TikTok and WeChat: Curating and controlling global information flows
aspi.org.au
aspi.org.au
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Strategic_Policy_In...
ASPI sponsors and ICPC sponsors are listed separately on ASPI's official website for a reason.
But it’s really besides the point. Instead of attacking the authors or their sponsors, perhaps we should focus on the content instead. What’s happening here would be equivalent to me attacking you or the parent (and vice versa) for having a comment history pushing CCP talking points.
Also a couple of criticisms from Australian elected officials themselves
https://www.afr.com/policy/foreign-affairs/the-think-tank-be...
https://www.australiachinarelations.org/content/theres-more-...
on the ASPI who still defends the Iraq War, Syrian regime change war and argues that the west should have went to war in Ukraine.
There's a longer editorial version of the criticism here: https://thegrayzone.com/2020/03/26/forced-labor-china-us-nat...
Ya, no disagreements there. The Chinese government has zero PR capabilities. Every response from their foreign ministry's spokesperson to a leading question sounds like a painful mea culpa.
> No matter what is happening there, even what officials have officially shown western media, crosses our moral boundaries.
Who is "our" in this case? It doesn't seem to include the U.N. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-rights-un/china-say... or Organization of Islamic Cooperation https://www.oic-oci.org/docdown/?docID=4447&refID=1250. Not that any of them have more PR power than China either.
I don't think most consider the UN to be upholding Western values. That's also not their prerogative since they also aren't distinctly Western. The permanent members are: China, France, Russian Federation, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Sure, that's 3 to 2, but not exactly like US/Western overlords.
> OIC
Since when is the OIC considered "Western"?
> The Chinese government has zero PR capabilities.
> Not that any of them have more PR power than China either.
China has a lot of PR power. part of which is exactly what the article and topic at hand are about. This is so far removed from reality that I'm not exactly sure how to respond.
> I don't think most consider the UN to be upholding Western values.
Of course my reply doesn't respond to your questions on western values. It's the first time you bring up "western values". That's why I asked what you're referring to as "our".
> China has a lot of PR power. part of which is exactly what the article and topic at hand are about. This is so far removed from reality that I'm not exactly sure how to respond.
Maybe you're right. I wouldn't know how to quantify it. Can you name a single thing in the past decade came into your consciousness from Chinese PR (that isn't re-broadcasted from western editorials)?
> Since when is the OIC considered "Western"?
Wait, I thought the west cares about the whole thing now because of Muslim freedom and eagles and all. Now Muslim opinions on Muslims are irrelevant? That's the most "Western" thing to say :)
See my original comment
> Can you name a single thing in the past decade came into your consciousness from Chinese PR (that isn't re-broadcasted from western editorials)?
What's in the parenthesis makes that a near impossible criteria since western media does do global coverage depending on what you mean by editorials. It is important to remember that the media here doesn't have to report back to any single entity. There's multiple countries, multiple organizations. Each with their own bias. But every country does report on global news.
If we are considering news that isn't editorials, then yes, plenty. There's been plenty here on HN. TikTok's response was on the front page. Several news organizations have defended TikTok. Some have issued (non-editorial) pieces on both sides. There's a lot of talk of military, which is PR. Economics. Quite a lot of economics and how fast China is growing. That's PR too. How quickly China dealt with covid 19. That's PR too.
So either this is trivial or impossible depending on your statement in parenthesis.
> Now Muslim opinions on Muslims are irrelevant?
HN has rules about acting in good faith. Willfully misrepresenting comments, trolling, and baiting are not allowed here. [0]
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[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
> This is so far removed from reality that I'm not exactly sure how to respond.
HN has rules about acting in good faith. Willfully misrepresenting comments, trolling, and baiting are not allowed here. [0]
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
We're going places my friend.
Imagine if you are a Chinese person overseas, all of your family and friends are on wechat, then one day BAM it's all banned. Would you be thankful for US government for 'saving your personal information from CCP'?
The day that Apple removes Wechat from appstore is the day they sell their last iPhone in China. You can't live in China without it, simple as that. It essentially replaces phone numbers.
Actually, that's probably the only good justification for banning WeChat. If someone's views were formed by propaganda, when you disconnect them from their reinforcement, they'll probably at least mellow with time. The point to point communications features of WeChat can mostly be replaced, but less so with the social media aspects.
