Red States: Censorship Reveals Your Naivete

There seems to be a great gap between realities of today's internet and what state legislatures believe it to be. Over my cup of bad morning coffee, I read in the news that Montana has passed a new law banning TikTok within the state and requiring app stores to make it unavailable to Montana residents. It is an action one would expect from the People's Republic of China or any of the other autocracies existing around the world. The ban is contrary to the First Amendment, a terrible way to deal with security issues, and is unenforceable. It is typical for MAGA legislators who have no clue about technology and could care less about actual governance.

Since this is the blog for MOFO Linux, I will make a comment about how the Montana TikTok ban will fail. What's more, the Utah PornHub restrictions will fail. Other red-state bans on abortion and contraception websites will fail. Why? Because there are too many alternatives, trivially easy to access, which circumvent censorship. I get into it in depth in Censorship's Grave: OBSERVATIONS, TOOLS, AND TIPS FOR TAKING THE INTERNET BACK FROM AUTOCRACIES . For any app store which limits software offerings, there are others which have no limits. For every blocked IP address or domain, there is a means to unblock it. For every forum where free expression is not allowed, there is another where expression is unrestrained. Banning an app is theatrical; nothing actually stops.

Autocracies won't admit it openly, but censorship is dead. Thank you to Tor, I2P, Lokinet, Freenet, the thousands of VPN providers, and thousands of people who teach others how to set up their own servers for usage in censorship circumvention.

That said, let's talk about security. If TikTok takes too much personal information, then just don't use it. That is a personal decision, not for any state to make. If you are worried about the app monitoring the user's actions or stealing data, I suggest keeping application permissions set strictly, and for all apps - not just TikTok. Scan for malware regularly. Be wary of links and attachments sent by anyone.

Being smart about using the internet is far more effective than the security theater being practiced by the current crop of dumbass legislators.

Thank you for reading; have a beautiful day.

PC / MOFO Linux