FCC commissioner wants TikTok removed from app stores over spying concerns
cbc.ca
cbc.ca
TikTok collects data for an adversary at scale. Many complain that the US does the same but that doesn't change the fact that I live in the US. The Chinese government is an adversary of the West whether we like it or not.
With that said- It's pretty telling that the FCC only needs to go to Apple and Google. It would be really nice to have some antitrust regulation so that the FCC doesn't have this power.
On the other hand, the same cannot be said about your own government. They collect data on you and your fellow citizens and they use it. And they can mess up your life much more than what China will ever do. One recent example: the worry over period tracking apps and the recent decisions of the US Supreme Court. Those apps are a weapon against citizens who, until yesterday, were not doing anything illegal.
All tracking is bad, and the FCC should do something about it all.
Did we already forget about political interference by "enemies of the West"? I mean, not just brazen election / referendum interference, but driving political narratives to stoke up internal conflicts? That is usually achieved by funding political extremists, but controlling the feed algorithm will work even better.
This isn't just a US problem either, other western countries have also been affected.
At least our own governments have some accountability to us. Foreign governments don't even have that, so I'm ok with them being the first ones to give up the tools of influence. Of course I would prefer if such tools did not exist at all, but it will be a while until we get there.
https://www.nytimes.com/video/world/asia/100000008314175/chi...
Though, fair, that's a glorious and highly theoretical future :P
Antitrust regulation is to prevent an Apple+Google duopoly (or cartel) from having this power. This is nothing about the FCC.
The point is, without antitrust regulation, the FCC only has to go through two giant corporations.
After trust busting Apple and Google, we would theoretically have many more competing stores. The FCC would have to then ask each individual store for a takedown, perhaps even across different legal jurisdictions (read: outside of the USA) and therefore be unable to take down TikTok in such a centralized fashion
I'd like to se a source on this. I don't think different political ideologies imply adversarial intentions. China has been as friendly to the west as it can be while still protecting its own cultural and economic interests.
If western leaders would stop seeing China as the enemy and instead as a partner we would see a rise in infrastructure and economic opportunity globally.
China is not trying to do global charity work, they have their own motives as well. They are also not the devil incarnate. I would argue that their intentions in foreign policy are still _generally_ more morally palpable than most western nations.
https://stratechery.com/2020/the-tiktok-war/
China has stated in multiple occasions that the ideologies of the west are a threat to the country and that they will actively work against them.
Get real. It's a worldview, not a scientific fact.
You can agree or disagree, but finding one source that supports or opposes that worldview is not going to make any difference.
Your source could be human conflict for all of recorded history.
It's not primarily ideological, it's geopolitical realism. They are a growing economic and military power in a different geographic sphere, competing over global influence and power. The history of civilization is conflict over scarce resources, space, and power. China is a cohesive ethnic and political collective and nation that exists separate from the US, it's government and citizens.
Of course there is and will always be room for co-operation in many areas; economic trade is a big one. But conflict over competing interests is a fact of life and where that comes into conflict global adversaries and enemies are created.
"Morality" is not a good metric to guide geopolitics, where material national interests and power dictate more than anything.
Can you compare the human conflict for all of recorded history between China and the US (+Europeans who influenced the US)?
Can you help me understand the logic of "generally more morally palpable than most western nations?" When I look at China's global activities, I see lots of IP theft, aggressive trade deals, debt diplomacy, investing in infrastructure yes... but then bringing in their own people to staff the projects (I saw this firsthand last year doing work in both Kenya and Cameroon and traveling through Uganda), bullying governments and organizations to toe the CCP party line (e.g. Houston Rockets), taking over Hong Kong and shutting down the free media there, basically paying off Muslim nations to keep them quiet regarding the Uyghur genocide.... and this is just off the top of my head!
I'm not implying you're doing it, but whenever I hear people defend China, they always use the word "culture" to defend totalitarianism/communism, as if they're part of Chinese culture.
Instead of being xenophobic we can be privacy focused.
Many millions of people follow his words & think it still relevant today.
He also had a special way of recognizing & calling out hyprocrisy.
It's kinda like the FDA earlier this year declining to approve a covid-19 vaccine not because it was ineffective (it wasn't!) or because it was dangerous (it wasn't!) but because they thought that saying that one brand was OK for kids but the other wasn't (yet) would be confusing and send a bad "message". The FDA's job is to help us identify what pharmaceuticals are safe and effective, not to worry about messaging.
If anything, TikTok is a national resource as at least you know that the propaganda bias will be towards whatever the PRC wants. Facebook will sell itself to anyone - KGB, prostate pills, whatever.
And if they want your kids to smash up their schools, does it help you with your geopolitical battles to know that's what 'they' want? Or would it be more helpful if that didn't happen?
Is it? I feel like it is an adversary of the Western governments. I don't feel like they are my adversaries. We could be friends if our governments wanted to.
If you’re a citizen of the US or Europe, the Chinese government is most definitely your enemy.
It's not like they became an adversary overnight, China's economic success was predominantly sponsored by the West; Their abysmal human rights regulations were favorable for Nike to Apple for employing child labor and they in-turn used that economic growth to increase their defense budget 6-fold in just two decades.
Of course autocracies and democracies would be adversaries; But the sabre-rattling without holding the West's capitalist interest in China accountable seems disingenuous(In general, not your comment).
Now if you bring up US political spectrums, whataboutism is highly effective.
TikTok stores data on US soil. That's part of the deal brokered by the self-claimed best deal maker Mr. Trump.
If there is unauthorized data access from inside China, then that's an issue to be investigated.
