ByteDance confirmed it used TikTok to monitor journalists’ physical location
forbes.com
forbes.com
I am Ukrainian, and when some years ago my government banned the most popular social network at our country - Russian-made VK, I felt strange about it. I kind of understood some of the security concerns, but didn't feel like they were enough to turn off my open internet fantasies and free-speech absolutism.
Now I totally get it and am happy that it happened sooner that later. Turns out that the security concern was as real as it gets. Russia gets info from VK to jail hundreds of people, and at least they one less weapon to use against Ukrainians.
And I have to admit that I've used VK and probably wouldn't stop doing it if my government didn't ban it. Now I am kind of hoping that they will do the same with TikTok. With all of this experience I still have no strength to quit it by myself.
This sounds like addiction?
Just delete the app from your phone and move on?
You'd be surprised by perfectly fine life goes on without Twitter / Facebook / TikTok / Instagram.
We can get technical - drugs and booze are psychoactive, while social media is behavioral addiction. Even so, the habit-building loop and the compulsion that stems from it is effectively the same.
So, I don't think it's condescending to say "just quit it". I suspend my Twitter account from time to time when I realize I built a habit loop again, and the "urge" just goes away.
If you delete your facebook and twitter accounts you lose access to the only customer support channel in many places. If you delete faceboom you lose access to local second hand markets, you lose access to information about community events, you cannot participate in group chats, you get harangued at every social event if you try to share another contact channel.
Its very similar to not being a blue bubble in some regards, but Facebook has a much broader scope than just being a messenger platform.
Excited for the EU to fix the closed messenger issue, then I can have 3rd party clients to bridge all my communications securely into one unified view, just gotta make sure that these large companies don't try and open up these platforms by hiding your end to end encryption keys on their servers :D
Is this a Freudian slip? I'll have to start using this term when referring to Facebook in the future.
Interestingly enough, friends started calling again. Quitting social media cold turkey is great because you get to find out who is actually important in your life, and you find it out really fast.
Perhaps PLA believes that bleeding Russia dry via America expending all of her reserve weaponry means that that American combat power can't be used in the Pacific. If you squint hard enough, it might actually be in CCP's interest for Russia to extend itself in Ukraine because it means that the Americans spend infinity dollars and burn through stocks of key weapons. It's Machiavellian but it makes sense.
China is and has been - as Russia did, prior to its invasion - massively expanding its armed forces.
To my eye, there is absolutely no defensive need for this - India is not about in invade, for example. There is only one use for all this weaponry; Taiwan.
I swim a lot, and I meet people in the pool.
Two weeks ago or so I met a South Korean diplomat - in the pool :-) - and we discussed the situation. South Korea very much is looking to see that Russia is defeated, to discourage China from invading Taiwan.
I suspect the Chinese are more bothered about the delicate balance of other consequences (strength and unity of West, central Asian nations prioritising China over Russia for alliances, Security Council implications, trade implications) and aren't necessarily sure which outcome will be best overall for them.
China can see the price the intensional community levies upon a war now, and, in case Russia accidentally wins, they can also see the price of occupying an otherwise independent nation.
Mind you: Taiwan isn't recognised as an independent nation by nearly as many nations as Ukraine is.
This sort of breaking up of NATO cohesion would allow China and Russia to act more freely in the world without a unified opposition.
What China and Russia were betting on was that the EU would be weak in the face of tension, and realistically that was a pretty good bet because the EU looked pretty.
They attacked, that didn't turn out to be true, and all their best laid plans are going to shit before their eyes as the EU unifies in the United States pros like 10% of our military capacity at Ukraine and manages to make a tiny country of like 25 million people compete effectively with the country of 150 million that is like three times the size.
China still wants Russia to be a strong unified country, because they want a Russia opposed to the west so that the west is now divided between two fronts.
But aside from that, every single one of their plans has gone about as long as it possibly could have.
Russia was not able to take Ukraine but in a few days
The west did not fall apart
United States has gotten stronger economically.
Economic sanctions have been incredibly effective, without firing a single shot.
It has become clear that given a choice between security and economic progress, countries choose security. China was betting on the ability for their large experts and import market to prevent countries from standing against them.
People were claiming this was going to be the decade of authoritarians against waning democracies, but all of a sudden it looks like this is going to be the decade of strong democracies against waning authoritarians.
They are seriously mistaken. Unlike Europe whose capacity in manufacturing anything from ammo to tanks and jets has gone downhill over the last thirty years and who haven't seen an actual fight since the Balkan wars and the early years of Afghanistan, the US has logistics nailed down and is in well-trained condition from the adventures of the last twenty years. Should China ever decide to enter war against the US, it won't end up pretty for them.
If this is their plan then this is a very poor plan. Russia is a land war, and most of the equipment we're giving to you crane is not the sort of equipment that we would ever use in a war anymore.
Some other places would do good to ban tiktok and people concerned about national secrets and the like sure should, but I’m just some dude leaking plenty of information plenty of places and china is among the least of my concerns.
I could also probably be fired for things i say on the internet with my real name, but i think it’s worth standing against that kind of thing and not being afraid of it even though it’s entirely possible. (I do on occasion say things which are very much not well thought out, rude, just to trigger good discussion, or because I’ve had too much wine or am feeling ornery… in other words I’m not ashamed to be human)
If they stopped working tomorrow they'd be rich for the rest of their lives. Just not 'even richer'.
Makes sense, if you think about it. because it is just peak capitalism, unchecked by anything else then the need for money (the best approximation for power the west has).
Keep your comments in the boardroom, but whatever influence you have, you use.
The fact that American boys are increasingly preferring video games to sports should also worry you. There is a shortage of fit young American men for special-ops programs like the SEALs, etc.
The USA, technologically and manpower wise is doing fine at the moment in addressing these external threats.
You should not worry about the fighting ability of the average Chinese man vs the average American man. U.S. has the most violence-ready population of young men on Earth, and it's not close.
Maybe Latin America or parts of Africa and the Middle East beat us in terms of willingness to commit violence, but we have much more resources, training, and equipment. China has none of this.
In fact, you should be worried about our young men choosing to exercise this violence against you here before you worry about some kind of military defeat at the hands of the Chinese.
Can confirm. I have seen South Park.
and let's not pretend that the UA govt has had a history of transparency lol. Being better than Russia has been a low bar in the eastern bloc. -30 is better than -70 but it's still far below 0.
As I understood it, before the war he was sliding down in the polls, becoming unpopular because there haven't been the massive crackdowns on corruptions he was campaigning for (like in his TV show), with him also being uncovered in the Pandora papers as having various hidden assets [1] and only his resistance to the Russian making him the most popular leader ever.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/news/2021/oct/03/revealed-anti-o...
Incremental progress. Getting rid of Kremlin influence and corruption is enough for one presidential term.
This is also why I hope for Zelenskyj to step down after the last Russian has been driven off Ukrainian territory. There is no greater feat a President can achieve than saving the country from such an aggression - if he steps down, he'll be remembered for the rest of his life in the glory he and the defenders of Ukraine deserve. If he stays in office, his legacy will be tarnished by the everyday muck throwing of politics - no matter if legitimate or not.
Such as?
> and let's not pretend that the UA govt has had a history of transparency lol. Being better than Russia has been a low bar in the eastern bloc. -30 is better than -70 but it's still far below 0.
Why bring up Russia here, and disparage by faint praise Ukraine?
This is not related to anything in the original reply.
I used to be on Twitter more (Masto now) and this type of reasoning is seen from the Russian Twitter farm accounts, and I note the account making this reply is new.
1. I did not write what I mean, to say the account is new : I mean to say, it has sprung into life, for this thread. Farm accounts can be brand new, and many are, but you also find accounts which have been around for a long time, and then start being used. I suspect Farms constantly make accounts, bank them, and then consume them however many months or years later.
2. Having read the comments from this account, I does not feel like a Farm account. However, I could be wrong. Farm accounts in my experience use different approaches - some are combative, some are mild, some use the usual twisted Russian or Chinese logic ("we had to invade Ukraine because of NATO!", etc).
This also means that I only comment here on certain topics.
I love advocates of democracy and freedom of speech always taking up the time, in the middle of a brutal war no less, to show us the righteous path.
