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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

#461

Post by nodont »

ianleeclark wrote: post #392
ChrisLomont wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your initial reply was to this >India is absolutely right in banning TikTok as it is a significant national securities threat. which is exactly why YouTube and China are not equivalent. You're talking about abstract black box algorithms; no one else was.

> 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.

There is also no guarantee that Youtube is not manipulating its rankings to make the CCP happy. I think many American companies are too afraid to anger the CCP which has resulted in them filtering content the CCP would be offended by.

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

#462

Post by jryle70 »

puranjay wrote: post #332
swatkat wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> From a neutral POV, China has only 'invaded' some islands. You should read about China's antics in African countries. https://qz.com/on/china-in-africa/

Remind me when they drop bombs on an African country's capital and hang its leader, all on a false charge of possessing WMDs. I see absolutely no way that any American can ethically justify the invasion of Iraq.

> Remind me when they drop bombs on an African country's capital and hang its leader, all on a false charge of possessing WMDs.

They didn't. On the other hand they were the master of Khmer Rouge, who carried out a genocide killing millions of Cambodians in 1970s - [0]

> In April 1975, Khmer Rouge seized power in Cambodia, and in January, 1976, Democratic Kampuchea was established. During the Cambodian genocide, the CPC was the main international patron of the Khmer Rouge, supplying "more than 15,000 military advisers" and most of its external aid. It is estimated that at least 90% of the foreign aid to Khmer Rouge came from China, with 1975 alone seeing US$1 billion in interest-free economics and military aid and US$20 million gift, which was "the biggest aid ever given to any one country by China". In June 1975, Pol Pot and other officials of Khmer Rouge met with Mao Zedong in Beijing, receiving Mao's approval and advice; in addition, Mao also taught Pot his "Theory of Continuing Revolution under the Dictatorship of the Proletariat（无产阶级专政下继续革命理论）". High-ranking CPC officials such as Zhang Chunqiao later visited Cambodia to offer help

You should also check out the short war with Vietnam in 1979, where atrocious crimes were committed against civilians.

You should finally read about Chinese's systematic effort to suppress Tibetans - [1], or more recently, Uyghurs

[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khmer_Rouge [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinicization_of_Tibet

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

#463

Post by gruez »

kanox wrote: post #413
krn wrote: post #360

A reddit user, who claims to have reverse-engineered the TikTok app[1], concluded: > TikTok is a data collection service that is thinly-veiled as a social network. If there is an API to get information on you, your contacts, or your device... well, they're using it. > For what it's worth I've reversed the Instagram, Facebook, Reddit, and Twitter apps. They don't collect anywhere near the same amount of data that TikT…

> > If there is an API to get information on you, your contacts, or your device... well, they're using it. For what it's worth I've reversed the Instagram, Facebook, Reddit, and Twitter apps. They don't collect anywhere near the same amount of data that TikTok does, and they sure as hell aren't outright trying to hide exactly whats being sent like TikTok is. I find this unconvincing and reddit comments are not trustw…

>Wouldn't data collection be limited by the mobile OS anyway

Maybe on iOS. But on Android of the ones that he listed, many can be retrieved without any permissions, such as

>* Phone hardware (cpu type, number of course, hardware ids, screen dimensions, dpi, memory usage, disk space, etc)

>* Whether or not you're rooted/jailbroken

I also suspect that they can get some or all of the network information without any special permissions either.

>* Everything network-related (ip, local ip, router mac, your mac, wifi access point name)

As for "other apps you have installed", it looks like it's getting it through the "retrieve running apps" permission, although I'm not sure whether that shows up as a permission prompt or not.

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

#464

Post by seemack »

ianleeclark wrote: post #365
mtgp1000 wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't see a difference between an ideological party which interns millions of people by ethnicity (among other glaring issues), and a corporation seeking profits from a video platform?

On the question of black box algorithms, no because it's not relevant.

I would think that the reputation of the creator becomes even more critical when considering a black box algorithm.

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

#465

Post by lolbrels »

jjoonathan wrote: post #418
dvt wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're going to get heavily downvoted (HN loves the paradox of tolerance), but I wholeheartedly agree. I think it's complete nonsense, not to mention that its spirit is much better represented by older ideas (e.g. Mill's Harm Principle). "Tolerance" is kind of a weasel word anyway, essentially giving carte blanche to the one that invokes the paradox.

