Judge temporarily blocks U.S. ban on TikTok downloads from U.S. app stores
reuters.com
reuters.com
This position is covered much more eloquently than I put it above in Ben Thompson's "The TikTok War" [1].
Trump's problem was that he wanted to hand out free tickets over the internet. Just don't do that.. problem solved.
If that's the limit of TikTok's power.. then I think we're going to be ok.
(my current bibliography only goes back to 1919, but a historical survey in a mid-century work came up with biblical examples of information warfare.)
There's absolutely no need. Facebook cooperates with three-letter agencies, and we expect them to.
I'd think that the guilty party should be prosecuted for doing things like that.
And the rest are run by the ultra-rich. They care about the interests of the Americans not much more than the CCP.
Two wrongs don't make a right. Work to improve our system rather than using our failures to normalize CCP oppression and violence.
I do believe it would be best to block all apps owned by the Chinese, but blocking them one by one would work as well, because it’s incredibly difficult and expensive to obtain the userbase that makes the app worth blocking.
You'd probably say 'potential' but just think about it, banning something for 'potential'. Is that where we are right now?
We gave an Australian US citizenship so he could get past the limit on foreign ownership of TV stations. He jumped right into bed with US political parties and has a chokehold on one of them by building itself, intentionally, as its media arm.
That said, I think the internet should be free for the most part. If we have to kick them out of the country and deprive them our markets then this should be done by law instead of by authoritarian decree. Google and Apple already have rules against apps that violate laws.
We had these laws and watered them down before because it would benefit a particular political party by putting an influence empire behind it. We just need to update and modernize the laws. Define specific things that are allowed and not allowed.
EG, GDPR-like privacy rules about not sending user data to Asia, with stiff penalties. Restrictions against allowing investment from individual and corporations (and subsidiaries) on a specific watch list, along with defined criteria for getting on that list. EG, Tencent's contending years ago to become the social credit provider for China to help manipulate populace behavior. I'd consider that a human right violation worthy of entry to a list after careful review.
Maybe if we had such things in place, the FBI wouldn't have had to wander around to all of the major US businesses a year or two ago, quietly begging them not to use Kaspersky because it was potentially sending data to Russia. They would either have not been on an approved vendor list due to their sanctions or they could provide sufficient evidence to get them on the list and then demand removal instead of beg for companies to do it voluntarily.
And if strengthening these laws means kicking out Fox News as well, so be it.
Honestly, given the amount of smearing and disinformation about China and Chinese government in Western media, I can honestly say the ccp is super weak at doing any kind of PR messaging. Half the world still believes the coronavirus is manufacturered by the Wuhan lab and is released to world as a bio weapon. Even when scientists have repeatedly debunked it as a conspiracy theory. It's almost as if ccp isn't even trying at controlling the public opinion. Just let the rumors fly wild. Back in April, I have seen so many videos about this conspiracy theory on Tiktok. Meanwhile, look at how fox news, PragerU and other conservative media are blaming China and defending Trump for things US scientists, public health experts and policy makers have called him on. Look at how they have attacked Dem cities and Dem leaders while promoting themselves as the just and righteous. This looks more like manipulating public opinion and pushing out propaganda to me.
I. e. they claim to have reserved far more tickets than capacity would allow to attend. But that seems to demonstrate that tickets weren't limited by capacity. So how did their action prevent other people from getting tickets?
Are you sure you need an explanation?
You mean one channel out of hundreds?
> controlled by one of the worst governments on Earth,
As opposed to our current channels of information, that are controlled by billionaires that also couldn’t care less about Americans?
Various forms of location data gathered from it, e.g. the location of any member of the military that uses it.
Launching pad for zero days if China feels the need to root someones (or many someones) phones.
Massive social graph, massive amounts of behavioral data. Useful, for doing things like identifying who was likely recruited by a spy agency or identifying potential assets that can be turned.
Potential to pressure speech that China prefers, e.g. by rewarding popular creators with money only if they don't say things China likes, or by decreasing the reach of people who say things China dislikes.
Potential for foreign control of the general trends of content people see. E.g. tweaking the algorithm so "it just happens" to suppress the potential to suppress topics china would prefer we didn't talk about (e.g. their "re-education" camps) or to boost topics they would prefer we did (likely things like political infighting).
Most of these involve various levels of overtness. Many of them it probably only makes sense to start doing once you've captured the market (right now it's more important to onboard more people than to push a message). But I would view all of them as real threats if I was the US government.
Are you uncomfortable adopting that belief with literally no concrete evidence that anything of the sort is actually occurring?
I don't know how you reconcile rule of law with such drastic interventions in the rights of companies without evidence of wrongdoing. If anything you can come up with in your most paranoid fantasies can be the basis of shutting down a company, pretty much anything can be done to anyone on the basis of anything, no?
If you think the CCP having this data could be a problem, you can't wait until they collect it all and use it in order to stop them.
There is a reason laws like GDPR prevent even the mere collection of data, and don't wait until Google does something wrong with the data in order to stop them.
It's not a company. It's a division of a foreign government. That was the point being made. If it was an independent company, none of this would be happening.
ByteDance Ltd. (Cayman) -> TikTok Ltd. (Cayman) -> TikTok LLC. (US)
Legally it is indeed a company and not controlled by the CCP, but exactly how much of its US operations are conducted and directed by non-US citizens on non-US soil is unknown.
First, it being incorporated in the Caymans is a technicality. ByteDance's headquarters are in Beijing[1] and they don't speak of a Cayman Islands office. In addition...
> As with many Chinese companies, the company has an internal Chinese Communist Party committee serving the party members among the employees, with vice president Zhang Fuping serving as its Party Committee Secretary. It also has a strategic partnership with the Ministry of Public Security for the ministry's public relations efforts, and joint ventures with a state-run publisher in Beijing and media firm in Shanghai. ... It has garnered public attention over allegations that it worked with the Chinese Communist Party to censor and surveil content pertaining to Xinjiang re-education camps and other topics the Party deemed controversial. [2]
[1] https://www.inputmag.com/culture/tiktok-weirdly-tries-to-sug...
A lot of companies are incorporated in the Cayman Islands, or in Ireland, or other tax havens, but we don't generally refer to them as Cayman companies or Irish companies.
TikTok's parent company ByteDance has sought permission from the Chinese government to export technology, Bloomberg reported Wednesday. ByteDance filed a request with the Beijing Municipal Commerce Bureau asking for approval to export its technology under restrictions recently implemented by the Chinese government, according to Bloomberg. [2]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ByteDance
[2] https://www.businessinsider.com/bytedance-seeks-china-govern...
It says right there in your link that Bytedance is legally a Cayman's Islands company.
Can you elaborate on this? As far as I can tell this is just not the case, and none of the people saying it are clarifying what they mean.
TLDR; the CCP does whatever it wants whenever it wants, and is deeply ingrained in every major corporation at the highest levels.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_People%27s...
[2] https://thediplomat.com/2019/12/politics-in-the-boardroom-th...
[3] https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3045053/c...
This isn’t playing the “devil’s advocate” (which-the devil here does not need any advocacy) this is a request to prove a potential negative.
Can we please retire the tactic of giving the devil representation in such a blatant and cavalier fashion?
there's got to be some limitation on where you draw the line on the government exercising this absolute and arbitrary power, i'm curious where exactly it is. could they shut down twitter for national security reasons? what about shopify - they're canadian, and the government is already levying tariffs against canadian imports for national security reasons, so the national security threat is already justified. should they be able to ban shopify with no concrete justification beyond claiming it's a vague threat to national security?
Maybe a better solution is allowing the us government unfettered access to source code, algorithms, data collection, etc.
Edit - it seems reasonable that if a private company is able to massively influence the countries politics they should be scrutinized more closely. IMO it’s like have 1 national newspaper, but it’s a social platform rather than newspaper.
Yeah... the Chinese could, like, get the inside scoop on some serious teen drama.
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-10-04/the-big-h...
Perhaps an appropriate response here would be to detect this manipulation and highlight and educate people about it. Possibly create regulation to outlaw specific types of highly problematic aspects of it. But I find it hard to simultaneously accept that it's both so subtle as to be undetectable and unregulatable and yet so terrible it warrants arbitrary restraint of free speech.
Protecting free speech of geopolitical competitors (China) and their economic agents (TikTok) is legitimate avenue for democratic destabilization.
It's pretty obvious: TikTok could be a potent propaganda tool, and in a time of increasing geopolitical tensions, you don't hand an adversary nation potential weapons like that. Also, Chinese intelligence is interested in collecting information on Americans (and others) that an app like TikTok could provide. For instance:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/11/us/politics/trump-china-t...
> WASHINGTON — The cyberattack on the Marriott hotel chain that collected personal details of roughly 500 million guests was part of a Chinese intelligence-gathering effort that also hacked health insurers and the security clearance files of millions more Americans, according to two people briefed on the investigation....
> Such information is exactly what the Chinese use to root out spies, recruit intelligence agents and build a rich repository of Americans’ personal data for future targeting. With those details and more that were stolen from insurers like Anthem, the Marriott data adds another critical element to the intelligence profile: travel habits.
> James A. Lewis, a cybersecurity expert at the Center for Strategic Studies in Washington, said the Chinese have collected “huge pots of data” to feed a Ministry of State Security database seeking to identify American spies — and the Chinese people talking to them.
> “Big data is the new wave for counterintelligence,” Mr. Lewis said.
I don't think you're saying that, though.
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/05/huawei-would-have-to-give-da...
"Huawei would be forced to hand over 5G data to the Chinese government if it was asked for it, because of national security laws, experts told CNBC."
...is really no different from the US, is it?
And while China has lots of problems, citing a lack of "rule of law" in this context is rather brave. Also: if you believe everything called "communist party" is "communist", you definitely have to pay the beer at the next "RePUBlican Party" meeting.
It is enormously different in that it is judicially reviewable (if not in need of an outright warrant) and the USA is a country where there are limits on government. This post, specifically the "judge temporarily blocks" is proof that the USA is a fundamentally different country.
> Also: if you believe everything called "communist party" is "communist", you definitely have to pay the beer at the next "RePUBlican Party" meeting.
I have not commented on communism as a general topic at all. I am specifically talking about the entity named the Chinese Communist Party.
The US government is already unconstitutionally doing what you say that judicial review prevents, and the partisan (by design) Supreme Court simply refuses to take the case. So much for judicial review.
There is no check for power, only balances of power. And power in the US tends to agree on such things as much as power within the CCP.
Consider what would happen if you decried the powers of the CCP on a China-based platform. Consider what would happen to you, personally, if you did so while living in China.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chinese_dissidents
Here's some internet-specific examples:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_China#A...
Obviously, China silences dissenters. However, most of the comments in this thread probably wouldn't even be removed.
Take this study (cited 1600 times) from Harvard:
https://gking.harvard.edu/publications/how-censorship-china-...
Both that can be true and it can also be true that the Chinese government is worse to their own citizens.
Every country on Earth gives its executive some discretion when dealing with foreign powers. The idea that TikTok should have the same due process rights as American corporations is naive (putting it mildly).
"Rule of law" means you need to have a specific rule to govern government's action. The use of the catch-all "national security" justification here is in itself proof that nothing better exists in US law, or they would cite that.
Among the free countries, I'm most familiar with the EU's laws: there are some provisions limiting, for example, acquisitions of land, mergers, and military technology to countries like China. But there's no "we don't like them" power. Those powers belong to a king, not a president.
EU companies have explicit guarantees against discrimination in other EU countries, and most every trade agreement contains similar provision. I believe even WTO rules, which both China and the US are theoretically bound by, would exclude arbitrary bans.
What I'm saying is it's largely hypocritical -- telling China they need to open up their markets to foreign businesses from America just the way Americans do for foreign entities, and then once a Chinese company becomes successful enough to garner the slightest bit of attention forcing a sale to an American company. It's exactly the thing America has been accusing China of doing for mandatory joint ventures.
They can do it, by all means, however it further erodes the brand value of America on the world stage as "open for business."
With those who are open for business.
This is basically America telling the world to accept American companies, no questions asked, no matter how big or manipulative. Criticizing other countries for their protectionist self-serving practices. And then literally the second a foreign product gets big and interesting enough forcing their sale to a US domestic entity. This is what America is complaining China does.
