US designates more Chinese tech companies as military collaborators | Hacker News Reader

US designates more Chinese tech companies as military collaborators

theregister.com

63 pointsDaveFlater63 comments

The fact that TikTok is still allowed to run amok when the PRC has their hands all over it and also shows completely different content to Chinese users is the greatest irony and crime here

most Americans can't speak chinese

You don't need to speak Chinese to know that any large corporation that exists in the PRC does so at the behest of their government, and must kowtow to their surveillance demands accordingly.

Every American social media company is a front for NSA surveillance and CIA propaganda, what's your point? I thought we were supposed to believe in free markets and competition around here.

Alternatives that exist openly in the US would not be suffered to exist in the PRC -- for instance, Signal.

Again, I see little difference between the PRC and USA in this regard. As an American, I couldn't care less about Chinese surveillance. But my own government has an active interest in monitoring my politics for thoughtcrime and influencing my thoughts and actions. Making a moral panic only about the foreign platform seems, itself, like propaganda.

Thank you. I cannot understand people who are more frightened by foreigners knowing about their penchant for horse porn than by their local cops knowing the same embarrassing facts.

The moral panic isn’t remotely limited to foreign platforms, not even 24 hours ago the Senate Judiciary Committee publicly hung online sexual abuse of children around the CEO of Facebook’s neck, complete with a broadcasted apology before asking the TikTok CEO if they’re a member of the CCP in the same hearing.

Countries other than the USA have agency and interests, and are entirely capable of seeking to influence your thoughts and actions to affect change if it furthers their goals (it is literally an election year).

Tiktok has a superpower of injecting random people into your feed, which could be and would be used for manipulation. Or suppressing specific posts. Probably that is why meta did the same (before they could only do it with ads, but nobody watches ads anyway).

Having a foreign government covertly influence your thoughts and actions should be of concern. It's one thing to have your thoughts and actions be changed by a logical process; it's a whole other concern when an agonistic foreign power is expending non-trivial amounts of resources to bend your opinion.

This isn't mutually exclusive to being concerned about the US government actions in this space but the risks are completely different.

Seems like you are overly concerned with the devil you know while ignoring the threat of the devil you don’t. If you think the US government isn’t your friend, well… you are right. But if you are an American, the PRC is your enemy. They actually want bad things to happen to the citizens of the US. And they have the leverage to cause some of those things to happen.

oh please, spare us. Do tell what china has done to the US citizenry. Consider that you're attempting revolutions, surrounding them with military bases, arming separatists, and instigating trade wars. Your government hates the Chinese people. Don't project your vile tendencies onto others.

No matter the morality of the government’s actions, I would rather be on the side of the biggest guns and do what I can to undermine the size of the other guy’s guns, unless the other guy offers me a better life

then admit that instead of fearmongering and promoting actively harmful sinophobic views. it's the blind and naive i am taking issue with, not the geopolitical realists. even if i disagree with both

Sinophobic? You just sound like a tankie or a shill. The Chinese government is a cartel that actively trade in the stolen organs of their own citizenry. The US may have completely squandered its global hegemony entering into useless wars, but the Chinese preside over a horror show.

And this is a model you feel should be implemented here?

Signal isn't exactly trustworthy here either. Signal still likes to brag about the times when they told the government they couldn't hand over the data the feds wanted because they never collect/store it in the first place, but a long time ago they started collecting and permanently storing in the cloud exactly that same data. Worse, they refuse to update their privacy policy to reflect what they've started doing, meaning that the very first sentence of that policy is an outright lie. Personally, I take that as a massive dead canary and assume that signal has been completely compromised.

There are alternatives out there which I hope still deliver on the promise of allowing secure communications, and we're free to roll our own, but I strongly suspect that the US gov will move in on anything that gains enough of a following.

I think that we're still far better off than the Chinese, but we're not as free as we pretend that we are.

Every American social media|insurance|telecom|financial|tech company are a surveillance endpoint for the FBI or LE in general and/or a foreign policy endpoint in terms of being an effector for economic warfare.

No legal fiction is inured to the machinations of its host state.

Endpoint != Front

Social media companies have also their own nefarious goals so you don't have only to worry about your government but also about the (un)intended consequences of attention capitalism

The fact that *insert American tech company * is still allowed to run amok when the *insert 3 letter agency* has their hands all over it and openly flaunts it is the greatest irony and crime here

Except, in this bilateral relationship, those firms aren’t allowed to run amok in China for basically the same reasons as highlighted.

I’m not taking a side fwiw. I think it’s all sad and nation states, nationalism, etc, are the cause of almost all ills.

No, they're not allowed because they don't want to follow the same laws that Chinese companies have to follow. The rules are the same for Chinese companies and those from other countries.

The divide is largely due to the fact the Chinese government has regulations about the quality and kind of social media content platforms are allowed to distribute, including emphasizing educational content for kids etc. Possibly other nefarious reasons you allude to, but those content standard regulations are sufficient enough to explain why Chinese content is segregated - they literally can’t share the same content selection inside China, so otherwise would have to conform to Chinese regulations outside China as well. Those regulations would make TikTok much less profitable outside China, and they’re not required to do absolutely anything to “improve” the content quality outside China, so they naturally optimize towards engagement and stickiness. That incentive is shared by all social media companies, and is why the Chinese regulations exist to begin with - because what’s engaging and sticky is likely really the absolute worst crap ever.

> because what’s engaging and sticky is likely really the absolute worst crap ever

I looked up the most popular/viewed youtube channels not long ago and it was either corporate advertising (music mainly) or largely trash. Out of all the great content on youtube what rises to the top seems to be ads and garbage.

And even in the western world companies would do self-censorship, so they would pass rules of the apple store (reddit case), pass "rules" of payment providers (mastercard/visa for OF) or please the advertisers (youtube/ig rules).

Just recently, one chinese game company extra content for western audience and pissed of the local chinese users.

Youtube, Facebook, Microsoft.

Is it just me, or does it feel like there are some strange comments in this thread. Like responses to comments that add nothing but trying to shut down conversations... Patriots I guess

Totally. Seeing this conflict from an outsider perspective (not American nor Chinese), makes me puke.

US has been killing and plaguing millions of people with their crappy social networks, with depression and draining their attention, using it to monitor and spread American "democratic" values around the world.

Now that China has 01 social network that is successful (nowhere as close as the ones owned by Meta tho), Americans and politicians think that China is a menace and it's the end of the world. Of course the PRC have influence in Tiktok and will use it. The US has been doing the same for ages.

My only hope is that we get more and more alternatives, up to the point that American Big Techs become irrelevant, and so does this conflict.

I wonder when the first American nuke will be used because of a meme being shared in a social network

I agree that it's kind of silly to worry about social media platforms, but microchips, drones, routers, cameras, etc are another story. It'd be a good thing for the US to try and be less dependent on China and their environmentally disastrous manufacturing and their slave labor for everything we own, especially when it comes to things that could be sensitive. If the Department of Defense wasn't looking at the companies in China we depend on and considering the impacts that could have to our security they wouldn't be doing their job.

Once you notice it you'll see it everywhere around here.

FBI director Wray just spoke about China's strategy.

https://www.fbi.gov/news/speeches/director-wrays-opening-sta...

> If or when China decides the time has come to strike, they’re not focused solely on political or military targets. We can see from where they position themselves, across civilian infrastructure, that low blows aren’t just a possibility in the event of a conflict. Low blows against civilians are part of China’s plan.

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