The Chinese government made Apple remove two apps – just as US considers the same thing for TikTok.
  • Apple has removed WhatsApp and Threads from its Chinese app store following a government order.
  • WhatsApp has been blocked in China since 2017 and its parent company Meta since 2009.
  • Other Western platforms like Gmail, YouTube, Snap, and Spotify have also been censored in China.

Apple removed WhatsApp and Threads from its app store in China after being told to do so by the Chinese government, according to the Wall Street Journal.

China’s top internet regulator asked Apple to remove the two apps because of national security concerns.

  • taanegl@lemmy.worldEnglish
    334·
    3 months ago

    I think Europe and America generally need to ban TikTok, not because of national security concerns, but because of national mental health concerns.

    Change my mind.

    • bassomitron@lemmy.worldEnglish
      251·
      3 months ago

      They need to ban all corporate social media, not just TikTok.

      The whole conversation around banning TikTok is pretty silly and hypocritical. Meta spies on even more Americans than TikTok does, and just as egregiously. Additionally, Meta is willing to sell much of that data to anyone, including China. So even if the US bans TikTok, all that changes is that now China has to pay more money to access the same information as before. By banning one app and not another, it just becomes painfully obvious that it’s corporate protectionism all in the name of national security, and how many times have we seen other ridiculous laws passed using that as an excuse? E.g. the joke that is TSA, Patriot act and all of its facsimiles, DEA, etc.

    • DdCno1@kbin.social
      91·
      3 months ago

      For both reasons. The national security concerns are real. Try taking the app apart with some standard tools and you’ll quickly discover that it shares more in common with malware than with any other social media applications.

      Then there’s the rampant misinformation from the Chinese state, the fact that non-Chinese employees of Bytedance do not have any access to any of TikTok’s underlying tech (they’ll fly in technicians from China instead of letting any outsider look at anything), the enormous and very telling difference between TikTok for the world and the Chinese alternative, etc. pp.