
U.S. bans WeChat, TikTok, citing national security reasons - empressplay
https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/u-s-bans-wechat-tiktok-1.5729249
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greenyoda
Previous discussions:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24515540](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24515540)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24519307](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24519307)

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salimmadjd
This is very bad news for Silicon Valley.

Allow me to explain: As long as TikTok was around any talk of controlling or
splitting the big tech could have been diverted by saying if you regulate or
break us, China will take over the vacuum left behind.

With TikTok not only gone but also will be used as a precedence, big tech have
lost the "China will take over" argument. Because the answer would be, no, we
won't allow China to fill the vacuum and at the same we are going to heavily
regulate you.

Whoever is coordinating (if it's coordinated) the future demise and break up
of big tech has definitely earned their think tank salary.

~~~
stephc_int13
I think this is good news.

When corporations are too big, this cause the same kind of bloat, corruptions
and anti-innovative climate as when states are controlled by too powerful
bureaucracies.

There is a threshold, of course, but unfortunately we've allowed a few
companies to go well past this deleterious threshold.

~~~
scarface74
I’m much more worried about a corrupt state that has the power to take away my
freedom, liberty, and life than a corporation. A corrupt company can’t take my
property through eminent domain and civil forfeiture or declare some phony
“War on $X” that disproportionately is used against one group. The current
administration is not going after Big Tech “for the people”. It is doing it
expressly because they think Google, Facebook, and Twitter are being unfair to
conservatives.

In what universe is _Twitter_ any type of monopoly that needs to be reigned in
by the government?

~~~
epistasis
Twitter needs to be reigned in when it is considered the only good option, and
there's no chance for a competitor.

Suppose some company had cornered the web search market, and nobody would even
try to use some other web search, and used that position to control
advertising and all sorts of other access to the web. Perhaps they even come
to control the most commonly used web browser; the most commonly used mobile
OS. In that environment, where a single company controls the OS and the search
and the vast majority of access to the web, are you really more fearful of
"eminent domain" than you are of the company wiping you out before you have a
chance to capture a piece of the pie by our competing them?

When was the last time a tech company had to worry about civil forfeiture or
eminent domain?

~~~
nine_k
Search, to tell the truth, is relatively easy to displace. Users are fickle,
they easily migrate to whatever they consider a better option. See all these
"I moved to DDG and it's OK" comments here Even controlling user data is not
that much; one can move the entire email archive, and the entire documents
archive, elsewhere. Not easy but doable, and has been done a lot of times.

The real power is controlling the user's _identity_. Think about all the
hundreds of places where one would need to replace a "@gmail.com" address. To
say nothing of all the places where one used to use "login with Facebook" and
where using another method of logging in means losing the previous account.

~~~
stjohnswarts
I moved, I left my gmail address up forwarding my email to protonmail for
about a year, I figured if someone hasn't switched over to my new address by
then (or I've changed it with them) I don't need them. Everything has a price.

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isx726552
Reminder that Facebook lobbied for this:

[https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-ceo-mark-zuckerberg-
st...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-ceo-mark-zuckerberg-stoked-
washingtons-fears-about-tiktok-11598223133)

I’d you can’t beat ‘em, ask your buddies in government to ban ‘em, I guess?

~~~
karsten5
And here the opposite where Zuckerberg actively says that Would Set “A Really
Bad Long-Term Precedent”
[https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/zuckerberg-
face...](https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/zuckerberg-facebook-all-
hands-tiktok-ban)

~~~
IncRnd
Don't confuse either of the statements with a "belief" he holds.

The two statements were to two different audiences. The one stoking fear of
his competitor was in Washington D.C. The other was to his own employees.

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post_below
If the ban ends up happening (seems unlikely that they won't make a deal with
a US company before the deadline) gen Z in the US will grow up with a better
understanding of VPNs and other workarounds.

~~~
dheera
You don't need a VPN for this. They are only banning providing the app via the
app store, so Android users can just download the app directly from wechat.com
instead of the Google store.

(Sorry iOS users -- you use an OS designed by a dictator. You can maybe try
switching to the App Store in a freer country than the US, e.g. Canada or UK.)

~~~
summitsummit
If you think the iOS users and just gonna cry and tiktok's just gonna be used
by Android users -- or iOS users are going to suddenly switch -- you are
deeply mistaken imho.

iOS is a status symbol.

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scarface74
Yes it is a status symbol with a 50% market share. Aren’t status symbols
suppose to be something that make you stand out from the crowd?

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stjohnswarts
They're also needed to be in a crowd. If you other upper middle class
classmates catch you using a cheap ass android device instead of the latest
iPhone you could get ostracized.

~~~
scarface74
Has Apple survived _40+ years_ selling more expensive electronics than the
competition by being a status symbol? Why are adults also buying iPhones then?

Would students really be “ostracized” if they had high priced Samsung phones?

You realize the $349 iPhone SE is more performant than any Android phone at
any cost.

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ghostcluster
> Commerce officials said they will not bar additional technical transactions
> for TikTok until Nov. 12, which gives the company additional time to see if
> ByteDance can reach a deal for its U.S. operations. "The basic TikTok will
> stay intact until Nov. 12," Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross told Fox Business
> Network.

~~~
jonas21
> _" The basic TikTok will stay intact until Nov. 12,"_

Seriously, what does that even mean?

