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Comment by MuffinFlavored | Hacker News Reader

Is the "TikTok ban" draft (RESTRICT Act) for consumers/regular people or only government personnel?

Aka, are they really going to ban TikTok for regular people or just make it so govenment personnel can't install TikTok on their device? aka, only ban TikTok for government people and not regular people

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Hopefully the thing is going to fail and they are not going to do anything. But yes, it provides for banning government-choosen foreign sites entirely, with heavy penalties for assisting in circumventing blocks. (Although I guess VPN services could avoid it by filtering their users traffic themselves)

> it provides for banning government-choosen foreign sites entirely, with heavy penalties for assisting in circumventing blocks

I recently heard the argument that TikTok is a media control issue. Rupert Murdoch famously had to become an American to buy Fox. Applying that precedent seems cleaner than the RESTRICT Act.

I'm generally pro-migration but in Murdoch's case I don't think it worked out well for his new neighbors.

Don't you just have to move the VPN offshore? China could even spin up their own VPN companies.

> Don't you just have to move the VPN offshore

Payment would still be a problem.

I pay for my VPN with cryptocurrency.

Its for everyone, not just government personnel.

https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/senate-bill/686...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35369075

It doesn't appear to have much to do with TikTok at all, from what I saw. It looks more like a regular old power grab by the federal government over tech generally, moving us towards censorship and overt surveillance and punishing circumvention.

I'm 100% sure that no one who works for the government knows how to acquire and operate a separate smartphone either /s

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