The TikTok ban is a betrayal of the open internet
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The TikTok ban has very little do with TikTok. It's yet another Patriot Act (now, the Restrict Act [2]) style back door to slip in some seriously heinous legislation that could find you fined to the tune of millions, or worse, thrown in jail for 20 years.
> A person who willfully commits, willfully attempts to commit, or willfully conspires to commit, or aids or abets in the commission of an unlawful act described in subsection (a) shall, upon conviction, be fined not more than $1,000,000, or if a natural person, may be imprisoned for not more than 20 years, or both.
I do view TikTok as a covert military campaign (ideological subversion) and do think it should be limited in the West, however, not via this bill.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fgh2dFngFsg
[2] https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/senate-bill/686...
Yep. They couldnt put the backdoors through the 'we are fighting pedophilia' excuse. Now they are using Tiktok...
No need to be interested unless you develop for:
... [critical infra] ...
... [telecom / internet] ...
... [services] ...
... [IoT anyone uses] ...
... [unmanned vehicles] ...
... [apps] ...
... [anything important] ...
I'd like you to expand on the idea that is it is "a covert military campaign (ideological subversion)". It's common talking point, but I literally do not understand it. Sure there are some Chinese based creators that are spreading lies like how everything is super cool in Xinjiang with Uyghurs, but I can go on Twitter and find some American tankie saying that as well. The *VAST* majority of stuff on my FYP is cosplayers, dancing girls, dumb and intentionally awkward jokes, and skateboarders. Are Warhammer 40k and 3d printed Star Wars droids a CCP plot on par with the CIA and modern art[0][1]? To what end? To crash our economy by trying to get us to impress skateboarding leggy Chinese girls with the size of our 7-foot Imperator Titans[2]? Chinese girls that would no doubt a face swapped APT-2 officer, ala Azusagakuyuki[3][4]?
I'm not trying to be dismissive, but it does seem far fetched. So what's the best argument?
[0] https://daily.jstor.org/was-modern-art-really-a-cia-psy-op/
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10463076
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VgjqNmKPEE
[3] https://twitter.com/azusagakuyuki
[4] https://www.vice.com/en/article/y3g88m/viral-japanese-biker-...
As for a why: look at the parallel of how the Chinese raise their youth, specifically in relation to combat and military service [1]. If your biggest adversary is the United States/its Western allies and you intend to perform a military strike down the road, it's in your best interest to weaken their fighting population physically and mentally to an extent where they're either non-existent or easily destroyed.
That military strike could either be Taiwan, or, on the continental United States in conjunction with other BRICS countries (namely, Russia and now, Iran and Saudi Arabia).
I get that the idea is unsavory and triggering (just me having to say that is evidence that the campaign was/is successful), but it's a reality that people need to be aware of in the West. Western hegemony is coming to an end and the geopolitical vultures are taking flight.
[1] https://bitterwinter.org/compulsory-military-education-chine...
You think you're a rebellious independent-minded feminist sticking it to the patriarchy (or [insert identity here])? Yeah maybe, but you're also being tricked into spending money on stupid unhealthy shit by a real-life cartoon villain. [0]
Because the things you talk about in your first sentence saw their rise many years ago, and you are only seeing people in relative positions of power now who were raised or grew their careers in places surrounded by these ideas. And they've been raising kids along the way. It stands to reason their kids might be a little more radical.
Quite the long game China is playing!
Can you describe how TikTok's algorithm works? Because there's plenty of people on TikTok who only see street fights, or only rich person fridge organization, or military life "pov"s. Or Minecraft gameplay. And so on. TikTok is known for providing hyper-local content too, so if you're in say, rural Mississippi, you're less likely to see the feminism and gender ideology videos.
_put up proper user protecting rules by law and enforce them fairly against any company_
it's simple, fair, and would either ban TickTock due to non compliance or cripple it's ability to do whatever they are afraid of it doing
the problem is the US Government isn't against the things TickTock is doing, it's only against them being done under Chinese control
They might fear that Tik-Tok might apply some oversight to this process...
China's Navy is already more numerous than the USA's Navy, and they include advanced stealth destroyers and probably Hypersonic Missiles.
I don't want to be a racist asshole like some others online. But there is a geopolitical reality coming towards us and we need to start preparing for it. Nothing against the Chinese people or their culture or whatever, but their leaders have some goals that conflict with the USAs goals, and it could turn hot over the next 10 years.
And the USA should support Taiwan. Not only because we get AMD, Apple, NVidia, Qualcomm, automobile chips, and F35 RADAR chips from that island... But also because Taiwan is our ally from WW2 days and we have a long history of friendship with them.
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Let me be clear, once again. Taiwan manufactures Xilinx FPGAs that are in direct support to the F35 project.
There is a geopolitical reality here that cannot be ignored.
The United States needs China for industrial and consumer goods. Our economy is brittle and will quickly break without them. This is the logical result of US policy. China clamping down on Taiwan from the official US position is effectively China more tightly controlling thwir existing territory.
Not even close to what happened in Russia vs. Ukraine situation.
Taiwan during World War II, was part of the Japanese Empire...
When the famous WW2 Pilot Doolittle did his famous raid on Japan and crash-landed in China, it was the Kuomintang who saved those pilots and returned them safely to the USA, despite the Japanese atrocities that were occurring. (Well, Imperialist Japan did capture some of those pilots... but the Kuomintang did what they could)
Communist China then took over most of China and forced Kuomintang to retreat to Taiwan by 1949. And we call those people "Taiwanese" today. Historically, they are the rightful owners of China, though they lost the civil war.
Today, we're strategically ambiguous to try to not piss off China about our different viewpoints of history. But we're quickly coming to the point where ambiguity no longer helps. We're likely heading for war unfortunately.
Speak for yourself! From my perspective, entrenched business interests have very much been at war with the people of this country for a long time.
A growing military competitor notwithstanding, the real issue we're facing here is that we've based our society around this fiction that wealth makes right - under an assumption that the wealthy will compete amongst themselves to grow their own wealth in a straightforward (short term) manner. This framework is utterly unprepared for dealing with large (extremely wealthy) actors that push in more structured and less immediately profitable directions, with the goal of reaping dividends decades in the future.
But when I'm using "War with China", I'm talking about true war, like the kind going on in Ukraine. I'm talking about vicious weapons designed to kill hundreds, or thousands, in the blink of an eye, and at risk of escalation into Nuclear Armageddon.
In this context, I am not taking the word "war" with any amount of whimsy or hyperbole. This isn't a "class war", or "war on poverty" or "war on drugs". What we're unfortunately preparing for is a true war.
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With any luck, China will back down and keep the tenuous peace and status quo.
By number of ships, most of which are close-to-shore patrol boats. By volume of ships, the US Navy is more than twice as large.
The USA's count of China's ships ignores the 224 close-to-shore coast guard ships.
China has 351 surface combat ships, against the USA's 294. Yes, our Navy is still superior by capabilities, but China continues to mass produce ships, including large cruisers and carriers. They are not a threat to take lightly anymore.
If we include the 224 coast guard ships, then China's fleet is well over 575 ships as of 2022. I'm talking only of the 351 combat ships that would likely play a role in a hypothetical Taiwan confrontation.
But yes, China keeps producing ships. I have no idea what will happen in a Taiwan Straight conflict where we've escalated to open conventional war looks like. I imagine that the air-to-surface and surface-to-surface missiles will be the determining factor.
But there's also a major difference. The US has a blue-water navy that can project power globally - enough power that it's an open question if the largest country in the world with the second-highest GDP can stand up to it in their back yard. There's no symmetric threat to the US where the Chinese Navy can get close enough to the West Coast have a similar threat.
US Navy will have to expose itself to Chinese missiles and Chinese Air Force, and those small Missile Patrol Boats, to defend Taiwan.
China isn't thinking about attacking Hawaii or the West Coast. What China is trying to do in the near term is complete its takeover of ... well... what it believes to be part of China.
And because various F35 chips are made in Taiwan, its a threat we cannot afford to ignore. (Along with all of our video game consoles, GPUs, AI Tensor processors, and other strategic level computer systems)
Yes, the US Navy is unrivaled. But in a local, regional conflict... especially supported by the largest Airforce in the world (China has a lot of airplanes), and some of the largest ground-based missile forces in the world (China also has a lot of advanced missiles), the US Navy very well could lose the fight to defend Taiwan.
> supported by the largest Airforce in the world (China has a lot of airplanes)
The US Navy has more aircraft than the Chinese Air Force does. The US Air Force has like 4 times as many, and can stage a good chunk of them over the Straight as well.
South Korea and Japan combined have about as many planes as China, and I have no idea if they (or India) get involved.
