Don't be fooled by talk about security or privacy.
This is simple Nation State realpolitik. TikTok is a propaganda threat controlled by a non-friendly state to the US.
Any other way to look at this is naive.
This is simple Nation State realpolitik. TikTok is a propaganda threat controlled by a non-friendly state to the US.
Any other way to look at this is naive.
As far as I remember from the previous elections the Russian bots were operating on US based platforms
> non-political is political. Do you imagine that there aren't people making political TikToks?
is that you are indeed in a filter bubble of non-political content which exists alongside political content. One example of political content on TikTok within the larger Israel-Hamas war topic was the brief trend of commenting on Osama bin Laden's manifesto called "Letter to America" [1]. If you were (not saying that you are) knowingly ignoring the existence of political content on a specific topic on TikTok, then you would be making an inherently political decision (which does not mean that you should change your decision).
[1] https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/osama-bin-ladens-lette...
Is war also peace and freedom also slavery?
Si vis pacem, para bellum
> freedom also slavery
Total freedom for one includes their ability to enslave others.
My point is, you’re presenting false dichotomies to justify another (the political and the non-political).
If your populist parties aren't on it, they're incompetent.
(Note: that means that I don’t believe that all propaganda is inherently evil, sometimes your interests align with a State. For example governments paying for advertising to discourage smoking is a great thing, IMO!)
I’ve never lived in China, but I’ve spoken with many people that have and my understanding is that allegiance to the State (eg, the State’s sole stewards the CCP) is a big part of life there. I’ve even been told that staying in the good graces of the State’s only official political party is important if you want to do things like buy property or start a business.
TikTok is administrated by humans, many of whom live in China.
Those humans are, I assume, ambitious and want to do well for themselves and therefore likely want to appease the State.
Therefore, when I read articles about how the administrators of TikTok can effectively decide what goes viral it makes me fear what I’ve begun calling ‘incidental’ propaganda.
Probably those China-based administrations at TikTok don’t want to actively harm American society, but it’s certainly true that America and China have different interests in the world. I assume that any administrators in China will never choose to make something go viral if it is critical of the Chinese State or its interests.
You can see how that might skew things for those that only get their news from TikTok, right?
(This is my understanding and thinking on things right now given the information I have. I gladly welcome any new information if someone reads this and disagrees. But please be kind :))
Your line of reasoning seems fine, but it basically applies to any "other". If some European decides what goes viral, he is going to subject poor stupid american viewers to their nefarious European biases - and those biases may harm our society!
Furthermore the biases of US based company executives may harm our society as well. I'll grant you that they may be less inclined, but gosh, rage bait and selling sweets to children does make them a whole lot of money.
So the logic isn't wrong, but it seems to be applied selectively in cases that just happen to benefit large American tech companies - who are incapable of providing US consumers a product that's nearly as good as Tiktok
Maybe biases in algorithms need to addressed.. But that should be done in a thoughtful unbiased holistic that applied equally to everyone - instead of this embarrassing kneejerk "the commies are taking over" kind of way
I’ll certainly agree that the ‘red scare’ vibe to this bill makes me uncomfortable — even if I agree with the action overall.
I certainly am biased towards companies that operate in a way that I’m familiar with. In the companies I’ve worked in delivering value to shareholders trumps all else at the end of the day. (I don’t love it but it’s predictable)
As you allude to that causes some quite nefarious behavior, but it’s predictable to me for the most part.
To me, this is in contrast with what I see happening in the Chinese market. Again, this is colored by my experience. From the outside looking in it appears that companies based in China bend much further to appease their government than in the markets I’ve worked in (US, UK and Japan) and that makes me less inclined to trust them.
> I’ve never lived in China, but I’ve spoken with many people that have
IMO, these opinions are a bit biased. 1) those are probably the people who chose to stay in the West; 2) Chinese people (incl. me) sometimes talk extravagantly about life in a "communist country", since to some degree it pleases the Western audience and adds some fun to the talk.
