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Comment by nixcraft | Hacker News Reader

There is lots of talk going around TikTok, especially now geopolitics has been added to this kind of discussion due to ongoing tensions between two giants. Instead of banning or removing the TikTok app, how about the US government put a firm privacy policy that forbids TikTok, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, Twitter and co from collecting excessive data on users? That would be a better solution, IMHO. Let users download and use whatever app they want but keep a firm privacy policy. But, of course, geopolitics will take over, so I have ZERO hope for a tight privacy policy for all apps.

Similarly, there is no such thing as a backdoor in apps for good guys (3 letter agencies) vs bad guys. Just make one rule for all. Otherwise, it is all grey areas open to abuse. Also, it is not just geopolitics; big social media like YouTube, Insta, FB and others face colossal competition from TikTok. As a result, they are losing users to TikTok. So they want this kind of ban (emphasis mine ), at least they won't object to it, and it is a slippery slope.

View on HN

> Just make one rule for all.

This is the correct solution of winning the moral high ground.

What Russia has been doing for several decades (see Yuri Bezmenov [1]) is leveraging the "west's" inner discontent. Every time a Watergate or Snowden happens it's a gift to them. It exposes our 'hypocrisy', and failure to live up to our own democratic standards. That fuels the narrative of the western nations as corrupt.

We're in a bind because the kind of medicine that would fight the even more sophisticated Chinese tactics now would also hurt our own corporations and agencies. But we must take it. Targeted advertising and domestic surveillance must go if our values are to survive in the world.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuri_Bezmenov

You don't need a "narrative" to describe western nations as corrupt.

All you need to do is look at wealth inequality over time:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f3/Wealth_i...

Well, okay corrupt, but still capable of self-repair. meanwhile others have the corruption build into the very system of thiefdoms handed out to nobles.

Also there are quite alot of ideals at work, for example when it comes to free trade. Anybody can sell his product and ideas in the us, meanwhile alot of beligerents, have walled of their societies from free discours and sabotage any external market contenders.

Why do you think wealth inequality is an inherent sign of corruption?

Because wealth can be turned into power.

Because when power is unevenly distributed a few people can make boneheaded decisions that create misery for the many.

To point to the Russian experience the Tsar made the bad decision to take an odyssey the long way around Asia (and Africa for some ships) to attack Japan and they got their asses handed to them in a few hours. That was the first time Lenin and company tried a revolution and ultimately they made this feature film about it

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battleship_Potemkin

A few months back we had the spectacle of Elon Musk possibly buying Twitter (maybe he was in the running for asshole-in-chief) but I think he got some sense scared into him and he is keeping his head down these days.

Btw, you still didn't answer the question.

Yes wealth can be turned into power, but you know what already is power? Political power. Wealth is a counterpoint to political power. This is why communist systems become authoritarian, because there is no counterpoint to the power of the politburo. View xi’s crackdown on tech in China as a elimination of a potential competitor, just like his earlier corruption purges.

You push a narrative by including 'western' there. Non western nations also have tremendous wealth inequality.

You are also pushing a narrative. You can't ignore the basis of the hypocrisy of the west: the west purports to be better. You aren't just not doing better than the comment above, you're doing worse.

Show me please how wealth inequality implies corruption.

It's been studied quite a few times and links have been identified. Here is one from 2004.

https://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar_url?url=http://web.hks....

This particular study is just measuring correlation. Sorry, this doesn't count. We were talking about inequality CAUSING corruption.

> It exposes our 'hypocrisy', and failure to live up to our own democratic standards. That fuels the narrative of the western nations as corrupt.

I don't know why though. It should be clear by now that nobody in the west cares about hypocrisy, democracy, standards or corruption.

I care.

I do too, but statistically we are "nobody".

Given the lack of data, you might as well assume that you are not so special, and hence part of a statistically significant group.

I see the claim that nobody cares about democracy as another piece of right-wing propaganda.

This! It is propaganda designed to give you apathy. Ironically it only works because you are aware enough to know you want a better world.

A great many of us care, but are powerless in the face of the hypocrisy and corruption.

Where is it that you live that you fought and won the good fight so handily that you’re able to criticize us from afar?

