Journalist writes about discovering she’d been surveilled by TikTok
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
> "By the time ByteDance was founded in Beijing in 2012, Google had been reading our emails over our shoulders, Amazon had been watching us shop, and Twitter and Facebook had been mediating our messages to friends and foes for years. Indeed, Zhang Yiming, the millennial software engineer who set up ByteDance, modeled himself and aspects of his new company on Silicon Valley. Zhang, who briefly worked for Microsoft before going out on his own, was once fond of quoting Steve Jobs and Jack Welch."
It would be highly surprising if the ByteDance-Beijing relationship was all that different from the Google/Verizon-Washington relationship (2013):
https://www.corpwatch.org/article/verizon-and-google-helped-...
> "Technology companies willingly provided information to U.S. government agencies to help the Obama administration snoop on reporters from the Associated Press (AP) and Fox news in order to ostensibly crack down on leaks that pose a "threat" to national security."
No, no it wouldn't.
It's not the relationships of the parties in control that worries me. It's the arrests and abductions of the people that concerns me.
Thankfully, posting banned ideas or government critical stuff in the US doesn't involve being arrested by the police and being held for months or years.
The CCP is a completely different beast, it has no issues jailing people for speaking the wrong things, forcing it's citizens into reeducation camps, welding them locked into buildings and much worse.
I would not be so confident about that, at least until the US and other western countries wise up to the CCP's tactics, which may be starting. E.g., CCP is running overseas "police stations" to intimidate and harrass people oversead, and the US FBI finally just arrested two people doing so in New York City.
>>TikTok spied on me. Why?
Short answer, is that it, along with every other Chinese company, has no choice other than to bend to the will of the CCP. Plus, they have no ethical boundaries (other than crossing the CCP) in seeking absolute market position, and this journalist had done something to threaten that dominant position.
[0] https://www.npr.org/2023/04/17/1170571626/fbi-arrests-2-on-c...
Let me think of groups of people in the US and if they have been treated like this - C language programmers...we'll there is Julian Assange.
> no issues jailing people for speaking the wrong things, forcing it's citizens into reeducation camps, welding them locked into buildings
China has more than four times the US population, yet the US incarcerates more people than China does. In that context it does not sound like much of a knock "China locks up less than a quarter of the people the US does!" Well - yes.
Yes, but mostly because of race, not politics. (Not that that's any better, but the underlying dynamic really is different.)
https://www.googleadservices.com/pagead/aclk?sa=L&ai=DChcSEw...
Same with this wiki page
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_St....
Is it? I believe every state, or its establishment, acts forcefully to protect against what they consider potential existential threats.
Given that the Western states and their establishment are atleast 2 centuries ahead of the curve of anyone else in terms of modern state apparatus, ideological basis (...), it is natural that we will observe distinct patterns of oppression and red lines. Most of the emerging powers are acutely sensitive to ideological challenges, challenges to the legitimacy of the establishment, precisely because they are the newly arrived and insecure in their position.
Someone mentioned Julian Assange. Why did US and UK come down so hard on this guy? Because he represents an existential threat: he represents dissident factions in their intelligence communities (5 eyes) and that layer of the system is central to their maintenance of power and they will -not- tolerate any challenges in that area.
So the equations defining the dynamic are identical. We just need to plug in the appropriate values for the equation's variables.
Yes.
> I believe every state, or its establishment, acts forcefully to protect against what they consider potential existential threats.
Of course. But just because they all have this one feature in common does not mean that they do not have additional features that distinguish them.
The US locks up more people, but not for wrong-think. Instead our country does it for consuming the wrong plants at the wrong time, because our systems are still racist in various ways, and because we have somehow allowed prison to become a for-profit institution.
Those are different problems and they need to be addressed. The war on drugs must end, policing culture and policies must be corrected, the US prison system must be corrected. Other options for dealing more effectively with various social and mental health problems must be instituted.
And none of that is the same as what China is doing to their people, nor does it absolve China of the wrongs it has committed. And it doesn't take the edge off of it either. Going to China can still get you locked up for reasons you don't understand because you said the wrong thing one time and forgot you even said it.
That actually is a more risky situation for most people than making sure they are not buying or carrying around the wrong plants. That is what comments such as the one you are responding to are actually worried about. It's not a raw numbers game for the individual, it's a question of "how easy is it for me or people I know to go to jail for what should be trivial actions?"
