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

U.S. looking at banning Chinese social media apps, including TikTok

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 171 posts

Re: U.S. looking at banning Chinese social media apps, including TikTok

#131

Post by jml7c5 »

myopenid2 wrote: post #107
davidbonachera wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-tiktok-lawsuit/tiktok...

This report lack a lot of technical information. What counts as "personal information"? What did they send exactly? Is sending app analytics count as personal information? Why don't you hold American software companies to the same level of rigor? Case in point, almost all apps on my Android phone snoops on my "personal information"; Google literally knows where I am all the time; Facebook SDK snoops on the apps I use…

Made a (very) brief scan of the filing. The notable personal information mentioned: phone/social network contacts, MAC, IMEI, IMSI, device serial #, browsing history, cookies, "metadata", location. Pretty par for the course. (I'm not sure "browsing history" and "cookies" is correct, at least on Android versions after KitKat.) I believe you'd need to give permission for most (all?) of these before you download the app, or when you run it the first time.

The filing also makes these claims regarding video uploads:

>Once TikTok users click the “next” button, but before they click either the “save” or “post” buttons, their videos are transferred from their devices to the following domain owned and controlled by Defendants: [...]

Not very damning.

---

In the end, the concern is solely that the Chinese government may have access to the data, or may be able to upload exploits to users. This may be a reasonable fear. But people need to stop pretending TikTok's data collection is somehow worse than that of any other data-hoarding apps (Snapchat, Facebook, etc).

Re: U.S. looking at banning Chinese social media apps, including TikTok

#132

Post by nicbou »

usvsthem wrote: post #63
nicbou wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not equivalent, but I am certainly wary of having my data handled by US companies that aren't big enough to be scared of GDPR. My phone number and email address spread to many more American marketing lists than European ones, even though I rarely visit. Many of my Facebook ads result from my yearly visit to American cities. I just can't trust American businesses to use my data for the intended purpose only.

>>I am certainly wary of having my data handled by US companies that aren't big enough to be scared of GDPR. In that one comment, you have explained everything anyone needs to know as to why most of the tech innovation originates in the US and not from within Europe, and also why this situation is probably never going to change.

This is fine by me. I am glad to let the Americans pay the price and reap the benefits. I value different things.

Re: U.S. looking at banning Chinese social media apps, including TikTok

#133

Post by nicbou »

saagarjha wrote: post #73
nicbou wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not equivalent, but I am certainly wary of having my data handled by US companies that aren't big enough to be scared of GDPR. My phone number and email address spread to many more American marketing lists than European ones, even though I rarely visit. Many of my Facebook ads result from my yearly visit to American cities. I just can't trust American businesses to use my data for the intended purpose only.

Not sure if I should be more concerned about companies too small to be scared of the GDPR, or too big to be scared.

The large companies react to GDPR. Europe has already shown that it's willing to go after Google, Apple and others. It's the small companies that fall in the cracks that worry me.

Re: U.S. looking at banning Chinese social media apps, including TikTok

#134

Post by nickthegreek »

ekianjo wrote: post #36
coliveira wrote: post #33

Welcome to dictatorship. Government will now start to ban all kinds of apps they don't want.

If some apps coming from other countries are riddled with spyware, is that dictatorship or common sense?

Make laws banning the spyware practices to increase consumer privacy, dont ban apps one off when others do the same thing.

Re: U.S. looking at banning Chinese social media apps, including TikTok

#135

Post by raspyberr »

wiml wrote: post #10

What would it mean to "ban" an app? Would they force Apple and Google not to distribute it? Would they set up a national firewall?

These apps rely on having a critical number of users. If you ban the easiest ways, people just won't go on them.

Re: U.S. looking at banning Chinese social media apps, including TikTok

#136

Post by socrates1998 »

The CCP bans so many apps, websites and other western technology, so this seems like a reasonable action just on that alone.

And given how bad TikTok is with user data (mostly minors too), I don't see how banning it would be a bad thing.

There will be American or western clones within days that replace it.

Re: U.S. looking at banning Chinese social media apps, including TikTok

#137

Post by max_hammer »

wiml wrote: post #10

What would it mean to "ban" an app? Would they force Apple and Google not to distribute it? Would they set up a national firewall?

Not sure how do they do it but recently India banned [India Bans Nearly 60 Chinese Apps, Including TikTok and WeChat](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/29/world/asia/tik-tok-banned...)

Even with VPN people were not able to bypass ban.

Re: U.S. looking at banning Chinese social media apps, including TikTok

#138

Post by DiogenesKynikos »

actuator wrote: post #14
codezero wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just ask the app stores to ban them. The US couldn’t do anything more sophisticated right now, and that would solve most of their concerns.

Has there been any precedence of US banning an app/website without some clear violation of law?

Informally, the US government pressured payment processors to cut off WikiLeaks. All the major players complied. I'm not a lawyer, but that certainly feels like a violation of the 1st Amendment to me.

Re: U.S. looking at banning Chinese social media apps, including TikTok

#140

Post by w7euudeheh »

pjc50 wrote: post #120
Deganta wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not from the USA, but if I can choose if the USA, or China gets my data, I will choose the USA everytime. Sure, America does a lot of shady stuff, but the situation in China is just way worse in pretty much every way imaginable.

Yes, although you're more likely to be extradited from most of the West to the US than to China. So if you're a dissident against the US you may be safer using Chinese technologies.

What does this even mean? Being a dissident is allowed in the US going by google's definition. What's not allowed is stealing a bunch of shit and then giving it away to foreign nations like Snowden did.
Post reply on HN