IIRC, the CCP spends considerable effort trying to maintain influence over the Chinese diaspora (for instance, by getting control of foreign Chinese-language newspapers), though this effort pales in comparison to their domestic efforts.
No. I will just buy iPhones for my parents and start using iMessage. I simply cannot wait to see WeChat got banned in Europe. Disclaimer: a Chinese living in Germany.
It's very difficult to say something like this and has an effect: "Mom and Dad, there's much cooler and securer chat app out there, let's try it out." They will just say WeChat is good enough and they don't care about privacy because they don't anything to hide.
But it'd be much easier to ask them like this: "Mom and Dad, those asshole Americans and Europeans and Australians banned WeChat and I can't reach out to you anymore, can we please switch to that much cooler and securer chat app?" This will likely work.
But to friends I am not so nice. I force them to communicate with me either through iMessage or email (or Telegram, but it's banned in China). Some friends switch to iPhone and we still keep in touch (but probably not solely because of me), and others didn't and we lose touch ever since. It's just a choice we all have to make at some point.
And also to be member of the world community.
Finally many Chinese people with friends in China are citizens.
Let's be clear: the Chinese government is going to cause its citizens great pain because it performs this information manipulation with its own technology. It is at fault if other countries take steps to protect the world from the CCP's actions, not the nations taking those steps. Don't victim-blame either the other countries or the Chinese people, both of who are harmed by the CCP's actions.
Speaking of information manipulation, just because people have the freedom to access all information, doesn't mean they won't be manipulated, you're seeing this happen in front of your very eyes.
At least in China people know they're not seeing the full story from the media. They know they can't access certain website because of censorship. In the US people just swallow whatever that they happen to see and believe, the results are comical.
In many ways, Chinese people are less manipulated than certain set of people in America. There were genuine anger when Li Wenliang died. But then eventually they realized that shits so much worse elsewhere - meanwhile in the US people still believe that disease China is worse because - manipulation? Or inability to overcome cognitive dissonance.
If we want to uphold freedom and be a part of the world community then yes, we in fact cannot sink to the same tactics and policies as the Chinese government.
Actually this is a well understood principle, and is in fact why our police cannot use criminal tactics to catch criminals (at least on paper).
Probably you might be aware of this https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/we-people-support-... Over 100k Chinese American petitioned to ban Wechat and TikTok in the US.
And for WeChat becoming so ubiquitous, it's a case of network effect. China isn't the outlier, the West is. Try living in South America without Whatsapp.
They censor nipples, kamallaharris.info website, and certain right wing groups.
I think the fact that you are this one-sided in the “censorship” department shows how propagandized you’ve become. Propaganda is everywhere, done by all factions. It’s not just something the communist party does. Every party does it.
Over 600k American petitioned banning Bill Gates' Foundation obviously.
We eventually settled down to use QQ which is also owned by Tencent. He also mentioned we could use this Tencent business meeting app, or that Alibaba business meeting app (dingding), but at that point i rejused. I was quite fed up after he couldn't to install Skepe on his phone. I think MS is one of the US companies that's so willing to bend over to most requests from Chinese gov but they are still treated like crap. If Trump bans QQ as well then I will just call my parents with the good old international telephone call. These Chinese tech co isn't gonna get another weekly active user just like that.
I even thought about setting up my own Jitsi server and let them just Jitsi to it, then i thought it must be even harder than installing Skype. VPN isn't an option. Any other way to circumvent the GFW will be too complicated for them. They will all be too low bandwidth to video chat anyway. Plus, illegal. You can find cases where individuals got punished because they use VPN. The government even lists them on a website. They ain't hiding or sugar-coating this crap no more.
So after this process, if you ask me, a Chinese living overseas, which side I'm gonna blame for how we got here, guess what, it won't be the US gov.
(Also this is from a burner account because I don't want nobody to knock on my parents door for this post.)
Also, you probably should buy your dad a computer.. I've never heard of anybody having trouble to install skype on a computer. Since Huawei was blocked from transaction with any US entity, I guess it make sense why Skype doesn't exist on Huawei store? Not by their choice if I have to guess.
Jitsi works in mobile web browsers and yes it can access camera
ByteDance (the same company as TikTok) launched feiliao [0, 1] last year to compete with WeChat but I don't think they gained much market share. Also, it obviously has no end to end encryption for chats.
The US government is not trying to 'win the minds' of wechat users.
Also, why would Apple pull it in China?
