Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 677 posts

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

#151

Post by xvector »

markdown wrote: post #89
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…

> TikTok is controllable by the CCP Are we, years after the Snowden revelations, still pretending that USA is any better? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_security_letter

I cannot believe people are downvoting you. The NSA and associated gag orders have made a joke of our right to privacy. FISA courts are a dog and pony show, only 12 out of every 34k warrants are denied.

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

#152

Post by zmmmmm »

soared wrote: post #105
IfOnlyYouKnew wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"but it is fairly clear how this is a potentially serious threat to national security." Yeah... the Chinese could, like, get the inside scoop on some serious teen drama.

They decide what content is viewed by millions of teens who will be voting in a few years. It’s not that far fetched to show them more violent content / mildly biased content / etc in order to move their political views a bit.

If they successfully do that then isn't that in fact the exact democracy working as it should? If you turn it around, you are endorsing the US government cutting off free speech specifically to manipulate people's voting opinions towards its own perception of what is "good". That seems almost exactly the opposite of the spirit of the constitution.

Perhaps an appropriate response here would be to detect this manipulation and highlight and educate people about it. Possibly create regulation to outlaw specific types of highly problematic aspects of it. But I find it hard to simultaneously accept that it's both so subtle as to be undetectable and unregulatable and yet so terrible it warrants arbitrary restraint of free speech.

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

#153

Post by dannyw »

dilap wrote: post #126

It's strange how so many in the US have adopted the mindset that it's important, for national security, to deny its citizens access to foreign social networks. Previously, when China did the same, this was widely viewed as an unfortunate restriction their freedoms -- the actions of an intrusive, authoritarian government. Now that the US is itself considering doing the same, many in the west have suddenly adopted the…

The US is a democratic government with the rule of law, as seen in this very example with a judge blocking the order.

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

#154

Post by sudosysgen »

Drew_ wrote: post #149
soared wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They decide what content is viewed by millions of teens who will be voting in a few years. It’s not that far fetched to show them more violent content / mildly biased content / etc in order to move their political views a bit.

The KGB already did this in 2016 and the White House conveniently doesn't care and actually vehemently denies anything happened. Now, in the lead up to an election, suddenly they care about foreign intervention of elections? Or is it more likely that Donald Trump is just trying to tally as many "wins" as possible in the lead up an election like any politician would? The CCP already compromised our technology supply c…

Minor nitpick, but the KGB didn't exist in 2016, that would be FSB. Unless you are referring to Belarus, which does have a KGB.

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

#155

Post by dannyw »

bduerst wrote: post #150
llboston wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All major internet companies in China, including ByteDance, have CCP branches [1]. CCP would be crazy not to use TikTok data. 1 https://www.jenniferzengblog.com/home/2020/8/5/bytedance-hea... [edit] added source.

*Subsidiaries. Bytedance has TaoTiao inside China, which shares TaoTaio user information with the CCP, the same way that Apple has Apple Guizhou, which shares iCloud data with the CCP. Neither Bytedance, or it's TikTok subsidiary, exist inside China, so there's no reason to suspect data sharing with the CCP without evidence.

You really think that stops China?

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

#156

Post by shadowgovt »

MereInterest wrote: post #10
shadowgovt wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't generally align with America's approach to these sort of things. A law like that would have made the internet itself very hard to develop.

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…

I mean much lower-level things.

Email's early versions weren't strongly privacy-protecting.

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

#157

Post by Natsu »

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…

There's also the fact that the CCP has been known to do things like catfishing or otherwise trying to gather data about US servicemen and women in bulk.

The information on TikTok probably isn't valuable, but we know how rich Facebook has gotten by building social graphs. The same is true of many social apps.

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

#158

Post by sudosysgen »

MattGaiser wrote: post #102
IfOnlyYouKnew wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Government", "administration", and "party" are all the same thing in China. So something like: "Huawei would be forced to hand over 5G data to the Chinese government if it was asked for it, because of national security laws, experts told CNBC." ...is really no different from the US, is it? And while China has lots of problems, citing a lack of "rule of law" in this context is rather brave. Also: if you believe every…

> ...is really no different from the US, is it? It is enormously different in that it is judicially reviewable (if not in need of an outright warrant) and the USA is a country where there are limits on government. This post, specifically the "judge temporarily blocks" is proof that the USA is a fundamentally different country. > Also: if you believe everything called "communist party" is "communist", you definitely h…

Are there actually real limits on government in the US? If the Democrats and Republicans agreed that they wanted to do something, would anything stop them?

The US government is already unconstitutionally doing what you say that judicial review prevents, and the partisan (by design) Supreme Court simply refuses to take the case. So much for judicial review.

There is no check for power, only balances of power. And power in the US tends to agree on such things as much as power within the CCP.

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

#159

Post by pessimizer »

causality0 wrote: post #140
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…

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 mil…

Are you pretending you can say anything you want on US owned social media? I still remember when Facebook censored an anti-wingsuit post.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12419313

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

#160

Post by sudosysgen »

xwolfi wrote: post #121
bmitc wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you point out in the article or describe what you feel is the actual, explicit issue? I read the article, and I didn’t catch any concrete description of why TikTok is dangerous aside from the typically general descriptions, or at a minimum, how TikTok is any different from Facebook or YouTube or Twitter Instagram or whatever else, all of which have essentially black box recommendation algorithms. The article neve…

I'm in China and I did stop using facebook because it felt like a stupid data sinkhole from an hostile power... I agree it's a bit paranoid to block Tik Tok, but maybe if these company found a business model that didn't require my name, age, graph of all my acquaitance and pictures of all of this, maybe that would be better for the worlds ? Maybe we SHOULD ban social media on the principle that the risk of abuse outw…

I agree we should, but banning foreign social media actually makes that even less likely.
Post reply on HN