The worst part? Instead of trying to find some basis in law as one does in a rule-of-law jurisdiction, they just pulled out the national security™ ban-hammer, which cannot be challenged in a meaningful way. That's straight out of China's playbook. If rule of law is the china shop, national security justifications are the bull.
They just ceded the entirety of what was left of the high ground.
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/business/hershe...
And by the way, the US govt certainly pushes for free trade, but that actually means implementation on a bilateral country-by-country basis (a couple dozen countries or so by now). The public is certainly never going to go for unilateral free trade with anyone who wants to sell anything. I'm sure that's true for almost every country.
It's a Chinese company, they have privledges, not rights.
Going by “national security” reasons most countries should ban Facebook and google, not to mention amazon, Microsoft, oracle, Cisco etc. since the us government has already shown willingness and ability to spy on anything they can get their hands on, including foreign heads of state. Allowing US controlled social media and other tech companies is a huge risk.
Of course power doesn’t balance that way so they don’t.
What I find bizarre about the Tiktok ban is that they are being banned essentially on executive whim: as far as I can tell, there are no concrete allegations, much less evidence, that they're violating any US laws.
But it's not OK for the US to keep out spyware. Heck, retaliation for China's banning of Google etc would be sufficient justification for banning TikTok on its own.
What you are saying is that unless PRC becomes like the US, the US has to become like PRC. I'm amazed how this is not clear to anyone following this. The only way to go forward and not become what you are pointing fingers at is taking the high road. The US is clearly not doing so.
Plus it goes against the US's low restrictions and limitations on doing business.
If US wants to retaliate China by becoming more China, well, surely China isn’t the only one getting hurt.
It's like butting your head against the wall to teach the other fellow not to but his own head against the wall.
The issue isn’t a tit-for-tat they block, we block issue, with the US and China acting like playground children.
The issue is whether or not the rule-of-law still means anything in the US. Have the executive block things pretty much arbitrarily undermines the rule-of-law.
If the US wants to block Chinese companies, then pass laws in congress to do so. Don’t let your executive do an end run around your democratic process.
That's independent of the rule of law being preferable to the alternative.
The rule of law itself doesn't put much of a constraint on what the government can do, it just requires proper form.
That's not how the rule-of-law works. The bill of attainder doesn't allow the US gov't to punish an entity (or a group of) arbitrarily by legislating.
The legislative and executive branches have already been briefed on privacy and/or security threat Tiktok poses to US. The US senate already passed a bill to ban federal employees from using Tiktok on gov't issued devices, which is exactly what the legislative is supposed to be doing without overreaching and impinging on Americans' civil liberty, and Trump in turn issued executive orders to deter national security/privacy threats from foreign entities. The judicial branch likewise appropriately exercised their power by delaying Trump's EO and challenging his authority.
That's precisely how the rule-of-law is supposed to work in the US -- there is nothing novel or arbitrary here.
The courts are doing exactly that, determining whether the executive has the authority to implement this. This is in fact the rule-of-law in action.
This is also the reason why the rule-of-law is lacking in China, the courts rarely if ever finds against the government in constitutional matters like these. Their system was designed for the CCP to retain power.
Be noted that China is not a country under rule of law.
When Google was blocked, there was no primary legislation stipulating that online content shall be censored in whatsoever way. There were vague administrative rules (secondary legislation) with questionable applicability. Today, there is only one piece of primary legislation with a section on online censorship in China, but this section targets ISPs only, not content providers.
EDIT2: corrections
FWIW, Google already has a substantial presence in China, but they don't target consumers there.
I work at a French software company in Shanghai (outside any pilot zone fwiw) and we don't have or need a local partner. Our software is on-prem so data storage is not an issue.
* In a sense that Google didn't want to follow Chinese laws anymore.
The US Senate unanimously approved a bill banning federal employees from using TikTok on government-issued devices last month. So there is some consensus among lawmakers that some sort of privacy and/or security threat exists -- it's hardly on "executive whim."
I suspect the answer is that Tiktok is just doing the same as Facebook etc, and that's unacceptable only because the mined data might go to China.
As an example, they could make it illegal for all video hosting companies operating in the US to censor videos on Taiwan, Tienanmen and Tibet.
Which would probably run afoul of the first amendment. Freedom of speech requires freedom to refrain from speech.
But even if that would fail, I am sure that a team full of lawyer could find something which would be incompatible with Chinese law.
[1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/executive-or...
Yes.
Yes.
As a European, I believe in Europe (and in the rest of the world) we should definitively ban most US tech be it for ethical reasons or national security. Same for China.
EU Politicians don't seem to understand the situation yet, but given the current technological cold war happening, I hope we'll wake up soon and switch either to open tech or at least to our own local tech.
China's tech could also be used, but I am not a Trump supporter. I would be more afraid of Trump facist controlled NSA backdoors monitoring me than CCP seeing my dance moves
Neither Bytedance nor TikTok are Chinese companies.
It's true that Bytedance has buildings in Beijing, and a Chinese app (Taotiao) that is a Chinese subsidiary, but Bytedance is a Cayman's Islands company and TikTok doesn't even have servers inside China.
For purposes of the Chinese National Intelligence Law compelling the company to share user information with the CCP, Apple shares way more user data than TikTok does.
Sure, it's incorporated in the Caymans, but we all know that that is just a technicality.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/china-unlikely-approve-ti...
[0] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-10-04/the-big-h...
By the way, they never provided any proof and even better, claimed that their laptop broke when pressed.
Edit: this too? Mob mentality here. Sad. Lol if this is being downvoted I have some words for you.
A single laptop has likely hundreds of processing units, running unknown software, often with direct access to the memory buss. Building a secure devices however where every bit of code and every bit of hardware is designed domestically (and preferable in house) is so prohibitively expensive that no one do that. The hope is that if there is a security fault then someone else will find it and report it, and so a reputation system is the only economical viable method for hardware security in most consumer devices.
Edit: Quite a lot of high end cpu are now done in Taiwan TSMC, they caught up to US capabilities. But most of intels cpu's are still made in US.
The political regime of the countries you deal with is not a national security issue in itself, that's not what national security means. Certainly, 'dictatorship' is not a national security issue. Some of the US's "best friends" were, and are, dictatorships.
It is highly duplicitous to be sabre rattling over perceived ideological differences, when America's own ideology is couched in immensely contradicting - nay, hypocritical - failures to conduct state affairs according to International law.
>It's a Chinese company, they have privledges, not rights.
This is also true of American companies, especially those with a trillion dollar profit motive in the military-industrial endless-war market.
Be very, very careful about what doors you open with statements such as this:
>If you want some sort of smoking gun evidence you're not going to find it, unless you somehow have a security clearance in China good enough to gain knowledge about their operations
We know all too well how tightly wrapped up in its deep state secrets America's own heinous crimes against humanity are .. and if you are so sure of your own states innocence that you feel warranted in calling for other states' downfall for similar reasons, you must surely be willing to discuss America's own human rights abuses in a similar light.
No? Then the moral authority you claim does not exist.
It is pretty accepted no government has the higher morale ground. You can dig enough in any past or present to find evil or good.
Can you prove to me that any company, domestic or otherwise, operating in the US has its national security in mind over shareholder value?
Maybe not in the mass media, but the new cold war preceded Trump as an issue.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Asian_foreign_policy_of_t...
You should probably break the news to them, given their continued behavior I'm not sure they're aware it's all a front.
Iran, on the other hand, was a brit show up until Ajax (1953) or so: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran–United_Kingdom_relations#... The US would not formally take the baton before ending Suez (1957).
[1] In the lost opportunities department, General Wedemeyer on "who lost china?" (emphasis mine):
> "If Uncle Sugar, Russia, and Britain united strongly in their endeavor to bring about a coalition of these two political parties [the Kuomintang and the Chinese Communist Party] in China by coercing both sides to make realistic concessions, serious post-war disturbance may be averted and timely effective military employment of all Chinese may be obtained against the Japanese. I use the term coercion advisedly because it is my conviction that continued appeals to both sides couched in polite diplomatic terms will not accomplish unification."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Coady_Wedemeyer#China-B...
[2] thanks to burnaway's excellent search fu: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24490540 I learned US propaganda in 1914-1918 had not only been officially going to russia, but also the then-white entities (where American Expeditionary Forces were operating) archangel and siberia.
Other countries historically accompanying the US in the top GDP pair included the soviet union and japan, so no surprise that today china would get the two minutes hate.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_largest_h...
(right now I'd say india is too underdeveloped and too important a part of Oceania, but assuming the US remains in a position to believe it embodies power two or three decades from now, we'll see if india gets the hate, too.)
In my opinion, absolutely. Stop it now before it gets too powerful to ban. WeChat already has 19 million US users.
The status quo is that you only need some minor skill at language games to talk about forbidden topics without using any keywords that trigger censorship. With a ban in place, at least one of the participants additionally has to circumvent their country's firewall to reach the other side. Censoring censored media even more is not a good way to fight censorship.
I'm also not sure why you think "How much time would you really spend discussing Tiananmen or criticizing the CCP?" is talking about TikTok, since you can absolutely do that there https://www.tiktok.com/tag/tiananmen
Ideally people would stop using it by choice. Perhaps too much to ask, but I know enough people that wouldn't use it precisely because of these issues.
Agreed that it is easy to play language games, but maybe your intention is to draw attention of a larger crowd that would be completely oblivious to it.
Trying to "win the hearts and minds" of the Chinese people is a lost cause. Either they agree with the CCP or they've adapted to its restrictions. All we can do is try to keep that ideology from spreading beyond their borders.
US OpSec is terrible and it's still obvious.
How far reaching does the rule of law go? Like the US is governed by rule of law, but when you bring in international elements, can all parties operate under rule of law ?
It seems almost in this case that the argument made by the US is actually that TikTok is not governed under an agreed upon rule of laws. Such as it needing to share information with the CCP or having to comply to any other of their wishes.
Also, rule of laws just means the laws define the regulations which apply equally to everyone (which means everyone that bought into the society which honors those laws). So the question here is, do the laws give the president the ability to block a foreign company in such situation? If not, then this should be blocked, though laws could be made to block the company as well, just not exclusively enacted by the president.
Yes, Congress has given the President the power to “regulate, direct and compel, nullify, void, prevent or prohibit, any acquisition, holding, withholding, use, transfer, withdrawal, transportation, importation or exportation of, or dealing in, or exercising any right, power, or privilege with respect to, or transactions involving, any property in which any foreign country or a national thereof has any interest by any person, or with respect to any property, subject to the jurisdiction of the United States” [1], “to deal with any unusual and extraordinary threat, which has its source in whole or substantial part outside the United States, to the national security, foreign policy, or economy of the United States, if the President declares a national emergency with respect to such threat” [2]. This is the power that Trump is purporting to exercise.
They also published Bytedance’s written complaint for injunctive relief, but it’s hard to know which arguments the judge accepted: https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/tikto...
we don't need the evidence for TikTok's case when we already have the evidence of what Facebook is capable of (think about their A/B testing people without ethical considerations to whether they can be made depressed by showing them certain posts ... or the many other ways US social media giants are now critical to shaping the political discourse outside of the US from the UK to Myanmar to Hungary ...)
this isn't about hacking or 0days or even spying on Americans but about whether we allow them to control a machine that allows continuous manipulation of billions of people outside China.
Letting a non-ally control a social media platform and what content billions of people around the world are fed (or NOT fed) is too much of a risk for the US. Ofc the US does it too but their logic is that they're the "good guys".
It's about how much you're willing to (or forced to) give up in the name of national security.
Are we, years after the Snowden revelations, still pretending that USA is any better?
I suspect Tiktok is bending backwards to accomodate Trump, rehosting data in Oracle.
Fellow citizens you should be more afraid Trump monitoring you than CCP. If he gets reelected and you didn't vote for him, that is world Im scared of
Lol. The next conflict has been upon us for a while. Trade sanctions. Embargoes. Proxy wars. Information campaigns. We cannot see the forest through the trees.
https://www.military.com/daily-news/2019/12/30/army-follows-...
https://www.military.com/daily-news/2020/09/18/us-bans-wecha...
Since the sole arbiter of what constitutes a national security matter is the executive branch, whether or not it represents a material threat to national security is very much up for debate, proclamations aside.