I think you are misunderstanding the motivations for the ban.
Sounds like a good initiative. Unfortunately, I expect most social media networks to resist that kind of regulation. Except maybe for TikTok and WeChat, since regulation would be better for them than the total ban they're facing.
The Australian Financial Review says:
The think tank behind Australia's changing view of China
The Department of Defence-backed Australian Strategic Policy Institute has become a flashpoint in the breakdown of consensus in Beijing.
https://www.afr.com/policy/foreign-affairs/the-think-tank-be...
If there was a real concern for users privacy and safety this would've been taken care of awhile ago.
All this is just war drums that try to seem like privacy concerns.
US corporate greed gave China a platform for world domination by offshoring everything. Now that the tiger is loose, us plebs need to go to war for them.
Bah.
It's generally best to avoid this trap by either talking about what the likely end results will be (fragmented web ecosystems bounded by per-country restrictions) or to talk in country-neutral objectives (no country should allow massive data collection and privacy breaches in apps, regardless of their place of origin).
Could unironically be answered “Yes, and?” in a rational discussion about geopolitical issues, especially one without a globalist (or specifically western) bent.
I’ve gone ahead and done that in response to the GP just now.
Friendship, joint ideals empathy, are not strictly rational.
You’re not coming to HN to look for a rational discussion of geopolitics, you’re looking for someone to agree with.
Doesn't seem like much of a choice.
I would say that no choice is more honest. The illusion of choice is a bit like the fake buttons on traffic lights, it's there to make you think you are in control of something while you are really not.
This might be naive but it seems like we have a much bigger privacy problem in the US.
Yes. It’s a separate issue.
If there was a real concern for users privacy and safety this would've been taken care of awhile ago.
Yes. The concern is over the entity exploiting the data, not the exploitation of data itself.
All this is just war drums that try to seem like privacy concerns.
It’s an explicitly political article that mentions China by name 7 times. ASPI is a defense & strategic policy thinktank.
US corporate greed gave China a platform for world domination by offshoring everything. Now that the tiger is loose, us plebs need to go to war for them.
The recommended actions are for governments & social media companies, not users or non policy making citizens.
I thought the point of social media networks was so that governments can conduct surveillance and information campaigns.
[1] It is claimed that "enough" could be under the corporate coffee budget.
[2] They might pronounce conducting these activities as "using custom and lookalike digital insights to create meaningful audiences and reach your business goals" however.
"This report recommends (on page 50) that governments implement transparent user data privacy and user data protection frameworks that apply to all social media networks. If companies refuse to comply with such frameworks, they shouldn’t be allowed to operate. Independent audits of social media algorithms should be conducted. Social media companies should be transparent about the guidelines that human moderators use and what impact their decisions have on their algorithms. Governments should require that all social media platforms investigate and disclose information operations being conducted on their platforms by state and non-state actors. Disclosures should include publicly releasing datasets linked to those information campaigns."
Yes. If we could get Google, Facebook etc. to do this. That would be great. Thanks, signed someone in Europe.
I don't get your worries. Yes your conversation will be monitored. But you know that. And let's face it, 99.9% of your conversation won't be political (I'm just making an educated guess here; I don't know you), nor about sensitive subjects.
If you want to talk about sensitive subjects, you can always ask those friends to get off Wechat and on a different channel, specifically for those subjects.
For the 99.9% of fun, personal conversations that are about cat photo sharing, pizza recipes and the latest celebrities, Wechat is not a problem. CCP really doesn't care about those, they just care that nobody on Wechat causes trouble (by their definition of "trouble").
When do you accidentally say something considered not OK, the worst that happens is that the message gets deleted. They don't go after people unless you're instigating mass protests or something like that.
You won't get advertisements about CCP propaganda. Unless you subscribe to those channels yourself.
Everything you put in there, the CCP will use to learn about you, your connections, your friends.
And what is a 'sensitive subject'? AI? NLP? Software? Portland Protest? Donald Trump?
"When do you accidentally say something considered not OK, the worst that happens is that the message gets deleted."
This is a really odd thing to say.
1) "When you accidentally say something" ... what kind of ridiculous world is that?
2) "Worst case, deleted" - obviously there are far worse things that can happen.
" get off Wechat and on a different channel, specifically for those subjects."
Yes, do that for everything.
I can tell you that AI, NLP, software, Portland Protest, and Donald Trump all aren't sensitive subjects.
