Live data from Hacker News

Why we are suing the Administration

newsroom.tiktok.com

61–70 of 486 posts

Re: Why we are suing the Administration

#61
post #7

Why is the US always focusing on individual companies instead of working on laws to protect them from all companies invading the privacy of their citizens? Banning one player isn't going to help much in the long run I would think. Edit: I am an EU citizen if it matters.

I am coming to believe that what we are seeing is a kind of "race" to see which aspiring superpowers will eventually control (or own) the main companies that are intentionally the most successful in invading the privacy of citizens.

People can only inhabit a finite number of social media networks, and there can eventually only be a fairly small number of big players in a position to produce massively detailed rich profiles on individuals and therefore hold most influence on them (consumer behaviour & voting behaviour)

Imagine that the USA clamps down heavily on facebook, and in 4 years some rival company from Russia or China ended up achieving the largest market share / richest per-person psych profiles. That represents a security threat even greater than the (nearly catastrophic) threat that Facebook represents today. Who wins and who loses in this race is going to make a massive difference in what the planet looks like 20, 10, even 5 years from now.

Re: Why we are suing the Administration

#62
post #7

Why is the US always focusing on individual companies instead of working on laws to protect them from all companies invading the privacy of their citizens? Banning one player isn't going to help much in the long run I would think. Edit: I am an EU citizen if it matters.

They would need to explain how TicTok brainwashes americans to vote(or not vote) but Facebook and Twitter categorically does not do the same thing. If "brainwashing" on social media exists then all should be made illegal not only the a small subset.

Hmm, what does it mean to keep a social media giant hostage right up to the elections?

Re: Why we are suing the Administration

#63
All Chinese companies are subsidiaries of Chinese communists party. There is no single exception. TikTok and Huawei have been exploiting all of its information and power to influence in the favor of China Communist Party and it's against not just us, but all the free states and people in proper nations.

Re: Why we are suing the Administration

#64
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US political system is structured in such a way that it's very difficult to draft legislation and get it passed. You have to get a bill to pass a majority in the house, then (generally) get 60% in the senate, then get past the president's veto, and then implementation of that legislation will fall to a governmental organisation ultimately run by a political appointee who is appointed by the President and confirme…

I didn't know the details of this before lol. That sounds like a nightmare it's a wonder anything gets done...

That’s the idea. The states are supposed to be doing the majority of the legislation.

Re: Why we are suing the Administration

#65
post #28

Regardless of what you think about TikTok, the banning of an app in the interest of "national security" is largely unprecedented. The jump from banning Huawei from building critical public infrastructure to banning an app that hasn't even conclusively been proven to behave in any uniquely dangerous ways seems to be an intense, unjustified escalation of this conflict. [1] You may disagree with me on the strict securit…

> banning of an app in the interest of "national security" is largely unprecedented No it's not. China has banned most Western apps in the interests of national security. And that article you listed on analysing TikTok is hilariously incompetent. Didn't think to investigate multiplexing data with the video stream ?

>No it's not. China has banned most Western apps in the interests of national security.

Chinese law doesn't carry a legal precedence in the US court system. My concerns regarding free speech and the precedence for banning end-to-end encrypted apps remain in tact. Additionally, China bans end-to-end encrypted messaging apps, which bolsters my concerns regarding precedence.

>And that article you listed on analysing TikTok is hilariously incompetent. Didn't think to investigate multiplexing data With the video stream ?

Even if I concede that no one has proven the apps safety, it seems to me that the burden of proof should be on the administration to demonstrate that the app behaves in uniquely dangerous ways, not on security researchers to prove that it doesn't.

Re: Why we are suing the Administration

#66
post #52
post #24

Chinese administration ban or ostracize large portion of us software , imo us and eu must do the same 'til minimum information freedom for free people ( no China firewall,information circulation ban ) is allowed there too

They are not comparable. Quote form fortune[1]: Kai-Fu Lee, a leading artificial intelligence expert who heads the tech investment firm Sinovation Ventures, worked for Google in China between 2005 and 2009. (Until 2009, Google operated a separate, censored version of its search engine in China.) He said in a Chinese-language statement on Tuesday that Google's experience in China and TikTok's case in the U.S. are "not…

China bans plenty of US apps and services. Facebook, for instance. They are exactly comparable.

Re: Why we are suing the Administration

#67
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not think that the actions of a 3rd party should be influencing our decisions regarding the standards we apply to ourselves.

A huge amount of smart people in the U.S. seem to completely forget this when it comes to China. Everyone's so effectively brainwashed to think that China = bad that you can't even start any type of complex conversation about such a multifaceted topic.

It's because China regularly does things that Western countries simply don't do.

For example right now we have an Australian citizen who is being held for no reason and with no ability to purse it through the judiciary because there isn't one.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/31/world/asia/china-australi...

Or you know that small issue of the mass-genocide that is happening in Xinjiang.

Re: Why we are suing the Administration

#68
post #63

All Chinese companies are subsidiaries of Chinese communists party. There is no single exception. TikTok and Huawei have been exploiting all of its information and power to influence in the favor of China Communist Party and it's against not just us, but all the free states and people in proper nations.

Isn’t pine64 a Chinese company? I haven’t seen them do anything pro ccp.

Re: Why we are suing the Administration

#69
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the subtext is, "It is OK for companies to invade the privacy of US citizens, so long the companies' own countries is also on the US side as well".

> so long the companies' own countries is also on the US side as well The US side of what? What does it mean to be on the US side?

I don't understand how someone can be on HN for 6 years and not already know this.

Look up Five Eyes.

Re: Why we are suing the Administration

#70
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the subtext is, "It is OK for companies to invade the privacy of US citizens, so long the companies' own countries is also on the US side as well".

> so long the companies' own countries is also on the US side as well The US side of what? What does it mean to be on the US side?

The USA has enemies, NATO has enemies.

The short list is China, Iran, Russia, N Korea, Venezuela, Cuba. There are others, but these seem to get the most attention.

Remember the Axis of Evil?

Post reply on HN