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TikTok to Sue U.S. over Ban

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Re: TikTok to Sue U.S. over Ban

#71
post #44

Imagine US companies suing China for not allowing them to operate there. People would say "China can decide what they want to allow". Well if China can decide (which they did first) two can play this game. Also TikTok says this ban is baseless. If USA's ban of TikTok is baseless, what base does China have for banning everything?

China is a totalitarian regime which doesn't follow due process and basic freedoms. I strongly hope that your strange "tit-for-tat" doesn't extend to basic rights of people and businesses on US soil. US is supposed to be better than that, remember?

> basic rights of people and businesses

Expand on these basic rights that are violated if TikTok is banned. And since when do foreign businesses have basic rights in US or any other democracy?

Re: TikTok to Sue U.S. over Ban

#72
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dislike Trump (not as much as I disliked Bush, because I knew a lot of guys like Bush so I had something to focus my dislike on, and I don't know anyone like Trump) I'm not American but I did live there a long time. I agree the ban is some crazy stuff but: >How any "small gov't" conservative is okay with this, while over 1000 Americans are dying of COVID per day nonetheless, is beyond me. How is it the ban relates…

Well the President is putting more effort into banning Tik Tok than fighting Covid at the moment.

thanks, I wasn't following the logic.

Re: TikTok to Sue U.S. over Ban

#73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Forgetting Trumps' feelings about the Tulsa rally, I truly believe the Tulsa thing was the smoking gun. We know that TikTok did manual moderation of topics sensitive to China, as well as some more non-ethical ones (censuring/pushing results back) of disabled and 'ugly' people. My girlfriend was offered a job moderating for TikTok and their package details with the work described left a bad taste in my mouth to be hon…

So do you think Congress, both the House and Senate, also overwhelmingly voted to ban Tiktok because of the poor showing at Tulsa rally? smh

Congress voted to ban it from federally owned computers which is much different than a blanket nationwide sanction.

Re: TikTok to Sue U.S. over Ban

#74
post #33
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does China doing something make it ok for the US to do it too?

Because if you keep trying to take the "high road" you'll keep losing your IP and getting nothing for it.

You do gain something, namely you don't become the same as the people you're implying are worse than you. If everyone is on the same level, nobody is an improvement over anyone else and the contrast is a purely cosmetic one.

Re: TikTok to Sue U.S. over Ban

#75

Imagine US companies suing China for not allowing them to operate there. People would say "China can decide what they want to allow". Well if China can decide (which they did first) two can play this game. Also TikTok says this ban is baseless. If USA's ban of TikTok is baseless, what base does China have for banning everything?

I keep seeing comments like this There are reasons you can oppose this ban, but this isn't a good one of those reasons. - The US promises certain freedoms and protections, and TikTok is saying the US is unfairly denying them those freedoms and protections. China doesn't promise those things to anyone, so there's no grounds to complain they're not being fair. I mean, imagine this argument applied to other things. "The…

I agree, I don't fully understand why the comparison is being made here. There are plenty of things that are unfair on either side as far as the law goes; Chinese and US businesses have dealt with that for years unimpeded.

The more interesting question is my eyes is who's going to benefit/hurt from all this and why - US consumers, US/Chinese tech cos, US/Chinese foreign interests? I'd love to hear opinions on this aspect.

Like another comment said, it'll be interesting to see what comes out in discovery.

Re: TikTok to Sue U.S. over Ban

#76

While I think TikTok is a cesspool, Trump banning TikTok is a wild overextension of Federal power. How any "small gov't" conservative is okay with this, while over 1000 Americans are dying of COVID per day nonetheless, is beyond me. They need to educate Americans on the predatory nature of TikToks software and move along.

> While I think TikTok is a cesspool Is that referring to the content or the company itself? I don't see how it's any more of a cesspool than any other social platform. Twitter? Facebook? Reddit? Every sufficiently large platform is filled with a very wide range of content, from great to awful. As a company, I do agree they have shady practices, but again, don't most other social media apps such as Facebook and the g…

> I don't see how it's any more of a cesspool than any other social platform.

