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Trump says he will ban TikTok through executive action

cnbc.com

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Re: Trump says he will ban TikTok through executive action

#601

Post by FraKtus »

instance wrote: post #523
FraKtus wrote: post #485

We are on HN here, right? Does anybody was able to do a man in the middle inspection to prove that the app is spying on Users? Does anybody did inspect the binary and found a back door in the app? In am working in video and I find that the tool they did develop allowing kids to remix video succeeded were previous startup failed...

There is ongoing research by different companies/people. For example, check out penetrum: https://penetrum.com/research Got it from this reddit thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/fxgi06/not_new_news... It'd be awesome if the reverse engineered code was on Github or something. I found this repo but wasn't able to look deep into it yet, so take with a grain of salt: https://github.com/augustgl/tiktok_sour…

Thanks!

penetrum has this nice white paper:

Penetrum_TikTok_Security_Analysis_whitepaper.pdf

This is their conclusion:

"After extensive research, we have found that not only is TikTok a massive security flaw waiting to happen, but the ties that they have to Chinese parties and Chinese ISP’s make it a very vulnerable source of data that still has more to be investigated. Data harvesting, tracking, fingerprinting, and user information occurs throughout the entire application. As a US company, we feel that it is our responsibility to raise awareness of this extensive data harvesting to TikTok’s 1 billion users."

There is bad coding in the app but is that enough for the ban?

They also seems to get telemetry data, who does not :-)

Re: Trump says he will ban TikTok through executive action

#602

Post by CydeWeys »

bigpumpkin wrote: post #542
CydeWeys wrote: post #502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This gets right to the heart of the paradox of tolerance. When your country is tolerant of other countries' companies operating locally, but they aren't tolerant of the same, then you're going to eventually be overrun. You cannot defeat the intolerant through blanket tolerance; consequences and retaliation are necessary. To make it even simpler, tit-for-tat is a good strategy for iterated prisoner's dilemma; always c…

Hah! Why doesn't the US ban the Nazi party or the KKK if it really cares about the Paradox of tolerance?

We fought a war against the Nazis, with millions dead, to end fascism. We'd (hopefully) do it again if it were necessary.

It's really off the mark to criticize the US for not having done enough against Nazis! Forget banning, we invaded and killed those fuckers.

Re: Trump says he will ban TikTok through executive action

#603

Post by CydeWeys »

justinzollars wrote: post #598
CydeWeys wrote: post #505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There have been plenty of rises and falls of civilization in China in the intervening thousands of years. It's way reductionist to claim that this is all the same one unflagging continuous empire. In a way, you're doing Chinese history a huge disservice by making it a lot less interesting than it actually is when you claim that it's all just one empire persisting steadily through time. And anyway, "the west" has a co…

I think your perspective is one of not having read any books on China, not having studied anything about China and not having been to China.

Do you have anything to contribute beyond ad hominem and argument from authority?

Re: Trump says he will ban TikTok through executive action

#604

Post by AsyncAwait »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #575
AsyncAwait wrote: post #499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is less so because they ban anything that isn't controlled by the authoritarian and antidemocratic regime. Really? So why are there Apple stores in China? It seems like a rationalization to always see ourselves as the "good guys" no matter what. Every empire ever did. Playing devil's advocate, I can see the Chinese rationalizing their bans as defending their sovereignty against Western dominance since we have…

Come on. China’s communist regime killed tens of millions of its own people within living memory. It presently commits egregious human rights abuses against its Uighur Muslim population. It prohibits its citizens from accessing media which might possibly negatively portray The Party. Banning TikTok may be a bad idea and the US certainly has its own troubled history, but this executive order isn’t “hypocrisy” and it c…

I do not agree with the CCP, but I also don't like it when people present non-nuanced arguments that feel a bit like U.S. ra-ra propaganda copypasta.

> China’s communist regime

China's regime is many things but cannot really be described as communist much anymore, this is erasing a whole lot of history post Mao.

> China’s communist regime killed tens of millions of its own people within living memory.

Absolutely. That has not stopped us from treating regimes like Saudi Arabia as friends. The U.S. foreign policy establishment is hardly concerned about human rights.

Of course these are horrible, but I don't believe for a second that the TikTok ban has anything to do with human rights.

Re: Trump says he will ban TikTok through executive action

#605

Post by justinzollars »

pell wrote: post #257
justinzollars wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China has been able to maintain its civilization state and it has a continuous history.

You commented this twice already as some sort of universal truth. But in fact the region known as modern-day China had one major conflict after another like they occurred in any other region in the globe. Also what does it mean to "maintain" civilization when at least 45 million people died under Mao due to famine, overwork and state violence? Is putting Uighurs in concentration camps "maintaining" civilization?

I recommend reading "On China" which describes this concept thoroughly.

Re: Trump says he will ban TikTok through executive action

#606

Post by gruez »

supergirl wrote: post #414
Kuinox wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think this will be a "Great Firewall". The app will be banned from the stores, advanced users could still install the app by getting the APK.

not on ios. also, i'm afraid banning in the US here means actually banning it worldwide. or that will be the next step. it would be easy to force apple to just pull it from the app store. and no, people won't just install it from the apk. maybe 1% know how to do that, so it'll be a ghost town anyway

You can still sideload on iOS with cydia impactor. It's a bigger hassle though, because you need to resign every 7 days.