So, where is the evidence of the large-scale data access from inside China to TikTok data?
> “Everything is seen in China,” said a member of TikTok’s Trust and Safety department in a September 2021 meeting. In another September meeting, a director referred to one Beijing-based engineer as a “Master Admin” who “has access to everything.” (While many employees introduced themselves by name and title in the recordings, BuzzFeed News is not naming anyone to protect their privacy.)
A US companies' internal employees were conflated to China? And who the hell allows TikTok to operate in US in the first place. If someone working at MSFT has access to MSFT's China user data, is that a problem?
1) Data collection and algorithmic manipulation. This has been discussed to death, but why you'd let an adversary control the information flow to a huge portion of the population is beyond me. This is obviously a national security issue.
2) Fairness in the marketplace. No, I'm not talking about the U.S. marketplace. U.S. tech companies have had their IP stolen and unfair regulations placed on them in China. Why should the U.S. let Chinese tech companies compete in the U.S. marketplace when China doesn't let U.S tech companies compete in their marketplace?
I'm not going to feel pity for TikTok.
I understand your concern, I honestly do, but Americans are always the first to cry foul when others, such as the EU, put measures in place to curtail the amount of data collection that happens by US firms (you even made that complaint about China yourself). At least in the EU we're not advocating the complete removal of access to foreign social networks. And that's the real crux of the issue here. You want a borderless internet but only when it's US companies in control. And you don't want government intervention just so long as it's only US companies abusing their position. From an outsider looking in, it all looks a little hypocritical. Which is why I Personally feel the EU approach is a lot smarter: allow other nations to operate equally but put legislation in place to protect consumer rights.
Who complains? FAANG shills? I haven't heard anybody outside of this site complain about such a thing.
Even if this statement is true(likely isn't based on the support at least seen online), aren't you supporting the GP? If EU blocks data transfer to US, US would cry and not EU. It is a positive outcome for EU. Similarly, here China could cry and it would be no harm to US.
I've heard the unsubstantiated claim that /r/india is covertly run by Pakistanis, which of course, would be a pretty big problem considering the relations between those countries-- but whether or not it's true it's a claim that people can make because it's entirely possible for it to in fact be the case.
The problem is that solutions that are in accordance with security needs would interfere with free speech. I see the only path where both free speech and security needs are maintained as some kind of genuinely distributed social network with no central control facilities.
Also, I'm not sure the public at large cares much about the competitiveness concerns that big tech companies have with the EU. It's not really a story in the sphere of public conversation.
Also the US isn’t an adversary, so it’s different. The stakes are different.
The main issue with the EU approach is that they only view surface level compliance.
Perhaps an unjust over-generalisation?
I think Americans cry foul at how feckless the regulations are. Is forcing me to accept cookies really making my life better or the Internet worse?
What? Why do you think American people care that Europeans have better digital privacy laws? And why do you think that those that do care are angry at Europe??
If I click the not interested button, it stops sending me videos of content similar to that. Youtube, Facebook, Google News, and Twitter all seem to ignore me when I click their equivalent buttons. I have been attempting for years to get Google News to stop showing me Meghan Markle drama, and have blocked half of the news outlets in the UK.
Anyone can literally stick a totally false political statement or whatever they want over "OhNo" by Creeper and it's highly likely to trend. It's also why the song OhNo, and many variations of it played so often on the platform. There is always a limited and interchangeable pool of songs designated by the platforms to trend, in order to make the ruse less obvious. The designated sounds can also be muted so that uploaded video sound can only be heard as well, but plays of the original sound still get the royalties.
On the back-end of that, Creeper makes royalties from each stream, and gives a cut to sponsors and TikTok... Literally millions of dollars each day are generated by any associated video plays... The entire music industry is looted by this too.
This is the BS involved with the algorithm on TikTok, it's not mostly AI driven recommendations, it's driven by a pre-designated sounds that make a lot of money because of royalty plays. TikTok gains popularity and money each time these trending sounds play picks the songs that trend. Other musicians, thinking they have a chance (without being endorsed by the platform) struggle fruitlessly to get their sounds to trend, but undercover they can't because they are not aligned with the right brand partnerships that lobby TikTok and pay heavily for advertising.
It's primarily not the algorithm in charge based on my observations as a developer, and the idea of content "choice" on TikTok is mostly a fallacy, though taxonomy does play a minor role in the mix, user accounts also manipulate their taxonomy to insert their content regularly into your feed.
That is a point that very few people grasp. I've found that it's a bit easier to explain how the policies impact the technical side. You can extrapolate other facets from there (say, sales, for which I don't have direct expertise, although from what I hear, it's worse).
Let's say you want to sell stuff over there. Given that it's 2022, maybe you want a website to go with that? Possibly using some AWS services?
Ok let's do this.
Maybe you just want to translate your stuff and continue hosting from the US(or anywhere else really). Well, even if the traffic was allowed(it probably will be, at least initially), the firewall will make the experience miserable (ranges wildly, down to single digit bytes per second). The first request to anywhere is usually blocked. Geographical distance doesn't matter. Cross the border and the experience is terrible. So, that's not really an option. You really need to host from there.
First of all, your website needs a license. Even if all it says is "coming soon". Doesn't matter. Port 80(and 443) will be blocked until you get your ICP license. If you check wikipedia it talks about a 'grace period'. I'm not sure that is accurate. Traffic is usually blocked by providers regardless.
As a foreign company, you can't get one. You will need boots on the ground. And a lot of documentation. You cannot have non-Chinese DNS servers pointing to IPs in China. Yes this is scanned for and flagged and you better fix it otherwise you can lose your license. No it does not matter that these are automation/internal use domains.
