Comment by yurlungur | Hacker News Reader

Comment by yurlungur | Hacker News Reader

It's so ironic that mainstream opinions in the US are nowadays so ideologically charged that TikTok is assumed, without proof, to be 100% controlled by the Chinese government and therefore this forced takeover is justified one way or another.

You see arguments all the time that start with "CCP is evil, X is Chinese, therefore...", which would basically justify any and every action against all Chinese entities.

Meanwhile, if you have even close to a clue about what's going on in China you'd know that ByteDance is bending over backwards trying to position itself as a multinational corporation with independence from the Chinese government, all in utter futility of course. That action actually drew the ire from the mouthpieces of the party.

Some rumors say that the reason TikTok announced the potential deal so fast is to make it so that the Chinese government won't intervene and turn it into another Huawei situation. Well, that kind of reasoning seems to be based on a purely fictional assumption that the US government is still operating on principal or in good faith.

There is no way to prove beyond doubt that ByteDance isn't having their data watched by the CCP, or that the CCP won't forcibly take their data in the future. That's just part of dealing with a company based in a country like China. You don't need proof that ByteDance is controlled by the CCP. You just need to see the way CCP deals with companies in its country, and the powers they have over companies within their borders.

Note: Yes, the US gov can do the same thing to US companies to some extent. But this about ByteDance and the CCP. And I think the assumption that you can't trust a Chinese based comapny (because of the CCP) is justified.

The way I see it...

If ByteDance is letting the Chinese government use their other app, Douyin, as a propaganda platform for the CCP and banning entire races from using it in their native language on their direction: https://www.codastory.com/authoritarian-tech/xinjiang-china-...

And entering joint ventures with CCP owned media companies https://www.reuters.com/article/us-bytedance-filing/bytedanc...

... then why shouldn't people assume they're not independent of the CCP?

By that logic, you also can’t trust a US based company because of the US military intelligence community, which makes a Microsoft-run TikTok no more or less safe than a ByteDance-run one.

Which gets us back to square one about comparing the danger of each.

TRUE! Except this is the US government acting in the interests of the US government, you see?

No more or less safe to who?

It's the US Government doing this. The US Government probably doesn't view itself as a threat.

The users of the app, naturally. The concerns over it being a CCP-controlled app are about the risks to the users of the app.

Having it be a US-controlled app does not reduce those risks.

> There is no way to prove beyond doubt that ByteDance isn't having their data watched by the CCP

Is there a way to prove after Snowden that there is no direct data pipe between Microsoft data centers and NSA

I'll speak for myself only, but if the choice is between the US gov't (or any Western gov't) having my data versus China having it, I'll pick the Western countries.

to be honest, you'd rather have the government other than your place of living to have your data.

Not necessarily. For example, if your data contains something that is embarrassing but not illegal, a foreign government is more likely decide to use that to blackmail you into committing crimes (say, industrial espionage) on their behalf.

this is not technically impossible, but a slippery slope to go on, I wouldn't risk prison time just to save an embarrassment for sure.

For most, this depends on how serious the embarrassment is, and how much risk there is of getting caught.

> There is no way to prove beyond doubt that ByteDance isn't having their data watched by the CCP

Same is true for Microsoft.

World powers’ signals intelligence services don’t only monitor domestic or domestically-owned traffic.

I already addressed this in my comment. This decision is about the US government acting in the best interests of the US government. I was making the point that from a foreign interference perspective, the decision is justified.

> I already addressed this in my comment.

No, you didn't even attempt to. You addressed a concern about US government monitoring of Microsoft (which seems to be based on the same false premise that intelligence services only monitor domestic entities).

My point, which you did not address, is that transfer to a US owner doesn't somehow mean you have a guarantee that the PRC intelligence apparatus isn't monitoring it, just as it currently being owned by a Chinese entity doesn't provide a guarantee that the NSA isn't monitoring it.

So your argument is that any data that exists in the world might be monitored by the PRC, therefore we shouldn't be more wary of companies that operate inside the PRC because the PRC could be spying on everything everywhere anyway? Weak argument.

> You don't need proof that ByteDance is controlled by the CCP

Well, there is a counter proof. One of ByteDance's app (com.ss.android.essay.joke) was shutdown by CCP in 2018. Bytedance is a victim of governments bullies.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/11/technology/china-toutiao-...

> Vulgar content on the Neihan Duanzi app had “caused strong dislike among internet users,” a brief notice from the State Administration of Radio and Television said. The company was told to clean up its other platforms, too.

That's actually not a counter proof. It shows that they couldn't stand up to the bully. We don't have to question the Tiktok leadership's intent, just the CCP's intent and its ability.

That... just shows that ByteDance will do what the CCP says. Which is exactly the problem being discussed here.

> ByteDance will do what the CCP says

If bytedance does what CCP says there won't be any app shutdown in the first place.

For the exact same logic - there is no way to prove beyond doubt that you are not stealing money from your mum!

