
US bans WeChat, TikTok from app stores, threatens shutdowns - dsavant
https://apnews.com/a439ead01b75fc958c722daf40f9307c
======
hirundo
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 "least restrictive means" to achieve the purpose?

Like demanding that they change the apps rather than banning them.

~~~
SoylentYellow
I am focusing on WeChat only with this comment.

It is not narrowly tailored or least restrictive. Narrowly tailored means the
law must be precisely written to minimize the 1st Amendment impact. In this
case, this order prevents millions of Americans from using their primary (and
oftentimes only) method to communicate with family in China. There is no
practical alternative to WeChat as all other similar apps are banned in China,
so this order is extremely restrictive.

~~~
thaumasiotes
> In this case, this order prevents millions of Americans from using their
> primary (and oftentimes only) method to communicate with family in China.

Didn't look that way to me? The order prohibits services from providing the
application or updates to it via an "online mobile application store in the
US", it prohibits services from doing any payment processing for WeChat, and
it prohibits services from providing hosting or content delivery for WeChat.
But while it's doing its best to make it difficult for Americans to _obtain_
WeChat, (1) it does not actually prohibit them from doing so, and (2) it very
much doesn't prohibit anyone from _using_ WeChat. (Except for monetary
transfer; that's prohibited.)

~~~
matthewdgreen
Translated to a more familiar medium, the analogy would be: “bookstores can no
longer sell that title, but that’s ok because people who already own a copy
can still read it.” I’m not a constitutional scholar, but this seems like a
pretty weak counterargument to me.

~~~
thaumasiotes
I agree with your analogy, and I agree that this is a terrible move.

But for the demographic mentioned ("this order prevents millions of Americans
from using their primary (and oftentimes only) method to communicate with
family in China"), I find it vanishingly unlikely that _any_ of them doesn't
already have wechat. The order has essentially zero immediate effects on them.

~~~
matthewdgreen
On the contrary, I think it's vastly more consequential than the corresponding
argument wrt a hard-copy book or CD-ROM. A single OS upgrade can render an
application completely inoperable. Had this ban been timed slightly
differently, the recent iOS 14 update could have shut down every copy running
on iOS devices. Every typical iOS user (and many Android users) are "N days"
from total failure of the app on their device, for values of N ranging to a
few hundred.

------
gameswithgo
We see another side effect of app stores: gives governments easy leverage to
tell you what you can do with your computer.

~~~
2bitencryption
I hadn't even thought of this.

What if WeChat was a traditional installer (.msi, .app, .exe, .run) that you
download from some sever and which is mirrored all over the place?

Does the same authority apply? Can the government say "it's illegal to have
this binary executable?"

Or is this only possible because there's one central repository for these
platforms, and the government can simply compel the platform (legal and
ethical questions aside) to remove them?

~~~
Aperocky
You actually can, there's a desktop version.

~~~
mmwelt
Yes, there is, but it requires you to scan a code with your mobile phone
before you can use it!

------
technoplato
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?”

~~~
Wowfunhappy
So, separate from the Trump Administration's actual motivations (which I think
are at best vague and at worst petty retaliation), I thought this NY Times
editorial made a pretty strong case in favor of banning these platforms:

[https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/18/opinion/tiktok-wechat-
ban...](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/18/opinion/tiktok-wechat-ban-
trump.html)

TikTok and WeChat benefit from being the only social networks that can be
accessed from all of the largest internet markets in the world. And the only
social networks that can do that are... the ones from China. When the US is
permissive, and China is not, China gets to write all the rules.

This gives China the ability to effectively export their restrictions on
speech around the world, as they have shown an eagerness to do. If you want to
be a global social network, you have to play by China's rules, globally.

I'm not personally convinced that banning these platforms is the right move,
but I think the case is legitimate, and it's certainly a major problem.

~~~
vbezhenar
Imagine that Russia bans Facebook because of those reasons. Do you think that
would be a good move?

~~~
kelnos
Doesn't Russia have VK, and isn't it the most popular site in Russia? FB is
certainly popular in Russia, but it's not like people there wouldn't have
another place to go if FB were banned.

~~~
failuser
The sort of people that use Facebook in Russia know their way around a ban.

------
SomeHacker44
US Government just provided another case study in why we need to be able to
side load apps.

~~~
vbezhenar
Ban is a heavy word. Can Google issue command to android phones to stop
running some particular program? For example as a security measure to stop
malware? I think that Google have that ability, even if that malware was side-
loaded. Apple definitely can do that on Macs. That feature could be abused to
prevent running any forbidden program and side-load won't help you.

Android is still better than iOS in that regard, because it's open source and
you can disable anything. Just side-loading might not be enough.

