• Venator@lemmy.nz
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      Seems like meta were trying something similar with thier replacing all links in Facebook messenger with thier fbrpc://facebook/nativethirdparty?app_id Links, but seems like they gave up on it because it was all broken.

      • kibiz0r@midwest.social
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        Yup. They’re all dangerous monsters.

        IMO, it doesn’t even matter who’s worse, cuz they’re all bad enough they should all be subject to aggressive regulation with the goal of establishing safe interop off-ramps for people to stop using the services or at least use more trustworthy clients.

        In my estimation, TikTok is worse, but that’s not even what the ban is about. It’s because China is spying instead of the US. That’s not a reason to defend TikTok though, or to oppose the government’s decision — cuz they were accidentally right, for the wrong reason.

        • 0ops@lemm.ee
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          That’s where I’m at. If in an alternate universe Congress did something like banning the distribution of harvested data, even just to foreign entities, and TikTok then refused to comply, then I’d be fully in support with them getting banned for it.

          Here in the real world though, Congress apparently doesn’t have the balls to pass blanket privacy rights like that, because you see, that’d catch some of the wrong fish. I think it says a lot about the state of modern social media that all they were willing to go after TikTok for was something as nebulous as “national security risk”.

    • Drusas@fedia.io
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      No, he’s just a beneficiary of apartheid. Even Patrick Bateman knew we needed to end that.

  • Pacattack57@lemmy.world
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    2 hours ago

    This was never about national security. It’s about money. Most of congress owns Meta stock and meta lobbied the fuck out of trying to get the app banned. It’s extremely annoying that people buy this crap about national security.

    Ask yourself when in the history of our country did 85% of congress agree on something? 85% of these fuckwads agreed that banning this app is more important than literally anything else. Stopping school shooting, fixing our economy, providing affordable healthcare or housing, are all not important.

    • snooggums@lemmy.world
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      30 minutes ago

      Ask yourself when in the history of our country did 85% of congress agree on something?

      Patriot Act and other government spying laws of course.

  • sevan@lemmy.ca
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    2 hours ago

    I suspect its being banned because of people using it in public without headphones or earbuds. I was submitted to that experience for an hour+ in a waiting room one time and now I fully supported the ban to prevent it from ever happening again.

      • Drusas@fedia.io
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        5 minutes ago

        Have you met people? They are unpredictable. You might get shot just for asking somebody politely to turn off their speaker.

        In fact, I was once on a bus where somebody got stabbed because they asked some guy to stop playing music through his boombox (yes, I’m old).

    • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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      3 hours ago

      I wouldn’t be so sure about that. The CEO has a prominent seat at Trump’s inauguration.

      • leadore@lemmy.world
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        Yep. Which means TikTok gave Thumper a load of dough and TikTok will be allowed to continue operating here. Zuck is probably not happy since he’d also given him a load of dough to get rid of TikTok.

        pops corn

  • gmtom@lemmy.world
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    4 hours ago

    Serious answer: because it’s owned by a US citizen and is operated and HQ’d in the US, so the the US government has effectively full control over it and can monitor it.

    That’s not a lot better from an end user privacy and security point. But is wayyyyyyyyyy better from a national security standpoint.

    • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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      The US government has no more control over X than regulations permit. They have the exact same amount of control over TikTok operations inside the US.

        • nieminen@lemmy.world
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          58 minutes ago

          Should be an invalid citizenship, he falsely stayed in the us under a student visa while he did business, and didn’t attend school

          • snooggums@lemmy.world
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            24 minutes ago

            He should absolutely have his citizenship revoked and be deported because we have it on record that he knew he falsely stayed for his personal benefit.

            I will cut less well off immigrants slack for not following the complex and difficult process, especially if they immigrated for asylum, but Musk did it because he could get away with it and deserves to be punished for it.

        • EtherWhack@lemmy.world
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          21 minutes ago

          I just knew he wasn’t when he was with PayPal and never really paid much attention since.