But yeah, I have no idea what happens if it stays conventional, and I have no idea how likely it is that it stays conventional (and obviously WMDs mean no one knows what happens). Given the number of fast options (e.g. missiles) to sink ships, I imagine we'll know who will win the fight quickly, but it might take months to actually slog it out.
https://i2.wp.com/missilethreat.csis.org/wp-content/uploads/...
The YJ-21 is 1500km, more than enough to strike Japan's mainland let alone the nearby Ryukyus. If the US Navy wishes to support Taiwan, we will be open to those missiles.
But they have the capability to launch missiles at a US Carrier Strike Group who has retreated towards Japan. That means that our Navy will be within Chinese missile range during Taiwanese defense operations.
We aren't going to support Taiwan from Japan or Korea. We're going to use our Supercarriers to sail closer and then support Taiwan in a more direct fashion. But that means our carriers have a high chance of being shot at, and possibly sunk, by these missiles. And we'll need to sail very far away (far in excess of Japan) before our CSG is safe from the Chinese missile range.
I absolutely expect our Carriers to be attacked, and possibly even sunk, in the upcoming fight.
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There's still a lot of ocean to hide in when our CSGs enter that missile range. It will be a matter of killing the Chinese sensors (ex: drones, spycraft, and avoiding satellites) which are looking for our carriers.
We're gonna need our Carriers to be closer so that there's a reasonable response time to scramble and defend Taiwan. If it takes 2-hours for our airplanes to launch from a Carrier and support Taiwan (because they're cowards and hiding in Japan), then our airplanes simply will be too late to help with the defense. I don't know how fast the Chinese can scramble and attack Taiwan, but they have gross advantages in terms of distance. Only a Carrier can even the odds, and that carrier needs to be physically close to Taiwan. That's just how the fight will go.
The USA does not need carriers anywhere near Taiwan when China invades. They can handle everything from island airstrips. And we totally would support Taiwan from the Ryukyus, thats the whole reason we are there to begin with.
It could, but it really looks to me like it's the US that is trying to make things turn hot, not China.
We all see where this is going. We know Xi wants Taiwan. Selling weapons to Taiwan so that they can better defend themselves is the moral thing to do.
Its the same thing as how the Russians blame USA for "extending" the war in Ukraine. Erm, yeah. That's the point. When we see evil and decide to do something to stop it, it makes it harder for evildoers to do what they want to do. And I think its a good thing to make Taiwan harder to get taken over.
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All China has to do, to avoid the war... is to not start it. Its not like Taiwan is in any position to attack China right now or anytime in the foreseeable future.
The only thing that really has a chance to start a war is this Taiwan situation. I don't see any room for diplomacy anymore.
Hilarious. Do you actually believe US foreign policy has anything to do with "good and evil," and if so, could you explain how this drove the decision to, oh I dunno, bomb Guatemala city? Or annex Hawaii? Or arm Saudi Arabia to the teeth? Or pick virtually any foreign intervention since WWII, really.
You can try to use whataboutism to detract from this point. But the question at hand is: what are we going to do about the Taiwan situation.
I see that you're pissed off about these other world events, but I'm not sure what any of that has to do with the subject matter. As such, I conclude you're trying to do the Russian propaganda technique "whataboutism", where you detract from the primary discussion point by talking about unrelated subjects. The way I try to defeat this is by simply staying focused and avoid trying to be distracted by the obvious red herrings.
> Sorry, I'm not equipped to handle this.
Are you equipped to talk about Taiwan in any capability? Do you have any perspective worth sharing on that subject? I recognize that various people of the world have anti-American views, good or bad, worth sharing.
But with regards to this topic (TikTok ban), its clear that Taiwan and the military situation stands front and center.
We're so fucked.
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
Please don't take HN threads further into political/national flamewar, and please follow the HN rule against calling names in arguments a little more broadly. The epithet "whataboutism" qualifies as the latter—it's a label that's used to silence argument rather than respond to it. If someone brings up an example that's not relevant, a counterargument should explain what the difference is that makes it irrelevant—not simply denounce it based on what side it's on.
Past explanations here if anyone cares: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=whataboutism%20by:dang&dateRan...
At some point, describing the opponent's argument style in what I feel is going on is important. Its a meta label. If you think "whataboutism" is a poor term, then I'll substitute non-sequitur from here on out. But I don't think my discussion point changes.
It is a fallacy to distract from an argument by posting irrelevant stuff. If I make a challenge with whataboutism (or non-sequitur), the correct response is the same. The opponent should better describe why their words are relevant to the discussion. Or alternatively, change their argument's form so that it is relevant to the discussion.
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You're right that over use of fallacies / labels can lead to a fallacy, ie: the fallacy-fallacy. That is, someone using fallacies could be making a good point and still be contributing to the discussion. And its a mistake to focus on their poor form rather than their good points.
But the labeling of points / fallacies / and naming of those points is very useful at speeding up debates in my experience and in the typical case. It concisely describes my opinion and sets up a pattern of understanding. So I don't think its a bad thing. It very much depends on the situation.
That is to say: its only a "fallacy fallacy" if I'm ignoring the good points and killing the debate. I'm not sure if I've committed this sin in this case. The other poster seems to have simply stated "What about Hawaii?" without much elaboration on why or how Hawaii could be even relevant to Taiwan... or Tiktok.
But if some social media network starts in france, then even if it could manipulate users, france probably doesn't care because they can "control" it with force of law.
This is no different than wanting a domestic steel and fertilizer industry. You want powerful entities to be under your control.
Facebook once purposely manipulated depressed kids by adjusting what was shown to them in their feed. They should have been burned down the second that happened, and no country should allow that nonsense, even if you trust the american legal system to work. In much the same way, we should not trust tiktok, as chinese companies are incredibly opaque, so we would have a much harder time finding red flags to key us in to any nefarious activity.
In the same way, we probably shouldn't let a secretive private company have a thumb on the scale of a significant amount of american life. If we only have the political capital to ban tiktok right now because "China bad" then oh well, sometimes doing the right thing for the wrong reason is okay, like when Trump pushed for transparency in medical pricing. I don't think a free market health system is a workable system, but that was still a beneficial step in our current system.
Others say all this talk is cover because the actual law being discussed is much more draconian and gross. I would not be in favor of that.
> apply some oversight to this process...
They don't care about that, they also get the data they need from other companies they have much more influence one. Like phone companies, Facebook, Instagram, Google, Twitter, etc. etc.
How would that work? A warrant signed off by a judge is required to compel companies to comply with requests.
It’s…not. Administrative subpoenas (some of which have their own unique names, like “National Security Letters”) are a thing, and if legally valid compliance is mandatory. Sure, ultimately, if there is a disagreement about validity that can be taken to court, and a judge will be involved, but that’s not the same thing as a warrant.
Any areas where higher scrutiny is required have been specifically added by statute.
There's been some slight pushback recently against this state of affairs from the Supreme Court in the area of geolocation data, but the general rule still stands.
TikTok is arguably the most powerful means to spread ideas, and people in that line of business do not appreciate outsiders on their turf.
The whole TikTok thing itself seems like a distraction from the contents of the bill they've drafted under the guise of only banning TikTok.
Democracy as it is is a giant magic trick, and TikTok is pulling back the curtains in it, so it must go.
I watched the hearing. The main concern voiced is manipulation of content by the CCP. User data is what cranky HN users care about.
> The main concern voiced is manipulation of content by the CCP
But the potential is obvious. China already heavily manipulates content for domestic consumption, and foreign information in other contexts. Why would TikTok be an exception?
No official government body does not prevent unofficial collusion. People go to dinner, play golf, define how to scratch each others backs given the rules.
Americans are no less propagandized and experiencing information shaping. Prattling on about the authority of dead men’s political documents and philosophy is propaganda.
That is a solution, but there's nothing simple about it. Obviously there's an even much simpler solution than coming up with what would be a very very complex set of regulations and laws, that would have impact across all the industry, and that btw tech giants would love. The really simple solution could be done tomorrow, without the need of figuring out what "proper" is in this case.
Not that what you're saying shouldn't happen, but it's a different battle that needn't be intertwined with this one.
Can you elaborate?
The argument for creating regulation is not that it would be simple but that it would be comprenhensive.
The majority of these US companies have already been fined like this. The same should happen to TikTok if they want to continue to follow the regulations in the US.
Regulation in general is a double-edged sword. While it may be great in the short term if your goal is to rein in the bad behaviour of large companies, in the long run it can act as a pretty effective moat for established companies, preventing startups from effectively being able to compete. A lot of people attribute Europe’s less competitive tech sector (vs the U.S.) to an abundance of complex regulations in the EU.
We should pass a constitutional amendment guaranteeing right to privacy, and it should apply to both the US government, and to firms operating withing the US.
And that's a perfectly fine reason.
We do the same thing with Iran, Russia and others.
The proposed law specifies it's targeting China, Iran and Russia, as well as North Korea, Cuba and (the Moros regime of) Venezuela. It also has rules for adding or removing countries from that list going forward.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/senate-bill/686...
