5 ms·

Can you steelman TikTok's argument?

airstrike 4mo ago
No, because it's terrible. There's no need to break encryption to allow you to report a user. You'd just report via a copy of an excerpt of the conversation and leave the rest of your communication private. If the user can't tamper with the extraction of that excerpt, you can trust it is correct. You could even extract hashes from both the reporting party and the reported party and compare them with zero knowledge of the actual conversation. More sophisticated HNers can chime in with zero-knowledge proofs and whatnot to show that their argument is DOA.
- fragmede 4mo ago
  You have you contrive a complex system involving zero knowledge proofs and a lot more work, rather than just being able to see on the server the message asking for a child to dance in their underwear directly makes their argument DoA?
  - airstrike 4mo ago
    Hashing a handful of strings and comparing them is incredibly simple. Not sure where you think the complexity lies. It is in fact so trivial I'm confident Claude Code can one-shot this. But I'll humor the notion and say that, yes, I'd rather not let them see me dancing in my underwear unless I've explicitly decided to share it.
  - aucisson_masque 4mo ago
    It's pretty easy to do tho and it has the benefits of both allowing privacy and being able to check if someone is actually trying to abuse kids. No e2e is understandable if you're the Chinese government but isn't TikTok now run by a us company (at least in America) ?
reddozen 4mo ago
HN isn't a place for serious thought nor internal critique. No one (all bots at this point?) will critically engage past the most surface level reddit tier argument.
- 2ndorderthought 4mo ago
  I'm sorry but encryption like https has been around since 1995. Every software engineer knows they should use encryption to protect pii. What am I supposed to be doing on behalf of meta? To prove I am not a bot with a smooth brain? Present their argument? Their argument is they want to sell as much data as possible about adults and children to the department of war. They want to double dip and use all user data as a means to produce advertisements, algorithms, and user experiences that negatively impact children's health so they can profit. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-03-26/meta-and-google-found-liable-for-harm-to-children/106496392 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-03-26/meta-and-google-found... If you want me to argue for meta on their behalf to help them find reasons to forward their goals of exploiting their user base, I won't. The exercise has negative value.

No, because it's terrible. There's no need to break encryption to allow you to report a user. You'd just report via a copy of an excerpt of the conversation and leave the rest of your communication private. If the user can't tamper with the extraction of that excerpt, you can trust it is correct. You could even extract hashes from both the reporting party and the reported party and compare them with zero knowledge of the actual conversation. More sophisticated HNers can chime in with zero-knowledge proofs and whatnot to show that their argument is DOA.

fragmede 4mo ago
You have you contrive a complex system involving zero knowledge proofs and a lot more work, rather than just being able to see on the server the message asking for a child to dance in their underwear directly makes their argument DoA?
- airstrike 4mo ago
  Hashing a handful of strings and comparing them is incredibly simple. Not sure where you think the complexity lies. It is in fact so trivial I'm confident Claude Code can one-shot this. But I'll humor the notion and say that, yes, I'd rather not let them see me dancing in my underwear unless I've explicitly decided to share it.
- aucisson_masque 4mo ago
  It's pretty easy to do tho and it has the benefits of both allowing privacy and being able to check if someone is actually trying to abuse kids. No e2e is understandable if you're the Chinese government but isn't TikTok now run by a us company (at least in America) ?

reddozen 4mo ago

HN isn't a place for serious thought nor internal critique. No one (all bots at this point?) will critically engage past the most surface level reddit tier argument.

2ndorderthought 4mo ago
I'm sorry but encryption like https has been around since 1995. Every software engineer knows they should use encryption to protect pii. What am I supposed to be doing on behalf of meta? To prove I am not a bot with a smooth brain? Present their argument? Their argument is they want to sell as much data as possible about adults and children to the department of war. They want to double dip and use all user data as a means to produce advertisements, algorithms, and user experiences that negatively impact children's health so they can profit. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-03-26/meta-and-google-found-liable-for-harm-to-children/106496392 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-03-26/meta-and-google-found... If you want me to argue for meta on their behalf to help them find reasons to forward their goals of exploiting their user base, I won't. The exercise has negative value.