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US bans WeChat, TikTok from app stores, threatens shutdowns

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Re: US bans WeChat, TikTok from app stores, threatens shutdowns

#51

Post by bleepblorp »

tstrimple wrote: post #9
technoplato wrote: post #8

I’m genuinely curious what the perceived threat is here. Is it as simple as “China is going to read everyone’s stuff and use machine learning to figure out what the cool kids are doing and then brainwash them?”

TikTok kids are mean to Trump.

It's interesting that this explanation gets aggressively downvoted every time it is posted. It's a narrative that someone seems to want to bury.

It is the explanation that best fits the facts, given that talk of banning TikTok didn't gain traction until after Trump's indoor rally turned up empty.

I suspect the empty rally was the tipping point that gave those who wanted to get rid of TikTok for competitive reasons enough of Trump's ear for him to go full banana republic and ban it.

Addendum: as expected, this post was downvoted. Say 'hi' to the RNC (and/or Putin) for me.

Re: US bans WeChat, TikTok from app stores, threatens shutdowns

#52

Post by zaksoup »

dheera wrote: post #48
hirundo wrote: post #17

Banning a speech app should trigger strict judicial scrutiny for first amendment infringement in the same way that banning a newspaper would: 1. Is it necessary to a "compelling state interest"? Maybe they are CCP surveillance apps, but that needs be shown in court, not merely asserted. 2. Is it "narrowly tailored" to achieving this compelling purpose? This seems narrowly tailored to two apps. 3. Does it use the "lea…

PSA: If you have an Android phone, you can download WeChat directly from wechat.com. You don't need to go through the Google Play store because your OS supports your freedom to some degree to install whatever you want on hardware that you OWN. If you have an iPhone, sorry that your phone company's CEO is pretty much a dictator and is complicit in restricting the freedom of Americans.

How come the argument "you can just buy an android phone" doesn't apply to iOS users in the same way "you can just sideload an APK" does to Google play store users? This isn't a rhetorical question, I'm genuinely curious about how people think of these distinctions.

Re: US bans WeChat, TikTok from app stores, threatens shutdowns

#53

Post by frenchy »

mcgt wrote: post #24
ericmay wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea but if the citizens of the US don't like it they can call on their representatives to introduce a bill limiting that power or whatnot. The president also theoretically has the power to just unilaterally start a war or even drop a nuclear bomb on another country. But this isn't a Trump issue, we've increasingly turned to look at the president as the government instead of elected representatives. In an ideal scenar…

>But instead we're lazy so we just want the president to be a dictator instead of safeguarding our republic. Funny. I wrote my senator months ago about that encryption bill going around then. Just got a canned response back today, about how law enforcement should be able to access encrypted nformation, etc. Poetically waxing about the effects of "writing your reps" is bullshit when they are entrenched with one anothe…

Not American, but we have a similar situation here, just with less political extremism.

I think a part of this is that many of the issues that are important to techies are either unimportant to most voters, or the voters don't understand them enough for form a good opinion. When an representative is representing hundreds of thousands of people, it's not really surprising that they ignore feedback on issues that most people don't care about.

Balkanization might help, but many states have been doing the exact opposite of that for the last 200 years because there's a lot of benefit to having a common set of laws and unregulated trade & travel over a large region.

Re: US bans WeChat, TikTok from app stores, threatens shutdowns

#54

Post by samatman »

jmoss20 wrote: post #30
ericmay wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea but if the citizens of the US don't like it they can call on their representatives to introduce a bill limiting that power or whatnot. The president also theoretically has the power to just unilaterally start a war or even drop a nuclear bomb on another country. But this isn't a Trump issue, we've increasingly turned to look at the president as the government instead of elected representatives. In an ideal scenar…

> The president also theoretically has the power to just unilaterally start a war... ? " The Congress shall have Power . . . To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules conquering Captures on Land and Water;" -- US Constitution, Article I, 8.11

Please don't be naive.

The workaround, for at least fifty years, has simply been for the President to start a war without going through the formality of declaring one.

Congress could probably put a stop to it after the fact. We don't know this for sure, because thus far they just rubber-stamp it. Military-industrial money flows into everyone's district, by design.

