TikTok admits to spying on U.S. users as effort to ban the app heats up | Hacker News Reader

TikTok admits to spying on U.S. users as effort to ban the app heats up

mashable.com

69 pointsCharlesW28 comments

Tiktok has been used by the Chinese gov just like the U.S gov has been using its own internet companies(i.e apple, microsoft, google, meta etc). We already know from Snowden. I really dont understand why people act surprised.

If any national or supranational gov(i.e E.U) cares about privacy and security of its citizens it should ban data transfer and data access outside its jurisdiction(i.e require totally separate entity located in each country/jurisdiction). This would be better for taxes and local jobs too.

Every time something like this is posted, the thread is littered with a dozen comments about how this should surprise no one, "water is wet", etc. News does not mean that journalists or the readers are shocked or even surprised. It's a new (or updated) piece of information. So yes, it's OK to have a discussion about it without the snarky comments.

How would your proposed solution solve the problem you outline in the first sentence? If the US bans data transfer outside of its jurisdiction then Apple, Microsoft, etc will stop cooperating with secret government data collection programs?

Not to mention that such limitations accelerate the fragmentation of the Internet

So be it. If its either one country spying on everyone, or no one. I think its better to be no one.

All countries that tightly control their Internet bubble have very free societies: just look at NK, China, Saudi Arabia, Russia, etc. If only the US could have as little spying as those countries!

Lol, you think Saudi Arabia can be compared to China?

You have no idea.

And the problem is not the spying it self, rather its that one country has all the data mining companies, and has regulations to force these companies to give them data even if its breaks local laws.

And when a truly foreign competitor showed up, guess what? They banned it(huawei) and now they want to ban software too(Tiktok).

Yet they go moaning about data protection laws limiting their companies reach and spying power.

> If only the US could have as little spying as those countries!

They already do, if not more. These countries have local spying power, and foreign teams. While the US almost controls the entire internet, they can spy on anyone anywhere.

You end-up with fragmentation of corporations not fragmentation of the internet.

If Google sets a self governed license based entity in Europe with staff from Europe(executives including the CEO etc) then you have two separate entities playing by different rules(EU based or U.S based) linked just through a licensing deal. Think of it like Microsoft sells On-premise Azure instalations to governments.

The EU and US entities would share no internal data b/c they would be two different companies that use the same software for different clients.

I assume there are spies working in all different companies, governments don't even need to officially tap into those companies. What the private companies can do is to strength their security, and make sure it cannot happen easily.

> I really dont understand why people act surprised.

The official narative is: China bad, America good.

The fact that the majority of OS's and Apps that will spy on you is developed by US companies, does not seem to matter.

> The official narative is: China bad, America good.

This isn’t accurate. The official narrative is that America’s way of life is under threat from China. This is just true. China would say the same thing, and that would be true too.

There is an assumption that most US citizens prefer America to China, also true. Can we assume that most Chinese nationals prefer China to America? Presumably.

Apparently some forget that there are more than 2 countries in the world.

> I really dont understand why people act surprised.

I despise when people use this sentence to blow off stories.

It's great you're not surprised. Doesn't make it less important.

Well, color me shocked.

I think this is something that's widely known (edit or heavily suspected), but the people who use TikTok as a rule don't care.

We recently learned that Twitter was receiving money from the FBI that enabled the US government to censor users and suppress certain hashtags, etc. But TikTok is seemingly the only one the media is trying to push to get banned. Seems strange. Wish we had an honest media.

The way that Twitter/FBI relationship has been portrayed by certain people has been dangerously misleading -- don't fall for it. Twitter was compensated for assisting with investigations (e.g. collecting information), which is entirely normal, and has nothing to do with censorship. Don't be a sucker, the people pushing this conspiracy theory are depending on us to not investigate the matter for ourselves and to instead get angry.

Its no conspiracy that the FBI acted to try and delegitimize the Hunter Biden laptop story by warning tech companies (Twitter, Facebook, etc) about a ‘Russian disinformation campaign’. This, of course, was entirely false and no one knew that better than the FBI, as it was the laptop repair shop owner who (legally) possessed the laptop who had directly contacted the FBI first.

And the FBI 100% knew the laptop was genuine. They publicly lied to support an election outcome.

Not only is this not remotely a conspiracy theory, its something that needs to be taken incredibly seriously.

> Twitter was compensated for assisting with investigations (e.g. collecting information), which is entirely normal, and has nothing to do with censorship.

Collecting information about random people _is not_ entirely normal.

Now, if you live in a totalitarian state, it might be.

Really?

Are you suggesting that you would be surprised to find that companies are collecting information about you?

We can need to ban TikTok due to Chinese influence AND can need to fix the fact that the FBI was doing shitty things with Twitter at the same time.

You are not arguing in good faith by framing that as either/or.

The difference between the two problems is quite stark. The ONLY effective hammer that the US has against TikTok is a ban. Against Twitter, there are a range of options that various municipalities, states, etc. can bring to bear.

Nice, add some fuel to this fire, let it burn.

Reminds me of when congressman Josh Hawley needled the COO of TikTok for 10 straight minutes trying to get a direct answer as to whether any TikTok employees with access to US user data were affiliated with the Chinese communist party. That was 3 months ago. https://youtu.be/meWM8d4Uz7Q

If you are talking about Chinese Communist Party, you are basically talking about everyone in China. It is like 1/10 Chinese people.

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