You completely ignored OP's example of Julian Assange, I guess?
Put it this way, if you can name a country that would not react in the exact same manner to the actions that the US did to Assange's actions, please let me know. I certainly can't think of any.
Wikileaks became very close to Russia in the end, anyways, not exactly a bastion of freedom and IMHO destroying any credibility Assange had. If Assange was on the "other side" and the classified stuff was from Russia, he'd probably have been "Novichoked" for what he did.
That's just the casus belli for the arrest - the real motivation changes over time. Drug laws have been used to target and disrupt various groups from Latinos and African Americans to hippies and anti-war protestors. First it was about racism and Hearst's economic interests, then about policing wrong think, then it was about the tough on crime wave, and now it's largely about protecting several lucrative industries.
It seems that line of argument would get much deeper into how, how fairly, and on which groups, the various countries have tended to apply their laws.
For now I can fully grant that selective enforcement has and still does happen in the US. The legal system here definitely does leave that possibility open and prosecutors are elected officials, some of whom have provably gone after certain groups or individuals, hunting for a reason to put them in jail.
https://www.cnn.com/2016/03/23/politics/john-ehrlichman-rich...
“The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people,” former Nixon domestic policy chief John Ehrlichman told Harper’s writer Dan Baum for the April cover story published Tuesday.
“You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin. And then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities,” Ehrlichman said. “We could arrest their leaders. raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”
The process of repairing the damage that was done should include large payouts for unjustly taking away years of those people's lives, if nothing else. I'm not exactly holding my breath on these points, but if we take seriously the idea that the world should become more fair and just over time, we're going to have to square with the wrongs that were committed in the name of unjust laws.
In the post you are responding to, what you see is me acknowledging that, in order to answer the specific questions: "Is the US just as bad as China on this?" or "Is what China does to it's citizens in order to suppress wrong-think being unfairly criticized in light of what the US does to it's citizens in order to suppress drug use and generally be racist about it?"; one would require good data on just how many citizens are sent to jail for what should be trivial acts of speaking their mind or consuming weird plants, and that data is unlikely to be available or good data if it exists since both countries have rather large incentives to make sure it doesn't.
Please also note that I fully granted Akiselev's point that selective enforcement happens in the US even now. There should be genuine outrage over this until it is changed. However, I understand why people can't even keep up with the sheer scale of the bullshit modern governments get up to.
"Nowadays, the penalties for being caught with cannabis are severe. Offenders run the risk of receiving the death penalty for being in possession of just five kilograms or more. Additionally, strict sentences are imposed; anything from five years imprisonment to a life sentence."
Yes and PRC wrong think 99% of time gets you an invite to the police station to "drink tea" and sign a paperwork not to do it again. Maybe occasionally a write self criticism letter. Consequences are about as trivial as it gets. It generally takes enormous repeat and public offenses that gains popular traction to get administratively punished let alone end up in jail for the simple reason that PRC doesn't have mass networks of for profit prison that incentive internment. It takes extraordinary bad luck (i.e. % of become a trending author in particularly sensitive times) and to get punished / arrested for wrong think on the same level as Americans carrying the wrong plant, which is statistically a much riskier situation due to how US racial prosecution and internment system is incentivized. Ask PRC citizen how many people they know has been formally punished, even mildly, for wrong think vs Americans who know someone jailed for drug offense and the numbers will be revealing. In both raw numbers and ease of getting fucked over "trivial" offenses, PRC wrong think is much less riskier than US drugs. Which is not to say PRC wrong think wouldn't stack up poorly compared to other "liberal" countries, rather US internment is just that messed up.
That is good to know. And genuinely new information for me. Thank you for contributing it.
And the details you offer do help calibrate something of an answer to the question you are responding to. Thank you also for being a great participant in that conversation!
> Ask PRC citizen how many people they know has been formally punished, even mildly, for wrong think vs Americans who know someone jailed for drug offense and the numbers will be revealing.
We should definitely like to have real data on that for both countries. It seems difficult to find though. In the mean time I take your seemingly first hand experience as insightful. Thanks again!
I personally do not see much difference. Holding person in prison for profit is a result of corporations buying government. It is as political as it gets. Those people in my view are just as bad scam of the Earth their political counterparts in China.