~~~
rrrrrrrrrrrryan
There should be an option to opt-in to side loading, and opt-out of remote app
deletions.

Bury them deep in settings, have a ton of recurring confirmation prompts,
etc., but we should have laws to ensure these options are available on the
devices we own.

------
busheezy
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.

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

~~~
nairteashop
Sponsor is perhaps a strong word. You need another WeChat user to verify your
account by scanning a QR code displayed on your app using their app. You need
to do this when you create an account, and also if you haven't used your
account in a while. I assume this is some sort of anti-spam/anti-bot feature.

Note that the above is just for the chat feature. You have to jump through
more hoops if you want to make payments using the app.

~~~
ISL
Not only is it an anti-spam feature, but a single personal connection gives
substantial insight into a person's social graph.

------
ApolloFortyNine
Wechat has an inherent advantage that in order to chat in China or too chat
with anyone living in China, you must use wechat.

No American or European chatting app has this same benefit. And since chatting
apps and social media in general tends to gravitate to the service with the
most users, this puts wechat in a great position. Why use wechat to message
your friend in China and WhatsApp to message the rest of the world, when you
can just use wechat for both?

------
peteontherun
Although this is very reactionary and targeted, I hope it eventually spurs a
structured process to handle issues like these, ie:

a) Clear criteria for what constitutes an app national security risk

b) An actual government process to evaluate, respond, and enforce against all
potential app threats (not just based on popularity, though scale is a factor
in prioritization)

~~~
pessimizer
I'd rather they not institutionalize this. More bureaucracy isn't going to be
meaningful if this is the model, the bureaucracy will just exist to whitewash
this stuff in the future.

~~~
jessaustin
I also prefer "less authoritarianism" to "more reasonable authoritarianism".

------
bambax
Why does the rest of the world tolerate American bullying is beyond me. At
least in Europe, we should ban every Facebook app immediately. This would have
the added benefit of letting regional apps emerge.

~~~
jlmorton
One big reason is that America controls the SWIFT network for settling
international transactions. If you hate American commercial bullying, perhaps
the biggest thing to be excited about is Europe's SWIFT-alternative, INSTEX.

The world is so reliant on SWIFT currently that America can grind your
commerce to a halt if you don't refuse to do business with entities it doesn't
want you to.

(I realize this current TikTok action is domestic-only and unrelated to SWIFT,
but I'm speaking more broadly).

~~~
tobias3
"SWIFT" is already in Belgium and INSTEX isn't a SWIFT replacement.

This isn't a technical problem (one can transfer money other ways as well, for
example). If an entity does business with Iran it risks being put on the US
Entity List (think Huawei) or other sanctions. US influence currently is still
far reaching and many businesses don't want to risk (future) complications for
little gain (Iran isn't that large of an economy). The calculus changes if it
is a market as large as China, though.

------
hijklmno
When China does not allow foreign companies to operate in their land
(Facebook, Amazon, and a host of other companies) then why should we allow
their companies to exist here?

------
xnx
Any concern about apps accessing data is a great argument for sandboxing apps
completely from the rest of your phone (e.g. no shared file access, no shared
camera roll, no genuine GPS data, 2-way logged/firewalled network access,
etc.)

------
peacefulhat
WeChat ban is just evil, no justifiable benefit. Almost all the users in
America are overseas Chinese who use it to talk to friends and family in China
and send money.

~~~
TheAdamAndChe
Calling the ban evil is a bit hyperbolic IMO, or maybe just incomplete. Phones
with the software could easily be compromised. Users with the software can be
profiled and tracked by the Chinese government pretty easily. The Chinese
market bans most of America's social media software, and we're entering a
trade war. All these are real, legitimate reasons to ban it.

~~~
Bhilai
> The Chinese market bans most of America's social media software, and we're
> entering a trade war.

America is not China and should not frame its policies based on China's
policies. While, I agree there is a need to retaliate but 'be like China' is
hardly the way to do it.

~~~
didibus
I agree that the US shouldn't justify acting like an autocratic state because
China does so, but on the side of punishing an autocratic state there is
precedent all over the place. The question we should ask is more how the US
ever allowed China such exception in the first place, when Cuba for example
has a full on total sanction against it, and so do many other autocratic
states. So how did China get away without that for so long?

~~~
xnx
> So how did China get away without that for so long?

