NEW YORK (AP) — President Donald Trump has ordered a sweeping but vague ban on dealings with the Chinese owners of popular social media apps TikTok and WeChat on security grounds, a move China’s government criticized as “political manipulation.”
Americans who’re tracking every click don’t want Chinese tracking any of their clicks. I’m a little tired of China being used as a copout by American businessmen, as if Google’s, Amazon’s, Apple’s, Microsoft’s and Facebook’s data handling and security procedures are any damn better.
Banning all business by U.S. companies with WeChat’s parent — if that is the case — could prove to have much farther-reaching effects than Trump may have anticipated.
Users who already have the apps apparently don’t come under the order, but the app stores would no longer be able to send money to the owners for people who buy and download the apps after the order goes into effect, and any ads served by US ad brokers wouldn’t be allowed to generate revenue. This would be an interesting opening for alternate non-US app stores and ad brokers.
Yeah, I was wondering how you would block an app that’s on millions of phones and computers. I guess you can’t and how you would stop people downloading it from non-US servers isn’t clear. I suppose you could block credit card payments, which has been done with offshore gambling sites.
“The U.S. thinking is that anything that is Chinese is suspect,” said Andy Mok, a senior research fellow at the Center for China and Globalization in Beijing. “They’re being targeted not because of what they’ve done, but who they are.”
Using the logic of “takes one to know one”, I can’t help wonder…
Is the US fearful of TicTok leaking data to the Chinese because the US has access to US tech company data and use it to survey foreign citizens?
Blundering his way round the economy and international relations, shooting from the hip, relying on his good brain, writing EOs with no thought or concern for legality or downstream consequences, spewing nonsense and treating the whole presidency like it is a reality show during ratings sweep week - that’s our president. Real world consequences mean nothing when you no longer live in the real world.
Still think this is mostly about collecting data for the US.
NSA does not have access to TikTok’s servers. It’s a goldmine for data on young people.
Click to enlarge image to see where your data goes: