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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

#461

Post by crawfordcomeaux »

kelnos wrote: post #250
brookst wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure. If censorship is wrong, then it is wrong. If censorship is just fine, the n it is just fine. It is the height of hypocrisy to engage in censorship in the name of stamping out censorship. It feels like a tautology because the opposing viewpoint is a very simple hypocrisy. If you don’t like something, don’t do it.

Your argument is predicated on the idea that banning TikTok is censorship. It's not. No speech or information is being suppressed; any speech being made on TikTok can instead be made on other platforms. This isn't like China where the government bans any services they can't control, and directs the services that they can control to suppress any information they don't want people talking about.

The Free Palestine movement has grown on TikTok in ways it hasn't on American-owned platforms because it's so heavily censored on American apps. It is the censoring of genocides across the world that TikTok bypasses. Why this is doesn't matter. The end result is populations being kept in the dark about what their governments are complicit in or actively contributing to.

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

#462

Post by ludston »

pas wrote: post #444
ludston wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thinks that China is an enemy government when the USA and China do 500 billion dollars worth of trade each year.

Ukraine and Russia also continues to trade gas. Countries pay Gazprom and Ukraine charges Gazprom for transit. Life is not black and white. See also https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/manufacturing-is-a-war-now/

Yeah it's the lack of black and whiteness that makes me so confused as to why you would brand the government of a 1 billion person nation as an enemy rather than say, a competitor or even an ally that behaves in occasionally intolerable ways. Kind of like how a lot of nations continue to be allies with a nation that goes around invading other nations and deposing legitimately elected governments in the interest of ore and fossil fuel companies.

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

#464

Post by rsolva »

Many commenters argue that free speech is being infringed upon, but isn't this really about protecting user data and preventing an adversarial and autocratic foreign power from influencing U.S. citizens? Sure, it is hypocritical to not protect the same user from U.S. companies harvesting their data, but you get my point.

Shutting down TikTok in the U.S. doesn't prevent people from expressing their opinions. There are countless other ways to share and publish thoughts freely.

None of these platforms, like TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and X, are public squares where citizens have any of these rights. They are privately owned and regulated by unending terms of service agreements, with users often moderated or banned for minor infractions by company algorithms. Free speech has never truly existed in these spaces, nor is it likely to ever do so.

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

#465

Post by libertine »

flkenosad wrote: post #459

I really hate how people are arguing that it should be banned because of the content being inappropriate in one way or another when the content you see is based on how you interact with the app. We don't all see the same stuff. So yeah China may have more educational content but that's probably just becuase the people there are interested in that stuff. When I travel to the mountains, I get more outdoorsy/hiking vide…

Are you aware of what happened in Romania with Tiktok?

A candidate got funded by foreign agents, paid for influencers, and sprinkled with Russian bot accounts it was enough to make a pro-Russian candidate get 20% of votes when he was an unknown political figure.[0]

The app allows this. You can try to distract everyone from an app that enables illegal foreign interference by hiding under the guise of "oh, this is just what people want to hear; the problem isn't Russia but Romanian politicians." - that's a very dangerous stance and a threat to free & fair elections.

[0]https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/romania-tiktok-pr...

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

#466

Post by hnfong »

xanderlewis wrote: post #427
t0bia_s wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- they're banning stupid, memes/brainrot app Imagine same rhetoric by CCP adressing Facebook or YouTube.

You can imagine it. But they'd be wrong. Facebook and YouTube aren't directly controlled by an enemy government, and likely aren't intending as part of their raison d'être to sow discord and chaos in China.

> likely aren't intending as part of their raison d'être to sow discord and chaos in China.

This is so revisionist that it's funny. I vividly recall Facebook management celebrating their role in toppling regimes around the world for example the "Arab Spring": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media%27s_role_in_the_A... https://www.thewrap.com/facebooks-sheryl-sandberg-finding-jo...

I dare you find direct evidence of such quality that Tiktok is trying to do the same in the US.

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

#467

Post by libertine »

HKH2 wrote: post #445
tester756 wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Censorship... zzzZZZzz They're banning app/news delivery app managed by enemy government It is not like they're blocking internet, wikipedia they're banning stupid, memes/brainrot app

Chinese Tiktok is forcibly wholesome (by Chinese standards). They do not believe in absolute freedom of speech. Now Americans have just conceded that they don't believe in it either. It's good that we're all on the same page now.

[flagged]

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

#468

Post by professor_v »

flkenosad wrote: post #459

I really hate how people are arguing that it should be banned because of the content being inappropriate in one way or another when the content you see is based on how you interact with the app. We don't all see the same stuff. So yeah China may have more educational content but that's probably just becuase the people there are interested in that stuff. When I travel to the mountains, I get more outdoorsy/hiking vide…

So how do we ensure that Tiktok doesn't covertly alter the algorithm to subtly include propaganda tailored to China's geopolitical interests that are detrimental to the US? Or even just propaganda tailored to enhance internal strife to weaken the country?

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

#469

Post by aziaziazi »

numpad0 wrote: post #379
supriyo-biswas wrote: post #338

> it would "not directly prohibit the continued use of TikTok" by Apple or Google users who have already downloaded TikTok. But it conceded the prohibitions on providing support "will eventually be to render the application unworkable." I have a technical question with regards to this. Typically, censorship* investigation efforts (from academia or elsewhere, such as OONI, Apernet etc.) have tended to focus on non-Ame…

Would killing .ipa/.apk distribution not suffice? PWA still sucks, no one knows how to deal with .apk let alone invalid signed .ipa, I think it'll effectively prevent any app from going mainstream. Which is crazy but I suppose okay just this one time?

PWA also offer some advantages that apps don’t. As a personal anecdote, I’m often using a 8yo iPhone and as you might guess many apps don’t work anymore. Not because OS incompatibility (still updated thanks to Apple) but because they laaaaag and crash. Local gumtree (Leboncoin, if some dev here) systematically crash at the first in-app add load. Conter-intuitively, many PWA seems to be way more performant on the field. I know this is not the tech itself but bad dev, but that’s my experience so far.

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

#470

Post by Shorel »

brookst wrote: post #146
gkanai wrote: post #100

Reciprocity is key. Google and Facebook and most Western web services are blocked in China. If that is the case, then there should be no complaint with blocking Bytedance/other Chinese apps in the West.

So… if China mistreats their citizens, reciprocity says we must mistreat ours? You don’t fight censorship with censorship. That doesn’t stand up to even the most cursory thought. You fight censorship with openness. As soon as you find yourself arguing that you have no choice but to engage in the same behaviors you claim to dislike, you have literally become the enemy.

This is a case of China mistreating western citizens with misinformation.

Targeted addictive misinformation.

Blocking that source of misinformation is the only logical response.

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