[1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/proclamation...
Your linked position is that this is basically an ideological war, and that China won't quit until it has destroyed "liberalism." So why are you advocating the destruction of a key aspect of liberalism, the right to the free spread of ideas?
This reeks of classic red scare techniques. Those damn Chinese are more concerned with destroying our way of life than internal affairs, and we must abandon our values to stop the risk.
But I am. HN is a forum of quite intelligent people and surprises me to see so many people see US as a bastion of freedom...
Edit: Why did I think Instagram didn’t start in the US?
The article never hones in on anything specific to TikTok or makes a claim. From what I can tell, the two potential issues are concern of data collection with what that feeds and then a concept of influence.
The former feeds a learning algorithm that shows what people find entertaining, funny, interesting. Could this be weaponized? Potentially. My best guess how is that it simply shows what people in various regions like and dislike, providing food for propaganda and policies. So the app is just a vacuum that feeds some external process that may or may not feedback through the app. No doubt this very thing with Facebook’s data was weaponized in the 2016 U.S. election by Cambridge Analytica and other entities.
The latter possibility is one of influence. However, I do not see how TikTok is unique in this. In a different timeline, Facebook or Twitter or a multitude of other sites could have easily been used to hijack the rally, so that example is weak. If anything, the example is damning since there is a large possibility that Trump’s war on TikTok is one of personal vendetta that has been hypernormalized in the context of actual concerns between the U.S. and China and general concerns of the influence of social media. Further, there is factual evidence of Facebook being weaponized by organized groups to start protests and riots and people being influenced by foreign efforts.
From my stance, the question is why is just TikTok a concern? If it is a legitimate concern, which it probably is at least in theory, then these same concerns apply to other social networks. The other question is where does this all stop?
I agree it's a bit paranoid to block Tik Tok, but maybe if these company found a business model that didn't require my name, age, graph of all my acquaitance and pictures of all of this, maybe that would be better for the worlds ? Maybe we SHOULD ban social media on the principle that the risk of abuse outweighs any advantage ?
It's sadly, poorly communicated.
The CCP has entities within all Chinese corps to ensure they follow CCP policy which includes censoring individuals for all sorts of reasons. They will flag individuals for speaking out, possibly having them face arbitrary incarceration - all sorts of dystopian stuff.
This is well documented, and it's why 'WeChat' is getting banned outright.
TikTok is a slightly special case, because it's not an overt tool of CCP control, that said, anything and everything grabbed by TT can be used by the CCP for any and every reason.
Imagine if Donald Trump could order FB to provide detailed data on any Chinese user at any time, for whatever purposes.
I've referenced here several times how China literally has CCP entities within every company, this is 'normal' there I'm loathing to have to look up the reference yet again, but it's public information.
New information has come to light about ByteDance that's rather scary, from NPR:
"ByteDance CEO Zhang Yiming has made public statements showing he is "committed to promoting" the agenda of the Chinese Communist Party."
"ByteDance, according to the document, employs 130 Chinese Communist Party members at ByteDance's Beijing office."
"ByteDance employees organized a party in which they faced a Chinese Communist Party flag, "raised their right hand, clenched their fists, and reiterated their guarantee as a party member and vowed to never betray the party.""
This is pretty serious stuff in an autocratic nation with no judiciary etc.. The CCP is effectively forcing control of the entity, even on the basis of morale.
It would be one thing for Trump to be able to legally order FB for data, can you imagine the farce of him requiring FB employees to 'Pledge their fealty and loyalty to the GOP'?.
It would be better for the US Gov. - probably in concert with other nations to make some 'new rules' on this, because it's simply not going to work to have Chinese media apps in the 'rest of the world'. I would say the same for Russia and some other states.
Finally - there are simply issues of trade, on the basis alone, China wouldn't allow an American TikTok in China without censorship, and frankly, I suggest they just wouldn't allow it no matter what.
[1] https://www.npr.org/2020/09/26/917134452/new-doj-filing-tikt...
See Japan 1980s
Nah, the ideology is manufactured - we were just fine doing business with them and we keep being just fine doing business with the Saudis or any number of ideologically 'opposed countries.
1: https://bikez.com/motorcycles/kawasaki_kz_700-a1_1984.php
If it needs to be expedited, then it the POTUS should expedite the case, but we can't have arbitrary decisions being made like this without evidence, or we're like the CCP?
That mindset is an affront to what it means to be American and it is much more of a threat to our country and the rights of our citizens than TikTok could ever be.
See: the PATRIOT Act.
1 https://www.jenniferzengblog.com/home/2020/8/5/bytedance-hea...
[edit] added source.
Bytedance has TaoTiao inside China, which shares TaoTaio user information with the CCP, the same way that Apple has Apple Guizhou, which shares iCloud data with the CCP.
Neither Bytedance, or it's TikTok subsidiary, exist inside China, so there's no reason to suspect data sharing with the CCP without evidence.
Please stop spreading FUD.
> The spokesman says Mayer will continue to live in Los Angeles, but will "travel frequently to Bytedance’s headquarters in Beijing, as well as TikTok’s major offices in New York, London, Japan and India." There's no mention of any trips to the Cayman Islands, though.
https://www.inputmag.com/culture/tiktok-weirdly-tries-to-sug...
The information on TikTok probably isn't valuable, but we know how rich Facebook has gotten by building social graphs. The same is true of many social apps.
If it's a national security issue for Tiktok to operate in the US, it's a national security issue for facebook to operate in Canada.
That might be an advantage to the Communist party but it's not an advantage to China as a nation, or its citizenry.
Regardless of the risks and challenges increasingly posed by companies that have, at best, murky relationships with the folks in Zhongnanhai, attempting to circumvent this process is an outrageously offensive and damaging to the long-term ability for the US to be able to assert rule of law and democratic processes as the way forward.
One can cynically argue it was always a flimsy patina anyway, but the behavior of, whatever this is at the moment, is disorganized, suffers from shifting reasoning, dubious personal intervention by POTUS, and lacks the due process that we demand of the US government. There has been not a single shred of meaningful evidence presented to the public that TikTok itself is engaged in active spying or intelligence gathering on the part of the Beijing. I would not be surprised if the federal government had evidence that Bytedance is using TikTok for nefarious reasons, but as the saga has dragged on it becomes increasingly unclear what evidence exists. First it had to divest; now it has a "strategic partnership" that's somehow still being sold as a divestiture?
On what basis are we to trust the random proclamations of an executive branch that blatantly and unabashedly lies to the press and the public at-large even over trivial nonsense, declares all unfavorable news as "fake" and suffers endless information leaks from people who have repeatedly been burned by its mercurial cast of characters?
The approach Trump is using is arbitrary, and he seems more interested in engaging in crony capitalism than actually protecting the US.
This approach undermines the rule-of-law in the US, which alongside its democratic processes, is what US holds up as its reason for moral superiority in the world.
If the executive and they rest of the US really cares about this issue, then put legislation through congress. Put those much vaulted democratic process to work, and don’t support executives that seek to undermine those processes.
That or the president wants a Friendly social network to manage the news cycle of the election instead of a social network that is not so much influenced by him.
Those who control the news has the power to change perceptions.
This just seems like yet another case of Republican double speak. Say one thing do a different thing that just coincidentally happens to grab power over others.
Also, what is the method of using a 60 second video platform to share messaging with a crowd who will immediately scroll past anything heavy (or just plain stop using the app) to get to the next funny video? It seems a ultra low effectiveness medium for controlled messaging.
Look into what is mined. Look into how algorithms get optimized to influence behavior. See a recent paper on this with using social media to shut down a power plant. Memetic warfare is real and it’s been going on in cyberspace for a while now. Every single bit of information is manipulation.
Every social network is a memetic warfare piece and TikTok is a primary target.
Lol at the downvoting. Bunch of brainwashed people here already.
Citation needed. Come on.
My pessimistic side says they probably are, and maybe they even did.
https://www.thinkbox.tv/research/thinkbox-research/a-matter-...
[1] CIA didn't exist before 1947, so it would have to have been a different they for late 1920s, or even a different medium for "Remember the Maine!"
Bonus blog: https://joshuaspodek.com/north-korean-propaganda-our-adverti...
Also 60 seconds of video is a ton of information. And it’s not just one video at a time. The total session aggregated per user per active user is way higher than that. These are behaviors where users use the app all day. Their entire worldview is based on the content within the social network experience.
seek variety of manipulated information: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24600424
systematically analyse received information: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23897577
analyse especially source levels: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24459177
compare https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24403135 and remember we may have evolved big energy-guzzling brains in order to see through primate politics.
The Arthashastra recommends never acting on intelligence which hasn't been confirmed through at least three independent channels. Russian, swiss, and US secondary sources agree on the the underlying events of that scenario. I guess if the soviets really had had a highly-placed mole like Stierlitz, they could have done more, perhaps have been subtly encouraging top nazis first to prioritise ideology over pragmatism and then to get into speed, into the occult, and into the bunker.
However, I think a simpler explanation for the later events of 1945 would be: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23401308
====
Nighttime, 1944 Berlin: A ushanka-wearing man with skis and a parachute creeps silently along the hallway of an apartment building. He raps quickly on one of the doors.
A dishelved german in nightcap and house shoes opens after a few minutes.
"The eagles fly over the campfire. Repeat: the eagles fly over the campfire!" whispers the man in the hallway.
"Sorry," says the german, "I'm Otto Stierlitz the plumber, born 1904. You want Otto von Stierlitz the spy, born 1899. He lives up on the third floor."
Would that influence anybody?
A single 60 second video is not materially useful. But steady repetitive exposure to the same or similar messaging videos, is the foundation of TV advertising. There is likely some useful weaponization in there somewhere when the videos can be made without the assistance of a Madison Avenue crew and contract, and the consumers are pecking at the screen for more videos for long stretches of time like a pigeon in a psychology experiment.
Someone is going to try something to achieve controlled/directed opinion shaping with that kind of mass population behavior in a relatively regulation-free context compared to conventional centralized media. It has to be too tempting a centralized target to leave alone. Opinion shaping in these channels already is being attempted commercially. I'd like to hear from domain experts whether the metrics bear out such efforts actually work in the commercial sector, and if other domain experts in politics and defense think such experience warrants those sectors dabbling in making their own attempts.
Unlike the Boomers, who most definitely haven't been brainwashed by right-wing propaganda on Facebook and Fox News?
You’re absolutely correct that brainwashing happens on those mediums. It’s entirely interesting on one hand and entirely alarming on another. At this rate I’m not sure what the world at large can do given the technology out there to manipulate the populace. It leads to some very critical questions on how to exist.
You don't have to look far to know this hypothesis won't stand up to any scrutiny. Not only are TikTok users typically in the age range less likely to vote, but everyone is susceptible to propaganda and lies. There is a lot of US produced propaganda out there aimed at the older generations which is being lapped up by a public thirsty for negative partisanship and divisive rhetoric.
If the Tiktok generation has been undermined, then it's by the older generations who benefited from more favorable situations, grabbed the wealth and power for themselves, pulled the ladder up and now refuse to see how any of this is an issue and will fight to maintain an unequal situation as long as it favors them.
But that’s less my point, it’s more about the methods and attack vectors being an increased surface area now than ever before.
See here on why more so with TikTok generation: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24614815
Also: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perception_management
“Chinese military scholars argue that their nation has a long history of conducting "psychological operations", a phrase that connotes important aspects of strategic deception and, to a certain degree, what the US Department of Defense portrays as perception management. For example, several articles published by the PLA's Academy of Military Science (AMS) journal Zhongguo Junshi Kexue, examine psychological warfare and psychological operations mainly as a deception-oriented function of military strategy.”
China are extremely skilled at psyops.
At which point you’re being disingenuous.
The zoomers are entirely on internet platforms which has a higher degree of manipulation. Every single person is mined against. Every single person gets optimized against. There’s more room for coercion based on the algorithmic use targeting demographics, and with the capability of individual optimization with machine learning tech.
If the typical “hacker” can launch a botnet with GPT2 and automate conversation and thread demographics based on interactions putting a “group” into a human in loop pattern with a goal ... imagine what state actors are doing.
It scares me everytime I think about it how little $$ you need in order to reach e.g Reddit's front page.
It’s incredibly alarming what one can do with very little resources.