Cheap labor for US manufacturing

~~~
fakedang
Unfortunately, Cuba values its citizens' lives more than China does, hence it
turned out to be more profitable to keep manufacturing at America's biggest
rival, all while Cuba gets stuck in middle income gap. Just an addendum.

------
nullc
I wonder what would happen if WeChat/TikTok opened up their protocols and let
people connect with arbitrary software, including self written and open source
stuff.

The malware vector concerns would be gone. They could still spy on
communication that wasn't E2E encrypted or impersonate users but that concern
arises with essentially every communications service.

~~~
TheDong
I doubt that realistically it would make any difference.

There being open source alternative apps to consume a service means exactly
nothing to the officials pushing for this ban.

The action seems to be politically motivated, and technical details like "the
protocol is open" are not going to be understood by politicians.

~~~
chrchang523
It wouldn't make a difference if only client code was open-sourced, sure.

But if the _entire system_ was open for Americans to peruse and operate their
shards of, that might be a different story. Not saying that is practical, but
I've never seen an objection on nationalist grounds to the fully open-source
code I wrote from China while employed by a Chinese company in 2012-14.

------
yalogin
Is WeChat even useful in the US? Is it used at all?

~~~
baron_harkonnen
I'm guessing you don't have many Chinese friends, if you do I would recommend
asking them how important it is for them.

It is an essential form of communication for the large community of Chinese
citizens in the US. If you have any Chinese friends I can promise you their
families are worried about how they are going to keep in touch. It's also
heavily used for intra-US communication in various Chinese communities. In the
NYC area there is almost an entire other city available to WeChat users.

It's a big, and I do believe intentional, 'fuck you' to the Chinese community.

~~~
rrrrrrrrrrrryan
It's a big pain, but surely they'll find another way to keep in touch, though?

What do western people do in China to keep in touch with their families back
home, when all the western social media apps are banned?

It's hard for me to believe that a state-backed communications app is the only
option available to Chinese expats.

~~~
withinboredom
> What do western people do in China to keep in touch with their families back
> home, when all the western social media apps are banned?

They change the country of their app store.

~~~
fma
Huh? It's not just apps are banned from the store but you can't get out of the
Great Firewall even if you have the apps.

~~~
withinboredom
You have to get the apps to use them, the rest is a VPN or something similar.

------
danellis
What was the point of selling TikTok to Oracle if it's just going to be banned
anyway?

~~~
pjc50
It wasn't, the deal was never completed; the point of the ban is to coerce
them into selling.

------
neves
What really makes me afraid is that the USA Gov is so scared of a foreign
social network app, they must really know how powerful are these apps. How
would I trust the social networks under the American Gov?

~~~
jjcon
> How would I trust the social networks under the American Gov?

Presumably a country probably wouldn’t if they are an enemy of the western
world.

~~~
el_dev_hell
Such as China (see: Facebook, Youtube and Instagram).

------
thorum
> Users, meanwhile, face a security “nightmare” because they won’t be able to
> get app updates that fix bugs and security vulnerabilities, he said.

This is because people who already have the app will be able to continue using
it, just without updates.

So we can probably expect to see a mad rush of new users downloading the app
over the weekend before it gets banned - and then keeping an outdated,
insecure app on their devices without any security updates...

~~~
vbezhenar
I saw people selling iPhones with Fortnite installed with some premium. That
story might be repeated.

------
akersten
When will Apple and Google come out and say "no" to this? What is the
legislative mechanism that gives the Dept of Commerce control over what code
(speech) is transmitted on their app platform?

Calling it a "transaction" is a stretch - using that logic, Department of
Commerce could ban any online download they wanted. That's clearly not a good
outcome, and not an interpretation we as technologists should accept.

~~~
grumple
Can't they? Aren't there bans on open source contributions between Iran and
the US?

See: [https://github.com/1995parham/github-do-not-ban-
us](https://github.com/1995parham/github-do-not-ban-us)

~~~
kelnos
I think there's a legal difference between declaring an entire country and its
citizens subject to these sorts of restrictions (which is allowed), vs.
singling out specific companies.

But unfortunately the executive has been granted a lot of ambiguous and murky
power under the guise of "national security" and things like that, so I
wouldn't be surprised if these actions are indeed legal, but the root of the
legality is something other than ITAR or OFAC.

------
trashcan_
I really hope there is more to this story than the public is privy to, and I
hope we find out about it soon.

------
euix
On the flip side maybe Fdroid will take off. Is fdroid open source repos only?
If Bytedance was gutsy they could release an open source version of tiktok.
They could keep their algo as closed off either as compiled code or for the
app to make API calls?

