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Comment by gruez | Hacker News Reader

Do you really want China to have the social media history (secrets, likes/dislikes, usage profile) of our future leaders?

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From Tik Tok? Sure, I can't picture a scenario where that would matter much.

"Our server logs show that you were actively engaged with racist/sexist/transphobic video when you were 19. It would be a real shame if that got out. We could make it all disappear, if you helped us in the next round of trade talks..."

Maybe, but I don't think China has enough credibility in the US to blackmail anyone. The leader can simply claim it's Chinese propaganda and China wouldn't have a way to prove it, AFAIK.

Edit: Plus if that's all it takes to blackmail someone you can probably just bribe them with money or something just as easily.

It’s not like the headlines are going to be “China says ...”. It’ll be reported via an anonymous source, or some credible person that they also control.

Maybe I am, but if it's that easy to blackmail a person, why would that person not also just be willing to take a bribe? If they care that much about themselves over their country. It just doesn't seem that realistic to me.

Both political parties already elect people that have sexual assault allegations against them, have done racist things, sexist things, etc. I don't think anything on Tik Tok is gonna be scandalous enough to blackmail over.

Do you really want big tech and alphabet soup agencies to have the social media history (secrets, likes/dislikes, usage profile) of our future leaders?

You can sue big tech. If you're a Western leader, you're more likely to be aligned with Western security agencies, than with China.

They already do, so I don't understand the point of asking this. Why does another government (that is becoming increasingly at odds with our own by the day) also need to have this data?

Not exactly compelled to add the Chinese government into the mix on top of that. The state of privacy being internally dire already doesn't mean I'm obliged to be compromised and debased on an equal-opportunity, global basis.

What exactly are they going to use against anyone? The truth?

Also, what kind of credibility could anyone attach to it?

Hey TikTok claims that Person A liked video B on date C. And what proof do they have? They could already just create a bunch of fake logs like this.

I hate to break it to you, but a site like reddit is 1000000x more incriminating for anyone than tiktok is.

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