It’s downright horrifying or exciting when realizing what one can do with more than average resources.
In a way, that’s why I think the battleground is more “weird” than ever. It’s not just state actors, it’s factions of organized and convergent groups using memetic warfare. Some groups naturally converge towards each other. Take the anon’s, and various sects then overlay it with state actor and your smaller groups. Weird nameless stuff of massive influence and self organization.
That is more than enough boomers being algorithmically swayed to alter an election. As has been shown (Cambridge Analytica, etc...) Facebook's segmentation arguably offers more power to target it's user than Tiktok does.
Heck, people made this argument for the printing press.
Yes, ads have always been this. But no, it’s never been like this.
All that data on the internet is being used to train algorithms to sway global sentiment. This emerges as bots, ads, interactions, content. It’s mind blowing.
Sure, this is all hypothetical, but it's not unthinkable in an all out cyber war. Nations are stockpiling zero days and other hacks just to have an advantage when it becomes necessary.
Note: I don't have TikTok, so no clue if they actually use location services, but every app seems to do that nowadays, so I just assumed it does.
However, I'm less worried about whatever correct/incorrect info they get about Trump or politics in general. And more worried about the disturbing cultural trends that this app and others like it are amplifying. Culture can have strong effects on people's political/voting behavior and that's what I think is being addressed (as opposed to the spying/privacy/CCP concerns which are secondary yet used as the main reason behind this ban).
I am pretty sure that Facebook/Youtube/Twitter will be targeted next in some way, but probably not with outright bans such as what they did with TikTok.
Amnesty international was refused entry to observe the Assange trial. I don't know how it is on your FB search, your twitter search, even google news search, but this is harder information to find than i'd expect.
Perhaps this genuinely isn't as newsworthy as i was thinking it should be but then i feel like i have been privvy to every minute detail of Carrie Lam (and the CCP) vs the protestors.
If you deny voting rights to a certain group of people, politicians just don't have to care about them at all. They can do things that hurt that group, and no one is going to hold them accountable.
At this point, I believe we should stop discriminating based on age.
If the age of voting is lowered to 6 (as some have asked for: [1]) or even removed altogether what stops me from producing 5-10 kids and then having them vote for a political party that I support? That is 5-10 extra votes in just a decade. And if 1000 families do that, that would significantly tilt the outcome of an election. By the time they grow up to understand what their rights are and that they were being exploited by an adult they would feel disgusted that they were used (or rather misused). You are assuming that minors have inherent understanding of political issues at that young age. Most don't. And it is not reasonable to expect them to know.
Voting should only be enabled for those who are completely aware of their rights. Children typically are not. They are not political by nature. They are playful and more interested in learning things around them. Turning them into political ballots waiting to be exploited by adults around them is the last thing we need in this already fractured World.
[1]: https://reason.com/2018/12/07/should-we-let-children-vote-th...
You might want to read about on peer pressure and age influence here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2779518/
Do you really want your children to be exposed to political influence at such a tender age when they are already dealing with peer pressure, bullying and all other negative aspects that come with school life?
Giving them voting rights at such a young age will just make them all into activists or worse politicians. I see so many child activists who are just being exploited by their parents for making a quick buck. Most of what these children utter on TV is just stuff that have been told by their parents. If you talk to them outside of all this media circus you'll know that they are innocent and don't have much idea about the World except for doing what they are told.
This is what happens when you engage children in politics/activism: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVUhKpnv8-k
They are just not prepared for it. The moment you go off script the cookie crumbles. But keep aside politics/activism for a moment. Do you think it is fair that a child has to go through this sort of exploitation for what should be adults coming out with solutions? Because let us face it. This is exploitation. The child needs to be in school studying and enjoying with friends. She will never get back this youthful life again. We as adults are literally using children as props to settle our political issues. This is immoral and not right.
It may be a bad idea to do it, but this isn't the reason.
What exactly is stopping the Chinese from buying that same data? Name one hindrance they will face, please.
The delusional jingoism on HN is painful to fight.
You’re also ignoring the fact that they can use their apps to easily spread propaganda and influence elections. They’ve already censored videos that criticized the Chinese government. And inside the app then they have a very prominent “Covid-19” button where they can cherrypick what information to display.. they’ve for instance chosen to omit the fact that the Wuhan Virus originated in China.
Any social media platforms using the term "Wuhan Virus" would be a bigger sign of governmental propaganda than the lack is.
This trick is very effective in erasing the obvious link between the virus and its origin.
See https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/03/20/coronavirus...
Nobody is trying to erase "history" or anything. Anybody actually interested can always read about the origin location of the virus in Wikipedia. This is all about keeping things straightforward for the otherwise uninformed.
Note that this is a standard virus naming methodology. The Ebola virus was similarly intentionally named to avoid unintentionally creating a target for discrimination.
It shouldn't matter whether you think Wuhan virus or COVID is the propaganda-name, a company just defaulting to the most common term for their market is not a useful sign of propaganda.
Using Tik Tok's Covid information as proof of propaganda is just looking at noise and pretending it's data.
This is just an example. If I spend enough time, I can think of a whole lot more examples.
This administration has a significant pattern of their actual reasons deviating from their stated ones.
This was the genesis of the TSA, right?
Let's say the nuclear reactor site hosts a "post pictures of our site to Instagram" day. Then who has the data? And then suppose that the worker gets a text from someone impersonating his wife that says, "honey, you should text me some schematics of the plant." That would also be really bad.
And then suppose that the worker adopts a Chinese daughter, but really the daughter has been a Chinese spy the entire time, and on bring your daughter to work day she excuses herself to use the bathroom but actually goes and sabotages the plant by pulling an unguarded lever in a control room, sparking WW3. What is the US doing to protect against that happening?
Maybe you think these scenarios are unrealistic or that there are simple security measures that can mitigate them, but I want to stress that these are just examples. If I spend enough time, I can think of a whole lot more examples.
If I spend enough time, I can think of a whole lot more examples.
They already have [0]. Federal employees, however, do have personal cell phones. There have been multiple cases of militairy information being leaked through Facebook posts [1]. Also, these people have conversations with their significant others, who also have personal cell phones. Recently, a list of PoI's leaked from a Chinese data collection company, some of which were children of people in power [2]. It is not completely unthinkable that the phone of a child is hacked and is then used to compromise the home network of an influential person, or something like that.
I'm not saying that TikTok would facilitate this, I don't know. If there's any intelligence indicating that it's a possibility I fully understand that there is a response, however.
0: https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/senate-tiktok-ban-1.56767...
1: https://www.portsmouth.co.uk/news/defence-leaks-soar-mod-emp...
2: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/14/zhenhua-data-f...
The iOS app doesn’t request Location permission.
Or the could just buy that information from the phone companies or data brokers.
In regards to the value of 60 second funny videos to share messaging, part of the strength here may be exactly because it's a platform for short, funny videos; as long as the ideas being communicated can be slipped into a funny video in a subtle way, people are hearing them without even realising it. (e.g. perhaps videos making fun of American leaders, undermining their authority etc. - certainly not hard to do with certain leaders...)
A free press also includes a free press for people you disagree with.
But media you don't like being produced at all is perfectly compatible with a free press, including dislike because of influences and pressures you disapprove of. (In some sense, it would be extremely surprising if you liked all the media being produced.)
FWIW I don't think Facebook is likely any better in this area than TikTok, or indeed any social network or platform based around user generated content. It's likely always possible to create popular content that subconsciously influences people's thinking.
One thing that might separate Facebook from TikTok (for some people, not necessarily myself) is the question of "do I trust who is serving this content?" - in these days of algorithmically generated feeds, these companies can likely get away with more in terms of inserting specifically targeted content etc. without it looking suspicious, and have people assume it's showing because it's organically popular.
Politics is huge on TikTok.
the same can be said for imgur but it's very effective in presenting political content to a young audience which is as you say scrolling past. what makes it to the top is self regulating (by user upvotes) and still imgur has plenty of political content on the front page (twitter or reddit cut-outs with links to both OC and "deeper reading"). So I can't see why the same wouldn't work on TikTok (oddly one of the videos where a make-up tutorial was shared contained anti-Chinese content and criticism of how Uyghurs are treated - which went viral. Not sure if this is proof but it is certainly evidence that this isn't impossible).
TikTok relies much more heavily on an algorithm than FB, though. FB primarily pushes content posted by your friends, while TikTok pushes anything that might interest you. They can subtly influence you. If they hate Trump, the can push joke videos about tax returns and his sexual assault allegations or something. In other words, try creating an unconscious association between Trump and evil in your brain.
Another issue is that, if TikTok becomes crucial for advertisers, we give China power over these companies. Hiring people who have publicly expressed anti-chinese opinions or donating to the wrong politicians might suddenly ban you from the platform.
This used to be the case, but is very very far from the case now in my experience. Most facebook newsfeed content is algorithmically driven too (to the point that it's mostly put me off using facebook and pushed me to instagram where most content is still from people I explicitly chose to follow).
I think it's very naive to think that FB is not doing that.
So...like following Trump's tweets. That's indeed a great danger.
I am not R or D, I am Russian programmer who lives in Russia and likes to read.
One of things I've read already long ago is about priming: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5266685/
Showing one different pictures change walking speed, at the very least. And effects can last as long as year: http://www.bm.ust.hk/mark/files/staff/Bob/mkwyer-JCP-2014-24...
TikTok, being a massive analytical (see other discussions at HN) and priming platform, allows for quite interesting effects on the humans to be discovered and/or tested.
Facebook is primarily text which is low bandwidth and it goes through higher thinking. TikTok is high bandwidth from the start and is primarily analyzed using much older parts of brain.
I do not like Facebook (don't have account) and I vehemently hate TikTok.
Today Facebook is mostly images, livestreams and videos.
As an erstwhile small business owner it became very clear that business page posts with images always get more views so all informational posts always have images if you want to improve your engagement scores.
Most friend posts that are popular enough to spread to me include a gallery or shared video.
People make text comments on news stories and link a news website, which then pulls in an image/video. So often the headlines/images are misleading - as one finds on HN too.
I used TikTok for 6 months or so, even posted a video. To me the only content was ever goofy dances, magic tricks, acrobatics and 'pranks'. No more harmful than any other human-targeting Skinner Box.
Edit: To add necessary context for those unaware, TikTok's audience in the US is politically liberal. The buy out of Trump rally tickets a few months ago was organized there [2].
It's true that we should be talking about the security implications of foreign control over our social media platforms. It's also true that we should be concerned about a targeted ban (instead of, say, a general crackdown on foreign social media) on what amounts to a meetinghouse for Trump's critics by the Trump administration itself.
[1] https://replicationindex.com/2017/02/02/reconstruction-of-a-...
[2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/jemimamcevoy/2020/07/07/tiktok-...
I cannot discern whether author says that social priming research has replicability of 25% or social psychology has replication success of 25% and priming research has even less.
The scale at which TikTok operates is much larger than any studies that can be performed by a group of scientists. This is true for audience (or test subjects), amount of hardware used and for information gathered.
The link you provided still allows for some replicable effects to be present. Effects that were hypothesized, planned for discovery and then tested and brought to the light of day.
At the scale of TikTok, effects can be discovered without hypothesis first, just by using sheer analytical power available.
- Social priming does not replicate;
- Social psychology has a replicability rate of 25%.
[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-03755-2
Effects do exist.
You linked the full statement, and then focused in on only two words of that statement for your comment.
What about the linked article makes us think that this is something that the US government has the authority to step in and ban? We should skirt both the 1st Amendment and the free market over a social theory that might survive as a set of modest findings?
It's good that the courts are blocking this in the absence of a specific, credible threat. "Some effects do exist, but we don't really know what they are, and they're a lot more modest than the scare effects that people are familiar with" is not a specific, credible threat.
The threat of allowing the US government to get comfortable exercising ever more invasive control over the free market for questionable reasons, to the point of turning off or banning widely used communication channels -- that's a much more tangible threat than what I'm seeing linked in your article.
As usual, official justification and real reasons may be very different. The "security threat" may be direct and indirect. I tried to present a picture of indirect threat to the security of US.
My point is that the indirect threat to the security of the US through priming is statistically tenuous, that there's little reproducible evidence even from optimistic researchers that priming works on a significant scale (or at all), and that even if the threat is real it's likely much smaller than the threat posed by this kind of over-regulation and government overreach. My point is that a threat this vague doesn't warrant this kind of discussion in the first place.