Maybe a CCP member has to show their allegiance from time to time, but I am not and I can not recall I was asked to do so in any form. Probably asked to sing the national anthem every morning when I was in the school? And despite the censorship, people, especially young netizens, invent all kinds of altered words mocking domestic politics, often to my surprise how much they are aware of, given that I already live in the West out of the bubble, that people usually think Chinese internet is.
Taking a particular different mindset as unconscious propaganda and thinking it's harmful seems to support the Chinese internet firewall project and the opinion that people are not able to make "correct" opinions on their own.
Discussions like this are why I love HN <3
I think I’ll be chewing on your final paragraph for some time. Thank you!!!
Is there evidence - any evidence whatsoever - that CCP or bytedance is using tiktok to push a particular flavor of propaganda? No.
That said, TikTok's moderation is quite unfriendly to LGBTQ+ and Palestine creators (even though they find ways around it).
I didn't even watch the videos, they insisted on putting them on the home page despite me giving 0 engagement. I finally adblocked the element.
It's hard for me to imagine a lot isn't filtered out. There is a reason they have a separate app. It's likely one is heavily filtered and the other is their propaganda tool but I'd like to see more evidence to indicate that but it's a hard thing to track given they could be just feeding kids the worst things for them or favorable views to their party and we wouldn't even know.
My own experience, as well as my partner's, disputes this. My content is generally creators in the neurodivergant, LGTBQIA+, power generation for Alaska towns, wildlife rescues, D&D, cosplay, and news.
Only the last can occasionally contain ragebait, but it's generally not. Most of the things that make me angry are those like Nex Benedict's death, the death toll in Gaza strip, women being treated poorly by doctors, etc. Actual issues brought up in real time, not manufactured outrage.
My partner's content is generally "customer states", cats, dogs, ferrets, and couples sharing the amusing parts of their lives.
A data sample of only two, to be sure, but the absence of softcore porn and ragebait entirely makes 60 minutes' claims suspect.
that’s not what i’m talking about.
start a completely new profile and see what is recommended.
That just speaks to what people in general find interesting. Instagram and YouTube shorts do the same thing.
Use the app for more than two minutes, and you're out of the "popular" bubble.
https://networkcontagion.us/wp-content/uploads/A-Tik-Tok-ing...
They simply dismiss the alternate explanation .. that it's a demographic difference or a time difference. Uygher stuff was a hot topic before Tiktok became popular. And people that are super pumped about that issue and are posting about Chinese political issues probably are I'm guessing not the kind of people to be using Tiktok. Those are just wild guesses.. but there are a lot of ways to explain the difference observed here.
In any case.. just mildly muting topics is pretty benign.. I was expecting promoting conspiracy theories or bots posting AI generated videos. The stuff the Russians (and I think Chinese as well?) botfarms do on Facebook is way crazier
But basically, Chinese children got lots of science, engineering, and other educational content, while other countries got your run of the mill generic time-wasting nothingburger nonsense kind of content.
Food for thought.
The other is a editorial banter from talking heads discussing 2 political parties like they're competing with ESPN.
On the opposite side you would fill it with messages about the virtues of hard work, stories of success and happiness, etc.
Reasons for having two apps are rife with speculation. One is that censorship in Douyin is more prevalent than on the export version (that one is pretty obvious). There's also speculation that the export version of Douyin has an algorithm tuned to be more addictive.
But let's be clear, by ByteDance's own statements the two apps have shared management and technology.
Are we protecting America's trade interests with this bill? I don't think so...
You've got it backwards: reciprocal trade agreements are the norm not just in US politics but across the world.
Are we doing this because they banned Facebook? Again, I don't think so.
This is the foundation of reciprocal trade agreements: We don't put tariffs on your cars if you don't put tariffs on ours. We don't ban your social media companies if you don't ban ours.
Unless China is part of the US, I don't see how CCP/Bytedance can get First Amendment protection.
Nobody proposed blocking TikTok.com. It’s just limiting its distribution.
I’m not saying the bill is performative. The app-store and hosting ban will be effective. The point is nothing will be censored. Distribution will have been curtailed.
I'd be interested to know the source of your claim that facebook wouldn't be allowed if it complied fully with Chinese law?
It's literally run by the "Central Propaganda Department".
