how can the US government just ban an app? has this ever happened before in US history? what gives the government the right to tell US citizens what apps they can and can't use? this is some North Korea tier behavior you expect to see from authoritarian governments panicking when they lose control over the narrative
I'm sure there's case law all over the place, but effectively the Surpreme Court unanimously decided that the US definitely has a right to protect itself from foreign influence. This is diplomacy.
And for anyone living in North Korea who ever has a chance to read your comment, I'm sorry, this person has no idea what it means to live in a police state under a belligerent dictator.
The US government is often eager to impose sanctions on foreign entities it doesn't like. TikTok ban is fundamentally no different from some of the more controversial sanctions, such as those imposed on Cuba and Iran. The only exceptional part is that this time the average American sees the effect in their daily life.
And the right comes from their Constitutional power to regulate foreign commerce. The US has banned American companies from doing business with various foreign entities for a while, though it really picked up after 1990.
Father Coughlin's periodical Social Justice was denied a mailing permit during World War II for airing pro-Nazi material (such as The Protocols of the Elders of Zion) under the authority of the Espionage Act of 1917, which limited its distribution to news stands in the Boston area. I don't think America has faced a political rival like China since the Soviet Union; not sure if there were any restrictions on the distribution of Soviet software in the late 80s.
> I don't think America has faced a political rival like China since the Soviet Union; not sure if there were any restrictions on the distribution of Soviet software in the late 80s.
I doubt there were, because it would have been moot: the Soviets were so far behind on computer technology that they didn't really make anything anyone would want.
But more generally, the US was a lot smarter about trade with adversaries during the Cold War. There were significant restrictions on trade with the Communist Bloc that limited the kinds of entanglements we now have with China. The US got really stupid and overconfident after the Cold War ended, and that's only slowly starting to change (and this TikTok "ban" is a welcome part of that).
It's happened to gambling and poker services. Some file sharing services. A couple services to anonymize crypto. And I'm sure plenty of others I'm not thinking of right now.
> how can the US government just ban an app? has this ever happened before in US history? what gives the government the right to tell US citizens what apps they can and can't use?
Being a government. They also get to tell you want kind of guns your allowed to have, what kinds of medicines you can take, and how much gas your car uses, and how your home has to be built.
Welcome to the real world, is this your first time here?
None of those obviously correlate to the kinds of websites you’re allowed to visit. The issue is that it’s awfully close to the kind of speech you are “permitted” to be exposed to, which is a slippery slope.
Where I come from, that's an ultra-liberal point of view. "Instead of saying that Elon Musk does not deserve 68b as a salary (because no human does), then maybe you should become ultra-rich yourself".
What did the US foreign policy establishment know about Afghanistan and Iraq than you or I do? Last I heard from reliable sources, Iraq had WMD's and were a clear and present danger? Why not just preempt China's nuclear capability too by nuking them?
I think you are just making a rhetorical flourish, but we should be clear that Iraq didn’t have WMDs, wasn’t an urgent danger, and any sources that said they did should not be treated as reliable.
> any sources that said they did should not be treated as reliable.
American GEOINT, MASINT, SIGINT and TECHINT are likely the best in the world. American HUMINT, OSINT and--somewhat paradoxically--FININT are atrocious. Unfortunately, we frequently ascribe confidence intervals to our clandestine services based on experience with e.g. the NRO.
They might be the best in the world- but it doesn't matter because they don't answer to citizens. I trust that they have good information- I don't trust that good information gets to us, our politicians, etc.
A container of Soylent Thincrust, lost earlier during hurricane Harlan, washed up on the shores of Orlando to the delight of the Orange County Non-Denominational Order of Homeless Laborers.
Getting yourself banned off of Airbnb for $950 doesn't sound optimal unless you are swearing off short term lodging around the world (outside of hotels) for the foreseeable future. That's one of the negative externalities of capture-the-market VC investing - getting banned on one of these platforms cuts you off from almost the entirety of supply because of how marketplace dynamics work.
There are lots of alternatives. Agoda, Booking.com, and many similar sites offer short-term apartment rentals. Also, in much of the world outside the US, hotels are a better and surer bet than short-term apartment rentals.
Look at it like this: Would you pay $950 for the privilege of using AirBNB? I sure wouldn't. An "AirBNB Membership fee" on the order of $950 should seem absurd.
If a service stole $950 from me, the last thing I would be worried about is getting banned from the service
They would not get a single cent from me for the remainder of my life and in fact I would do plenty of things to cost them business at any chance I will get.
AirBNB is also not the only short term rental option out there. E.g. Vrbo
I would absolutely end any customer relationship with Airbnb for a $950 host scam. If they can’t fix that they don’t deserve your business and you are better off off their platform.
For most people I can't imagine that keeping AirBnB "happy" is so important that you wouldn't try to get $1000 back. But, yes, it's a problem when keeping AirBnB, Google, Twitter, etc. placated requires rolling over.
Maybe your market is different, but Airbnb is hardly a monopoly on either short term housing or vacation rentals these days. The entire travel booking industry has caught up.
Similarly to the OP, both my wife and I had to pull teeth for weeks to get the full refunds we were entitled to after booking airbnb units. We both had dozens of stays and 5 star reviews under our belts prior to those experiences, dating back through 2013. In my case, it was a unit that the host admitted was infested with rats prior to arrival. In my wife’s, it was a unit that didn’t remotely match the photos of the listing.
At this point it’s my very last resort for booking any kind of stay, which is to say I’ve effectively sworn off the service. Since then, I’ve had no trouble finding vacation rentals elsewhere. For $900, yeah, I’d chargeback in a snap.
You assume you have a choice in playing. Most of the supply will never consider listing on multiple marketplaces, because its a massive hassle. $ABNB is up 48% YTD bucking the rest of the market, they have strong financials and are massively profitable. The growth-at-all-costs play DID work, and now you have no choice but to bend the knee. Edge cases like this will never materially affect their business.
> $ABNB is up 48% YTD bucking the rest of the market
Thats pretty cherry-picked, and I wouldn’t look to stock price to make the conclusions you’ve shared. Lots of growth companies are bouncing back after being oversold last year. As another cherry-pick, it’s also down nearly 50% from its 2021 high.
I've never been a host so can't speak for multiple listings, though there seem to be a ton of services that try to market to multichannel listing, so "never" seems a pretty strong word here?
But, if the interwebs are correct, airbnb has 7 mil rentals, booking - 6 mil rentals (vacation specifically, not hotels) and vrbo - 2 mil
Just have a friend use their account. Or make a new account. Or use VRBO or a number of Airbnb’s competitors. Or use a sock Airbnb account to connect with a host and then negotiate directly.
Great, maybe they get banned too and it's two less people playing a stupid game. I'm not going to tell anyone else how to live their lives, but cowering on my knees to tech bureaucracy out of San Fransisco is not how I'll live mine.
it was the case when they were the hot new disruptor. By now there are alternatives for house/apartment rentals, so they can't dick around and rip people off like that anymore. They've been called out on "cleaning fees", at some point may be forced to implement a sane cancelation window as well.
Hackernews now advocating for burning books, wow. This is the end result in allowing political ragebait threads instead of focusing on tech and startups.
Literally nobody cares about saved comments. Not even the person saving the comment.
You will have to turn this into a bet with cash on the line if you actually mean it and I think bets are stupid so how about you just stop writing comments like that?
I think it's a performative figure of speech, as if "i disagree with your comment and i think i will end up being right". Not meant to be taken for its literal content
