151–160 of 694 posts
So how do you ban an app actually? Yes they could remove the app from the app store but what about the APIs etc...? Also the next TikTok clone is going to be a massive succes.
Not even getting into the CCP ties, it's always struck me as unfair that Western social media companies are banned in China, while Chinese ones have been able to compete Worldwide. In a way this gives Chinese apps an immediate advantage (as some are indirectly calling out in this comment section). If you want to reach out to someone in China, you have to use a Chinese company's app. Since social media is mostly a win…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> What's he going to do when ByteDance uploads the .apk somewhere? I don't think most Android users know how to install an apk, and as far as I know a similar distribution model is not possible on iOS.
It wouldn’t matter. To make it effective the FCC would likely ask all the ISPs and Carriers to block TikTok IPs at the network level.
Even if they could - what is a TikTok IP? I'm confident their US endpoints are AWS or Google Cloud - good luck blocking those.
I’m torn. On one hand, we’ve seen how TikTok has been used by the CCP to extend the reach of its censorship, oppression, and surveillance. On the other hand, I’m not sure if the government should be deciding what software we’re allowed to have.
I think this is a good measure to even the playing field. Thousands of companies are blocked in China. So why not do the same?
I (an individual) would be happy to see TikTok banned, along with Twitter/Facebook/Instagram/etc, because I see them as vain wastes of time with a sinister twist. But I've also met teenagers, and even been one! So I can guess how they might respond to a government-imposed ban on a new and interesting vice.
And I (a citizen) am deeply suspicious of being told that I must not know something. It smells like corruption and tyranny. The belief that knowledge should be free is tattooed on my soul (and my skin).
Tit-for-tat only works in the absence of moral imperatives.
Not even getting into the CCP ties, it's always struck me as unfair that Western social media companies are banned in China, while Chinese ones have been able to compete Worldwide. In a way this gives Chinese apps an immediate advantage (as some are indirectly calling out in this comment section). If you want to reach out to someone in China, you have to use a Chinese company's app. Since social media is mostly a win…
After reading many books on China I learned China values social stability over everything. In its 4,000 year history they have seen the dangers of social instability. We are a very young country and haven't seen what real chaos can look like. (These ideas are from Henry Kissinger's on China, Destined for War by Graham T. Allison and The China Dream by Liu Mingfu)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The executive branch taking wild swings to impose rules that even congress would struggle to pass through constitutional review, is a threat to the democratic principles on which the US is based.
Why would congress struggle to pass it through a constitutional review? Plenty of Trump's EOs have been ruled unconstitutional. He may feel that his authority extends beyond checks and balances, but it doesn't. His attempts to abuse his power have been duly mitigated and stopped about as well (or badly depending on how you look at it) as the last few presidents, as I see it.
Because a computer program is an expression, and the right to free expression is a cornerstone of the first amendment. So broadly, I don't think the government can "ban" an app, no matter who wrote it.
This proposition has been tested and affirmed for source code (see DeCSS t-shirt, etc.) but to my knowledge has not been tested for binaries. So, it would at minimum be a new test of whether binary code is as much a protected expression as human-readable code.
This will be a huge gift horse to Zuckerberg/Facebook and I have a sneaking suspicion it's a project of Peter Thiel. There are a lot of remedies that could be taken if we suspect TikTok of malfeasance, but a straight up ban? I smell fish.
If it is a project of Peter Thiel, I would hope that would finally wake everyone up to how bad faith calling himself a libertarian is.
Not even getting into the CCP ties, it's always struck me as unfair that Western social media companies are banned in China, while Chinese ones have been able to compete Worldwide. In a way this gives Chinese apps an immediate advantage (as some are indirectly calling out in this comment section). If you want to reach out to someone in China, you have to use a Chinese company's app. Since social media is mostly a win…
After reading many books on China I learned China values social stability over everything. In its 4,000 year history they have seen the dangers of social instability. We are a very young country and haven't seen what real chaos can look like. (These ideas are from Henry Kissinger's on China, Destined for War by Graham T. Allison and The China Dream by Liu Mingfu)
What "real chaos" has "China" (which is, by the way, nowhere homogenous) seen that we have not seen?
EDIT: I suppose the Great Leap Forward was an example of "real chaos", to an extent we haven't seen in the West. But where was China's 4,000 years of history to stop the deaths of millions of their own?