The evidence is in: HN hates the paradox of tolerance and loves the idea of having its cake and eating it, too. I'm not surprised, but I'm slightly surprised that you're surprised. > "Tolerance" is kind of a weasel word anyway, essentially giving carte blanche to the one that invokes the paradox. How so? Demonstrating that a principle makes for a poor foundation has little bearing on its ultimate validity.

Never saw validity as a good marker, reminds me of Sophistry-esque arguments. If you're an intelligent enough person you can bend and twist almost anything you want so that it's "valid".

I prefer the imagery and idea of something with a good foundation over something that's valid.

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

#466

Post by mthoms »

learnstats2 wrote: post #322
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.

>As long as the platforms recommendation and ranking algos are a black box All platforms recommendation and ranking algos are ultimately a black box. Why is TikTok special here?

TikTok is controlled by an authoritarian dictatorship engaged in a war against Western/Democratic values and human rights.

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

#467

Post by panopticon »

bad_user wrote: post #242
mathnmusic wrote: post #80

I think this sort of response was inevitable and will be seen in more and more nations. China bans most of the popular websites and apps (including Wikipedia). The most recent trigger was the border standoff between India and China where Indian citizens could see and read both governments' responses, but Chinese citizens were only told Chinese govt's talking points. This seems like yet another instance of the paradox…

The paradox of tolerance is bullshit though, as it's not based on empirical evidence. It's just armchair philosophy used as justification for intolerance by intellectuals, the mental gymnastic people need to get over their cognitive dissonance. AFAIK Plato came up with it to justify autocracy. That says it all actually.

This seems like a really wild stance to take on a paradox. Paradoxes aren't principles, laws, or theories. They're just self-contradictory or logically contrary statements; they don't require "empirical evidence" outside of the reasoning laid out in the paradox itself.

It would be better to say that people shouldn't use a paradox as evidence for something (e.g., claim aliens must exist because of Fermi's Paradox).

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

#468

Post by thuruv »

ianleeclark wrote: post #57
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.

Are YouTube algorithms open? I don't really see a difference here. Nation state vs. private corporation is different on paper, but I don't see why. They're both going to react to material stimuli to increase their standings.

Politics does. That's the difference. Acting on above is solely depends on political bias instead of a concrete notice. No official research conducted and released stating the harm about the apps, right?

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

#469

Post by AsyncAwait »

greycol wrote: post #453
im3w1l wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All American companies move in lockstep. We see one company after another pull out of facebook advertising very quickly last week. They work together as a group with a consistent goal. This week we saw one social media platform after another ban the same people. The North American cartel moves together as one, once again. You can host your own videos but if you do expect to be banned by paypal and mastercard and visa…

That's why Blizzard decided to come out against the Hong Kong people? Western companies don't move in lockstep because they scramble in whatever direction they think a dollar is in. I can name plenty of western companies that have come out in support of the Hong Kong people and plenty that have abandoned them for a quick buck. Can you name one Chinese (Not Honk Kong or Taiwanese companies, these are under different g…

I don't disagree that no company has spoken out, but given that "the Hong Kong people" are not a singular entity and support for the protestors in so far as their methods go has been declining, it simply does not make business sense to do so, which is to say nothing about what's morally right as business rarely takes moral stances.

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

#470

Post by sethammons »

alex_smart wrote: post #449
sethammons wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't realize Zoom was mostly developed in China! That seems bad. > “Our product development team is largely based in China, where personnel costs are less expensive than in many other jurisdictions,” Zoom wrote in a regulatory filing. https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/26/zoom-key-profit-driver-ahead...

Why?

China has a history of data snooping to support its totalitarian goals. Software and development that comes out of there should be considered to come with elevated risk. Some companies work with this by ensuring that China-only data is served from within China. If there is no audit of code pushed from China and ran in the US, I'd be suspect that no backdoors or anything else have been introduced by coercion from the state. Perhaps I'm just paranoid, but just because you are not paranoid, it doesn't mean they are not after you.
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