191–200 of 585 posts
Slightly off topic - I'm not sure I've heard the gov stating it plainly in the recent years: "the People's Republic of China is an adversary of the United States" (from the bill). Did I just miss it / glance over, or is this out of character for officially released gov documents?
I wonder how many Chinese-manufactured goods the state of Montana bought yesterday while issuing this statement.
- sent from my iPhone
Slightly off topic - I'm not sure I've heard the gov stating it plainly in the recent years: "the People's Republic of China is an adversary of the United States" (from the bill). Did I just miss it / glance over, or is this out of character for officially released gov documents?
Slightly off topic - I'm not sure I've heard the gov stating it plainly in the recent years: "the People's Republic of China is an adversary of the United States" (from the bill). Did I just miss it / glance over, or is this out of character for officially released gov documents?
All it means is that "the people of Montana really don't like China", but more officially.
Here are the takeaways:
* It'd be easy for Apple and Google to prevent downloads of TikTok for most users, which would also include app updates, as they have a significant amount of knowledge of users' locations and could prevent most users in Montana -- even those using a VPN -- from downloading the app or updating it.
* It'd be very difficult for Montana to enforce the other piece of the TikTok ban -- if "entity" in the bill means any company, they're stuck: the state has little ability to prevent side-loading of apps on Android and users who want TikTok can access app repositories hosted out of state. There's virtually no way for ISPs inside Montana to surveil all user usage to find out if they're trying to download TikTok from a third-party repository, and even if they could there would be legal issues with the state mandating this.
Fundamentally, this makes user privacy and security much worse.
* Apple, Google, and ByteDance could be aggressive and use the data they have -- all three have GPS data for most or all relevant users here (i.e. TikTok users on an iPhone or Android) -- and block requests to download or use TikTok from within Montana. And they probably will, unless they get a court to block the bill.
The one thing the bill banning TikTok doesn't do is the one thing that is desperately needed: actually protect user privacy, by banning the collection, aggregation, sale, and use of fine-grained user data -- by ByteDance, Meta, Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, or any other.
I hope that this shifts the Overton window toward discussion about banning facebook, twitter and instagram. They play a major role in exacerbating the divisions in the society and the rising suicide rate. Those domestic platforms do a better job at undermining the national security than any foreign force could dream of.
How do you reconcile this position with the First Amendment?
At the time the amendment was conceived, it was unimaginable to have a nation-wide entity that threatens the freedom of expression other than the government. So, it may actually be in spirit of the First Amendment to control the entities which promote and censor public discourse according to their opaque internal algorithms.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's predictable that it's coming from a conservative state. That they are broadly against using state power to ban things is part of their identity and marketing but not reality. Especially when it can be construed as a social-moral problem.
Or, in other words, all "conservatives" don't necessarily agree on or believe the same things, and this varies by person and by region. Like any political group, there's a wide variety of ideas. Religious right folks get lumped together with constitutional libertarians, but have very, very different ideas on the proper limits of legislation and government power. And yes, there are both idiots and brilliant thinkers i…
Slightly off topic - I'm not sure I've heard the gov stating it plainly in the recent years: "the People's Republic of China is an adversary of the United States" (from the bill). Did I just miss it / glance over, or is this out of character for officially released gov documents?
I guess that's one way to describe the tense rivalry without completely calling your most important trade partner an "adversary".
One underappreciated aspect of this is ban is that anyone who wants Tiktok will just go download it in Wyoming or Idaho etc, as it seems to be merely a ban on downloading the app, and not a ban on Tiktok traffic itself. So the ban will have near zero actual impact in practice (even if it somehow makes it into effect). Furthermore, it's unclear if the web app of Tiktok will be affected, or if it's only a ban on the mo…
Someone needs to setup a nonprofit that will transport a user's phone to a free state and setup TikTok for a modest fee. The nonprofit could use the money to reimburse the women and transgender people who now need to travel to free states for some of their health care.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That such bans don't include domestic companies spying on people and providing that data to domestic entities says everything about how bankrupt this whole thing is.
Please be clear what you're talking about. There's a difference between "service providing targeted advertising based off what it knows about you" and "service that sells data it has collected about you". The former wouldn't sell that data, because it's their most valuable asset.