(i) the People’s Republic of China, including the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region and Macao Special Administrative Region;
(ii) the Republic of Cuba;
(iii) the Islamic Republic of Iran;
(iv) the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea;
(v) the Russian Federation; and
(vi) the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela under the regime of Nicolás Maduro Moros.
"Any telecom, etc, product where someone in the parent post's list has partial ownership, including voting stocks and has >= 1 million users"
So, that includes a lot of video games (Genshin Impact, League of Legends, Gunfire Reborn, etc) and also Reddit and Epic Games, maybe? I'm sure an argument would be made that since the CEO of Telegram was born in Russia, it would count, too, somehow.
Edit: whoever downvoted the above comment, that's literally section 8B
Addendum: I'm not a lawyer, I'm just a layperson trying to read this thing.
Why is TikTok of all things where we're making our stand? I don't buy it.
Having arbitrary companies buy the mines is something that they occasionally do - however, that comes with the risk of exposing themselves to the corruption and issues of the country where the mines are located. The FCPA https://www.trade.gov/us-foreign-corrupt-practices-act makes it difficult for companies that aren't going to use bribery to compete against other companies and countries where corruption isn't seen as an issue.
These can make it rather difficult for the United States government or a company based in the United States to try to "buy up" the raw materials of other countries.
TikTok, however, is a way for one government that the US has a strained relationship with to potentially direct the public discourse in the US or use it to track / identify individuals. The spying that was mentioned is https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/dec/22/tiktok-by...
> TikTok has admitted that it used its own app to spy on reporters as part of an attempt to track down the journalists’ sources, according to an internal email.
> The data was accessed by employees of ByteDance, TikTok’s Chinese parent company and was used to track the reporters’ physical movements. The company’s chief internal auditor Chris Lepitak, who led the team involved in the operation, has been fired, while his China-based manager Song Ye has resigned.
> ...
> ByteDance and TikTok had initially issued categorical denials of the allegations when they were first reported. The company claimed it “could not monitor US users in the way the article suggested”, and added that TikTok had never been used to “target” any “members of the US government, activists, public figures or journalists”. Those claims are now acknowledged to be false.
US does this for Oil rather. It isn't so sophisticated in mining. But it has occupied the Syrian oil fields and uses them to supply military bases.
Crickets in the media - because it wouldn't look good.
As a consequence of the US war with the Islamic State across Iraq and Syria; IS had previously occupied Eastern Syria where the oil fields now controlled by the US are located.
> Crickets in the media - because it wouldn’t look good.
Crickets in the news media largely because the news media covers news and static situations aren’t news (same reason whey the occupation of Crimea got intense coverage for a short time in 2014 and then critics until 2022, which wasn’t because Russian aggression and occupation looks bad for the US.)
The news media covers events related the US presence in Syria, but the ongoing fact just isn’t news.
I hard disagree - smuggling out oil in multiple large convoys by the US military from a region just after a significant natural disaster is most certainly news. But the US media will never cover something like this.
> In 2020, a U.S. firm called Delta Crescent Energy LLC secured a deal with the Kurdish authorities under an authorization from the U.S. government. The firm’s partners include former U.S. ambassador to Denmark James Cain, also a Republican campaign donor; James Reese, a former U.S. special forces officer; and an experience oil executive, John Dorrier Jr.
> The Daily Beast reported that Delta was to earn $1 per barrel of oil exported from Syria, according to government filings. Dorrier, the firm’s CEO, had worked with a U.K. oil company with offices in Syria. He told the Military Times that Delta “had some $2 billion in contracts to sell oil into the international market that will benefit American allies in northeast Syria that have helped in the fight against the Islamic State group.”
> The Assad foreign ministry called it all a U.S. plot to “steal Syria’s crude oil.” The ministry described the Kurdish forces as “terrorist militias,” and predicted they would be defeated by the government.
> Delta Crescent Energy was the only firm licensed by the U.S. government to work in Syria. The license was permitted despite U.S. Treasury sanctions aimed at punishing the Assad regime.
> Things changed when the new Biden administration did not renew Delta’s sanctions waiver this year.
> In February, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said that the 900 American troops then in Syria were there to resist IS and “are not authorized to provide assistance to any other private company, including its employees or agents, seeking to develop oil resources in Syria.”
---
Do you have any additional sources that support the US is using Syrian oil fields for supplying US Bases?
https://www.thecitizen.in/opinion/us-continues-to-occupy-syr...
https://www.tasnimnews.com/en/news/2023/03/05/2863033/us-con...
https://thecradle.co/article-view/22945/us-resumes-theft-of-...
Smuggling out and plundering valuable resources from a region that has undergone a disaster is what I call "evil" by any definition.
Also, you may wish to find and talk to some savvy educated Syrians. They will laugh if you suggest the US is doing nothing of the sort. Of-course, usually, there will be no American citizen doing this - it will be all done by third parties. They made a mistake here by explicitly involving the US Army and thus this got extensively publicised (in the non Western media).
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusory_truth_effect
Tolerance is an important social/psychological phenomenon, but perception is even more important. Teaching people to think in memes is dangerous imho.
Even more complicated:
- this applies to all piecs of information, including mainstream "truths" that are not actually true
- there is an important distinction between lies, speaking untruthfully, speaking misinformatively, etc
- most people are not just bad at epistemology (and related fields), they think they are good (because it seems that way, and "seems true equals true" in our culture) - epistemology is highly counter-intuitive
- Normies
- The Man
They are both utterly defenceless against it (yet: don't have any realization of it), it's almost like a weapon from another dimension of reality.
https://www.dea.gov/sites/default/files/2020-03/DEA_GOV_DIR-...
The contention here is that one country does not allow the other to do business in their territory, yet complains when their product is threatened with a ban.
The contention is _not_ that double standards are being applied to TikTok vis-a-vis FB/Twitter.
White people are discriminated against in China, so we should discriminate against Chinese people in the US.
But if you insist on calling money "speech" and banning foreign businesses "censorship" then it turns out, under your very broad definitions, censorship is sometimes a very good thing!
Your argument amounts to word games.
Same thing when RT was banned across Western Europe. It's not what they were saying that was banned, it's what they are: an arm of the Russian government. Russian shills are still free to peddle their propaganda.
Spin up a cloud VM in China now. Go do it. Try.
I can, literally in minutes, go create a virtual machine hosting a web site in some random middle eastern country I probably would not visit because they're anti... everything. Anti-female, anti-christian, anti-gay, anti-freedom, anti everything I hold dear.
But I can create a virtual machine there, right now, no problems.
China? Hah... no.
That would require paperwork, in person, in chinese, paid for in renminbi, from a Chinese bank.
I'd have to get a chinese id, and submit it to a police station to get an authorisation number, which I would then have to display on every page of that web server.
Chinese companies can spin up whatever they want in any country they please.
Every other country has to sign up to Chinese censorship laws to publish anything at all on that side of the Great Firewall.
China has an asymmetric market, and it’s bad for US businesses but good for Chinese businesses. The US wants to send a message to china that it can also punish businesses that it doesn’t like.
Yes the US has a mechanism to ban a company and that should apply to that company’s app. It’s just trade restrictions like with Huawei. Banning a website will be harder, but by banning advertisers from paying for ads it’ll destroy the profitability of serving American consumers.
Popper’s Paradox on the geopolitical scale.
The media were freaking out about the trade restriction on China, but my circle of D-voting friends and I (and I'm about as libby-lib as a lib can lib) who mostly hated Trump were like "fucking good, more of this please".
I think he mostly caught at least as much shit as he deserved over his shenanigans (far less, in some cases—my "oh no, this is gonna be really bad for the health of our democracy" moment was when he made his "2nd amendment people" remark and suffered no meaningful consequences, back in the '16 campaign) but there were a handful of cases like that, where the negative media response was sharply at odds with our (as, again, solid D voters who AFAIK all voted against him twice) reactions to things he did.
Arguing that the relationship is inherently completely asymmetric isn't really true either. Chinese companies can't really just create a single website that serves both western and Chinese customers. While nothing legally is stopping them, doing this is just going give your western customers a bad time overall, since content delivery across the Chinese border is all but impossible at any reasonable speed. TikTok is an American company, fully owned by Bytedance yes, but they went through incorporating in America and complying with all local laws to do so.
How many Chinese made websites do you use? Unless you're a Chinese immigrant, TikTok is almost certainly the only one. You might use e-commerce websites like AliExpress, but, again, AliExpress is a specially made website that was designed to follow foreign regulation. Chinese companies don't generally operate in other countries. The only reason TikTok is so popular is because they bought their way into the western market with millions of dollars with the acquisition of musical.ly. You have not shown any empirical evidence of any Chinese tech company actually being successful in the west, that hasn't just bought out some American competitor.
