TikTok: Logs, Logs, Logs
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There is no concrete evidence of spying. Tiktok is a private company. Yes one or more people in Tiktok may have ties with CCP members. But doesn't banning the whole of Tiktok, without concrete evidence, based merely on some level of association with CCP (and the level of association isn't even clear or proven at this point), then how can people still claim "the Chinese people and the CCP are separate"?
It seems more like we're moving more and more towards "anything and everybody from China equals CCP and the whole of China is evil".
No but there's evidence of CCP propaganda already, just try to make a video about Taiwan, Hong-Kong or the insecurity issues within China and notice your account being banned.
And before anyone tells me "it's the same as Facebook", I can go right now on Facebook and find as much anti-american or anti-Trump content as you want.
> But doesn't banning the whole of Tiktok, without concrete evidence, based merely on some level of association with CCP (and the level of association isn't even clear at this point)
The level of association is pretty clear, unless you have no knowledge on how large companies operates in China.
> It seems more like we're moving more and more towards "anything and everybody from China equals CCP and the whole of China is evil".
No, I'm only against the CCP, maybe one day the Chinese people will have the government they deserve.
> The level of association is pretty clear, unless you have no knowledge on how large companies operates in China.
> No, I'm only against the CCP, maybe one day the Chinese people will have the government they deserve.
This looks like a huge contradiction to me. "Private companies in China have to follow Chinese law, so private Chinese companies are associated with CCP, so we should ban private Chinese companies, but I'm only against CCP".
Imagine someone disagreeing with PRISM, and making the same statement as above, but substituting "CCP" with "American government".
I don't see how you came to that conclusion. CGTN is still there on Facebook for example. They weren't even kicked out despite blatantly faking their subscribers count (yeah it's that obvious).
> This looks like a huge contradiction to me. "Private companies in China have to follow Chinese law, so private Chinese companies are associated with CCP, so we should ban private Chinese companies, but I'm only against CCP".
In China, if you did not know, there is no rule of law, the CCP is the law. Any large companies needs to have a CCP representative. There is no independent large company in China, that's not a thing yet.
> Imagine someone disagreeing with PRISM, and making the same statement as above, but substituting "CCP" with "American government".
The problem isn't just the data, it's the propaganda and the reach of the CCP.
> The problem isn't just the data, it's the propaganda and the reach of the CCP.
The problem is the method by which each entity might effect their goals.
In the US: Go to FISA/FISC and request a warrant. Otherwise, request a surveillance warrant in normal court.
In China: Go to the company in the dead of night, and tell them what they need to do.
In the former, you at least have a paper trail. In the latter, you have nothing.
That seems to be a meme on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@smokingpineapple/video/6747343325621...
Edit: Also this hashtag: https://www.tiktok.com/tag/chinazi?lang=en Less than 4000 views implies that it might be censored, I guess?
Edit: Actually, if you could find that kind of video on another platform, it would be possible to upload it on TikTok and see what happens.
https://www.tiktok.com/tag/uighur https://www.tiktok.com/tag/hongkongprotests
Go to any of the hashtags for those issues and you'll find the hashtag still active, people bringing awareness and jokes about how they'll be banned.
> Any organization or citizen shall support, assist and cooperate with the state intelligence work in accordance with the law, and keep the secrets of the national intelligence work known to the public.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Intelligence_Law#Lega...
At that point, the CCP doesn't differentiate between "the Chinese people" and the CCP. They legally all have to do what they are told by the CCP for spying or whatever else. "Non-democratic" can sound a bit abstract, but...
I personally don't like ByteDance mainly due to its product philosophy of reducing users to mindless eyeballs (it's a general indifference to social consequences in China tho ), but can't help but clarify that ByteDance isn't like those.
Having billion-dollar app killed by the party without recourse is just not a remote possibility for the Chinanet establishment, but it is a reality for ByteDance. This is not to say it's impervious to CCP influence, but the dynamics is more nuanced. Old comment:
>The CCP high officials don't really care about anyone but their own relatives and cronies, while your assumption is mostly right as in the cases like Alibaba and Tencent, ByteDance isn't exactly like them, it has a kind of autonomy and internationalization those companies wouldn't dare to dream of. ByteDance isn't as beholden to the party as those two since it's a startup capitalized on the app economy, it's growth is organic, didn't rely on government policies and protection. >In fact ByteDance already has blockbuster app Neihan Duanzi killed by Chinese authorities overngiht.
