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

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

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 171 posts

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

#151

Post by hellomyguys »

chaos_a wrote: post #103
apexalpha wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's be honest: Google has been known to be in bed with the NSA and other agencies as well. It's very disingenuous to pretend Google only serves you ads but has no relations to the US national intelligence community but Chinese apps do.

the difference is that the US is using spying to stop people from doing illegal things. China is using spying to silence/monitor anyone who disagrees with it's government. Yes, both countries are definitely spying on people via social media apps. But what they're using it for is different.

>the difference is that the US is using spying to stop people from doing illegal things.

I don't think this is entirely accurate...

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

#152

Post by Balgair »

sushshshsh wrote: post #130

This is such cancer. I didn't expect that trade wars and centralized app stores would lead to this, but here we are. Think back to 1999-- could you imagine if China had made Napster, the USA would block your access to download and use it? We would all just laugh at how easy it would be to get around it

Sure, but with Napster I mostly get movies and songs I want, for free. Viruses too, sure.

With TikTok I get bad choreography.

I don't see a lot of people trying to get around firewalls for that.

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

#154

Post by LyndsySimon »

Balgair wrote: post #152
sushshshsh wrote: post #130

This is such cancer. I didn't expect that trade wars and centralized app stores would lead to this, but here we are. Think back to 1999-- could you imagine if China had made Napster, the USA would block your access to download and use it? We would all just laugh at how easy it would be to get around it

Sure, but with Napster I mostly get movies and songs I want, for free. Viruses too, sure. With TikTok I get bad choreography. I don't see a lot of people trying to get around firewalls for that.

That's... actually an interesting thought experiment.

Let's say the US "bans" TikTok. Younger users around the country then install various VPN clients and learn a bit about security. This in turns leads to an overall more environment for US security services to perform mass surveillance.

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

#155

Post by LyndsySimon »

vkou wrote: post #149
lightgreen wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It could be for example if your neighbor works for CIA or at some secret research laboratory. They can learn a lot about them by watching your funny cat videos.

This makes zero sense. What material information will they learn about my neighbour from my phone?

I'm spitballing, but here goes.

A) Your neighbor's laptop is partially compromised, and part of what is obtained is a list of APs with which it has been associated.

B) Your phone has TikTok installed, and part of what is obtained is your location and the available APs (while you're using the app, only).

C) You use your phone to view TikTok videos in the middle of the night, at home.

Because of B+C, the foreign actor now knows where you live (via location services) and the wireless APs nearby. Because of A, they know where your neighbor's laptop has associated. Taken together, they now have a reasonable level of confidence where your neighbor lives even though they have never installed TikTok.

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

#156

Post by lightgreen »

vkou wrote: post #149
lightgreen wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It could be for example if your neighbor works for CIA or at some secret research laboratory. They can learn a lot about them by watching your funny cat videos.

This makes zero sense. What material information will they learn about my neighbour from my phone?

For example match car plate numbers with locations and timestamps. By analyzing millions of videos they can build a driving pattern for a particular vehicle.

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

#157

Post by hintymad »

sushshshsh wrote: post #130

This is such cancer. I didn't expect that trade wars and centralized app stores would lead to this, but here we are. Think back to 1999-- could you imagine if China had made Napster, the USA would block your access to download and use it? We would all just laugh at how easy it would be to get around it

This may or may not have to do with trade war, but the banning TikTok makes sense -- it's just quid pro quo. The Chinese government banned FB, Google, Twitter, Netflix, after all.

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

#158

Post by codezero »

actuator wrote: post #14
codezero wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just ask the app stores to ban them. The US couldn’t do anything more sophisticated right now, and that would solve most of their concerns.

Has there been any precedence of US banning an app/website without some clear violation of law?

Sort of. There are a lot of international regulations that prevent things like SaaS companies from servicing Iran and Korea - so they could just introduce some “justifiable” legislation and then ask Apple to enforce it which they probably would.

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

#159

Post by bobbydreamer »

I like Chinese tiktok "for you" recommendation than YouTube's recommended. Tiktoks reco is like yeah I will watch that, most of the time I am like thanks. Keep recommending like this. Youtube is like, algorithm thinks it has figured me but it's sort of showing me the same old videos like it's new. I will throw my data to China.
Post reply on HN