Is WeChat even useful in the US? Is it used at all?
US bans WeChat, TikTok from app stores, threatens shutdowns
61–70 of 306 posts
Re: US bans WeChat, TikTok from app stores, threatens shutdowns
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
Trump wasn't elected because of magic mind hacking by Facebook or whatever. He appealed to issues that people were concerned about, whatever you may think of those issues, and so they voted for him.
Watch the latest Triumph bit from the Colbert show to see the mentality of Trump supporters. We are living in an idiocracy now. 51% of Americans have no critical thinking skills. The "issues" are whatever you can use to trigger an emotional response from someone who is easily manipulated.
This sentence could be true with each political faction once an entity gets to control the narrative and decide to see the views of some of the 'hardcore XYZ supporters' which then is used to reflect on how irrational an entire group of supporters are. This entity is the media companies.
Replace XYZ with EU, Brexit, Biden, Trump, and in the UK: Boris Johnson, and Jeremey Corbyn.
> Watch the latest Triumph bit from the Colbert show to see the mentality of Trump supporters.
It's a stretch to speak in complete absolutes here.
Re: US bans WeChat, TikTok from app stores, threatens shutdowns
#63The cynic in me wonders if the TikTok ban is just to try to drive the price down for Trump’s friend Larry Ellison.
Re: US bans WeChat, TikTok from app stores, threatens shutdowns
#64Banning a speech app should trigger strict judicial scrutiny for first amendment infringement in the same way that banning a newspaper would: 1. Is it necessary to a "compelling state interest"? Maybe they are CCP surveillance apps, but that needs be shown in court, not merely asserted. 2. Is it "narrowly tailored" to achieving this compelling purpose? This seems narrowly tailored to two apps. 3. Does it use the "lea…
> Maybe they are CCP surveillance apps, but that needs be shown in court, not merely asserted. If TikTok sued the US government under this theory, the government might need to make the argument in court to defend the lawsuit. There’s no requirement for the government to preemptively make a showing in court before it does everything.
Why would that not be abused as a means of political oppression? You could just sue your opponents and it would be guilty until proven innocent.
Re: US bans WeChat, TikTok from app stores, threatens shutdowns
#65Just 3 months after TikTok users embarrassed Trump at his Tulsa rally, where he left visibly upset.
He's called for the repeal of section 230 because of "tech bias". He attacks news outlets for “biassed” reporting. He attacks whistle blowers. He attacks people that supported him and later changed their minds (mattis, kelly, etc). He attacks Amazon for owning Washington Post. He attacks anyone that opposes him.
I'm surprised people are taking this ban at face value.
And what's sad is that he's made it clear he would attack US tech companies if he can find a legal basis to do so. There's zero doubt in my mind that this is all about Trump silencing opposition. It's his modus operandi.
Edit: Even the sale was politicized. He came out against Microsoft owning it, and publicly supported Oracle... Ellison being one of his friends.. whom I would guess Trump assumed would make the platform more friendly to him.
Re: US bans WeChat, TikTok from app stores, threatens shutdowns
#66> Users, meanwhile, face a security “nightmare” because they won’t be able to get app updates that fix bugs and security vulnerabilities, he said.
This is because people who already have the app will be able to continue using it, just without updates.
So we can probably expect to see a mad rush of new users downloading the app over the weekend before it gets banned - and then keeping an outdated, insecure app on their devices without any security updates...
Re: US bans WeChat, TikTok from app stores, threatens shutdowns
#67I’m genuinely curious what the perceived threat is here. Is it as simple as “China is going to read everyone’s stuff and use machine learning to figure out what the cool kids are doing and then brainwash them?”
The threat is that China is, step by step, getting bigger than the US, and the US has no real mean to stop it so they try anything to slow it down.
Re: US bans WeChat, TikTok from app stores, threatens shutdowns
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
PSA: If you have an Android phone, you can download WeChat directly from wechat.com. You don't need to go through the Google Play store because your OS supports your freedom to some degree to install whatever you want on hardware that you OWN. If you have an iPhone, sorry that your phone company's CEO is pretty much a dictator and is complicit in restricting the freedom of Americans.
How come the argument "you can just buy an android phone" doesn't apply to iOS users in the same way "you can just sideload an APK" does to Google play store users? This isn't a rhetorical question, I'm genuinely curious about how people think of these distinctions.
For one thing, buying a new phone, buying all your apps again for a different app store, and transferring all your data isn't a trivial task.
Sideloading is free.
Re: US bans WeChat, TikTok from app stores, threatens shutdowns
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
PSA: If you have an Android phone, you can download WeChat directly from wechat.com. You don't need to go through the Google Play store because your OS supports your freedom to some degree to install whatever you want on hardware that you OWN. If you have an iPhone, sorry that your phone company's CEO is pretty much a dictator and is complicit in restricting the freedom of Americans.
How come the argument "you can just buy an android phone" doesn't apply to iOS users in the same way "you can just sideload an APK" does to Google play store users? This isn't a rhetorical question, I'm genuinely curious about how people think of these distinctions.
sunk cost fallacy. If you have an iPhone you're probably deep into the Apple ecosystem and migrating to another platform is painful.
Re: US bans WeChat, TikTok from app stores, threatens shutdowns
#70WeChat ban is just evil, no justifiable benefit. Almost all the users in America are overseas Chinese who use it to talk to friends and family in China and send money.
Calling the ban evil is a bit hyperbolic IMO, or maybe just incomplete. Phones with the software could easily be compromised. Users with the software can be profiled and tracked by the Chinese government pretty easily. The Chinese market bans most of America's social media software, and we're entering a trade war. All these are real, legitimate reasons to ban it.
Retaliatory action in a trade war is probably a good idea, but the government may not have a legal tool to block the app for that reason. Hence the need to come up with a security threat.
I’m skeptical of the security issue. If China wanted to inject spyware into American’s phones, there are so many apps to choose from, including lots of apps with millions of installs from no-name developers that could easily be compromised. If the US wants to protect citizens against these threats, they can have entities with infosec skills like the NSA or CISA work with Apple/Google to help detect threats in the app review process. My guess is that programs like this are already in place. Blocking just a couple of economically significant apps doesn’t seem like the way you’d go about pursuing that goal. It smells like a pretext for firing a few more shots in the trade war.