Interesting parallel to learned helplessness. [1] (Note: not making a value judgement, just using the psychological terminology)
If (a) you are a company that exists in a state where the government can and does intervene at any time for purposes of social engineering, then (b) you would expect, over time, to develop a culture that deprioritizes considering social consequences, as (c) it's not something that's reliably in your control.
By taking a more active hand in private-social interactions, it would seem the CCP ironically makes those same companies care less about it proactively, and simply follow the letter of the law.
[0] https://twitter.com/BBCPolitics/status/1284784810200838145
This is just absurd, that's not the case at all. Your argument boils down to some bizarre implication that any Chinese company is state-run.
For all the over-emotional CCP rants on this website this has to be up there as one of the most hilariously ill-informed.
I get the feeling it's not possible to have a good faith discussion here.
(Tangent: TIL Apple's operation of iCloud in China is by a government-sponsored data company named Guizhou-Cloud Big Data [1] as a result of this law.)
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Internet_Security_Law
The US just has secret laws and courts to compel boards to do what they say or otherwise straight sends its goons to illegally hack their own global companies seemingly oblivious to why rule of law even exists.
I'd very much like to see this "definition" applied equally. Would you say Atlassian is controlled by the Australian government for the purposes of spying?
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/10/secret-court-rules-fbi...
https://www.zdnet.com/article/us-says-it-does-not-need-court...
https://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/nsa-hacked-google-...
https://www.infoworld.com/article/2608141/snowden--the-nsa-p...
Seems close enough to me.
[0] https://asia.nikkei.com/Opinion/TikTok-risks-becoming-new-fr...
And this is the problem, you can shift goalposts on the truth as you see fit no matter how repeatedly you are proven wrong.
Let's take a comparison:
> Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg endured an hours-long grilling by dozens of U.S. senators Tuesday during which he repeatedly apologized
Is Zuckerberg now a card-carrying member of the standing government? Is he an agent of the state? Of course not. He's protecting his business.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/2018/04/1...
[1]https://deadline.com/2020/07/mark-zuckerberg-anthony-fauci-c...
Do you have any proof that Zhang Yiming has been forced to become a CCP member or lose his job? Hell I'll even make this easier for you: any evidence whatsoever that he's actually a member of the CCP?
That aside you honestly think Mike Cannon-Brookes would hold some moral highground and throw away his billions if all it costed was some lipservice and a $50 signup fee to be a party member? He managed to complain a few times after being forced into becoming a 5eyes spying vassal but besides that didn't do a single thing to stop it.
Its a fake dilemma you've created here, Chief executives do far worse things all the time than kowtow to their respective governments and when push comes to shove they all back down because it's worth it.
What do you think the ADF would do if, say for example, someone used Jira to manage their whistleblower contact and reporting?
Those yachts'd be boarded, mate.
Let's say we should ban Tiktok. Everybody's data is still being spied on by the CIA, and gathered by PRISM.
Go one step further. Ban Tiktok and Facebook, Twitter, etc.
What happens within the borders of a country is different, even if it is spying and suppression of human rights and what not.
The destiny of a country should be in the hands of it's people. Be it good, bad or worse. But if you allow propaganda from another country to enter into your media, all is lost. Why? Because you lose faith in everything. How is one sure the revolution in a country is pure bred from that country? How is one sure the change one sought is because of the needs of the people of that country?
It's an incredibly dangerous situation. Even if your own govt. spies on you, stopping the propaganda of a foreign country takes precedence at all costs, if necessary, even by war.
Am I supposed to tell my government to block American apps so that I can compete with American apps or on "national security" grounds? Because this is the trend American's will see. And if Zuck is reading this, you're shooting your own foot. What do you think is gonna happen? You're pitting the government against TikTok because your company cannot compete fairly. You think you'll win like this? Your Facebook/Instagram will get banned in future by other democratic countries in future because of the precedent you're going to be setting.
Let China do it's thing. It may very well turn out that their way of governance is better. Losers stick to old ways, if it turns out it's the superior system, they'll clearly be better.
But for a system to be proven takes decades/centuries. As long as China does not force it's system, it's fine in my eyes.
The primary motive is to curb propaganda. If all the countries in the world blocked data collection, businesses all over would stop data collection.
>You're pitting the government against TikTok because your company cannot compete fairly
Perhaps. But if the new competing app also collects data, the govt. ought to shut it down. Ultimately, I want data collection to stop.