Also, nothing is requiring you to setup servers in China to serve your Chinese audience, and in fact it's almost certainly much more expensive to do that, not just for an ICP license but for bandwidth as well. You can serve your Chinese audience well with servers in Japan, Korea, Hong Kong (for now), or other East Asian countries and as long as you follow Chinese laws, the GFW won't block you.
Sure, following Chinese laws is hard and goes against a lot of free speech principles, but at the end of the day the laws are enforced reasonably uniformly. Banning TikTok or Chinese companies in general just shows that Americans can't handle foreign competition. Instead I believe that a better solution would be to simply create uniformly enforced laws that create federal data processing regulation ... like Europe has already done with the GDPR ...
This logic is "they make themselves worse off, so we should match them". That is lose-lose scenario logic.
That being said, there is always an argument for banning foreign social media companies (really all media companies) from making commercial profits in other countries. The political and military risks are significant.
TikTok is only superior in poisoning the minds of people using it here in US. That's why the Chinese version is different. I think zero is lost if people use the inferior local ones in this case.
> This logic is "they make themselves worse off, so we should match them". That is lose-lose scenario logic.
Sure, the optimal solution for the prisoner's dilemma is that both cooperate. But once one doesn't cooperate, the optimal solution is not to cooperate. US looks like a dummy waving the flag of morality while China laughs in its face.
I believe the current recommended example is "Go look up France on TikTok vs look up France on Instagram"
Addendum: TikTok is also superior at dynamically generating an advertisable collective that are specifically interested and desiring of the ads they're given. Five million small businesses found their place on TikTok entirely because they found their 2000-person size niche that would be interested in buying their product, and even encouraged them to buy it.
> poisoning the minds of people using it here in US
Except for some reason, diversity of thought and free speech ideals aren't actually used to justify speech people disagree with, namely China's. This two-mouthed approach is noticed. It de-legitimizes the diversity of thought value.
To anyone who has argued for free speech before but is silent now, your silence says more than your speech ever could.
I agree that banning TikTok on the grounds of its algorithm being controlled by China is dubious. After all, it is content, it is information, and it is up to an open society to call out the fact that social media is trash, that Chinese social media is anti-American disinformation poison.
However, it is reasonable to believe tiktok's recommendations are crafted to harm American intellect, prey on vanity to reward shallow behavior, and gather large scale behavioral and physical activity (site tracking, habits, physical location, items in homes, etc) for the purposes of the Chinese government. If it is recognized as a spy tool of a hostile government, why permit it?
That said, I'm not sure I would lament a body blow to social media specifically.
Let me put the questions to you directly:
Do you think the Chinese government is generally hostile to the long term success of Western liberalism?
Do you think the Chinese government has meaningful influence on the behavior of TikTok or its recommendation engine?
Do you think TikTok data on its hundreds of millions of users is available for general analysis to the Chinese government?
They have backdoors to all major tech companies, they actively try to control discourse in social media and they just bailed out their tech sector. If that's not being tightly coupled, I don't know what is.
>Do you think the Chinese government is generally hostile to the long term success of Western liberalism?
No
>Do you think the Chinese government has meaningful influence on the behavior of TikTok or its recommendation engine?
Probably but no concrete evidence exists
>Do you think TikTok data on its hundreds of millions of users is available for general analysis to the Chinese government?
To the same extent our data is available to the US and its allies, yes. But China cannot do much with my data, my government can.
Edit: if you’re going to downvote, at least explain why in a reply. Thanks.
[EDIT] Case law citations would be a lot more convincing than downvotes.
We need to just make it a fair playing field and if they want to have software startups on the Internet and in App Stores they need to open their markets to our products too.
Because we're a democracy with free speech and open markets, and China is not? Banning foreign speech and competition is not the victory for our way of life that some people seem to think it is.
There is a problem with TikTok - like ALL social media it uses opaque ranking algorithms that serve nefarious interests, and like ALL social media it spies ruthlessly on its users. How about we address those issues, thereby indirectly resolving the TikTok issue too?
Just because we are a democracy with different values to the CCP does not mean we should be taken for fools.
We should absolutely ban it, the same way China bans Instagram, Facebook, Google, etc for the same reasons: national security threat.
And I personally love TikTok, I'm active on it for a couple of hours a day, but I know that it's a threat.
why ban at all?
or did you mean why not ban TikTok AND america?? hmmm that's a more interesting proposition
It's a slippery slope
no it's not. there's no such thing as a slippery slope.
ban TikTok. it is a threat.
the outcome is either the result of a single decision (not a slope) or a result of multiple independent decisions, any one of which could stop the forecasted unintended consequence (not slippery).
There is very little risk that I hurt myself doing cocaine responsibly once. The risk in doing cocaine is that if I do it once, I will be inclined to do it again and so on until I'm a broke addict. If slippery slopes were a mythical problem, I could just commit to doing cocaine only once.
If you ban alcohol, private citizens will be more likely to decide to start a criminal enterprise to supply it outside of the law. If someone is running a profitable criminal enterprise, they'll be less concerned about breaking the law in general and more likely to branch out to violent crimes. If slippery slopes were a myth, we could institute prohibition without risking a massive expansion of the criminal underworld.
I can't find it now, but I saw a comment on HN the other day where a UK citizen expressed how foolish Americans were for disliking their knife laws. Of course they should ban knives in public- knives account for the majority of homicides in their country. No one in the US could be convinced by that argument until effective gun control made it true. Instituting gun control makes it more likely for citizens and politicians to support knife control. (Whether this is worth it is another matter.)
Independent decisions are a myth; every decision is made in the context of the ones that came before.
It's not a slippery slope, true, its already the bottom one worries about a slippery slope leading to.
either the one decision destroys something (no slope into an uncontrollable outcome) or there are multiple decisions which appear as a single destructive decision (multiple independent decisions, rather than a slope into an uncontrollable outcome) even though any decision could have been the one to stop the unintended effect feared in the beginning. the outcome is always under control. maybe not by someone you favor, but it is always under control.
it's literally called "The Slippery Slope Fallacy."
"dangerous levels of ignorance" pfft
TikTok is sketchy AF, but you don’t ban it. Just have your buddies at Raytheon or Teledyne snatch up the old Vine assets and get cheugy with it.
And whether this judgement is significantly different from whether reducing influence from the CCP, an obviously totalitarian government that does not balk at overtly undermining of democratic values within your own borders, is worth losing access to TikTok.
Here:
- Is it worth losing access to US social media to reduce the influence of the US government?
- Is it worth losing access to TikTok to reduce the influence of the CCP?
Are these the questions your are asking? I really want to understand your comment because I think the same as the parent commenter. And even though I don't understand what you're try saying, it seems like they are important questions I should ask myself.
Subtle US interference and soft power, unpalatable though it may be, is not a real problem for European quality of life even in isolation, certainly not compared to the benefits of cultural exhcange & compatibility, and the following long-term trade and geopolitical cooperation with the US.
Whereas interference and soft power from the CCP deliberately undermines multiple core values of our society. It’s pretty damn obvious.
I guess to which degree Europe & the EU actually follows democratic values is a separate and very worthwhile discussion; maybe it’s closely related. Certainly looks like that from where I sit, at the northernmost border of the economic block.
The CCP seeks to undermine these systems to favour totalitarianism.
Still it has not much of an effect on the here and now. I'd still rather not be ruled by a communist totalitarian dictatorship.
As a European, I'm more likely to be extradited and tortured by the US than the CCP. I'm sure much of the world hasn't forgotten their penchant for assassinations, support for dictators, and destabilisation of democratically elected governments. Let's not forget the decades long mess that was the Iraq war.
> The administration of President George W. Bush abducted hundreds of "illegal combatants" for U.S. detention, and transported detainees to U.S.-controlled sites as part of an extensive interrogation program that included torture.
> Extraordinary rendition continued under the Obama administration, with targets being interrogated and subsequently taken to the U.S. for trial.
> A June 2006 report estimated that one hundred people had been kidnapped by the CIA on European Union soil
In less recent memory we might recall the US "protecting democracy" by providing direct financial, training, operational training, and the occasional assassination to military coups/dictators in Latin America[0].
Allies of the US certainly have it a lot easier but it doesn't mean their leaders communications won't be monitored [1].
China's behaviour is certainly objectionable but as someone that lives in neither country the US has a much more worrying history of foreign interference.
As a European you're effectively only protected from Russian aggression (or re-invasion, depending on which country you're in) because of NATO, which is substantially led by the US. Germany, Poland, the Baltic states, etc. would be completely up shit creek right now if it wasn't for US military involvement in NATO and arms in Ukraine. It's why you see Finland etc. racing to join after years of non-alignment.
