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

Re: Trump says he will ban TikTok through executive action

#581

Post by throwaway894345 » Sat, Aug 01, 2020, 3:17 PM UTC

AsyncAwait wrote: post #516

grugagag wrote: post #503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or maybe exposing the Chinese population to to a tiny bit of critical thinking or anything not in line with CCP’s propaganda is what is feared, not necessarily bullying, don’t you think?

I am talking about how they may rationalize it, not what the actual goal is. Take the Iraq war. The goal was to further assert ourselves in the Middle East, settle old scores, signal to our official enemies we mean business and enrich a bunch of military contravtors. But the rationalization that I think made it possible for a lot of these people to sleep at night was things like defending the country, empowering wome…

I mean, the societ union collapsed remarkably quickly. At least in Romania, the collapse was partly motivated by illegal showings of western films in homes across the country which have the Romanians (whose media and travel were tightly restricted) a glimpse into the freedoms and abundance they were missing out on. I’m sure it’s not exactly the same but it gives me pause.

Re: Trump says he will ban TikTok through executive action

#582

Post by cambalache » Sat, Aug 01, 2020, 3:20 PM UTC

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #250

rumanator wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (...) because TikTok itself is banned in China; Chinese users have to use Douyin Seems to me that it's not banned at all, they just release a region-specific version for a specific market.

It's banned in the relevant sense, that users of TikTok aren't getting any kind of network effect from the Chinese userbase.

Then Netflix is banned in the relevant sense in my country since I cannot get the same experience an American does. Look, shit on tiktok all you want, hell I installed both tik-tok and wechat and I uninstalled them within 1 day when I noticed how Orwellian they were. I only ask to some westerners commenters to not be disingenuous, because Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter and virtually any other big American company has given carte blanche to the NSA to get on their data. Also spare me the tired " this is whataboutism" argument.

Re: Trump says he will ban TikTok through executive action

#583

Post by eru » Sat, Aug 01, 2020, 3:24 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #549

eru wrote: post #491

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> Do you have any evidence for that? I doubt it. Last few decades are pretty much entirely made of evidence for that - private owners will, given insufficient barriers preventing it - move their manufacturing to the places with low labor costs. It's why almost everything you or I own has a label on it that says "made in China", and not "made in the USA". > That seems like a decision for customers to make? If customer…

The real output of the manufacturing sector in the US looks pretty robust. See https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/OUTMS

You are right that Chinese manufacturing has grown a lot. But what's the evidence that this growth has anything to do with a hypothetical decline of the US? More than a century ago the US and German industrial output growing didn't diminish British output, either.

> Naively, yes. In pratcite, this is equivalent to letting a 3 year old choose whether they'll get chocolate or broccoli for dinner. Customers almost universally prefer cheaper products above almost anything else - including economy, environment, and their own safety. Which is why a good chunk of business-related laws in every country exists solely to remove options from which customers can choose.

Perhaps we should remove their opportunity to vote. When they make the 'wrong' decision when buying that mostly hurts themselves. But at the ballot box they can hurt the rest of the country and the rest of the world.

Re: Trump says he will ban TikTok through executive action

#584

Post by trasz » Sat, Aug 01, 2020, 3:24 PM UTC

jskell725 wrote: post #579

trasz wrote: post #528

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thing is, there are no checks and balances for this area of government activity. Otherwise why would american companies include government backdoors in their products?

Companies tend to fight back when it's profitable to fight back; and do their best to ignore the government otherwise. See: this week's tech CEO house hearing. I can't recall this example of the backdoors; and if you say "Clipper Chips" I'm going home.

Of course I don't mean clipper. I mean the backdoors in US telco equipment - some uncovered by Snowden, some discovered by independent researchers. If your theory were true, Chinese network equipment would be full of government backdoors, and US manufactured equipment would be free of them. In the real world, however, the reverse is true.

Re: Trump says he will ban TikTok through executive action

#585

Post by Kuinox » Sat, Aug 01, 2020, 3:25 PM UTC

tantalor wrote: post #446

supergirl wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

not on ios. also, i'm afraid banning in the US here means actually banning it worldwide. or that will be the next step. it would be easy to force apple to just pull it from the app store. and no, people won't just install it from the apk. maybe 1% know how to do that, so it'll be a ghost town anyway

That is a risk of a walled garden like iOS. There's always the web. Good luck banning a website.

In France they use lying DNS.

Most of the users have their default DNS set up: the ISP ones, and the french ISP dns' must comply to the law.

If you want to access SciHub for exemple, you need to change your DNS config to something else.

Re: Trump says he will ban TikTok through executive action

#586

Post by spamizbad » Sat, Aug 01, 2020, 3:26 PM UTC

dangus wrote: post #506

spamizbad wrote: post #498

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…

My conspiracy theory is that Trump is mad about TikTok kids pranking his Tulsa COVID-19 Death Rally.

No question the mere implication of that made this decision easier for him.

Don’t worry teens: theres always Reels(tm) your government-sanctioned viral video feature!

Re: Trump says he will ban TikTok through executive action

#587

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Aug 01, 2020, 3:26 PM UTC

jskell725 wrote: post #576

pinkfoot wrote: post #538

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is Telsa, never mind Buick and VW not at least some evidence that they have?

No, unless and until there is a domestic chinese Luxury Car maker of note. This is the exception which proves the rule. They don't make directly competing products; so these come in. Watch what happens when they do.

[deleted]

Re: Trump says he will ban TikTok through executive action

#588

Post by trasz » Sat, Aug 01, 2020, 3:28 PM UTC

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #562

trasz wrote: post #528

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thing is, there are no checks and balances for this area of government activity. Otherwise why would american companies include government backdoors in their products?

> there are no checks and balances for this area of government activity Of course there are. Congress can pass laws limiting executive actions. And the courts can constrain it.

Okay, so in theory maybe there could be checks and balances in place. In practice, however, there are instead secret court orders, subpoenas, or "national security letters".

Re: Trump says he will ban TikTok through executive action

#589

Post by refurb » Sat, Aug 01, 2020, 3:31 PM UTC

Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #347

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…

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?

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?

I’ve never heard of it described that way. I’ve heard it called “anticompetitive” or “protectionist”.

I mean, the US bans Kinder Surprise eggs, but I wouldn’t call that “authoritarian”.

Re: Trump says he will ban TikTok through executive action

#590

Post by wslh » Sat, Aug 01, 2020, 3:32 PM UTC

FraKtus wrote: post #485

We are on HN here, right? Does anybody was able to do a man in the middle inspection to prove that the app is spying on Users? Does anybody did inspect the binary and found a back door in the app? In am working in video and I find that the tool they did develop allowing kids to remix video succeeded were previous startup failed...

Yes, it is stupid that in 2020 we accept articles against an app without hardcore claims. It is also no sense if these analysis are only targeting Chinese companies and not other top apps like FB.