> Just to be clear, is this based on your own experience, or did you
From https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-68554075:
As is the case with other social media platforms, TikTok is banned in China.Not teenagers, TikTok's main target
If a foreign adversary attacks, can parents alone protect their children?
Let me get this clear:
1. you don't want govt to act for children because "parents", 2. you don't want govt to act for adults because they are "rational".
> 2. you don't want govt to act for adults because they are "rational".
Yes. This is absolutely correct from my perspective. Parents have agency over their children. They are there to guide or, if necessary, inact tyrannical laws.
Adults have agency. Nobody is a victim of TikTok involuntarily. Adults are making a choice to use it or allow their children to use it.
From what exactly is the government saving US citizens by banning TikTok from the app store, or more generally? And how can we be sure that this banning power won't expand over time?
(As parents can have agency over children and adults have agency)
> From what exactly is the government saving US citizens by banning TikTok from the app store, or more generally
The CCP accessing their data. The CCP pushing propaganda by silently altering the recommendations.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/08/tech/tiktok-data-china/index....
https://www.forbes.com/sites/iainmartin/2023/07/26/tiktok-ch...
But I contest that people are freely and knowingly giving that data to the CCP. It's been a common topic for years at this point.
The US government isn't saving their citizens from the CCP. They just don't want the CCP to have the data that Americans want to give them.
Regarding propaganda, it's obvious that it's content Americans want. They would leave the platform if they didn't.
I contest otherwise. Even if that is the case, how does that prevent the govt from acting correctly or morally?
People would love to pay no taxes, should the govt then tax no one? What kind of logic is that?
> The US government isn't saving their citizens from the CCP. They just don't want the CCP to have the data that Americans want to give them.
Strawman argument. Once again it is not just data! It is an oppressive foreign adversary that can push harmful propaganda. And has done so as pointed above!
> Regarding propaganda, it's obvious that it's content Americans want. They would leave the platform if they didn't.
Not all Americans. Americans want to ban TikTok. Thats who democracy works. The house has proportional representation.
> it's obvious that it's content Americans want
Nope, it is not obvious at all. In fact, the other way is more obvious given the majority (352-65-1) with which this passed in the House. It is obvious Americans want TikTok banned or divested from China.
(You may be unfamiliar with democracy and how it works, if so, my apologies.)
The govt already acts profoundly immorally. Social security is unconstitutional! My view of the government is that it exists to enrich itself, regardless of morals. While this legislation is narrowly worded, which I appreciate, it still goes so far as to prohibit a voluntary transaction. To me that is immoral.
> Not all Americans. Americans want to ban TikTok.
The Americans that want to ban TikTok aren't trying to ban it because they don't like the content. If that was the case, they could simply not use it. Instead they want to ban it because they don't like others using it, and that is categorically different.
> Democracy
I do understood how democracy works, especially federalism. This does fall under the purview of the commerce clause as it has often been interpreted by the Supreme Court, so I fully expect it to withstand legal challenges. I just think it's bad policy and hypothesize the precedent is what's needed to push for more and more.
Thank you for your response. We disagree, and that's okay.
Edit: Not to mention location data alone is valuable. The entire intelligence community runs on information, all of it has some value.
The easiest actionable thing would be propoganda of some sort, but there's a chance of a lot of smart people working on something that I can't imagine. I'm not saying this happening, but looking at Youtube and Meta, it's not hard to imagine.
The danger with TikTok is inherent to all these algorithmic feeds. It is like, bad for you. People get mentally ill from them.
I certainly think that knowing very specifically what a substantial portion of a county/market’s population is interested in qualifies as intelligence.
How effectively you make that information actionable is up to the creativity of your intelligence/advertising apparatus.
But H.R. 7521 gives power to handle more than TikTok. (g)(3)(B) [1] certainly looks to me like it can be used by any President to pressure or outright censor many foreign sites and apps.
[1] https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/7521...
It’s a perfectly well understood fact that our nations use businesses, and literally every other avenue possible to spy on and propagandize each other’s populations
As a result, each nation has to counter that it does so mostly privately, but sometimes very publicly.
