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Comment by UncleMeat | Hacker News Reader

What makes TikTok different than literally any other website in this manner?

...being controlled by the CCP is what makes it different. All of these sites/apps have the ability to shove propaganda in the faces of millions of people, only one of them is run by a government.

> only one of them is run by a government.

And the rest are run by the ultra-rich. They care about the interests of the Americans not much more than the CCP.

Taking this as true, are you suggesting we should have, instead of our (expanding on what I think you're saying) "non-democratic capitalist ologopoly", have our important companies and institutions be run the by the CCP?

Two wrongs don't make a right. Work to improve our system rather than using our failures to normalize CCP oppression and violence.

If the point is to send a message about normalizing the CCP, then Apple's gotta go too.

Yes, there's a lot we need to be doing to put pressure on the CCP that we aren't currently doing, and it also doesn't need to be binary. There's a difference between Apple doing business in China, and a Chinese company doing business in the US. China has considerable influence on Apple, but not as much as it does on TikTok. Tim Cook's family isn't at risk of jail if he criticizes the CCP.

The bigger thing is them dragnetting 100 million Americans for data like interests, conversations, contacts, location, private videos, etc. Not to much potential for pushing backdoors into to target individuals.

There are a lot of Chinese companies that do business in the USA, why is Tik Tok special?

Surely there are other websites like this. Bytedance isn't the only chinese company that exists. Should my browser not allow me to visit those websites?

And what prohibits any three letter agency hiring some intermediary and do the same thing on Facebook for example?

> hiring some intermediaries

There's absolutely no need. Facebook cooperates with three-letter agencies, and we expect them to.

You seriously think that if one of those decided to influence election (for a greater good of course) you would expect direct cooperation of FB in the matter?

I'd think that the guilty party should be prosecuted for doing things like that.

He's talking about handing over information, not launching a "elect the next Manchurian candidate" campaign run by the NSA.

Then he'd completely missed my original point that was about practical inability to prevent that exact scenario - "elect the next Manchurian candidate campaign run by the NSA". I do not think juducial review will enter the picture here. I am not sure what practical legal mechanism is available to prevent such scenario. I guess it would run the risk of being exposed by some whistleblower but with the latest developments in the area the chances are that it wont.

At this point I have doubts about who employs the Manchurian candidates in the first place, people behind the big companies or the three letter agencies. There are revolving doors between them.

Deliberately curated recommendation algorithms to maximize negative perceptions could conceivably be worse than those that do such accidentally.

None really, the next Chinese successful "social media" platform will face the same treatment

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