This license thing takes at least a month in a happy day scenario. Potentially more.
You also need your 'AWS' account. It's in quotes because it's not really AWS. And no, it's not like "Amazon", the parent company, has an overseas "branch" or "affiliate" which, even though it's registered locally with the host country, it is effectively also Amazon and controlled by Amazon. No. The Beijing region is operated by Sinnet, Nginxia is operated by NWCDD. They are not Amazon, they are third parties. One wonders why Amazon went that route, since it seems suboptimal.
The process to get this account may take months.
Once you get your account, _you do not get the root credentials_. Those companies have it. They will tell you "there's no root user concept". That's not true(even though this is in the documentation now!). It's still basically the same AWS software, it has a root account. But they hold it, then use it to create an IAM user for you, and hand off that one to you instead. Over email.
Ok you have signed off on all those things. Now let's import some AMIs like we do everywhere else on the planet and start the services? No, you cannot do that. AWS China is a different 'partition'. Just like GovCloud. So they cannot be transferred. Same goes for just about everything else. Even S3 buckets. The one silver lining is that you can reuse the same bucket names. So let's just rebuild those images right? Well, remember the firewall thing? It's going to hit you here too. You will be using unbearably slow links that barely compete with dialup _unless_ everything you need is already mirrored over there.
Containers for the rescue. Or not? Your k8s cluster takes 5 minutes to download all containers in the US? It's going to take hours or days for you. Assuming it's not blocked - I hope none of your stuff uses gcr.io, for example (like K8s own components like to do). If they do, better mirror everything.
Money can help some of these link issues. You can pay companies to get around the firewall(but not around the regulations – if a destination is blocked it will stay blocked). If you do so, you will also have to provide a list of IPs that you will be talking to and what their purpose is. They will be vetted. If you have anything serious there, go that route(but be prepared to pay 5 digits for a link that's slower than your average Comcast business DSL).
"AWS" to AWS connections also seem to have some special rules, because the bandwidth is consistently better(not amazing, but better). So maybe setup your command and control that way. Can't do that via IPSEC tunnels though, that's not allowed. Unless done by "approved" vendors, to approved destinations. If try to do that by yourself, you risk your services getting shutdown, if not your entire account. SSH may or may not work.
Some of that affects local companies too (they all have to get the ICP thing) and can be, charitably, be blamed on excessive bureaucracy. Some of that may be due to decisions made specifically by AWS. But not everything can be explained that way.
And all you wanted to do was to setup a website.
Does this mean one can harass companies one doesn't like by pointing DNS entries at them?
Yes, living in a country with free speech is a national security issue. This should be obvious to a child. It's one of the tradeoffs of freedom of speech. Sometimes, people will use it to lie.
Sometimes, malicious foreign actors will use that freedom against it. But here's the problem. Sometimes, malicious domestic actors will use that freedom against it.
If we're going to pick and choose who gets to be the gatekeepers of information, why are you only singling out malicious foreign actors? There's no shortage of malicious domestic actors.
You can't say that you have freedom of speech, if you're not allowing speech that doesn't serve the interests of the state.
The lack of regulatory reciprocity has always bugged me about US economic policy: e.g. if it is unlawful to pay a worker less than 7.50$/hr then shouldn't it be unlawful to import goods made by someone making less than that? Ditto for environmental regulations, privacy requirements, etc.
It is mind-numbing that we made it this far without very serious consideration of this point. I've frankly just never understood it, especially given what we know about the power of algorithms to define reality at scale.
These to me are separate issues that should be discussed independently.
So for your post: Data Collection, Algorithmic Manipulation, and Fairness in the Marketplace
Because most of the possible responses are various forms of censorship.
I see the national security angle, but I want Meta to burn.
Moreover if the apps are not doing anything illegal what is the justification for taking such a measure.
"China lured graduate jobseekers into digital espionage."
Sure all governments spy. But you can't discount the massive digital dragnet (targeting their entire own country and us as well) and huge mechanical turk of p2p spies they have built.
This seems to be a blind spot for those who support "tech" companies.
2) Didn't US just take Huawei out not only from its market, but also forced its allies to do the same? There is nothing about fairness in the marketplace, just different interests.
US wants to kill its competitor, I am fine with it. It is expected to happen, just our nature.
The notion that imaginary property can be "stolen" is so ridiculous and dystopian to me. Information isn't ownable, and the assertion that it can be was dreamt up by and for lawyers. We finally invent something - The Internet - that lets information be free and available to everyone, and computers that let people share copies of thing at effectively no cost, and rent seeking lawyers go and invent some bullshit to fuck it all up by bribing congress to make it law that benefits them immensely to everyone else's net detriment.
China doesn't recognize dystopian American copyright laws. Why should they? They're not China's laws, and they're detrimental to China.
Asserting "fairness in the marketplace" and copyright infringement (and calling it theft) in the same paragraph is absurd. In a fair marketplace, copyright infringement isn't a thing, and neither is "Imaginary Property" law. And don't get me started on software patents.
That said, I also feel no pity for TikTok and I'll never install it. I don't have the facebook app either.
Because the US has freedom of expression and free publishing, regardless of nationality of the publisher.
Once you start doing the same "foreigners can't publish here [and the local ones are under our influence]" nonsense that China does, it becomes indistinguishable from the adversary.
First, if we saw China as another state that was part of the US, 1 would sound like a ridiculous claim. 2 would still be an issue, but this is why we have international regulations, trade agreements, and so on.
