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

EFF statement on U.S. Supreme Court's decision to uphold TikTok ban

eff.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 350 posts

Re: EFF statement on U.S. Supreme Court's decision to uphold TikTok ban

#61

Post by isodev »

snypher wrote: post #46
unyttigfjelltol wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Now it seems like most platforms seem to be thinly veiled psyops hoping to trade quick dopamine for mindshare. The first step to reform would be to persuade legacy media to stop reporting the opinions trending on X/Twitter as "news". Stop reporting it entirely, it's manipulated, at best unverified, rubbish.

That would require legacy reporters to get out on the streets and do some reporting.

Can you imagine, holding public servants (a president for example) accountable for their statements… practically unheard of in the last decade…

Re: EFF statement on U.S. Supreme Court's decision to uphold TikTok ban

#62

Post by error_logic »

nialv7 wrote: post #50

Never expected to see the EFF siding with a big tech company, and fighting for its right to profit from its users. Never expected to see the EFF dismiss an argument for user's data privacy as "shaky". Quite disappointed honestly.

There's a bigger picture in the question of precedent and risks created by the infrastructure to ban a platform like this.

Unfortunately it seems the powers that be are dead set on pursuing destruction of not just specific competitors but, eventually, the entire notion of constructive competition and its win-win outcomes provided the right safety nets.

Re: EFF statement on U.S. Supreme Court's decision to uphold TikTok ban

#63

Post by loeg »

whoitwas wrote: post #39

I agree with the ban on security basis, but could this be abused by countries to sabotage companies? China could buy majority shares of a company and force them out of business.

We've just seen an example of the US blocking a sale on national security grounds -- we can block sales to China, too: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/03/us/politics/us-steel-nipp...

Re: EFF statement on U.S. Supreme Court's decision to uphold TikTok ban

#64

Post by loeg »

hedora wrote: post #48
parkaboy wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah this is a weird one where their m.o. on privacy/security are at odds with their first amendment side of things...sounds like the latter won out. I also disagree with them on this. This isn't something like net neutrality. It's one of many privately-owned social media platforms and one such with deeply privacy-invasive software that has adversarial foreign ties against the US.

There’s a simple, obvious and overwhelmingly popular solution to this problem that respects free speech and privacy. Unlike the current law, it wouldn’t blatantly violate the constitution by targeting a specific group: Apply reasonable privacy and transparency rules to all social media platforms, regardless of ownership. I’m not sure the EFF really needs to spell it out at this point.

Yeah the reasonable privacy and transparency rule here is "don't be an arm of the PRC." It applies to all social media platforms.

Re: EFF statement on U.S. Supreme Court's decision to uphold TikTok ban

#65

Post by whatshisface »

parkaboy wrote: post #31
x3n0ph3n3 wrote: post #27

I don't often disagree with the EFF. Strange times.

Yeah this is a weird one where their m.o. on privacy/security are at odds with their first amendment side of things...sounds like the latter won out. I also disagree with them on this. This isn't something like net neutrality. It's one of many privately-owned social media platforms and one such with deeply privacy-invasive software that has adversarial foreign ties against the US.

The fact that only one app is being banned makes it pretty obvious that privacy concerns are orthogonal to the political shift this represents. The law was originally passed before the Gaza ceasefire, and the activism on the app relating to that issue was the specific example that was blamed on Chinese influence. The hypothesis was that teenagers would not know or care about US policy towards the conflict if a foreign communication service was not facilitating the spread of relevant information.

Re: EFF statement on U.S. Supreme Court's decision to uphold TikTok ban

#66

Post by packetlost »

munchler wrote: post #42
schoen wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked at EFF for twenty years, and every iteration or incarnation of EFF would have said that it should be extraordinarily difficult for the government to prevent Americans from using foreign web sites or software. And that it should be extraordinarily difficult for the government to compel tech intermediaries to help block foreign sites or software. This would have been a bog-standard EFF position for the organiz…

It required specific legislation to ban TikTok. I would say that's pretty extraordinary. I think even the EFF should admit that allowing the Chinese government to control a major American social media app is an unacceptable security risk.

Not only did it require specific legislation, but it had the near unanimous support of all 3 branches of the government (if you exclude the shifts in presidential opinion)

Re: EFF statement on U.S. Supreme Court's decision to uphold TikTok ban

#67

Post by dralley »

error_logic wrote: post #52
lolinder wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Privacy laws don't solve the real problem, they would only solve the fig leaf that politicians are hiding behind when it comes to tiktok. The actual problem is and always has been control over the content being fed to users. It's not an issue of privacy, it's an issue of voter manipulation. It's just that the US has decided that it's okay with its own plutocrats manipulating voters while it's not okay with the CCP do…

The voting algorithm needs to change so that destructive (negative) campaigning is not so effective. Duverger's law makes campaigns devolve into undermining and destroying the competition, with the two parties hosting primaries to see which of them can "turn the wheel" the hardest before the general election where they claim "don't worry I won't crash the car!" despite their prior incentives. If we used plurality vot…

>The voting algorithm needs to change so that destructive (negative) campaigning is not so effective.

No algorithm is going to fix this, it's human nature. Negative campaigning has been a constant of elections since elections were invented. At best you can tamp down on the aggressive engagement feedback loops. We should probably do that, but it's good to stay realistic about outcomes.

Re: EFF statement on U.S. Supreme Court's decision to uphold TikTok ban

#68

Post by fastball »

anramon wrote: post #45
ipython wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s interesting about this argument is that the playing field is highly asymmetric between the us and china. China explicitly firewalls out large amounts of the internet from its population. If you want to do business via an e-commerce in china, you cannot do so without explicit permission, license and partial Chinese equity share - for example https://developers.cloudflare.com/china-network/concepts/icp... On the…

China doesn't pretend to be a democracy, so as they don't are nor pretend to be a democracy the rest of us should abandon democracy? Should be stop begin democratic because China isn't?

China absolutely does pretend to be a democracy. They call it a "whole-process democracy".

Re: EFF statement on U.S. Supreme Court's decision to uphold TikTok ban

#69

Post by fastball »

jmyeet wrote: post #53

So we know the real reason why the government banned Tiktok [1]: > [Manufacturing Consent] argues that the mass communication media of the U.S. "are effective and powerful ideological institutions that carry out a system-supportive propaganda function, by reliance on market forces, internalized assumptions, and self-censorship, and without overt coercion", by means of the propaganda model of communication. Tiktok doe…

> Tiktok doesn't push government propaganda to the same degree as Meta and Google.

Do you have a source for this claim?

Re: EFF statement on U.S. Supreme Court's decision to uphold TikTok ban

#70

Post by baobun »

Huge creds to the EFF for speaking truth even when it is politically inconvenient (see comments here...)

This ban is infringing of IMO fundamental rights of individuals in US to share and use the TikTok app freely. That China is doing similar things to their citizens can't be an excuse.

Yeah I hate TikTok and its effect on society too and good riddance etc but this is a first for something very bad. We have to look at the larger picture.

Post reply on HN