It's not terribly taxing to just say, "that's not the kind of conversation we want to have here" and go on to continue engaging with any specific points being made. And that's doable even when you suspect the post you are responding to might just be trolling. If there is an identifiable point, engage with that if you will, gently and patiently correct or ignore the rest. Kind of similar to being patient with a rowdy kid. Trolls don't get much out of it if they can't get your goat.
The sub-thread below still managed to take on a few people who just wanted to virtue signal with argumentative sniping but others showed up with good points and information, that part was good to see.
regretfully, being poor and in certain parts of the USA is sufficient to get sucked up by the system. no ideology necessary, just getting caught and loaning money for bail is enough to get swallowed by this beast.
i suppose the CCP pays for these systems directly? whereas the American way has a distributed system of crony 'entrepreneurs' (shoddy lawyers, loan sharks, court bureaucrats and so on) all keeping this system of private jails and other 'services' and industries built around people 'breaking the law'
https://amsterdamnews.com/news/2023/05/04/black-activists-ac...
> Just because you advocate programs that are not aligned with or approved by the U.S. government, siding with anti-racist, anti-colonial forces should not make you a target of U.S. cointelpro actions, raids on the homes of citizens, and humiliating arrests.
[0] https://catholicherald.co.uk/fbi-spied-on-american-catholics...
By the way in China as of this month saying something that is against national interest is punishable under espionage law. If they want they can jail you for using VPN to access something outside of great firewall.
The NSA, CIA and the US intelligence-industrial complex, however, is a direct and credible threat to me. Perhaps not today, and hopefully not tomorrow, but as history has shown us, governments change, sometimes wildly so, in a short period of time while still holding the trappings and lip-service of their predecessors. If you dismiss the concerns about warrantless data collection, tracking, active suppression of free discourse and political targeting of people who ideologically threaten those in power (no matter the political background), well, you just haven't been paying attention.
But if you are nobody why worry about the NSA, FBI, etc they have better people to target
Governments—particularly those of the world's greatest superpowers—have influence outside of their borders, and can make your life hell, no matter where you currently live. They can restrict your freedom to travel, censor your public speech, and target you electronically in many ways. This can happen if you fall on their radar for whatever reason, including by mistake. Good luck getting off that list, and getting your life back after that.
If I'm rating which government I'm more afraid of, it would be the one that has a totalitarian control over its citizens, and no regard for human life. Otherwise, they're all equally harmful to my wellbeing.
That entire sentiment seem to have disappeared especially in the last few years in favor of China-Russia-terrorism-whatever new bs hysteria.
China absolutely does not limit their abductions to their own citizens. If you're in China, you're fair game.
It is absolutely not limited to Chinese citizens.
They've:
"fabricate evidence that the hosts of and participants in the meetings to commemorate the Tiananmen Square massacre were supporting terrorist organizations, inciting violence or distributing child pornography" [0]
You mention only being concerned about US authorities, but have somehow failed to realize they can fabricate evidence and send it to US authorities in an attempt to reach you from across the pond.
[0] https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/china-based-executive-us-tele...
Have I mentioned that China and Russia are deep allied and are probably sharing intelligence? I don't think the US government is worse than Russia's.
But it is not surprising that those laws are never passed so far. Google in their software realm is too strong to be combated as compared to their hardware realm with right to repair. The big names in hardware are replacable as they all buy stock solution (like fingerprint sensor), and those sensor manufacturers don't care about right to repair. But Instagram or Snapchat or WhatsApp or Tiktok or whatever are not that replacable and thus more addictive and better for the company. Google or Meta is definitely not giving up on these places, and considering their influence, the future ain't bright.
Which parallel world are you living in ? I would like to migrate there to this utopian USA.
In China when the CCP says jump however, there’s no recourse
Only in theory, when it comes to National Security Letters.
If you can't prove the government spied on you specifically, you can't take them to court to get a check or balance.
I'm not sure the same claim can be made about China.
And congress hasn't done anything to reign them in.
And I'll freely admit that China is going to be worse, with less oversight. But not only is the comparison a fallacy, it's cold comfort for the rest of the world (not to mention many non-naturalized American citizens).
Edit: Sorry, 14 days for the defendant to appeal. The Feds team gets longer (because they have less resources than a locked up person I guess, some animals have more rights than others in American courts)
https://www.justice.gov/jm/jm-2-4000-time-appeal-or-petition...
