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

reuters.com

461–470 of 677 posts

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

#461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Inside China, Bytedance's founder is known as pro-US. They've publicly made pro-US statements. Furthermore, the CCP has 90+ million members. With the number of employees that Bytedance has in China, you'd expect — by proportion — that they have thousands of employees that are CCP members. But it's just a couple of hundred. Bytedance's founder has made an effort to make this a global company, not a Chinese company, no…

> ByteDance has had a party committee since 2017 and is headed by CCP secretary and company editor-in-chief Zhang Fuping (張輔評), reported Human Rights Watch. Members of the committee hold regular gatherings at which they study speeches by Chinese Chairman Xi Jinping (習近平) and "pledge to follow the party in technological innovation." > In addition, ByteDance on April 25, 2019, signed a strategic cooperation agreement w…

Both of those issues are besides the point I make.

Your article is also treating Tiktok and Douyin as if they're the same thing. They aren't, they are separate networks and datasets.

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

#462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But they cannot buy the same data - the quantity and quality of the data they obtain themselves (through apps like TikTok and WeChat that are running in the background 24/7 while collecting any information possible, such as secretly copying your clipboard which is likely to reveal passwords and other sensitive information) is far higher than what they could pay for. You’re also ignoring the fact that they can use the…

> they’ve for instance chosen to omit the fact that the Wuhan Virus originated in China. Any social media platforms using the term "Wuhan Virus" would be a bigger sign of governmental propaganda than the lack is.

For the record, "Wuhan Pneumonia" and "Wuhan Virus" were widely used by official news coverage in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and guess what, Mainland China, before the WHO suddenly dictated all people must use "Covid-19" or else you're racist or propagandist.

This trick is very effective in erasing the obvious link between the virus and its origin.

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

#463
post #112

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…

> 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 social media and other tech companies is a huge risk.

Yes.

As a European, I believe in Europe (and in the rest of the world) we should definitively ban most US tech be it for ethical reasons or national security. Same for China.

EU Politicians don't seem to understand the situation yet, but given the current technological cold war happening, I hope we'll wake up soon and switch either to open tech or at least to our own local tech.

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

#464
post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

US companies operating in China need to follow Chinese laws, including those on censorship. Google etc are blocked because they are hosted outside China, and are not willing to cooperate in China. What I find bizarre about the Tiktok ban is that they are being banned essentially on executive whim: as far as I can tell, there are no concrete allegations, much less evidence, that they're violating any US laws.

If Bytedance was violating U.S. laws a “ban” would not be necessary to prevent them from continuing to do so. The executive order is based on a concrete factual assertion: “the spread in the United States of mobile applications developed and owned by companies in the People’s Republic of China (China) continues to threaten the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States” [1]. The injunction we are discussing results from a challenge to that assertion.

[1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/executive-or...

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

#465

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…

If you’re willing to admit that media and information can be used against yourself and your nation, you’ve made it to the first stage of your awakening. Great; now look within yourself.

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

#466
post #452
post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, it is not. I am not R or D, I am Russian programmer who lives in Russia and likes to read. One of things I've read already long ago is about priming: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5266685/ Showing one different pictures change walking speed, at the very least. And effects can last as long as year: http://www.bm.ust.hk/mark/files/staff/Bob/mkwyer-JCP-2014-24... TikTok, being a massive analytic…

Priming is one of the least reproducible effects out there and lies literally at the core of the reproducibility crisis [1]. I'm going to call BS on claims of some sort of spooky weaponization of it. Edit: To add necessary context for those unaware, TikTok's audience in the US is politically liberal. The buy out of Trump rally tickets a few months ago was organized there [2]. It's true that we should be talking about…

To quote the link of yours: "Five years later, Kahneman’s concerns have been largely confirmed. Major studies in social priming research have failed to replicate and the replicability of results in social psychology is estimated to be only 25%"

I cannot discern whether author says that social priming research has replicability of 25% or social psychology has replication success of 25% and priming research has even less.

The scale at which TikTok operates is much larger than any studies that can be performed by a group of scientists. This is true for audience (or test subjects), amount of hardware used and for information gathered.

The link you provided still allows for some replicable effects to be present. Effects that were hypothesized, planned for discovery and then tested and brought to the light of day.

At the scale of TikTok, effects can be discovered without hypothesis first, just by using sheer analytical power available.

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

#467
post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, it is not. I am not R or D, I am Russian programmer who lives in Russia and likes to read. One of things I've read already long ago is about priming: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5266685/ Showing one different pictures change walking speed, at the very least. And effects can last as long as year: http://www.bm.ust.hk/mark/files/staff/Bob/mkwyer-JCP-2014-24... TikTok, being a massive analytic…

> Facebook is primarily text which is low bandwidth and it goes through higher thinking. Today Facebook is mostly images, livestreams and videos.

My wife uses Facebook and I beg to disagree with you.

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

#468
post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet somehow the Chinese government can control the export of their technology and needs to approve any deal with a US company? https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/china-unlikely-approve-ti...

Well, the US also controls lots of companies that are not American. Especially in finance. They were handing out American sanctions for European banks doing business with Iranian companies.

I was referring to laws literally called "export controls" which regulate goods and technology that originate in China, not stretching the word to make a metaphorical case for ownership.

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

#469
Also, what is the ‘ideological’ difference between US and China? The mere mention of communism suffices in most government circles, but that doesn’t explain any of their tactics, and certainly not strategy or objectives. I would like to know what you (HN) think.

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

#470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fed government could simply order all federal employees off tiktok or any other service without legal hurdles. What is the point of banning for the general public.

Let's say a child of a worker working in a nuclear reactor site for "Bring your daughter to work-day". She's ofcourse using tiktok, and guess who has that data now. This is just an example. If I spend enough time, I can think of a whole lot more examples.

Every single secure facility I've ever been to required you to leave your phone at the gate, and this was pre-smartphone days. The more serious ones prohibited even disk-on-keys.If you're relying on kids keeping their phones secure for your national security, you've already lost.
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