The rest of the code base, everyone could see.

~~~
rvz
> On the flip side maybe Fdroid will take off. Is fdroid open source repos
> only?

FLOSS repos I guess, but they are 'opinionated' in which open source software
they allow on f-droid which this statement goes against the entire idea of
FLOSS. Even if the software is open source and free software [0].

As you said, Bytedance must essentially do the same thing as Telegram and
relicense it as GPL3 [1]. That includes everything.

[0]
[https://www.f-droid.org/en/2019/07/16/statement.html](https://www.f-droid.org/en/2019/07/16/statement.html)

[1]
[https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.telegram.messenger/](https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.telegram.messenger/)

> If Bytedance was gutsy they could release an open source version of tiktok.
> They could keep their algo as closed off either as compiled code or for the
> app to make API calls?

Hence the above, I don't see this happening.

~~~
em-bee
f-droid clients support multiple repos. the main repo is just one. in the
f-droid forums you can find others which employ different policies.

------
blackrock
So, we are supposed to have a congress that deliberates and passes laws. This
is the notion that we are a society of laws.

However, here, we have a president that acts by decree, similar to a dictator.
No deliberations. No industry consultations. Nothing. Just some vague excuse
that this is a national security issue, so no further questions are allowed.

Welcome to the new Totalitarian States of America.

------
bmitc
China bans WhatsApp. The U.S. bans WeChat. Great, no I have no official app
besides good old text and phone to communicate with my fiancée who is still
banned from reentering the U.S. despite still having a job here.

The U.S. has simply become an authoritarian state of a different color. My
fiancée is prevented from returning and we are prevented from using our
primary communication method simply because the so-called president wants to
personally gain from these actions (i.e., swindle a re-election).

And what am I supposed to use to pay for things when I visit China now if
WeChat is removed from AppStores?

Freedom my ass. Facebook, Google, and the others all collect the same if not
more data than these apps, and those companies have shown time and again they
do not have the American people’s best interests at heart and abuse the data
collection and their power. So what are we doing here?

Instead, I suspect there was collusion between Facebook and Trump’s cronies
for them to have released Instagram Reels when they did.

~~~
martin__
I thought the border restriction was just about having been in China in the
last 14 days. Couldn't she get back into the US if she went to a different
country first for 14 days?

~~~
bmitc
No. The U.S. refuses to even process visas. Early on, the U.S. initially held
her passport (a foreign one at that!) for over a month, preventing travel to
countries she had valid visas to. When she eventually did once the passport
was returned, the U.S. canceled her appointment, forcing travel back to China.
Such foreign visas have now expired. The U.S. continues to allow appointments
to be made at embassies and consulates and then cancels them right before. She
actually falls into one of the conditional allowances that should get her
back, based upon lawsuits from large employers, but the U.S. is not keeping
appointments and not processing visas. So whatever they claim is allowed
(which is not much), they are blocking that and more on a procedural level,
just like they were doing since January before any bans were even in place.
They don’t care.

H1Bs and others (at least from China) are banned at a minimum until January
2021.

~~~
martin__
That’s rough.

We are in a similar situation. She’s got a tourist visa though, and while we
think it would technically be possible for her to enter the US, we’re kind of
afraid to try.

------
Simulacra
Under what analogy might the United States be justified in doing this?

------
lgats
duplicate thread of
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24515540](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24515540)

------
zepto
This has nothing to do with free speech and everything to do with foreign
policy.

China doesn’t allow US social apps. For historical reasons to do with attempts
to establish trust, the US has allowed Chinese social apps.

That trust is arguably no longer reasonable to hold.

It is entirely reasonable for the US to want to trade with China on an equal
footing.

It’s notable that China is the worlds largest economy, and proclaims the
superiority of their socialist system over western democracy.

Obviously the US claims to be the worlds largest economy, and proclaims the
superiority of western democracy over socialism.

Regardless of who is right, there is no legitimate argument supporting a
continued imbalance in the playing field.

Trump may be doing a stupid and clumsy thing here, but the motivations seem
reasonable.

------
tomlin
For a country to purport itself to be about freedom...

~~~
jjcon
Isn’t this just an embargo? The fact that it is on software is new but
embargos have been a thing in just about every western democracy

------
tus88
Shutting We Chat is pretty huge for the diaspora.

------
bamboozled
What happens when the next one comes along ? Does that just get banned too?

It wouldn’t really been hard to imagine they take almost the same codebase
rebrand and relaunch.

------
stickfigure
I'm confused: How does the executive branch have the right to unilaterally
edit app stores? If Trump says "I'm sick of Barron playing CandyCrush at the
dinner table, let's just ban it" can he do that? How? Shouldn't this require
legislation?