Well guess what: war is the absolute worst enemy of democracy, there can be no polite debate and pluralism while the enemy is blowing your children up. A country defending from a aggression is a fascist state where everybody has an assigned post and maintaining the chain of command is an existential duty. Democratic armies do not exist.
It's no coincidence that all authoritarians and fascist tend to start wars or invent enemies, they long for this state of total control where the whole nation is forced to rally behind them. For Ukraine, that enemy is very much real and the resulting fascism is the only way forward as an independent nation. There is nothing "questionable" about it.
As for advocating for freedom of speech, yes, there is place for that after the Russian aggression ends. Or one could try to setup a booth in the Kremlin square and promote those ideas into a country that, allegedly, is not at war with anybody.
I cannot put into words how revolting this idea of yours is, and it's exactly people like you that need to be silenced in times of war for any chance of durable peace.
War is always and everywhere a result of insufficient deterrence - the enemy will only be dissuaded if they are guaranteed a response that far outweighs any potential wins.
World War 1 killed a lot more than 1% of the involved population.
Honestly, just giving up and "losing" WW1 would have been way less bad for the commoners than actually fighting was.
The problem with wanting to fight wars is that deterrence doesn't work (e.g. see the past 10 wars). The incentives leaders are subject to often makes starting a war the best option for them personally, even if its bad for the population.
Btw: its exactly warmongers like you who need to be silenced to have any chance of a durable peace that doesn't kill a million Iraqis ;)
I know you are well intentioned and believe in the things you say, but you should probably think this stance more thoroughly.
While the internet has been in existence for a while, it is actually still quite young in the sense of affordable democratization of access to the internet. This does raise a lot of questions regarding long term effects of the internet.
While the current threat actors were relatively predictable, I wonder how in the long run nations can protect themselves from threat actors which are currently still seen as allies? On long timescales allies can become threats and threat actors can become new allies. Does this mean the concept of international companies and services will fragment? Currently Europe is trying to organize more domestic manufacture of semiconductors. Will the future see a race of nation states to be as self-reliant as possible? On the level of individual humans the prepper who wants to make his own shoes / computer / ... is ridiculed, while blocks / nation states / ... are taking steps in such directions...
Again, I thank you for your honesty, most people would just be embarassed for their past activity on foreign platforms, and not highlight it to others.
ByteDance planned to use TikTok to surveil specific American citizens - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33280176 - Oct 2022 (208 comments)
Leaked Audio from TikTok Meetings – US User Data Repeatedly Accessed from China - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31781146 - June 2022 (12 comments)
Ah yes, straight from the playbook: management gets caught being mischievous and throws a few underlings under the bus to save their own asses.
Basically, rather than make stuff up, I'd rather go with what the evidence shows and what can be proven. It's easy to hide in a big company, and it's at a bigger company where it's a lot easier to abuse your position without anyone else, including higher ups, knowing.
That's not what I suggested in the slightest. Stop lying.
> seems pretty unlikely to me.
Sure, because I imagine they didn't just do it for fun. But that doesn't mean a more senior person has to be involved.
Back it up with evidence. Your feelings are worthless. I'm right, and you are wrong.
I really hope that the information commission has the bollocks to nail tiktok for this
Wouldn't want those jobs to go missing during a Brexit war deepfreeze winter.
A pity there wasn't some way of harmonizing laws and enforcement with other nearby nation-states. Some sort of "Union".
Thinking aloud
A move to Paris will both optically look, and could again be headlined as TikTok trying to skirt the rule of law to make sure they can keep stealing your data.
Announce some extra investment into tech industries using the fines collected from TikTok, using any assets you may have frozen and prevented from leaving the country if needs be, in order to bolster jobs.
I think the government of the day could spin it into a PR win.
Now it's 'optics' and geopolitics.
These two scenarios are not equivalent. One gives ByteDance vastly more leverage.
In the old Soviet system, you had people who were openly members of the Party, political officers placed in your organization. But you also had KGB agents placed in your organization that you didn't know about, because their job was to keep an eye on you.
That implies a culture of rebellion against overreach and abuse of power, which doesn't exist.
Isn't that worse? Management being unable to make commitments, because they don't control their firms, the Party does, is the central problem with Chinese companies.
If the issue is that corporations aren't following data privacy laws, build the privacy into the tool at the software/ecosystem level (e.g make signup without true name / phone number / IMEI a legal requirement, signup without location sharing a legal requirement) then it'll be impossible to track journalists for both Chinese and American companies.
ByteDance isn't the problem, the CCP controlling it is.
This is detracting from the fact that we have an actively hostile actor with a huge platform here in our country, and that needs to be handled as soon as possible.
I totally support broad regulation of privacy law. TikTok is a much deeper concern. I don't like seeing a good cause used to distract from another good cause.
If you want to be more like china, you can ban them, but if you think that freedom is valuable, it's you who's losing out
[1] https://time.com/6139988/countries-where-twitter-facebook-ti...
A TikTok that doesn't have the ability to do bad things isn't an issue. Focusing on TikTok pretends that it's the only hostile actor with a large platform in <country> that needs to be handled asap
You can handle Facebook and TikTok at the same time by putting in strong privacy regulations, along with all the other similar hostile actors
Even if you move all of their code and mandate that they have a shell company in the United States, and you mandate that none of American data ever goes to China, they can ignore you. You validate that every request only stays in the United States? How do you validate that there's no communication between the two systems?
The state they operate in is going to make whistle blowing very difficult, not ever allow proper auditing into the state apparatus which ultimately controls the company.
You can administrate code, but unless you actually build that code yourself and basically understand it from the ground up with every single update, which is going to be nearly impossible, it's going to be very easy to sneak features through.
The problem is, keeping this safe is going to be a herculan task, and we're just not up to it. Facebook is tame in comparison, because at the end of the day they're subject to our open media, transparency laws, corporate auditing, and all of that other fun stuff.
We can reasonably pass regulations that help keep Facebook in check.
We cannot reasonably pass regulations which we'll keep TikTok in check.
Contrary to the current American discourse, not everyone in China is a government bot.
Jack Ma is a good case study, one of the most influential and successful businesspeople in china, and he was summarily thrown in jail for merely discussing ideas the CCP didn't like. There was no legal process, he just dropped off the grid completely, and then some time later the chinese government made ominous statements about how he was "embracing supervision."
No, it isn't. The idea of private companies existing to make money is exactly the same in China as everywhere else. Companies talk about serving the public good (as they do in the US as well), but they really just care about the bottom line.
> he was summarily thrown in jail for merely discussing ideas the CCP didn't like
He wasn't thrown in jail. He was pressured to stop directly criticizing the government, after he publicly criticized China's financial regulators.
Right now, TikTok faces much greater political pressures from the US government than it does from the Chinese government. It's a private company trying to make money, and trying to avoid scrutiny from both the Chinese and the US governments.
No, not everyone in China is a state bot. However, every company has to keep at least a few party members on their board and obey state controls constantly.
Couldn't the same be said of companies here in the US? We know the government is collecting data from US corporations. Should other countries be blocking Google, Facebook and Microsoft?
Companies do cooperate with the government, but for the most part that cooperation is either voluntary, or clearly defined by law which mandates cooperation.
There is still some reason for concern, but there is much less reason for concern.
That's why the sudden concern about TikTok theoretically being a problem comes across as an excuse for going after yet another Chinese company, as a way to pressure China and hamper its development.
> The state they operate in is going to make whistle blowing very difficult, not ever allow proper auditing into the state apparatus which ultimately controls the company.
You can have auditing and whistleblowing on the US entity (and include a promise of asylum in the whistleblowing protection), and big fines if they ever send data offshore.
the FBI has the power to put me in a cage, China does not... I am confused as why china is a bigger threat to me personally than the FBI?
CIA and FBI are very big threats to you, which is why you vote regularly to ensure that your rights are represented and those agencies aren't able to abuse their power.
China is a much more distant and abstract, but much more serious threat.
If the FBI or CIA fucks up, they will put let's say 10% of people in prison for opposition to the state.
