Trump says he will ban TikTok through executive action • Hacker News Board

Re: Trump says he will ban TikTok through executive action

#491

Post by eru » Sat, Aug 01, 2020, 1:02 PM UTC

goatinaboat wrote: post #480

eru wrote: post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just do unilateral free trade. Why would you restrict what your customers (ie citizens) can do, just because some despotic regime somewhere abuses their citizens?

Why would you restrict what your customers (ie citizens) can do, just because some despotic regime somewhere abuses their citizens? One reason Chinese products are cheaper is that they largely ignore environmental concerns. So by allowing the trade all we do is put our own, well-regulated factories out of business, whilst increasing the net pollution in the world, and instead of quality products that last we get junk…

> So by allowing the trade all we do is put our own, well-regulated factories out of business

Do you have any evidence for that? I doubt it.

> and instead of quality products that last we get junk destined for landfill, [...]

That seems like a decision for customers to make? If customers prefer cheaper products, who are we to judge?

> And that's before you even get into the slave labour...

I don't think that's a big economic factor. However, insofar as it is occurring, it is bad. I would suggest opening immigration more to give people around the world an alternative.

Re: Trump says he will ban TikTok through executive action

#492

Post by bayesian_horse » Sat, Aug 01, 2020, 1:03 PM UTC

re6tor wrote: post #327

ApolloFortyNine wrote: post #106

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…

The message that would trascend from such an action is that our vision of how a society should work was no better than the one in China. The West always believed their ideals and principles around "democracy" and "freedom" were superior to those of the CCP. Now the West also needs to ban (in this case, a social media platform) to function and is no better than its rival. If anything, this would prove the CCP was alwa…

Bigger than the reciprocity problem is that TikTok is operating under Chinese law and thus its American userbase's social media exposure, or a part thereof, is controlled by the CCP.

Not good idea.

Re: Trump says he will ban TikTok through executive action

#493

Post by Justsignedup » Sat, Aug 01, 2020, 1:09 PM UTC

This should be through legislative action not the word of an idiot.

That's the travesty. Personally I'm okay with banning tiktok but not this way. The way matters.

Re: Trump says he will ban TikTok through executive action

#494

Post by bayesian_horse » Sat, Aug 01, 2020, 1:10 PM UTC

eru wrote: post #484

bayesian_horse wrote: post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bigger problem is that when American users use TikTok, the Chinese government gets a say in their social media exposure. Nobody should be using TikTok voluntarily, in my opinion. There should be a PR-effort led by governments, parties or NGOs to tell people why they shouldn't use TikTok.

I don't know enough about TikTok to have an opinion on them in particular. But I do agree that it should be up to people to decide whether they want to use TikTok. An information campaign like you suggest might be justified. Though given how politicized everything seems to be, I suspect it might backfire. Btw, would you like to make it illegal for people to send their personal information directly via email to the CC…

It's not unusual for some kind of transaction to be forbidden by only penalizing or hindering one side.

TikTok users don't consent to the CCP directing their user experience. In fact, TikTok will do its best to avoid letting on to anything like that. And US jurisdiction doesn't cover this company at all. That is one of the rare situations where you really want a government to step in and tell people what not to do.

Just like you would still ban a dangerous product, even though users could know the danger if they really wanted to.

Banning TikTok isn't really about personal information or even surveillance of any kind. Social media can be abused in many different ways, and much more actively.

Re: Trump says he will ban TikTok through executive action

#495

Post by chapium » Sat, Aug 01, 2020, 1:11 PM UTC

tanilama wrote: post #182

euix wrote: post #48

Shows how far the balance of power has shifted in the last 20 years back when the Chinese government was banning western products to prevent "spiritual pollution" and "western influence". Now we got the reverse and it's also for ideological reasons (at least at face value). Wonder if WeChat is next. That would be fairly effective in prevent overseas Chinese from communicating with the mainland and a lot of mom and po…

No Westerners actually use Wechat. TikTok is getting mainstream in US. That is the difference

Anyone with relatives in china would. That includes westerners.

Re: Trump says he will ban TikTok through executive action

#496

Post by fallingfrog » Sat, Aug 01, 2020, 1:15 PM UTC

stunt wrote: post #481

fallingfrog wrote: post #453

If any other country in the world did this to, say, Facebook, we would denounce them as an illegitimate dictator. Astonishing.

