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Comment by bduerst | Hacker News Reader

Isn't the whole, "TikTok spies for China" meme also politically motivated, per the last Republican president?

I don't doubt that Bytedance shares Chinese TouTiao user data with the Chinese government, akin to how Apple does it with iCloud, but Bytedance has been pretty adamant that TikTok is external to China and doesn't share data. Even when there was an executive order to ban TikTok for being a national security threat, they couldn't prove that it was.

Does anyone have actual evidence of TikTok sharing with the Chinese government, outside of political hit pieces like the one above?

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To answer your question on evidence, when I'm looking for information on politically charged questions I often reference the Congressional Research Service whose purpose it is to take complex issues and boil them down to something digestible and generally apolitical for Congress (I know that's hard to believe, but I've read a lot of them, they are way less political than most other sources I find).

Here is the one on TikTok with references.

https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R46543

I was going to give quotes from the CRS, but there are so many.

If you want to learn about current issues just go to the home page and search with an empty search field.

https://crsreports.congress.gov

I check it daily.

Explicit evidence of Tiktok sharing information with the Chinese government is not needed because there is already sufficient evidence that

1. The Chinese government does not deserve our trust.

2. All Chinese businesses are extensions of the Chinese government.

The default assumption should be that your information is being sent to China and that China is using Tiktok as an extention of their propaganda arm.

Technically all businesses with a large interest inside X jurisdiction will have leverage against it in some way. For example Microsoft had to hand over its Windows source code to China. By extension of that leverage you can assume that jurisdiction has some control over it. In US it could be national security letters issued to TikTok. In China it could be their equivalent issued to someone physically on their soil.

To be clearer, Microsoft has a program allowing most governments to inspect the source code of Windows. This is not specific to one country.

Private companies as well

What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitchens%27s_razor

Like I said in another comment, I'll allow HN readers to use their own judgement.

edit: but you know what. Since you want evidence I'll give you some. The entire Alibaba debacle where the CEO was forced into hiding because he dared to contradict the Chinese political elite is my evidence that the Chinese government has implicit control over every business based out of China.

Evidence? If I did not use their services and had some friends work at Alibaba, I would trust you.

How much are you being paid?

Just less than you

And what am I being paid for? I’m not the one promoting a dictatorship. I’m consistent with my anti-dictatorship message.

I just shared the information based my real life. I live in China and had some business with Alibaba, even though I don't like the company. I did not say anything about politics or dictatorship, I just shared the fact that Alibaba is still running well. If you think whatever you don't believe is just fake, then you would better go back to watch your CNN. So who is brainwashed?

You live in China, clearly are enamores with it, and yet you’re completely unbiased. Right.

Also nice CNN name drop, you clearly know me very well.

Anonymous HN commenter proves their point by saying "I have friends who know better". Everyone immediately agreed (not).

> edit: but you know what. Since you want evidence I'll give you some. The entire Alibaba debacle where the CEO was forced into hiding because he dared to contradict the Chinese political elite is my evidence that the Chinese government has implicit control over every business based out of China.

So you think his words are much better than "I have friends"? You can find all Alibaba sites are still running. Alibaba Cloud is still providing services. You can also contact to sales and support. Then you still want to believe "entire Alibaba debacle".

Nothing that Christopher Hitchens ever said struck me as remotely insightful. Characterizing one of his reductive proclamations as a "razor" does not make it more useful or accurate.

Nothing is being asserted. Statements 1 and 2 are truths, and from those two truths, we arrive at an ounce of prevention that we'd be wise to heed, whether our assumption is correct or not.

People are talking about the other parts pretty well, but the idea of a "propaganda arm" seems a little funny to me. What is the propaganda they want to push? To what end?

> What is the propaganda they want to push? To what end?

Propaganda is not just about "pushing" a message but also about smothering discussion. In fact, pushing a message via something like Tiktok is ham fisted, what the Chinese government can do instead is stifle any discussion related to topics that they consider "dangerous". For example, shadow banning any tiktok videos related to the Uighur genocide.

They can blame any manipulation on some ranking algorithm.

But then isn't this circular? They create the app to harvest the data to help them stifle the conversation they have made possible by creating the app in the first place!

You are assuming that the platform would not exist if the company didn't create it. But if tiktok doesn't exist the discussion would just happen somewhere else. I should also say that I'm not suggesting that tiktok was created for the sole purpose of pushing propaganda from its inception.

Well then I guess there is nothing left to say, as there is absolutely nothing that can be falsified in your beliefs, only the single-minded faith in an absolute national enemy.

I only wish y'all could hear yourselves when you say these things, with even a fraction more rational clarity, even an ounce more suspicion of the political narratives at work here.

These conversations are deeply troubling to me, makes me absolutely ashamed to be a westerner of any sorts. I think I will go find greener pastures now, thanks for the wake up call, hope you find peace too.

> Well then I guess there is nothing left to say, as there is absolutely nothing that can be falsified in your beliefs, only the single-minded faith in an absolute national enemy.

Got it, so since you couldn't argue against my statements with reason you are now attacking my character.

> makes me absolutely ashamed to be a westerner of any sorts

Absolutely nobody that is from the west calls themselves a westerner whatever the hell that means. Also FYI, there is an extreme mistrust and dislike of China from almost every country in the so called East. So it isn't a west vs east thing.

There is also serious mistrust of the Chinese government by the citizens of China. They just rarely communicate it as there is real risks to doing so.