Remember kids, propaganda doesn't need to convince you of anything to be successful, only to get you to believe in nothing. “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing,” . The intention of 'what aboutism' is to get you to do nothing, especially to not speak up in support if you aren't sure. 'Don't Let the Perfect Be the Enemy of the Good'. Don't let doom posters like this one suck you into their world of apathy and hate. If someone says something that's goal appears to be negativity, hate, or apathy, they are toxic, do not rent them space in your head.

After action reports, critical evaluation with a goal towards improvement, great. Apathy, the world sucks, give up? F that.

In the 90s the USA had the developed world's worst infant mortality rates. But if you look at the way we gather our statistics, it is different from all other countries. Why? Because unlike others we didn't manipulate the metrics because it was more important to us to have actual data to help save/improve lives. So who sucks? Who is failing kids? The country who is willing to make itself look bad with the worst metrics so that it can change things, or those not honest enough to be willing to look bad or make self examination?

Yeah, America sucks, but it's 10x better than it was when I was a kid in the 70-80s, or most places I have traveled. I would rather have public suck that can be addressed than the general apathy that this poster has.

What a nice piece of creative writing. The internet truly is a wonderful place to let loose with one's imagination.

Do they still pay you guys 50 cents a post, or is it more these days?

Oh well, at least I'm paid.

It's entirely possible that you're living and working with a bunch of zeroes, and getting all of your information third hand. How many real people do you know well, one dozen? Two dozen? Maybe you could spend your time around better people.

How do you know that pointing out the ‘hypocrisy’ is the propaganda rather than the idea that these values as commonly understood have any basis in reality in the first place?

I think that's a fair objection. I don't know. But my lived experience in a family who have sacrificed a lot on the alter of democratic values leaves me with a strong bias for which I make no apologies.

People in my family have sacrificed meaningfully for these values as well, but I think it’s important to evaluate objectively whether those sacrifices are honored by the people who wield power or taken for granted.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-poli...:

> But the picture changes markedly when all three independent variables are included in the multivariate Model 4 and are tested against each other. The estimated impact of average citizens’ preferences drops precipitously, to a non-significant, near-zero level. Clearly the median citizen or “median voter” at the heart of theories of Majoritarian Electoral Democracy does not do well when put up against economic elites and organized interest groups. The chief predictions of pure theories of Majoritarian Electoral Democracy can be decisively rejected. Not only do ordinary citizens not have uniquely substantial power over policy decisions; they have little or no independent influence on policy at all.

> […]

> When both interest groups and affluent Americans oppose a policy it has an even lower likelihood of being adopted (these proposed policies consist primarily of tax increases). At the other extreme, high levels of support among both interest groups and affluent Americans increases the probability of adopting a policy change, but a strong status quo bias remains evident.

while many struggles with the mental gymnastic, for me it has always been clear-cut. Government might be bad, and if they did bad, can we criticize it?

Did any harm come to Joseph Gordon-Levitt or Adam Driver for portraying real life events depicting US government in lesser light?

Can the same be said to Fan Bing Bing if she is to portray Li Wenliang in a movie? Or Viktor Bychkov playing Navalny in some sort of biopic produced by Russian production house?

I want more freedoms than just the ability to complain about not having freedom though.

America is more Brave New World than 1984; people can protest the government, but if that protest rarely overcomes the inertia of the status quo, does it even matter?

Yes of course it matters. Is it sufficient? Probably not. But it’s a substantial improvement over not being able to e.g. protest the government.

Anyway, our government isn’t designed to be steered by protest but by voting, which despite all its flaws does shift inertia.

> isn’t designed to be steered by protest but by voting

Even voting within states are completely rigged with gerrymandering and popular vote means nothing in national elections.

This is a disingenuous pattern of argument. You point out a known problem and then throw the baby out with the bath water. In this case, its clear voting does have some effect because seats are constantly changing parties, and parties fiercely compete for votes.

Other similar examples of this argument:

"Everyone knows taxes go to corrupt corporations, they are completely useless get rid of them"

"Everyone knows masks dont block 100% of airflow, theyre completely useless!"

> seats are constantly changing parties, and parties fiercely compete for votes

Possibly because those seats are worth money. I don't know that people competing for them means voting 'works' in any definitive fashion.

