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Judge temporarily blocks U.S. ban on TikTok downloads from U.S. app stores

reuters.com

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Re: Judge temporarily blocks U.S. ban on TikTok downloads from U.S. app stores

#131

Post by xvector »

libraryatnight wrote: post #42
schoolornot wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What exactly is the national security risk with TikTok?

Propaganda. You don't have to bother making troll farm accounts to spread misinformation and sow doubt when you control the platform and can create and drip content you want into peoples feeds, and you know what they like, you're already serving them an addictive stream of content based on their behaviors.

No different than MSM owners in the US using propaganda to manipulate hundreds of millions of Americans to their own ways.

Re: Judge temporarily blocks U.S. ban on TikTok downloads from U.S. app stores

#132

Post by bduerst »

devwastaken wrote: post #101
zmmmmm wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Instead, I believe that it is a national security issue Are you uncomfortable adopting that belief with literally no concrete evidence that anything of the sort is actually occurring? I don't know how you reconcile rule of law with such drastic interventions in the rights of companies without evidence of wrongdoing. If anything you can come up with in your most paranoid fantasies can be the basis of shutting down a…

Any business with china is a national security issue. There's plenty of evidence to the level of dictatorship in China. It's your responsibility to look at its history and make reasonable conclusions from it. If you want some sort of smoking gun evidence you're not going to find it, unless you somehow have a security clearance in China good enough to gain knowledge about their operations. It's a Chinese company, they…

>It's a Chinese company, they have privledges, not rights.

Neither Bytedance nor TikTok are Chinese companies.

It's true that Bytedance has buildings in Beijing, and a Chinese app (Taotiao) that is a Chinese subsidiary, but Bytedance is a Cayman's Islands company and TikTok doesn't even have servers inside China.

For purposes of the Chinese National Intelligence Law compelling the company to share user information with the CCP, Apple shares way more user data than TikTok does.

Re: Judge temporarily blocks U.S. ban on TikTok downloads from U.S. app stores

#133

Post by Barrin92 »

kennywinker wrote: post #21
Barrin92 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that'd probably kill every American social media app on the app stores as well, not sure they're ready to do that.

Has GDPR killed social media in europe?

nope, but neither has it killed tiktok. (which was the proposed point)

Re: Judge temporarily blocks U.S. ban on TikTok downloads from U.S. app stores

#134

Post by rtx »

arcticbull wrote: post #125
homptydompty18 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uh, welcome to international politics? Every country on Earth gives its executive some discretion when dealing with foreign powers. The idea that TikTok should have the same due process rights as American corporations is naive (putting it mildly).

Nobody's saying the Americans can't do it. What I'm saying is it's largely hypocritical -- telling China they need to open up their markets to foreign businesses from America just the way Americans do for foreign entities, and then once a Chinese company becomes successful enough to garner the slightest bit of attention forcing a sale to an American company. It's exactly the thing America has been accusing China of d…

>open for business

With those who are open for business.

Re: Judge temporarily blocks U.S. ban on TikTok downloads from U.S. app stores

#135

Post by nmfisher »

libraryatnight wrote: post #42
schoolornot wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What exactly is the national security risk with TikTok?

Propaganda. You don't have to bother making troll farm accounts to spread misinformation and sow doubt when you control the platform and can create and drip content you want into peoples feeds, and you know what they like, you're already serving them an addictive stream of content based on their behaviors.

Will the US apply the same rules and ban Facebook, given actual evidence of Russian propaganda/misinformation during the last election?

Re: Judge temporarily blocks U.S. ban on TikTok downloads from U.S. app stores

#136

Post by FpUser »

mtrpcic wrote: post #58
UncleMeat wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes TikTok different than literally any other website in this manner?

...being controlled by the CCP is what makes it different. All of these sites/apps have the ability to shove propaganda in the faces of millions of people, only one of them is run by a government.

And what prohibits any three letter agency hiring some intermediary and do the same thing on Facebook for example?

Re: Judge temporarily blocks U.S. ban on TikTok downloads from U.S. app stores

#137

Post by pier25 »

libraryatnight wrote: post #42
schoolornot wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What exactly is the national security risk with TikTok?

Propaganda. You don't have to bother making troll farm accounts to spread misinformation and sow doubt when you control the platform and can create and drip content you want into peoples feeds, and you know what they like, you're already serving them an addictive stream of content based on their behaviors.

So like Youtube or Facebook?

Re: Judge temporarily blocks U.S. ban on TikTok downloads from U.S. app stores

#138

Post by Retric »

yibg wrote: post #112
devwastaken wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any business with china is a national security issue. There's plenty of evidence to the level of dictatorship in China. It's your responsibility to look at its history and make reasonable conclusions from it. If you want some sort of smoking gun evidence you're not going to find it, unless you somehow have a security clearance in China good enough to gain knowledge about their operations. It's a Chinese company, they…

Let’s not pretend this is anything other than just plain old geopolitics with TikTok caught in the middle. Going by “national security” reasons most countries should ban Facebook and google, not to mention amazon, Microsoft, oracle, Cisco etc. since the us government has already shown willingness and ability to spy on anything they can get their hands on, including foreign heads of state. Allowing US controlled socia…

Many countries including China do block US companies on national security grounds. National security is very much a double edged sword.

Re: Judge temporarily blocks U.S. ban on TikTok downloads from U.S. app stores

#139

Post by Polylactic_acid »

marsrover wrote: post #17
MereInterest wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it would have made targeted advertising on the internet be very hard to develop. The internet existed before targeted advertising, with site-specific advertising based on the interests of a site. Stalking users across sites for the purpose of targeted advertising is a much newer development. I agree that this doesn't align with the US's general approach to this sort of thing. That is a fault with the US's general…

Targeted advertising is a major reason for the Internet’s success. It has allowed many companies to become extremely wealthy and invest back into the ecosystem.

Personally I'd rather the internet be less successful and more useful/less hostile.

Re: Judge temporarily blocks U.S. ban on TikTok downloads from U.S. app stores

#140

Post by causality0 »

zmmmmm wrote: post #51
localhost wrote: post #20

Unlike some other commenters below, I don't believe that this is a privacy issue. Instead, I believe that it is a national security issue because TikTok is controllable by the CCP which is ideologically opposed to the United States. The next global conflict will likely be one between the east and the west, with control of information being advantageous to both sides in the conflict. China already blocks the western I…

> Instead, I believe that it is a national security issue Are you uncomfortable adopting that belief with literally no concrete evidence that anything of the sort is actually occurring? I don't know how you reconcile rule of law with such drastic interventions in the rights of companies without evidence of wrongdoing. If anything you can come up with in your most paranoid fantasies can be the basis of shutting down a…

Read the replies from Chinese nationals on HN defending TikTok. Even they don't pretend you can say anything you want there. Their argument is "How much time would you really spend discussing Tiananmen or criticizing the CCP? Is it really worth losing contact with your friends or colleagues who use TikTok and WeChat?"

In my opinion, absolutely. Stop it now before it gets too powerful to ban. WeChat already has 19 million US users.

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