If you care about these perceived abuses by US tech companies, why wouldn't you applaud the outcry against TikTok? At the very least, it moves the needle in the right direction. It increases the awareness of industry practices and helps flesh out some constraints. Even if you're of the mindset that there's no practical difference between the US government and an authoritarian communist dictatorship that murdered millions of its compatriots for having the wrong political views, why defend their right to do the things you hate?
in fact, "the pot calling the kettle black" is a textbook example of a tu quoque logical fallacy:
"We need to do X because A is bad because it does Y"
"But we also do Y, shouldn't we also do X for us?"
Logic says yes. "Whataboutism" was invented to kill basic logical inference, in the context of the bipolar Cold War era. Using that term to kill discussion and browbeat is anti-intellectualism, pure and simple.
indeed, the whataboutism itself is intended to kill discussion of the initial topic (in your example, A doing Y, not simply Y), hence why it's a logical fallacy, too
in this case, the goal was to stop people from talking about China's actions and instead deflect to someone else's actions
that might explain why Whataboutism, invented by russian propagandists, is explicitly described as a subtype of the tu quoque logical fallacy:
"From a logical and argumentative point of view it is considered a variant of the tu-quoque pattern (Latin 'you too', term for a counter-accusation), which is a subtype of the ad-hominem argument."[0]
You made this up. Nowhere in this thread is it implied.
as an example, look at whether, after the whataboutism, we're discussing the original topic (Tiktok & its actions) or something/someone else.
see? whataboutism deflection succeeded.
it should be clear now why whataboutism is indeed, as shown above, explicitly defined as a logical fallacy, despite the made-up claim that it isn't one.
It is most often used as an attempt at a defense by calling out other guilty parties. Yes, we should like to live in a world where anyone calling out a problem or injustice only does so from a place of unimpeachable moral authority. But we do not live in such a world so we are still left with the need to address problems where and when we can get the social and political will to do so. Using finger pointing as a defense has the effect of making the problem seem insurmountable and therefore sapping the will to fix it.
The more genuine admission might be to simply say, "I admit I have shit on my shoe, and it does stink; however, if you are to hold me to account for that, then I demand you also be held to account".
With that approach people have a much harder time seeing the complaint as merely a self-defense by way of finger pointing and it's much more likely to be taken seriously.
This is where many people in the US are probably at on, say, the Trump indictment. Can't really say it shouldn't happen, he has almost certainly broken a long list of laws for his whole career. But that also shouldn't be the end of it, more like "Great start getting a corrupt and lawless politician in jail! Who's next on that list? When does their indictment begin?".
That's definitely not you or your deflecting and derailing comment which rocketed to the top or the whatabout comrades who make it impossible to discuss this topic here.
ByteDance has no choice.
I would guess the truth is somewhere in the middle... That there is genuine pushback but also theatrics to project independence.
It would if we account for the fact that we haven't seen any reports of fake legal fights / warrant canaries and etc.
>I would guess the truth is somewhere in the middle
I don't understand this phrase, wouldn't that just mean the bigger lie / conspiracy wins every argument? How do you weigh such things reliably?
P.S. Have you noticed that both Twitter and Youtube have adopted TikTok-type formats, in terms of Twitter video feeds and Youtube Shorts?
It is a relevant question to wonder what prompted the concerns and bills… is it national security of is it economics? That’s not what’s being questioned, and even then there’s no good basis to know so it’s hard to go anywhere other than conspiracy theory.
I actually fully buy that both are plausible and likely, but I have no basis for the economics other than Meta’s lobbying. But the whataboutism always shifts away the conversation from the moment at hand by dismissing it all as something that meta/google do. We can at face value look at the risks of TikTok doing it and understand that they’re maybe legitimate national security concerns. By broadening, we end up just ignoring this completely.
I have noticed the copy cats. The concern from congress has been what can the CCP know via TikTok; not what can TikTok know as an independent entity. I personally do see the control of information and the knowledge of attention being a national security risk, which is unfortunate as I think they have the better product.
And it's been decades, and they've really been quite good about it. There are abstract arguments about whether that kind of data centralization is a good or bad thing, and I think that's fine.
But that's extremely different from "this company actively spied on its enemies". And I think we need to treat with that distinction and not muddy it. Because if your point becomes "Facebook and Google and Amazon are bad too" it becomes isomorphic to "oh well, nothing can be done", because in practice society is OK with the existing giants.
We shouldn't be OK with active spying!
[1] Twitter is more of an open question right now, certainly the promiscuous release of the "Twitter Files" nonsense didn't tend to exhibit an institutional inclination toward privacy.
