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U.S. looking at banning Chinese social media apps, including TikTok

reuters.com

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Re: U.S. looking at banning Chinese social media apps, including TikTok

#91

Post by Barrin92 »

cthalupa wrote: post #86
Barrin92 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>But you can't really equate the rule of law in both the countries in good faith Yes you can't because Americans aren't subject to Chinese law. What do you think is going to happen, the CCP send their best assassin over to get you because they didn't like your cat video? You've got more to fear from the FBI trying to get into your iphone if they suspect you of a crime than a foreign government that doesn't have any j…

>Yes you can't because Americans aren't subject to Chinese law. China certainly disagrees with you. Just look at the new Hong Kong NSL - it claims jurisdiction over every person on earth for offenses defined to vaguely as to be meaningless. This obviously has horrific effects for the people in Hong Kong - protesters are already being threatened as being national security threats for having a protest where they did no…

Hong Kong is part of China. Obviously going to China when you're a well known dissident is playing with fire. But I don't see what that has to do with banning apps from the app store for regular US users? This isn't actually news. Their are currently European and American citizens under arrest in Turkey, or Saudi Arabia say, has the US taken any Turkish apps from the app store?

Or for that matter has the US currently banned any Russian apps, probably the most notorious country when it comes to cyber-attacks on the US and arresting if not even killing dissidents?

It's a total non-sequitur, it's got nothing to do with security. It's an appeal to the increasingly rabid American population to deflect from covid or the general state of the country. It's the new 9/11. Just start accusing China of random things and hope everything else goes away.

Re: U.S. looking at banning Chinese social media apps, including TikTok

#92

Post by ketzu »

yann_bleu wrote: post #66

Well China has banned FB Twitter, Google etc. a decade ago

Many countries have banned some or more services (especially uber and the like received many bans). But even if others didn't, it seems like a very weak argument to me.

Re: U.S. looking at banning Chinese social media apps, including TikTok

#93

Post by roenxi »

lightgreen wrote: post #65
HenryBemis wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

USA has a track record of issuing a request for info (if not other shadier methods) tied with a gag order. So... and if the Snowden/Wikileaks/ATT room 641A has taught us anything (combined with the 5-9-14 eyes), is that we cannot trust any government when it has enough power to spy on its people. IT DOES. Major difference between USA, UK, France, Spain, Sweden etc. Vs Russia, Iran, China, Turkey, North Korea is that…

That major difference you mentioned means that the leak will be much more likely in the US, company will try to battle the order in court, the government will think twice before issuing a request to a company, and the net result is spyings are several orders of magnitude less often in western countries (I have no data to back up that statement).

> the leak will be much more likely in the US

After what has happened to Snowden and Assange? I hope the leakers share your blind optimism. Snowden literally had to flee to Russia, of all the countries in the world, for political asylum.

Re: U.S. looking at banning Chinese social media apps, including TikTok

#94

Post by Deganta »

AbrahamParangi wrote: post #24

It is absolutely foolish for any country other than China to allow TikTok within their borders. You might fairly ask whether or not it is equally foolish for non-US countries to use US services. I think that is also a reasonable question, and deserves reflection.

I'm not from the USA, but if I can choose if the USA, or China gets my data, I will choose the USA everytime.

Sure, America does a lot of shady stuff, but the situation in China is just way worse in pretty much every way imaginable.

Re: U.S. looking at banning Chinese social media apps, including TikTok

#95

Post by cthalupa »

Barrin92 wrote: post #91
cthalupa wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Yes you can't because Americans aren't subject to Chinese law. China certainly disagrees with you. Just look at the new Hong Kong NSL - it claims jurisdiction over every person on earth for offenses defined to vaguely as to be meaningless. This obviously has horrific effects for the people in Hong Kong - protesters are already being threatened as being national security threats for having a protest where they did no…

Hong Kong is part of China. Obviously going to China when you're a well known dissident is playing with fire. But I don't see what that has to do with banning apps from the app store for regular US users? This isn't actually news. Their are currently European and American citizens under arrest in Turkey, or Saudi Arabia say, has the US taken any Turkish apps from the app store? Or for that matter has the US currently…

>Hong Kong is part of China. Obviously going to China when you're a well known dissident is playing with fire.

Up until VERY recently, you would have zero reason to fear being a political dissident in Hong Kong. That's kind of what these protests have been about.

For the NSL in specific, the problem is that it's no longer just a 'You can get disappeared in China', but a 'You can get disappeared in a significant portion of Asia on China's behest', because there is now a law that applies to you, even if you're an American citizen, and China has extradition treaties and huge amounts of power to exert political pressure on other countries.

Two months ago, if I was a vocal critic of the PRC, I could travel to Thailand without concern. Today, I cannot.

My point was primarily about your comment of "what is the prc gonna do send assassins?" - being on the PRC's bad side is dangerous in ways that might not be readily apparent, unless you plan to just never travel to many countries.