Princeton recently released a study (this one[1], I think?) that basically says as much: voting does very little.

1 https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-poli...

What seats are changing party? I live in California where my vote counts the least. Since I turned 18 every single election has sent a Democrat to Washington for both senate seats and my representative and president (though California doesn't have final say on that last one).

Currently, of those 4 seats, 3 are in their high 70s or even 80s and the 4th was appointed by the governor.

I'm in my 30s. My interests are either entirely not, or very very poorly represented in Washington.

Tell me again how my never missing an election has made a difference?

What seats are changing party: In November there are 50 tight races for house seats alone. The house and senate play a huge role in legislation so this election will have massive impact.

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2022-election-forecast/...

Even if you live in WA/CA your vote still matters. At the federal level there are 4 elected positions, 14 at the state level, and more at a local level. There are also primaries, so even if your Governor is guaranteed to be a Democrat you can at least pick which one.

The people that do vote have an outsized impact because, like you, most Americans are too lazy to vote.

I clearly said in my comment that I've never missed an election.

I do also vote in primaries, those have typically gone opposite to how I voted, or else were a foregone landslide for my pick.

I also never implied I live in WA. Apparently you got confused because I spelled out the name of the capital city of this country.

Ah, apologies for misreading your comment.

I see your point that district style voting can feel pointless unless you you're in a swing district. I still think there are smaller positions you can influence over but I agree with you on that.

If voting doesn't matter, why do Republicans work so hard to prevent voting?

It depends on where you live. Some states your individual vote will not matter because the outcome has already been decided by the popularity of one party.

If you vote for the biggest offices and nothing else. There's a lot more on those ballots.

There is, and my vote will also not influence those based on where I live.

> voting

You cannot meaningfully vote in the US, you have two options that have similar fascist views of the rest of the world and are unlikely to change anything. That is a false choice, meant to lull the chooser into a false sense of agency.

Yep it’s an imperfect system. It’s dramatically better than a lot of others that have existed through history (including today) though.

It is simply wildly untrue to imply that the two major parties don’t hold opposing views on at least a few important topics or that voting doesn’t help determine which party holds the power to realize their worldview. There’s a lot of overlap and a lot of ineffectiveness but this does not make them the same.

I thought this was incredibly obvious, but when you are not inside the US it becomes a lot more clear that it's foreign policy or stance on human rights doesn't change. It doesn't matter who you have in charge. What US news reaches outside of the borders frankly also doesn't convince me it's the same clusterfuck year after year. It wasn't always like this - it's gotten a lot worse in the past twenty years that I've paid any attention to it.

How would you know if someone less famous got disappeared? How would you evaluate the claim from people who say they saw it happen?

> How would you know if someone less famous got disappeared?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot

Almost everyone living in the US has some sort of record. They went to school, had friends, teachers, family, etc.

It's unlikely you wouldn't know someone has disappeared, especially if they were important enough that the government decided to illegally disappear them.

By reading and applying critical thinking in evaluating said material. Unless you are parroting the infamous FSB playbook of 'question everything it will muddies the truth'.

Tell that to Julien Assange (ducks).

>Government might be bad, and if they did bad, can we criticize it?

Assange rots in prison, Alex Jones gets found guilty of defamation by default judgment, FBI raids James O'Keefe and leaks his phone data to NYT (which he is suing), and to top it all we have a soviet-style shitshow trial directed by politicians in January 6th Committee.

Now, I will see some awesome mental gymnastics of people explaining how none of these things have any effect on freedom of speech.

> Alex Jones gets found guilty of defamation by default judgment

Given that Alex Jones has in the last 24 hours been found to be lying under oath repeatedly during his trial, since his lawyers accidentally gave a full digital copy of his phone to the prosecuting attorneys (which they were supposed to have done already during discovery, but did not), this may not be the most effective example.

It's a perfect example of how people are brainwashed to accept degradation of their basic speech and due process rights because powers that be found an example (a scapegoat, really) that's not sympathetic to the public.

