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US lawmakers tell Apple, Google to be ready to remove TikTok from stores Jan. 19

reuters.com

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Re: US lawmakers tell Apple, Google to be ready to remove TikTok from stores Jan. 19

#61
post #2

Bizarre, in the land of free speech the government is suppressing it.

Land of free speech? Maybe in like a John Wayne movie was this ever true… Like you know other parts of Bill or “Rights” like “prohibiting unreasonable searches and seizures” except like your toothpaste at the airport… Americans are generally too funny thinking it is still “land of the free”

US doesn't rank at the top, but is still rated as quite free by Freedom House https://freedomhouse.org/countries/freedom-world/scores?sort...

About 74 points higher than China based on my math

Re: US lawmakers tell Apple, Google to be ready to remove TikTok from stores Jan. 19

#62
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TikTok could just release a web app

I wonder what kind of impact this would have on their ability to actually provide good ML recommendations. Based on reporting that would be a lot of data to give up

The reporting I've seen is extremely dramatic about the data being collected. The most useful thing to the recommendation algorithm is interactions: number of loops before scroll, like, comment, share, etc.

Re: US lawmakers tell Apple, Google to be ready to remove TikTok from stores Jan. 19

#63
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Land of free speech? Maybe in like a John Wayne movie was this ever true… Like you know other parts of Bill or “Rights” like “prohibiting unreasonable searches and seizures” except like your toothpaste at the airport… Americans are generally too funny thinking it is still “land of the free”

Something doesn’t have to be perfect to be good. Most American’s recognize and lament the erosion of freedoms over the years, while still valuing the many that remain. I don’t think they should be be laughed at for that.

Even very intelligent people will accept this argument for America, and then reject it for often literally every other country.

Imagine I made the same argument for Russia, or China, or North Korea, or Syria, or Venezuela, or some other country the Western mainstream media says is bad. You'd presumably come up with a reason - immediately, effortlessly, almost without thinking - why it didn't apply in that case, and that that country really was bad, and their imperfections really meant they were not good.

Unlike the U.S., which simply cannot fall out of favour with some people, no matter what they do.

If an organisation doesn't serve its purpose, whether through ignorance, stupidity, or malice, it should be either broken up or restructured. There's no reason not to do this with businesses, states, etc, other than the usual quasi-religious ones, centered around various tired and confused dogmas involving markets, freedom, human nature, and that sort of thing.

Summary: Human beings should be given second chances, and third chances, and so on, as many chances as we can give them. Organisations on the other hand should be given one chance. We owe them nothing.

Re: US lawmakers tell Apple, Google to be ready to remove TikTok from stores Jan. 19

#64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Land of free speech? Maybe in like a John Wayne movie was this ever true… What country would you say has stronger free speech protections than the US? I won't say there's none, because there are roughly 200 countries, and I don't know enough about many of them, but I cannot name one. Not the UK, France or Germany, and I'd be surprised to find any other European country. For a sampling of other laws/measures: - http…

The USA is not especially high up on the World Press Freedom Index: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Press_Freedom_Index My main problem with free speech in America is how it’s become some sort of unquestionable belief that it’s absolute. There are many instances of freedom of speech being curtailed by the USA government, yet they are somehow redefined into some sort of “unspeech” and don’t count instead of being…

This list is reminiscent of "happiness index" which simply encodes a certain ideology via a benchmark, the components of which a reasonable American does not necessarily agree with being the utmost important factors, and only is taken seriously if abstracted and lipsticked by generic names like "press freedom" or "happiness".

The simple example that UK is ranked higher than US is prima facie evidence that it is complete bullshit, considering the lack of First Amendment and much stricter libel laws that UK media has to worry about.

Re: US lawmakers tell Apple, Google to be ready to remove TikTok from stores Jan. 19

#65

As grating as this is to freedom of expression, I’ve been annoyed enough times by ‘tok’ers doing crap like I dunno, licking ice cream buckets in supermarkets, I’m also looking forward to that going away for a few months till the next thing replaces it. Unfortunately, this is pretty bad precedent. While I love my country, these sorts of decisions are as federal level are pretty scary and I question whether the governm…

Counter point, how is letting the primary adversarial power (which happens to be an authoritarian regime) massively influence the political views of the future generation a good idea? It sounds to me like the federal government is doing its job here.

Re: US lawmakers tell Apple, Google to be ready to remove TikTok from stores Jan. 19

#66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Land of free speech? Maybe in like a John Wayne movie was this ever true… What country would you say has stronger free speech protections than the US? I won't say there's none, because there are roughly 200 countries, and I don't know enough about many of them, but I cannot name one. Not the UK, France or Germany, and I'd be surprised to find any other European country. For a sampling of other laws/measures: - http…

The USA is not especially high up on the World Press Freedom Index: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Press_Freedom_Index My main problem with free speech in America is how it’s become some sort of unquestionable belief that it’s absolute. There are many instances of freedom of speech being curtailed by the USA government, yet they are somehow redefined into some sort of “unspeech” and don’t count instead of being…

The two examples of that are CSAM, which makes obvious sense to restrict, and copyright infringing material. It might make business sense not to let people post the latest Disney movie but it just goes to show the first amendment isn't absolute.

Re: US lawmakers tell Apple, Google to be ready to remove TikTok from stores Jan. 19

#67
post #36

1) Excellent way to teach millions of people about sideloading overnight. This could be a big win for Android (where sideloading is easy) vs. iPhone were sideloading is impossible (? or only possible only with an annual dev license?) 2) Will this affect apps like CapCut and Lemon8 too?

Tiktok servers will be banned at the T1 carrier level, probably.

Re: US lawmakers tell Apple, Google to be ready to remove TikTok from stores Jan. 19

#70

As grating as this is to freedom of expression, I’ve been annoyed enough times by ‘tok’ers doing crap like I dunno, licking ice cream buckets in supermarkets, I’m also looking forward to that going away for a few months till the next thing replaces it. Unfortunately, this is pretty bad precedent. While I love my country, these sorts of decisions are as federal level are pretty scary and I question whether the governm…

Counter point, how is letting the primary adversarial power (which happens to be an authoritarian regime) massively influence the political views of the future generation a good idea? It sounds to me like the federal government is doing its job here.

I really don't understand why you are being downvoted.

I'm baffled at folks wanting to overlook that a Chinese-controlled brainworm is even more dangerous than a US-operated brainworm.

Yes, we should steer clear of all brainworms, but we should be exterminating the brainworms run by adversaries ASAP.

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