Why wouldn't China cosy up to Russia? The US has spent much of the last decade tearing apart most of the progress they made over the last five. The Trump administration took an overtly hostile stance to relations.
> As a European you're effectively only protected from Russian aggression (or re-invasion, depending on which country you're in) because of NATO, which is substantially led by the US. Germany, Poland, the Baltic states, etc. would be completely up shit creek right now if it wasn't for US military involvement in NATO and arms in Ukraine. It's why you see Finland etc. racing to join after years of non-alignment.
Russia can barely deal with Ukraine's largely irregular army. They'd get wiped trying to invade any of the EU states.
TikTok is state owned and state controlled. On top of that, the communist Chinese state has consistently threatened its neighbors with violent annexation. I think it's a dishonest argument to claim that independent American platforms and state-owned Chinese platforms are equivalent.
Are you saying that the US government can compel these companies to take certain actions in the same way that the Chinese government can? Like, as in, being able to force the company to give up all of its users' private details? Or being able to force the company to inject malware into their software?
https://onezero.medium.com/cops-are-increasingly-requesting-...
I'm surprised you haven't heard of this by now, its been known for years. Of course you can say police will only use it in "real emergencies" but you're not the one defining what a "real emergency" is and cops lie constantly just to get information
There is reasonable evidence of this happening. For example: what happened with Qwest. The former CEO claims this was the primary reason for him being targeted. He was openly against the spying by the NSA before the charges were filed. https://www.foxbusiness.com/features/former-qwest-ceo-joe-na...
> ByteDance is financially backed by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, SoftBank Group, Sequoia Capital, General Atlantic, and Hillhouse Capital Group. As of March 2021, it was estimated to be valued at $250 billion in private trades.[0]
> ByteDance says 60% of its shares are owned by non-Chinese investors such as U.S investment firms Carlyle Group and Kohlberg Kravis Roberts and Japan's SoftBank Group. Employees own 20% and its founders the remaining 20%. [1]
> On top of that, the communist Chinese state has consistently threatened its neighbors with violent annexation. I think it's a dishonest argument to claim that independent American platforms and state-owned Chinese platforms are equivalent.
I don't think America has much moral high ground when it comes to violent foreign interference.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TikTok
[1] https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory/us-chinese-owned...
If the US withdrew from NATO we would be in theoretical trouble.
If US would like to hurt us economically, our retaliation capacities are weak.
All in all we unfortunately depend on the US and have to play along.
When Donald Trump decided to punish Iran he forced EU companies to retract from Iran as well (despite having contracts there). If we were to not comply, there would be sanctions against EU companies operating in the US.
We asked the EU Commission for help on that but ultimately the EU did not have enough weight. So we got off Iran.
Note that I am not addressing the human/ethical aspects of operating in Iran, just the economic imbalance between the US and EU
The point is that EVERY country needs to concern itself with its own national security, local laws and regulations. I wish that every country would embrace freedom, free trade and the open Internet and that we could all just get along ... but those are my personal value judgments being applied. In the current world of foreign relations, countries are going to act according to their own national interests, whatever those happen to be. Each will pretend that it is the one taking the "right" position, and each might behave hypocritically in the moment. The question of who is "right" and who is "wrong" will vary according to your own set of moral principals and beliefs.
They are not saying that it should or should not be banned.
And I do agree: I don't feel more threatened by TikTok than by Big Data.
that way governments may act against you regardless of where you are, best abide by the law, citizen,
On a national scale? Well, I certainly do not want an adversary with an interest in overtaking the U.S. have both data and means to manipulate the opinions of its citizens.
How is that any different from the US itself. People seem to have forgotten the WMD lie...
Your argument leans on whataboutism.
Your government was the one kidnapping its own citizens through 'rendition flights' totally outside the legal apparatus and holding and torturing them whenever it wanted. It still does that.
Your government has power over you. Not China. If you would be concerned about 'opinion manipulation', there is still the open issue of the Iraqi WMDs lie and the entire false reality created by that very government of yours and its private sector extensions. If you are not worried about that, you would have no grounds to be worried about 'hostile' governments.
And what does 'hostile' even mean? You think that China or any other country cares about what you do as a singular American? And their hostility is toward you, the random American in god knows where in the US and not instead towards your government that is openly, explicitly, directly saying that it is targeting China in total violation of the international laws? Are you aware that any such threat or open admission of intent of economic or actual warfare from a country that can follow up those threats gives a legitimate casus belli against the targeted country and triggers the Article 51 of the UN convention?
Its amazing how the Americans think that they have anything in common with their government and establishment and they literally claim shared interest...
> whataboutism
There is nothing wrong about 'whataboutism'. Those who make moral, legal, ethical accusations have to provide an objective framework for their accustion. You cant just smear others while your own side does even worse things than what you accuse others of. Without an objective framework, any kind of moral accusation becomes a mere smear.
Chinese government does not have the power to abduct you without telling anyone, hold you in an undisclosed location for however long it wants without telling anyone. The US president does. No other president and government in the world has that kind of openly legislated power. Not even any secret service anywhere has been given that power. And yet you worry about 'other governments'.
This behavior pattern seems more like projecting the troubles at home to abroad to avoid cognitive dissonance than any actual concern...
In 2012, the act was updated to accommodate the prevalence of the Internet, and has led to an increase in the spread of government propaganda. Individuals who unwittingly perpetuate these false narratives may inadvertently be contributing to the deterioration of the Western world, all for the benefit of a select few who manipulate situations for their personal gain.
It's essential to recognize that remaining ignorant on such matters is not acceptable. We must strive to educate ourselves and be critical of the information we consume. If this is your first exposure to the Smith-Mundt Act, it may be time to reflect on whether you have been misled in the past.
Also, "whataboutism" only serves to stifle meaningful conversation and hinder our ability to understand different perspectives. To foster a healthy exchange of ideas, we must commit to evaluating arguments based on their merits, rather than resorting to discrediting tactics that have been employed by evil political parties you think you're against.
Being condescending does not help you win arguments.
After I got past your tone, I saw you completely ignored the part where I said my disapproval of Chinese spyware does not imply approval of American spyware.
EDIT- Let the record show that infamouscow substantially edited their remarks above without noting it. The tone was indeed condescending and referred to me as a marionette.
If one chooses not to actively participate in the exchange of ideas, it may lead to a perception that the informed individuals are being condescending, when in reality they're sharing knowledge and perspectives.
I'm eager to exchange ideas, but it's important to engage with those who are genuinely interested in constructive dialogue and are open to considering different perspectives.
I am willing and able to debate the nature of all governments and to acknowledge history. I don't enjoy sarcasm, snide remarks, and unacknowledged bad faith edits.
"One is my government, one is a hostile government."
Instead, we find ourselves focusing on peripheral points and accusations.
This situation brings to mind the tactics employed by the CIA to discredit truth tellers like journalists and academics. These tactics often involve diverting attention from the core issues, creating distractions, and undermining the credibility of the individuals presenting the facts. Engaging in this behavior we inadvertently contributes to a climate of misinformation and confusion, which hinders productive discourse and prevents us from reaching a deeper understanding of the issues at hand.
"One is my government, one is a hostile government."
This is a perfectly valid retort.
A hostile foreign government spying on Americans is a national security risk.
It is perfectly fine to care more about national security risks like that, even if both situations are arguably bad.
Hostile foreign governments doing it is simply worse and more important to regulate.
Please respond to this directly instead of talking around it.
The primary focus of the discussion has been on the potential influence of the Smith-Mundt Act on one's opinions and understanding of the issue at hand.
Engaging in a deeper analysis provides a more stimulating conversation, as opposed to simply expressing superficial agreement or disagreement, which isn't thought-provoking or worth commentary in the slightest.
Ok gotcha, so then the point is valid, and it is totally fine to be more worried about, and ban the actions of a hostile foreign government.
Glad you agree completely with the central point, and we cleared that up that you are in 100% agreement with the original statement.
I urge you to consider the implications of the Smith-Mundt Act and its repeal in the context of your viewpoints. Engaging with this crucial aspect of the conversation allowing for a more informed and nuanced understanding of the issue at hand, and to help ascertain whether opinions are genuinely untainted by external manipulation.
Because that sounds like a yes to me!
You didn't say no! So I can only assume that this is a yes.
If you do not explicitly include the words "yes" or "no" in your response, I will assume that your answer is "yes".
Actually you already basically said yes here: "The claim on its face was never in dispute".
This is a yes.
Source? They are a totalitarian government that considers the US it's #1 enemy, and has its sights on a military invasion of a peaceful democratic nation and ally in a 2-5 year horizon.
Understand what I'm saying here -- I'm specifically talking about whether I'd prefer to be spied on by China or by corporations. If that's my choice, I'd prefer to be spied on by China because they don't care much about me, individually.
