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India bans TikTok, WeChat, and dozens of other Chinese apps

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Re: India bans TikTok, WeChat, and dozens of other Chinese apps

#291

Post by rgrs »

jlmorton wrote: post #257
saltedonion wrote: post #42

India is absolutely right in banning TikTok as it is a significant national securities threat. As long as the platforms recommendation and ranking algos are a black box, there is no guarantee that China isn’t conducting misinformation campaigns via the platform. At the very least, the government should audit the algos and make sure China can’t arbitrarily alter ranking results.

> there is no guarantee that China isn’t conducting misinformation campaigns via the platform. And who cares if they are? We live in an open society, and in the US, freedom of speech is a foundational principle. This is among the trade-offs you face when prioritizing absolute freedom of speech.

I care

Re: India bans TikTok, WeChat, and dozens of other Chinese apps

#292

Post by rgrs »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #111
seshagiric wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not true in this case. There is continued aggression by China, infringing into India borders. It would be stupid of Indian govt. not to react.

Exactly what I'm saying. A tried and tested tactic that works well. And in fact I think China is playing a similar game, and the Chinese public buys it in the same way. But it is a dangerous game because it can get out of hands. I think both sides know it and they don't want things to escalate. We need to see how the pandemic develops and hits both countries and their economies. I'm more worried about the Indian side…

And your proposed solution is?

Re: India bans TikTok, WeChat, and dozens of other Chinese apps

#293

Post by pphysch »

mda wrote: post #283
tshaddox wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This might be a shock to most people in the western world, but if you go on almost ANY news website in china, the headline news is dedicated to government propaganda. Those people would be even more shocked by the extent to which this is true in the western world as well.

Is it though? At least you can see different sides, different voices.

And that is usually enough to placate Westerners. Even if, say, the "different sides" are just different heads of the same snake, which is often the case.

The only two political parties in the US, for instance, differ remarkably little in terms of foreign policy and labor rights. Headlines in major US media will virtually never indicate there is any significant room for debate here. The public is satisfied with the false dichotomy of "raise military budget by $100B" vs. "raise military budget by $200B".

Re: India bans TikTok, WeChat, and dozens of other Chinese apps

#294

Post by coliveira »

saltedonion wrote: post #42

India is absolutely right in banning TikTok as it is a significant national securities threat. As long as the platforms recommendation and ranking algos are a black box, there is no guarantee that China isn’t conducting misinformation campaigns via the platform. At the very least, the government should audit the algos and make sure China can’t arbitrarily alter ranking results.

The same can be said of companies like FB and GOOG. They operate black boxes with little scrutiny from society.

Re: India bans TikTok, WeChat, and dozens of other Chinese apps

#295

Post by reaperducer »

ianleeclark wrote: post #161
saltedonion wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have a good point. But TikTok is much more risky, and as as such requires much more scrutiny given existing body of knowledge between how chinese social media / chat companies such as WeChat enforce government censorship and aid in propagating misinformation. This might be a shock to most people in the western world, but if you go on almost ANY news website in china, the headline news is dedicated to government p…

> The reality is that Chinese firms and government operates together intimately No, I get this, but here's the thing: YouTube and, more specifically, it's advertisers do everything that you're accusing China of. There are material consequences if YouTube doesn't keep in line. What this means is that a status quo that pleases advertisers will be maintained. It's every bit propaganda as dropping leaflets, but you can't…

YouTube and, more specifically, it's advertisers do everything that you're accusing China of

YouTube and its advertisers aren't countries, and aren't engaged in recent, deadly military skirmishes with India.

Re: India bans TikTok, WeChat, and dozens of other Chinese apps

#296

Post by puranjay »

kumarvvr wrote: post #160
hatenberg wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'll see the same attitude to the US from the rest of the world too

Yes. Especially in South America. However, US is not about expansionism. Its about trade and control. It wants markets, trade and resources. China is about expansionism and lacks moral or ethical compass.

> However, US is not about expansionism

I love how the world paints China as an aggressive power while conveniently forgetting the completely unjustified and unwarranted invasion of Iraq by America.

From a neutral POV, China has only 'invaded' some islands. America has toppled governments and literally occupied sovereign nations - all under the guise of "national security".

And it all happened in the distant past of just 17 years ago

Re: India bans TikTok, WeChat, and dozens of other Chinese apps

#297

Post by mrfusion »

mda wrote: post #283
tshaddox wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This might be a shock to most people in the western world, but if you go on almost ANY news website in china, the headline news is dedicated to government propaganda. Those people would be even more shocked by the extent to which this is true in the western world as well.

Is it though? At least you can see different sides, different voices.

All the voices are within the Overton window though.

Re: India bans TikTok, WeChat, and dozens of other Chinese apps

#298

Post by reaperducer »

coliveira wrote: post #294
saltedonion wrote: post #42

India is absolutely right in banning TikTok as it is a significant national securities threat. As long as the platforms recommendation and ranking algos are a black box, there is no guarantee that China isn’t conducting misinformation campaigns via the platform. At the very least, the government should audit the algos and make sure China can’t arbitrarily alter ranking results.

The same can be said of companies like FB and GOOG. They operate black boxes with little scrutiny from society.

FB and GOOG don't have troops stationed on India's border.

Re: India bans TikTok, WeChat, and dozens of other Chinese apps

#299

Post by shripadk »

Barrin92 wrote: post #24
riffic wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you seen any of the recently posted analyses of the TikTok binaries? https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastWeek&page=0&prefix=fal...

Yes, some of them are somewhat hyperbolic like the Apple keyboard thing which was apparently related to some sort of anti-spam feature, but in general that makes TikTok a privacy mess, which is undoubtly true but not really grounds for a national ban on the basis of security. By that logic you'd have to throw half the app store out.

> not really grounds for a national ban on the basis of security

All Chinese companies are completely at the mercy of CCP. No two ways about it. If tomorrow a War does break out between India and China, then the CCP can utilize these apps to spread propaganda to influence Indian public against the Government. Foreign interference is grounds for strengthening National Security. And this ban is not from the Government alone. Indians have literally been demanding a boycott of Chinese apps and goods for well over a year now! So it is actually the Government which has acted late!

You can read more about it here: https://www.thequint.com/tech-and-auto/tech-news/tiktok-app-...

It is not easy to get an app rating to go down from 4.9/5 to 1.3 within few days on Google Play Store when it has close to 1.5 billion downloads. You can imagine the anger among the Indian public.

Re: India bans TikTok, WeChat, and dozens of other Chinese apps

#300

Post by linsomniac »

This weekend "someone" was asserting TikTok was extremely malicious, but a lot of things in it raised red flags for me. I wrote up details about the supposed malicious action, and got a little discussion going over on this thread, but it hasn't gotten traction so far:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23679649

TL;DR: A tweet posts photos of "someone on reddit" saying they had analyzed the TikTok client and it was sending all sorts of data and able to execute .zip downloads, etc. Reddit thread has the poster saying "I'd provide proof, but it's in a soldered on SSD in a broken computer."

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