So, the way that it is enforced, is if the major app stores, do not remove TikTok, then they get fined a bunch of money.
> It seems TikTok would have no reason to pay for any fines from the state.
Well, ignoring the fact that this applies to app stores, companies can't just ignore court orders.
If they do, then their bank accounts could be frozen. US banks aren't going to ignore US court orders. Bank of America, or whoever, is going to give that money to the government, when it is ordered to do so.
I guess if Apple, and Google, want to shut down their US operations, then that would allow them to avoid the fines.
But, I expect they won't do that, and will simply remove those apps from their app store, for Montana residents.
It's hard to find them these days, but some of the blogging about blogging/internet marketing crowd used to post data on headlines and what got clicks based on different sources like Facebook and Twitter.
It's one of those things that doesn't get noticed when it works well, which we hope is most of the time. That has an amusing side effect: the cases that people notice are the ones that they don't like—those stand out like sore thumbs—and this creates the feeling that the title edits are always annoying and wrong. Which is true, if you don't count any of the good cases!
Thus most of the comments about HN's title editing system (software + mods) are about how awful and obviously terrible it is, and comments like yours here are rarities.
In the end this is all priced in, so to speak, to HN's system. The main thing is that the front page be mostly free of misleading and/or linkbait titles and gimmicks. pg used to describe it like this: we want the front page of HN to look bookish. That is, it should look interesting to people who like to read, and look boring to people who don't.
It's an orange field of strange little holes in the ground. Some people would simply walk past and not wonder. Others, The Curious, would be compelled to stop and peer down one.
A bit of silly analogy but if a megaphone recorded everything about the person speaking into it and forwarded it to a semi-adversarial state, would banning that megaphone be a violation of freespeech?
Freedom of speech is recognized as a universal human right throughout the world, and American political philosophy considers many rights mentioned in the Constitution as applying universally as well.
For those that don't believe me, go try to have a discussion as skeptic of accuracy of Jewish deaths during WW2. I'm not saying they're right, but there are several things you can flat out go to jail for in the several countries just for talking about.
I'm assuming your definition of free speech is the absolute variety. If so, no country, including the United States, has ever recognized freedom of speech as having no limits, making it a useless definition in the context of this conversation. There are always limits, everywhere.
But it's obvious that European countries have a concept of freedom of speech, just one you personally don't consider valid. But like the guy said, that's just, like, your opinion, man. That concept is defined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and international law, as well as the EU Charter, and probably whatever individual constitutions or bodies of law each country has. It was established before the US came up with the First Amendment, which was based on existing Enlightenment philosophy.
"and demands mobile app stores make the app unavailable for Montana residents."
Oh so now they've made an enemy of Google & Apples legal teams? Because those two aren't going to want to set a precedent for all sorts of bans across random jurisdictions.
At a technological level there is no difference. If there's a reliable mechanism for geo-walling content they can carve up the map however they wish. Nothing says it can only follow national borders.
These are states… should there be city level bans too? Where does it end. Now they need 50 different app stores just for the US customers? Does DC get its own? How should we handle US territories… I think Apple and a Google have plenty reason to fight this.
States are sovereign except for specific roles and powers explicitly reserved for the federal government or otherwise restricted from the states. These aren't provinces, theyre more like European countries in the EU.
They already did when they geoblocked content in European and Asian countries to appease their authoritarian leaders in order to profit from their large markets.
Nah, this is entirely our mistake. Our devices took away our ability to choose what we install, and now certain individuals get strongarmed like this and we lose our say. The shame is that modern society went 10 whole years thinking this was a smart move because Twitter wasn't shit and the news wasn't scary enough yet.
While a dupe, there are thousands of users reading this site sporadically - I've been on here over a decade and have never seen either previous discussion. The site's fresh out of 1990 design is hostile towards navigation of anything beyond a few pages of comments. If people discussed this enough in the other 2 threads, they can... gasp.. skip the discussion here.
so let me kick it off then. What exactly does this mean? To illustrate my point, let's change the scenario. There's a small town north of Chicago called Skokie. 100k people. Lets say they pass a "law" to ban some app from Google's play store.
People in Montana should perhaps take their phone, ask it what a computer is, listen to Siri's answer, then call 411 and ask them how to open a pdf. Then they should shovel some cow dung - as is daily life - and finally then they can pass some laws about cow dung.
>The law specifies that no penalties apply to users of TikTok. But app store operators and TikTok itself could face fines of $10,000 per violation per day, with an individual violation defined as “each time that a user accesses TikTok, is offered the ability to access TikTok, or is offered the ability to download TikTok.”
No. Although I'm a Texan, it'll probably happen anyway if it hasn't already and my vote doesn't matter. I don't want the government deciding what software I'm allowed to use and what forms of speech and entertainment I'm allowed to expose myself to.
