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

Senate Bill to Ban TikTok

congress.gov

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

381–390 of 741 posts

Re: Senate Bill to Ban TikTok

#381

Post by belval »

withinboredom wrote: post #346
sebzim4500 wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you believe that a significant portion of iOS users are going to set up an Apple development account and manually reinstall TikTok every week then I have a bridge to sell you. They will just switch to a different social network, which is equally destructive but not Chinese.

I didn’t do anything special. I just installed Xcode, and bam. Done. We ripped CDs so we didn’t have to buy them. Hell, we sat by boomboxes until the right song came on the radio just to push record on the tape player. Kids will do whatever it takes to get what they want. I’d buy that bridge.

> I just installed Xcode

I think you are overestimating the tech know-how of the average person and how driven the average teenager is. TikTok a year ago was pretty unique, but now you have YouTube Shorts and Instagram Reels. I'd bet a hard money that 99% of people will just switch to those in a heartbeat if TikTok was banned.

> Kids will do whatever it takes to get what they want. I’d buy that bridge.

What they want is cheap dopamine hit from the smartphone. It's really close to drugs, make heroin hard to get and people will go to an analog like fentanyl.

Re: Senate Bill to Ban TikTok

#382

Post by lcnPylGDnU4H9OF »

spogbiper wrote: post #233
tomcar288 wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's worse than you think. This bill isn't really about Tik Tok. Read the fine print: people caught using a VPN could be thrown in jail for 20 years! It's about giving govt unchecked authority to throw people in jail.

can you point out where the bill says this? I'm not practiced in reading this kind of thing and struggling to find it

That claim seems to be making the rounds. https://hn.algolia.com/?q=restrict+act

Some of the the more accusatory headlines:

> The Restrict Act would allow the Feds access to all the data on our devices

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35362848

> The “anti-TikTok” RESTRICT act seems to apply to nearly every U.S. tech company

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35318956

> The RESTRICT act may let the government control any public tech company

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35324114

> The TikTok Ban Act, RESTRICT, will give Gov't unprecedented privacy access

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35342797

> Could the Restrict Act Criminalize the Use of VPNs?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35358761

Re: Senate Bill to Ban TikTok

#383

Post by jfk13 »

withinboredom wrote: post #337
throwaway29812 wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For half a decade, I have lived outside of the US, and I've watched as it has fallen to shit in slow motion. Then you no longer know the place. According to media the US is nothing but school shootings and government censorship.

I had a meeting last summer with some Americans and I jokingly said “meh, it’s a free country.” They all quickly pointed out that it wasn’t, any more. I still have family there and still visit for nearly a month out of the year. The number of people running red lights has gone up significantly the last few visits. To the point where I feel like I’m driving in Bali and not the US. People are more rude now than they us…

> I’ve had cops plant evidence in my car, I’ve been hit by trucks running red lights, I’ve gotten in a knife fight with a hobo, I’ve been shot at on the highway, I’ve been fired for no reason, I’ve gotten in a motorcycle accident that fucked me over seven ways to Sunday.

While I think I can understand many of your feelings about US culture, I'm a bit lost here. I was married to a US citizen and have lived a significant amount of time there, although never settled permanently. But I never experienced any of these things, nor felt an overwhelming need to worry about them. Is it something about your chosen lifestyle?

(For context, I have also lived and worked in a place where many of my neighbours employed armed guards to sit at their gates. And I watched from my office window as an armed bank robbery took place across the way. It ended with corpses lying in the street. And I was far more worried when dealing with police there than in any of my several US interactions with them. Think the US is bad? Well, in some ways it is... but it could be a lot worse.)

Re: Senate Bill to Ban TikTok

#384

Post by throwaway29812 »

withinboredom wrote: post #337
throwaway29812 wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For half a decade, I have lived outside of the US, and I've watched as it has fallen to shit in slow motion. Then you no longer know the place. According to media the US is nothing but school shootings and government censorship.

I had a meeting last summer with some Americans and I jokingly said “meh, it’s a free country.” They all quickly pointed out that it wasn’t, any more. I still have family there and still visit for nearly a month out of the year. The number of people running red lights has gone up significantly the last few visits. To the point where I feel like I’m driving in Bali and not the US. People are more rude now than they us…

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anecdote

Your experience is not everyones experience. For example, the country you describe has 0% resemblance to the one I know. Why should your experience matter more than mine?

Are you actually proposing that your experiences are in some way typical ?

Re: Senate Bill to Ban TikTok

#385

Post by twoodfin »

sebzim4500 wrote: post #326
ActorNightly wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honest question,did the Patriot act ever get misused intentionally in a grossly negligent way?

Yes. Between 2003 and 2006, nearly two hundred thousand National Security Letters were issued to obtain personal/financial history of US citizens without any judicial review. This data was only used for one terrorism related conviction, and it is generally considered that this conviction would have happend even without the act.

Why would you expect NSL’s to be used in criminal convictions? What does that have to do with national security?

Isn’t the whole point of an NSL to get something for legitimate national security purposes that couldn’t be legitimately acquired for criminal prosecution?

Re: Senate Bill to Ban TikTok

#386

Post by bioemerl »

falcolas wrote: post #231
calgarymicro wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you believe the Senator who wrote it (up to you I guess), this doesn't meet the bar for prosecution. > Warner's office says this isn't so. Spokesperson Rachel Cohen told Newsweek that the provisions only apply when someone is "engaged in 'sabotage or subversion' of communications technology in the U.S., causing 'catastrophic effects' on U.S. critical infrastructure, or 'interfering in, or altering the result' of a…

They can say that until they’re blue in the face, but if those conditions are not in the law, it’s up to prosecutors discretion.

They can amend it before it gets passed into law.

And this bill without question needs to be passed into law in some form.

Re: Senate Bill to Ban TikTok

#387

Post by dataflow »

withinboredom wrote: post #164

Maybe someone will scroll all the way down to this comment. Probably not. For half a decade, I have lived outside of the US, and I've watched as it has fallen to shit in slow motion. I make a decent chunk of income in USD and this terrifies me... but this. This move saddens me. There are only so many hours that congress has to make real decisions ... and this, this is what they spent their time on? Talking about how…

[edit: never mind, I didn't see others already mentioned this]

Re: Senate Bill to Ban TikTok

#389

Post by dragonwriter »

dataflow wrote: post #387
withinboredom wrote: post #164

Maybe someone will scroll all the way down to this comment. Probably not. For half a decade, I have lived outside of the US, and I've watched as it has fallen to shit in slow motion. I make a decent chunk of income in USD and this terrifies me... but this. This move saddens me. There are only so many hours that congress has to make real decisions ... and this, this is what they spent their time on? Talking about how…

[edit: never mind, I didn't see others already mentioned this]

Its about industrial protectionism with National Security as a paper thin pretext.

Re: Senate Bill to Ban TikTok

#390

Post by dan-robertson »

withinboredom wrote: post #211
throwaway4837 wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly, it has nothing to do with "talking about how 'kids' might be influenced by an algorithm", because if it did, they would be trying to ban Facebook, Instagram, and other social media services that have the exact same effect as TikTok on children. This is really meant to be a punch in the fight against China. US government does not want any possibility of US citizens' data being in the hands of China and their qu…

> [The] US government does not want any possibility of US citizens' data being in the hands of China. Yeah, except that any business can just buy that information. I can buy your day-to-day movements for dirt cheap. I own a non-American company (though I'm still an American citizen, but that isn't a factor), and it is insanely cheap to get information about any American you want. Hell, BingBot will tell you all about…

I don’t really know anything about buying data or whatever, but how would you actually go about buying my day-to-day movements and how much does it actually cost?

I was always under the impression that when people say ‘Google collects all your data and sells it’, or whatever, they really mean that google sells ads which may be targeted based on the data they collect, and it’s only small companies with much less data who might sell it.

Post reply on HN