As for whether or not the app could be a national security threat, we already know social media apps can be used for all sorts of intelligence gathering purposes. Outside of the obvious, social media GPS data has been used to track specific people via interactions with others, even if their phone was not "compromised", it has been used to estimate the number of soldiers stationed at military bases, and it has been used to detect training and other military operations. Not exactly the sort of data you want to hand over to a foreign country.

Re: U.S. looking at banning Chinese social media apps, including TikTok

#96

Post by stunt »

lightgreen wrote: post #34
AbrahamParangi wrote: post #24

It is absolutely foolish for any country other than China to allow TikTok within their borders. You might fairly ask whether or not it is equally foolish for non-US countries to use US services. I think that is also a reasonable question, and deserves reflection.

Google is 1000 times more transparent company than ByteDance. It is OK to use US services for non-US countries.

> Google is 1000 times more transparent company than ByteDance. It is OK to use US services for non-US countries.

Are we talking about freedom of speech? I 100% agree.

Otherwise, I don't think Google is a good example. There are actually many bad cases among US and EU companies. Just consider a few blow ups that we had with Google (e.g. Street view), Cicso (the issue with NSA), RSA (also the story about NSA), Facebook scandals, Crypto AG, Gemalto SIM cards, and etc.

Are they less evil or more transparent? I don't think so. It's the system that's more transparent in the West not companies. So when something leaks it's more likely that we are informed and it will blow up.

If you want to link everything to national security, then obviously domestic services are right choices. But, I'm still against banning and blocking other services. It's just against how I like the world to look like. It also sets a bad standard for other countries to inherit it. You don't want to disconnect the world more than it's now. History shows that it has bad consequences no matter where you are standing.

I think the right move would be setting good data protection laws (e.g. GDPR), and educating people about data privacy and help them to understand all the risks that are involved.

Re: U.S. looking at banning Chinese social media apps, including TikTok

#97

Post by simonh »

All this will do is validate that banning each other's social media apps is a legitimate thing to do, all you need is sufficient justification.

The usual reason for tit-for-tat trade restrictions is to punish the original restrictions and try to coerce the other side back to a free trade position. That can't happen in this case, the CCP will never allow foreign social media in China, so it would end up with a permanent mutual ban.

Either we believe that freedom of communication is a paramount principle that should be protected, or we don't and we think it's ok to interfere with it for 'national interest' reasons. Our national interest reasons might differ from theirs, but we'd still be validating that banning social media is an acceptable step to take depending on the circumstances. I realise this poses a problem because letting Chinese social media into our markets creates risks but if they operate in our markets they have to follow our laws and our standards. Playing the game their way by their rules is a losing strategy. We need to get a lot more creative on this.

Re: U.S. looking at banning Chinese social media apps, including TikTok

#98

Post by djcapelis »

cthalupa wrote: post #81
ur-whale wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because it would be the law What remains to be seen is if said law would be "legal" (as in: not in direct conflict with the constitution).

I'm not sure that a foreign company has any rights under the constitution to begin with. It's contentious whether or not it grants rights to a foreign citizen while they are outside of the US's borders, so claiming that ByteDance would have their constitutional rights violated by such a ban would be even more so. However, if this were to happen, it would almost certainly be under national security law, which has pret…

> I'm not sure that a foreign company has any rights under

> the constitution to begin with.

Would that be this foreign corporation that is incorporated in the checks notes State of California?

https://businesssearch.sos.ca.gov/Document/RetrievePDF?Id=03...

(Yes, I know this is a company owned by the Beijing based ByteDance but that’s not immediately disqualifying of this US corporation run under US law being able to defend itself in a US court system as any other US company would.)

Re: U.S. looking at banning Chinese social media apps, including TikTok

#99

Post by eirini1 »

jeswin wrote: post #52
AbrahamParangi wrote: post #24

It is absolutely foolish for any country other than China to allow TikTok within their borders. You might fairly ask whether or not it is equally foolish for non-US countries to use US services. I think that is also a reasonable question, and deserves reflection.

> You might fairly ask whether or not it is equally foolish for non-US countries to use US services. I think that is also a reasonable question, and deserves reflection. It's a fair sentiment (and held by others as well on this thread), but IMHO there's no equivalence. In democracies, violence against their own people (or others) will invite opposition from their citizens - while in China people won't even know what'…

The US installed a dictatorship in my country in the 70s. China hasn't done anything of the sort, except ship me cheap stuff through aliexpress. I know who I would choose as my designated data thief if I had to choose between the US stealing my data and China stealing my data.

Re: U.S. looking at banning Chinese social media apps, including TikTok

#100

Post by stunt »

lightgreen wrote: post #31
sschueller wrote: post #23

So it is not ok for a foreign app the spy on its user but it's perfectly ok for Google and co to do so? Anyone remember what Uber did with their app and tracking users? What about the king of tracking, facebook?

There’s a quite a large difference between Google spying and China spying. When Google “spies”, users get more relevant ads. When China spies, people get into “Vocational Education and Training Centers” and other bad things happen. Chinese spying is like 10000 times worse in practice. But in theory, when dealing in absolutes, there is no difference, both are spies.

> When Google “spies”, users get more relevant ads.

Not always about ads. Remember Cambridge Analytica data scandal.

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