This is all part of the totally broken, absolutely run by children, international relations system.
It’s exceptionally mundane and exceptionally bad for all citizens as a result. However it’s great for business. So you’re not going to see a change until citizens demand different international economic, political, communications and relations structure that isn’t based on competition.
TikTok shouldn't be banned, and if it is, it could eventually open the door for US owned companies without "direct" ties to also be forced "divest." Some of Facebook and Twitter's biggest investors are not exactly US allies. To me, it's a slippery slope. The "tit for tat" argument also falls flat to me, the US shouldn't try to mimic being China. China's attempts to wall itself off from the world have hurt it more than helped it.
If we really wanted to address this, we'd just have legislation on personal data in general, not this company targeting nonsense; but we'll never do that because Facebook/Twitter/Google/Microsoft/etc all have their hands lining the pockets of plenty of lobbyists in DC. They just maybe don't realize, or care, at the moment that eventually their own allegiances will be called into question.
Yes. Would you have been offended when during the Revolutionary War we restricted British propaganda? German and Nazi propaganda in the World Wars? Soviet propaganda in the Cold War?
Let’s reverse the roles. How thrilled would we be if we could have had a propaganda arm active and accepted in Nazi Germany or the CCCP? If we had person-by-person profiles of interests and affiliations for every person in Russia or Iran?
We didn’t block it. Same as, even if ByteDance refuses to divest, this bill wouldn’t block TikTok from being accessed on the web. It’s just taking it out of American app stores and off American hosting services.
We will have a new debate.
Nobody wants to kill TikTok. There is simply way too much money in it.
Has anyone considered that the content pushed on TikTok is actually the content Americans want? Perhaps the reason TikTok is super popular is precisely because of their tailored content.
Besides if your country is strong enough you should be able to shrug it off. France recently put the right to abortion in the Constitution despite American media.
Also, it's not in your interest to do this because it makes your comments less persuasive and indeed gives people an easy reason to dismiss them. So if you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.
Past explanations here in case helpful: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
Also, in case it's helpful, here is a list of moderation posts I made for a user who was in a similar position a while back: https://news.ycombinator.com/chinamod. It's old(ish) now but the principles are all still the same.
If you're a mod then please why are you allowing for this. Half this xenophobic speach and anti chinese rhetoric is worse than calling it out.
I've put in countless hours, over the years, trying to do just what you're demanding here. That's why I gave you that last link to look at. We've learned the hard way that there are limits to what moderators can do about this, unfortunately—and when you post comments that are egregiously breaking the site guidelines, you make this problem harder.
Just to be clear, I don't want you to stop posting! I'm saying we need you to make your substantive points thoughtfully, in keeping with the HN guidelines. I realize how hard that is when feeling the pressure of being outnumbered by an ignorant majority. But if you post things like "you sound as ridiculous as the politicians", "jfc the absolute garbage rhetoric", and so on, you make it impossible for the mods to do much about the comments on the other side—people will simply point to your posts and say "but it's ok for them to break the rules?"
We cut people slack for being under the pressure of holding a minority view in an argument, but there's a limit to how far we can take that, and your comments are unfortunately beyond that limit. That's why I responded to you, in the hope of persuading you to understand this dynamic. I have a lot of sympathy for your position—not because I agree or disagree about the underlying topic, but because I know what it feels like to be outnumbered on the internet.
All things considered, it's a minor problem for the US/West. Just looking like hypocrites. Compared to, say, the 2003 Iraq war it's a nothingburger.
This is the paradox of tolerance [1]. It’s a worn discussion and far from hypocritical.
In any case, I’d rather be right than consistent. Particularly when it comes to the survival and wellbeing of our people and allies. More pointedly when the other side is a dictatorship.
Make of that what you will.
Which one(s)? (Genuinely curious.)
Also, was it a ban or divestment requirement? What wins me over on this bill is it isn’t a ban. It isn’t even a requirement to be controlled by an American. ByteDance could sell TikTok to a Korean or Hugarian or Middle Eastern country—even Turkey—and be in compliance with the law.
