- biometrics
- what words are mentioned in the video, popularity
- surrounding wifi, location data
- your contacts (presumably to cross link to social media platforms)
I just can't believe that a powerful country like America is letting a not-so-friendly military/civilian complex infiltrate it for somewhat unknown purpose.
And before someone says Meta is an American company, not controlled by an adversary, let me recall that it’s controlled by Zuckerberg who spent $419 million to influence US election administration in a seemingly partisan way (“democracy hacking” as another commenter said). Meta may not be YOUR adversary, but that fact is not necessarily true of all (or even most) Americans
For more context, from: https://www.protocol.com/newsletters/policy/zuck-bucks-consp...
> He offered nearly half a billion dollars in grants to any election official who wanted one, as long as those officials spent it on what a lot of people would consider mundane essentials: ballot sorters, drop boxes, poll workers and — because it was 2020 — hand sanitizer.
> And when those election officials applied for more money than he originally offered, he kicked in another $119 million to satisfy the rest of the requests.
> At a time when Republicans are rapidly restricting access to the ballot box in states across the country, spending nearly half a billion dollars to do the exact opposite of that is tantamount to a partisan choice. Or, at least, it was bound to be viewed that way.
That it is represents a failure in whatever party seeks to restrict voting.
>On average, Biden counties received $2.85 per vote, compared to Trump counties that only received $0.89. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10090603/Mark-Zucke...
So long as every county could receive funds equally, the fact some received less isn’t at all damning.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/zuckerberg-funded-el...
This is an example of an extremely wealthy person influencing an election, plain and simple. It's odd to me that we're all just supposed to be ok with it.
What’s the argument as to what happened here?
E.g.
https://capitalresearch.org/article/shining-a-light-on-zuck-...
The parent to your comment is asking what caused CTCL to give more to Democratically aligned counties. Everyone agrees it happened - I am just unconvinced it has a strictly partisan explanation. They are asking for proof it’s malicious. Just stating there is a difference in funding isn’t proof the CTCL acted with partisanship.
There are many latent variables besides GOP/Dem, Urban/Rural that could cause the difference. For example when examining barriers to voting, time spent in line or number of polling places/capita are easy KPIs. Urban areas tend to score poorly on these metrics. If the funding was allocated by these metrics urban areas will win more funding.
There are many reasons a totally non partisan group would prioritize grants to urban areas. Chief among them might be that partisans have deliberately underfunded urban locations and sometimes been caught saying the reason was for their partisan gain.
Or the simplest explanation: a party that discourages voter turnout is in charge or rural areas. Officials in those counties are less likely to ask for funding that makes voting easier.
>Emails from the Office of the Pennsylvania Governor and the Pennsylvania Department of State show that former Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar and an official in Gov. Tom Wolf’s office knew about private 2020 election grants and invited Democratic-leaning counties to apply, appearing to aid the selective process at a time when other counties were unaware. No email shows any official in either office providing similar information or assistance to any of the commonwealth’s Republican-leaning counties. [2]
It appears that the grant process were overly influenced by politics both from an application, and an outcome perspective.
I'm against privitization of election processes.
[1] https://www.realclearpolicy.com/articles/2022/03/02/show_me_...
[2] https://broadandliberty.com/2021/10/19/former-sec-of-state-b...
You’d think that for all this is, there’d be a sob story somewhere of the Republican counties that wanted better access to voting and didn’t get it. So… what happened?
Even if they ended up donating more to areas likely to vote their way. More voting is good period. If GOTV funding is spread unevenly then more GOTV funding to neglected areas is the solution.
They seem to use their network of paparazzi/journalists to actually research facts on the ground. It is paid for by the fact that 95% of the content is indeed trash that sells.
But the 5% that isn't trash contains classic what/when/where/how style facts in great detail. For select topics like the trucker protests in Canada the Daily Mail is one of the best publications.
I even remember noticing they stole one of their uplifting weight-loss stories from another tabloid.
edit: they have lots of photos, though, which is the best thing about tabloids.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/zuckerberg-funded-el...
