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Comment by technoplato | Hacker News Reader

I’m genuinely curious what the perceived threat is here. Is it as simple as “China is going to read everyone’s stuff and use machine learning to figure out what the cool kids are doing and then brainwash them?”

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My understanding is that there are quite a few perceived threats, but all of them apply to large US corporations as well.

If you collect enough information on people, they can be manipulated to certain beliefs or actions. This is the same information that Facebook and Google use for advertising purposes, similar information to the Cambridge Analytica events, and the risk is China (or a nefarious actor with this information) using it to "meddle" within the US.

Apps collecting sensitive information (which maybe TikTok content counts as?) can also be used for blackmail, especially when owned by a foreign government which wouldn't even blink at blackmail.

There are other more paranoia-centered concerns around essentially-real-time location data being used to "know where in the country to attack".

Basically there are definitely legitimate concerns around large-scale data collection, but the "National Security" concern definitely seems to be "China is less trustworthy than any American company".

This is just my understanding, and am open to being proven wrong here.

Update:

I forgot to mention that I do believe there is a legitimate concern around a foreign government having what is effectively editorial control over a platform which is used by a rather-easily-influenced group as a "news source". Whether or not social media should ever be considered a source of news is a different discussion, but if a large section of the US population is believing what they see on TikTok as fact, and the content on TikTok is editorialized by a foreign state actor, it is a legitimate concern.

Hmm, why just foreign governments? The last 3.5 years (if not more) the US government doesn't seem to have been acting in your or my best interests, unless you're of the "Koch brothers"-class elite.

Meanwhile it's not the government, but Instagram hides unfavorable "related hashtags" when you search for Trump-related hashtags, but doesn't do the same for Biden: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/instagram-relat...

Viva la democracia! /s

To put it more bluntly: People have studied how to weaponize Facebook, and are have finally got around to make sure others can't to them same to them. It's the classic two sides of intelligence and counter intelligence.

I would expect the big IT companies to be treated more and more as intelligence assets over time, if we aren't already there.

Summation: Censorship by US is good, if it keeps you from hearing things the current administration does not want, such as ways to troll the presidents rallies.

Cui bono? This sets up the current president and spy agencies to approach US tech companies with both a carrot and a stick - look what 'America first' can do for you, and look what I can do to you if you get in my way.

This sort of erosion of due process and international law serves the current administration well (government by fiat is now the norm), but I don't think it serves the US itself well at all. We're about to discover just how resistant the US republic is to such attacks on free speech and the rule of law.

> This sets up the current president and spy agencies to approach US tech companies with both a carrot and a stick

This has already happened? It’s weird to have these conversations as if the Snowden revelations don’t exist.

I guess for now it's just a power game.

In the future? Who knows what might happen if this sets a precedent. Seems like a slippery slope to me if the US government is allowed to just selectively ban communication channels on the grounds of "security".

General election interference, manipulating public perception by constantly suggesting pro-CCP propaganda, aggravating the general public to turn on each other, tracking vocal anti-CCP individuals and potentially targeting them while traveling abroad. That's a few off the top of my head.

How is Google/Twitter/Facebook any different? Lemme guess your answer: well, they're on our side because it's an American company, and we can control them!

It's been 10+ years of these companies and no meaningful oversight has been exerted, at least not on behalf of users. Not after:

1. Self-admitted election interference https://www.vox.com/2017/4/28/15476142/facebook-report-trump...

2. Tracking and targeting individuals' political speech in the US https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/31/20837448/social-media-dhs...

3. Tracking and targeting individuals' political speech in autocratic nations: https://www.npr.org/2019/11/07/777352750/how-saudi-arabia-us...

4. Paid to suggest pro-CCP propaganda! https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/08/technology/china-facebook...

I don’t think we can control them, I do think we could ideally introduce sensible legislation and hopefully the bad actors would at least be incentivized to benefit their own country to some extent. Also, sorry if I somehow insulted your home country, was only trying to make the point of why Americans would want a Chinese company ran out of town.

I don't think google/twitter/facebook are any different than tiktock. Honestly, I'd love to see something done with these companies too, since it's clear that making microphones available to anyone, whether they are a human or a script, just leads to noise that overwhelms any expert level signal on world events or domain knowledge. I'm not sure what can be done at this point, though, it's like pandora's box has been opened. Now that the playbook is there, the internet is legitimately polluted for good. There will always be some other social network to trivially exert manipulation on, since humans are just wired to give into this tribalism as a species at the end of the day.