I recall the debates around banning Jones from YouTube. It was "sold" as an unprecedented step to combat unprecedented violation of basic decency. And here were are a few years later, when simply mentioning some wrongthink words automatically demonetizes your videos, splatters them with warnings and even cuts live streams from air. People are banned from YouTube left and right (pun intended). It's the new normal and brave technologists who posed as defenders of "real" free speech are mostly rationalizing and cheering it on.

BTW, would you care to explain how something that happened in the last 24 hours is relevant to the issuance of default judgment that occurred in November last year?

the default judgment happened after 6 months of 'fuck around and find out' from Alex 'turn the frogs gay' Jones...

he putted around with blatant disregard for the trial and cries crocodile tears when he's found lying under oath during the damages hearing...

Alex 'you may be my neighbor but i'll eat your ass' jones is not some Bastian of freedom - he's a snake oil salesman profiting off other's pain and misery. selling 'real' pills his family makes.

He had due judgement - he had 6 months to do literally anything (He didn't raise a finger in this regard).

You don't 'not go to trial' by ignoring it... that's not how this works... not how any of this works.

BESIDES ALL THAT:

I agree with you: platforms are censoring people... that's in reaction to malicious (not just false - but intentionally crafted and designed to cause harm) information propagating through our social networks - mind viruses just like bulimia and anorexia that are shared socially - only far more potent: things like QAnnon.

information is spread not by how true it is - but by how sticky.

if malicious actors infect a network - besides censorship - the alternative is violence - either by inaction allowing the malicious mind virus to flourish - or by taking action against it.

We are in a brave new world - and we don't even know the tools we need to protect ourselves as a species from the existential threat of memetic viruses...

Maybe we just all need to stop sneezing our thoughts out onto the internet letting them congeal into this amalgamations of ideas that seem to have a life of their own.

the life status of biological viruses is suspect. I suspect viruses made of thoughts and memetic imagery can potentially reach agent-hood.

This kind of argument is a fundamental disagreement between "censorship can be ok" people vs not. Whose responsibility is it that the public is not tricked? Policy makers? Each individual person? etc

And books and movies are being or have been made about Assange and Alex from both sides with no repercussion. Case in point.

Here's another one: Show me a China documentary that outlines the overreaching adverse effect of state digital surveillance on China population. I can show you at least 5 docs on NSA and Snowden, produced by HBO / published by Harper Collins.

It's astounding how smoothly we went from "you can criticize the government" to "you can make a documentary about someone who criticized the government and got royally fucked". As if those two are the same thing.

To be fair, none of the examples you gave seem just like "criticizing the government," honestly. Snowden physically leaked a bunch of docs he agreed ahead of time would be a criminal offense to leak. I think what he did was the right thing to do and we should have said that whistleblower protections apply to people in his position, but I feel like that's a different problem?

> Alex Jones gets found guilty of defamation by default judgment

Civilly liable, not “guilty”, and how is that not his own fault?

It's more than a narrative for sure.

Seems insane to me to undercut our own companies because a hostile foreign state is operating in our nation.

Kick out the hostile state. That's not hypocrisy.

That is only a problem if value profits of a few companies, that don't even pay that much of taxes, over your citizens. Unless, of course, FB and Co. are doing for the letter agencies what TikTok is doing for the Chinese. In which cade it never really was about the companies in the first place.

The comment chain you’re replying to is advocating for reigning in “our own” companies, regardless

Kicking out the hostile state solves the immediate threat from China. But what about threats from our own (current and/or future) government?

I find it fascinating how China is described as an hostile state when it's manufacturing the vast majority of our goods.

Are these two things inherently contradictory? They're currently flying missiles and threatening one of our allies. Can you interpret that as not a hostile enemy?

We can handle our own companies with regulations that reflect the fact they aren't owned by a hostile state. We need to be much much more restrictive with china and also restrict our companies ability to work with them when it comes to data and technology sales

Imagine in the current world that every other countries take the same approach and kick out that now hostile influence (basically banning Meta/Apple/Microsoft/Amazon). How would these companies look when limited to domestic market ? And is that really the world we want to live in ?

China and Russia already does this. Very few other nations have reason to, but if they want to pick between American, Chinese, or domestic websites they are free to do so and I'm confident the vast majority will pick American.