>It may very well turn out that their way of governance is better
Governance is different from protecting basic human rights. An authoritarian government is a danger to the whole world. You can see that already happening with Turkey.
And didn't the Turkish people vote in Erdogan?
If you really think the rest of the world is that dangerous, then block off all foreign websites...
How are either of those things worse than let's ban this propaganda but allow that propaganda? Is propaganda only bad if you happen to 'disagree' with it (ie not be as extensively indoctrinated by it)?
> Because you lose faith in everything.
Including, according to your argument, propaganda from who you think (because of propaganda) are on your side.
Propaganda from what is supposed to be your own side is actually, if anything, more repugnant and indefensible than 'enemy' propaganda.
> Even if your own govt. spies on you, stopping the propaganda of a foreign country takes precedence at all costs, if necessary, even by war.
So when your own country, while not spying on you, spreads propaganda in another country, you think it's totally understandable if that other country starts a war over it?
Yes. In today's world where mis-information and propaganda can topple governments and wreak havoc in societies, it's imperative that a destructive act of propaganda be seen akin to an actual act of war.
[edit to make less likely to cause problems for people reading HN in China]
Generally nothing happens to people who complain, unless they instigate mass protests or are deemed a threat to the state. As for whether govt officials listen to them: they do, although not always. Depends on the case.
In America, one politically incorrect mark may get you not allowed on social media at all, right from the start. It may also lead to your immediate termination from your job, if your single remark attracts any attention whatsoever online. You may be de-platformed. You may be sued. Your bank may decide to close your account. And the people are angry. They want to punish thought criminals. If you think the Bad Thoughts, you deserve everything you have coming to you.
In China, the government is remote, people are generally happy with the job it's doing, and no one wants to criticize it. So the rule of "don't criticize the government" is not a burdensome one, and (aside from a few vocal minorities at the fringes of society) people don't care.
Yet in America, the smorgasbord of people and thoughts you are not permitted to criticize are around you 24/7. They are pushed continually in the media you consume (for "representation"), promoted as heroes and "brave", and if you disagree with any of this, at all, you had better hold your tongue about it.
One of these countries deeply and heavily oppresses its populace, with continual threats of job loss, social ostracization, and suspicion about whom around you might be an informant, a political extremist or opportunist who will report your Bad Thoughts on the nearest social media platform and seek your immediate and total ruination.
The other country does no such thing, and the idea that you would have to live in a state of perpetually policing your thoughts to not get fired or ostracized seems bizarre and paranoid when you relate it to its people.
I'll let you guess which country is which.
Source: 30 years in the U.S., 10 years in China. Frequent travel between the two, and tons of exposure to many people in both.
It's a little naive to think that there would be a red herring found with a packet inspection, though the author deserves credit for settling doubts.
Will the US government use FB/Twitter to delete the supporters' posts for the candidates it doesn't like?
By Which definition you're referring to? Now ByteDance is desperately trying to find a way out of this. It shows CCP is not intended to save their ass like how they try to save Huawei. Because it's just a company without government background.
> They clearly believe that their method of governance is superior to Democracy and they have ambitions to become the world's superpower.
It is the Western World who believe Democracy is superior to any others without contexts.
Democracy is good of course on paper, however, it's usually used as a cause to target flawed developing countries and leaving them to burn in hell. The West got rid of Gaddafi, leaving Lybia people suffering even more. Assad was facing a similar situation, I believe if he died the situation in Syria would be much worse. They just want to judge, and don't give a shit about that they cause much more damages.
A quote from Lee Quan Yew from the interview with Charlie Rose[0]: "I think to make sure that they feel they're accepted at the top table." China was THE superpower for a very, very long time (For example, in terms of GDP, and here's a video on the historical comparison [1]). The situation is more like, China has its own system and it's not possible to largely change or its people would greatly suffer (as always according to Chinese history, or just like Eastern Europe), and they're not quite accepted because the system is radically different.
> They still have portraits proudly displayed of Mao Zedong FFS.
State media has already started to criticize Mao for years. They didn't do it at scale because it would piss-off most middle-aged or old people, and it's pointless. It's very likely they will do this after these generations have died. It's basically like when people talk about Washington they rarely talk about how he treats slaves.
[0] https://youtu.be/A8GwmsLXOx8?t=597 [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-2nqd6-ZXg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hercules_Posey
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oney_Judge
And he had no biological heirs which I can only imagine made it a breeze to not keep people in bondage.