But really, I'd prefer not to be spied on at all -- and that's my underlying point. When it comes to issues like TikTok, I'm not saying TikTok isn't a problem. I'm saying that the problem TikTok presents is not unique to them. If we are to address the problems -- and I think we should -- we should address it across the board, not just with a single company.
I don't want to be spied on by either government, but this point you are trying to make that China has 0 influence or means to impart change in American life is incorrect.
That is most definitely not the point I was trying to make.
I'm talking about data collection, not propaganda.
But I was talking specifically about China's ability and interest in harming me, personally, directly. I was not talking about China's ability to do societal harm.
The US has squandered what good will it had with China to the point that they and even India have aligned more closely to Russia as a consequence of the Ukraine conflict.
The inability of the west to effectively put an end to Russian aggression in Ukraine only makes an invasion of Taiwan more likely.
See: one China policy
> Any effort on the Biden team's part to improve relations (and China has indicated a strong desire to do so) would likely have the administration fending off charges of being soft on China.
The results of this approach have been, among others: a trade war, a president repeating conspiracy theories that blame China for Coronavirus[2], and publicly accusing China of controlling the WHO[2]:
> "I chose not to make a statement today," Mr Trump said on Monday about the event, while describing the body as "China-centric" and "a puppet of China".
> He said the WHO had "gave us a lot of very bad advice, terrible advice" and were "wrong so much and always on the side of China".
More recently we've heard American politicians, in a congressional hearing, repeatedly refer to China as their "enemy". Are we supposed to believe that doesn't indicate how far relations have cooled? Are we supposed to be shocked that China doesn't align with US interests on Russia when the US has been displaying open hostility?
[0] https://theconversation.com/trump-took-a-sledgehammer-to-us-...
[1] https://www.npr.org/2021/01/23/959683134/what-trumps-declass...
[2] https://abcnews.go.com/Health/trumps-chinese-virus-tweet-hel...
Not only that but China is committing mass espionage in US universities through their Thousand Currents program and National Front Work Programming.
They are using 5th generation war tactics to attack and debase the US society through cultural weapons such as tiktok, as well as Facebook and twitter.
They are attempting to install backdoors in US infrastructure such as the power grid (Biden signed executive order reversing a ban on such equipment) and the communications backbones (huawei, zte, etc).
They have police stations in countries all over the world to ensure they can rendition misbehaving expats.
Its likely covid was leaked by improper handling of virus research in the BSL2 parts of the WIV. So they likely are to blame for poor practice's.
The WHO was demonstrably favourable to China giving them a two week headstart and refusing to acknowledge or talk about Taiwan as a country. It doesn't matter what trump said we have video from the source.
They frustrate freedom of movement operations in international water they claim sovereignty over.
And overall they operate in bad faith, using hypocritical unequal double standards, pushing for conditions in the USA and elsewhere that they disallow in China.
So it is no wonder US politicians believe them to be an enemy, when they act like one.
Taiwan is not the Ukraine.
For better or worse, I'll give Biden credit for picking a side, though I personally think he picked the wrong side.
No. Let's call spades, spades. The Unite States is declaring war on China, not the other way around. Our policy with Taiwan is as stupid as if the EU recognized the Confederacy as not belonging to the United States.
Once again the United States seeks war - and this coming from a U.S. Marine.
Once again the United States will compromise its principles in its pursuit of war. Winston Churchill is credited with the quote, and I'm paraphrasing, "the United States can be relied upon to do the right thing, once it has exhausted all other possibilities."
Here we go again, exhausting all those other possibilities.
Not true. Communism is allowed:
It is just not very popular:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_Party_USA#Best_resul...
Progress?
Memes about Tiananmen square were popular on that platform. As well as videos critical of the CCP.
Anyone who claims otherwise clearly hasn't used Tiktok. And they'll shift goalposts to fit their narrative
There's no point in hiding these things from western users because we already know about them. If they will block them it will only attract more attention (aka Streisand effect)
Sure, but would you get delivered this content if you didn't search for it?
Or if you are in a contested region? https://futurism.com/china-hong-kong-censoring-protests-tikt...
Big difference.
And we're talking about TikTok content in America, not in Hong Kong.
A Chinese company sold Grinder because of privacy concerns. Tiktok will either IPO or be sold off
China bans western websites because they don't follow China's censorship requirements. Apple services exist in China, why isn't Apple a national security threat? They're the richest tech company on the planet, and based in the US.
Tim Cook just went all the way over there to kiss their feet: https://nypost.com/2023/03/27/tim-cook-touts-apples-symbioti...
And he doesn't have a choice. Google took a stand and had to give up its position in the Chinese market. But Apple as a manufacturer will have to give up their entire business if they go against China.
Bytedance is majority owned by foreign shareholders:
> ByteDance says 60% of its shares are owned by non-Chinese investors such as U.S investment firms Carlyle Group and Kohlberg Kravis Roberts and Japan's SoftBank Group. Employees own 20% and its founders the remaining 20%.
I would go a step further and say that reclaiming Taiwan and triumphing over the US are among the top goals of the CCP.
That’s a silly reason.
Soo... where is all this anti-Taiwan stuff on tiktok then? Because I've seen exactly 0.
The US/UK didn’t do anything to save Hong Kong’s democracy, so I don’t know how much I’d buy the tired “protecting democracy everywhere” approach. Is it just because we have military bases there?
The US (and post WW2 europe) has a long-standing policy of protecting democratic countries against expansionist dictatorships.
WW2 was an battle between two types of nations: democracies and dictatorships that wished to expand their empires. What is playing out in Ukraine and China is no different. If the democratic world shows weakness (e.g letting Russia to take over Ukraine) it threatens the entire democratic world order since suddenly smaller nations are free pickings to expand Russia / China’s sphere of influence.
Even something as benign as adjusting the temperature for Ukraine related content is 100% in China’s interest here. Ukraine cannot defend itself without the support of the US public, and any sign of weakness from the democratic countries will have material consequences.
Instead, the idea is: if you have a substantive point, make it thoughtfully; if not, please don't comment until you do.
I don't really see a fair way to handle this that doesn't end up also banning Facebook, Instagram, etc. The problem is that these companies are collecting enough sensitive data to pose a huge security risk, but our politicians are acting like it's only a problem when someone else does it.
So much this. Everyone's gotten focused on one particular company when this problem is much more widespread than that.
If a company (Chinese or otherwise) ignores the law, then it would be appropriate to sanction them.
No it hasn't. It admitted China into the WTO (only to have China go back on pledges to open their economy), stood up multiple industries domestically in China with expertise only to have all foreign entities kicked or squeezed out.
Why would anyone think China would go along with any international agreement ?
China has not banned those. Foreign internet companies can operate in China if they obey the same rules that Chinese internet companies have to obey, such as Chinese censorship requirements and requirements to share data with the government.
Most US internet companies aren't willing to meet those requirements, so don't operate there.
If the US wants to ban TikTok it should do the same thing here: make privacy and transparency rules that all social media companies that want to operate in the US must follow.
I wonder how many people in the US will use TikTok if the rules require government censorship and data sharing.
US: Listen CCP, you can't use your tech companies to deploy a massive surveillance system on American soil as you do in China.
CCP: OK!
Those rules, however, are official state secrets, and western companies who wish to operate in China must infer what they are themselves lest they get kicked out. China works on the standard that "there are rules that you must break, we won't tell you what they are, so be very very very careful." Not transparent at all (incidentally, China rejects rule of law as a western imperialist concept).
The laws on paper might be entirely fair, but what those laws say doesn't matter.
Wow. Talk about being disingenuous. “oh you can vote - you just have to take a literacy test first and show us 5 different types of ID we’re sure you don’t have - it’s just the law”.
“It’s just the rules” - what else could it be? Censorship isn’t this mystical thing the government does - it’s implemented with rules. Sounds like “go back to your country” at company scale.
I would accept limited bans within specific contexts (e.g., people in sensitive positions with access to sensitive data).
At the same time, I crave reform to our privacy laws. We, the people, need better protection against data collection and use by both private and public entities.
Is that really where you want to go.
Tiktok gained audience and market share because it happened to be a better product in its niche. Inventing any excuses to ban it is unadulterated hypocrisy.
All the words like "censorship", "free", "CCP", "national security", "china bad" are just euphemisms for childish protectionism of an oversized ego.
Some of us think all social media is trash for the mind and society, and think it's doubleplusungood when a hostile foreign power controls the algo.
You're implying that I root for Instagram. That's not the angle.
Ah yes, because China can totally tolerate competition.
1. TikTok has a "heat" button. It can make anyone go viral. This is not uncommon to other platforms artificially boosting some content, but this is much more deliberate than the other methods. https://www.forbes.com/sites/emilybaker-white/2023/01/20/tik...
2. Persuasion is two things: exposure and frequency. The native way that TikTok works allows for this to happen easily. Imagine a tool that is very good at this being controlled by a government that is hostile to most of the rest of the world.