It's easy to avoid the Bezmenov's "trap" (for a lack of better words). Avoid moralizing issues especially if it doesnt directly affect your core interests. Also acknowledge that indeed all nations do have skeleton in their cupboards, let's keep them hidden.

>how about the US government put a firm privacy policy that forbids TikTok, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, Twitter and co from collecting excessive data on users

Because the U.S. has access to and therefore benefits from the data that these companies collect. The exception on that list is TikTok - the U.S. can't access that data, but their rival can. That's why they're keen on banning it.

Respectfully...

Does anyone really think the NSA are not able to access Tiktok? Or that Chinese equivalent orgs are not able to access Facebook etc? Really?

This whole thing is just the cultural side of people pushing a new cold war for self serving purposes (increase my budget, grant me more powers, buy my newspaper etc).

I'm not saying China is great, I'm just saying this seems very much like a made up issue to me.

Everyone is hacking everyone. For true matters of intelligence gathering and national security physical location is no serious object. If it's on a server it's accessible to us, the Russians, the Chinese, etc. etc, basically public. But, and this is a thicc but, the US government and its various enforcement arms really like having a domestic data pile because they can trawl through it some veneer of legal legitimacy. Google's data is only a rubber stamp warrant away and that data can then be used in court. The same is not true for offshore providers like Tiktok. Sure they could probably get access if it's in a friendly country but that's a much higher more expensive bar.

Basically the discussion we're having about Tiktok is the discussion we'd be having about all these data haystacks if it weren't for the fact that there are powerful government interests that like the domestic haystacks.

TikTok is already a NATO propaganda app anyway.

https://archive.ph/qYSsL

TikTok is feared not because of privacy, but because it shows China can do tech too. America placed its economic bets on being a tech superpower and that is now under threat. Restricting American companies in the same way would only serve to also diminish tech in the US.

Eh, not really. There have been plenty of perfectly functional apps working in China for a long time. Makes sense that people are worried about feeding video streams, geolocation data, facial recognition data, social network data, etc. to our adversary who uses the very same data sources to manipulate and control its own population.

> There have been plenty of perfectly functional apps working in China for a long time.

But, for the most part, they've seen little fanfare outside of China. Even the breakouts, like Alibaba and WeChat, have really only succeeded where they are able to bridge connections with China. They hadn't proven they can develop software for a wide audience. TikTok changed the landscape. TikTok is an app that could have come straight out of Silicon Valley and is successfully going head to head with American players on their own turf.

Sure, but this set of observations is actually much more explainable by: people are uncomfortable with China either pushing or pulling data directly to/from Americans. This set of observations is not very explainable by "we didn't know China can 'do tech,' now we know, and now we don't like it."

Or, the state's agenda of fearmongering during our parents' generation over foreign enemies did not pass on to their children and grandchildren, and perhaps our domestic strategy of refusing to acknowledge the value of individuals' data and privacy to grow US companies has backfired since they now do not have any sense of ownership or an expectation of privacy to any company.

This was a blunder writ in hubris and xenophobia from the start.

Wasn't Eric Schmidt working for the department of defense while pushing Google+ for other countries?

Letting most Silicon Valley-style platform stuff into your country is a bit crazy: why would you want network lock-in effects to mean 30% of taxi revenue or whatever flows back to the US, or that a US AI matchmakes your dating population and drains money out of the country having people pay to get more swipes than each other in a zero-sum competition?

For most countries Silicon Valley-style companies with strong moats aren't entering in and helping with comparative advantage: they are just a taxation that goes overseas, capturing people through failures of collective action causing inability to shift platforms when something competitive comes along.

I don’t blame other countries for banning American information providing/gathering services either.

I don't want to personally malign you and I'm not gonna downvote, but it's irritating to me that this is currently the top comment. I noticed exactly the same thing yesterday where a top comment was explicitly commenting on a completely different article from the one in the link that the commenter had read the week prior about a similar topic.

What you wrote here has nothing to do with the linked article. The article doesn't discuss what American government policy is or should be toward TikTok. It's entirely about the business implications of Facebook potentially losing a competitive edge from its social graph if it adopts TikTok's content model that does not use a social graph.

