Trump says he’ll ban Tik Tok, to hoots of derision – Boing Boing

Speaking to reporters on Air Force One, Trump last night declared that he would ban the social media site Tik Tok.

As far as TikTok is concerned were banning them from the United States, Trump said, calling the action a severance.

Trump did not specify whether he will act through an executive order, or another method. such as a designation, according to NBC News.

Well, I have that authority. I can do it with an executive order or that, Trump said.

Microsoft is negotiating to buy Chinese-owned Tik Tok, which would fill a social-media hole in the tech giant's lineup of consumer offerings. But commentators think Trump is mostly just upset that the platform is an explosively-growing social media platform that will not supplicate to him as Twitter and Facebook have.

Vox recently gamed out how Trump might accomplish a "ban" on Tik Tok, but the experts consulted found it an unlikely scenario.

To really take TikTok off Americans phones, the government would have to do something like make Apple and Google sever their ties with ByteDance (along with any other Chinese app makers). Getting removed from the iOS App Store and Google Play Store would vastly reduce TikToks appeal, even if you could still access it through a sideloaded app or website. Apple, in particular, keeps tight control over iOS devices; its App Store policy is so restrictive that its spurred antitrust lawsuits. The government would essentially be ordering companies to deplatform TikTok and deplatforming can be extremely powerful.

To do this, the Trump administration could repeat a tactic it used with Huawei: have the Commerce Department put TikTok on the entity list that limits its commercial ties to US companies. The administration doesnt need congressional approval to do this, and it can cite any US company that does business with them (barring special exemptions) for violating sanctions. The entity list has stopped Google from working with Huawei on Android phones, and if TikTok were successfully added to the list, Apple and Google would have a hard time keeping them in the App Store.

James Lewis, director of technology policy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, says putting TikTok on the list would be extreme, unusual, and legally dubious.

Foreign Policy agreed.

Because the attempted ban by the United States is likely to rely on novel theories and will be imposed in haste, the companies are likely to have an opening to challenge the U.S. government action in court as lacking factual and legal support. A legal challenge might also put pressure on the U.S. government by forcing it to risk disclosure of sensitive intelligence on the Chinese companies if it chooses to fully defend court actions. Given the dearth of public evidence to date that TikTok provides any data to the Chinese government and the Trump administrations less-than-stellar record against procedural challenges to its executive orders, it is possible that a well-structured challenge might be able to overturn, or at least delay, any ban.

Impotus Americanus is one of the heaviest leaders in the animal kingdom, and is famously known to be an orange, ruddy color not found in nature.

Over atVanity Fair, Katherine Eban goes behind the scenes of the Trump administrations abject failure at coordinating mass testing for coronavirus and perhaps unsurprisingly, in all connects back to Jared Kushner empowering all his trustfund baby friends, and Donald Trumps precious ego crushing every opportunity just to make some political gains: The plan called []

Wake Up, a short film by The Lincoln Project, depicts what it might be like for a republican to wake up after being in a coma for nearly four years and have his family tell him everything thats happened since Trump came into power. It was directed by Jon Turteltaub.

If you ever dropped a quarter into a Space Invaders game, youve likely fantasized about having your own arcade cabinet in your house. Of course, you likely thought better of it for several reasons, including the idea that a giant cabinet dedicated to just one game isnt very practical. Polycade understands the urge though very, []

Most of us have a love-hate relationship with banks. Okay, its actually probably more like a tolerate-hate relationship. We understand their role in holding and securing our money so we dont have to stuff it in a mattress somewhere. But we dont trust the bank not to gouge us on fees whenever they can. And []

If youve ever worked on a video project or engineered a podcast and thought youd make your own sound effects howd that go for ya? We assume it was a bigger undertaking than youd probably bargained for. From using stalks of celery to replicate breaking tree limbs to frying bacon to reproduce the sound of []

Continue reading here:

Trump says he'll ban Tik Tok, to hoots of derision - Boing Boing