Looking past the raw number of grants to the total amount of money granted, however, from zucks form 990 IRS filing. CTCL awarded all larger grants – on both an absolute and per capita basis to deeply Democratic urban areas.
E.g.
https://capitalresearch.org/article/shining-a-light-on-zuck-...
>Much of Mr. Zuckerberg’s money is documented by CTCL’s tax filings. The January 2022 report shows grants of $860,000 to Kenosha, $1.2 million to both Green Bay and Madison, $1.7 million to Racine, and $3.4 million to Milwaukee. These five critical cities alone received about $8.5 million of the $10.1 million that flowed into Wisconsin from CTCL, and $5.1 million dollars of Mr. Zuckerberg’s money was spent in Arizona. Four difference-making counties — Maricopa, Pima, Apache and Coconino — were carried by President Biden and received nearly 76% of CTCL’s grants. This funding helped Biden grow his turnout by nearly 700,000 votes in funded counties over Hillary Clinton’s 2016 total. CTCL sent $45 million to Georgia — more than any other state in the country — and 94% of the funds went to jurisdictions carried by Mr. Biden. [1]
It is pretty clear that pushing extremely well-funded get out the vote operations in highly democrat areas in the most key swing states is enough to swing an election.
This is dangerously partisan.
[1] https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2022/apr/12/mark-zucker...
Maybe if you are from US, if you are not from US you have no rights, US gov can spy on you, or even kill you without any legal consequences because it will be legal from US POV
IMO this is just reality of mediating "strategic" foreign companies operating domestically, especially from "adversarial" countries. Set legal compliance onerously high and hope they leave. Western platforms left PRC because they couldn't stomach the filtering requriements that every PRC company has to shoulder. And when they finally adopted improve moderation due to requirements/pressure in their host country, they tried to get back into the PRC market. Meanwhile TikTok is sticking around US because Douyin survived burdens of PRC regulatory environment so what's another difficult market. Both markets are difficult, TikTok just better at playing ball in such enviroments. FB/Google can't even control their own employees from sabotaging their return to PRC.
Apple "chose" to agree to this deal with a gun to their head, the only other "option" being that they would be banned from the Chinese market. This isn't just because they have a data sovereignty requirement, but also because they have requirements regarding the sovereignty of a company's corporate governance structure.
>TikTok/Bytedance was one Trump EO away from being force sold to US companies (actual nationalization)
I'm not defending that idea, but a forced sale is categorically not nationalization. The whole impetus for the idea was that Trump's "eye for an eye" approach regarding what he saw as unfair practices against other US companies that tried to operate there. And in the end, Bytedance challenged it, and it never came to fruition.
There aren't any functional counterparts to these checks on power in China that would have been relevant to Apple/GBCD. There's no independent judiciary or alternative ruling party.
The reason you don’t see stories like this [0] in China, is because of this [1]
0: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/14/apple-refuses-barr-request-t...
once every blue moon?
> by design
that sounds much bigger than it is, a little like inteligent design.
> not even close to comparable with the legal environment in China.
So, you are literally saying that you are not in a position to compare them. Or at least you are saying it's so out of this world, it may be on another planet, a parallel universe even.
Really, I have discovered a legitimate branch of legal research is in constitutional comparation (or whatever it's called). Sounds more promissing than it likely will be, surely a small field, but damn I'm intrigued.
I do concede that this thread should focus on less whataboutism.
Yes
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/apr/19/us-immigrati...
https://www.wsj.com/articles/federal-agencies-use-cellphone-...
https://www.theverge.com/2022/5/10/23065080/ice-surveillance...
2. Not for imprisonment (although deportation is an ugly business no matter the context).
3. Not working with companies, working with shady third-party data brokers that companies themselves would like to see shut down.
The only way to make sure that it continues like this is if nobody can collect the data.
So no, the answer is no. And there are laws in place that prevent such a change from occurring.
> nobody can collect the data.
It's unrealistic to think no one will be scraping data. You just need laws around who can do it, can for what reasons. And enforcement. (all of these things only possible in non-autocratic countries)
Haven't you learned anything from Snowden?