The link you posted optimistically describes a very limited, focused effect that is still actively being debated. Is there any accepted scientific evidence, at all, that priming in a 60 second TikTok video would have a larger effect on the average person's politics than seeing friends share fake news on Facebook?
Actually, my beef with the Facebook is exactly the same - one does not control the feed, the feed is being controlled by Facebook.
And is there any accepted scientific evidence, at all, that this would change whether we should be more worried about priming effects in a TikTok video than fake news posts directly shared by friends and family?
> Actually, my beef with the Facebook is exactly the same - one does not control the feed, the feed is being controlled by Facebook.
Our concerns with Facebook aren't related to priming. If your concern is that centralization and control over algorithms can be dangerous (especially in the hands of an authoritarian regime like China), then I agree, but I don't see any particular reason why TikTok should pose a unique danger in that regard. CraigJPerry's original comment you replied to still seems pretty on-point:
> Surely Facebook’s a bigger issue than 60 second videos since any bad actor can target messaging at susceptibile users and no one will know.
> [...] what is the method of using a 60 second video platform to share messaging with a crowd who will immediately scroll past anything heavy (or just plain stop using the app) to get to the next funny video? It seems a ultra low effectiveness medium for controlled messaging.
The main conclusion I have is that TikTok may pose a danger (just like any social media network), but the dangers it poses are not big enough or well-defined enough to justify this kind of intrusion into the free market. Is that something you agree with?
Facebook is also doing priming, by controlling what user sees. Heck, even television and radio back in the day were used for priming, albeit not in such a direct feedback way.
About "intrusion into the free market".
I see "free market" as a neutral or even negative thing. I do not see "intrusion into the free market" as necessarily negative thing.
I see ban of TikTok as somewhat positive thing given my view on situation. I really want to see regulatory actions on Facebook too.
This is not how regulatory policy should work. I'm just going to repeat my first comment:
> It's good that the courts are blocking this in the absence of a specific, credible threat.
If anything, then that audience is a very interesting target for either:
- trying to convert them to more conservative ideas, by feeding them with messages that play on their feelings
- trying to get them to not vote, by discouraging it
- trying to incite violence against the other group in order to destabilize the country
Especially the last one is interesting for China. The second one has been (by their own word) effectively used by Cambridge Analytica in Trinidad to influence an election by discouraging young people to vote [0]. Imagine if there was an app, mostly used by impressionable teens and young adults, and you had unlimited access to the users of that app.
Agreed. Reading and writing are recent inventions and involve thought and deliberation. There's a reason why such skills were rare and highly valued in antiquity. It's reasonable to assume that a medium with an emphasis on text is less prone to (but not entirely exempt from) manipulation.
On a somewhat unrelated note, people like Elon Musk believe that "information overload" can be solved by increasing the bandwidth between the medium and the brain. I wonder if that's true, or whether the lower bandwidth is necessary because our newer brain (prefrontal cortex) simply isn't fast enough.
Keep in mind that one is a political party, the other one is a country.
Sometimes I think the information campaign begins as forced education in senseless abstractions, which do nothing but confuse children into adulthood.
Everyone focuses on tiktok which is kids making stupid videos, but zoom which almost certainly has massive amounts of highly sensitive info going through it, seems to raise very few eye brows comparatively.
Are you seriously suggesting that its easier to gather psychological data from short videos than it would be from therapy sessions held over zoom? Why would that even be more valuable to china than the traditional industry espinoge that would be trivial to extract over zoom. Hell, why would you expect that short videos made for the express purpose of trying to gain popularity would be more telling about someone's personality than their candid work interactions?
He was pranked and wants to retaliate.
Defenders of the trumpalump wanabee emperor are looking for ways to make this rational.
Really? They seem quite fine with the states last I looked, you 100% sure that statement shouldn't be the other way around?
Does the CCP demand everyone on Earth follow their communist ideals? Does the CCP send drones to go bomb weddings and children in far away countries they really have nothing to do with?
Honestly they are a refreshing superpower and do far less horrendous shit to the rest of the world if you ask me. Sorry about your failing broken nation but someone needs to say it.
Even the EU is over your constant need for war with Iran/China/$NEXTBADGUY and not playing ball, perhaps get a bigger toupee for the president and stop building an entire economy on perpetual warfare next time?
Also US government hasn't made a specific claim of any imminent security threat posed by TikTok.
From a data security point of view the expert opinion seems to be that there isn't a clear cut case for singling out and banning tiktok.
The ban is therefore undoubtedly a political move, and that is problematic. Things should not be banned on political whims by using executive or administrative measures.
Even legislative has limits, even if Congress passes a legislation banning TikTok, that legislation is likely to be struck down by the court is my guess.
Ultimately banning TikTok is not a tenable democratic solution to whatever real or perceived problems it is causing.
Some of the commenters here seems to want the democratic US government to suddenly grow authoritarian powers.
Congress and Executive branch can easily ban foreign companies from operating in the US and there is a long history of them doing so.
When it comes to TikTok, frankly I'm not sure if a foreign business under the thumb of the CCP is more or less a threat than businesses operating in our own country abusing the same freedoms for personal gain. You would assume those abusing the system located in the US had a vested interest in stability of the country for continuation of their lofty positions in society, but given broad anti-consumer and labor practices, both foreign and domestic are gutting the foundations of the social contract that make citizens want to believe in and support a democracy.
I think the biggest blow we've had in this country is widespread undermining and exploitation of its citizens for personal gain, which have left many unable or in some cases, unwilling, to support the continuation of the system being used against them.
> frankly I'm not sure if a foreign business under the thumb of the CCP is more or less a threat than businesses operating in our own country abusing the same freedoms for personal gain.
Now of course the US government can (and indeed has) abused its own citizens for political manipulation too, via these tools. But the key difference is that the US government is (at least, in theory, and I agree more needs to be done here...) accountable to US citizens. The CCP is not. The CCP isn't even accountable to its own citizens, both in theory and in practice, which is exactly why many are against the CCP's modus operandi in the first place.
> I think the information age has really pushed the limits of what we find acceptable to leave to independent choice in democratic societies. Freedoms in democracy are being abused left-and-right to highlight specific weaknesses fundamental a democracy's healthy function.
there is no right to any goods or services provided by a foreign entity. none.
prove me wrong by providing a link to a law, treaty, or other official rule that says otherwise. i'll wait.
You violate US law by spying on citizens, you get banned. As a foreign company you don't get a right to a trial.
The US Government does not have a relationship with your users - you do. If you get banned, your users have a right to sue you to recoup their costs. The US Government does not owe your users anything.
If you get banned from the supermarket for not wearing a mask, the supermarket doesn't owe anything to whoever you were making dinner for.
If there's no trial, who is to say that any law was violated?
Also it has been allowed to operate for years till now, What sudden change of circumstance has occurred that banning it is imperative now? The government has not made any explanation.
Ideal solution in this case would be to define a data security and privacy legislation through Congress applicable to all social networking apps/services and clarify the terms under which they can operate. Then if TikTok is complying with them they can operate and if they are in violation they face necessary consequences.
Instead what is happening is arbitrary misuse of executive/administrative powers to promulgate a ban without due process, and based merely on fear and speculation.
Though I think the reason is very clear, at least their official one. If you are a China based company the CCP by law has access to your data and they have abused access to sensitive and private data time and time again. Just because nothing has happened yet doesn't mean we shouldn't be proactive against China.
And I wish Congress would do something about it. The Chinese government deserves so much more then a TikTok ban and Congress could give the ban a more stable foundation then a executive order from a controversial administration.
It‘s really astonishing to what extent people are willing to be hypocrites not only but especially in the US... American exceptionalism, what a f*cking joke... Might explain how the Republican party and American establishment could create such a mess of the country. It would be funny if it wasn‘t so damn sad and dangerous for all the other countries and people. /rant
They are though. The powers of executive order used for the ban are specifically limited to prevent any banning or stopping the information flow of any forms of media and communication.
i.e. The U.S. President can't use executive orders to circumvent the first amendment.
Cuban cigars haven't broken any laws. Iranian ceramics haven't broken any laws.
The power to sanction / embargo is a very well established power of the government, and it doesn't require a trial. China has long been in violation of the Trafficking in Persons report[1] and, more recently, the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act[2]. Violation of the TIP report especially gives a very strong precedent for trade sanctions.
TikTok has been described as a national security threat multiple times by multiple political leaders. You may disagree with that designation, but the resulting ban itself is strongly supported by law and precedent.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trafficking_in_Persons_Report
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uyghur_Human_Rights_Policy_Act
[a] And before the “ByteDance isn’t American, so the Constitution doesn’t apply” argument, they actually do employ US citizens in a US office. There’s also the fact that the Constitution doesn’t differentiate between citizens and non-citizens, but that seems to be ignored nowadays.
This action is obviously not a bill of attainder:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_of_attainder
> A bill of attainder (also known as an act of attainder or writ of attainder or bill of penalties) is an act of a legislature declaring a person, or a group of persons, guilty of some crime, and punishing them, often without a trial.
1) The action was not taken by the legislature,
2) I do not believe it declares TikTok to be "guilty" of any crime,
3) I'm sure the district court judge knows what a bill of attainder is, would have said so if this was one.
That does not apply on a number of levels.
1) this ban is an act of the executive, not the legislature. It is not a bill.
2) this ban does not declare tik tok illegal (It's not clear what it even means for a product to be against the law).
3) The department of Commerce has a long history of... regulating commerce. It's what it does. If this kind of trade regulation was indeed unconstitutional, someone would have noticed by now.
It's also not clear whether a download is actually an importation, or whether the Department of Commerce has any bearing on a US company (Google) manufacturing new copies of a product based on a foreign design. (The Huawei case is far from decided!)
As for your third point: Someone did notice, and filed a lawsuit in federal court! This is an article about the ongoings about that case.
It's extremely ironic that the Trump administration (& their supporters) justify their control over US people and companies, preventing them engaging in normal everyday activities with Chinese partners, by saying "[X] is controllable by the CCP". Even whilst there is no evidence of the latter actually happening.
This is not even "pot meet kettle", this is the pot calling a fridge a kettle.
https://www.asiatimesfinancial.com/ccp-announces-plan-to-tak...
Further the CCP has already done the same to Western companies across the board. Let's not forget not only the atrocities committed against Uigher people, but the censorship of those atrocities.
Another possibility is that objective physical reality contains some information (some of which is Top Secret) that does not exist in your internal mental model of reality. An exact, always up to date copy would require something akin to omniscience.
Orientalism and westernism
Just seems a slippery slope, or how do you know if an American app isn't funnelling data to CCP.
The problem is mobiles open us to such attacks.
Furthermore, the CCP has 90+ million members. With the number of employees that Bytedance has in China, you'd expect — by proportion — that they have thousands of employees that are CCP members. But it's just a couple of hundred.
Bytedance's founder has made an effort to make this a global company, not a Chinese company, not a "CCP/state company". He believes in internationalism.
And yet here we are: Mike Pompeo calling him a "mouthpiece of the CCP", and many people on Hacker News believing that Tiktok is a big conspiracy to hack the United States. All without a fair investigation into who Bytedance is, how much of these fears are actually founded, or whether there are more productive solutions than kicking out all things Chinese.
The irony. Can you imagine what all this does to his pro-US stance, or what it does to all the pro-US people in China for that matter? Treating China as an enemy is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
> In addition, ByteDance on April 25, 2019, signed a strategic cooperation agreement with the Ministry of Public Security's Press and Publicity Bureau (公安部新聞宣傳局) in Beijing. The agreement was billed as "aiming to give full play to the professional technology and platform advantages of Toutiao and Tiktok in big data analysis," strengthen the creation and production of "public security new media works," boost "network influence and online discourse power," and enhance "public security propaganda, guidance, influence, and credibility," among other aspects.
Your article is also treating Tiktok and Douyin as if they're the same thing. They aren't, they are separate networks and datasets.
is that confirmed or is that a believe you have ?
> It feels like we're talking past each other.
