The TikTok Hearings Inspired Little Faith in Social Media or in Congress
newyorker.com
newyorker.com
TikTok is a capitalist social media company that certaily deserves a lot of scrutiny, especially considering ties to China.
But if you think Congress did a good job here...then I don't know how we live in such wildly different worlds. Asking that CEO "does TikTok access the home wifi network?" is such an incomplete question. Everyone of us would immediately ask a clarifying question: "do you mean: does tiktok access data on other devices in the network" or "does tiktok monitor traffic within the network". These are legitimate questions, but to ask a completely idiotic question and then not let the man clarify is just embarassing. Same thing with "Have you changed the source code?" WTF does this even mean?? It's as if I'd asked somebody "Have you eaten?", not have you eaten today, or have you ever eaten. Have you eaten. Yes the fucking source code has been changed. It's being changed all the time???
Please...Congress already had an opinion on this before the hearing ever started and congress made sure to ask deliberately unanswerable questions to hit the man with "Yes or no????" as soon as he opened his mouth.
I'm certainly not a fan of TikTok, but if you see this as anything other than the US congress trying to get a unprecedented ban of a foreign competitor, you are being naive. 150 million US americans use TikTok. They are too big, they can't be as easily controlled and most importantly: they make money that belongs to Meta, Google and all our other friendly data monsters.
Don't be silly, this is not about national security, the CCP or anything like that. It's about money, like always.
As far as I can tell it's a since, but delusional, attempt to defend national security. They don't like American data going to China, and Chinese algorithms coming for American eyeballs. Which, same, but that's not actually illegal. And it's not clear why they imagine it's dangerous, other than old men yelling ay clouds.
I suspect they're really just afraid that the kids are enjoying something. So it's more like hauling Twisted Sister before Congress to justify their (really innocuous and vapid) rebelliousness.
It's similar to what phones ask the user on behalf of the app.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E84WQUJVoAAtPS3.jpg
I don't see what the problem is, imo it is a specific question. Almost no apps access the home wifi network, they connect to a remote server on the wan side of the network going directly through the default gateway/router, knowing nothing of the devices in the lan.
a good argument to support a bad one
yes, congress may well be capricious and incompetent, but that doesn’t make tiktok any less of a colossal security threat, which it appears you’re trying to indicate
On more than one occasion he was asked if he supports the ongoing state-led genocide of the Uyghur population in Xinjiang and he repeatedly refused to give an answer.
Obviously that’s nonsense and he’s most certainly in the pocket of the CCP, but it is fascinating seeing the deceit in real time.
We can see hints that the US is using these platforms to do that. Imagine the negotiating power the US has to go into a trade deal negotiations with another country. Run an influence campaign to sway the other country's population to accept a bad deal. Use democratic processes to get someone elected who will sign off on the bad deal. End up profiting enormously.
Having free access to show propaganda and misinformation to most of the world is an enormous power.
I prefer democracy over dictatorship what about you?
The difference between relation of US companies and government vs Chinese companies and government, US companies often go head-to-head with the government on policies, or they will need "lobby" it, but for Chinese companies, Chinese government have communist party officials directly running the board, Chinese company can only obey the party, look at Jack Ma.
US companies take the data turn it into profit, but scary part of Chinese companies and Chinese government they took the data probably not for profit but for something else, political agenda? or maybe even more worse.
Congressman trying to re-authorize PATRIOT Act was spied on by the FBI [1]. Google fired employees for abusing personal info [2]. Facebook fired employees for abusing privileges [3]. Twitter insiders spying for Saudi Arabia [4]
Democracy works when the desires of the people get enacted into law. We see more and more that it is not happening. Instead, more power is consolidated to the rich and powerful. How is that happening in a "democracy"?
I think that behind the scenes in the US, a dictatorship of intelligence agencies, wealthy businessman, and monopolistic companies have been developing over the last 20 years. The government and congress is not the boss, but the oligarchs are. They run the show, and its as much of dictatorship as anywhere else in the world. The US propaganda is not calling it that though.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/09/us/politics/fbi-surveilla...
[2] https://www.businessinsider.com/google-fired-employees-abusi...
[3] https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-fired-dozens-abusin...
[4] https://www.wired.com/story/twitter-insiders-saudi-arabia-sp...
For us in Europe, that's certainly true. For someone in South America where the US had installed some dictator, or funded and trained some paramilitary groups to clear lands for US fruit companies, I don't think that answer is quite as clear.
Where exactly would you like to have that? I guess not in South America, or any other country where the US world order was better off with a dictatorship rather than a democracy. Snap out of the stupor, my friend. The US has only one interest in mind and it’s not the interest of democracy, but rather that of the military industrial complex.
You can keep on drinking the cool aid, or actually support democracy, which would make you less keen on the theatrics that the US is struggling to keep up.