If China is allowed to gain upper hands on the United States, it will result in broad scale societal problems which I couldn't even begin to estimate. Imagine a world where Russia is allowed to take Europe. Imagine a world where the United States is convinced to stand by as Taiwan is invaded and our chip supply is shut down.
They are very different threats, and should be treated very differently. The FBI and CIA are immune system type systems, where China is a guy with a knife.
The CIA and FBI have checks on them and are balanced as we speak. China is a fully rogue actor with no balancing systems to prevent it from damaging our society.
Both can kill you, both will kill you if given the opportunity. You shouldn't worry not about the guy with a knife because your immune system can kill you in 5 minutes if it wanted to. You should worry about both.
That never works out in practice as the administrative state (which includes the FBI and CIA) are soo far removed from representative government they are basically unaccountable at this point, that is with out even getting into the idea that 1 vote in a nation of 350 million plus holds no real power anyway, or the problems with First past the post, or countless other topics around voting
"Democracy" is more or less an delusion those in power perpetuate to ensure the cattle think they have a choice
>>Imagine a world where the United States is convinced to stand by as Taiwan is invaded
I think we already live in such a world.
>>The CIA and FBI have checks on them and are balanced as we speak.
Do they? In any real sense? We have confirmed and rumored massive violations of constitutional rights both here and abroad yet there is no accountability. From the Torture report, to massive violation of 4th amendment via "parallel construction" to even the possibility of actual assassinations..
Who exactly are they accountable to? it is certainly not the people, or the constitution
I had a much larger post, but I'm going to only respond to this one now, because it sums up basically off the disagreements and no further discussion is going to resolve anything.
I don't agree with this sort of cynicism at all, and I very much do believe that while it is very flawed, democracy ultimately is still doing its job.
What data do you have to support the position that "democracy ultimately is still doing its job. " further what "job" do you believe democracy is doing.
I can point to many data points that show it is not, the for mentioned lack of accountability. The fact that most of the voting population does not even vote. I can point to research studies like that from political scientists Martin Gilens and Benjamin Paige [1] that shows Average citizens have little impact on public policy. I have all kinds of data, and clear examples in history to support my position, I would be interested in seeing a counter offer
[1] https://pnhp.org/news/gilens-and-page-average-citizens-have-...
Have you seen journalists attacking a dictatorship while living there, and go unpunished? Have you seen the same, but on democratic countries?
That should answer it.
Now you could argue that he still did a good thing, and perhaps that would have been taken into account by the jury in what would have been a proper trial in a civilian court had he not left the country.
None of the journalists who reported on those leaks were imprisoned or harmed. In fact, those on beats that require them to have accreditation to the White House, Pentagon, etc still have that accreditation.
This is fundamentally and vastly different to what happens to journalists in China, Russia, and similarly authoritarian states.
"National Security" is often used to cover up government abuse, the public only knows of a few rare instances of this abuse and based on those I can pretty much assume the abuses are FAR FAR more extensive than has been reveled to the public and there is great incentive by government to classify everything to ensure there is never any accountability. Just look at the actions around these JFK files that multiple administrations have tried to declassify, or the Torture report that clearly the CIA violated the law even during the investigation
You must have immense trust, not backed by any rational data to support that trust, to proclaim Snowden an enemy of the people simply because he violated state secrets laws, laws that IMO should be unconstitutional in the first place, and are completely antithetical to a functional democracy.
If the government can keep secrets from the voters, then the voters can not hold them accountable, it is as simple as that
> perhaps the illusion not actually being an illusion is what keeps it alive
After Glenn Greenwald reported on the 2013 leaks, the IC and news media started up a bunch of threats of treason and were questioning his status as a journalist (to make him more legally at fault)
This doesn't necessarily contradict your statement, given we state the obvious that the US govt (and executive agencies especially) are not democratic
You mean like Kashoggi, right?
Is it tho? Is it worse than Cisco or bcci? What about CryptoAG? Instagram and Meta literary have got shadow profiles on near every single person on the planet....
I'm sure the us would love an EU/UK with private health care and weaker unions and labor laws.
Democracy is good, yes, but blindly asserting that USA == democracy is an incredibly naive, elementary school textbook level take of how our society propagates itself (not saying you're asserting this, but addressing the hypothetical point)
It's rocket fuel for demagogues, who swoop in and exploit it and turbocharge it even more (see Trump). They say the old system isn't working, they promise to disrupt it. The old rules aren't working anymore, give me all the power, I alone can fix it.
There are documented examples of FBI killings of dissident citizens (e.g. Fred Hampton). This is not even a "possibility".
Democracy is a system that ensures that whoever has the actual power also holds the formal power.
The only direct result of this is that it makes revolutions unnecessary. But indirectly, it also makes revolution-like changes much more common, what is really great.
What democracy isn't is a system that empowers the small people, or that removes power imbalances, or whatever propaganda you've got. There are many visible false features about it that lots of people believe. But that doesn't mean it's a bad system, it's the best we currently know about.
Like him or not, Trump was very much not the preference of those in power, and very much was the preference of many people in America. That shows the people do have power.
An aberration shows your rule is not actually a rule. Trump is also not the only time this happened. FDR also bucked the trend.
The primary strength of democracy is removing people that mistreat us, and it is a real power in a properly run democracy. Lose that power, and democracy dies.
I do generally agree voters have little influence on policy.
Russia can not even 'take' Ukraine the chances of it being able to take Europe are zero at this point.
I don't want to totally discredit Ukraine here, but there is a world where without American support Russia would be having a much easier time.
For example, according to the US military (See The West Point Military History of the Second World War which is available on Kindle), without US support, WW2 would have lasted 1-2 years longer but the Soviets could have defeated Germany all on their own, both without lend/lease and also without any US involvement at all in the war on Europe. Here is what the West Point history says at the start of their section on Lend/Lease:
"Although nearly half the population and the great industrial regions of the Donets remained under German occupation, the Soviets still found men for new armies and vastly increased war production. They defeated the Germans at Stalingrad almost entirely through their own efforts and would probably have won the same victory if they received no assistance at all."
Or you can read When Titans Clashed by noted British historian David Glantz, which reads
"If the Western Allies had not provided equipment and invaded Northwest Europe, Stalin and his commanders would have taken twelve to eighteen months to finish off the Wehrmacht. The results would probably have been the same, except that Soviet soldiers would have waded at France's Atlantic beaches rather than meeting the Allies at the Elbe".
It is sad that many in the West don't know that 80% of German war deaths were at the hands of Soviet soldiers.
The reason why historians believe this is because of the timing. The vast majority of Lend/Lease aid was delivered in 1945. Only 20% of aid was delivered before 1944 to the Soviets, but by that time the tide had already turned (Stalingrad, recognized as the turning point, was in winter of 1942 to the start of 1943). By the time Lend/Lease really took off, the Soviet army was already vastly larger and more capable than the German army, which was in full retreat. During the dark days of 1941 and 1942, Lend/Lease was miniscule, primarily consisting of things like cans of spam and beans. The Soviets derisively called Spam "The Second Front", because instead of delivering the promised second front, they received cans of spam in small quantities during the darkest period of the war for the Russians in 1941-1942.
The massive factories and military gear were sent after the Germans were retreating, and therefore most historians believe they had the effect of speeding up the collapse of the German forces, which was the main effect of the Normandy invasion as well.
I mean, it's not even close. And the Soviet Union, with enormous quantities of oil, iron ore, and other raw materials, could mass produce tanks, planes, and heavy weapons in massive quantities.
This was why Stalingrad was so important -- it was the gate to the Soviet Oil fields, and once that gate was closed, the war was basically over. Had Germany been able to capture the Caucauses, one could argue that the USSR would be starved of energy and so dependent on the US or some other nation to supply it. But that never happened.
It's a different story if you are a Chinese national in the US, have family in China, are reporting on China, etc. But for most Americans it probably matters more if Google is sharing your info with various three-letter agencies.
This analogy is great, because it's a better analogy than you think. Immune issues kill a LOT more people than knife attacks in the USA every year. In general, external enemies are less dangerous than internal enemies. It's easy to rally people against an external enemy (see the Robbers Cave Experiment in psychology), but much harder to rally people against an internal enemy.