Oh Lawdy, people are saying things on social platforms I disagree with!

> General election interference, manipulating public perception by constantly suggesting pro-CCP propaganda, aggravating the general public to turn on each other

You mean what's happening everyday on Facebook and Twitter often being instigated by Chinese and Russian actors?

Pretty much and I hope they pay for it. It would be nice if those companies be actually held accountable where it makes sense. They might as well be operating from China! :)

US interferes in elections in many countries[1]

[1]https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/07/the-us-has...

and it shouldn’t be a thing.

>US interferes in elections in many countries

Sure, and I totally understand if those other countries decide to take steps to prevent that interference from happening. It is perfectly reasonable for them to want to do so, just like it is for the US.

It’s probably retaliation for this https://www.forbes.com/sites/jemimamcevoy/2020/07/07/tiktok-...

My take on it is that it's a distraction tactic. The current administration is pissed off at China for a variety of reasons, and wants to punish them, while also taking attention away from intelligence reports about Russian election interference.

Propoganda, election interference, tracking of people in the US for unknown purposes.

But I think it's primarily just deserved reciprocity to how the CCP is behaving in general. The US and the west have bent over backward for like 30 years and all we got was just more totalitarianism, hacking, IP theft, etc. Why play?

Because the majority of the people using Wechat and Tiktok are not CCP?

Does banning CCP controlled businesses not push back on the CCP because there is collateral?

So, separate from the Trump Administration's actual motivations (which I think are at best vague and at worst petty retaliation), I thought this NY Times editorial made a pretty strong case in favor of banning these platforms:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/18/opinion/tiktok-wechat-ban...

TikTok and WeChat benefit from being the only social networks that can be accessed from all of the largest internet markets in the world. And the only social networks that can do that are... the ones from China. When the US is permissive, and China is not, China gets to write all the rules.

This gives China the ability to effectively export their restrictions on speech around the world, as they have shown an eagerness to do. If you want to be a global social network, you have to play by China's rules, globally.

I'm not personally convinced that banning these platforms is the right move, but I think the case is legitimate, and it's certainly a major problem.

Imagine that Russia bans Facebook because of those reasons. Do you think that would be a good move?

Considering that China already did ban Facebook along with quite a few other US-originated apps, I'm not sure what your point is here.

Doesn't Russia have VK, and isn't it the most popular site in Russia? FB is certainly popular in Russia, but it's not like people there wouldn't have another place to go if FB were banned.

The sort of people that use Facebook in Russia know their way around a ban.

I agree. I too am not sure that these sorts of bans are the right move, but China's relentless restrictiveness vs. most of the rest of the world's openness cannot be good for the rest of the world.

I agree with this, social media is most often won by the service reaching the most users. Wechat is the only app you can use to chat with people living in China, and to (easily) chat with home when in China. So why have two apps installed, when one works everywhere?

It's bad enough that the Chinese market is already a bubble (foreign companies need a Chinese partnership to enter), yet the Chinese companies can freely operate in the western world.

Nobody disputes that China is already playing this game.

That is true in many areas. The questions is what a liberal democracy should do.

it's about posturing, appearing to 'take a stance' , whatever.

A lot more data is exported to china through the cheap IP cameras.

My biggest issue is the brainwashing aspect. Saw another commenter say that it's exporting Chinese censorship. You can get banned for what you say. Pro-China and anti-American articles spread, anti-China gets banned.

Facebook and Google does tracking, but I can post as much anti-Trump material as I want. Try putting anti Xi material on WeChat and see what happens.

Zoomers organizing!

No. Social networks are a mass persuasive tools. If you control the information flow, you can control public opinion. Or even worse, if it is unchecked these darn people can even start to organize and think for themselves.

Remember that this all started when a bunch a kids used TikTok to play a prank and sank a Trump rally: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/21/style/tiktok-trump-rally-...

The threat is that China is, step by step, getting bigger than the US, and the US has no real mean to stop it so they try anything to slow it down.

I agree that the argument for perceived threat is not great, but I can't say that I feel too bad for ByteDance or Tencent given that they are de-facto extensions of a government who has spent a lot of time imposing ridiculous restrictions and conditions on entering their markets, mainly forced technology transfer.

Also, if you think banning a chat app is more of a government restriction on free speech than requiring filmmakers to censor their movies and require Chinese government minders to be on the set in order to be screened in China then I would disagree with you.

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