways in any non EU country.

It is not absurd to say that the East India Company did occupy India like a country would have occupied another country they won against in a war.

They where also one of the main driving force behind the Anglo-Chinese War (see Opium wars).

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

#417

Post by jimbob45 »

riverlong wrote: post #356

I'm seeing lots of comments about national security-style concerns, and framing this in terms of the recent India-China skirmishes. That all makes sense. Where I think a lot of folks are missing the point is that this is also a tremendous boost to local Indian entrepreneurship. One of the really clever aspects of China's Great Firewall is that it keeps out international competition, which would crush local startups.…

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(no...

India’s GDP is much much smaller than most think: its smaller than California’s GDP. That doesn’t seem so bad since they’re so close to other European countries but remember that India’s population is also considerably larger.

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

#418

Post by jjoonathan »

dvt wrote: post #261
bad_user wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think you're going to get heavily downvoted (HN loves the paradox of tolerance), but I wholeheartedly agree. I think it's complete nonsense, not to mention that its spirit is much better represented by older ideas (e.g. Mill's Harm Principle). "Tolerance" is kind of a weasel word anyway, essentially giving carte blanche to the one that invokes the paradox.

The evidence is in: HN hates the paradox of tolerance and loves the idea of having its cake and eating it, too. I'm not surprised, but I'm slightly surprised that you're surprised.

> "Tolerance" is kind of a weasel word anyway, essentially giving carte blanche to the one that invokes the paradox.

How so? Demonstrating that a principle makes for a poor foundation has little bearing on its ultimate validity.

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

#419

Post by parthdesai »

unishark wrote: post #411
wadkar wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the point that GP made doesn’t have any equivalence in US two party system. The person in question really did start a new party that was not coupled with any of the existing parties and won the capital state with crushing majority. That is a sign of a working democracy in my book. I am not sure if US is one of the better version of a well functioning democracy given its two party system. I recall that it was…

Jesse Ventura wasn't affiliated with either party, along with a lot of people on that list. The founding fathers were afraid of democracy itself and put in many explicit constraints on it, never mind undesired self-organization like the two parties. So it's easy to find perspectives from which the US isn't the archytype democracy. But what's the point? That it somehow a bit farther down the road to authoritarianism a…

They are state governors, but did the state have a majority that wasn't either of the two main parties? That's the point. In India, in this particular instance, majority of the population were sick of the political parties in the country, there were protests and then this person created an entire new party and this party went to get elected in the capital state. I think that's the what democracy should allow you to do.
Post reply on HN