Preferring websites to apps when possible makes this approach more effective. If you use apps with ads in them, they will likely get sensitive information as described in the article.

System wide ad blocking helps more. Private DNS is the easiest way; Mullvad provides a free option.

Message history is a valid point. Signal just announced they’re fixing it.

Safety number change notifications are probably necessary to maintain Signal’s high level of security. The above device linking improvements should make them less frequent, though I’ll concede some might consider that a worse UX than an insecure chat with no such notifications.

I keep seeing this claim, but I may be too much of a computer nerd to notice when using them both. What does Telegram do better and how?

This is exactly the sort of deal making through bullying Trump is known for. He’s crazy, not stupid.

I’m sad PGP didn’t become a popular way to log into websites. A challenge-response protocol could have even been built into web browsers. Big tech is reinventing that idea as Passkey, but with a very big tech flavor.

I missed that part. Thanks for the correction.

Looking at the court’s opinion (PDF), it appears this case did not raise that issue. I think it’s unlikely it would be considered a bill of attainder because what it does is technically not punishment, but that’s a question for people who know more about law than I do.

Very likely, but I’d be surprised if they couldn’t achieve 80% of that on the web. Targeted surveillance, as they’ve been caught doing to critics before would not work as well.

This is correct, but the law doesn’t do that. It mentions TikTok in the title, but the text describes what is banned in terms of user count and control by a foreign adversary. It would apply to a future product made by a Russian company, for example.

No, but I imagine they can still run profitable ads, and probably more effectively than most websites.

I’m really surprised they’re not pushing the web version, which can operate in a way not covered by this ban.

Most of them[1] know a whole lot more about constitutional law than the average lemming.

When things are working correctly, the Supreme Court’s role is usually not very concerned with the facts of the case; its role is to resolve questions of law. Congress considered the facts including some classified briefings, decided that American app stores should be forbidden from distributing TikTok to American users, and made a law. The court was asked whether Congress has the authority to make laws like that, and the court decided that it does.

[1] Maybe not Clarence Thomas

I’m surprised they’re taking that approach rather than pushing the web version.

So can installing a faulty third-party cooling fan, but in the USA, the law requires the warranty provider to prove the fault was caused by improper maintenance or defects in third-party components.

In most situations, even that is giving too much power to the manufacturer. It’s fair for them to flash the original software as part of any diagnostic or service process, but not fair to refuse to repair or replace a product that actually has a hardware defect just because the owner put different software on it.

Agreed. Microsoft proposed something along those lines under the name “Palladium” a couple decades ago and was widely criticized, even in the mainstream press. Apple and Google doing the same thing to our phones barely got a whimper.

Locked in the technical sense of being able to verify the operating system isn’t a bad thing. The problem is when the device owner can’t add signing keys of their choice.

The latter is what GrapheneOS does.

It’s more likely that a fork becomes dominant, making him irrelevant. That’s almost the same thing.

I do review flashlights.

I did not say that they’re not important. I said that they’re hosted services, which traditionally don’t have the same expectation of user control as computers that users own.

It’s fine that he has an opinion. It’s even fine that he’s a fanboy, but important for people evaluating what he says about Apple to know that he has a decades long record of being barely more neutral than the company’s PR department.