That literally has happened already when Iran banned Facebook and Twitter during protest against election fraud that lead to Ahmadinejad to stay in power for second term. However, Iran banned Facebook merely because it was being used by protesters to share content about police brutality during protest. So I'm not sure if that's a fair comparison. I think governments are realizing that social networks are important st…

If you think the he’s banning TikTok for any other reason than teenagers sharing content about police brutality during protests, you really are a mooncalf..

Re: Trump says he will ban TikTok through executive action

#497

Post by js2 » Sat, Aug 01, 2020, 1:18 PM UTC

Twisell wrote: post #293

Not US citizen here. Can someone explain how in a democracy the chief executive can singlehandedly decide to ban a media only a few month before elections? I can't make any sense of that, it seems wrong at so many levels...

Either through the National Emergency Act[1] or some other legally dubious authorization the White House counsel came up with after talking to John Yoo[2].

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Emergencies_Act

2. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jul/20/trump-john-y...

Re: Trump says he will ban TikTok through executive action

#498

Post by spamizbad » Sat, Aug 01, 2020, 1:23 PM UTC

My conspiracy theory: Silicon Valley (Facebook) couldn’t compete with TikTok so they leaned on Trump to kill it. The fact that TikTok is a massive hotbed of anti-Trump memes the way Facebook is pro-Trump/anti-Biden is also curious.

The national security angle is laughable because we have no such controls over the data held by US companies. Would be trivial for a spy to pipe data out of FAANG to the country they serve - because we have no real privacy laws at the national level. Just look at how a 17 year old breached Twitter.

If social media apps are national security concerns then we should treat them like we do typical defense contractors (background checked/nat security clearance for employees, no foreign nationals on board, control foreign investment, export limitations, etc)

Re: Trump says he will ban TikTok through executive action

#499

Post by AsyncAwait » Sat, Aug 01, 2020, 1:29 PM UTC

read_if_gay_ wrote: post #440

Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree it's unfair, but when you defend something for moral reasons or claim to have a moral high ground, you should stick with it even if it's unfair, right? The West has always said that the Chinese bans to Western social media and tech companies were authoritarian and antidemocratic. How is this less so?

This is less so because they ban anything that isn't controlled by the authoritarian and antidemocratic regime. This ban is against something that's controlled by it. Bans per se aren't antidemocratic, we already have plenty of banned stuff. The only thing that can be antidemocratic is their purpose.

> This is less so because they ban anything that isn't controlled by the authoritarian and antidemocratic regime.

Really? So why are there Apple stores in China?

It seems like a rationalization to always see ourselves as the "good guys" no matter what. Every empire ever did.

Playing devil's advocate, I can see the Chinese rationalizing their bans as defending their sovereignty against Western dominance since we have a long history of bullying China and other nations that don't toe the line.

My point being, there's rationalizations you can make from their side too, which doesn't make their behavior correct.

Just because you can find some kind of a rationale for banning TikTok doesn't mean it's not hypocritical, especially while we often like to claim to hold higher moral values.

Re: Trump says he will ban TikTok through executive action

#500

Post by glenstein » Sat, Aug 01, 2020, 1:29 PM UTC

shlant wrote: post #455

glenstein wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's reasonable to do for national security purposes, just like I think it's reasonable to disentangle U.S. industries from Chinese companies that pose national security threats and steal trade secrets. So as a matter of principle, at least, I'm fine with it. I can't say I feel great about the wisdom of banning Tiktok in particular, but I won't let that confuse me into disagreeing with the underlying principl…

> I think it's reasonable to do for national security purposes Haven't the most egregious erosions of civil liberties (Patriot Act for example) been implemented using the same argument? Not commenting on the validity of your position specifically, but your reasoning for it seems like it could be applied to just about anything regardless of how well it fits into the idea of a free and open democracy

>Haven't the most egregious erosions of civil liberties (Patriot Act for example) been implemented using the same argument?

Oh, definitely. I think those excesses which have been justified under the pretense of national security have been quite terrible, and I think that they are bad for reasons particular to those cases and arguments.

I don't take it to mean we should not have a concept of national security, or that we are so helpless that we can't meaningfully engage in case by case analysis of what to do in specific situations. It could be applied to anything if one isn't willing to distinguish between different cases based on their merits.