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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 13, 2025

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The "TikTok" ban covers any social networking app controlled by a foreign adversary with more than one million American users, and at the discretion of the President. So if Red Little Book (the actual literally translation of Hongxiaoshu) picks up a million American users at the discretion of the President they can also be forced to sell or be forced off the app stores.

Also AFAIK this is only being kicked off the app stores and being forced to not do transact with American businesses. Existing installations will keep running, albeit with no ad revenue from American businesses.

Oh yeah, I forgot to ask this question: does the US Government have an opening to put the screws on Google and Apple vis-a-vis their mobile app stores?

Those are pretty important chokepoints for public exposure, and that Google and Apple have made walled gardens that make it easier to choke out anyone the government doesn't like.

An app store or internet hosting service that continues to enable distribution, maintenance, or updates for a banned application could be subject to civil penalties of up to $5,000 multiplied by the number of U.S. users who accessed, maintained, or updated the application. A foreign adversary controlled application that fails to provide user data as required could be subject to civil penalties of up to $500 multiplied by the number of affected users.

Interesting. I guess if I didn't mind the risk of financial ruin I could test my idea that operating a proxy is protected speech.