There are 0.60 knife deaths per 100k people in the USA. [1] There are 3.97 deaths for SAID per 100k [2], and that's just the first type of autoimmune issue that I googled for off the top of my head.
Rome faced plenty of external enemies over the years, what actually caused the fall of Rome was internal.
[1] https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/stabbing-.... [2] https://academic.oup.com/rheumatology/article/60/3/1321/5908...
When there are 100 million Americas with 100 million CIAs and all governments are ruled under a common government that makes all knife stabbings and war illegal, that maybe something that is the truth in geopolitics as well.
Until then, this isn't an analogy that works very well.
Never worked, will never work. Big people/elites will always have access to every data. The pretext will be "National Security" or "Children". It is like baptist vs bootleggers, so voting won't solve the problem.
When You're Accustomed to Privilege, Equality Feels Like Oppression. The world doesn't need to imagine, because we had to stand by while the US launched illegal wars in Iraq, continues the unjust economic sanctions on Cuba just just for election politics, or all the shenigans the CIA pulled in South America in the previous decades. Heck just this month the US has said it will ignore a WTO ruling[1] just because it says so and everyone will have to stand by.
The multipolar world threatens Americans so much because they'll finally have to live like there's another version of themselves in the world.
[1]https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2022-12-12/supply...
The US government have behaved like absolute shitheels for much of the Cold War and beyond.
That being said, they have a relatively free press and relatively fair and liberal laws, especially compared to China.
Haven’t the Twitter files proven unequivocally that is not true?
I agree that we should worry about both. I’m honestly unsure which of the two is a greater threat.
Considering the director of the NSA lied to congress about what they were doing and got away with it, I'm not sure we should be putting much faith in any checks or assuming the balance of three letter agencies.
I guess most Americans aren’t very scared of the feds “because they have nothing to hide”, which as we know is a false sense of security in any surveillance state. But it can still be true that you have /more/ to fear from the government of China, given that they can have economic impact on your life at a macro level.
My goal is to live my life free from abuse, coercion, and infringement of my natural rights as a living human
the governments goal (be it china or US) is power, and control via the exclusive authority to initiate violence on the people with in the sphere of influence
I do not share any goals with government.
I take it you’re not a huge fan of the US constitution?
TikTok is toxic trash for many reason well beyond its connection to China
Either way, I'm not getting an objective education.
1: https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/10/19/conservati...
That fear is from tv using it so often it seems true.
What does the average American need to fear about China? Very little in terms of impact to daily lives.
What does the average American need to fear about being secretly recorded by a neighbour? Very little.. they still think its creepy
The FBI has at least some kind of supervision, from elected officials who ultimately answer to their constituents. That's a long way from a guarantee, but it's more than nothing, which is what you have on China.
China can't (legitimately) put you in a cage, but they can do a lot of other things to make you really unhappy, and there's nothing you can do about it. Whether that nets out to be more or less scary is up to you, but there is a difference on which to make the distinction.
Me, I'm not really so sure that this app represents all that big a threat compared to all of the other things. My concerns are more with the intermediate: large corporations without the power to put me in a cage but with the power to do a lot of other bad things. Including just plain losing my info by accident, something neither the FBI nor China is likely to do.
There is no disadvantage to a US resident from stopping them from spying on US residents. Both the law-and-order type of US voter and the don't-tread-on-me type agree on that.
It has stopped the CIA from installing their own government, no?
- Students have had family members back in China threatened with imprisonment for merely attending protests.
- Journalists have been kidnapped and are still missing.
- Other individuals have been monitored by local embassy staff.
- Businesses have seen markets arbitrarily cut-off for any form of criticism.
Just because you have not been personally threatened doesn't mean others haven't.
Would be a shame if their youthful TikTok private videos and DMs happened to be leaked to the press. Unless…
If you ran an intelligence service, you might want to identify targets, prioritize targets, and potentially create a graph of social connections.
Tiktok provides picture data (geolocation, timestamps, hashes, potentially facial recognition and OCR), location data, time data (hours app is opened), private message data, and data on hobbies/interests, I assume there is profile and private message data as well.
That's all without bringing up the glaring problem which is damaging institutional trust. Promoting anti-science videos or showing one group very pro videos and another group very against videos is damaging to our very social fabric. Amplifying things that feel intuitive but aren't correct is dangerous.
The threat model you perceive is that our authoritarian government would oppress us. The threat model that is happening is that external governments are causing chaos within our borders, amplifying division, and sewing distrust.
You perceive the government to be a bigger threat because of how you imagine you might exercise power, maybe you want to unionize, maybe you worry about police abuse, maybe you worry someone might take your guns, maybe you hate taxes. That misses the bigger picture... out of the following people, would you prefer them to be "compromised" by the CIA or by China? Soldier, Politician, Judge, CEO, Engineer, nuclear scientist, EPA regulator, Chief logistics officers, FCC employees, Bankers, etc.
I think the answer is pretty obvious, but I'm open to an explanation of why it is not.
> I think the answer is pretty obvious, but I'm open to an explanation of why it is not.
Who has the motive and opportunity to do things that screw over regular folks? It's a lot easier to think of cases where the CIA has something to gain by keeping someone in or out of jail who shouldn't be, or routing money or weapons somewhere they shouldn't be, than where China does. Low-level disruption would be a poor use of their assets that's not worth the risk. CIA employees have a lot more reason to be in zero-sum competition with regular Joes.
Can you give concrete examples of who the CIA would want to jail or not? Why do CIA employees lose when regular Joes gain and regular Joes gain when CIA employees lose?
Who decides who should or shouldn't be sent weapons. How informed do you think you are compared to the people who make the orders to route money or send weapons?
I am not a CIA lover by an means. At best the CIA supports countries like Ukraine and Taiwan. At worst CIA plays "realpolitik" and puts American interests, particularly those of Americas upper class/aristocrats, first.
What I mean is they're a lot more likely to be entangled with everyday life. Just a lot more chance to get mixed up with a senator who can send more budget their way, or even a local sheriff who asked too many questions about the permitting for something they were building, or hell, one of the guys who bullied the agent at school. The amount of people who can meaningfully influence something a PRC agent cares about is likely to be smaller, just because there's so much more domestic politics than international politics.
Can you clarify what you mean here? I realize people are unhappy with how Elon has run Twitter but who do you expect to do what?
The reality is lots of people sell this data. If you shut down tiktok, the Chinese will go buy it or otherwise obtain it from one of them.
The real concern is the ability to use the website as a propaganda outlet
I was going to say that if user is addicted to TikTok (or other hostile application) and also concerned about surveillance/tracking - they could use a dedicated burner phone with fake info, no contacts.
> I totally support broad regulation of privacy law.
I later read this from Wikipedia:
"As of January 2020, researches found that governments of 155 countries have been mandating SIM registration laws; in some countries, prepaid users must submit biometrics like photos and fingerprints."[0]
The system is broken...
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prepaid_mobile_phone#Privacy_r...
The only issue now is (it seems), that it's the chinese doing it and not facebook/google or local telcos.
No. That is also an issue, few who are informed despute the need to address those as well. There can be more than one problem in need of solving at a time.
Lots of cognitive dissonance going on, I would bet.
In the US now, every story that has anything to do with China is reduced to "the CCP."
This is a story about a tech company abusing its access to user data to try to track down which of its employees were talking to journalists. This could be a story about a Chinese company, an American company, or a company from pretty much any country.
“TikTok has never been used to ‘target’ any members of the U.S. government, activists, public figures or journalists,”
The ongoing controversy with TikTok has always been about the concern of the government of China using TikTok data and manipulation of its content in clandestine ways. It all goes back to CCP.
* Zhang Yiming, founder / CEO of ByteDance until 2021: not a member of the Communist Party.
* Kevin A. Mayer, COO and CEO of TikTok during 2020: not a member of the Communist Party.
* Rubo Liang, CEO since 2021: not a member of the Communist Party.
* Lidong Zhang, Chairman of ByteDance China: I can't find any reference to him being a member of the Communist Party.
* Alex Zhu, founder of Musical.ly, the predecessor of TikTok, and former CEO of TikTok: not a member of the Communist Party.
I'm sure there are some executives that are members of the Communist Party, but looking at the top people, that just doesn't pop out.