And I notice none of these conservatives are talking about banning Twitter anymore - which is far more psychologically manipulative than TikTok - now that one of their own has taken it over to push as much right-wing propaganda on it as possible, just to hassle the "woke hivemind."
I'm fine with app stores making the decision on their own but I prefer to not throw the entire framework of free speech out the window just because stoking fear of the "red menace" still works in the US.
Yes. It lists one single product. It tries to wrap some semblance of legality by referring to 15 CFR 7.4 (a list of foreign "adversaries"). If they really cared about such legality, they'd have banned every app from every country in that list (most of which would be illegal in the US anyway).
Frustratingly, Gianforte has so far lived up to all my expectations for him. I love Montana, it's a great and beautiful place to live, but hilariously the California liberal migration invoked a huge immune response turning an otherwise purple state deep red and sending them off the deep end. Sucks to see this happen.
584 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 439 ms ] threadSo, the way that it is enforced, is if the major app stores, do not remove TikTok, then they get fined a bunch of money.
> It seems TikTok would have no reason to pay for any fines from the state.
Well, ignoring the fact that this applies to app stores, companies can't just ignore court orders.
If they do, then their bank accounts could be frozen. US banks aren't going to ignore US court orders. Bank of America, or whoever, is going to give that money to the government, when it is ordered to do so.
I guess if Apple, and Google, want to shut down their US operations, then that would allow them to avoid the fines.
But, I expect they won't do that, and will simply remove those apps from their app store, for Montana residents.
It's technically a secret that they're going to sue but everyone already knows at this point so it's fine.
I suspect most neutral observers would say it's unconstitutional. But what they think does not matter.
Examples from one of the larger still active blogs here: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=titles+site%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Fmoz.co...
There were also lists of headline swipe files that provided lots of templates.
(Manually removed in the meantime)
Thus most of the comments about HN's title editing system (software + mods) are about how awful and obviously terrible it is, and comments like yours here are rarities.
In the end this is all priced in, so to speak, to HN's system. The main thing is that the front page be mostly free of misleading and/or linkbait titles and gimmicks. pg used to describe it like this: we want the front page of HN to look bookish. That is, it should look interesting to people who like to read, and look boring to people who don't.
"Oh, a rabbit hole. I wonder where it leads?"
Will more countries ban Facebook/Twitter/Reddit etc?
The Wall Street Journal recently published this article that I think shines a light on some major areas of concern.
“TikTok Feeds Teens a Diet of Darkness: Self-harm, sad-posting and disordered-eating videos abound on the popular app” [0]
— [0] https://www.wsj.com/articles/tiktok-feeds-teens-a-diet-of-da...
A law this specific wouldn't even be valid I'm my country.
> AN ACT BANNING TIKTOK IN MONTANA; PROHIBITING A MOBILE APPLICATION STORE FROM OFFERING THE TIKTOK APPLICATION TO MONTANA USERS
https://leg.mt.gov/bills/2023/billpdf/SB0419.pdf
[1] https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/1549/right-to-r...
But it's obvious that European countries have a concept of freedom of speech, just one you personally don't consider valid. But like the guy said, that's just, like, your opinion, man. That concept is defined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and international law, as well as the EU Charter, and probably whatever individual constitutions or bodies of law each country has. It was established before the US came up with the First Amendment, which was based on existing Enlightenment philosophy.
Oh so now they've made an enemy of Google & Apples legal teams? Because those two aren't going to want to set a precedent for all sorts of bans across random jurisdictions.
so let me kick it off then. What exactly does this mean? To illustrate my point, let's change the scenario. There's a small town north of Chicago called Skokie. 100k people. Lets say they pass a "law" to ban some app from Google's play store.
People in Montana should perhaps take their phone, ask it what a computer is, listen to Siri's answer, then call 411 and ask them how to open a pdf. Then they should shovel some cow dung - as is daily life - and finally then they can pass some laws about cow dung.
And now this, from the Australia lawmakers. Australia, the Montana of the planet. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VB3uQHa14g
Sounds like a money-printing machine.
And I notice none of these conservatives are talking about banning Twitter anymore - which is far more psychologically manipulative than TikTok - now that one of their own has taken it over to push as much right-wing propaganda on it as possible, just to hassle the "woke hivemind."
I'm fine with app stores making the decision on their own but I prefer to not throw the entire framework of free speech out the window just because stoking fear of the "red menace" still works in the US.
Because these laws don't care about privacy if American companies and government reap the data.
I think TikTok is malware, and I think the reasons the US wants to ban it are self serving. Not how the RESTRICT act bans VPNs, for goodness sake.
I am highly skeptical of government making a coherent privacy bill that isn't a backdoor to more domestic surveillance.
99% of the sound is clearly people standing up to defend Facebook's interests against China.
Nothing about psychological manipulation here.
https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-15/subtitle-A/part-7/subp...
Are you imagining that telegram is owned by putin