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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

#731

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh. But can I think about something illegal ? Can I write something illegal down on paper ? Say something illegal quietly ? Can I say something illegal loudly in the middle of the forest ? Saying something is just a way to make your thoughts known by others. Thought police, and thought crime are just a tear drop away, it seems.

Sorry, but that's called the slippery slope fallacy

It's happening in the UK. Google "I need to check your thinking" for an example. You need to have some clear boundaries between speaking-crime and thought-crime otherwise they get blurred and you end up with something like McCarthyism.

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

#732

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Never intended for this to mean it was easy or anything. As you noted already it isn’t always. However this also admits it can be done as I mentioned too. You can’t pass legislation that makes another government open itself up to transparency though. That’s the fundamental difference

> However this also admits it can be done as I mentioned too. That wasn't the intention

It has been done tho

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

#734
post #466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TikTok is controlled by an authoritarian dictatorship engaged in a war against Western/Democratic values and human rights.

Many around of the world see the US also an authoritarian state with little regard for human rights.

[deleted]

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

#735
post #672

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea of someone drawing lines is positivist bullshit. The Declaration of Independence was grounded on the bedrock of Natural law, and the bedrock of the Constitution was the common law. The context for both was American but the principles therein are Universal. Liberty is the natural order, but liberties can be tempered by morals and laws. If they existed not in nature, but as a set of approved rights granted to…

I don't think liberty is the natural order, but something we have to fight to keep, each generation has to carry that fight. Once it is gone it will be a lot harder to regain. Another thing is that liberty is very difficult to define, and anything from a libertarian paradise to a socialist one (as in Scandinavia) can be the most liberty for different people.

You see, I disagree but not entirely. I do think it is the natural order, but that you are right, you have to fight to keep it.

America is a good example of where we used anti-democratic institutions towards democratic ends. We retained a parliamentary body, but we subordinated it to the Constitution rather than maintaining the premise of parliamentary supremacy. We retained the previous makeup of Congress in the Senate much to Madison’s chagrin, and even improved it somewhat by going from 1 State Vote to 1 State 2 Separate Votes; in exchange we got buy in during the ratification conventions. We put an elected official in Office in place of a King, with term renewal. We introduced an Electoral College into the process because these were the pre-Telegraph pre-Railroad days where it might take six weeks to go from the Potomac to Philadelphia, and made Congress the fallback when the EC couldn’t decide on an overall winner (this process was expected to be used more than it has been, most notably in 1824). We came up with political parties, and they functioned very well for a long time at keeping riffraff and people morally unfit for Office from ever coming close to the White House, up until we threw open the doors to the smoke filled rooms and made it so any DINO or RINO could run for President under the Party banner which is now we ended up with President Trump and Bernie Sanders was twice a serious contender in the Democratic Primary despite not serving as a member of the Democratic Party. Juries have absolute power over one simple question: guilty or not guilty, and peoples’ lives hang in the balance of that question.

Liberty is natural, but we do temper it with morals (it is sinful to kill) and laws (we will execute killers). There is no justice in lawlessness, and if men were Angels we wouldn’t need justice.

> Another thing is that liberty is very difficult to define, and anything from a libertarian paradise to a socialist one (as in Scandinavia) can be the most liberty for different people.

This speaks to our collective failure as a society to regulate our morals and understand our liberty. In part it is because we rely too much upon the State to do so for us. What societal understanding we do have of our own liberty is rooted in our liberties under the Common law, which despite its name, is as much tradition as it is law, traditionally tempered by Courts of law and equity, but which can be overturned by statute; and the natural law.

We don’t have a law saying that you have a right to live, to have sex, to have children, and to form a family. Nor do we have laws saying that you have a right to engage in commerce. These are rights, but not rights in the positivist sense where the State will provide these things for you under rational principles, but rights that are intrinsic to being born alive and grow healthy enough to engage in these pursuits. If you are sterile, you cannot sue for a remedy from nature for this misfortune, although our society is vast enough and complex enough that you might still form a family by other means, it is not owed to you.

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

#736
You'd imagine the Chinese communists would be smarter having been in business for 50 years now. But when pushed into a corner on taking the responsibility for the deadly virus, all they can think of is grabbing land and starting wars with their unfortunate neighbors. But better sooner than later. Now you know that when the dragon becomes a super power, it will be nasty, petty, manipulative, bloody, totalitarian & downright ugly. American capitalism propped up CCP. But CCP covets land and power more than money. And they'd rather go to war with their neighbors than accept that they were responsible for the breakout and the spread. The only fault of TikTok, just like that of Huawei and every other Chinese company is that their ultimate masters is the CCP. And yes that's enough reason to ban them.

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

#737
An aspect that most people seem to be missing is that this gives the Indians an opportunity to create their own apps and social networks. This has two benefits, it is a safeguard against information propaganda, and it gives protection to the Indian software industry to grow.

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

#739
post #683

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> YouTube's algorithm suppresses LGBTQ content more than usual Similar story with Tumblr. I had been using Tumblr for a good many years, for non-pornographic use/material (I shoot landscapes and buildings, and I liked the way I could post/group my photos). It pissed me off though when they (Tumblr) clamped down on sexual content, because it really hurt the LGBTQIA+ communities. A similar clamp down on Pinterest also…

I don't get how you can come so close to hitting the nail on the head and still miss it? Content that is specifically about LGBT issues is almost always going to involve sexuality at some point or another. Advertisers are skittish about their ads running next to such content. Tumblr wanted to become more attractive to advertisers, so they clamped down on sexual content. By clamping down on sexual content, they also i…

I don't think you could have proved their point any harder.

The equating of sexuality (an identity) to sex (an action) and specifically targeting identities that are not straight _is_ the problem. Under Yahoo (and in a bumbling attempt to adhere to App Store guidelines), completely safe for work content (from discussions to screenshots from media to even teenagers venting or asking for advice) that happened to contain words like "lesbian" got censored/marked as NSFW - meanwhile content that was much more sex-related than that (e.g. a gif from a movie showing two straight characters kissing or getting handsy) would pass just fine. But of course, it's "twisting the debate" to find it absurd and obviously homophobic that a girl _typing_ about wanting to marry another girl someday is considered pornographic in comparison.

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

#740
post #580
post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> > 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 trustw…

https://penetrum.com/tiktok/Penetrum_TikTok_Security_Analysi...

That report could not distinguish between ISP and Cloud provider, also between Alibaba as an e-commerce and Aliyun as Cloud provider. The report also complained about possible SQL injection, but the database it accessed is a local SQlite database. Who cares if you inject your own database?

Seems fishy.

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