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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

#481

Post by ecmascript »

mechnesium wrote: post #474

Welcome to the Red Scare 2.0, comrade. TikTok is under fire because it’s a piece of software from China. We’ve turned a blind eye to hardware security and the fact that the iPhone and nearly every other mainstream consumer device is manufactured in China and likely contain backdoors far more sinister than userland applications can muster. We can not and should not have such double standards when it comes to foreign p…

> Western governments are far more sinister than China

Oh really, I didn't know my country was doing things way worse then putting people in concentration camps, harvesting organs, putting people in prison because they had group sex, putting people in prison for years because they legally protested etc.

Thanks for the information! But just for future discussions when I try to talk down these pesky people that try to harass the beautiful country of China, the perfect state that never does anything wrong, can you provide some examples on how the western democracies are worse? These horrible right wing extremists always seem to want some kind of source for the claims when it's so obvious to us comrades.

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

#482

Post by lowiqengineer »

publicola1990 wrote: post #362
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…

Also TikTok hasn't violated US laws, then where is the case for banning them? Banning something that is perfectly legal seems absurd to do in our legal system. Also US government hasn't made a specific claim of any imminent security threat posed by TikTok. From a data security point of view the expert opinion seems to be that there isn't a clear cut case for singling out and banning tiktok. The ban is therefore undou…

[flagged]

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

#483

Post by sjy »

didibus wrote: post #294
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…

> I don't know how you reconcile rule of law with such drastic interventions in the rights of companies without evidence of wrongdoing How far reaching does the rule of law go? Like the US is governed by rule of law, but when you bring in international elements, can all parties operate under rule of law ? It seems almost in this case that the argument made by the US is actually that TikTok is not governed under an ag…

> do the laws give the president the ability to block a foreign company in such situation?

Yes, Congress has given the President the power to “regulate, direct and compel, nullify, void, prevent or prohibit, any acquisition, holding, withholding, use, transfer, withdrawal, transportation, importation or exportation of, or dealing in, or exercising any right, power, or privilege with respect to, or transactions involving, any property in which any foreign country or a national thereof has any interest by any person, or with respect to any property, subject to the jurisdiction of the United States” [1], “to deal with any unusual and extraordinary threat, which has its source in whole or substantial part outside the United States, to the national security, foreign policy, or economy of the United States, if the President declares a national emergency with respect to such threat” [2]. This is the power that Trump is purporting to exercise.

[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/50/1702

[2] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/50/1701

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

#484

Post by lowiqengineer »

tooltalk wrote: post #282
howlgarnish wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>> ... being banned essentially on executive whim: The US Senate unanimously approved a bill banning federal employees from using TikTok on government-issued devices last month. So there is some consensus among lawmakers that some sort of privacy and/or security threat exists -- it's hardly on "executive whim."

Those two examples are fundamentally different and it’s silly to conflate individual action with coercing the app stores to discontinue supporting the app.

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

#485

Post by gbraad »

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…

> I believe that it is a national security issue because TikTok is controllable by the CCP

is that confirmed or is that a believe you have ?

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

#486

Post by mechnesium »

xvector wrote: post #120
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…

And this justifies compromising on our freedoms? Some populist utters the words “national security” and we decide to destroy the first amendment. That mindset is an affront to what it means to be American and it is much more of a threat to our country and the rights of our citizens than TikTok could ever be. See: the PATRIOT Act.

Precisely. We should not censor platforms that enable effective free speech to occur. TikTok is the one place that you can post a political video that doesn’t get removed within seconds for “violating community standards.” It’s blatantly obvious that the American big tech companies such as Twitter, Facebook, and Google are propaganda arms of the US government that employ specialized algorithms to censor thought provoking content and further specific political agendas. A platform like TikTok is, by nature of its origin, resilient to that.

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

#487

Post by donkeyd »

publicola1990 wrote: post #354
donkeyd wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Theoretically, CCP could abuse location services to track movements of military personnel and civilians in a war. Since FB isn't Chinese, that is less of an issue for large scale surveilance. Also, if the Chinese had a zero day that they could exploit by pushing a malicious TikTok update, they could get root access to these phones and use them for surveillance on a large scale. Sure, this is all hypothetical, but it'…

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.

> Fed government could simply order all federal employees off tiktok or any other service without legal hurdles.

They already have [0]. Federal employees, however, do have personal cell phones. There have been multiple cases of militairy information being leaked through Facebook posts [1]. Also, these people have conversations with their significant others, who also have personal cell phones. Recently, a list of PoI's leaked from a Chinese data collection company, some of which were children of people in power [2]. It is not completely unthinkable that the phone of a child is hacked and is then used to compromise the home network of an influential person, or something like that.

I'm not saying that TikTok would facilitate this, I don't know. If there's any intelligence indicating that it's a possibility I fully understand that there is a response, however.

0: https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/senate-tiktok-ban-1.56767...

1: https://www.portsmouth.co.uk/news/defence-leaks-soar-mod-emp...

2: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/14/zhenhua-data-f...

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

#488

Post by johnday »

thesz wrote: post #466
djaque wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 le…

The quote you pulled spells it out:

- Social priming does not replicate;

- Social psychology has a replicability rate of 25%.

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

#489

Post by sjy »

notatoad wrote: post #71
soared wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Devils advocate - there is no evidence that it isn’t already occurring in subtle ways. Russia’s strategy is sowing discord, which would be fairly easy if one government controls the algorithm deciding what media the other country’s citizens sees.

so is just saying the words "national security" enough for you to believe that this is justified? should the US government be allowed to block any private company from doing business just by saying those magic words, with no further justification? or just any foreign-owned company? or just any chinese company - if it's china, what makes china special? there's got to be some limitation on where you draw the line on th…

The relevant legal powers are indeed confined to “property in which any foreign country or a national thereof has any interest” and this judicial decision illustrates their limits – an irrational assertion that the use of emergency national security powers is warranted may be subject to judicial review. See my other comment for citations: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24615640

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

#490

Post by nemetroid »

mschuster91 wrote: post #352
searchableguy wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ban all Chinese apps?

There are few, if none Chinese apps that have that level of market domination TikTok has.

And? Should there be a threshold of popularity above which you are not allowed to operate at all, but less popular apps are fine?
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