I completely agree! I do feel like you and I and Ben (even after reading Ben's post) are still talking past each other. I am completely lost at the point where you say "A and B, therefore C, the US should ban TikTok." What is it about the combination of success and external control that means TikTok should be banned? Ben wrote:
> This [video-based content-rich algorithmically-controlled feed] both explains why TikTok succeeds, and why it is an app the United States ought to be concerned about.
I think that's a jump to conclusions that is illogical it does not follow from the priors.
You, Ben, and other advocates of a ban on TikTok try really hard to explain and prove Fact A, that TikTok is a uniquely successful mobile-first semi-social network/information sharing platform. You also describe Fact B, that ByteDance is vulnerable to CCP influence which is ideologically opposed to the US. You do well on both counts, I agree completely with these facts, they're pretty indisputable. I would probably use "different from" instead of "opposed" to frame the philosophical differences in a less antagonistic way, but still, I'm with you on these facts.
http://english.www.gov.cn/ is another platform that's controlled exclusively by the Chinese government. But no one's proposing a book-burning, that the US firewall all information controlled by the CCP or those with ideological differences. Twitter is a popular information-sharing social platform, and there are Chinese actors on it, but this argument isn't extended to suggest that it be banned, either. But somehow, a platform that does both must not be allowed to exist? I don't get it.
Is it that hard to understand? Twitter and Facebook will at least try to make a genuine effort to root out and ban "coordinated inauthentic activity" by the Chinese government (and if they don't they could probably be compelled to do so): https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/sep/23/facebook-.... A Chinese-owned TikTok won't: either it won't do it at all, or it will make a fake/bad-faith effort.
Similarly, Twitter and Facebook may gather a lot of non-public user data, but there's pretty much no chance that any of that data will be willingly handed over to Chinese intelligence.
It should be noted that Chinese intelligence is not exclusively after top secret government data: they're also interested in many kinds of mundane information that you might be surprised by that can be leveraged to get it: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/11/us/politics/trump-china-t....
Personally I think all the effort and resources spent policing social media platforms is a complete waste and malinvestment. This looks like an overreach of government power.
That's pretty clearly not the case. Context matters. For instance: if I shot someone in self defense, and you shot someone to murder them, we're not "no different" because we both performed the action of shooting a gun at someone. In that case, like this one, the context motivating the action is more important than the action itself in determining its meaning.
> Personally I think all the effort and resources spent policing social media platforms is a complete waste and malinvestment. This looks like an overreach of government power.
Some people say the same thing about having any military at all.
[1] Italicizing something like that is a common quote style, but I'm assuming you're italicizing your own statement for emphasis because that isn't anything like what I said.
> Perhaps the most powerful argument against taking any sort of action is that we aren’t China, and isn’t blocking TikTok something that China would do? Well yes, we know that is what they would do, because the Chinese government has blocked U.S. social networks for years. Wars, though, are fought not because we lust for battle, but because we pray for peace. If China is on the offensive against liberalism not only within its borders but within ours, it is in liberalism’s interest to cut off a vector that has taken root precisely because it is so brilliantly engineered to give humans exactly what they want.
By extension should we ignore someone who's selling 1 gram of heroin at a time but we should definitely put a guy transporting 1 ton of industrial hemp in prison, on the ground that hemp can be turned into pot, somehow.
Comparing heroin to heroin though, yes we do ignore someone who’s selling 1 gram of heroin at a time over someone selling 1 ton of heroin at a time.
You're saying it's comparing heroin to heroin, is it?
But I see the point you're making. I'd say that, in the case of hemp vs heroin, the guy transporting 1 ton of industrial hemp would be subject to close scrutiny since the product could be used for illicit purposes (turning into heroin). If there was any evidence or suspicion of foul play, his capability to transport industrial hemp would be removed and he would face investigation. I'd apply the same logic to software too.
But the difference is that it's hard to scrutinise closed-source software and it's also difficult to "trace" data and know that data isn't being harvested for re-use by the CCP for other nefarious purposes. We do have suspicion of foul play though – TikTok routinely blocks anything anti-China and we're aware of the massive data gathering that the CCP performs to monitor its own citizens. We also know they (and others) are manipulating western social media using the data they've gathered.
Your subsequent argument that TikTok is just full of people doing stupid things is, I think, a bit disingenuous to the potential for harm that TikTok is capable of. The top level commenters link (https://stratechery.com/2020/the-tiktok-war/) explains it quite well. It's also worth noting that the same argument could be made for any social media platform when they first got started. Example, facebook = "just a bunch of teens socialising online". Obviously if you're one of the people who doesn't think facebook has become a problem then this debate is pointless. But if you do see the harm that facebook has caused globally, I personally believe that TikTok has even greater potential for harm.
If we were debating something like "where shall we go for lunch, Restaurant A or B", most people here likely wouldn't have trouble identifying (or wouldn't deny the existence of) attributes that one might take into consideration (price, location, quality, cleanliness, decor, types and variety of dishes, friendliness of wait staff, etc), and differences in the values of those attributes.
If we slightly change the context to one where rather than comparing restaurants, we are instead comparing software applications (excluding code editors and operating systems, let's say: alarm clocks), most people could likely still competently exercise their systems analysis skills.
But if we make one more slight context change, from comparing alarm clocks, to comparing TikTok to Twitter/Facebook/etc, some very curious things start to happen. Suddenly, people seems to no longer have the ability to reliably identify attributes of each application, or that the value of those attributes differ.
What is the nature of this small context change, such that it seems to have such a remarkably negative effect on the systems analysis capabilities of human beings? On its face, the conversational behavior seems clearly illogical - and yet, based on my 10+ years on HN, I have a rich intuition that the average intelligence level around here is very high.
Something seems very paradoxical about this situation.
- Marketing and propaganda cloud everything they touch, and that one market is full of both. We can't even be certain of the public features of those platforms, because there are a bunch of incoherent messages controlling the communication channels.
- Most of the features of those products are not public. They impact your life, but you have no chance of even knowing they exist. Both platforms apply editorial governance on their contents, what kind and how much is anybody's guess. Both platforms profile their users, who has that profile and what they do with it is anybody's guess.
It is hard to discuss some unknowable thing over a noisy channel.
For example, higher in the thread someone seems unable to see a distinction between TikTok and Twitter, and even http://english.www.gov.cn. They indeed have many similar attributes, but this similarity seems to then be presumed to extend to all other attributes. There are blatantly obvious differences in both distinct attributes, and values of those attributes (otherwise, they wouldn't be different applications), yet people seem to be in some sort of a state where they cannot see them.
This is just one example, this thread is full of all sorts of other counter-intuitive (compared to historical norms on HN) behavior, or at least the surface level appearance of it. The way people describe observable reality is just....weird. How can there be such massive variance in observations between (presumably) intelligent people, but only under certain scenarios? And this isn't a one-off anomalous thread either, I strongly believe that this phenomenon has been present and clearly observable for quite some time now. Am I maybe imagining things?
Clearly establishing the problem is key on determining how it can be solved. e.g. The solution for foreign editorial influence will only make discourse control more concentrated, and the other way around.
That question was being asked in a roundabout way, but if you're not so generous, do you not pick up a bit of a whiff of incredulity?
>> http://english.www.gov.cn/ is another platform that's controlled exclusively by the Chinese government. But no one's proposing a book-burning, that the US firewall all information controlled by the CCP or those with ideological differences. Twitter is a popular information-sharing social platform, and there are Chinese actors on it, but this argument isn't extended to suggest that it be banned, either. But somehow, a platform that does both must not be allowed to exist? I don't get it.
"But somehow, a platform that does both must not be allowed to exist?" seems either disingenuous, or that the person is unable to realize that an application that has ~100M users (and significant usage/day), most in a young impressionable demographic, that consists of ~60 second viral videos, just might have distinct and noteworthy differences from a national security point than Twitter, or http://english.www.gov.cn.
To be clear: the onus is not on this person to disprove their counterpart's assertion, far from it. I am referring to the apparent inability to notice that a valid difference might exist, and all of this in a world where we've been constantly told by the media that Russian hackers have been undermining our democracy, and occurring on HN, a site frequented by some of the brightest minds on the planet when it comes to software.
And this is just one example. Reading through the rest of the discussions in this thread, is there not something that seems "a little off" in the way people describe reality? Are so many people simultaneously faking that they are literally unable to see any valid concerns here, or in the arguments put forth in their counterpart in each discussion (and this goes both ways), or are they literally unable to see?
If this was to happen in every thread on HN, one might just write it off to "people being people", but it doesn't happen in every thread, it only seems to happen in certain types of threads. Is this a coincidence? Am I seeing things? Or might something interesting actually be going on here? Is this odd behavior restricted only to HN, or do we see similar behavior elsewhere?
But anyway, the reason people are uneasy all over the thread is quite simple. Banning a platform this way is a serious interference on the freedoms of expression and initiative, but letting the platform unchecked is a serious offense to the US sovereignty. There are no good options among the ones presented to the people, and the real non-damaging options depend on coordinating a system that is so complex that nobody is certain that they can.
By the way, just for completeness, that's how people around the world feel about Facebook too.
That's a nice simple explanation, and perhaps there's truth to it, but people aren't just "uneasy" - if that was all that was going on, there wouldn't be such a massive variance in perception of reality, and I also suspect we wouldn't be observing so many instances of weird cognitive failure on simple tasks. I don't know what the explanation is, but something unique is going on that you do not see in other threads, on more complicated topics.
> Banning a platform this way is a serious interference on the freedoms of expression and initiative, but letting the platform unchecked is a serious offense to the US sovereignty.
I have the same take as you, but ours seems to be a minority opinion. Personal opinions on what should be done about the situation are perfectly appropriate, but widespread disagreement and confusion about what the state of affairs of this rather simple scenario, that seems like something else entirely.
> China is not simply resisting Western ideals of freedom, but seeking to impose their own
And that it is likely they would be willing to use TikTok to further their ideology in the US:
> China has already demonstrated a willingness to censor speech on a platform banned in China; how much of a leap is it to think that a Party committed to ideological dominance will forever leave a route directly into the hearts and minds of millions of Americans untouched?
While no one is proposing banning the other platforms you mentioned that are influenced by China, I feel like that is irrelevant from the TikTok argument. If the two statements above are taken at face value (or the whole article really), then it seems to me that TikTok is indeed a concerning platform when it comes to preserving liberal ideology.
You’re misreading that line. It’s: “This explains why TikTok succeeds, and why it is an app the United States ought to be concerned about. <continue reading post to find out why>”. The author subsequently explains why.
You mention that you get Fact A and Fact B. Fact C isn’t, “Therefore, TikTok should be banned”. Fact C, according to that post, is that China has begun ideological warfare. For supporters of a ban, Fact D then, is “The US should respond with defensive manoeuvres”. A ban is a defensive move. Nobody’s advocating for an offensive counter-attack (by running misinformation campaigns on their own social media platforms for instance). It’s perfectly reasonable to defend when under attack from a foreign entity.
Whether you think the US is under attack is the real question. But you said you agree with Fact B, so you agree that the possibility for China to use TikTok as a tool for ideological warfare is definitely there. The authors argument is that, combined with the evidence we’ve seen so far (censorship on domestic platforms, censorship on foreign platforms), maybe the US should be taking China’s own words on the matter more seriously.
If a platform is afraid that an adult might see a particular piece of information or a particular idea, and be radicalized by it, they've not adjusted to the Information Age. We might need a better way to authenticate trustworthy sources, but I don't think the attack from Tiktok is a sharing of authoritative facts, it's at worst a message that the Chinese government is less evil than the US would like to represent them.
https://techcrunch.com/2020/09/20/gangster-capitalism-and-th...
There is not enough information included in the article to meaningfully comment on the situation.
Edit: here is the order, which is very short: https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.222257/...
The opinion is under seal, and the parties have been directed to raise objections to unsealing it, if they wish.
The problem with not having a link isn't when you're already skeptical but when you aren't.
It's a messy problem, as checking news items takes a lot of effort and it's just impossible to deal with the news volume nowadays. Ideally I'd love to see some cooperative effort to check news items by many people with different ideologies/biases, but I think there's currently not enough manpower for that and it's also very easy to end with a biased set of checkers.
https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.222257/...
Nichols says while emergency economic powers of the president (IEEPA) give Trump broad latitude on national security, TikTok falls under an exemption for "informational materials," like a news wire and "personal communication"
[0]: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/09/judge-will-rule-...