    • GreenKnight23@lemmy.world
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      6 hours ago

      that was literally the whole fucking point.

      is it me or did Lemmy fill up with the most oblivious users all of a sudden?

    • Kecessa@sh.itjust.works
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      5 hours ago

      They would then be under US jurisdiction, that’s the issue with TikTok, the US can’t for them to comply with any laws, current or future.

      • Crikeste@lemm.ee
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        3 hours ago

        No, the issue with Tik Tok is that the government can’t control it like it does Facebook, Twitter, etc.

        There is nothing in China that can harm you as much as the American Government. No intention, no action, no belief will ever hurt you as much as America has.

      • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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        Bullshit. Any country has jurisdiction over companies operating inside it’s borders. If what you say is true then we couldn’t even ban TikTok.

    • LucidNightmare@lemm.ee
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      6 hours ago

      Exactly. I find it hilarious how some of these people conclude that China ONLY gets our data because of TikTok, when our own government and on soil companies sell and shares our data as long as the other (China even lmao) buy it from them. No issues as long as they get money, but if they don’t get the money, it’s “national security” risk.

        • LucidNightmare@lemm.ee
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          5 hours ago

          I know… it’s the things I’ve been trying to drum on about every time someone’s says it’s a “security” risk. No one cares though, because “TikTok” bad. :/

    • adarza@lemmy.ca
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      6 hours ago

      because then they’d be subject to all the bullshit the feds do and required to comply.

      • jfrnz@lemm.ee
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        5 hours ago

        Like what? What are American companies required to do to protect your privacy that TikTok doesn’t do because they are a Chinese company?

          • jfrnz@lemm.ee
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            4 hours ago

            Fine, what national security obligations are US-based social media companies meeting that TikTok/ByteDance is not?

            • Habahnow@sh.itjust.works
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              3 hours ago

              TikTok/bytedance are controlled by a rival country. US based companies can, of course, help our rivals too but there’s some degree of separation that makes it a bit harder to address/discover.

  • peregrin5@lemm.ee
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    They are both security risks. The difference is the SA oligarch has already successfully infiltrated our national security and installed himself in a position of power so we can’t do anything about it anymore.

    Honestly the way he did it was pretty perfect. Create technology and weapons and R&D for the country you want to infiltrate, ingratiate yourself to it’s people, government, and military. Then start throwing money into politics to buy yourself a spot on the cabinet.

    This is a game any bad state actor with a huge wad of cash can play thanks to Citizen’s United.

    • Shiggles@sh.itjust.works
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      7 hours ago

      Create

      I think you mean buy. Fund is probably the most generous word you could use, but that’s a fat stretch.

        • snooggums@lemmy.world
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          7 hours ago

          He founded Space X, but he did not create the technology and do the R&D alone like Tony Stark. He got the funding though.

          • Diplomjodler@lemmy.world
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            6 hours ago

            Who ever claimed he created the technology? That makes no sense at all. And SpaceX got funding from NASA, just like a lot of other aerospace companies. In terms of value they delivered for that money, they’re far ahead of the competition. Boeing got more money for Starliner than SpaceX got for Crew Dragon. And look how that turned out.

            • snooggums@lemmy.world
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              Who ever claimed he created the technology?

              The initial comment in this thread:

              Honestly the way he did it was pretty perfect. Create technology and weapons and R&D for the country you want to infiltrate, ingratiate yourself to it’s people, government, and military. Then start throwing money into politics to buy yourself a spot on the cabinet.

              This is what was being responded to.

  • Cid Vicious@sh.itjust.works
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    China is an authoritarian government that is able to take direct control of any Chinese company. Like, explicitly. More or less all Chinese companies should be treated with suspicion.

    Musk is a shithead but not, to our knowledge, an agent of a foreign hostile government. Turning twitter into a place that promotes hate speech is legally protected free speech, although specific statements that provoke violence may not be protected. Contrary to popular belief, there are many exceptions to free speech.

    • PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat
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      Musk is a shithead but not, to our knowledge, an agent of a foreign hostile government.

      Correct. On Monday, he’s going to be an agent to a domestic hostile government.

      Almost all Lemmy users who happen to be in the US have been blessed so far with a government that generally is okay-ish, has some justice built in, and leaves them alone as long as they’re not doing anything wrong. I think that might be about to change, and they’re about to experience a China-style “you really have to be careful not to cross the powerful people” system instead.

  • Geometrinen_Gepardi@sopuli.xyz
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    8 hours ago

    Because tiktok data goes to China, and China is a competitor/geopolitical adversary to the USA. If tiktok was russian, it would be the same story. Besides, tiktok has been proven to be by far the worst data miner you can download from an app store.

    • PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat
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      8 hours ago

      Not just a data miner, it has some crazy capabilities that are malicious even by the standards of social media phone apps, which were already explicitly malicious. If I remember right, it can download custom code to augment its capabilities per-target, and has encryption to attempt to thwart any attempt to analyze it, which are both pretty unusual amounts of effort to spend from the POV of “we just want to gather your advertising data and listen to your microphone all the time” which are pretty standard things.

        • jaybone@lemmy.world
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          6 hours ago

          Yeah it’s been over a decade since I’ve dealt with the Apple App Store. But at the time, when publishing an app, they did all of this review and analysis of your app and they did not allow downloading additional executable code IIRC. Though if you are clever enough, you can get around that.

      • Redredme@lemmy.world
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        7 hours ago

        Ok, so Bytedance does exactly what Microsoft, Google and Apple do. Got it.

        All 3 can and do run arbitrary code on their platforms. All three share your data with third parties. All three encrypt stuff in their codebase and especially google tries it’s hardest to break networking standards just to obfuscate what their code is doing.

        • corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca
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          7 hours ago

          … And two of them can be sued by the DoJ and forced into revolving compliance evals .

          … if we had a non-toothless DoJ; I get it. But the ability is there.

    • Semi-Hemi-Lemmygod@lemmy.world
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      7 hours ago

      China buys a ton of data from Zuck and Musk and a lot of other people.

      The reason it’s being banned is for cutting out the middle man.

      If they actually cared about our data going to geopolitical rivals they’d pass comprehensive privacy protections regardless of where the company is headquartered.

      • Redredme@lemmy.world
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        7 hours ago

        China: bad. X/Musk directly and openly interferes in UK and GER politics : move along, nothing to see.

        Its such a bullshit argument. Don’t be the pot blaming the kettle.

        We should ban ALL socials. All. Everything becomes an echochamber after 1-2 years filled with bots, algorithms and Ai. Nothing is trustworthy anymore.

        • MelodiousFunk@slrpnk.net
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          7 hours ago

          Note that I am not disagreeing. Just pointing out that not being able to trust anything anymore is on-brand.

        • corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca
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          China: bad. X/Musk directly and openly interferes in UK and GER politics : move along

          Nope.

          Other gov spying on yanks: bad with no mitigation.

          Yank companies spying on yanks: bad with mitigation option we just don’t take today.

          Both: PR and disinfo campaigns to convince illiterate that it’s about more than surveillance, that it’s a conspiracy or nothing to worry about at all (paging Dr Schroedinger).

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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      6 hours ago

      Hey now. China’s not short on money. This is the other big problem with America.

      If Elon Musk was a black South African with a social media company interfering in our elections and sabotaging our national interests here and abroad, I assure you that it would also be in the crosshairs of a ban.

  • 𝕸𝖔𝖘𝖘@infosec.pub
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    Yoo shut yer mouf, ya hear!

    Jokes aside. Yeah, I’ve got no answer.

    Edit: I do love the middle finger people are giving by hopping off TikTok (basically being shut down for being a Chinese company) and running to redd (a Chinese company) hahahahahha

  • TrickDacy@lemmy.world
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    6 hours ago

    Comparing the two isn’t useful. They are both bad and should be either shutdown or regulated.