3. The idea of the open internet was based on actors working in good faith. The CCP does not do this (the Great Firewall of China).
4. Bytedance (TikTok's parent company, and directly controlled by the CCP) has donated substantial amounts of money to various US-based political caucuses.
Data security is a red herring. The true danger is that the CCP and business are one and the same, the CCP is in a Cold War with the USA, and the CCP will do whatever it can to gain any advantage it.
Notice, for the sake of high level rationalism, that this is a false dichotomy.
CCP influence over TikTok is a subset of the bigger problems:
- TikTok, or the medium it operates on, is extremely persuasive, it's the most potent way to spread ideas from one mind to another (for example: the beliefs you hold about China's intents, which you do not actually possess knowledge of).
- The US government does not have a means to exert control over it like the other social media giants.
> it's the most potent way to spread ideas from one mind to another
Well, consider the capabilities of the two platforms, as well as the demographics of users, and so forth and so on.
> any studies/links about that?
Not that I know of, but I have a feeling these discussions have been held at very high levels of the government and various 3 letter agencies, resulting in the mass theatrical spectacle we saw in Congress the other day.....did you watch any of that? Is it not blatantly obvious that in this case, "democracy" is an illusion?
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/03/andro...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQK1LAtRh7Y
Republicans hate it because they lost both the president and the senate by thin margins due to, arguably, too many young people deciding to vote.
You would think Democrats would welcome more young voters, but only a few do (AOC is one..), because they are corporate democrats and don't really want young people to vote in primaries.
Mainstream media will be on board since they don't want another competitor.
I do enjoy compilations of him freaking out though.
Well, there is this chart:
https://adfontesmedia.com/interactive-media-bias-chart/?utm_...
There is little point in discussing this if we are all just pretending that it is an issue that it's not.
Don't dance around with claims of 'national security' and 'spying' and 'protect the children' which seem to always lack vital details on how they expect to use their technological foothold to... mobilize 82 million screen-obsessed teenagers to march across the Pacific and take back Taiwan?
Don't propose bullshit "well, they could keep operating if they just..." standards that you either aren't going to honor, or are inherently unfulfillable. It's farce in the same vein as expecting Saddam Hussein to turn over the WMDs.
Just tell us "the fix is in, we have no interest in actually getting to a mutually agreeable consensus." Then we can ask exactly why.
Is it a single casualty as part of a long-term strategy of antagonizing a new Cold War with China? Or is it a smaller game-- responding because American social-media companies are butthurt that they can't capture TikTok's appeal?
Large internet "infrastructure" businesses are in partnership with government officials, so I have no reason to believe that the Parler takedown was anything but political censorship. Maybe not technically, but definitely in spirit and effect - and after all, that's all that really matters.
On this topic, the point is, that something is banned by someone with the appropriate means. It doesn't really matter whether it is government or private enterprise, because they meet in the backroom and coordinate their steps anyway. In the end, it doesn't matter who's initiative it was, who did the execution, but the purpose and result itself.
To argue it's a betrayal of the open Internet, is the same as pretending that somehow nations weren't going to apply their real-world laws, beliefs, economic or political restrictions on the Internet space just as they do in their physical space. Whether we're talking about moral/religious type matters, basic speech issues, human rights issues, commerce/trade, and so on.
The Europeans often think the US is crazy for having something reasonably close to true free speech. There must be restrictions they'll proclaim. Britain has far tighter controls over offending public officials online for example. No open Internet for the Europeans? They'll universally disagree with the premise.
To make that argument, you have to say that every single localized control over the Internet is a betrayal of the open Internet. And even if I agree that that is true, good luck, because it's going to get dramatically worse over the next decade (and all 50 US states are likely to get further into the regulation party).
Morally the US should ban TikTok just on economic reasons alone, in response to China not allowing various foreign competing products into the country (in the social media category in this case). Not just ban it in the US, we should lobby for its economic wipeout across all spheres in which the US has economic influence. The US is in a severe confrontation with China (economically, politically, culturally, etc), and it's only in the 2nd or 3rd inning, there's no sense in pretending at this juncture. That confrontation ends, one way or another, in Taiwan.
If you make the underlying data collection practices illegal, then TikTok will stop being a problem.
The problem is that an open internet is incompatible with [the politics of] the world we live in.
In that world, state and other actors seek to use contemporary surveillance data to drive sentiment and behavior in targeted populations. To put it directly, we (the US) are engaged in memetic warfare both internally and externally.
Tik Tok is correctly being singled out as a singularly powerful platform for surveillance of and control of Americans by a state rival.
Should we come to war (e.g. over Taiwan) hot or cold, it's not viable to have a Tik Tok and its well-publicized ability to determine what goes viral, in the hands of the foe.
This is at heart a conflict between aspirational principles which are incompatible with the reality of human nature and the tools we have built as force multipliers.
This is unfortunate.
Much is.
( read the RESTRICT Act. That's my layperson read of what it says. I'm not a lawyer. )
Banning a walled garden is "fair game" as far as I'm concerned. They excercise controll over their users but don't like it when they're controlled.
open internet does not live in a vacuum. and the world is not perfect.
China has banned so many US applications starting more than one decade ago.
a free and open platform only works when all players in general are following similar rules, if a few big players exploit the system and you do not act about it, you're a fool and doomed.
The ban is an issue between US government/politicians and US people. There are some nominal moral contract between the government and people, and the ban need to be justified and satisfied by people's moral belief, such as open internet. Without sufficient moral justification, people's trust against the government is at risk.
If you care so much about america then stop helping corrupt politicians turn it into the so-very-hated-china.
"We don't need a Chinese company stealing our data and spying on us. That's a job for American companies. USA! USA! USA!"
Is having a password on my wifi a betrayal of the open net? Me having a firewall/nat? Let the devices be freeeee
...which kind of makes sense given how easy it is for a social media platform to deliberately influence peoples' thoughts and feelings.
Saying we should tolerate the influence of a totalitarian state over a major communication platform (https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/10/21/more-americ...) in the name of the First Amendment and democratic values is setting up our democracy to be weakened and fragmented even more than it already is.
We already know that domestically-controlled networks like Facebook directly contributed to electing a demagogue President who tried to disrupt the peaceful transition of power. We'd be morons to accept the same thing but under the influence of an autocratic country which has clear intentions to erode American influence and power.
TikTok (and other surveillance apps) are what is the betrayal of the open internet.
Banning TikTok alone will not fix it.
But, it is a good start. Banning everything from China would be a better start, considering the insane asymmetry the CCP enforces on everything, and the degree to which they consistently and systematically lie, cheat, spy, and steal from their trading "partners" in order to gain military advantage (and no, don't start with the false equivalency about US companies' surveillance capitalism; although it is also evil, it isn't even close to proportional).
Yes, we've got to fix all of the exploitative surveillance, but banning technology seeded by another nation-state actor like CCP because of it's both data harvesting and asymmetric warfare capabilities does not threaten the open internet.
And certainly, since CCP has banned most US technology because they won't do their dirty work of surveilling and spreading disinformation in their population, banning all CCP tech (which is all China tech) in response is a good step.
In the age of social media, information has been weaponized to an alarming extent, with the power to influence masses, incite violence and topple governments. Those Russian troll farms and Chinese bots and CCP shills aren't just doing this for the lulz; they're paid agents working for a government who's found that the easiest and cheapest way to harm your enemy is via the same channels they've built and opened for everyone to use. The East and West have been at war for decades now, and these operations no longer require sophisticated IT knowledge and expensive hackers; they only need thousands of agents willing to spread disinformation and propaganda on the internet. This sows division and panic, which eventually causes societies to crumble from the inside out. There's no doubt in my mind that the mass hysteria we've seen in the past decade has been stirred in part by foreign agents.
I encourage everyone to watch this interview of a former KGB agent[1]. He explains the power of psyops and information warfare. This was well known and in widespread use in the 1980s. Imagine how sophisticated these operations have become today with the internet.
Do keep in mind that the US forced the sale of Grindr away from a holding company that had golden shares in an actively homophobic regime.
There is no such thing as a truly ‘open’ internet and the real internet is open enough that any constructed really open network will be overrun by content no one wants to host, like racist extremism and pedophilia.
I’m not saying that TikTok or other social media is great, but it would certainly be an interesting social experiment to suddenly force millions of kids to go cold Turkey on something that they’re addicted to.
Maybe they’ll turn to other social media, maybe they’ll start painting, maybe they’ll burn down a city.