I’m not pro China, I believe in the European social democratic post-capitalism, possibly with less capitalism and more social democracy and wealth redistribution. From this perspective, the US is doing worse than China.
Surely the U.S is defending its interests first but if I have to choose who will influence my life more I will choose the system aligned with my values.
For example one congressman asks if titktok used wifi of users to track them and ceo replies something like "titktok needs wifi to work" which may have you go "oh look dumb congressman" but the congressman was asking about how tiktok scans devices in your wifi and collecte that information for tracking and who knows what else (he clarified as much afterwards).
He was also very dodgy and distanced himsef from bytedance which is a weird thing to do.
Some of the big chinese APT breaches are related to data about people. E.g. OPM hack or equifax credit information. This tells me they want information about americans so they can use it against americans. This means to manipulate social groups but more than that you can target people based on their habits and interesrs and turn them.
Even if they couldn't just order bytedance to do stuff you are a fool if you think hacking a company they have physical proximity to or implanting operatives there is difficult for them.
In other words, I am not concerned about teenagers being tracked or looking at some video but rather being made sympathetic to CCP propaganda and against their own country's interests. And it doesn't have to be brainwashing either, you can pick people based on psychological profiles and give them propaganda or just money and use them as assets like the CIA does except you have young people who will go into military and academia soon. And keep in mind, China doesn't care about the next few months they care about the next few decades.
Based on the reaction in support of tiktok I have seen, I believe if a conflict between China and Taiwan is developing it will become like vietnam with many americans protesting against a war and being anti-military. China will win the war before it even starts because even though they would lose a conventional war, the US cannot fight a war without the support of the people.
In crude terms, you will always have propaganda. The US military needs to win over americans using its own propaganda more than CCP, if anyone is going to brainwash you and turn you into an assett it should be your own government.
And to clarify, I mean no moral superiority here. China does what the US does and will do against Chinese citizens. But the fact if the matter is, China is the biggest enemy of the US right now, not russia or isis or whoever else. They have already succeeded in turning the global south against the US and are carefully watching the Ukraine conflict to time any move for Taiwan to be at the moment the US is most worn out with Ukraine and with whateve chaos the election season might bring. 2024 in my opinion would be the best time to invade Taiwan (Xi basically said that's a too priority for his new term).
The human brain cares just about as much about where propaganda is coming from as evolution has a goal in mind. With that, if the US wants to outcompete China on propaganda, then we've already lost. As long as there's a country willing to go one step farther than we will, we're fighting a battle we can't win.
Honestly, you can only be one of two things, you have never actually read the full text of the constitution and you are brainwashed on tiktok or some other social media or you are an actual CCP troll. No in between.
You will have the 1st amendement now but soon China will destabilize your government even more than russia and if you don't get a civil war you get a chinese satellite fascist state and you think there will be a firsr amendement in any scenario where China brainwashes a significant number of americans strategically?
Look at Twitter, Facebook, Google, Instagram, even TikTok and many more tech companies are banned in China, what on Earth are the Americans' thinking? You guys are holy saints to think "with our open door policy will one day China be democratic and liberal like us" ?
Probably the Xi JingPing and his comrades are laughing at the Americans while watching the hearing, especially the congress member for discussing things so trivial while they would have probably already doing Machine Learning with the TikTok users.
Just ban TikTok, what takes you guys so long? You guys are not playing the same game as CCP, U.S.A being out-gamed not because not power but the speed on dealing with CCP.
It feels horrible because that freedom necessitates people who believe everyone else has the same ability to say or make anything they want, even if you find that stuff disgusting or risky.
Yes, there are definitely some limits to the right. But we should be cautious about the government making laws to restrict the right.
Should we ban an entire company or force them to sell as soon as we believe they give personal data to another country? Where is the line drawn at which country? What about a Russian based app or a Belarusian based app?
I'm not saying it's wrong, it just makes me nervous.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
There's nothing in there about foreign entities or any other authors of speech. It's about speech (and religion and assembly and petition) itself, which the state is directed to leave the fuck alone. The variety of zany things any particular entity might want to say is not even the main point. Freedom of speech is important because it means we get to hear and read and experience speech from everyone and everywhere. As soon as a line is drawn around speakers we're not allowed to hear, we no longer have the freedom of speech. Many people are confused about this because they habitually speak without listening. Those of us who mostly listen are not confused in this manner.
Has your country done a full TikTok ban?
Anyways, like the other comment said, this issue in America is less about do we trust China (a majority of people don’t) or do we want to be saints, and more about rights. Outright blocking an app (or website for that matter) at all is completely unprecedented in the US, as far as I know. And the second part is that TikTok is incredibly popular, which means banning it would be possibly ruinous for someone’s election chances.