It actually is uniquely bad.

A disproportionate amount of the content consists of the sexualization of underage girls.

The way the thing is set up, there is some kind of audio, someone does a thing (usually a dance), and then other people try to do the same thing to the same sound. The audio is generally nonsense. One of the currently popular ones is a Russian cereal commercial (mepas zoo zoo zoo). Okay, fine. But then somehow the majority of the audio clips are misogynist or misandrist. Every other one seems to contain the N-word. And they're all catchy tunes that get played over and over and get stuck in your head. It's pretty messed up.

Re: TikTok to Sue U.S. over Ban

#77
post #33
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does China doing something make it ok for the US to do it too?

Because if you keep trying to take the "high road" you'll keep losing your IP and getting nothing for it.

If you want to do something about Chinese business practices, than do something within the constraints of the law.

If TikTok wins, it means that we didn't follow our own laws. Either change the laws or follow the current ones.

Re: TikTok to Sue U.S. over Ban

#78

Imagine US companies suing China for not allowing them to operate there. People would say "China can decide what they want to allow". Well if China can decide (which they did first) two can play this game. Also TikTok says this ban is baseless. If USA's ban of TikTok is baseless, what base does China have for banning everything?

China's basis is that foreign companies won't respect their laws. What US laws has TikTok broken? Privacy isn't protected because an entire domestic industry has bought off Congress. Why can't a foreign company participate in the same?

You aren't wrong, but it's fairly easy to make a plausible argument for national security.

You can argue nation security when it comes to any app that isn't doing end-to-end, especially if it's written in a way that could allow the first, or a third party, to get access to arbitrary user data with the plausible deniability that security bugs can offer.

TikTok has had security bugs that made me outright mad when I looked at an expose on some of them. The kind of comedically terrible bugs they've had not too long ago makes it absolutely certain there are many, many more. Not even checking which user is logged in when you send a message for the user? Seriously, that's embarrassing in a rarely used feature on an app with a handful of users. Core functionality on a hundreds of millions users app? That's so terrible I almost can't believe it.

Not that other apps don't have bugs, but the track record, and global spread would make a solid argument. Confound by their app appearing to spread the data over an absolutely massive number of domains, and hosts, making auditing very hard, and also attribution of blame if data gets in the wrong hand.

I'm not saying eg Facebook is necessarily much different, only what argument can be made. Incidentally, what TikTok is doing is almost certainly illegal in EU, as I have no information that they have even attempted to follow GDPR rules.

Re: TikTok to Sue U.S. over Ban

#79
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. It is no surprise that they sue, but maybe that was a mistake. Because depending on the result, it might get TikTok banned in the EU as well. Or the result is that indeed their operation is 100% independent of their Chinese parent company and no US data ever touches mainland China... which would surprise me.

Honest question: would it matter if they stored data in mainland china? Wouldn't it still be fine if they are storing data there but not giving it to china gov? (Not that i really believe that any data in china is safe from gov, although i could say the same about usa, but what is the actual bar that the us gov has to meet to show its a national security risk? Is data on china soil sufficient?)

> Wouldn't it still be fine if they are storing data there but not giving it to china gov

That's a HUGE assumption to make. All companies are required to install backdoors BY LAW in China, and the gov can even have its own employees/spies within the companies' data centers.

Why would you assume any different or that it's up to the company to give that data? It's not like the Chinese government really has to go through a democratic judge to do that.

Re: TikTok to Sue U.S. over Ban

#80
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because if you keep trying to take the "high road" you'll keep losing your IP and getting nothing for it.

If you want to do something about Chinese business practices, than do something within the constraints of the law. If TikTok wins, it means that we didn't follow our own laws. Either change the laws or follow the current ones.

What laws are those?
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