You've hijacked that topic to talk about a completely different and more divisive topic du jour that is already discussed every other time TikTok comes up.

agree, I wish this discussion was less about politics and more of the impact on social media

Their business is built on top of collecting and selling users' data. Why will the politicians sponsored by them try to establish a policy to break their own business?

I generally like this, but there's another risk to keep in mind:

Purposefully over-regulating to such a degree that only the existing behemoths can survive and no startup could reasonably navigate the costly labyrinth of policies in that sector.

I think California has been doing OK recently in creating tiers of companies based on employee size and applying varying degrees of requirements based on that.

> how about the US government put a firm privacy policy that forbids TikTok, [...] from collecting excessive data on users?

This wouldn't address the way the CCP can use TikTok for subversion of America, vis-a-vis foreign election interference by Russia on social media in 2016.

> Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, Twitter and co

The American government has more options with American corporations, these companies aren't intrinsically linked to foreign governments in the way that TikTok is to the CCP. However, the EU should probably kick these American social media companies out of the EU.

All of them to to great lengths to ensure Taiwan isn't accidentally mentioned as being a country.

As does the American government, unfortunately. I hope this period of appeasement is soon coming to an end.

I honestly don't see a reason for the US not ban TikTok for arbitrary bullshit reasons, simply because China does the same sort of bullshit for American internet companies. Foreign websites often get mysteriously throttled, which encourages people to use their domestic alternatives. The iTunes store was banned, despite following all their censorship rules. They even hacked Google.

I, on the other hand, don't see a reason to ban TikTok. Just because China does something doesn't mean the US has to do the same thing.

Chinese here. While I can confirm a lot of these sites are banned for whatever reasons, iTunes is not. Check it yourself with https://ping.pe .

Sorry. I meant iTunes Books and iTunes Movies.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_of_the_iTunes_Store

I don't think "china does it" is a good reason for the US to do it. There are lots of things China does that we don't want to.

I'm not advocating censorship for censorship sake. The problem I have is with asymmetric rules regarding commerce. If China wants to have free access to US dollars, they need to allow us to have equally free access to their RMB.

How would the US possibly enforce this law on tik tok? At the end of the day, if a regulator can’t investigate, then they can’t enforce. What’s to stop tik tok from providing lip service then doing the opposite?

Banning the app may be the only way.

Does tiktok actually collect that much (valuable) information? It seems all the scaremongering people spread (rightfully or not) is around it's moderation and attempts to steer discourse and change opinions to pro-china?

Yes, they basically collect everything.

Yeah to me seems they rather buy data, so in the app I see ads about things things I've looked for somewhere else. Never seen it other way around, but maybe it is more subtle - YouTube Shorts and TikTok have a huge overlap in content for me, but does it mean YouTube buys my data from TikTok?

I think the real concern that isn't being said out loud is that it's fear of TikTok's ability to distribute information, and that the US government doesn't have management under their thumb.

It's far worse than just data collection. At least at one point in time Tiktok's client was disassembled enough to reveal that it had a function to download an unsigned binary blob and run it on the device. They're able to bypass app store protections completely...

> [...] how about the US government put a firm privacy policy that forbids TikTok, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, Twitter and co from collecting excessive data on users

And also a policy that forbids UX addictive-by-design patterns to induce bad habits.

How exactly would you word or enforce such a policy? What is a "bad habit"? Is fun or happiness addictive? Why might the puritan nanny state approach work better here than with alcohol, drugs, or abortion?

You hire the same kinds of people that these companies hire to design their products to be addictive and then you draft legislation banning the things that they say are addictive.

A better solution would be to teach how to get out of addiction and treat it more effectively vs banning. Banning only makes the addiction features more taboo and thus even more addictive. See prohibition, 1920-1930.

Do you really foresee a future where addictive aspects of social media are banned and the descendents of moonshiners are setting up servers next to rusted out stills in abandoned shacks in the Kentucky mountains so that people can get their doom scrolling fix over Tor?

Now that I reread that, I think it's entirely possible. Man the future is weird.

>"A better solution would be to teach how to get out of addiction"

It's hard to say no to the idea of more education, but I believe this is a non impactful solution. We've been teaching about the dangers of alcohol, tobacco, illicit drugs, unhealthy food, and much more for decades - if not generations. It only goes so far. I don't believe most addicts are addicted because of ignorance or a lack of rationality. I believe the primary driver is biological rather than a lack of knowing better.