It is true that authoritarian control freaks are my least favorite people, regardless of what government they're affiliated with - but I don't doubt that the American version, given free rein, would rush to introduce the methods used in China to control the population.
China does continuity not plurality, because its government scopes out centuries, not decades.
And the Chinese understand this - they are broadly happier with their government than Americans are with theirs. https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/07/long-term-sur...
How relevant is it that Xi Jinping has gained an additional mandate, if he's basically continuing a long-term policy which started in the early 80s with Deng Xiaoping, who was also the head of the party that's been in power since 1949?
U.S. could create privacy laws which were equal to every company but there is no will.
Comply with laws or get banned, applying every company.
edit: for US companies, at least
The real solution is that we should all have privacy. Encoded in law, with serious penalties. and that no country should be able to do what is described.
Privacy laws are dead almost before they're even conceived.
It would also create a very large spike in unemployment. I can't imagine how many jobs would be lost if the tech industry could no longer spy on the internet.
I can dream though.
That's a pain but I think inevitable:
>On a practical level, my old device was relegated to being a dummy phone only to be used for accessing TikTok for work.
Who knows what other apps on their other device are up to...
Probably the same things. That data's worth a lot of money for advertisers, both corporate and political.
I doubt all the other apps care.
/s
We totally have.
EDIT: I worked for Amazon in customer service back in the early naughts. They had an explicit alert set up for most celebrities that would basically get a CS rep fired if they went in and snooped. It was put in place because people went in and snooped.
20 years later, and more information about our lives is entrusted to these sites. It's absolutely happening at all of these companies. If it isn't happening, it's because of new policies and procedures resulting from prior incidents.
Targeted spying on a specific journalist /= general data collection. There's an important difference.
Maybe some true professionals but I'm doubtful most serious journalists really put much effort into it.
Here we have an example of a journalist who thankfully learned ... but didn't really know.
Journalists shouldn't have to be cyberopsec experts.
Journalists absolutely should have access to such expertise.
I don't know about experts, but I don't think they can afford to think they can just install any old app... open emails, etc.
They had better be at proficient in regular opsec if handling sensitive sources, and opsec includes cyber these days no?
I disagree. Especially if they are covering geopolitical or highly monetised industrial topics.
They are basically spies working for the public. Spycraft shouldn't be optional for them.
Sure, a journalist covering celeb fluff doesn't need it, but one covering China, Russia, big pharma etc are automatically a target. This article is an excellent example.
Doesn’t seem necessary as far as “more free” countries go, but maybe necessary at some times.
I personally don't think people should put work apps on their personal phone ever.
When I was a journalist back in the early part of this century, the company I worked for issued burner phones and laptops to anyone who left the country.
20 years later, it's probably become standard across the industry, and in more scenarios.
There’s a commonality between HN and TikTok that I haven’t yet been able to put into words. They’re both “bookish”. You feel like you’re exploring. Often times I’ll swipe past 6 or 7 memes in about 3 seconds, when something incredible catches my attention. And it’s often incredible in exactly the same way as HN: you feel like you’ve unearthed some fascinating gemstone. (And much like HN, it’s designed for entertainment, so you can waste arbitrary amounts of time if you fall under its spell too long.)
I wrote a comment at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34573893 showcasing the three lists I was particularly proud of: educational, physics, and math. But I have dozens more. There’s guitar tutorials, handyman repairs, a collection of 18 videos teaching you how to tie all kinds of useful knots, art tutorials, cute animals, hardcore ML discussions, and everything in between. Someday I’ll showcase them properly. (Theoretically you can view them on my TikTok profile, but I doubt it’s presented well: https://www.tiktok.com/@theshawwn)
Just know that if you stomp TikTok out of existence, it’ll be a real loss. It’ll feel to me like you’d feel if someone burned down HN. And the calls for banning TikTok sound to me how you’d feel if Reddit was urging everybody to ban HN.
Now imagine that politicians are seriously considering whether to ban HN. That’s how it feels to read through the comments here about TikTok. The outrage is deserved and understandable, but it’ll be a real loss if it disappears.
If this comment coaxes you into trying out TikTok, one tip: use the “not interested” button ruthlessly. (Long press on a video.) The algorithm will dial you in after around 45 minutes, which isn’t so long. The first experience can feel jarring the same way that YouTube in incognito mode looks like a weird dystopian universe filled with people screaming at each other.