Re: US bans WeChat, TikTok from app stores, threatens shutdowns

#55

Post by willis936 »

cyc116 wrote: post #23
ericmay wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Propoganda, election interference, tracking of people in the US for unknown purposes. But I think it's primarily just deserved reciprocity to how the CCP is behaving in general. The US and the west have bent over backward for like 30 years and all we got was just more totalitarianism, hacking, IP theft, etc. Why play?

Because the majority of the people using Wechat and Tiktok are not CCP?

Does banning CCP controlled businesses not push back on the CCP because there is collateral?

Re: US bans WeChat, TikTok from app stores, threatens shutdowns

#56

Post by shajznnckfke »

hirundo wrote: post #17

Banning a speech app should trigger strict judicial scrutiny for first amendment infringement in the same way that banning a newspaper would: 1. Is it necessary to a "compelling state interest"? Maybe they are CCP surveillance apps, but that needs be shown in court, not merely asserted. 2. Is it "narrowly tailored" to achieving this compelling purpose? This seems narrowly tailored to two apps. 3. Does it use the "lea…

> Maybe they are CCP surveillance apps, but that needs be shown in court, not merely asserted.

If TikTok sued the US government under this theory, the government might need to make the argument in court to defend the lawsuit. There’s no requirement for the government to preemptively make a showing in court before it does everything.

Re: US bans WeChat, TikTok from app stores, threatens shutdowns

#57

Post by jessaustin »

Alupis wrote: post #43
kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Watch the latest Triumph bit from the Colbert show to see the mentality of Trump supporters. We are living in an idiocracy now. 51% of Americans have no critical thinking skills. The "issues" are whatever you can use to trigger an emotional response from someone who is easily manipulated.

> Watch the latest Triumph bit from the Colbert show to see the mentality of Trump supporters Colbert has built a career upon exaggerating and editorializing politics. He is an entertainer and comedian, not an analyst. He is hardly a sound source for any real political insight. > The "issues" are whatever you can use to trigger an emotional response from someone who is easily manipulated. I think the same can be said…

I think the same can be said about both political ideologies in the US.

Definitely. So much this, that I wonder if "both" is even the right word? So much sound and fury, and somehow Congress votes nearly unanimously to give rich people trillions in response to a pandemic, while doing nothing about health care. Somehow we're spending $750B on the military every year, more than the next fifteen nations combined, with our increase this year dwarfing Russia's total spending. Somehow in the coming election we have a confused loudmouth old man from the urban northeast who likes draft deferments, non-consensual digital penetration, and criminal-panic race baiting, running against Trump.

Re: US bans WeChat, TikTok from app stores, threatens shutdowns

#58

Post by chance_state »

busheezy wrote: post #6

It seems like WeChat access is pretty hard to get in the US currently if you don't know anyone that uses it. I registered an account to try and get support for my Ender 3D printer(nightmare). After a few fields the app asked me to have my sponsor enter my number and I wasn't able to progress further so I uninstalled.

Wait what? You need a "sponsor" to use WeChat?

Re: US bans WeChat, TikTok from app stores, threatens shutdowns

#59

Post by abc-xyz »

SomeHacker44 wrote: post #2

US Government just provided another case study in why we need to be able to side load apps.

Funny, I was thinking the exact opposite. It’s the perfect way to isolate China from the rest of the world, and unless they start going after allies then I’ll be cheering them on.

This is also why 40%-Tencent-owned Epic Games have been attacking Apple non-stop ever since they purposely got themselves banned from the App Store to mount a PR lawsuit campaign to try to force Apple to allow third-party app installations, which coincidentally happened right after Trump signed an executive order that would ban Tencent’s WeChat.

Re: US bans WeChat, TikTok from app stores, threatens shutdowns

#60

Post by chance_state »

dheera wrote: post #49

PSA: If you have an Android phone, you can download WeChat directly from wechat.com. You don't need to go through the Google Play store because your OS supports your freedom to some degree to install whatever you want on hardware that you OWN. If you have an iPhone, sorry that your phone company's CEO is pretty much a dictator and is complicit in restricting the freedom of Americans.

You can download the spyware directly from the source!
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