China for having uncomfortable amounts of government control/vision over the data and operations of Chinese social media companies.
And the USA for singling out Tik Tok seemingly arbitrarily, and banning it for "national security" reasons without going into any detail about what they are or what evidence they have for them. (And it potentially violating 1A rights, being inconsistent with treatment of other foreign companies etc etc).
I'm making an assumption here that because of these two things it's mostly generally accepted that the Chinese surveillance state is "worse" than the USA surveillance state (and I largely agree with that take, but figured I should still state my priors here in case this isn't uncontroversial).
It’s McCarthyism all over again.
This type of behavior, coming from the very top of the US government, is unacceptable. It’s an erosion of your freedoms and needs to be vehemently fought.
This isn't McCarthyism, and to call it that shows a lack of understanding of what McCarthyism actually was.
Whether or not the ban is appropriate, there is nothing arbitrary about it.
Previously, when China did the same, this was widely viewed as an unfortunate restriction their freedoms -- the actions of an intrusive, authoritarian government.
Now that the US is itself considering doing the same, many in the west have suddenly adopted the attitude that China had it right all along.
Very surprising!
In the cases where the military dictatorship wants to jail a journalist (Assange) or has some protesters for a photo op, law no longer rules and instead the military just does what it wants without consequences.
Trump's narcissism notwithstanding, the natsec issue with these apps isn't that US citizens are communicating with others, including foreigners. It is that they are installing what may very well be Chinese government spyware on their phones, with detailed tracking and keylogging.
FWIW it would be interesting to keep an eye on what kind of permissions and access some of these PC gaming platforms have to peoples' workstations, as well.
But it's also worth addressing.
As near as I can tell, it is unfounded; there is almost no evidence to support it. The one potentially shady thing I know of that TikTok got caught doing was checking the clipboard every second, which it no longer does. TikTok's explanation is that it was an anti-spam feature. I know of no network analysis showing they were sending back the clipboard contents, or that they are sending anything other than normal analytics.
(Also, as an aside & for what it's worth, I personally think the data collection of Facebook is far worse than anything alleged against TikTok. They require you to provide your real name, they encourage you to give tons of other personal info, & they use trackers to tie your fb profile to your browsing history on non facebook websites. Then they sell targeted access to this profile to any advertiser that cares to pay, as their primary business model.)
(As a second aside, if TikTok is somehow gaining access to more personal info than standard analytics stuff, I would view that, for iOS devices at least, as a security flaw. I'm not that familiar with Android, but I assume the same applies there.)
Lastly, if TikTok is doing something nefarious, the proper way to handle it in a country ruled by laws is to have laws against the nefarious activity and prosecute the company for violation of said laws.
The president waking up one day and declaring TikTok bad and banning it is ridiculous, authoritarian behavior.
IMO :-)
This is the same reason why Europe should be also wary from both CCP and US administration.
Will TikTok remove Chinese propaganda on their platform, how would that conversation even go at their offices? Can we trust that TikTok will not in future censor things that China finds uncomfortable such as Taiwan being an independent country?
Just a few months ago HN was getting exercised about the rights of Hong Kongers. I'd say it is wholly consistent with the political beliefs of the average HNer to want to see a social network operating from within an autocratic state to be banned from operating, or at least under heavy scrutiny.
And ban “bad” propaganda movies and media from the CCP?
And ban direct conversation with known “bad actors” in the CCP?
This sounds like a really slippery slope to me.
China does not care about free speech, nor does it pretend to. Allowing a popular forum for speech to operate out of China is dangerous.
But China blocks American companies from their market, or extracts unfair concessions from them. So the US should do the same until they change their practices.
It's similar to how countries that want peace still need militaries -- that isn't a contradiction because militaries can help achieve peace. Similarly here, if you want free and open markets, you need to punish bad actors, like China, through things like sanctions.
Maybe that is true. I'm not sure. But if this is the real reason and national security is a fig leaf, then it is contrary to the rule of law and the constitution.
This is largely untrue. First, American companies have a far larger market presence in China than vice versa. Second, American companies have made massive returns on investment in China. They're in China because it's profitable for them.
There's a view that developing countries should immediately open their markets to complete, 100% unfettered access by all foreign companies. That might be great for foreign companies, but it would be terrible development policy. The host country would risk destroying any domestic industry it has. Developing countries benefit from some level of protectionism. There's nothing unfair about that - advanced companies from developed countries have enough of an advantage that they can still compete. Asking for 100% market opening on day 1 is like asking to eliminate weight classes in boxing in the name of fairness. That would be great for the heavyweights, but not so much for the featherweights.
The reason why we're stepping it up is because China has shown that they can domestically grow successful tech and social media companies that can penetrate the US market. It's not so much national security that's the issue more than it is insecurity in our fundamental beliefs that our system is inherently superior because they're now crossed the barrier higher up in the value chain. We gave them manufacturing just like we gave domestic immigrants the "dirty" jobs that no one wanted.
#1 is national security. #2 is trade, level playing field i.e. tit-for-tat policies.
Secondary issues are:
a) As you say, competitive fears - but TikTok is not a threat in that sense.
b) Trump's personal ambitions and elections. TT users apparently screwed up his GOP nomination event. Likely nothing at all to do with CCP, but Trump is an emotional guy, and I think this is 'him getting back at TT' on some level.
But #1 and #2 are legit and the first-order issues. There need be nothing else to legitimize this.
#2 Blocking apps used for the dissemination of information is a free-speech issue. China blocks information because that's what they believe in. US blocking information is fundamentally against our beliefs. If China jumped off a bridge would we do so as well?
#2 however is the true reason. We're getting insecure about our dominance in certain industries and are applying more "tit-for-tat" policies—even if they contradict our core beliefs.
If China wants to block US social media companies that should be perfectly fine. They get less domestic competition, and lower quality social media services should develop (in theory at least). We should welcome their competition despite this because competition breeds innovation and a healthy competitive landscape. However in reality we're resorting to tit-for-tat tactics because we're insecure about the fundamental superiority of a free and competitive market's ability to develop market-leading businesses and innovation.
I think there is an argument to be made that TT is not an open forum. The only party that speaks through the app is the Chinese government.
You're assuming that there are 'free market' conditions here (i.e. competition) - there are not. Not even close.
'Free market' ideals such as 'competition and innovation' are not the issues here, because a) there is no 'free market' and b) we're talking about mass media, which is really not about 'innovation'.
#1 is a very legitimate issue. To control the mass media, is to control a nation, this is not a 'new world order' concept, it's as old as time.
The CCP maintains it's power in China due to it's control over the media, not the army. By suppressing any and all information against them, and controlling all of the messaging people hear, and of course limiting outside access, you can effectively control people.
Media is a protected industry everywhere. Tell me who owns the main media outlets in Sweden? Germany? UK? USA? They are almost universally domestically owned and operated - when they are not (Rupert Murdoch) even then it creates problems.
The very existence of the BBC, CBC (Canada), ABC (Australia) speaks to this.
Imagine if the CCP itself wanted to buy NBC News. Would we allow that? No.
It's not a lite argument to say 'security' can be used for anything, after all any excuse can be used to validate something.
#1 is real.
As far as #2 - you're crossing streams.
China has a completely 'unlevel' playing field vis-a-vis the US in many markets. CCP controls monetary policy, industrial policy, major banks and most major industry players. This is 'not allowed' in free trade, because it means the CCP will do things like 'require large banks to subsidize solar panel makers to produce surplus to dump on US markets and put US players out of business'. This is not a hypothetical - it happened.
China doesn't allow foreign competitors in so many markets: foreign entities must be 51% China owned. They must have CCP officials working at the company to force CCP oversight. They must censor information, provide data to the CCP. Foreign entities must hand over IP to the CCP so they can give it to competitive entities. China puts up all sorts of non-market barriers to competition.
So when we talk about 'number 2' - the US, in order to provide a 'fair trade' scenario, should effectively apply the very same policies.
So imagine:
1) Chinese companies cannot operate in the US unless 51% US ownership. 2) They must employ GOP/CIA/FBI internally in order to effectuate US strategic policy, censorship. 3) Chinese companies must hand over source code and IP, so the US can give it to local companies while the US 'holds up' Chinese competitor in red tape. 4) US government takes control of the Fed, major banks, and provides massive subsidies to Cisco, and subsidizes Ciscos sales internationally with extremely good financing terms. 5) US government uses industrial espionage to grab Chinese IP and invest in local companies, for example, stealing all Huawei's designs etc., copying them, and creating a company to compete with them etc..
Those would be 'tit for tat' policies implying 'fair trade' between the US and China.
Your comments about 'concerns over competitiveness' are actually way, way further down the pile of issues.
As I say, 'national security' is reason enough for the ban.
After that, there are a host of 'fair trade' issues that should be applied.
Only then does it even make sense to start worrying about the more strategic competitive issues, because until then there is no market based competition.
And trying to control what media platforms are allowable... You sound like a communist Chinese official here.
Disallowing platforms that are controlled by totalitarian regimes like the CCP would be the rational result of any reasonable data protection policy like a 'slightly better GDPR' for example.
Protecting people's interests and basic national interests is not what the CCP is doing.
Then this is a case for WTO, which was successfully used in the past to resolve those kind of issues.
This needs a little more motivation. 19th-century China (and indeed, early 20th-century China) systematically broke the feet of all upper-class women, preventing them from ever being able to walk normally. But I don't think the primary reason we don't do that is that China stopped doing it.
Imagine, for example, an extremely convincing book is authored that convinces anyone that reads it that the United States government should disolve itself and its citizens should pledge fealty to China.
Quite credibly, the book could be described a national security threat to the US.
However, I would still argue that the book should not be banned, and that any country that wants to honestly describe itself as "free" could not ban the book.
Being a free country means giving citizens the right to engage with ideas that might not be aligned w/ the interests of its government.
But in a two directional medium, that allows an entity to soak up information .. well that's already a problem in the US. Europe saw it as so much of an issue they implemented GDPR (for better or worse) and California has similar legislation.
Information is way different, and we've already seen cases where TikTok has been caught reading clipboards (could just be to scan for tiktok links, but it could have also been harvesting additional data).
The US does not allow certain things to be imported/exported to other nations. We've seen that for decades with Cuba and various other embargo. If you get a book from an embargoed country, it's not illegal to have to distribute it (granted it doesn't contain illegal/obscene content). The Federal government can legislate foreign commerce.
If users had to address their videos to each other and they were delivered FIFO without priority, I would agree that they would be neutral.
But TikTok (and all social networks) are using algorithms to promote some content and demote others. This algorithm is an extremely powerful voice.
In 2016-2018, everyone was concerned about foreign countries influencing the election by running bots/ads on Facebook. Following the election, there were many policies put into place to try to prevent this bad behavior [1]. Fast forward to 2020 and there is documented proof of a foreign country controlling a social media algorithm and we aren't concerned?
[1] https://about.fb.com/news/2018/12/inside-feed-coordinated-in...
In this case, I'm not convinced there is - the nature of the alleged national security threat is very different from security threats in the past.
From recent actions in Hong Kong, it has been evident that the CCP will arrest and imprison people for criticising the CCP. If the suspicion is that the app gives the CCP access to vast amounts of information (including people's political views via their posts) on individual members of the public, including on the Chinese diaspora (placing relatives at risk in China or they themselves if they visit them) that is a different category of "national security threat". It's not just that it makes political or military strategy harder, or even that it foments domestic dissent (foreign propaganda of the past). The allegation is it directly puts civilians in jeopardy.
If the conclusion is that the app is such a threat (puts civilians in jeopardy to a foreign government), it would be odd to support its presence in app stores, used in playgrounds, etc.
You're clearly a lot more invested in this than I am. I'm not aware of any CIA kidnappings; I am aware of news headlines on HK media executives being arrested and am aware that the Chinese government is heavily invested in monitoring the views its diaspora express in a way that the US government isn't. (If an American called Trump a goose, they'd probably get upvotes. If someone called the Chinese leader something they might have more problems.)
Yes, the quantity is different, the quality I'm not sure about. Are Chinese internment camps worse than Gitmo or Abu Ghraib?
The Chinese have apparently kidnapped people off the street as well, but not in Western states to my knowledge. That's different with the US, though maybe they haven't kidnapped anyone in China or Russia.