> You just need laws around who can do it, can for what reasons.
You just make illegal to use personal data for any other thing that is not the service being directly provided to the customer.
Personalized ads? Tracking cookies? Ad bids? Make all these illegal and the collection of data will stop being profitable. Stop making it profitable, and companies will no longer be interested in doing.
Unless a new patriot act comes along, which is highly unlikely to pass in 2022.
Like all US billionaires, then?
> Meta may not be YOUR adversary, but that fact is not necessarily true of all (or even most) Americans
The US government and ruling class doesn't see Meta as their adversary, even if it this the adversary of some Americans.
Sheldon Adelson is the only other billionaire that comes to mind in recent times who is spending on this scale. In the 2020 cycle for Trump, he spent about 40% less than what Zuckerberg did this past cycle.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/oct/31/sheldson-ade...
Who's doing the collecting often matters much more than what is actually collected.
The important context here is we seem to be transitioning away from the era of kumbaya free market globalism into an era of tenser geopolitical rivalries and more conflict.
Correct, therefore far more attention ought be put to domestic corporate and government spying on the public because they have got a far stronger leverage over the public's mind than foreign companies whom do not
Also, wouldn't it just be funny if Meta had some internal deals to acquire Tiktoks data? Lastly, if memory serves Tiktok makes use of Oracle (approved US gov contractor) to handle US data, so this is already under scrutiny [1]
[1] https://www.reuters.com/technology/exclusive-tiktok-nears-de...
So it might seem that the powers that be, wants us to be attentive regarding this deal
>> The important context here is we seem to be transitioning away from the era of kumbaya free market globalism into an era of tenser geopolitical rivalries and more conflict.
> Correct, therefore far more attention ought be put to domestic corporate and government spying on the public because they have got a far stronger leverage over the public's mind than foreign companies whom do not
You're missing the point, so I quoted the context again for emphasis.
To make it more explicit: the fact that US has leverage over Facebook means it's far less likely that Facebook's data collection will be used to attack US interests. That's why TikTok's collection is different, from the perspective of the US and allied countries.
You can make a pretty close personal analogy: I don't care as much if a close family member collects real time location data of my movements, because I trust they don't have incentives to use it in particular ways that are very harmful to me. I care a lot more if a personal or business rival collects the same data, because their incentive is to use it in the context of their rivalry to harm me or prevent me from achieving some of my goals.
Sure, but it's also worth noting the interests of the "US Public" are more in alignment with "US (Gov) Interests" than they are "Chinese (Gov) Interests," at least when it comes to geopolitics and stuff like this. That's far more relevant to a discussion of TikTok, which this is.
And I am sure that you have got a citation for that, right, other than you know, your own personal assumptions
You ought read some of Xi Jinpings own writing, he alongside his aides published a small article last year
Unless something is actually done - then the actor and its properties are of utmost priority in discussion.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31852384
Why didn't the Italian government just ban data collection in this form? They want to promote EU / local companies to collect this data rather than international companies.
CCP has little power (or motive) to imprison me as long as I don't travel there.
- There will always be a ruler, and which ruler is killing, slaving, censoring and selling it's own people as meat tools for foreign companies?
- China will kill, torture it's own people and their families if they think they are a thread (even if remote) to their government party (CCP).
- China put on a HEAVY surveilance tool and actually forced people to behave like they want using social credit
- China is actively removing ANY historical filosophies, tales, traditions, religions that could be a thread to the CCP's beliefs.
- Have you ever seen a CCP convention? Their plan is to remove the worlds countries boundaries in order to rule over everything from culture to politics and economics. Australia is suffering a lot on their hands, they even sent spies to patronize elections.
To be sure, there are numerous areas in which the behavior of the Chinese government is concerning and unacceptable, but there is also an undeniable level of hysteria when it comes to China that is not applied to US Allies. (See: Saudi Arabia and the rest of the gulf states)
[0] https://www.wired.com/story/china-social-credit-score-system...
It's important to generalize in order to show that some people are having arguments about principles, and others hate China. Sometimes you mistake the latter for the former, and waste your time making principled arguments with someone who just wants to kill.