Like I get it, you like TikTok, but don't pretend that the quality of the content is the thing under discussion here. That is a really weird thing to do.
I was on HN when it was around 50 users total. That was day two, just after pg made it public. That was small, and yo8 felt like you knew everyone.
That feeling lasted for a couple years. But inevitably it went away. I didn’t mean the “hehe” against you, but rather a “I wish HN was small.” It was a magical era.
Believe it or not, you are precisely as hypnotized by HN as you feel I am about TikTok. They’re both wonderfully entertaining titans.
If the idea that there are similarities is so unbelievable to you, then so be it. It says a lot more about you than about the comparison.
Ah, there I go, letting the angry replies drag down my quality. Let’s see, what would pg say…
It may feel surprising that there could be similarities. But it’s not as unlikely as you might think. It does however require an open mind, and a willingness to set aside the anger.
If you’re determined to hate it, no words will change your mind.
I'm not angry about anything, nor do I dispute your thesis that from a content point of view there may be similarities. I just raise the question of how that contributes to a genuinely useful discussion about the sociopolitical implications of the app.
Because there’s never any opportunity to talk about anything else on HN. One hundred percent of the time, it’s a big discussion about the political implications of TikTok. The only time it shows up here is when it’s done something newsworthy, and people are (rightly) upset or scared about it.
The missing context here is that top level comments aren’t required to be “on topic” in the sense you’re saying. Quite the opposite; as dang says, HN is consistently contrarian.
All I can say is that I’m never contrarian for the sake of being contrarian. That’d be lame, as well as boring. I’ve been a TikTok user for over three years now. This is simply a glimpse into that world — or at least, my poor attempt at giving one.
I’d argue that “setting aside” the implications is a form of wishful thinking.
Everything you pointed out can be pointed out without discarding the implications or implying that having a stance regarding the risks is somehow equivalent to wishing HN would be banned.
TikTok is primarily an interesting topic here because of those implications and because many folks are quite willing to pretend the problem doesn’t exist as long as they get their dopamine hit.
But it is completely compatible with this reality to point out that the content can be joyful to experience, while acknowledging that the context of that experience is a serious issue.
And if TikTok is banned, people won’t stop creating the kinds of content found there. It’ll just move to the next big thing.
You’re comparing TikTok and HN in terms of entertainment value.
Parent comment is highlighting that there are more factors to consider if you want to seriously compare the two.
Wanting TikTok gone is not like wanting HN gone, unless you believe that the only thing that matters about TikTok is its entertainment value.
The entertainment value is what makes it a valuable strategic asset to the PRC. But judging it only on that entertainment value is the kind of logic that leads to acceptance of bills like the EARN IT act.
The underlying details matter, not just the entertainment value or supposed safety claims.
You keep coming back because HN makes you feel good. It’s both as simple and as complex as that.
EDIT: This topic is much more nuanced than my comment here. Entertainment doesn’t imply that it’s somehow a lesser endeavor. But if Dan stopped entertaining the community, it would fall apart. It’s a necessary step in order to get to the most gratifying aspects of HN, and it’s why incendiary topics are so tricky.
I think most people would agree that Reddit is less entertaining than HN. Entertainment doesn’t mean cheesy. I wouldn’t find most political discussions very entertaining, whereas someone explaining how they hunted down a subtle bug is one of the most entertaining types of comments.
The best commenters here “play for the audience” the same way street performers play for the crowd. It’s all about skill. And if it’s skill-based rather than something random, you’ll have to admit that there’s a target to aim for.
That target is “be entertaining.” It’s called intellectual gratification in the rules, but fundamentally, you come to HN instead of Reddit because you’re entertained here, not there.
It’s my job to write substantive comments here. And it’s one I do happily, because I get so much out of it in return. But I have to be keenly aware of whether you, the audience, are getting something out of it too. That’s the essence of being entertaining.
My point here was that TikTok is gratifying in addition to “entertaining,” in many of the same ways that HN is. This was shocking, since I was expecting something horrible when I tried it out. It’s quite the opposite; you just have to look past the horrors for the gems.
Think of it like being trapped on https://news.ycombinator.com/newest, except sometimes you get the front page, and occasionally you get /highlights. You’d think you were alternating between something apocalyptic, something great, and something astounding.
TikTok’s algorithm achieves that, somehow. I’ve curated almost 3,000 videos. Actually, I just checked: 4,644.