It is a reasonable assumption that the CCP, which has expressed ideological opposition to the spread of democracy, will not be using information it gathers on US or European citizens in order to defend or promote democratic rights and freedoms globally. It's a reasonable assumption that western governments, who do have an ideological intention of spreading democracy and western-style freedoms, probably would want to promote individual rights and freedoms (and that is why China was wary of them).
How you see a stick depends on whether you think the person holding it will brandish it for or against you.
And when was America doing this? I seem to recall the last 15 years as being full of America attacking and occupying foreign nations to claim resources.
This seems to be getting caught up in general "pro-US"/"anti-US" or "pro-China"/"anti-China" sentiments on the forum. To be honest, I'm not interested in that or getting into general political discussions, though the question of how the tech environment will evolve around the world is very interesting to most of us that read this forum. Someone claimed it was "surprising" that Americans would support their companies operating overseas but oppose alleged data gathering by allegedly foreign-government-linked corporations. I expressed that I'm not surprised by that at all. That matches up pretty well with how I imagine the American public reacting.
Likewise I do think the nature of this allegation is different to national security allegations in the past. So far as I recall, this is the first time a national security risk allegation has been about mass data collection on civilians from the regular operation of an app. Cambridge Analytica is perhaps the closest equivalent, and that got shut down pretty quickly even though it was a company run in another western country.
I'm more afraid of the guy holding a stick over my head than the guy a mile away, no matter what that dude is up to.
Last week it was discovered that an additional half a million Tibetans [1] were sent to join the Uighurs in labor camps. When do the democracies of the world say enough is enough? These are vast numbers of human lives being cast into the inferno because they aren't Han Chinese.
[1] https://www.smh.com.au/world/asia/china-forces-500-000-tibet...
Predatory loans on ports in Africa and their subsequent control by the CCP are by proxy tools of dominion.
There are more than a million people whose only crime was they were not Han Chinese who have been sent to camps. It is an ethical imperative to make a stand.
Yes, I already said I was afraid of the US Government.
The US Government is attempting to restrict the activities of certain Chinese companies to prevent private information from getting out.
In fact we should start a movement to migrate away from any US based OS or programming languages, cleaning our IT stack from foreign interference.
OK so one country... mildly contained. Now finish the job and do the other 193 countries.
Really third world country stuff where extreme nationalism is used hide crony capitalism.
PRC blocks applications which are critical of the regime and are not openly sharing data with the CCP[1]. The US is blocking applications due to legitimate concerns[2]. I don't know how both can be the same.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_websites_blocked_in_ma...
At very least consider China bans foreign apps because they won't help the CCP oppress their own citizens, which is obviously not the case in the US.
Late-stage capitalism, per Wikipedia:
> Since 2016, the term has been used in the United States and Canada to refer to perceived absurdities, contradictions, crises, injustices, and inequality created by modern business development.
Sounds just like this TikTok fiasco.
Apparently they were spending $10-$30 to acquire an active user and expecting to generate $5 of revenue per user in the US, implying a revenue payback period of 2-6 years.
Some ugly unit economics.
A 2 yr product lifecycle would be a $240 CLV meaning you just need 12% conversion rate to break even, which you don't even care about in growth mode. $30 CPA is more than reasonable.
Cash coming from the CCP is pretty much infinite, especially given the massive US trade deficit.
The internet has turned into a war zone of perception management involving state and non state entities. The non state entities are able to do things in quite powerful ways never before possible for a civilian level technology. Any hacker with creativity and GPT2 can manipulate hordes of people with a human in a loop pattern.
These services are causing the world to become politically unstable by stoking up rage for the purpose of selling ads. This is the biggest threat to our shared future.
Now that America has lead the way, it's hopeful we'll see such a response.
No, it's not. The power the President is asserting might be authorized under statute, though that's actually one of the questions in dispute.
Shut em all down !
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook–Cambridge_Analytica...
https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2019/09/ftc-s...
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/04/03/599069424...
If you can't give a shit about the security of your user's personal information / safety , you shouldn't exist.
You need to self regulate though and assume all data you give these companies will be sold. At this point unless it's ride sharing , apps don't get my location. If they means I can't use the apps, that's fine.
It wouldn't be the worst thing if tommorow Social Media was effectively banned. It's done enough wrong in the world
Yes they will suck during the first years, get barely enough customers to survive, but eventually they will get there with enough perseverance.
The current administration is only making everyone aware that the globalisation days are over.
Neither the companies (Q-on-Q) nor the politicians (4-6 years ) have long term incentive to do lasting change by pushing unpopular policies.
I agree that this doesn't align with the US's general approach to this sort of thing. That is a fault with the US's general approach, not with privacy protections.
It's the major reason for social media's success, not the internet. The internet was successful long before social media.
> It has allowed many companies to become extremely wealthy and invest back into the ecosystem.
What? It monopolized the ecosystem. Not the same thing.
Email's early versions weren't strongly privacy-protecting.
Most social media already obey GDPR for European users (I suspect TikTok included), so having this law in the US will benefit every user everywhere by forcing companies to treat everyone uniformly with a higher level of protection by default due to the majority of their userbase being covered by such laws.
There’s not an equivalent of the notion that every human life has intrinsic value, which is traced back to Christianity.
Therefore there isn’t a specific reason why it is wrong for the government to kill an arbitrary number of innocent people if it furthers the overall good.
That’s just one example.
Edit: I didn’t mean a specific reason, I meant a specific and overwhelming, basically non-negotiable reason, which maps to an equivalent in to the U.S. as an example.
i dont accept US moderation in my life with YouTube, twitter, or facebook. the fact that we're arguing the merit of CCP moderation of our youth is strictly a nonstarter; its crazy talk.
/sarcasm
If I decided to start calling it PHTT (Protocol for Hyper-Text Transfer), I'd be rightly viewed as a complete idiot.
TikTok is under fire because it’s a piece of software from China. We’ve turned a blind eye to hardware security and the fact that the iPhone and nearly every other mainstream consumer device is manufactured in China and likely contain backdoors far more sinister than userland applications can muster. We can not and should not have such double standards when it comes to foreign policy.
The cherry on top, though, is that Western governments are far more sinister than China. Your local government has the capability to act upon the surveillance data that they collect on you, since you are in their jurisdiction. China, by comparison, can’t do anything to you except protect you from such local surveillance.
If the US dislikes China so much, place an embargo and see how long it takes for Uncle Sam’s evil empire to crumble.
Don't forget: TikTok is under fire because Zuckerberg convinced Trump that it should be.
The state that took on the British Empire, Geronimo, the Confederacy, Imperial Japan, Nazi Germany, the USSR, pissing its pants over a mindless phone app for 12 year olds.
See perception management: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perception_management
Just depends on what you care about. For the majority of citizens democracy matters because different policies have an obvious impact on daily life.
In other words, if you think it's OK to steal our intellectual property, then we do the same. OK, to ban, block and force business structures, we treat you exactly as you treat us. Ban chunks of the international internet? No problem, you are treated the same.
Yes, I know this is simplistic. Yet, I think there's merit to the idea that we treat each other as we each choose to treat the other. I don't say this in a religious sense at all (atheist). I say this as a starting point from which a relationship can be refined and framed in less sophomoric terms. The alternative is to start from a position of absolute contempt for the other it is difficult to shift the relationship towards the middle. Just look at the, sadly, plentiful history of contentious divorces for examples of this.
BTW, I am not saying this in a US-centric fashion. China has been predatory to almost every nation of the world. From the tip of South America to the northern reaches of Europe and everything in between. They ought to live by the same rules they impose on everyone wishing to do business in China.
Another thing that deeply bothers me are the Chinese companies listed in US stock exchanges, none of which seem to comply with US regulatory and accounting requirements. In other words, they are likely as opaque as can be, or worse, they could be fabricating financials. US and other investors could be in for a horrific awakening as investment in these companies could very well be a house of cards.
I do believe framing the TikTok problem in terms of national security is wrong.
The correct term would be "global security". The US happens to be mounting resistance at this stage, yet other nations should think this through carefully. The most important fact to understand here is that the Chinese Communist Party has their hooks into absolutely everything in China. It might look benevolent when you buy your $28 blender at Walmart, but, in the long term, the equation that drives decision-making at the CCP isn't one that seeks to improve the lives of the Walmart shopper. Read Sun Tzu, it's all there. Now add ideology, motive and objectives.
As a parent I do not want my kids anywhere close to these algorithms. I also don't care for my kids to be anywhere close to the Facebook algorithms.
Imagine, if you will, if the US federal government had --by force, by law-- full access to all of the data from Facebook, Google, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, etc.
Would you be comfortable with that reality?
I would not. Not one bit.
Why then, is it OK for the CCP to have their hooks into everything that reaches international shores that has "Made in China" in it?
I think it is fair to say that nobody is comfortable with their own government (anywhere in the world) having detailed access to all of their most intimate social media/internet data.
How could anyone be in favor of the CCP having exactly that access through, quite literally, every Chinese company doing business internationally?
For me, from a Libertarian/Classical Liberal perspective, this isn't about hating China --I do not, they should be free to do as they please within their own nation. This is about a general principle:
No government in the world should be allowed to sink their hooks into internet companies to turn everything we touch with our phones, computers and TV's into surveillance data from birth until death. That would be --and I hope everyone agrees with this-- unequivocally wrong, evil, disturbing and can lead to nothing good in the long term.
This is not how free human beings are supposed to live on this planet. Going from free animals roaming the plains to being entries in massive databases with unique identifiers tattooed on our backs is far from freedom. It's the internet turning humanity into cattle. Add the power of government to that and anyone should be able to understand why this TikTok mess is the right fight to have at this moment in time.
If not now, when?
Only its US operations.
From the Wikipedia link for ByteDance:
> ByteDance's first app, Neihan Duanzi, was shut down in 2018 by the National Radio and Television Administration. In response, Zhang issued an apology stating that the app was "incommensurate with socialist core values", that it had a "weak" implementation of Xi Jinping Thought, and promised that ByteDance would "further deepen cooperation" with the ruling Chinese Communist Party to better promote its policies.[7][8][9]
> It has garnered public attention over allegations that it worked with the Chinese Communist Party to censor and surveil content pertaining to Xinjiang re-education camps and other topics the Party deemed controversial.[18][19][20]
I mostly follow sports/cycling/ski stuff on Instagram. What is the most liked/viral content in any category..? It's probably a woman with tight or almost no clothes on. So even when I get a ski video, it's often some babe posing in ski boots and nothing else. Or for cycling it's a woman with the top unzipped. Opening Instagram is basically NSFW even though I've never liked a picture like that or follow those kind of accounts.
And well, most of the content on Reels are reuploads of TikToks or old viral videos. So not much interesting to see.
[0] https://indianexpress.com/article/technology/social/mitron-c...
This is a really naïve world view—not that TikTok isn't potentially a channel of propaganda, but that we somehow are free of propaganda in the US. The Trump administration is a source of propaganda. The Democratic party is a source of propaganda. Propaganda is basically any speech from any biased source. The only significant difference between China and the US isn't that one practices propaganda but that China limits their propaganda to only one source.
Blacklisting "propaganda" from sources you don't like is in fact censorship. If we start blocking China because we don't like what they are telling us, why stop there? Why not start blocking propaganda from the Trump critics.
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/22/technology/apple-no-longe...
Why the Western world accepts as legitimate the products of a closed society that relies on ubiquitous censorship and withholds free access to the outside world through a national firewall is hard for me to fathom. I have lived in China, South Korea, and Taiwan off and on for decades and believe the people of PRC deserve better.
I agree, people of many countries deserve much better. However restricting trade, sanctions, undermining diplomatic relationships etc rarely do anything other than harm the citizens of the country. It's difficult but not impossible to tell someone off while doing the same thing yourself.
As far as national security goes, the US has a checkered history of interfering with other countries.
As far as the rights of citizens within a country again a checkered modern history.
As far as political manipulation .... etc etc, I think you get the picture.
I am not saying the US is as bad as China, but some of their actions would surely deserve reprimand as well. But I doubt the US is sitting there and doing this for the "concerns" of the residents of these countries.
Now in the case of TikTok, I think this is a great case for protection of data in ALL countries. GDPR is a good example of this.