So does Trump really expect TikTok to just disappear like COVID, or is the actual play here to give Trump a strong talking point to fire up his remaining supporters? He'll undoubtedly group constitutionality-litigating Apple/Google with "the left", like everything else that conflicts with his 1850's world view.
FWIW TikTok may be problematic, but it's only slightly more problematic than all of the US-based spyware that has apparently been acceptable for the past decade. The rest of the world has just had to live with the US being able to surveil most of their citizens' digital activity. Now there's a whiff of symmetry and the panic bells are going off.
One could not inspect the data flow after it left the client, but it would still show far more than we normally see from major social-media vendors.
I don't think most Android users know how to install an apk, and as far as I know a similar distribution model is not possible on iOS.
Even if they could - what is a TikTok IP? I'm confident their US endpoints are AWS or Google Cloud - good luck blocking those.
Also ISPs and Mobile Carriers have their own blocking and network redirection methods, like url filtering with transparent proxies, that are used to re-lane traffic based on bandwidth usage. a.k.a putting Netflix on the slow lane
This is a social network which gains from network effects / usage. A social network only accessible to Android users is a ghetto. The vast majority of young people in America use iPhones.
The last time the majority of internet users managed to disobey the government was the heyday of torrenting and Megaupload. That's not going to happen with today's users and today's walled gardens.
I even more doubt that we have the infrastructure in place to do a network-level ban (whatever that would mean) for a single app. It is much easier for me to believe Google/Apple could be strong-armed or sweet-toothed into delisting the app, if it really came down to it.
If 100 russians or whomever can subvert our democracy, we never really had it together to begin with, did we?
Maybe, and this sounds crazy, but maybe it's domestic people trying to whip up a fallacious outside threat for insider political reasons. A totally unheard of phenomenon.
Again to your reply, I don't think you understand how pervasive and wide reaching it has become. We are talking about entire groups of protesters and counter-protesters being organized and subsequently funded through donation platforms solely by foreign social accounts.
Airborne leaflet propaganda: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airborne_leaflet_propaganda
Also, Taiwan has a huge speaker array pointed at mainland china which blasts propaganda: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/beishan-broadcast-stat...
Though sometimes it ends up making the target stronger if it can overcome the complaints E.g. Soviet propaganda highlighting racial injustice in the US probably forced some real changes in the 60s.
Had.
> until it was taken off duty in the 1970s
Followed later by:
> Kinmen stopped using the speakers for such things sometime in the 1970s, opting instead to occasionally play the songs of the Taiwanese pop star Teresa Teng, at moderate volume, for the benefit of tourists.
Taiwan ended martial law in 1987, it's been a democracy ever since. They don't spread propaganda, they are too busy worrying about themselves and trying to ensure they have a good image to distance themselves from china.
> Also, Taiwan has a huge speaker array pointed at mainland china which [used to blast] propaganda
Thanks for pointing that out.
I'm fine with the fun and games and industrial espionage, let the best man win. It's not a threat to our democracy unless our democracy is critically weak. Where's the accountability?
What authority does a US president have to tell a US-based software company to not distribute code from its US servers?
There's been precedent set recently with e.g. Huawei: https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/15/18216988/white-house-huaw..., but also keep in mind we have dealt with much stronger things in the past: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Export_of_cryptography_from_th...
It doesn't really matter, because the app code is repackaged at the Google/Apple level. At that point, it is from US-company to US-consumer. There are no "import restrictions" or customs on code (speech) like there are on hardware.
Edit: Yeah, instead of downvoting this into oblivion, how about making an argument that the US Government doesn't have the authority to determine what companies operate within its borders.
My point is that the US president does not have the authority to tell a US company (Google/Apple) to "stop distributing this code (speech)," because that is the only way a ban like this could be implemented.
Well, there are other ways, but all of them involve legislation by congress and things like Great Firewalls that we don't really want to see happen here. At least, I don't. That is why that any travel down this path I see as an erosion of western democracy, and especially when that travel comes from the executive branch swerving way out of its lane.
If congress were convinced to make a Ban TikTok law, I would still object but it would not be because I think they lack authority, it would be on 1st Amendment grounds.
And to be clear, I despise the app and am a little sketched out by it. But I don't think either of those are good reasons to corrode our liberties.
Yes they can. Who is going to stop them? If the judges/supreme court says that it is legal, then there is nothing that these companies can do to stop the US justice system telling them to do so, and fining or arresting them if they refuse to comply.
> Well, there are other ways, but all of them involve legislation by congress and things like Great Firewalls
No. All you have to do is bring it up in US court, and fine/arrest people if they refuse to comply.
This is how the law works. If you don't follow it, you get fined. And if you continue to not follow it, then mens with guns, known as the police, come to your house, grab you, and put you in a jail cell.
The law is enforced by force. And you really can't just ignore US law like that, if you have any presence at all in the US. Which major companies do.