As an accomplished contributor to ML and a long time community member, trust me when I say that I wouldn’t do it unless there was something valuable there. I’d lose interest, just as you would in Reddit’s /r/politics.
Simply put: HN is not a national security threat, and TikTok is. This statement is compatible with acknowledging that both provide value (of the entertainment sort and otherwise).
But when evaluating the risk associated with each platform, one is clearly in a category that the other is not.
Guns can be very entertaining. Learning to shoot and honing one's skills can be an enjoyable and rewarding experience. People do it because it makes them feel good. It's as simple and as complex as that.
But if you were to evaluate the risks of using guns as entertainment, you could not conclude that guns are no different than guitars. Both can be used to satisfy deeply human desires to learn a skill and entertain oneself. But there is an appropriate difference in policy when it comes to the requirements imposed on a gun buyers vs. guitar shoppers.
I'm not saying you're doing this intentionally, but you continue to ignore and sidestep the nuance that I and others have tried to reintroduce.
Let me ask you this: is there something that would have to happen for you to change your opinion about TikTok? If we learned tomorrow that it has actively been used to manipulate the mental health of teens and could be causally linked to suicides, does the overall entertainment value make that not matter?
Where's the line that you won't cross?
This presupposes and operates as though TikTok isn't an enormous collection of tiny niches. Many parts of TikTok are exactly like tiny subreddits where everyone or most people know each other.
Equally, some places on TikTok have a whole lot of people, like the front page of Reddit.
HN is somewhere larger than small reddit and smaller than big reddit.
We've all had that feeling where we start off in a smaller group and as the place gets more popular you lose that original feeling. Not sure if HN today is comparable to Tiktok for many reasons: because this site hasn't really changed technology wise, controlled by another government superpower.
Let me edit this comment with one particular example. One moment…
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1511104
That thread is one of the most vivid examples of the difference of then vs now. But looking back on it, the delta isn’t as large as one might think. I was going to write “Imagine Dan giving an answer like that to the community unprompted,” and then realized that he has, many times now. He’s done a tremendous job preserving the spirit that pg imbued into HN.
The thread is nostalgic for other reasons too. Aaron Swartz gave a candid answer that stuck with me, and turned out to be really prescient for my life.
There is nothing downvote-worthy about this comment. I really appreciated reading this perspective, since pretty much all I ever hear are the reasons TikTok is bad.
Thank you for sticking up for me, but remember: our goal here is to write comments interesting to read. As much as I appreciate it, complaints about downvotes never do any good. They just stoke the fire.
Have a wonderful weekend, wherever you are. Cheers.
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There’s a grain of truth to it. Both are addictive. HN does it so well that the psychological aspects are almost invisible, but they’re there. That karma counter in the upper right is suspiciously impossible to ignore.
Does that erase HN’s merits? I don’t think so.
If this is your takeaway then I picked the wrong metaphor. My intent was highlight that people have baseline preferences, but the post engages in arguing that their tastes are somehow _logically wrong_. I thought chocolate ice cream would be the least objectionable taste but I guess leave it to HN to find a way =)
If HN was controlled by the CCP I would have the exact same concerns and wouldn't be using the platform. The CCP doesn't care how useful, delightful, unique, or wonderful your product is. They only care about whether they can leverage it usefully in some way.
It became clear really quickly that they have completely disrupted instagram and snap. The UX is much more communal and interactive than either of those, the algorithm lands you on your interests faster, and they have massively reduced the friction around becoming a content creator rather than just a consumer - so there's simply more STUFF there. The videos are more ephemeral and imperfect than what you usually see on IG, and there's a lot more joy in what's being captured. It really is a step change in the ability to build communities around shared interests.
Behind the scenes, it's a privacy nightmare and I understand the national security concerns that go with PRC tapping directly into the id of our electorate. I think PRC is much more skilled and subtle about online manipulation than Russia is. (I was working on media monitoring when social media became strangely fixated on trade deals for just long enough to get US involvement in TPP killed - a framework that was only significantly different from other trade deals in that it would sideline PRC. Once both candidates came out against it, popular concern over trade deal nuances disappeared and never returned)
But the hysteria is driven just as much by SV tech knowing that they've been lapped and finding common ground with congress for purely anti-competitive reasons, as it is by the government trying to thread the needle between free speech and ceding ground to adversary information ops.