Isn't the claim the opposite ? tiktok china (douyin) is all about propaganda, education, tech, nationalism, success, &c. while the international version is dumb challenges, addictive content, memes &co
> Douyin vs TikTok also differs in terms of popular content. The most popular on Douyin is definitely educational content, with videos helping to improve skills and grow personally, while on Tik Tok the most popular is narrating videos, which is a great opportunity for artists, singers, and music producers. Therefore, global TikTok is more art-based, with musicians, dancers, and so on, while Douyin is skills and lifestyle-tips-based, with automatic voiceovers with no personal touch.
https://marketingtochina.com/differences-between-tiktok-and-...
> “It’s almost like they recognize that technology is influencing kids’ development, and they make their domestic version a spinach version of TikTok, while they ship the opium version to the rest of the world,” Tristan Harris, a former Google employee, and advocate for social media ethics, said of China’s approach to TikTok.
https://www.deseret.com/2022/11/24/23467181/difference-betwe...
The simple explanation as to why content popularity varies across countries seems to be that there are cultural differences at play. Frankly, it feels like a lot of people are simply uncomfortable with seeing their cultural values reflected back at them.
I need to "reset" my history of YouTube sometimes after I "spend" watching 3-4 videos of some topic, and now my YouTube is overrun with just content related to that, instead of different topics.
TikTok is guilty of the same, where after using it for a week or two, I basically see no other content than content related to a couple of videos I watched longer than others.
I liked how the internet was before, where I stumbled upon content wildly different from each other, and could acquire new tastes, instead of just being served what the algorithm have decided I should surely forever like.
IMO, the big problem of this world is fueled by the "like" button concept. The internet would be a much nicer place if we replace "like" with "dislike". "like" typically push people to the extreme, and "dislike" will push people to the middle.
* I watched once, 12 years ago.
* Sit in recommended for a week or more, despite my obvious lack of interest in them.
* Relate to some subset of recent topics.
It's strange how static Youtube recommendations appear to be as well. I often see the same set of Youtube Shorts for a few days at a time.
I do miss when forums were more popular. It's nice when you stumble across one that's still going.
1 year later
"Keeping a service owned by the CCP that spies on people in hostile countries and purposefully feeds them garbage and incorrect information is against the open internet!"
Silicon Valley truly is the enemy.
Edit: I'm serious. From a national and personal security perspective, as unpalatable as it is, China has the right idea - what sane country allows any stranger from anywhere in the world detailed access to any of their citizens' thoughts and decision making processes?
They should also should condemn the controversial content such as questionable dance videos from underage teenagers.
And how depressed teenagers are as a result of using TikTok and Instagram.
Or how the entire thing is run by the CCP.
But of course they don't care about any of that. Even during a time where CCP is invading US airspace.
Checking Wikipedia's Perennial Sources list [1] I notice that The Verge is listed as 'green' with a green checkmark, i.e. 'reliable': There is broad consensus that The Verge is a reliable source for use in articles relating to technology, science, and automobiles.. Here reliable probably serves the same function as open in the title of this thread, i.e. that which follows my ideology.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Per...
Secondly, a better solution is a multi-billion dollar fine for TikTok's egregious invasion of privacy and the like, worse than the other tech companies and they also got massive fines.
Either TikTok pays a multi-billion dollar in the US or they exit the US market. This is much better than a ban and a win-win-win for TikTok, US gov. / regulators and the users and the ball is in TikTok's court.
A one-time fine doesn't fix that, and you can't get the oversight to make sure consumer data is protected because you're dealing with a state actor. But maybe you're thinking of some sort of recurring fine, like a "Sell Americans As A Service?" SAAAS? Innovations like that could help with the national deficit.
Where is the evidence that TikTok has been much worse than their peers in this regard?
[0] https://futurism.com/tiktok-spy-locations-specific-americans
[1] https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/emilybakerwhite/tiktok-...
Could not have been more clearer and is worse than the rest of the US social networks.
Your Futurism article directly contradicts the claim that any of this behaviour is unique to TikTok:
> This isn't the first time that a major social platform has been caught spying on specific individuals. In the past, Facebook and Uber have both been in the hot seat for tracking the locations of journalists and political figures.
The byline of your June 2022 Buzzfeed article implies that TikTok was already actively working to remove foreign access to the data:
> an external auditor hired to help TikTok close off Chinese access to sensitive information, like Americans’ birthdays and phone numbers.
This largely appears to have born out based on the PBS article regarding the recent congressional hearing[0]:
> As of October (2022), all new U.S. user data was being stored inside the country. The company started deleting all historic U.S. user data from non-Oracle servers this month, in a process expected to be completed this year, Chew said.
> access to U.S. data is managed by U.S. employees through a separate entity called TikTok U.S. Data Security, which is run independently of ByteDance and monitored by outside observers.
The hearing itself was mostly evidence of how unfit many of your elected officials are for office. From a previous comment of mine:
> Buddy Carter confidently believes that TikTok is tracking it's users emotional response through pupil dilation but has no comprehension of why you'd need to identify someone's eyes to put a motion tracking filter over them[2]. According to Mr. Carter, TikTok isn't doing enough to protect younger users but thinks that asking a user their age and checking whether or not the users public videos align with the age they declared is "creepy".
> Dan Crenshaw used his time to state that Chinese law requires it's citizens to co-operate with their national intelligence agencies. That might have been a good point if not for the fact that TikTok's CEO, the person Crenshaw was questioning, is not Chinese.
> Richard Hudson proved himself unable of forming a coherent question as to whether TikTok attempts to access other devices on a WiFi network. Instead asking "So if I have a TikTok app on my phone and my phone is on my home WiFi network, does TikTok access that network?"
[0] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/watch-live-tiktok-ceo-...
[1] https://edition.cnn.com/2023/03/25/tech/tiktok-user-reaction...
This only proves that TikTok should deservedly get a billion dollar fine from the regulators as I said before, rather than trying to evade responsibility and join the likes of Facebook who did get fined for privacy violations, if they want to continue to operate in the US.
If Facebook can't get away with the fines, neither should TikTok.
They never claimed their own employees didn't have access to the data. They claimed that access to the data was controlled and it was stored in data centres not subject to China's jurisdiction[0]:
> First, let's talk about data privacy and security. We store all TikTok US user data in the United States, with backup redundancy in Singapore. Our data centers are located entirely outside of China, and none of our data is subject to Chinese law. Further, we have a dedicated technical team focused on adhering to robust cybersecurity policies, and data privacy and security practices.
Furthermore, the Buzzfeed article acknowledges that the "foreign access" was typically in the service of restricting that access:
> In the recordings, the vast majority of situations where China-based staff accessed US user data were in service of Project Texas's aim to halt this data access.
The actions of TikTok don't appear to be that of a bad faith actor. They responded to concerns about data privacy by moving customer data from their own data centres to those of an American cloud provider and have shown that they're working to restrict access to that data further.
> This only proves that TikTok should deservedly get a billion dollar fine from the regulators as I said before, rather than trying to evade responsibility and join the likes of Facebook who did get fined for privacy violations, if they want to continue to operate in the US.
What regulation did TikTok break?
> If Facebook can't get away with the fines, neither should TikTok.
Facebook wasn't fined for allowing internal employees in other countries access to internal data. They were fined for spunking that data all over anyone that winked at them. In the absence of a data breach, I'm not aware of which US law TikTok would have been breaking by allowing specific employees access to internal data.
[0] https://newsroom.tiktok.com/en-us/statement-on-tiktoks-conte...
That is a clear denial by TikTok since they were already under investigation at the time and denied having such access to US data overseas, then the leak demonstrated that they can (and already did) have access to that data. Showing me a 2019 newsroom post already tells they haven't learned their lesson about overseas data access.
> The actions of TikTok don't appear to be that of a bad faith actor. They responded to concerns about data privacy by moving customer data from their own data centres to those of an American cloud provider and have shown that they're working to restrict access to that data further.
So making it possible for them TO access non-public US user data overseas after saying they couldn't? (and admittedly they already did). Which they did again, when employees accessed the data to trace the source leaks on US journalists and reporters overseas. [0]
With such access overseas also explains why those employees at ByteDance got fired, confirming that ByteDance is able to do it regardless.
> What regulation did TikTok break?
US privacy regulations, like they already have done years before [0]. They are no stranger to getting fined by the FTC, as with Facebook who already faced and paid a massive multi-billion dollar fine.
> Facebook wasn't fined for allowing internal employees in other countries access to internal data. They were fined for spunking that data all over anyone that winked at them. In the absence of a data breach, I'm not aware of which US law TikTok would have been breaking by allowing specific employees access to internal data.
Both cases are unprecedented with the way that user data was handled and accessed. TikTok's case alone is worthy of an extensive investigation by the FTC, since not only they have denied this and then later found to have lied after the leak, it even more deservedly should receive a multi-billion dollar fine with this case as with Facebook has done.
There are no hiding places or defences left for TikTok to fall on. If they can't pay, well they can exit the US market themselves.
[0] https://www.engadget.com/bytedance-tiktok-employees-us-user-...
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/02/27/us-gove...