Right now it just feels like agitprop
Eventually, I can see these hearings continue, but the line of argument will change to protecting American jobs, especially if Meta's ad revenues fall.
The FBI chief being discussed here, Wray, is a political appointment but not an elected politician so hopefully the appointment shields them from politics. Nevermind that the DoJ tries pretty hard to be independent of the President. But beyond that, this particular chief was appointed during the previous administration of a different party. And has served in both party's administrations.
I have no position on TikTok, but Wray saying this is not really comparable to McCarthy.
In fact the McCarthyism acticle on Wikipedia has a whole section about the FBI. The FBI was deeply involved in McCarthyism.
Only a lot, lot worse.
We go after terrorists and insurgents the same way by learning their social networks and patterns of life. I'm sure that we wish we had stuff on our adversaries like the data from the OPM breach[2], the Strava fitness data, or the kind of data that TikTok can collect on their phones.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34474946
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Personnel_Management...
https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2021/05/28/us-soldiers-expos...
Zuckerberg has openly violated the privacy of millions of Americans, and been fined the largest amount in FTC history for doing so.
He might not be in the Axis of Evil, but the fact that he continues to operate his division-by-doomscroll machine on American soil makes this TikTok talk sound pretty ridiculous.
Science VS twerking
how to be a good citizen VS tide pod challenge
&c.
It's not a military or political threat per say, just a slow brain rot over an entire generation
https://www.deseret.com/2022/11/24/23467181/difference-betwe...
I think the dopamine receptor frying nature of apps like TikTok is more of a danger than the Chinese government getting hold of kids/teens data.
We have almost entire generations hooked on a short-form media content app which is rapidly decaying their attention spans and sitting in their hands like a hardcore drug. The longer term implications of children / teenagers that can't read a short book is far more detrimental than China knowing which pop songs they like.
Add to that, the moronic trends spread and perhaps encouraged on these platforms (tide pod eating, play-acting as if they're victims of the holocaust, and the sketchy sexual content on the platform).
TikTok, and to be honest, all social media, are toxic products. Maybe if the US bans TikTok, they should proceed ahead and ban the rest, "for the children's safety".
Read any book on the history of espionage to see the efforts made to collect intelligence. Suggesting TikTok data wont be used in an intelligence context is simply ridiculous.
They are very worried about the US citizen population saying they are DONE with Lobbyists and congress selling out. US Citizens are done with the GDP being stolen via rigged industries (pharma, 2008 crisis, Medical, taxes, etc.) US Citizens starting to all agree together on TikTok, enables citizens to galvanize into a united front.
The US Gov needs to control US citizens, by banning them. This is why US intel services have removed 100% of US citizens in militia community groups people from Facebook. 100% have their facebook accounts have been shut down. They can't shoot people over facebook. The gov's risk is that people see many other citizens galvanize that they find congress w/lobbyists effectively stealing GDP.
That Huawei or is there another one?
I wish it was more common actually. Imagine if we shared technology more freely in exchange for reciprocal benefits. For instance Australia (my home country) has a wealth of natural resources yet very little high-tech. We should leverage China's dependency on our raw resources to obtain technology transfer to enrich our country in a mutually beneficial way.
We know Russia was able to pump a bunch of psyops campaigns into Western social media, most NATO governments now have dedicated branches that root out this kind of information.
But Russia's programs were really obtuse and relatively easy to trace. On the other hand, TikTok is all about flooding people with niche content areas. And content is consumed so much faster that it propagates quicker. And keep in mind TikTok is still state-sponsored by China despite the algorithm being so addictive that it is banned domestically.
My tinfoil hat is that US officials have reports that the Chinese state is having influence on the American news cycles, but doesn't want to admit that it's made its way already into news media and politics issues.
The problem is that this was, itself, all complete disinformation. Their "Russian bots" were largely made of normal, and very real, conservative Americans. [1] Many were of substantial note, including authors, lawyers (one had published a book on the constitution), news editors/hosts, and more. So you ended up in this zone where anything conservative individuals were talking about was immediately claimed to be Russian disinformation, which was equated with fake news. But you'll never see anything about this in those same news sites that ran stories based on the disinformation. Nor is their any grand demand that we shut down Hamilton 68. In fact you can still find their dashboard on the "Securing Democracy" page. [2]
So normal genuine conversation was being censored under the guise of 'securing democracy against state sponsored disinformation' while major examples of genuine disinformation, which did (and continue) completely distort democracy, remain completely ignored. Very little of it has anything to do with integrity, security, or safety. It's all petty politics. And supporting the government banning apps, with no proven misdeeds, is one heck of a nasty precedent.
[1] - https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1619029772977455105
[2] - https://securingdemocracy.gmfus.org/hamilton-dashboard/
I haven't heard about Hamilton 68 but I can't seem to find any verification about it. It also seems narrowly focused on bots and not the hundreds of professional (human!) trolls and hackers that countries like Russia (and others) employ.
I will grant you that the "fake news" problem was a completely separate issue and largely domestic: https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2016/11/23/50... We should be clear when we talk about "misinformation" we are talking about things that are materially true! Just weaponized. Russia hacked both the DNC and the GOP, but only leaked the DNC emails. Nothing was made up! We were just given a selective and unfair version of the truth.
Honestly, I consider myself a somewhat conservative leaning myself. But foreign countries are engaging in these psyops programs believing them to be effective (as is our own government)! So I think it would be incredibly naive to let foreign agents with ulterior motives run free through our systems under the guise of political speech.
I want my political trolling to be domestically produced!
Imagine if something like The Pentagon Papers was released today. There's a good chance the mainstream media simply would not cover it. And the government itself would also likely claim it was just some sort of a Russian or Chinese disinformation campaign. At best, it'd end up being some sort of a partisan issue. Those that supported the war in Vietnam, or supported the current political party in power, would claim it was all disinformation. Those against it would claim it was the worst thing since Pearl Harbor.
The solution to disinformation is not disinformation, censorship, or anything else. It's simply more information. Because the truth always finds a way. Even in the days of the Soviet Union where the political powers had not only complete control of the media, but even strictly controlled travel in/out of the country, people knew the politicians were full of it. And that's kind of a nice moral from 'the truth always wins' type story, but really shitty from the reality of living in a society where the most correct response to basically anything is to assume, as a default, that it's, at best, a half truth. And that is the endgame of domestic disinformation.
[1] - https://fortune.com/2023/02/15/trust-in-media-low-misinform-...
* The extent to which TikTok tailors content, normalization of over-simplified content, ease of creating content and other factors make it great for radicalization. As well as extremist groups, this applies to more regular protest movements and generally an active citizenry, which is not in the interest of the feds.
* It has encouraged regular crime and idiocy. For example it spread knowledge of the Kia/Hyundai ignition bypass, and is full of pseudomedical nonsence.
It also serves as a useful scapegoat.