How sure are you about that? There are countries that are successfully fighting addiction (such as Portugal) to drugs[1].

The US has massively failed addicts for some time, wanting to just put them in jail instead of treating them.

1: https://deserthopetreatment.com/addiction-guide/drug-industr...

I think we're talking about two different aspects to the problem. The methods and approaches taken in regards to treating addiction is not the same thing as teaching people about the harm of drugs. I'm not saying we shouldn't have drug / substance abuse education, but rather, its not the cure-all people think it will be.

what's the "addictive" part of tiktok to ban? Scrolling? Providing recommendations? Seems quite nebulous to legislate against.

The core problem with most social media, including TikTok, is that they fully control how you can consume the content, be it the endless-recommendations-scrolling of TikTok or the Twitter or Facebook timeline. You can't browse it in a non-addicting fashion, even if you tried, as third party clients are not allowed.

So the solution should be to force them to open up to third party clients. This won't magically make the problem go away completely, but not having so much content locked inside a Skinner box would certainly be helpful.

And how much should those third-party clients have to pay for access? Who sets the price?

Nonsense. There is no way to write such a law that would comply with the vagueness doctrine. It's impossible.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/vagueness_doctrine

Ah, you'd set up the revolving door system of regulation the likes of which is used to ensure banks, stock markets, and military procurement don't operate against the public good. Well that takes care of "addictive".

Now how about "bad habits"? Have Republican politicians appoint their "experts" to draft it? Or perhaps your politics sway the other way and you'd prefer Democrats to appoint their experts, perhaps the Catholic Church, given the persuasion of their current leaders.

Ok, what about moderation? You won't find viral videos about Xinjiang or China's organ "donor" program on TikTok and that seems more problematic.

Yeah, this sort of protectionist interference in the name of "security" isn't new - look at Boeing.

They could not even exist without harvesting data - it is their business model.

Unfortunately, the only option is to just leave.

This top comment is odd, in the sense that the article does not talk about TikTok's privacy and/or geopolitics debacles at all, even though the title "poison pill" might lead some users who didn't read the article to think it refers to TikTok's violation of privacy, or it being created and controlled by an Internet giant based in Communist China, or something along these lines.

The "poison pill" in the title actually refers to TikTok's recommendation model that disregards (or at least de-weights) social graph, versus Facebook/Instagram's approach.

It'd be practically impossible to enforce the 'privacy' concerns, because the data is so vast and accessible to CCP entities employed by ByteDance. I mean, they literally pay CCP members to promote government policy agenda within the company.

As for trade - FB, Google etc. - none of it is even allowed in China. So purely from a 'trade parity' basis, Chinese social apps simply should not be allowed in the US. If we can't have apps 'there' then our policy should be 'tit for tat' and do the same thing our side.

Technically US companies are allowed in China as long as they follow the local regulations (which probably involves following Chinese National Security Letters etc). What OP proposes and the EU is doing is to allow anyone in the market as long as they follow strong privacy laws. Existing apps can defend themselves in court and only get banned after a sentence from a judge.

The specific regulation is having a Chinese Communist Party member on the board and having the owner be a Chinese citizen.

The second requirement in that definitionally excludes american owned companies, other than dual citizens

China does not recognize dual-citizenship (at least not if one of those citizenships is Chinese).

>It'd be practically impossible to enforce the 'privacy' concerns,

But US would first need a law, now you just surrendered before you even tried. It could be possible to enforce it, you find an illegal action you slap them with a fine, find a new infraction slap them again and again.

Do I need to spend my time thinking for americans? Make a law so Tik Tok keeps US people data in US, force them to have US employees and offer a bounty to this employees to report illegal stuff. The only downside is that most US citizens and companies will have no choice then to accept EU privacy laws as really good and valid (but I am sure the world can find soem other laws to make fun off, like something about bananas shape).

"Do I need to spend my time thinking for americans? " Only if makes sense, and unfortunately, I don't think it does in this case.

Which is the point: TikTok can't really be TikTok with those laws in place.