Correct. And so when the government assesses my risk when going for a clearence or job application, they will look at whether I have a history of theft, a criminal record, etc. We can see the CCP's track record when doing the risk assessment of TikTok.

Which is not the same comparison. That would be that kids have a track record of stealing from their moms, and since you're a kid you don't get clearance.

The same can be said about US companies as well, or not?

I mention this in my comment. The same can be said for US companies. But this is the US government making a decision about TikTok. And obviously the US government is okay with their own companies seeing the data. This isn't about that. This is about the US Gov assessing the risk of data being collected by the CCP. And I'm saying that the decision is justified based on the CCP's track record.

No need to justify anything. The US gov can do whatever it wants

the thing that troubles me that an entertainment platform becoming a national security risk. what is the boundary?

> “CCP is evil, X is Chinese, therefore...”

This may seem like a tragic misattribution, but I think the more widely this is understood the clearer it is how much of a pure practical liability an oppressive totalitarian regime is (in addition to the pure evilness of it in Carse’s infinite game sense).

If you are trying to build a business not liable to be exploited by CCP, you have to build it elsewhere. Considering regime specifics, namely nonexistent freedoms and checks as far as government intervening in corporations’ private business, CCP can be pretty much considered a “parent company” of any business, and it has eroded trust in itself for some credible reasons.

And sadly, that might be the only practical way companies will be disincentivized from doing business with China. I sincerely hope that this happens, and then maybe China will be forced to show more respect for human rights and the rule of law, again not out of any fundamental change of heart, but purely for economic reasons.

Can you elaborate on how ByteDance is trying to earn independence from the Chinese Gov? I'm genuinely just curious, to educate myself. From what I've read, they have a deep CCP governance and partnerships with Chinese state-owned media organizations.

You can probably try to find the English version of the memo in this news here: https://www.scmp.com/tech/apps-social/article/3095822/byteda...

But in any case. I did not say ByteDance is substantially moving towards independence from the Chinese government (what does that even mean, should it disobey laws in the country it's operating in?) and I'm not privy to any inside information as to how tightly integrated it is with the party. I'm just saying that it is trying to position itself as such.

Really? https://www.reuters.com/article/us-bytedance-filing/bytedanc...

What is TikTok doing, other than selling its international operations, that would prevent it from having to provide foreign users’ data to the Chinese government at their request?

I think there could be some reasonable guardrails. For one, its servers could be fully hosted in the US (if it's not already the case today), and it could be subjugated to US laws and regulations that require user information be protected. Its data infrastructure and code could be audited and if found breaching such laws it could be punished accordingly.

On a side note, neither Google or Facebook could comply with the Chinese law that require their servers to be hosted inside China. But I'm not saying that justifies TikTok's business in the US either.

But do we have laws requiring user data be protected? Aside from the new California law, we don't have anything like GDPR nationwide, do we?

Isn't that the onus of the US government and congress? Regardless, since TikTok is considered a potential national security risk, I'm sure plenty of existing laws would cover it if not others already.

> and it could be subjugated to US laws and regulations that require user information be protected

Do laws exist that prevent US companies from providing data to foreign law enforcement in the other countries where they operate? Because from my limited experience with Chinese passport holders, if the Ministry of State Security asks you to do something, you do it. Unless they're planning to remove admin access from every TikTok employee with a Chinese passport it doesn't really matter where the data is hosted.

This is a good question. I assume that any company with operations in a foreign country is going to cooperate with local laws. I suppose you could limit data requests to domestic users only, but I have no idea if that would fly.

> TikTok is assumed, without proof, to be 100% controlled by the Chinese government

All companies operating in China are 100% controlled by the Chinese government, because there is nothing the Chinese government is actually prevented from doing, and with regard to access to information, the PLA can essentially ask for anything for any reason without appeal. The legislature is more of a propaganda ritual than an actual legislature.

One need not prove that TikTok is particularly controlled by the Chinese government.

All these arguments are strange, all companies operate within the law of the country they are in. All countries have an national security letters/demand Let’s call it as it is, Americans don’t want China to have there data, but meh not my problem for the Rest of the world when it comes to Facebook and Twitter data

>You see arguments all the time that start with "CCP is evil, X is Chinese, therefore...", which would basically justify any and every action against all Chinese entities.

You know they're running concentration camps directly comparable to Nazi Germany right? Like they're mid-genocide right now.

Yes any and every action against all Chinese entities is justified. Total economic blockade is the least the rest of the world should be doing.

>Meanwhile, if you have even close to a clue about what's going on in China you'd know that ByteDance is bending over backwards trying to position itself as a multinational corporation with independence from the Chinese government

This seems kind of tonedeaf to say when you consider what is happening to Hong Kong right now. Why should anyone believe that ByteDance, a mere 100B dollar company, can have independence from the CCP, when that same government is seemingly itching to have to tanks rolling down Hong Kong?

Position. Like I can position myself to have the starting pose of a master martial artist... and just be completely bluffing my further competence in whatever technique you're thinking of.

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