As an American, this seems very... "unamerican".

~~~
gabruoy
I have been trying to figure this out as well. I am just guessing as I haven't
found anything specific, but since this is being issued by the department of
commerce, I would assume that downloading an app from the Google Play or App
Store would constitute a transaction, even if the price of the software is
free, and the government can order that these are products that constitute a
national security risk.

------
trasz
Well, since US fails to compete in other ways...

~~~
rrrrrrrrrrrryan
What? The U.S. failed to create competing social apps?

You realize the only reason WeChat exists is because China didn't let western
companies compete, right?

~~~
kelnos
I wouldn't say it's the _only_ reason. WeChat is more than just a chat app;
it's also a social networking and payments app. For digital payments, at
least, the US is far, far behind the ease of use and merchant buy-in that apps
like WeChat offer.

I know people in China and other Asian countries who rarely pull out cash or
even a credit/bank card, and handle nearly all of their payments through apps.

Think of it like Venmo, but all merchants accept it directly, and you can
complete transactions in the middle of a chat session (with a merchant or a
regular person) without having to switch to another payment-dedicated UX.

------
mrlonglong
This, I'm afraid, is purely Trump's vindinctive revenge on tiktokkers as a
million of them wrecked his rally by booking tickets to it and never showed.
Isn't abusing his powers and dishonouring the Presidential Office an
impeachable offence anyway?

------
peter303
Trump attacks a children's app because he is unable to do much against China
otherwise.

US apps from Facebook and Google collect far more personal data and use it
more malevolently.

~~~
kinkrtyavimoodh
> US apps from Facebook and Google collect far more personal data and use it
> more malevolently.

Source? What 'malevolent' use has Google made of your data?

------
thesausageking
[redacted]

~~~
newen
Trump wasn't elected because of magic mind hacking by Facebook or whatever. He
appealed to issues that people were concerned about, whatever you may think of
those issues, and so they voted for him.

~~~
kevin_thibedeau
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.

~~~
entropea
>Watch the latest Triumph bit from the Colbert show to see the mentality of
Trump supporters.

Not a defense of Trump supporters here, but do we know how many were edited
out that intelligently spoke on issues to form the Triumph bit? Without that,
you can't really make any determinations. On top of that, the sample size is
likely very small.

~~~
kevin_thibedeau
Editing doesn't matter. They all signed a release knowing that their recorded
statements were perfectly fine in their own heads.

~~~
entropea
You misinterpreted what I said. The point I was trying to make was not that
what they were saying was edited, but that the choices of people who were
selected to be in the bit was chosen, for the bit. There could have very well
been a majority of well informed people, but that wouldn't have made for a
great Triumph bit. You cannot make generalizations based on that video.

------
mcintyre1994
The cynic in me wonders if the TikTok ban is just to try to drive the price
down for Trump’s friend Larry Ellison.

------
tomohawk
That's a good start. Next up: twitter, facebook, instagram, ...

------
senderista
Even when the actions of this administration seem facially justified, I always
assume they are acting in bad faith.

------
rgbrenner
Just 3 months after TikTok users embarrassed Trump at his Tulsa rally, where
he left visibly upset.

He's called for the repeal of section 230 because of "tech bias". He attacks
news outlets for “biassed” reporting. He attacks whistle blowers. He attacks
people that supported him and later changed their minds (mattis, kelly, etc).
He attacks Amazon for owning Washington Post. He attacks anyone that opposes
him.

I'm surprised people are taking this ban at face value.

And what's sad is that he's made it clear he would attack US tech companies if
he can find a legal basis to do so. There's zero doubt in my mind that this is
all about Trump silencing opposition. It's his modus operandi.

Edit: Even the sale was politicized. He came out against Microsoft owning it,
and publicly supported Oracle... Ellison being one of his friends.. whom I
would guess Trump assumed would make the platform more friendly to him.

~~~
akersten
> I'm surprised people are taking this ban at face value.

Yeah, it's astounding how quickly these discussions focused in on "well, what
are the pros and cons of banning an app? When is an app a national security
issue? What is an appropriate trade retaliation?" and completely missed the
fact that - hey, the US government is, for the first time, using the Commerce
department to dictate what code you can execute on your own device. It's
absolutely disheartening how many people are getting distracted from the real
issue here.

This is another trial balloon to expand executive power, and they're going to
get away with it because "national security."

~~~
quantum_state
Pretty soon they will dictate how we should arrange furnitures at our own home
....

------
seebetter
It is great to be an idealist but in the end, we will lose precepts of the
Enlightenment unless we act strong and intelligently.

------
csb6
Love how people criticize the Chinese security state for banning websites and
apps as infringing on free speech, but of the U.S. does it, it’s a smart move.