> The ongoing controversy with TikTok has always been about the concern of the government of China using TikTok data and manipulation of its content in clandestine ways.
That's the way literally every issue even tangentially related to China is spun in the US nowadays. This is actually a story about a tech company trying to find leakers by looking at the user data of the journalists they met with. It gets turned into a story about how the Communist Party is going to infiltrate and undermine the United States, using an app that teenagers use to show off their dance moves. The paranoia about China has gone just a bit too far for my liking.
* Golden handcuffs, but intending to move away once they vest.
* Actively trying to move away, but want to have a new role at that/better level lined up.
* They might've been eased into it through deception (e.g., someone raises a concern internally, they're assured that's not happening or has stopped, and only later it's in the news that it's happening anyway).
* Or, really, "tech" has pervasive ethical flexibility. Figuratively, the same kind of people who were looting pension funds in the 1980s are now selling out computer users, and they've normalized a lot of sociopathy, so the party is open to a lot more people. Normalized, it's easy to rationalize doing just a little more. Example: "Oh no, they're monitoring journalists." Which is something almost every startup Web site starts participating in, on their first day of business, when they add third-party trackers, and then often they add to that.
News Corp hacked phones to track people, they just got caught and punished.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/News_International_phone_hac...
And Uber and Tesla?
This is so far from the truth in how you're stating it and in this context.
* Tesla is only alleged as having hired PIs, and the claim came from a disgruntled former employee that was fired for cause. Let's not treat this like fact. There is zero evidence other than this person's claim.
* The alleged target of the alleged investigation was a Tesla employee, not a journalist, that was actively leaking confidential information (and admitted to doing so) with deliberate intent to harm his employer. The SEC also declined to provide the leaker with any sort of whistleblower status.
* There is no evidence Tesla used data outside what was freely accessible on company devices, which literally every large corporation on the planet monitors.
* The leaker was later successfully sued for $400,000 by Tesla and found guilty of several criminal offenses. It was also revealed (and admitted to) that his legal defense was bankrolled by The Funicular Fund, which is a known Tesla short-seller.
This simply isn't true for the Chinese government and Chinese companies.
But the other issue, which is both more palatable and more general, is one of reciprocity. China deliberately restricts Western companies from their market. A key component of trade is reciprocal market access.
> This simply isn't true for the Chinese government and Chinese companies.
Huh? Do you think the Chinese intelligence services don't have to go through processes and approvals before grabbing user data? It's exactly the same thing - sure it's a secret court that rubber-stamps every request put in front of it, but that's no different from how NSLs work.
Maybe our translations don't call it a court, but there will be processes. In practice, what does the FISA "court" guarantee that the Chinese intelligence service bureaucracy does not?
> There is no due process for those affected.
Much the same as the US, right? The courts have ruled that people don't have standing to challenge the NSA's large-scale surveillance programmes, the warrants are granted by secret courts, the usual rights of appeal don't extend to those courts.
> That law also compels companies and citizens to actively assist intelligence agencies.
Which is much the same as the National Security Letter system, no?
Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Mark Warner argues that even if there is nothing wrong with Tiktok it ought to be banned because it gives China a crucial edge in the development of AI tools that American companies don't have. China is able to freely access Western markets but not the other way around.
> Finally, there’s the fear that China will be able to use TikTok’s data to power its AI innovations. That’s an advantage the US won’t have because its social media apps are banned in China and because there aren’t laws that would compel social media companies to hand over data just because the government wants it.
> “They are aggregating literally billions and billions of images of not just Americans but people from around the world who are using TikTok,” Warner said. “That gives them so much more data to help them create tools that can be utilized in the AI world.”
Wait, why would it be an advantage for creation of AI in the US if social media companies (or company) could be more easily compelled to give our data to the government? Given that it's the social media company we are expecting to produce the AI anyway.
So CCP gets full access to American residents, without reciprocating US social media actions within it, and then compels Bytedance to give it access.
This is not some obscure conspiracy theory but well documented mainland China domestic law.
You see this very clearly in the conservative response to US support of Ukraine. You’d expect to see more conservative support for simultaneously defending a free people while also destroying a primary adversary for pennies on the dollar but instead you see a lot of skepticism because the Democrats are all over supporting it.
I also see a similar phenomenon with TikTok, where I think some people defend it principally because banning TikTok was “a Trump thing” and more generally China-hawkishness is viewed as “a Republican thing”.
We'll see how long it lasts but it wouldn't be the first time the presence of an external enemy eased internal tensions.
You can steelman an argument for supporting Ukraine in their war that goes something like "bleeding Russia dry means they won't be able to enter into the Pacific as a co-belligerent with China in a potential WWIII scenario".
Similarly, you can steelman an argument for banning TikTok that goes something like "this algorithm can nudge people into believing certain things in a measurable way, and it's bad that an adversary (PLA) has the ability to do this in our country, so we should stop that".
GOP skepticism of support of Ukraine is linked to that aforementioned goal, which we've probably achieved at this point. Why continue to print money and weapons and send them to a place 99% of America couldn't find on a map without googling, especially when this adversary has been shown to be a paper tiger?
Democratic skepticism of the TikTok calamity is, yes, linked to Trump Syndrome to a certain extent, but I think its also an adherence to boilerplate neoliberalism where you let companies compete in a globalized way, and banning TikTok because its Chinese has a tinge of racism (not me saying that, I'm outlining why the Democrats would be skeptical of a ban).
1. It provides security for Europe, which benefits us.
2. Our military expenditures are massive in general, we have sent roughly $50B in aid thus far which is around 3% of our 2022 DoD budget. If you consider the military a tool to destroy specific enemies, of which there are two main candidates, spending a marginal 3% (or more!) to destroy one of them is incredibly cheap. Personally I would invest 3-5x as much without blinking. The returns look great.
3. War is bad, starting wars is bad, and invading smaller neighbors to set up puppet regimes or annex them is bad. The best way to prevent this in general is to make starting wars look like an extremely bad idea which will definitely destroy your country.
4. Showing that we will doggedly defend countries to which we owe no special allegiance is an extremely good deterrent and raises the expected costs of invading (for example) Taiwan. China might see a more limited investment in the defense of Ukraine and say “ok, well Russia couldn’t afford to match that but I can. Expensive but on the table” whereas open ended support till Russia collapses is substantially scarier.
And this is only reasoning from an America-first perspective. Considering only how these are good for us, I would expect conservative support to be more full-throated. That said, it is true that mainstream conservatives are definitely much more normal on this front.
1. This is true if and only if the United States signs up, completely, for security of the entire European Continent. The armies of Germany, Poland, and Great Britain are just too small to do this (France isn't even worth mentioning)[1]. And, as the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan made painfully clear, the rest of NATO is unable to conduct air operations without direct support and coordination from the United States. There's a high cost to this, and we should go into it eyes wide open if this is the security responsibility we are assuming. To top it all off, the US Army is facing a serious recruiting crisis. We may need to consider a draft if we are going to shoulder the burden of securing all of Europe (again).
2. Aid to Ukraine is over $100B at this point, but I agree that there is some significant return on investment here if the aim was to degrade Russian military power via a proxy war. While we're sending some high-end stuff (HIMARS, rumors of MIM-104s) that would be useful in the pacific theater and are hard to replace, doing so has ground Russia down so bad that they're stuck in the defensive for the foreseeable future.
3. I don't really care about this. I'm interested in what makes sense for the security of the United States and what makes American citizens better off - economically or otherwise. It's like saying "murder is bad, we should punish murderers really hard so that other people don't murder". Sure, I agree.
4. I think this is mostly fantasy, or an insane game of chicken. If we're in Ukraine until the Kremlin collapses, that would catastrophically reduce security for an entire hemisphere because of the ensuing chaos a fractured and broken Russian Federation would represent. Many, mostly on the Left, seem to think this is actually a good idea but it isn't. I doubt this is actually the goal of the State Department, and since China isn't stupid they likely doubt it as well. So on balance, whatever the US does in Ukraine I'd judge to have very little impact to PLA's calculus on a Taiwan invasion.
[1] It is worth mentioning that Poland has plans to double the size of it's ground forces. But until this actually happens, this remains a plan and not existing combat power.