I'm all for banning TikTok on that front alone. Twitter too, but good luck.
There are deeper and farther-reaching issues here than competition between nation-states for information supremacy
Effects of regular use on cognition and attention span, data harvesting, pervasive advertising, etc
This affects humanity at large and the US particularly profoundly, as the US is friendlier to the most pernicious media business models than nearly anywhere else, and we are among the world's most addicted to new media
National sovereignty/security concerns are understandable and legitimate. This is a criticism many outside the US have been leveling at relentless American cultural export for decades
The final purpose of the market is not to serve producers. It is, rather, to serve consumers through producers. You might protect U.S. companies by preventing U.S. consumers from choosing the best and cheapest products they can find abroad, but you are not protecting U.S. consumers by expecting them to use inferior products. Because TikTok is in a leisure market, neither a self-consistent imperialist philosophy, nor one focused on the happiness of US citizens, can justify favoring it over domestic competitors. Of course, it is in our interest to ban the importation of all products of the labor that we ourselves perform, but let's not pretend there is anything but self-interest behind the desire to do so.
Citizen Lab published a report last year - https://citizenlab.ca/2021/03/tiktok-vs-douyin-security-priv... - which found that the app does not engage in any overtly malicious behavior:
> TikTok and Douyin do not appear to exhibit overtly malicious behavior similar to those exhibited by malware. We did not observe either app collecting contact lists, recording and sending photos, audio, videos or geolocation coordinates without user permission.
And if there's any organization I trust about this sort of thing, it's Citizen lab, owing to their groundbreaking work around Pegasus and other APTs.
I would applaud the American youth if your post ever becomes reality.
All videos get assigned a 0-1 anti- vs pro-CCP score. Videos with a >0.5 score get a slightly (~5%) better chance of being shown, and <0.5 is slightly penalized. This would be undetectable if the algorithm is run off device. Anti-CCP content would still play often. But on the massive scale TikTok runs, this would still tilt opinion favorably towards CCP.
Not necessary. Our governments are doing a great job of this already.
About security, US may worry about what such a powerful platform can influence users. Think about how people were saying about Facebook when Trump was elected. And how US has been using Facebook in other countries to influence people.
There are ways that I can't even imagine that other people can imagine how to use that data for nefarious means.
Nobody forced anyone to install TikTok at gunpoint. Presumably, if there was a more compelling domestic product, the kids would go there instead. Why has that product failed to materialize?
I know, you can't really set out to manufacture "cool", but maybe we need to get back the spark in this sector. I don't think the existing players are capable of creating an appealing blank-slate social platform. They might have the cash and technical chops, but they have negative social currency. Facebook/Meta's brand is hopelessly tainted: if it's not creepy spying, it's still where Mom and Dad hang out to swap antivax memes. Google might have a little more cool left-- not much-- but they're also attached to such teen favourites as "crappy limited school-provided Chromebook" and "we have 92 chat apps on our phones and still can't reach each other".
TikTok lets you put current popular music on the videos without a care for copyright, correct? As they are Chinese, they don;t really care about any lawsuits. The same is not true for US based companies, thus they don't have as good of music on it.
Also, again, sorry if I totally wrong here!
https://social.techjunkie.com/how-does-tik-tok-use-music-leg...
I am expecting TikTok to release a music app in the future since they have already paid for the music.
TikTok had zero qualms about making their algorithm favour pretty people, rich people, people with lighter skin.... What American product manager would dare suggest doing that?
Now, of course, this isn't a holy grail for success. But it's a factor.
There’s a reason for that.
My search consistently yields marketing stats. Perhaps I am using the wrong key words?
You post video in it so the app gets camera and mic access, assuming you give it permission. Can you use it without giving permission? IIRC Apple requires apps to work without permissions?
I tried installing it and it requires an account so uninstalled. Not really into TikTok but was able to view in a browser without an account.
And that can be enough to trigger national interest concerns from US.
+ ~7.9 billion people may be excluded.
So to answer your question, it doesn't /do/ anything that other apps don't. But what it does it does rather effectively, and it isn't controlled by a company that is ultimately beholden to the US government. So from the gov's perspective, TikTok somewhere between a nuisance and a threat to national security.
I was under the impression it did quite a lot of spyware behavior that is rivaled by few if any apps on the store.
The issue isn't so much that TikTok isn't beholden to the US government. The issue is that TikTok is beholden to the Chinese Communist Party. If TikTok were Japanese or Korean or something, this wouldn't be a problem.
The psychological profiling that can be done with the data is likely somewhat scary, and the feds are going to be doubly terrified considering Beijing is ingesting all that data. The latter is probably the primary motivator of a ban.
Something would pop up in its place anyway.
As written, the title makes in look like the whole commission is asking for this, and "ask" isn't always a request, sometimes it can be a command (for example a police officer asking for your license and registration when they pull you over).
I think you're the only poster who actually caught this.
Brendan Carr comes out of a firm that owns a major DC lobbying hydra (Signal Group). His FCC history is all about parroting the (often anti-consumer) talking points of last administration.
He's indistinguishable from Ajit Pai. Carr is endlessly supportive of ISP monopolies. He rails against net-neutrality and Section 230. He's everything the FCC ought to protect us from.
As far as TikTok+China goes, I tend to be way more concerned about govs that can imprison me.
Past that, is TikTok a problem? We don't actually know because we never, ever, ever get meaningful specifics about what's being collected or what how that manifests as an actual risk to us.
IMO a better use of time and effort would be to create mechanisms that make these kinds of tracking less impactful. We have avenues for technical solutions to these kinds of problems and decentralized systems. Whenever we attempt to spread adoption to them we are often met with the argument that "just using X big company platform is easier".