It is always difficult to simply destroy your wealth after death. It would have been easier for him to Will all his slaves to whomever inherited the rest of his estate, or to simply sell them all before his death and give that money to causes he believed in (like setting up a university under his name).
No one at his time was going to criticize him. Heck other slave owners probably considered him too tender hearted for doing, what was in their minds the equivalent of releasing your prize horses into the wild to “run free” after you died.
Indoctrination North Korea would kill for, never mind China: George Washington "freed slaves".
Aside from owning (more than 300) human slaves, George Washington "yanked" the teeth from their heads for his own personal use[0], and he doesn't get enough credit for not doing that any more after he died either.
[0] https://www.phillytrib.com/commentary/coard-george-washingto...
Will they be exempt from China's national intelligence law?
Which means if it is still operated by ByteDance they will continuously remove contents they don't like.
But to be frank, there are much more companies are vulnerable to similar issues like Blizzard. Although they're not obligated to ban accounts that against China's interest, they do it anyway because they don't want to lose market.
If you're saying we shouldn't support China financially, I agree, but TikTok doesn't even scratch the surface on the ways in which Americans give money to Chinese companies. Banning TikTok might be the start of a larger set of sanctions against China, but that would have massive economic implications for the US, which aren't likely to be popular. I doubt this will happen. So banning TikTok as an economic sanction is a pretty meaningless gesture.
If you're saying we should be worried about TikTok collecting data on us: again, I agree, but I think we should be more concerned about American companies and government agencies collecting information on us. Every time I know of an American civilian has been arrested, shot by law enforcement, canceled, etc., it has been due to actions of Americans. Has even a single action been taken by the CCP against an American civilian?
Privacy is a fundamental human right, and it's unacceptable for the CCP, the US government, or US companies to violate that right. But if we're trying to protect ourselves, it makes sense to protect against the entities that are actually attacking us, and for US civilians, that's not the CCP. I don't see a strong argument for banning TikTok here that doesn't also apply to Facebook, Instagram, Google, or any of the various other corporations that collect data on you and then sell it to whoever will pay for it.
EDIT: I'm sure the person who downvoted this post in the time it took for the page to refresh after posting it read the whole thing. /s
Have you missed all of this year and last year? The trade war ship has long sailed
Compare to the 1979, 1984, 1995, and 1996 sanctions against Iran, each of which banned investment and trade with Iran in entire economic sectors. Such bans would be politically impossible for the US to direct toward china, since we are dependent on China for certain products--we literally don't have the production capacity to meet our own needs.
>USA bans Huawei
>TikTok becomes the most popular social app
>USA bans TikTok
Yeah it's totally because China is "evil" and not because we're losing our edge.
The majority of investors and high-stake owners of Bytedance are non-Chinese.
[0] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tiktok-cfius-exclusive/ex...
Our American friends are interested to teach our Chinese friends lessons by hitting hard on their public business faces. Never mind not talking about thousands of real state investments by Chinese people in US cities. Never mind, not talking about CCP atrocities on the Xinjiang people going way back at least 15 years (since when I am following).
It's not support for humanity, it's not about sudden urge for national security, it's about politics and populism.
[0] - https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/153944/burp-wit...
Checking wireshark should really be done first.
Like Boeing, Microsoft, GM, Apple, KFC, McDonalds, Proctor and Gamble GE, Nike, Coca-Cola? They all make billions annually and have dominant marketshare. American companies are everywhere.
Facebook and Google are the only two banned that I know of and it's because they didn't want to follow local regulations.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_websites_blocked_in_ma...
Free markets are a two way street, if one party refuses to participate then why is it not okay for the other party to block them? China refuses to participate by blocking American companies from competing in many Chinese markets and requiring Chine ownership of most companies that are in China. So there already isn't a free market, the US is simply acknowledging that fact and acting accordingly.
It would not surprise me if China retaliated and blocked american companies from selling in China.
Most are, Boeing I believe opened an assembly plant in China a couple years back. Even for the ones assembled in America the components may be built in other nations by subcontractors.
This makes no sense.
"Brands Smands" indeed, good luck getting consumers to buy PatriotSoda instead.
China could easily make the claim that Boeing have strong connections to the US government and using them is a threat to national security.
It's at least as relevant as brand penetration is.
In China, you can change the policies, but you can't change the party. In America, you can change the parties, but you cannot change the policy.
I would be shocked to see solid proof that tiktok is substantially more intrusive than snapchat or instagram. Data collection should be limited at the OS level anyway.
The only crime of tiktok is being chinese.