It feels so bizarre to have someone convey seething hate for the government in private while seemingly being supportive in public. What is less obvious is how brittle it makes the country, it could literally dissolve into anarchy tomorrow or last for hundreds of years.

well not so uncommon, there are plenty of posts everywhere before it's taken down. If you use wechat the amount of 'read before deletion' are just a major category of gossips. I sometimes wonder do people outside of China really know the chinese 'domestic' circle well or am I so out of touch now? Also imho people don't tend to go 'against' the highest level government since it's very abstract. It's the everyday stuff that people care, which means local authorities that almost never get involved in any internationally focused affairs.

I wish you could hear yourself as you defend a country who’s listed as a communicated but is in every definition a dictatorship. Why are you defending them so hard, are you being paid?

The conversations would've been held elsewhere. Control the biggest platform, people gravitate there, shut down the topics you don't like, pay big names to visit the Forbidden City.

Why do countries use propaganda? Why do companies use it? Why do people use it?

Because changing what is important to a group or people can make pushing your agenda easier.

What would be important to China's propaganda wing? Most important would be to maintain control over China and downplaying anything that reflects negatively. So controlling negative speech or shifting blame to someone else if a covid virus is discovered to original from territory you control would be important.

Tiktok's algo focuses on keeping you occupied in a state of mind where you zone out.

Post Snowden leaks, one could pretty much say the same about any American tech giant.

It is a little different with the nsa tapping the underwater cable trying to steal info where in China they create an internet where they hire millions of people to watch every conversation happening in real time.

One couldn't say the same.. at all.

Yes, if you completely minimize the level of bulk data collection the NSA and the US does through its partners, it’s completely different. You’ve left out all of the prism program, wherein the government had direct access to telecom and tech company servers.

What China does inside of China doesn’t have any bearing on the western internet. The topic at hand is the data collection that tic tok is engaging in, which already has plenty of precedent in the west, unfortunately.

It’s completely contrary to the values enshrined in the US constitution to make arguments like, “ah well but that person/group/country is bad and we aren’t” the entire political theory our nation is supposed to be built on is the notion that people with too much power will do bad things.

> watch every conversation happening in real time Eh.... are you sure? A lot of my childhood friends are now working in various ares of what you might consider 'authoritative post' or the infamous 有关部门 but I think it's still a bit too divorced from reality. Censorship and blatant blockage for sure but millions spying on billions in real time? I don't think that's how they work.

Yes, parent’s assertion is fairly preposterous. There is no way one could conduct surveillance on that scale in a non automated fashion. There are too many resources required.

It's a combo of both with automatic flags and manual live reviews.

Reporters without borders reports 2 million employed in government censorship in 2013. https://rsf.org/en/news/chinas-cyber-censorship-figures

It depends on how you define employed for censorship roles. On Douyin there are a lot of memes about passing censorship as a writer/reporter, jokes like 'night is dark' but it's actually 'night club'. Plenty of turks are just mechanically checking according to a theme. 'No brainer' as they call it. What's considered lighthearted there is probably horrifying sounding here.

The assertion was:

> watch every conversation happening in real time.

Even with 2 million people, you can’t follow even a fraction of the conversations of 1000x the population without automation doing most of the heavy lifting.

Peng Shuai was a recent censorship failure that has cost the party face globally.

You only has to shut down the major channels. Over 22,000 influencers were openly censored last year. Even in the past week, several Olympics-related hashtags have been blocked on Weibo. You can control the conversation even with just one person.

https://scmp.com/tech/policy/article/3159947/chinas-internet...

WeChat censors live, and automatically

https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/07/15/134178/how-wecha...

well I'm not sure whether the goal is to "save the party's face". To be honest it could be anybody, any hot issues of celeb big or small or could even be nobody can ignite some kind of sentiment, just like anywhere else. The difference is that domestically although censored, the social issues were sometimes genuinely flagged / monitored and led to change for better polices, in a sort of top down / authoritarian way, which to be honest surprises me.

Algorithms handle the bulk, humans make choices where the algorithm flags things.

You reduce the signal to noise ratio using automation, but humans are still king and validate particular targets before other humans get involved.

> Bytedance has been pretty adamant that TikTok is external to China and doesn't share data.

Considering that there are TikTok employees in china - both engineers and moderators, there is no chance that china doesn't influence TikTok. Even Zoom which is a clearly american company that has chinese employees wasn't immune to chinese influence.

source: i personally know a tiktok employee in china.

Does that TikTok employee you know have access to user data?

Does it matter? The presence of an office full of people in china means that there is an office full of people that can be exploited and controlled by the Chinese government.

Also, until recently they employed moderators in china, who by definition have access to customer data. So yes, the Chinese offices have/had access to customer data.

Many globally operating software companies have offices full of people in China, but presumably they have access controls in place to minimize the risk of data exfiltration.

On the other hand, many of the same companies have been involved in scandals where employees abused their position to stalk people or whatever, so maybe their access controls aren't actually that strict.

So it would've been interesting to hear about TikTok's internal security culture.

I'm not sure whether I'd call what moderators get "access to customer data", since it's not like they're in control, right? And aren't the posts they're moderating usually public anyway?

And this is where the conversation derails - when someone asks for evidence.

> Bytedance has been pretty adamant that TikTok is external to China and doesn't share data

Oh well if they've been _adamant_ then I guess it's true.

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