Of course, this admits that these other NATO members are client states of the Americans, which is an ugly (but mostly true!) thing to say out loud.
They have been caught once [0] and have been caught again this year [1] and lied about accessing the sensitive data of its own users [2], [3], [4] and admitted it here. Clearly the fines in [0] and [1] are extremely low and the fine must increase in the billions since these are repeated privacy violations and haven't learned anything from it.
There is no excuse for billion dollar fines for TikTok.
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/14/technology/tiktok-kids-pr...
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/26/technology/tiktok-childre...
[2] https://futurism.com/tiktok-spy-locations-specific-americans
[3] https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/emilybakerwhite/tiktok-...
[4] https://techcrunch.com/2021/06/03/tiktok-just-gave-itself-pe...
Foolish doesn't describe it, if they knew they were taking a calculated risk.
Suppose they knew there was a risk the app could be used to track them, and maybe even a risk that tracking data could be used to assassinate them. But if TikTok tracked them with the app, that could also become part of their story against TikTok and thus advance their journalistic career. Fortune favors the bold.
It is like staying that a company that got hacked because it did not put in place basic security gets a free pass because Russians/Chinese/NKs are bad.
If the journalists were targeted by a sophisticated back I would be completely sympathetic. Here they were simply careless.
I wonder how my boss would say if my answer to being hacked was "hey, blame the attacker - I am the victim here and should be consoled. It does not matter that I should have known!".
Then there is the "skirt case" - something as a French I am sadly aware of. My personal perspective is that the police should aggressively react to such harassment. And punitions should be drastic. And that deep changes in the way we handle ghettos we built ourselves should be undertaken (this is much more difficult than the first two ones but effectively the only way forward).
With this said, I will not go to a cité (more or less a ghetto) with a "Fuck Allah" shirt and wonder why my head was chopped.
We live in a world where there seems to be a contradiction between "common sense" and "justice". Justice and equity is the most important but it does not mean that we should not think WHEN WE KNOW that the world is not ideal yet.
Why is this insanity allowed ? China doesn’t allow Western social networks. Why do we allow our strategic enemy to have software on our phones? End this madness. Stop the sale of Chinese tech in the West, period. It’s all backdoored.
(if you think they are interested in “co-living” go talk to the Kremlin on how that went. China is bidding its time but their intention is to end US dominance. They tell us this and they release papers on how they intend to do it. If you think that’s ok, great. I don’t see how a democratic rule of law country, flaws as it may have, being replaced by a brutal dictatorship, is a good option).
Note: this is entirely independent from whether TikTok is bad, which I'm more confident than not it is. But contorting our already contorted national security laws around it is not a tenable solution.
What an odd question. The government bans things all the time - can you go and buy unpasteurized milk right now? Or walk into a weapons store and buy brass knuckles? But heaven forbid, we’re abandoning our principles if we ban a data collection platform owned and operated by a genocidal undemocratic government.
It's not even clear what statute you'd use to "ban" TikTok. Is it a national security risk?
I don't see any reason for it not to be in the purview of government.
Every single country on this planet of ours engages in some form of protectionism, whether we like it or not: again, it isn't clear what casuistic justification explains singling out China's protectionism, and even then banning just one company involved in it. Italy doesn't let us sell the sawdust we call "Parmesan," but I'd prefer it if we didn't ban selling the real thing in retaliation.
Finally, for the national risk: what, precisely is the national risk? You can argue (correctly!) that they're a bad actor given this news, and I would be more than happy to see those involved in the surveillance of journalists see the inside of a court. But this doesn't even come close to meeting the standard for a national security risk, weak as that standard has become.
Frankly, I wouldn't mind if this happens. I just wish we wouldn't swing "national security" around as the cudgel.
It worked for limiting cigarette use and TikTok is at least as bad for you. I think it’s worth a try and the legal precedence is already there.
I'd love to have a tikTok not controlled by the CCP (or KGB for that matter).
You know, a platform where saying something against the government doesn't result in prison time or death.
You may as well call Russians "Soviets". Yes, it's many of the same people in the same buildings, doing the same sort of bullshit. But they aren't called Soviets anymore and if you go around calling them Soviets, you'll going to have people think that you're stuck in the 80s.
The KGB doesn't exist anymore. They are now the FSB. The "KGB" still exists in the same sense that "The Soviets" still exist, neither call themselves that anymore, nor do they have any subsidiaries called that.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-61480988
(Note also that this happened not too long after a pretty bloody phase of the war, though of course less bloody than what we had since last February, especially in Mariupol.)
Oracle and Walmart reportedly at that time brokered a deal to run the US arm of TikTok. Do you trust them? Walmart certainly isn't politically neutral, by any stretch. Meanwhile, Larry Ellison was a leading figure in the effort to subvert the 2020 election. He was on the Nov. 14 election subversion planning call, along with "Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.); Fox News host Sean Hannity; Jay Sekulow, an attorney for President Donald Trump; and James Bopp Jr., an attorney for True the Vote, a Texas-based nonprofit that has promoted disputed claims of widespread voter fraud." (source: WaPo)
This doesn't seem like a solid plan, to put it rather mildly.
https://www.oracle.com/industries/government/us-defense/
Larry Ellison defecting to China doesn't seem like a likely scenario, I don't think he'd like life as an international fugitive, slave to a host with a history of treating their own native billionaires harshly. Barring such a flight, the US Government can get their hands on him if that becomes necessary, but I doubt it will.
Well, I trust them more than I trust China. I guess we should have done nothing instead?
Doesn’t this sound a bit off?
No, just regular protectionism and it doesn't get too much flack.
The problem with China is that they are actually suppressing free speech and freedoms and whatnot. Do you disagree that this is the case?
We are in a world where our strategic enemy has a foothold on our digital lives and will likely use it against us. This is evidence. We should treat our enemies as enemies. China doesn’t consider itself to be in a friendly competition for dominance. Neither should we.
The enemy was here before TikTok has existed, china is catching up quickly to the western tools for dominance
Companies need to comply with PI laws. Then there is no need to find excuses to keep approved spyware companies operating depending on where the stockholders live.
It doesn't have to, and other countries have imposed restrictions and even outright bans on US tech firms. The EU being the prime example.
This detached observer way of looking at the world is mind boggling. There is nothing contradictory about arguing for the good and arguing against the evil. I think this mindset stems from a fundamental uncertainty in our values, and conclude that our values are just as good as any others. It’s simply not true.
No. TikTok is run by a state hostile to the ideals of freedom and our western way of life. That alone is enough of an argument for banning it: because of values are good, and we don’t want their values. If they are not willing to go above and beyond to demonstrate they will do the same, then ban it. They are not entitled to our attention, our children's attention, or any of our other resources.
Again, no. That fatalistic attitude doesn’t help anyone and is just a suicide pact. We have a responsibility to expand the good in the world. That includes domestically with rooting out our evil, but also includes keeping China out.
This is exactly my point. You’re saying “because the US has done bad things in the past, it has no moral standing to do good in the future”. A lot of bad happened in the Middle East, some parts caused by the US, so that means we can’t ban the evils of China in our country and minimize their harms abroad?
Try this: focus on increasing the good in the world. Don’t be hamstrung by “well the US has done bad things before”. “We can’t do good anymore because we’ve done bad before” is not a valid argument. And no, none of this makes China equally good.
It’s not your job to weigh all the countries of the world on some balance to decide who’s been the most good. That’s that detached observer mindset again, and it does nothing but occupy your mind and sap your agency while bad things continue. Your job is to increase the good in the world. If you don’t care to do so, then get out of the way
Give me a break.
They make the phones. What makes you trust the hardware in the first place?
Production moved to China because China began allowing foreign investment, and Chinese labor was cheaper. Foreign companies made their own decisions to take advantage of cheap Chinese labor.
This wasn't some sort of nefarious Chinese plot. The US also wanted China to open up to American investment.
> Chinese strategic efforts to locate our industrial production there
makes it sound like some sort of conspiracy to undermine the US. It was normal economic policy, of the type practiced by most countries.
No need to put 'nefarious' in there, or 'plot' even, but it was a goal. If not, then why did they want to join the WTO so badly?