There's no way to make any US or European privacy laws gel with CCP policy and there's no realistic way to 'segregate the data'.

The only 'solution' would be to have a complete and total separation of the app in almost every way, essentially meaning TT as an operating entity would be an American/Western company, which happens to be 'owned' by a company in China, but that's it. Literally everything else, except for maybe some code-sharing, would be completely different.

Then EU would have to do the same for FB, Goolge,Apple and americans will have to stop complaining about protectionism every time we give those giants a fine for doing bad things.

The EU is not capable of producing it's own FB, Google and Apple, and those 'bad things' they do are are very marginal.

FB selling ads to people and allowing agencies to 'target' people based on whatever just isn't causing a lot of harm to anyone. Nobody in Europe is being 'put off' because they're seeing Kid's Clothing ads because they are parents. I mean, it's odd, but not that bad.

The American Gov. are not going after Europeans for arbitrary reasons. If the NSA is targeting a European for something, you can be sure it already rises to the level of 'international shenanigans' anyhow, and that probably something is very wrong.

FB could very well remove the possibility for the NSA to directly get data on some random European but it largely won't make a difference.

Right now, the CCP has access to anything they want, for any reason they want, including arbitrary malicious things such as harassing NGOs etc..

The scenario I am thinking is

1 some EU person has social media account sicne a child, NSA,CIA know everything about this person

2 this person manages to reach top leadership role in politics

3 This person is involved in a decision to use say USA or EU stuff(airplanes, guns, software)

4 CIA, NSA other 3 letter agencies popup this person files and blackmail them so the Americans get the contract.

Or it could be that americans want to invade something and EU population don't like it, but the politicians get blackmailed to support he US anyway. We know as a fact that Americans spy on our politicians , I will not be surprised if blackmailing and bribing is happening, so why give the CIA,NSA access to our entire population for free, make those bastards work for it, make them do illegal shit to obtain it not just offer the data like idiots.

I am just saying, force TicTok out or ask them to keep the data in US, EU and the same force FB, Google to do the same because US does not want to do the reasonable thing and offer EU citizens same righs as US citizens when it comes to data privacy, sorry dude but fuck your US gov , privacy and other values are applied only for citizens and we the rest are just economic markets, idiots to be exploited and screwed over

You may have noticed this from the attempts or lack thereof over the past two decades to regulate tech to the benefit of everyday people. This is because Congress has been petrified of "breaking Google". It is currently why so much of SV now sits on the POTUS's cabinet.

No one knows the totality of how and where these modern day digital East India companies truly operate, and there will never be legislation that broadly protects citizen privacy like in the EU because of it.

Which law will be used to reveal the encrypted traffic between the app and server was sending personal data to be used in influence campaigns by the CCP?

> how about the US government put a firm privacy policy that forbids TikTok, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, Twitter and co from collecting excessive data on users? That would be a better solution, IMHO.

Something that frankly won't happen since that would put those companies out of business. Not to mention actual collusion between US gov and some of those corporations (all of them depending on the subject: from military to political data mining). Collectively they have more influence than the US government,so even assuming that the politicians would correctly try to protect the citizens from what are de facto surveillance machines it would be a big stretch. Again, that would actually go against their interests, so let's not hold our breaths on this.

Hate to dig up old skeletons, but if most of the tech consumers (not even all the knowledgeable and principled individuals, let alone the mass of users) stood by Snowden & Assange, what kind of chance do we stand now? Some of the criticisms of Snowden(undermining US influence thus helping China) let's say was "half-tolerable", but with TikTok (which is de facto China's spying & "hypnotizing" tool in the west) we have no excuse of tolerating that here. People brushed it off when Trump said it, but he was right.You need to clean house with external players(Tiktok) before you move on towards harder, "more legitimate" opponents(FB,etc), which were dying anyways.

And what do you do when tik tok violates the privacy policy? You're not changing the geopolitics at all.

How on earth would you enforce such a law on a company headquartered in China?

from collecting excessive data on users

Nothing's going to happen for at least a generation. Boomers/Gen Xers in power need to die off, they don't/refuse to understand the Internet.

No American pundits and politicians just hate TikTok because it is not a US corporation.

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