Is there any concrete action that you think people can do?
That's a fantasy that makes the perfect into an enemy of the good.
>> Or maybe we should just support and adopt open source alternatives...
> People who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those who are doing it.
You misunderstood. I'm objecting to the either/or framing that implicitly says that something like Vine should not be brought back. If you want to create an open source alternative, go ahead and I hope you're successful. However, the chances of that succeeding are much smaller, therefore it's not a good choice to focus on to solve the particular problem at hand.
Users who are not willing to accept their data being mined. Who are not willing to be sold as eyeballs. Who are willing to pay a few bucks a year just to keep other smaller providers running.
The software exists. Unlike Vine, millions of people use it already.
The privacy of your data is more impacted by where it is and who controls it, not the copyright license of the software that moves it around
Of course the software license is not related directly with privacy and access control. But there is no way that a private company will be able to offer a global social network while keeping user privacy a priority. The moment that any single company becomes big enough, they will either exploit the data for their own benefit (like Google/Apple/Meta/Microsoft/Amazon) or they will be pushed into it by some government.
Our best alternative is to have not to trust any particular company, but to use federated/distributed services, and the easiest way to have that is by ensuring that we are supporting and adopting open standards and open source systems that can be hosted by many different players.
That’s why Meta is blocked in the PRC.
The west should do the same for TikTok.
Seemingly doing a lot of lifting here
The real threat from TikTok is not so much the collection of information (though that's a problem) - it's the way the CCP can leverage it to tune influence without users noticing (silencing Hong Kong or Uyghur related information for example).
It's disingenuous to assume their capabilities are the same.
Meta might still be a shitty company, but their incentives are not to gather intelligence against US citizens that could be used to conduct cyber attacks or plan for military operations.
https://s21.q4cdn.com/399680738/files/doc_financials/2022/q1...
Oh, so it's us vs them. Gotcha.
What a weird statement. Facebook has been taking all of that data for a long time. Some of the protections in Android and iOS were specifically added to inhibit Facebook from recording the surroundings in the background. TikTok just does more of the same partly because they just have more audio and video data to work with. Remember how Uber showed how cool they can track hookup dates? All of that is potentially blackmail-able information.
Are you somehow insinuating that Facebook is somehow okay because they are in a "democratic" country?
You think?
> very soon it will be possible, with a little hand tweaking, to fake "cool" people
If your worst thread is being out-done by a bot in the ... what domain is "cool" in. And whom are you quoting from?
PS: What can I say, you got my goat. Vain people are very vulnerable in it (think that's the definition of "vain", but I still want to know what "it" is)
>After Trump proposed to ban TikTok in the U.S on July 31, 2020, security researchers expressed their concern about limitations of freedom. In one article, PCMag quoted Jennifer Granick of the American Civil Liberties Union Surveillance and Cybersecurity Counsel who said that "banning an app that millions of Americans use to communicate with each other is a danger to free expression and is technologically impractical."
> On 23 September 2020, TikTok filed a request for a preliminary injunction to prevent the app from being banned by the Trump administration.[62] This request was filed with the District Court for the District of Columbia. Just a week prior, a different preliminary injunction from WeChat users filed with the United States District Court for the Northern District of California was approved by Magistrate Judge Laurel Beeler.[63]
> The preliminary injunction was approved by Judge Carl J. Nichols on September 27
> The following June, new president Joe Biden signed an executive order revoking the Trump administration ban on TikTok
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump%E2%80%93TikTok_co...
> Commissioner Carr was nominated to the FCC by President Trump and confirmed unanimously by the United States Senate.
https://www.fcc.gov/about/leadership/brendan-carr
> His term runs from July 1, 2018 to June 30, 2023.
This is 100% why their US data is now stored in Oracle cloud storage. So the US can mine it too now for free. [1]
[H] https://techcrunch.com/2022/06/17/tiktok-oracle-us-traffic-c...
This gives them full graph of relationships building technology.
[0]: https://techcrunch.com/2022/06/17/tiktok-oracle-us-traffic-c...
