Re:US bans WeChat, TikTok from app stores, threatens shutdowns
by dheera on Friday September 18, 2020 @02:44PM
(#24520434)
> WeChat ban is just evil
Yes, they do some evil spyware things, but so do many US apps as well.
> no justifiable benefit.
Maybe to you, but this does not apply to everyone. This is supposed to be a free country, but projecting one person's idea of benefits on everyone is exactly the opposite of a free country.
> Almost all the users in America are overseas Chinese who use it to talk to friends and family in China and send money.
Well yes, people need a way to talk to their family, and we shouldn't be taking out country politics on civilians' basic human needs, including both visitors and US citizens with family in China. As a free country we should be respecting the needs of the overseas Chinese and overseas everyone-else who is here.
While I do support apps not being evil, I don't think the right answer is to ban WeChat. Rather, the right answer is better and stricter privacy controls on phone OSes that prevent these apps from doing evil things, like arbitrarily scanning your Wi-Fi networks, which both WeChat and Google do.
LineageOS (Android fork) has a good set of tools for this and can run WeChat just fine while spoofing fake data to their servers for most of these spy attempts.
Yes, they do some evil spyware things, but so do many US apps as well.
> no justifiable benefit.
Maybe to you, but this does not apply to everyone. This is supposed to be a free country, but projecting one person's idea of benefits on everyone is exactly the opposite of a free country.
> Almost all the users in America are overseas Chinese who use it to talk to friends and family in China and send money.
Well yes, people need a way to talk to their family, and we shouldn't be taking out country politics on civilians' basic human needs, including both visitors and US citizens with family in China. As a free country we should be respecting the needs of the overseas Chinese and overseas everyone-else who is here.
While I do support apps not being evil, I don't think the right answer is to ban WeChat. Rather, the right answer is better and stricter privacy controls on phone OSes that prevent these apps from doing evil things, like arbitrarily scanning your Wi-Fi networks, which both WeChat and Google do.
LineageOS (Android fork) has a good set of tools for this and can run WeChat just fine while spoofing fake data to their servers for most of these spy attempts.