The issue is that there were no
> Chinese strategic efforts to locate our industrial production there
There was a Chinese policy of encouraging foreign investment, but that's not a strategic plan to remove another country's industrial capacity, which is how OP framed it.
It allows for all kinds of trickery regardless of where the chips are manufactured.
Trump called for Tik Tok to be banned. He was mocked for it.
Edit: CCP has a committee inside of ByteDance. Also CCP has power over all chinese companies. (Wanted to answer that to the subcomment but there is no answer button)
That means ByteDance is effectively beholden to the CCP, and since TikTok is owned by ByteDance, it gives the CCP unfiltered access to all TikTok data.
ByteDance actually can structure its operations to separate its US and Chinese apps as much as possible, to limit the ability of either government to access data from the other country. It's not a state actor, and is actually trying to avoid coercion from both the US and China.
If the CCP requests data they have no choice but to hand it over. There is no way bytedance can structure its operations to prevent the CCP requesting data.
As we've seen, the US is perfectly capable of building up a massive surveillance operation, and of tying the tech companies into that operation, without the involvement of any real court (i.e., something other than a secret rubber-stamp like the FISA court), and indeed without the public even knowing that such a system exists.
The US also exerts other forms of extra-legal pressure on companies. It can and does threaten tech companies to play ball, or else. When WikiLeaks published documents that embarrassed the US government, the US government froze all of their financial accounts, simply by telling the companies involved (e.g., PayPal) to do so. American tech executives know that they can face regulatory action if they say "no" to requests, so they have a very strong incentive to comply with demands to provide data, censor content, and help US government influence operations (see the recent revelations that Twitter worked with the US government on covert influence campaigns using inauthentic accounts).
> There is no way bytedance can structure its operations to prevent the CCP requesting data.
The Chinese government can request whatever it likes, but ByteDance can structure its operations to make those requests impossible or difficult to fulfill, or to make it so any attempt to fulfill such a request will be highly visible. The Europeans have exactly the same problem with regards to the US, which is one of the reasons that GDPR exists.
As I said before, right now, ByteDance faces much stronger political pressures from the US than from China.
However, beyond all this theoretical argumentation about which government exerts more control over ByteDance, the argument that TikTok is a security threat is absurd. It's primarily a platform for little funny videos, dance videos, etc. The motivation for banning TikTok is clearly just part of the larger tech war against China, and the general hysteria that has developed with regards to China in the US. That's why a thread about a tech company misusing user data to try to identify a leak has turned into a discussion about "the CCP."
Of course! Because tiktok should be banned everywhere.
> The Chinese government can request whatever it likes, but ByteDance can structure its operations to make those requests impossible or difficult to fulfill
LOL no it can’t. They would not risk getting thrown in jail for nothing by refusing a request from the CCP.
> American tech executives know that they can face regulatory action if they say "no" to requests, so they have a very strong incentive to comply with demands to provide data, censor content, and help US government influence operations (see the recent revelations that Twitter worked with the US government on covert influence campaigns using inauthentic accounts).
Companies challenge data requests all the time. The fact is you cannot challenge that request with the CCP.
Unsure why you’re hell bent on defending the CCP with whataboutism. Because what the US does isn’t even close to that of China.
The US actually appears to have a much more extensive global surveillance system than China does. Nothing even remotely comparable to what Snowden revealed has yet come to light about China.
> They would not risk getting thrown in jail for nothing by refusing a request from the CCP.
This is a very cartoonish view of how things in China work. The Chinese government knows that an attempt to leverage a company like TikTok (or Huawei) to spy on foreign countries could backfire and damage Chinese companies abroad. So far, it appears not to have used these companies for spying to any measurable extent. The NSA hacked into Huawei's systems, and found no evidence of spying. British GCHQ regularly audited Huawei's hardware and operations, and never found any evidence of spying.
> The fact is you cannot challenge that request with the CCP.
If the Chinese government requests data from TikTok, an American company, that sits on US-based servers, TikTok actually can challenge that request. US laws will come into play, and it will not be a simple matter to transfer the data (particularly in secret).
Lol the CCP doesn’t need to go to tiktok it goes to the parent company to access data. Bytedance. Which we know has infact accessed data from China.
But it’s clear now that you support the CCP so this is a pointless conversation.
Country of origin is still very relevant. China has National Security Laws that compel companies and citizens to provide access to and actively help their intelligence agencies. The CCP right now can lawfully order TikTok to push a version with a backdoor and then gaslight the US about its existence if found, e.g. oh that was just an innocent software bug. Or to secretly provide user data and lie about providing it.
I agree with this. Things should be reciprocal. I do not think China is the enemy though. More like a strategic competitor. Trading with the enemy is a crime, right?
>"(if you think they are interested in “co-living” go talk to the Kremlin on how that went"
Why do you equate China with Kremlin? I think China is way smarter and has managed huge economical achievements while Putin is pissing away immense potential that Russia has. If we talk about co-living it is the US that after WWII was attacking and wrecking numerous countries killing directly and indirectly millions. China so far has harassed its own population only and has yet to do anything even remotely approaching what the US has done on international scale.
>"China is bidding its time but their intention is to end US dominance."
Now here comes the real reason. The US dominance - you sure this is what the rest of the world wants? How about we try without subservients to a single country.
>"I don’t see how a democratic rule of law country, flaws as it may have, being replaced by a brutal dictatorship, is a good option"
Nobody wants that. But it is the US (and allies) that keeps taking away more rights and freedoms. If you compare for example 90s and now people look more and more like cattle. You can't blame China for that. I think somebody else is responsible.
Not entirely true, they just have to follow Chinese law if operating within China, but they mostly refuse to. For instance facebook wasn't blocked in China until 2009, when it refused to release information on suspected terrorists.
You can argue those laws US companies would have to follow in China ae wrong, but they are still applied more-or-less evenly. If you want to respond in kind then make privacy laws that Chinese companies would find difficult to follow, but are none-the-less applied evenly.
>if you think they are interested in “co-living” go talk to the Kremlin on how that went. China is bidding its time but their intention is to end US dominance.
It's interesting that Americans consider "co-living" to mean continuation of US domination.
Why do we hold ourselves up as “we have to follow the standard”? Standards are defined by previous action, and it’s by acting that we alter the course of reality.
Also, I’m not American. I just read history enough to know that there’s always a dominant country in world affairs. And I know I wouldn’t choose a brutal Chinese authoritarian regime to lead us into the next century.
> TikTok has never been used to ‘target’ any members of the U.S. government, activists, public figures or journalists,
This sort of outright lying is bound to piss off DC. Will it lead to TikTok getting banned? Idk, depends on their lobbying budget
Always is. Bad apples. Rogue actors. Acting alone. Examples made. Lessons learned. Public assured. Throw the low rank scapegoats under a bus. And keep praying we're as stupid as you make yourself look.
None of the big tech solutions are good, but they are where people are.
Before answering, consider carefully whether this is a precedent you want to set. Some in government may want to do the same for Twitter.
Sanction it.
> some in government may want to do the same for Twitter
Difficult to do this with an American, or even allied, country.
The funny aspect to me is that the senators pushing to "ban TikTok" are the same senators pushing for an "open App Store" bill. But I don't see how you can have it both ways.
Sure you can sanction TikTok. Are you going to jail every middle schooler who "does business" with them by downloading the app from unofficial sources?
Or perhaps you want to force ISPs to drop connections to TikTok servers?
They're both about open markets. China is not only a closed market, it's threatening our open-market allies.
> going to jail every middle schooler who "does business" with them by downloading the app from unofficial sources?
If they download the app from unofficial sources and then send it money, somehow, or get money from it, somehow, yes, they'd be treated like someone trading with the Taliban. If they're just using the software, no, that's like using open-source code written by an Iranian.
But if TikTok really is as useful to the Chinese government to be the threat that the politicians trying to ban it make it out to be, surely the Chinese government would be willing to eat those costs to keep it going here.
Without revenue in it, and influencers on it, only few would jump through the insane hoops to sideload an app nowadays.
There's also a lot of overlap between the politicians who want to ban TikTok over concerns that user data might go to China and politicians who block proposed data privacy laws that would stop US companies from selling similar data (or worse, such as ISPs selling browsing data) to data brokers.