My view of TikTok isn't so much that it's purpose is to be used as an threat; but rather a way to create an (insanely) lucrative e-commerce market in the same what it's being used in China. [1]
[1]: https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/China-tech/Move-over-Alibab...
Because it provides a very convenient back door for our three letter agencies? Speculation, but the data that True the Vote was able to simply purchase on the open market legally was pretty shocking in its detail. What's to prevent our government from doing that? They haven't respected the 4th amendment for decades.
The insidious thing is how the data is used. For example knowing the exact content of each video allows them to filter certain topics and promote others. Knowing your location allows them to use this geopolitically (showing content about the Ukraine war in some places, but not in others).
Whether intentional or unintentional, their recommendation engine infers demographic information. I'm pretty sure TikTok thought for a while that I was gay; videos with reasonably accurate predictions like "if this is recommended to you, you are a male between 25 and 30 who is introverted. You like to start projects but never finish them" were a trend for a while.
All of this gives TikTok and by extension China a great tool to influence opinions and moods in a finely targeted way. Take all the scandals about what Facebook experimented with, and how targeted ads influenced elections and votes, and give that power to one party with no oversight. That's TikTok.
In the US is it normal and routine for corporations to dispute government demands. In China, If you don’t play ball with the party, your company ceases to exist and you are put behind the great firewall.
But we already know that's just somescreen and the U.S gov/NSA gets the data. Poor Snowden ruined his life for almost nothing.
We also know that many companies in the US say “no” and have the legal ability to do it. For example, when the FBI asked Apple to unlock a phone for them, they said no, and they never did.
In China, your company doesn’t say “no” because the CCP members forcibly installed on your company’s board always vote “yes”.
And in fact, the CCP holds the iCloud keys for all Chinese iCloud users. (As well as the entire data center)
And, since you mentioned
> And in fact, the CCP holds the iCloud keys for all Chinese iCloud users.
Quoting from [1]:
> The court records show that the FBI sought Lavabit's Transport Layer Security (TLS/SSL) private key. Levison objected, saying that the key would allow the government to access communications by all 400,000 customers of Lavabit. He also offered to add code to his servers that would provide the information required just for the target of the order. The court rejected this offer
(I'm well aware that Levinson wasn't a halo figure, either. But that's beside the point)
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warrant_canary
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavabit#Suspension_and_gag_ord...
Of course, governments in every country collect data in at least some circumstances, and the details of those circumstances are a topic of great public debate in western democracies. This friction is how democracies continually improve. It isn't an indication of disaster, it's an indication of progress being made. Disaster is when you don't hear about it at all, because it happens unilaterally and without contest.
This kind of statement should always end with "for now". Data lives forever, laws change. Just take a look at Roe v. Wade and how formerly benign data now has potential legal implications for users.
In practice big corporations bow to gov demands (i.e apple, microsoft etc via PRISM) as they value their relationship with the government. The small companies don't have the resources to fight the gov (i.e NSA). You may see some smokescreen(i.e that Apple iphone vs FBI) but it's not the first time we see that ki d of stuff/PR. The only thi g you may trust is e2e encryption and open source
I would expect an "adversary" nationstate, like China, to respond with similar alarm.
All of the sudden, private details about you can be weaponized and used as blackmail in order to carry out the will of a state actor.
It really doesn't take much creativity to think about how this information can be weaponized against you.
> Depends on what you do.
It's not great if a foreign intelligence has data on you, but depending on your threat scenario, it _might_ be better than your government having it.
words mentioned in the video: creating captions
location data: helping to recommend people near you, also ability to enforce laws based on regions
your contacts: this is something you give them permission to access. This is so you can connect with your friends who also setup TikToks. You do not have opt into this.
These are just the things I thought off the top of my head.
