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US bans WeChat, TikTok from app stores, threatens shutdowns

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Re: US bans WeChat, TikTok from app stores, threatens shutdowns

#81

Post by entropea »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #29
newen wrote: post #13

Earlier 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.

>Watch the latest Triumph bit from the Colbert show to see the mentality of Trump supporters.

Not a defense of Trump supporters here, but do we know how many were edited out that intelligently spoke on issues to form the Triumph bit? Without that, you can't really make any determinations. On top of that, the sample size is likely very small.

Re: US bans WeChat, TikTok from app stores, threatens shutdowns

#82

Post by vbezhenar »

thorum wrote: post #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expect to see a mad rush of new users downloading the app over the weekend before it gets banned - and then keeping an outdated, insecure app on thei…

I saw people selling iPhones with Fortnite installed with some premium. That story might be repeated.

Re: US bans WeChat, TikTok from app stores, threatens shutdowns

#83

Post by tstrimple »

bleepblorp wrote: post #51
tstrimple wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TikTok kids are mean to Trump.

It's interesting that this explanation gets aggressively downvoted every time it is posted. It's a narrative that someone seems to want to bury. It is the explanation that best fits the facts, given that talk of banning TikTok didn't gain traction until after Trump's indoor rally turned up empty. I suspect the empty rally was the tipping point that gave those who wanted to get rid of TikTok for competitive reasons en…

There may be legitimate security issues with TikTok, but that's not really something that is believable coming from Trump or Republicans who are willing to outright contradict their intelligence agencies on Russia and election security and refuse any funding for additional security. Actual national security issues don't seem to concern this administration very much, but Trump has a solid track record of being exactly this petty.

Re: US bans WeChat, TikTok from app stores, threatens shutdowns

#84

Post by triceratops »

fooey wrote: post #14
tstrimple wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TikTok kids are mean to Trump.

I've wondered if this has all been because TikTok influencers famously tricked team Trump into thinking they had a full stadium for a rally that turned out to be humiliatingly empty. But this seems overly petty for even Trump, it's just bizarre.

> But this seems overly petty for even Trump,

Nothing is overly petty for him.

Re: US bans WeChat, TikTok from app stores, threatens shutdowns

#85

Post by peter303 »

CWuestefeld wrote: post #77
hirundo wrote: post #17

Banning 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…

This seems narrowly tailored to two apps. Doesn't that make it a Bill of Attainder, which is unconstitutional? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_of_attainder A bill of attainder (also known as an act of attainder or writ of attainder or bill of penalties) is an act of a legislature declaring a person, or a group of persons, guilty of some crime, and punishing them, often without a trial.

That part of the Constitution applies to Congress. They can not single out individuals (or individual corporations by Amendment 14) for punishment by legislation. Punishment is the role of a court trial.

Re: US bans WeChat, TikTok from app stores, threatens shutdowns

#86

Post by darkhelmet »

zaksoup wrote: post #52
dheera wrote: post #48

Earlier 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.

Technically, you can on an iPhone too, just not for free and not anywhere near as conveniently. There were various tools in circulation while there were no decent Jailbreaks. One that springs to mind was iReSign - according to its github page it's for re-signing app bundles with enterprise keys, but that's not what it was used for back then. People captured the .ipa files and signed them with developer keys and all sorts of unfortunate things happened after that.

TL;DR: "sideloading" for iOS = Free: no. Convenient: no. Possible: yes. Out of reach of most people: absolutely yes.

Re: US bans WeChat, TikTok from app stores, threatens shutdowns

#87

Post by rvz »

euix wrote: post #40

On the flip side maybe Fdroid will take off. Is fdroid open source repos only? If Bytedance was gutsy they could release an open source version of tiktok. They could keep their algo as closed off either as compiled code or for the app to make API calls? The rest of the code base, everyone could see.

> On the flip side maybe Fdroid will take off. Is fdroid open source repos only?

FLOSS repos I guess, but they are 'opinionated' in which open source software they allow on f-droid which this statement goes against the entire idea of FLOSS. Even if the software is open source and free software [0].

As you said, Bytedance must essentially do the same thing as Telegram and relicense it as GPL3 [1]. That includes everything.

[0] https://www.f-droid.org/en/2019/07/16/statement.html

[1] https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.telegram.messenger/

> If Bytedance was gutsy they could release an open source version of tiktok. They could keep their algo as closed off either as compiled code or for the app to make API calls?

Hence the above, I don't see this happening.

Re: US bans WeChat, TikTok from app stores, threatens shutdowns

#89

Post by matwood »

6DM wrote: post #11
technoplato wrote: post #8

I’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?”

General election interference, manipulating public perception by constantly suggesting pro-CCP propaganda, aggravating the general public to turn on each other, tracking vocal anti-CCP individuals and potentially targeting them while traveling abroad. That's a few off the top of my head.

> General election interference, manipulating public perception by constantly suggesting pro-CCP propaganda, aggravating the general public to turn on each other

You mean what's happening everyday on Facebook and Twitter often being instigated by Chinese and Russian actors?

Re: US bans WeChat, TikTok from app stores, threatens shutdowns

#90

Post by rrrrrrrrrrrryan »

cyc116 wrote: post #31
peacefulhat wrote: post #20

WeChat 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.

I mean if the Send money feature is what triggers it then isn't it already banned prior to this ban? There are also many non-Chinese that use wechat.

> There are also many non-Chinese that use wechat.

Are there?

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