Anyone else see that Dept of Commerce is wholesale blocking downloads of TikTok and WeChat in the US beginning Sunday?
I'm not a TikTok fan, but I'm even less a fan of the US following China's lead with the Great Firewall. Today it's TikTok and WeChat, but what comes next? Slippery slope...
@ecksmc As far as I'm concerned the fact that we're nationally blocking downloads of anything is a problem.
The timing is a little suspect too, given FB is a couple weeks out from debuting their competing product.
@ecksmc @th3j35t3r had posted up the FaceBook Inc PAC filing summary.... it looks like Zuck got a deal too ~$400k. Was probably worth way more... Trump really is just as shitty at business as he is at everything else...
@ecksmc I just took the time to actually browse the disbursements of the FB PAC.... a fair amount went to Trump's opposition. So whatever Zuck "paid" for the help was an even better deal than I thought...
@PrivacyL0st And in totally coincidental news, a Facebook competitor to TikTok is about ready to roll out. https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/facebook-readies-global-launch-its-tiktok-competitor-n1234013
@PrivacyL0st anyone who exposes #Trump’s 20,000 lies or reminds #Americans he has needlessly killed 197,000+ with a bungled #Covid19 response will be at threat - #TrumpLiesAmericansDie
@PrivacyL0st I haven't been following this much (and don't really want to), but I don't understand how they will do this. We have an open Internet with plenty of connections thru other countries, and private companies host the app stores. In addition, it is not difficult to side load something to Android.
@Dashdrum The Dept of Commerce is effectively outlawing distribution of the SW and in a few weeks ISPs will be prohibited from facilitating connectivity to it
I haven't seen any tech write-ups, but I assume that they are either going to ignore the endpoint workarounds, or go ahead and attempt to establish some sort of national firewall or blackhole policy that ISPs are expected to implement. I don't know enough about the architecture at that scale to know if that's possible, thats my guess
@PrivacyL0st we'll see how it goes, I guess.
@PrivacyL0st just read about it
if a deal isn't struck by 12th nov the app, apps, will be fully banned
so, as far as i can tell this is a temp-ban, and only affects downloads, until 12th nov users who have the app installed can still use the apps