Does this mean China can't influence the populace? No. But the previous administration didn't think that external influence into elections was an issue. And the majority of Americans didn't seem to care, either. So you have at least one party that generally doesn't care. And don't pretend that FB doesn't matter. FB might be American, but it doesn't limit itself to only working with American companies.
video analysis
- words are mentioned in the video
video content analysis
^^^^ these are for videos uploaded, which I do not upload any
- wifi and location
probably user modeling for recommendation
for Location I always say NO
- contacts
I always say NO to any app
Basically it collects very little information from me. I did register an account though, otherwise it wouldn't collect any
You mean the same country that also just overturned Roe v Wade AND Miranda rights ?
One thing I do though, since missing out on TikTok bothers me, is to watch YouTube clips of TikTok videos which have been downloaded and shared on YT. Not that YT is better in terms on privacy, but it's better than having a Chinese malware app on your phone.
It's no different for many other social apps. Even user accounts are often linked to individuals that harvest and scape data from most of these platforms routinely.
I'm not saying that TikTok isn't nefariously aligned with political agendas, but we've really got to ask ourselves at this point just what exactly ALL of these social app platforms are doing.
They make so much money and share so little with the creators on them which of course creates a windfall of funding for them to integrate complex tracking and manipulation into the platforms year over year.
Right now, the only reason why these sites are beginning to come under scrutiny is because people who are considered "High value assets" (i.e. congress people and government leadership) are realizing that these apps, and the phones that run them exist within their homes now, listening to vital conversations that these people have.... How? Because their children use the apps, even if their parents don't.
There is a mesh network everywhere now, based on the devices we've purchased that provides intel to anyone who knows how it works and it's gone widely ignored for years... Phones with lidar that can scan rooms for occupants, multiple pictures and selfies saved under real names of individuals, voice recordings galore, etc...
All content provided by children and adults alike in the quest for social media popularity.
If we're worried about just TikTok weaponizing this data, we're worried about water on a duck's back. The types of information that can be collected by apps now has completely crossed the line in terms of privacy. The biggest offense is that personal devices (the only ones we CAN purchase any more, and the devices we're supposed to be owners of) all allow this data to be gathered and shared with apps, not that apps are harvesting the data.
Two factor authentication alone often forces users of services (considered vital to their work) to share their phone numbers with private companies, and from there it's sold to others, and used to track users across the web. Now private companies collect more data on individuals than the US government, and it can be easily accessed to determine anything from credit and insurance-worthiness for individuals to being used in deepfake content (potentially by BOTH companies and by individual users on platforms) all without our knowledge, and with our unwitting consent -- buried deep into EULA agreements everywhere.
Congress has dropped the ball, too busy being enthralled into public theatre, and many congresspeople actually being invested into many of these tech companies profit-wise themselves.
It's a tragic game of "shoot yourself in the foot" because most of the profiteers from the data mining game never realize the damage they do until they find out their own children become victims of it.
It's not really about TikTok in my opinion, it's about get rich schemes and all of the corrupt Ponzi schemes we keep fostering and permitting to run freely in this country. It's been going on forever, and that's the thing undermining America most, our domestic impulse to both salute and coddle those that make profit without accountability or morality.
"I just can't believe that a powerful country like America is letting a not-so-friendly military/civilian complex infiltrate it for somewhat unknown purpose."
Are you for real? The one country that fits the description of not-so-friendly military-complex is the U.S. itself.
A more pressing problem and question is that despite everything we learned from the CIA and NSA leaks, American companies and their software is inside every country, government, business and IT infrastructure, and is collecting vast amounts of sensitive data still to this day.
All while people like you are drawing attention to TikTok.
And the US Government doesn't use private sector data to round up and imprison their citizens in concentration camps. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/12/14/huawei-surve...
And as for the US Government and concentration camp, maybe they don't use private sector data for that, but they sure do it based on ethnicity and origins, such as Japanese Americans in concentration camps during WW2, and South American children and their immigrant parents literally put in cages just a couple of years ago.
And pointing out anything that has nothing to do with Tiktok in a thread about Tiktok is not providing context, it's an attempt at distraction and deflection away from the thing you trust (the CCP, somehow) towards the thing you don't (the US Gov).
Whether "this side" is-doing/has-done it as well is an orthogonal concern, i.e. not pertinent here. We have a small but non-zero ability to affect change on our side.