Can someone put into succinct evidences of this statement?
To the typical talking point:
* IP infringement: there is not much unusual rate of IP stealing from China. Considering the size of Chinese economy and foreign trade ties between China and the rest of world, absolute number of IP infringement cases are not a good indicator of the government's policy.
* Coercion of South East Asian nations: This one is a natural demand of a rising super power. Putting it in the perspective of any historical rising of superpower, China has been relatively much more peaceful. Again, the sheer size of China make the absolute number terrifying, but please stay rationale, and don't try to paint China as some sort of arch evil of the west Civilization. After all, the West has been nourished by the Oriental civilization, among them China particularly contributed to the advancement of knowledge and inventions (gun powder, magnet etc.).
* Confrontation with US over Taiwan: If you are OK with Texas leaving the union, then you are entitled to support Taiwan independence. Enough said. Pick your side, and stick with it.
PS: I am Chinese living in US. And I support the peaceful cooperation between China and US. The 2 nations are the most refined examples of the oriental and western civilizations. It's indeed a tragedy that the finest human civilizations cannot work together. We Chinese living in US, as well as the US people having good exposure in China, are in a good position to amplify the cooperative ties between China and US.
I'm sad that you don't realize Taiwan is already functionally autonomous, and wants to remain that way.
It's also telling how you imagine that a typical American wouldn't "let" Texas leave the union.
As far as I (or anyone else I know) cares, if Puerto Rico or Guam or Texas wanted to leave the U.S. (which they don't), and they held a vote, and a supermajority voted to leave, why wouldn't we let them leave? It isn't the 1860s anymore. The world is much more democratic now, imperialism is over, and if a group of people want to go it alone, we should let them.
Scotland had a vote to leave the U.K., and they decided to stay, so they stayed. If they had voted to leave, they would have left.
The U.K. had a vote to leave the E.U., and they decided to leave, so they did.
Would China recognize Taiwan's independence if Taiwan held a vote? Of course not. The reason for this is not merely because China doesn't sympathize with the desires of the Taiwanese people, but because China doesn't even believe in democracy in the first place.
Texas has a 2 trillion dollar economy with shipping, electronics, manufacturing, oil, electronics, etc, 28 million taxpayers, a lot of military bases and assets and miles of coastline and ports. You don't just let that leave.
We're not the UK or EU - if Texas tried to secede they would just learn what it's like to be on the business end of an American military "liberation."
Are these similar? Texas is part of the union and WANTS to stay in the union. Taiwan is independent does NOT want to be part of China. They don't seem similar to me.
1. Those are not even close to equivalent. For so many reasons.
2. Sure, Texas can leave if they want. Florida and California too. Definitely Puerto Rico and Hawaii.
Maybe the Philippines is a better example. They've been independent of the US since 1946. I'm perfectly OK with it staying that way!
The person that is punching you in the face can best be described as an "enemy" - even if they deny they are doing it.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/10/16/china-intellectual-prop... https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/china-hacked-least-six... https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/08/politics/chinese-hackers-brea... https://apnews.com/article/microsoft-exchange-hack-biden-chi... https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/04/politics/china-hackers-econom...
That has not weaken their legitimacy as the government agency, or US government's legitimacy over US citizens.
Equating some online hacking with punching in the face, is probably as convincing as Trump stating Kungflu with Covid.
That just doesn't make any sense.
Every power is an adversary of each other on the world stage. It's not something special that exists between China and the US, each and every power is in a similar relationship. Since there's no higher power to govern it all, the only thing that keeps the adversarial relationships somewhat peaceful is the balance of the power. Otherwise one would assimilate the other. The rest, like the particulars you listed, are just details.
That's just a war-mongering propagandaist talking point.
- Taiwan is technically the legitimate government of China, so it's really more appropriate to say that the mainland broke away from China instead of the other way around. Realistically though, they've been defacto independent for decades during which there has been peace. The KMT is no longer the dominant party in Taiwan and the CCP has moved on from Mao, the two sides should drop the charade and normalize relations, but it's unlikely to happen with Xi at the helm stoking Chinese nationalism.
That said, I don't think any of this should automatically make the US and China adversaries. The US has a number of allies that are worse on the human rights front, and has historically propped up dictatorships as long as they were aligned against communism.
imo the real reason for the conflict is that there is a resurgence of nationalism in every major country. Both the US and China has become more fascist compared to 20 years ago, and this trend is likely to continue.
In case it wasn't obvious, Western influence (individualism and democracy) is an existential threat to the CCP -- This is why see western media censored and/or outright banned in China. Tiananmen Square Massacre is another example of CCP's response to western influence in China.
Nobody is obliged to tailor their beliefs to your whims. It doesn't matter how logical you think you are. It doesn't matter if you think other people are being hypocritical or illogical. The simple fact of the matter is that I support American interests and oppose Chinese interests, and I don't care if you think that makes me hypocritical.
Privacy breaking apps must be thrown out. However, this mustn't be decided on the basis of hearsay.
But that's hard - it's easier to demand that private corpos play the enforcer (and corpos themselves were dumb to even get themselves into a situation of playing the moral and political arbiter).
But in terms of potential harm, unquestionably China, unless I'm actively breaking US law.
My hostilities with the United States government are an edge case, a risk to be managed. The government, for 9 in 10 people, is a good actor.
China is a foreign actor. Unlike the US government it has zero checks and balances which I control, and should it use this data to compromise our government or fool the people I live with I expect the consequences to be far more damaging.