> I would still object but it would not be because I think they lack authority
You can "object" all you want. But if the judges of the US disagree with you, then none of that matters. You don't decide what the police do. Thats what the courts are for.
>That is why that any travel down this path I see as an erosion of western democracy, and especially when that travel comes from the executive branch swerving way out of its lane.
This is naive. Power is power, and the executive branch did much more restrictive things during WWII. We're in Cold War II now and it is absolutely reasonable to expect moves like this, and while I share your apprehension for the erosion of liberties (I really do), at some point you have to make sure you have a winning hand before you put the cards on the table.
Which was ruled unconstitutional.
Well it has the authority that is backed up by both the most powerful economic nation, that has the most powerful military in the world, and which is the nation that contains many of the most valuable companies in the world, which will absolutely follow the orders of our judges.
Also this while apple and Google play stores have not found problems with the TikTok to kick it off their app stores.
If Tiktok is the greatest "threat" than obviously there is less than meets the eye. More likely NSA can't spy on US citizens. Its so obviously easy to check out and block. If I were China, I just make things transparent in the age of built in backdoors would be huge untapped market.
It wouldnt work on five eye, but the other 200+ nations would be won [keep it coming haters]
I don't see what this has to do with our electoral system.
That seems like a rather narrow and emotionally charged stance to take on this issue in my opinion.
Plenty of Trump's EOs have been ruled unconstitutional. He may feel that his authority extends beyond checks and balances, but it doesn't. His attempts to abuse his power have been duly mitigated and stopped about as well (or badly depending on how you look at it) as the last few presidents, as I see it.
Because a computer program is an expression, and the right to free expression is a cornerstone of the first amendment. So broadly, I don't think the government can "ban" an app, no matter who wrote it.
This proposition has been tested and affirmed for source code (see DeCSS t-shirt, etc.) but to my knowledge has not been tested for binaries. So, it would at minimum be a new test of whether binary code is as much a protected expression as human-readable code.
Under the authority of an executive order.
> Why should they comply?
Because these are american companies, who make a bunch of their money in america, and they can be fined many millions or even billions of dollars, or possibly even arrested if they don't comply with the orders of the nation that has the most powerful military in the world.
> What's he going to do when ByteDance uploads the .apk somewhere?
Probably just fine ByteDance, which has a US presence, and many employees/bank accounts that are in the US.
Blatant refusal to follow the law of the most powerful military in the world can be followed up with arrests of employees/executives that are in the US.
The problem with ruling arbitrarily is that it kills predictability and crushes the spirit. It leads to a state of fear in which nobody wants to invest or go out on a limb, because in an environment where you can be punished for anything, everything is dangerous.
That's why I'm personally adamant about requiring a rule before a punishment and why I'm dubious on this recent "let's sanction this one random foreign guy" push.
It is a good general principle to follow, as a very high level rule.
But when a country is in conflict with other nation states, that are not following the same principles as you are, then sometimes a country has to make comprises on their principles in order to not be at a disadvantage.
So if China changes a bunch of their own rules, and becomes a much more free and open country, then I would support giving them the benefit of small government/free market protections.
Nation states conflicts are messy. And you have to compromise on some of your principles in order to prevent others from taken advantage of you, who do not follow your own principles.
> The problem with ruling arbitrarily
It is not arbitrary. The USA is in serious conflict with China. And this is one such action that is at least indirectly related to these higher level nation state conflicts.
This is the same thing as Huawei being banned.
Correct, I am not objective on this topic and made no such implication. If we were all simply objective observational automatons, it would make for a pretty sterile comment section.
> This is the same thing as Huawei being banned.
Someone else said this earlier, and it's pretty different: one is a physical good that goes through customs where there are existing laws that allow for denial of entry. The other is code/speech for which there are no laws granting the executive branch the authority to block.
Let's be realistic, if an app was doing what is alleged here, they should be banned and I'm sure they are provisions to do so without a vote of Congress. Biden campaign was also told to delete TikTok from phones, maybe NSA knows something.
Yep, I also believe that would be in violation of Google/Apple ToS and they would be happy to ban it.
> I'm sure they are provisions to do so without a vote of Congress.
I highly doubt it, and I am waiting to be shown otherwise.
I showed it to you, Huawei. USA gives a LOT of power to the President, sanctions, bans etc etc.
We are a Republic.
This might also help: https://mises.org/wire/stop-saying-were-republic-not-democra...
>The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government
https://constitutioncenter.org/interactive-constitution/inte...
A dozen paragraphs in the article and not one questioning whether he can actually do this. What would such an executive action look like? An EO to Apple and Google to de-list the app from their stores? Why should they comply?
What's he going to do when ByteDance uploads the .apk somewhere?
Sick of media treating this man like a zoo exhibit instead of the advanced persistent threat to US democracy he is.