> I’d rather be right than consistent. Particularly when it comes to the survival and wellbeing of our people
Turkey's constitution also guarantees free speech etc. However, there are also laws that say you cannot insult people's religious sensibilities or serve sexually explicit content. The motivation for these laws is that this type of content degrades the moral fabric of society.
Politicians whipped up moral panics and judges (who were in many cases appointed by those very same politicians) issued rulings requiring these platforms to remove the offending content. The platforms refused, and were banned. When people argued the bans were against constitutional freedoms, the counter-arguments were always some flavor of "it's more important to prevent the moral degeneration of the country".
When the facts change our opinions should, too. I used to be a free-trade absolutist. It’s become clear that doesn’t work.
I remain a strong free-speech advocate. Which is why I was against Trump’s proposed TikTok ban. This, however, is different. There is an out in divestment—to an American or non-American. And even if ByteDance refuses to sell, TikTok.com won’t be blocked. Moreover, the entire process is subject to judicial oversight. If ByteDance’s Constitutional rights are being abrogated, they have a forum in which to find relief.
Turkey’s tale is cautionary. We should be mindful when we find we were previously wrong. But I think this is different. Free trade (in its absolute sense) isn’t a core American value. Free speech is. The First Amendment protects ByteDance’s speech. It does not guarantee its distribution.
China blocks many major Western websites and apps. Reciprocating is far from unfair: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_websites_blocked_in_...
China is not free, not a democracy, and not a free market, so there no hypocrisy. What was crazy was supporting the one sided relationship where we export our industry and production capacity to China while they block and steal from our businesses.
I'd support TikTok in the US if China gets rid of their firewall.
Because we are not China and our institutions are built on presumption of freedom of speech and freedom of thought and democracy. If we start emulating China, we will become China. Our institutions are supposed to be robust enough to handle local and foreign propaganda and if they are not, then censorship is certainly not a solution that would be compatible with the liberal democratic values that we are supposed to hold.
It's ridiculous to let Chinese apps and websites operate in the West when China blocks so many Western sites and apps: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_websites_blocked_in_...
They make a superior dancing video app, so then engineers in silicon valley can go work on something else instead
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_advantage
Resources are reallocated elsewhere
Most of those sites are not in China not because China says that they cannot operate there but rather because China say they would have to obey the same rules Chines companies do. That generally involves things like storing data on Chinese citizens only on servers in China, censoring things the government wants censored, and giving the government easy access to information including identifying information to unmask anonymous posters.
I think it's a dangerous road to go down, the US is already extremely inwards facing and suffers from not knowing much about the outside world. I've had hundreds of US Citizens talk to me face to face who don't know what language we speak in Australia, don't know we use different money, not know the seasons are backwards, not know it's a 15 hour flight, not know we don't have a president, etc. etc. (this list is endless). US Citizens are not very well educated about how things work in other countries, clearly to their own detriment.
Just yesterday I was talking to a friend in the US saying my friend has 18 months fully paid maternity leave and he almost fell over. His wife got 10 weeks. Many countries do things better than the US, and it's dangerous to limit US Citizens learning about that, else they will have no notion things can be (and are) better elsewhere, and should be improved.
Nothing is being censored. TikTok.com will still work. This bill limits TikTok’s distribution, not existence nor even access to Americans.
Wait for it.
Those campaigns mostly took part on platforms owned and operated by US companies.
Emulating the policies of a country 'we' think 'is bad' isn't great policy.
>> undermine Americans' faith in our democratic institutions
It seems like Americans did a pretty good job of this themselves at the last election cycle. A highly politicised Supreme Court, a violent attack on the Capitol, a lot of people who don't accept or believe the election result. How much worse can TikTok make things?
The paradox of tolerance.
>> A highly politicised Supreme Court, a violent attack on the Capitol, a lot of people who don't accept or believe the election result.
2 out of 3 of these were precipitated by foreign influence campaigns on social media actively undermining Americans' trust in our political institutions, so yeah, prohibiting foreign-owned social media networks in advance of the upcoming election is definitely a step in the right direction.
Why is nothing being done about Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Truth Social, etc. etc? There are more users on Facebook alone.