They were caught not too long ago actually spreading environmental causes in Texas against rare earth mining. They were trying to leverage our political process to make us dependent on them. Tools like TikTok make them far more effective at these sorts of operations, and it would be incredibly foolish to trust them.
Do you have a source for this? I did some quick searching but couldn't find anything concrete. Super curious to learn more about this case if it's true.
I don't think CCCP data collection from TikTok would be very useful at targeting specific individuals. But the data set as a whole could be the equivalent of a nuclear bomb if exploited in pursuit of some nefarious goal (e.g. an outside country influencing the results of another country's political election)
Just because one is more likely doesn't mean the damage from the other won't be so catastrophic that it's the greater risk.
Which is not to say that your own government shouldn't worry about national security- maybe the ban on TikTok could be more targeted, for example members of the government and military should not use it.
Anyway I was thinking more about the spying, and not so much about the influencing.
So CCP is so bad that mere association is enough to deter any meaningful defense?
If data harvesting was a genuine concern you might as well ban Facebook and every other social media app while you're at it. It's just hysteria and nationalism.
> If data harvesting was a genuine concern ...
It is, and that is what is going on here, with TikTok the beginning. EU is also helping here, so kudos to them. Hopefully Discord next.
This is not true. China financializes everything, and pumps capital into projects at rates unseen and unmatched in the history of the world. There is plenty of competition, as evidenced by the fact that China has apps that are fare more efficient and feature rich than anything in the US. See: WeChat.
This seems like a poor reason to ban an application/website/whatever. Reminds me of elementary school drama. Find a legitimate and/or legal reason (e.g. the mass harvesting of biometric data, unbeknownst to the users, being fed into some opaque government-ran database) or it should not be banned.
Um, no. Reciprocity is a pretty key concept in international relations, and a legitimate reason to take retaliatory measures. Also "we would rather not grant our adversary this advantage" is another legitimate reason to take action.
That being said, what US laws does TikTok not follow?
My understanding is that Chinese law is usually pretty vague and unclear, especially in areas like this, and in any case doesn't actually bind the government.
I would much rather we codify data protections, and then ban TikTok (and domestic) apps that do not comply.
The US could make something similar to eliminate Chinese companies in terms of democracy vs dictatorship: pass a law saying that social media websites can only operate if their employees have the right to vote in their own countries.
Then TikTok would be banned because it does not (/could not) follow the law.
Flip side is Bytedance/TikTok bending backwards to follow US laws, because Douyin is used to dealing with PRC regulatory bullshit, meanwhile their employees just want to make money instead of undermine company expansion plans with geopolitical culture wars. Like it's not hard, follow the law in the country you operate in and be competitive. TBH that really leaves some Google services, a lot of western platforms simply can't hack it against PRC competitors for domestic PRC market.
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/22/technology/apple-no-longe...
Smells like jealousy to me.
The US Government isn't lacking in harvesting extensive amounts of personal and sensitive data.
The reason we know that manipulation via algorithmic content feeds is effective and harmful is that numerous bad actors exploiting the Facebook algorithm have used it to cause real harm worldwide.
For the sake of argument, let’s take Facebook at their word that they are merely optimizing for engagement, and the well-documented radicalization spirals that manifest on its platform are the result of clever exploitation.
Now imagine that the bad actor wanting to manipulate large numbers of people also had control of the algorithm and all the data.
The risk here is blindingly obvious, and we should do something about it before it becomes an even bigger problem.
The senators were alerted to the issue by the WSJ:
http://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/tiktok-tracked-user-data-usi...
TikTok (Musica.ly) was caught violating COPPA rules in 2019 and fined more than double the amount that Disney was fined in 2011, which was the highest fine ever issued for COPPA violations:
http://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/cases/musical.ly_p...
There were allegations after 2019 that TikTok was violating the terms of the 2019 injunction and were still violating COPPA.
Like Google and Facebook have done in their communications after being caught acting unethically and/or illegally, TikTok rolled out the cosequent changes to their website/app with the accompanying phrase "You are in control".
Nothing could be further from the truth. If you were in control, you would disable advertising, for starters. :)
When you thought you were controlling tracking by changing your advertiser ID in Android, you were being misled. TikTok had stored your MAC address and could link it to the prior advertiser ID. MAC addresses are PII under COPPA.
In 2021, the Dutch DPA also fined TikTok for violating online privacy laws protecting children:
https://autoriteitpersoonsgegevens.nl/sites/default/files/at...
For the average user and I'd say the absolutely majority of users, this is a better alternative than being able to set your own. Only hardcare security enthusiasts would have an appetite for setting their own MAC addresses and knowing what to do with it.
FCC's mandate is to regulate telecom infrastructure - devices, bandwidth allocation, licensing, etc. Nothing at fcc.gov mentions anything about a mandate to regulate content being distributed over that infrastructure. There is a long history of debate over whether FCC using broadcast licenses to enforce decency standards, but this is the first I've heard of them implying that iOS and Android are subject to the commission's authority.
If it's a national security issue, it seems that Homeland should be addressing it; if it's consumer fraud over privacy violations, it would be FTC.
The letter (which is not on the FCC.gov website, so I found it through the commissioner's Twitter post) doesn't go into that at all, and it seems like pretty significant overreach that a commissioner can demand software companies to choose their customers according to his will.
https://twitter.com/BrendanCarrFCC/status/154182358595770777...