Re: Trump says he will ban TikTok through executive action

#607

Post by allendoerfer »

dfee wrote: post #599
allendoerfer wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I consider it much more questionable to exert power over allied countries to stop extraterritorial infrastructure projects (i.e. Nordstream 2) Nordstream 2 is a great example. Sanctioning a country that was literally the wall between you and the East is such an extremely stupid move. Just confirms Merkels sentence: "Europe can not rely on the US any longer". German here and I have to, say: You lost me there, buddy.…

Germany: underfunding its commitment to defense while undermining its national security by making itself completely dependent on Russia’s energy. Look how well that’s working out for Ukraine (starved of the energy that’s instead going to be routed through the Nordstream 2). And what about your former chancellor caught in the middle of selling out your sovereignty: Gerhard Schröder. As for your last comment, the one i…

That's one onesided way to interpret the war in Ukraine. There are others. Even if it was the right one, the US is in no position to talk about illegitimate wars. The US has it's own shitshow going on in the Middle East (where it has no border and really no business being whatsoever), so maybe it should fix that first, before bothering Germany about where and with whom it wants to build pipes.

The US is no position to police other countries - especially not European ones, who are not even part of one - about illegitimate wars.

Regarding the empire I don't know what you are talking about. If the US sanctions Germany, Germany is economically perfectly capable of creating countermeasures. I say we should do so, because I cannot stand this arrogance. If the US starts trade wars with everyone, it hurts itself the most.

Re: Trump says he will ban TikTok through executive action

#608

Post by dragonwriter »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #575
AsyncAwait wrote: post #499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is less so because they ban anything that isn't controlled by the authoritarian and antidemocratic regime. Really? So why are there Apple stores in China? It seems like a rationalization to always see ourselves as the "good guys" no matter what. Every empire ever did. Playing devil's advocate, I can see the Chinese rationalizing their bans as defending their sovereignty against Western dominance since we have…

Come on. China’s communist regime killed tens of millions of its own people within living memory. It presently commits egregious human rights abuses against its Uighur Muslim population. It prohibits its citizens from accessing media which might possibly negatively portray The Party. Banning TikTok may be a bad idea and the US certainly has its own troubled history, but this executive order isn’t “hypocrisy” and it c…

> China’s communist regime

Fascist more than communist: it's military-heavy, nationalist, authoritarian and corporatist but with notionally private enterprise rather than simply overt government industries, all of which are typical of fascism (a few overlap with features of Leninst-style Communism, but neither nationalism nor, particularly, private-but-corporatist industry fit that model.)

It's not particularly aggressively expansionist, so it's not quite classic Fascism.

Re: Trump says he will ban TikTok through executive action

#609

Post by allendoerfer »

dsabanin wrote: post #437
allendoerfer wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I consider it much more questionable to exert power over allied countries to stop extraterritorial infrastructure projects (i.e. Nordstream 2) Nordstream 2 is a great example. Sanctioning a country that was literally the wall between you and the East is such an extremely stupid move. Just confirms Merkels sentence: "Europe can not rely on the US any longer". German here and I have to, say: You lost me there, buddy.…

Putin is going to use NordStream to exert pressure on Germany. There’s no doubt about it. They use gas pipelines as a pressure point with Ukraine and Belarus all the time.

They are using it to exert pressure on Ukraine, not Germany. Germany is doing fine, thank you. The US should mind it's own business.

Re: Trump says he will ban TikTok through executive action

#610

Post by IgorPartola »

read_if_gay_ wrote: post #449
IgorPartola wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look, this isn’t ideological. This is about Trump being butt hurt. I wish I could put a more nuanced spin on it, but that’s all to this story. TikTok has been a big platform for his critics and he is in a perpetual fight with China. That’s how we ended up here. WeChat is not on his radar and makes no difference to him. It won’t get banned. To be fair, I have a feeling TikTok will simply sue and win since this is blat…

What do you base your reasoning that this is just Trump being butthurt on? Because I have a strong suspicion that even though you don’t think the TikTok ban is ideological, your reasoning for that on the other hand is ideological.

The fact that Trump has done literally nothing but the things that benefit him personally his entire presidency? The fact that this is conveniently happening the week the US has posted record shatteringly low economic numbers and every time the stock market or the economy isn’t doing well he does something to distract the media and the public? The fact that we managed to elect a grifter? The fact that the man can’t read anything but his own name, let alone understand nuances of technology or foreign policy? You would have to be blind not to see through his intent. Or willfully supporting that racist as if in a death cult with him.

No banning TikTok isn’t ideological in this case: it’s one of dozens of Chinese apps. No other app is under fire. Yes I am ideological about Trump: I am against corruption and he is bar none the most corrupt president the US has ever had and hopefully will ever have.

Edit: just noticed your username. Dude, not cool.

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