WeChat ban is just evil, no justifiable benefit. Almost all the users in America are overseas Chinese who use it to talk to friends and family in China and send money.
Calling the ban evil is a bit hyperbolic IMO, or maybe just incomplete. Phones with the software could easily be compromised. Users with the software can be profiled and tracked by the Chinese government pretty easily. The Chinese market bans most of America's social media software, and we're entering a trade war. All these are real, legitimate reasons to ban it.
Retaliatory action in a trade war is probably a good idea, but the government may not have a legal tool to block the app for that reason. Hence the need to come up with a security threat.
I’m skeptical of the security issue. If China wanted to inject spyware into American’s phones, there are so many apps to choose from, including lots of apps with millions of installs from no-name developers that could easily be compromised. If the US wants to protect citizens against these threats, they can have entities with infosec skills like the NSA or CISA work with Apple/Google to help detect threats in the app review process. My guess is that programs like this are already in place. Blocking just a couple of economically significant apps doesn’t seem like the way you’d go about pursuing that goal. It smells like a pretext for firing a few more shots in the trade war.
> The Chinese market bans most of America's social media software, and we're entering a trade war.
America is not China and should not frame its policies based on China's policies. While, I agree there is a need to retaliate but 'be like China' is hardly the way to do it.
I agree that the US shouldn't justify acting like an autocratic state because China does so, but on the side of punishing an autocratic state there is precedent all over the place. The question we should ask is more how the US ever allowed China such exception in the first place, when Cuba for example has a full on total sanction against it, and so do many other autocratic states. So how did China get away without that for so long?
Unfortunately, Cuba values its citizens' lives more than China does, hence it turned out to be more profitable to keep manufacturing at America's biggest rival, all while Cuba gets stuck in middle income gap. Just an addendum.
Except that it should frame its policies based on game theory if it ever plans to survive against China. Which is exactly what it's doing. The time to take the high road against bad actors is over.
> Except that it should frame its policies based on game theory if it ever plans to survive against China. Which is exactly what it's doing. The time to take the high road against bad actors is over.
I don't think the time "to take the high road against bad actors is over", but the time to take the complacent and hopeful road definitely is over.
No this is not "be like China", don't flatter yourself. When Facebook and Twitter was banned, there were imminent security threats as these platforms were used for organized crimes in China, and these companies simply ignores the requests from Chinese government to remove certain accounts. Google decided to not comply with local rules and left China by itself.
> Should Google, Facebook, Netflix be banned in Europe?
The EU historically has depended on alliance and trade with the US. If that corrodes, then it would make sense for them to ban those at a certain point. I doubt we're there yet though.
> The trade war started a while ago and I'm pretty sure China is winning it.
> From a user security standpoint, absolutely. But given that Europe relies on the US for military protection and trade, it’s unlikely to happen.
Military protection from whom? Russia? Russia is not in a place to attack Europe. And the US can barely protect themselves from Russia. Who do you think the US is protecting Europe from? Because the saviour of Europe seems to be Turkey and their willingness to keep all the refugees at their border instead of letting them flood into Europe.
And I don't think Europe relies on the US for trade. They export more to Swizterland and the UK than they do the US.The US are a massive trading partner, but to say they rely on them is a flasehood.
And let's remember the EU has banned American products before. Apple is the main contender for those bans.
You make it sound like the main reason Europe still doesn't have a viable Google/FB competitor is the fact that their citizens have access to Google/FB.
I have a strong feeling that it might not be the case at all, given that Russia also has access to Google/FB, and yet they have their own viable and massively popular competitors (Yandex for Google, VK for Facebook).
> You make it sound like the main reason Europe still doesn't have a viable Google/FB competitor is the fact that their citizens have access to Google/FB.
This sentence seems wrong on multiple levels. One it implies that Europe has been trying to build competitors and failing. Europe hasn't been, Europe has been trying to tax and control Google and Facebook. Which they've been doing rather well.
It implies that Europe can't build these. Which is really messed up since both those companies have multiple offices in Europe. And that both those companies are largely built by non-us born people.
It fails to understand or at least tries to frame away from the value a site like Facebook has, which is its user base. Even for it's users the value is the other users. Nearly everyone is on Facebook, even if they don't use it regularly.
> I have a strong feeling that it might not be the case at all, given that Russia also has access to Google/FB, and yet they have their own viable and massively popular competitors (Yandex for Google, VK for Facebook).
Facebook got into its dominant position not because other countries didn't have viable competitors. It's that all the competitors were bought up by companies that ran them into the ground.
Russia like China is a country that doesn't aim to be best friends with the US and has propaganda to boost it's own countries offerings, while actively trying to build its own offerings. Russia has more investment into its own services. The US also has lots of investments into offerings from the US. While Europe doesn't really match up. And there isn't even really a specific EU silicon valley competitor, London and Berlin both seem to be in the mix.
My original point is, if Facebook and Google aren't there, there would be a replacement extremely quickly. The revenue these companies make show it's clear there is value in building these service and if the current providers don't exist other companies will want to take that revenue. The technical know-how of how to build these is there. The desire and a realistic chance of success of competing with established companies are not.
No. It is evil, just as the Chinese bans on Facebook etc are evil. There is no real, legitimate reason to ban any software meant for communication. Payments I accept, but general communication should not under any circumstances.
Just because some people want to turn the US into a mini PRC doesn't mean we have to embrace their noxious, evil value system.
Nobody is seriously proposing that the US ban successful Indian companies, or that India ban successful US companies (the pushback against Free Basics did not rise to anywhere near that level). This is strictly about global retaliation against PRC Internet policy that is practically forced by geopolitical game theory at this point.
If US govt really cared about OS-level security vulnerabilities from malicious apps, a better strategy would be to require Apple, Google, and Microsoft to make their OS 100% source-available (non-duplication) and encourage serious industry criticism of their codebase. Current strategy of selectively banning Chinese apps and products is just bullshit.
> Yeah, let's follow CCP practices in the US, that'll show 'em!
To a certain extent, yes. A lot of foreign relations is about reciprocation and self-interest. For many, many years the US tolerated CCP polices that hurt its interests with the hope that, over time, that would cause the CCP would liberalize. That hasn't happened, and it's clear it won't happen anytime soon.
The parent didn't say reciprocation is always the answer. Stop putting words in people's mouth and derailing the conversation. In this case it makes sense to do a tit-for-tat ban to hurt them.
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.