I think TikTok is a giant human rights violation for being utterly stupid, but that doesn’t mean the arguments presented here make much sense. This comment is going to be fed as training data to some stupid AI to spit out comments that sound like I wrote them, which I find much more troubling from an intelligence community perspective. I never agreed to this when I joined Hacker News. TikTok users, on the other hand…
And I don't know, this crap is so sad, this all is such a misdirected effort. The operating systems must provide the users means to regulate the access to data and device functions instead of laws and committees deciding what apps are not hostile enough to be distributed. What laws and committees must enforce is properly equipped operating systems. Legally enforce full control of the devices, sand-fucking-box everything. Not on this planet, huh?
[1] https://twitter.com/BrendanCarrFCC/status/154182358595770777...
Hard to know without having them spell out their specific security concerns.
Seems to me it's able to copy almost anything it wants out of the phone.
On Android? Probably.
On iPhone? That's not how iPhones work
You can block the permission in settings, but as explained in the FCC letter, TikTok has a documented pattern of bypassing system permissions and accessing data that they shouldn't actually be able to access (which is malware-like behavior).
it would be really helpful for the FCC to explain to content creators why and how their biometric information can be used against them, tiktok is just one of the companies scanning their faces in that regard
If not, then no one at government agencies should be making such suggestions.
It's clear that this is not a principles-based ask to remove a data-hungry application. Carr isn't saying that applications shouldn't harvest this data. He's saying a Chinese company shouldn't be playing the same game that American companies do.
Thus, the logical conclusion to "why is Carr making this statement?" isn't necessarily "it's because TikTok does something abnormally bad," but rather political: it's anti-China propaganda.
Trump's most clever political tactic is to be a hypocrite and exceptionally effective liar: his agenda is always a superposition of contradictory claims. Even the GOP couldn't keep up and decided to forgo any semblance of a political platform for 2020 [1].
Despite the lies, there's a few consistent policy themes that emerged from his presidency. Notably, is a broad, across-the-board, blanket opposition to everything China. This includes decidedly not Chinese things, such as racism and condoning violence against Asian Americans [2] It also extends to economic opposition at all costs.
*Here* is the central truth behind Carr's statement. It's a continuation of the Republican party's current strong anti-Chinese policy.
[1] https://prod-cdn-static.gop.com/docs/Resolution_Platform_202...
[2] https://www.businessinsider.com/un-report-trump-seemingly-le...
In America, yes (just like Facebook is banned in China). Will you next complain that Carr is okay with American troops marching in Washington, but doesn't like it if Chinese troops do the same?
While Facebook and surveillance in general are anything but a boon for common Americans, it's understandable that those pulling the strings would get worried when a foreign country moves in on their turf.
So you and I are in an agreement then!
His motivation is only that the collection is done by a Chinese company. Not that data collection is bad, but rather that he wants the US government to have the authority to access the data via a National Security Letter or through the opaque, secretive FISA court system. [1]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Foreign_Intellig...
Perhaps not fully. I meant my analogy with troops - though it is not to American's benefit, they should be even more worried when a foreign power is spying on them.
After that anyone should be free to know what data is collected and decide to use or delete the app. I mean, if someone wants to use the service, just let them use, it's their personal choice.
TikTok in the US is not the same as Google in France, and even they were recently fined for signifcant privacy concerns.
It is important to protect citizens. People often don't have enough information about sharing their data to make the best privacy decisions without legislation to protect them.
Banning use is never an answer. If I want to share my data, it should be my choice, not the government's.
I also struggle to view China as an adversary. US and China are each other's number one trading partners. We are allies. Why not try to build on that productive relationship?
Totally a coincidence, probably..
I liked the previous idea of a transfer of ownership which would grant actual legal protections and oversight.
1) There are lots of American soldiers, the majority of these are young people. TikTok could have a real effect on American opsec, in these times.
That, of course, also goes for other apps - and should / is probably regulated by the military itself. But it is more worrisome when the app used is owned not only by a foreign company, but a foreign company that's friendly with your current enemy.
2) Influence. In the case of any big conflict, the propaganda machine will run at full steam - this means controlling opinions. China has rightly observed that TikTok is influencing on steroids, and at a much higher velocity.
When you're very young, and living the dream life by being TikTok famous - getting that rug pulled from under your feet can make you do irrational and desperate things. Such as promoting whatever agenda the owners tell you to.
They may not tell this explicitly, but by what content will be shadow banned, and what will be promoted heavily.
Apple has been applying huge pressure to Google on the "privacy" front.
Google could ban TikTok and portray itself as caring about your privacy whilst Apple doesn't.
Is there a fairly applied rule here, or is sinophobia driving this?
While I agree that sinophobia plays into discourse around TikTok, TikTok has an established pattern of collecting data against the user's wishes (even bypassing system permissions), and of collecting and storing data about minors in direct violation of the law[0].
They are not an unknown entity; they are an established bad actor when it comes to Dara collection and storage.
I suspect they just say "its against terms" but allow it to happen, because to verify children they'd need to collect information on them...
Don't hide behind sinophobia to defend China's communism. This has nothing to do with ethnicity.
China is using its laws to effectively ban competition from foreign companies which don't want to cooperate with its totalitarian form of government. The US should do the same and not allow competition from totalitarian countries.
restricting the free flow of information between citizens of countries whose corrupt leaders are engaged in a dick measuring contest only benefits the corrupt leaders.
advocating that we need to impose blinders on ourselves as well to punish them is just short sighted self-punishment
How so? Western platfroms bailed PRC after they were unwilling to handle PRC legal requirements that every PRC company has to deal with. Reasonable requirements like media filtering that western companies were eventually forced to adopt a few years later because it's obvious PRC was precient that attention driven platforms caused violence/destability if left unchecked.