~~~
eli
The people who have the apps installed now can keep using it and it can still
talk to their servers. But no new features, no app updates, no new apps,
probably can’t negotiate a new data center contract or form a new partnership.
But the basic app still works.

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vgchh
While I wish open internet prevailed, reality is that there are abuses with
national security implications. That being said, this won’t be the answer to
the national security quagmire. US needs to out-innovate faster than ever
before. It’s high time we got our shit together, cut the bureaucracy and leap
frog.

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publicola1990
It seems unreasonable that US government can dictate what apps one can use or
not use, and also there is no semblance of a transparent due process being
followed for this.

Also TikTok has not broken US laws as per US courts. How can the President ban
something which is not app/anything which does not run afoul of existing laws?
That's why this is essentially an arbitrary move.

The national security threat seems a vacuus argument as per many data security
analysts, tiktok not being that different from instagram, etc.

The president/executive should not have authority to ban anything at all
without a legislative process.

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alfalfasprout
HN is very quick to criticize the administration (which believe me has a _ton_
to criticize) for this move but also defend China's blocking of international
apps.

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taurath
I remember when the US was the one for a free and open internet instead of a
segmented one.

~~~
mathnmusic
I'd argue that banning apps from non-free and non-open economies encourages a
free and open internet by aligning incentives.

Really, reciprocity (and the paradox of intolerance) is an implicit
expectation in many situations and we need to talk about how to deal with it.

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wyattpeak
I believe in freedom of speech. Should I stop people who don't believe in it
from speaking to encourage alignment of incentives?

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meowfly
If the question is framed, Should I stop someone trying to stop someone from
exercising their freedom of speech? Definitely. This is the paradox of
tolerance.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance)

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jack_pp
Everyone says that people will use workaround like VPN's but if content
creators can't make any money anymore won't that affect it? I guess there will
always be content creators that don't care about money but I'd be surprised if
US traffic wouldn't drop by more than 50%

~~~
sonicggg
You don't need VPN, it's just the app stores that cannot offer it anymore, you
can still side load it. The States don't have a "Great Firewall" equivalent...
yet.

~~~
jack_pp
Can they not force payment processors to stop doing business with them?

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simonblack
WeChat is the 'do everything' app that's essential for the Chinese. No WeChat,
no Chinese customer. Looks like Apple is going to lose its Chinese market
completely. Without that big market, Apple's future is on pretty shaky ground.
(The Chinese market alone is as big as the _whole_ of the West.)

That's the law of unintended consequences.

~~~
stjohnswarts
Not gonna cry any tears for Apple that's for sure. They'll do just fine
without the Chinese market.

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ffhhj
> The Commerce Department will not seek to compel people in the United States
> to remove the apps or stop using them but will not allow updates or new
> downloads.

Don't they have a self-updating mechanism independent from the store? I
implemented that on all my apps to make them resistant to Google's rage bans.

~~~
sangnoir
I guess it's time to install Chinese app stores...

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tempsy
Why is this the top story right now? Is there anything new here that wasn't
mentioned this morning?

~~~
galacticaactual
Because the presence of one’s own smartphone reduces available cognitive
capacity.

~~~
verst
This is the best snark comment today. Nicely done referencing another front
page item from today.

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matty22
How about let's take the next step and ban the malicious collection of US
citizens' data by _US_ companies.

~~~
stjohnswarts
I'm all in for that as well

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tus88
How do you implement this ban. Was about side loading apps. Will they firewall
the apps comms?

~~~
cbhl
By telling the app store owners that they must stop distributing it.

[https://www.commerce.gov/news/press-
releases/2020/09/commerc...](https://www.commerce.gov/news/press-
releases/2020/09/commerce-department-prohibits-wechat-and-tiktok-transactions-
protect)

~~~
YetAnotherNick
Do they have power to ask for arbitrary removal from app store?

~~~
sillysaurusx
Sure. A simple "You are hereby required to cease distribution of X by
<deadline>. Failure to comply will result in a fine of $2,000 per day until
compliance."

It's basically what they did to -- uhh, what was it called? The encrypted
email service Snowden used when he was smuggling NSA docs. $2k per day,
increasing over time, adds up fast.

Once you're staring at an executive order, questions of whether they really
have the power fall to lawyers. In the meantime, corporations comply.

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voganmother42
Target the web, not app stores

Cryptocurrencies for payments

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naringas
As a thought expreiment, what if Apple and Google quite simply did not comply?

Could they really ignore an executive order? Could they sue the government and
get some sort of injuction?

How could the government compel them? With fines? With a police raid?

~~~
Taek
Disobeying a national security order from the federal government typically
lands you in jail.

Police raids and injunctions are both on the table.

~~~
Nas808
Could these big tech firms challenge this in court? It seems like a very
ambiguous use of "national security reasons".

~~~
coffeefirst
Yes they can. And they may, but we don't know for sure whether they disagree
or care to react at all.

Given the administration tends to make decisions based more on xenophobia than
empirical evidence _and_ there's good reasons to think these apps have shady
data practices, nothing about this situation is clear cut.