Tiananmen obviously is.
But let's face it. Are you going to talk about Tiananmen and similar subjects all day long? Most Chinese people are apolitical. As I said, 99.9% of your conversations won't be about anything political.
Yes I get that you're ideologically opposed to censorship, and that we "shouldn't have to" move to a different platform to talk about certain subjects. I agree.
I'm not talking about ideology, I'm talking about what's practical. You want to put up a barrier between yourself and your Chinese friends on the odd chance that 0.1% of your conversations might be about Tiananmen, and you can't be bothered to move to another platform? You have to pick your battles.
Let's face it: even if you refuse to use Wechat due to ideology, you won't change anything about the censorship policy. And your Chinese friends clearly don't care, and if the Chinese government answers to anybody then it would be first to them, and maybe a few kilometers behind them, be interested in what you think. So why are you taking this ideological stance for them? Isn't Chinese censorship mainly their problem and not yours?
If you want to convince your Chinese friends of how evil CCP is, and therefore that they should ban Wechat, go ahead. But don't you think that it should be their choice and not yours?
This kind of thinking is exactly why WeChat should be banned. China has banned every other means of communication, so it's the only option. Banning WeChat isn't a provocation, it's reciprocation.
Of course censorship isn't okay, but US doesn't get to play world police.
And you're supporting this attack in order to spite China, while totally ignoring practical outcomes for Chinese people, the very people you claim to support?
"We support you, we just hate your government. So we'll forcefully liberate you, even if you didn't ask for liberation."
Live and let live. Is that so hard?
It doesn't matter why they are banning every other means of communication. The fact is, they are banned.
It's not a matter of spite. In every other area of international relations, reciprocation is how things get done. You tariff me, I tariff you. You restrict visas for me, I restrict visas for you.
It would suck for Chinese people overseas. That would be unfortunate. They should petition their government to unban a few means of communication!
It removes spying on US users.
But the ban is world wide. Even inside China. And there are no conditions, it's a ban that cannot be resolved.
Claims of spying is just an excuse. They want to burn China's prosperity down to the ground.
That is publicly stated policy.
There is no need for 'tit for tat' apps from China should be banned by every reasonable jurisdiction outside China for that reason alone.
Without even getting complicated, just using EU GDPR as a basis for banning it would be just fine under already established legislation.
We just went through the entire 20th century of trying to overcome such bad regimes, the only reason that China is able to get away with any of it is due to basic economic power i.e. trade interdependance.
So it's time to reconsider and realign - too bad Trump pulled out of the TPP because that would have been a good first step.
But at the same time you're also saying that, regardless of law, the fact that the Chinese government can monitor the data, is justification for banning all Chinese apps.
You're so proud of rule of law, but once it's about China you're throwing rule of law away, and the only reason is because you want to stick it to them?
If you limit your statement to "it should be banned because it violates concrete laws" then I would agree. But "it should be banned because it's Chinese" is absurd and unfair.
Look at the Tiktok ban: they accuse Tiktok of forwarding data to the CCP, yet no concrete evidence of such practice has ever been shown. Everything is based on the speculation that it could happen. Well, okay, we can solve that via a security audit, right? Audit all the infrastructure, all the firewall rules, all the communication channels, and exhaustively prove that privacy laws are being adhered to. But no, nobody's interested in such an investigation. Chinese apps are guilty until proven innocent, and nobody's interested in proof of innocence or proper due process. Is your belief in western values really that shallow?
You do recall there's a pretty high-profile movement of Chinese citizens, some of whom were waving American flags and asking for liberation?
https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/hong-kong-pro...
https://sg.news.yahoo.com/university-hong-kong-students-wave...
Note: there's no great firewall in Hong Kong, so it's normal that they post to Youtube.
Those US flag wavers were limited to some in Hong Kong only. The rest of the population (including Hong Kong) has a very different opinion. See the above videos, posted by Hong Kong'ers.
Furthermore, how exactly does the US plan to liberate people? Here's what's done so far:
- Hong Kong Human Rights bill, which damages the Hong Kong economy.
- Banning Chinese companies, which damages both the Chinese and the US economy.
I believe that your intentions are genuine, but I don't believe the US govt's intentions are. To them it's all a political game, like "liberating" Iraq from that evil dictator who conjured weapons of mass destruction out of nothing.