Ban TikTok and anyone in China can get similar data on US citizens by just buying it from US data brokers.
if not, a new app will pop up and do the same.
I'm rare in that although I don't like it corporate spying doesn't really scare me. Corporations can't do very much without breaking the law. My concern is that this information is then passed on to the people who are empowered to come and drag me out of my home. Some of whom aren't even subject to my legal system. It makes more extreme measures like the GDPR seem insufficient.
And why does this happen? Because money. Every single tech darling plays along. Chances are, unless you knew for a fact you weren't participating in this, you were at some level.
Something like Wikileaks/Snowden got the "they're spying on everyone!" part into the public consciousness. The Twitter files is pushing out some slightly different nuances around what the current practice is. Plus the political implications.
People are annoyingly evidence based. There seems to be confusion about whether dictionary-definition fascism is a bad thing and it is important to collect and keep repeating evidence of what is happening as governments agents get involved in running media (or other) companies.
Indeed. It's the difference between public knowledge and common knowledge. Matters which are public knowledge may not be common knowledge, if they've been swept under the rug or generally forgotten.
We knew the US intelligence services had tweaked the elections of other countries. We didn't know US intelligence services had tweaked the last election in the US.
Given how close elections are in US, it's not hard to imagine US intelligence services made a difference.
So that's what's new.
Another revelation comes from your question itself. If you rely on mainstream media outlets to inform you, you'd either have no idea these 'leaks' exist, or a distorted view of what they contained. The NYTimes ran no less than 4 articles on 8 journalists being temporarily suspended on Twitter, promoting international regulations, laws, and even sanctions over it. But the entirety of these leaks, and the massive amount of content and information contained within? Well that's just not newsworthy contrasted against 8 journalists not being able to post on Twitter!
The media's independence and integrity has decline substantially since Snowden, with seemingly no bottom in sight.
1. The same reason they're playing Clash Royale... down time, filling the wait. Do you think they were on their employer-provided phone? Do you think they even have an employer-provided phone?
2. Maybe they also have a social media presence. That would be a different issue, and actually easier to address by the employer.
People defending TikTok are generally questioning the risk of this data being weaponized by the CCP and whether it's even much of a weapon and whether that's worth it to ban them over. Not over whether TikTok voluntarily follows some privacy guidelines -- on that it's generally assumed they're either already vacuuming up all they can, or could turn that on at any time.
The US government has a very long history of simply lying about things when it fits their goals so independently verifiable evidence is what's needed. The German government is still waiting for the promised proof about Huawei backdoors, by the way. This was promised when Trump was president. The US didn't produce any proof whatsoever and leaks even showed that the NSA couldn't find anything even after gaining access to Huawei's systems. The UK also said that the US never produced any evidence for any of the claims.
Now it might still be true that there's things going on but there's a huge difference between saying "We don't have proof but we obviously cannot be sure" and claiming to have proof.
Believe it or not, Trump’s policy was more nuanced than what are getting now. They were in the process of forcing a sale of the company to a US owner.
Trump's solution involved a one off payoff for a supporter (Oracle), whereas the current admin is at least trying to develop a policy framework and solve the problem with less corruption and arbitrary use of power. The latter is much more work but - to bring it back to the issue - is more nuanced.
Seriously give it to Oracle and 20 minutes. When you have to spend 3 minutes waiting for the next TikTok to load people will find alternatives real quick.
You're comparing a company pursuing commercial interests with a militaristic dictatorship threatening our allies.
Not that it should matter, but in the interest of accuracy he was a Saudi journalist who wrote for (among others) an American media company, not an American journalist.
Unless they broke out the bone saws for someone else besides Jamal Khashoggi.
Surely a better solution would be briefing journalists not to install pretty much anything on their phones that they don't actually need.
Edit: for clarity, I guess I'm saying that if there's ever a point when a country/company tracking you is likely to warrant problems, perhaps you need to consider how it could happen and how you could avoid it.
I would probably be less inclined to want TikTok banned if China were in the midst of saving my entire continent from an unhinged, marauding neighbor.
You might also check out how China is draining Russian economy - instead of focusing on making an appearance of doing so. But yeah, this is one aspect where I do agree. I’m really happy to see USA being the good guys again.
US companies operating in the EU are expected to follow local laws and ... this is unfair because the US is pursuing its own narrow internal interests in Ukraine, like it always does, and Europeans are supposed to be grateful?
> this is unfair because the US is pursuing its own narrow internal interests in Ukraine
So narrow that Ukraine president decided to come visit to rally support?
Not true. They can operate, they just need to obey the law. Same way other companies need to obey American laws to operate in US, eg enforcing copyright or providing Lawful Interception mechanisms.
Apple (at least) seems to have managed to strike some kind of a deal ?
Twitter, FB and Google have been banned in China, so banning US companies isn’t a new concept. Whether Europe join that is up to European countries. They haven’t shared your opinions so far. Maybe they value the relationship with the US? Especially after seeing Russia’s “special operation” in Ukraine
The recent twitter files show that the bond between Government and social media companies is a little too close... but it would be foolish to suggest that the lesser of the two evils here is China.
It is actually insane that we let China do whatever they want here while US companies are effectively prevented from gaining a foothold in China.
I wish people, at least of this site, would stop with this argument. US and European companies in China simply have to follow the same rules Chinese companies have to. It's admirable that they then go ahead and just don't do business there but they're not being prevented from operating there under the same rules as any Chinese company. A German car company cannot sell cars in the US without backup cameras even though that's completely fine in Germany. If someone from Iran wants to do business in the US, it's not legal to discriminate based on religion even though that might be fine in Iran.
Maybe it's time to overhaul the laws altogether. Just make the data collection itself illegal for everyone and be done with it. Then companies from all around the globe can decide whether they want to operate in a market or not and completely banning companies that openly don't follow the law is not really controversial.
If the ban happens because they're collecting data and the collection itself is illegal, I'm all for it. Banning companies on the basis that they're doing the exact same thing as everyone else simply because they're from another nation is problematic.
I don’t think it’s simple at all. That might be how it works on paper but I’ll ask you this. Do you think a US or European equivalent would ever be allowed to gain a comparable market share? Or would they find many convenient barriers while a Chinese clone, backed by the government, was being built?
I just don’t see a world where Chinese and US companies are on equal footing in the eyes of the CCP as long as they just “simply follow the rules.”
My main point here was that Facebook and Google are allowed to operate in China if they follow the law of the land. I've already said that not operating there is arguably admirable but the point is that they're definitely allowed to operate there if they follow the law of the land. And the laws for them are no different than they are for Chinese companies.
Apple and Microsoft are doing absolutely fine in China. Apple's mobile market share there is bigger than it is in Europe. So yes, they already _are_ allowed to gain a comparable market share. As for regular social media; LinkedIn is also doing just fine and always has.
Teslas were the #1 electric cars sold for the last time frame I could find.
There are various areas where foreign companies are big or even dominate the Chinese market.
Sure. Though, the footing is so unequal that it effectively prevents US companies from gaining a foothold. Maybe that is a little broad but it certainly leans towards the rule vs the exception.
>And the laws for them are no different than they are for Chinese companies.
Before or after they start operating? How difficult is that compared to entering the US or European market?
>Apple and Microsoft are doing absolutely fine in China. Apple's mobile market share there is bigger than it is in Europe. So yes, they already _are_ allowed to gain a comparable market share.
The Government of China is literally trying to stop Apple and Microsoft's dominance as we speak.
>As for regular social media; LinkedIn is also doing just fine and always has.
LinkedIn is doing fine? They shut down LinkedIn literally last year man, lol.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/14/technology/linkedin-china...
They're making some BS "CCP compliant" version that _only_ allows you to do job searching but it is certainly not LinkedIn as we know it.
Sure. On paper, once you jump through the regulatory hoops you're allowed to exist there... but the difference between the environments (and the bias foreign companies endure) is such that I stand by my original comment.
China is gonna eat the west alive. Sooner you guys wake up the better
Good luck America, you really need it.
>ByteDance has since restructured its internal audit team and removed access to US data from that department.
I read it as their internal audit team still having access to userdata data from other regions.