... so far. But with any technology it seems that, once the attention goes towards something, money and polish and 'Moloch' take over and the magic of amateurs and the joy of discovery are lessened. Perhaps TikTok will be different, however! It's not inevitable, but just a trend I've noticed.
The polish/money/influencers are there, but seems to coexist/not take over better.
The videos where you "learn" something are extra insidious because they convince you that it is a positive use of your time. The reality is you will forget 90% of it, it is formatted to be entertaining and not educational, and many are outright BS.
If you’re quick to point out all the reasons I’m mistaken, well… take all of those reasons, put them in a paint bucket labeled “tiktok”, and give it a stir till you can’t see the difference. Because as a three year TikTok user, I can’t.
We’re all addicts. It’s a matter of choosing your addictions wisely, and not letting their downsides outweigh their merits. Discipline tends to be the cure, though that never works for me; the only way out is to find a fascinating problem to go work on.
Make no mistake: the average TikTok viewer is a lot closer to the average HN reader in terms of addictive behaviors than we’d care to admit. All of the reasons you keep coming back are addictions in disguise. And if this argument sounds out of place, there’s a way out: it’s fine to be addicted to learning new things.
Hard Disagree.
I don't know who does that. I look at titles and decide which ones I want to look at. With tiktok, you don't know what's coming next, and normally it takes you at least one or two seconds to know if it's a video you want to watch. Also TikTok content is personalized and there is no end blah blah. It's designed to make you addicted.
By the way I have read a lot of interesting/helpful articles on HN, many of which are not easy read. Many people would agree with me. Also I have read a lot of articles with a critical eye and left critical comments (like this one), never did that on TikTok.
These are just some basic rebukes of your comment. I can go on and on. I think the difference between TikTok and HN is very clear. Not saying TikTok is better than HN, they are different products, but it's very disingenuous to draw parallels between them.
I'll say the opposite, and boldly. With HN, I can quickly scan 90 headlines where 50% of them are tech related and the other half, at least smart people find them interesting or something.
Imagine following a video for a recipe that you can't rewind...
What is going to happen, is that even if a ban goes through, they will end up just selling the US/international app to a US company, then that company will be completely separated from bytedance.
This almost happened during the Trump administration.
And this would be a positive result. We get to keep TikTok, and all it's "benefits", while the national security concerns are solved because it would be US owned, and no longer beholden to a foreign adversary.
I understand what you're saying though. But I think the answer should be to work harder at blocking Google and Apple, rather than capitulating to <new thing>.
The owner of TikTok is ByteDance, an American company. Would you ban them?
Also, Apple produces in China, under the jurisdiction of the CCP. Would you also ban them?
Those two examples are obvious, but when you look at the typical international megacorp structure, it becomes quickly much more difficult.
It is no better than Facebook and is in fact worse. Given the history of what TikTok has done and also has admitted to violating the privacy of its users [0] [1] [2] [3] in leaks and recordings, it needs to be fined for repeated offenses in the billions of dollars just like Facebook was once fined at.
Billion dollar fines for repeated offenses is much better than a outright ban and the regulators are never tired of collecting money from multi-billion dollar companies.
[0] https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/emilybakerwhite/tiktok-...
[1] https://edpb.europa.eu/news/national-news/2021/dutch-dpa-tik...
[2] https://www.scmagazine.com/news/privacy/uk-tiktok-16m-fine-c...
[3] https://fortune.com/2022/12/22/tiktok-data-privacy-blunder-c...
A quick scan and most of the comments seem to be Chinese talking points in one form or another
1. you can get around that by using the actual TikTok link on the
website, not the app
2. It's by design. People who know each other probably like similar
things, so it facilitates in the surprisingly effective, accurate
and narrow niches that people can find themselves in.I don't get the big deal?
They know my age and where I live, which is public information via sites indexed by Google for a large percentage of the population.
My phone knows where I go due to GPS + cell phone towers. This is published via a "location service" to every app asking for it (and given permission) on my phone.
Apple knows what I like because they run the operating system for both my phone and my laptop. Do they have some form of telemetry? Probably.
Google knows what I like because I use their browser and they run my Gmail/other services I use from them. Do they have some form of telemetry? Probably.
How is this a TikTok problem?
Are you just trying to hand wave for TikTok here?
As for the article, the situation in the article is very specific to that person.
They got her location. What else?
There's some serious mental gymnastics and reality denial required to limit the issues to "TikTok".
Someone else won a race, so now they need to tilt the field.