So? In 7.5 million people, you can find examples of pretty much any opinion you can think of. I can find videos from Westerners who will lecture you like they're reading from a CCP propaganda script.
> Those US flag wavers were limited to some in Hong Kong only.
Of course: anyone who did that in China outside of Hong Kong would have been arrested immediately, just like anyone who would try to do that now inside of Hong Kong (due to the new national security law).
> The rest of the population (including Hong Kong) has a very different opinion.
I'm not so sure, even before the national security law, a call for liberation would have been pushing the boundaries. If an opinion is literally illegal, it's impossible to say with any kind of reliability how prevalent that opinion truly is (or what kinds of opinions people would hold, without the threats and their second and third order effects).
> Furthermore, how exactly does the US plan to liberate people? Here's what's done so far:
> - Hong Kong Human Rights bill, which damages the Hong Kong economy.
> - Banning Chinese companies, which damages both the Chinese and the US economy.
The most obvious is to drop the economics uber alles outlook, and limit engagement to areas that might eventually lead to positive results on the human rights front.
>>> "We support you, we just hate your government. So we'll forcefully liberate you, even if you didn't ask for liberation."
>> You do recall there's a pretty high-profile movement of Chinese citizens, some of whom were waving American flags and asking for liberation?
> Furthermore, how exactly does the US plan to liberate people? Here's what's done so far:
I didn't say it had a plan or that it could, I was merely pointing out that as a matter of fact, that liberation was wanted and asked for.
When someone has an opinion that differs from yours, you downplay it as being an exception to the rule. For some reason, you stick to the default position that most Chinese people overwhelmingly want liberation from US, and that any evidence to the contrary is an anomaly.
It’s up to you to believe what you want. But I will let you know that I disagree, and that you ought to reexamine your axioms.
I watched a bit, but it seem to start reason from some East vs. West stereotypes so I took a peek at some of their other videos. One "National Security vs Democrazy: Analyzed with Facts and Logic" appeared to try to justify the new HK National Security law by appealing to superficial readings of some foreign laws, and the others like "Italians: "HK Separatists are Traitors, EU is Failing" - Keybros SOFTtalk Ep.2 🇮🇹 (3/3)" appear to be collections interview of random Westerners with rather fringe views. If they said anything interesting, feel free to summarize them in text, but I think I have better things to do with 20 minutes.
> When someone has an opinion that differs from yours, you downplay it as being an exception to the rule. For some reason, you stick to the default position that most Chinese people overwhelmingly want liberation from US, and that any evidence to the contrary is an anomaly.
You know, I didn't actually say any of what you claim I did.
Isn't you device already potentially compromised when you install WeChat?
On Android, isolation is not as strict and there are more holes. But each app runs as a separate Linux user, and with each Android version Google locks down the security model more.
Rootkits like you find on Windows just aren't possible on iOS and Android.
I believe they still allow clipboard snooping. I can't confirm nor deny whether Wechat does this.
Apple and Google should do something about that and further restrict their security model.
Except most people will never get those updates.
This is simply the US copying China this time. I support banning all Chinese apps. Let it begin.
1) FAANG does this too:
- I complain about that and so do many others here. Expect these people to also be upset about WeChat and TikTok. Anything else would be hypocritical. It is the same fight. We know. Stop the whataboutism.
- While FAANG often willingly shares data with the government and the many eyes, it is not unfettered. We've been making gains in the privacy regime and some of these companies are starting to say no (i.e. come back with a warrant).
- There is a difference, although slight (but meaningful), between a distribution of companies having my data vs a centralized body that controls all regulation.
- There's a difference between your own government having your data and a foreign government. Especially when tensions are escalating between them.
- See above where gov doesn't have unfettered access (not true in China).
- We're complaining about FAANG too, it just isn't relevant in a conversation about TikTok and WeChat and derails the conversation with whataboutism.
- Same reason we complain about Facebook over other apps. Scale matters. Of course we're going after the app with a billion users before we go for an app with 100k users.
- See 1.1. I'll complain about that too. Wouldn't touch it with a ten foot poll. No way.
- If you aren't looking for bias in every source that you read, what are you doing? Read, analyze, internalize. Every source has a bias. They define specific interests. Bias does not mean false. It is not a coup de ta. Yes, we should be aware, but people aren't bringing it up for the same reason we don't bring it up in literally every conversation: because we're aware and it often doesn't serve as a meaningful contribution to the discussion.