Ergo both FB and Google had internal initiatives to re-enter PRC market after domestic pressures to improve moderation capabilities enabled them to comply with PRC laws. Until internal FB/Google drama killed the effort. It has very little to do with "totalitarianism" because FAANG + co. was eager to compete in PRC market, until they realized they couldn't, or their employees wouldn't let them. Meanwhile Bytedance/TikTok keeps operating in US because they don't mind working around bullshit like Trump's EO. At the end of the day, it's US corporate incompentence and broader political culture that thinks US companies should operate in other markets with impunity that flunked them out of PRC market while dealing with regulatory push back else where.
If US wants to pull national security card to keep down PRC platforms, they have a right to. But don't pretend it's about competition. Bytedance/TikTok flourished in the west for the same reason FB/Google/Twitter failed in PRC - Chinese platforms know how to put up with regulatory/political bullshit and become more competitive because of it. Like TikTok isn't huge in US because domestic US laws is keeping FB down. It's huge because the kind of content that survives Chinese censorship designed to mitigiate political divisness is the kind of opiate that most people would rather consume.
People ask why Elon Musk is willing to pay so much for Twitter when the software could be replicated at much less expense - the software isn't the point, the network effect is. It doesn't matter how good your Twitter clone is, if no one is using it, then no one will use it.
If TikTok is banned (or can't grow in the US due to being removed from app stores), there's actually an opening for a clone. I wonder what sort of TikTok clone would succeed - one backed by existing social media companies? One that's just like TikTok, or one that introduces some killer new feature?
Same as what happened in Mexico with united fruits company.
The data it gathers (outside of location, facial recognition, and speech capture) has been really off target for being matched to content. The algorithms across most of these sites are really not useful in building a valid service from what I can gather... Most of the people that use social apps wear out quickly once they realize the level of free work they are doing, and how it goes unrewarded.
I personally can do without it, because youtube and other things still exist to host the same exact type of video content, but the entire social app landscape is frought with platforms that are too big to really reward creators with any real growth, and it's overrun with deceptive advertising. I know I sound like I'm jaded, but I've learned some valuable skills in film and editing, so I'm really not.
Apps that will win from this point forward will realize that they need to be more niche based, while also integrating into a larger eco system that allows for content to be shared across the Internet, the way the Internet was meant to work... The common tactics of limiting content reach and squeezing creators for ad money are short lived, most of these apps have a huge amount of inactive and outright abandoned user accounts...
TikTok is in essence just another video "doom scroller" app, that allows pretty much useless likes follows and shares, it's really put a bunch of suggestive psychology on top of that, but in essence it's the same thing other platforms have been doing just with vertical video and a different UI. It's not replaceable, especially when it takes it's user base for granted and works hard to gather data on users and to manipulate the majority into doing lots of work for them for free (with a really weak creator fund). We can live without it.
If there are a hand full of people on the platform that have millions of followers on the same platforms where most of the user base has only hundreds of followers, it's pretty telling that it's a free work exploitation scheme, and it's really the first indication that it's really not going to survive the long haul.
As far as the data gathering debacle goes, there is also nothing different happening with many other major social app platforms we all use, instead though, our data is being collected and used against us by private companies across the world instead of by foreign governments. Removing one app won't solve the problem of personal privacy violation. We each need to be a lot more careful about the level of information we share online, and we need to stop being so eager to work online for these greedy and abusive operations for free or it's our own damn fault.
Absolutely this. When I finally bit the bullet and downloaded TikTok, I was on it for maybe half a day before I gave up because content discoverability on the app is absolute garbage.
One of the reasons I've stuck around on Twitter so long is that their search features are incredibly useful compared to most modern social media sites. They allow users to get a much broader picture of what's actually happening as opposed to feeling like you're just silo'ed in your own little bubble. I think that has further effects on the ways that community is created and content is gamed. I've noticed the same thing happened on Instagram as it grew more popular. The explore feed is full of content that is obviously designed to play the algorithm rather than being actually useful to users.
We think of algorithms just being tailored towards our needs, but algorithms now are also tailored towards generating company profit, to limiting negative topics, towards censorship, and towards many other things that protect platforms first...
When bitcoin crashed for example, on Twitter there weren't a lot of people prominently screaming and cursing trending online, even though many lost their shirts, and were upset ant irate over the crash... They WERE cursing and screaming at a brick wall on Twitter though, the algorithms and moderation surgically muted and ratio'ed many of those users in order to "temper and quell" public outrage from developing against the crypto world, which Twitter is invested heavily into (rather coincidentally)....
This is the kind of modern world we live in now... We had a few years where apps were truly "social" but now, most things are carefully monitored and curated by the time we see them. This is also why you often don't directly (and consistently) see content posted from the people you follow now, on a consistently ordered time line, as well.
But the headline misleadingly refers to Commissioner Carr as "U.S. communications regulator." One would normally think that this referred to the FCC (THE U.S. communications regulator), not just one of its commissioners.
(Submitted title was "FCC asks Google, Apple to remove TikTok".)
Facebook GOOD! TikTok BAD!
I have yet to see a single China defender on Hacker News explain the treatment of the iBooks and iTunes stores in China after they were suddenly ordered shut after six months of operation, given no legal recourse at all. The Obama administration did nothing about it while Silicon Valley grandees kept conspicuously silent as well as all my Chinese friends here in the US. The were afraid of Xi Jinping and the Gonganju and still are.
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/22/technology/apple-no-longe...
"No thanks, we won't be doing that"
Apple is utterly dependent on China, but what about Google? It famously pulled out of that market years ago.