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Comment by MaxHoppersGhost | Hacker News Reader

China can and already has used tiktok to influence the U.S. population. Just because the US spies a bunch doesn’t mean we shouldn’t protect our best interests.

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As if US apps don't influence the population of other nations. Should every US company be required to divest in every other nation where they have users?

Came here to say this. The US owns Apple and Google, both of which are tremendously more influential than TikTok could ever hope to be. Turnabout is fair play.

Google is banned in China and China is already taking steps to limit use of Apple hardware

Google left China because they didn't want to play by China's rules. Whatever their motivations, I'm glad google stood up to them, but we're not even accusing China of refusing to follow any particular US law. I don't think the US getting our own version of the Great Firewall of China is a good thing.

And TikTok is free to leave if they don't want to play by our rules that companies with large numbers of American users can't be substantially owned or controlled by a foreign adversary and still do business with US companies.

Also, who said we're going to firewall them?

see, this is what is great about soft power. If you use it right who is not straight up an enemy will probably give you a lot of leeway as long as mutually beneficial. China is... not doing that.

The Tik Tok ban is years late and I don't know why any US citizen could not understand why it's the right thing to do, unless on the payroll of the Chinese government.

Not on the payroll of the Chinese government here, and I still think it's terrible for congress to tell us what software we're allowed to run on our own devices or to prevent us from accessing media from other countries.

If TikTok were breaking US laws and refused to comply that'd be one thing, but that's not the case. They say their just worried about "influence" which is beyond hypocritical and not really grounds for censorship. Should they ban websites hosted in other countries next?

Let's say the CCP were to establish hegemony in the future and even managed to create a bloc of pro-China politicians in US congress. Do you think these notions of free speech will matter then? We've already seen implicit pressure to censor Taiwan or Hong Kong.

Like it or not, your freedom to access whatever software you wish is only really possible because you have a state that is capable of resisting foreign pressure to allow you to do so. This move is very much part of that removing leverage from an explicitly illiberal group. Paradox of Intolerance and so forth. You can pridefully choose to reject that, but I don't think your freedoms will last very long then.

> Let's say the CCP were to establish hegemony in the future and even managed to create a bloc of pro-China politicians in US congress. Do you think these notions of free speech will matter then?

I don't think that having access to websites and media in China, alongside all the websites and media from everywhere else on Earth, will result in us electing congressmen who are secretly working for China. There is zero evidence that TikTok is making that happen. There's no evil on TikTok that isn't on facebook and youtube. What good is it for us to voluntarily give up our freedoms in order to keep the China boogeyman from taking them from us?

There's no evil on TikTok that isn't on facebook and youtube.

Apple has LGBT+ and BLM wallpapers on the phone by default. TikTok only reaches everyone with TikTok installed (and even then, only those that actually uses the app). Apple reaches everyone with an iPhone with its propaganda.

they probably should and they already have. Everyone defends their interest to the extent they can, the only difference is the USA has more leverage.

Please cite a well written study to back up your claim that is not an opinion piece or some state sanctioned message, from any country.

I'm writing one right now, just waiting on the CCP to get back to me with their internal communications and commit history at tiktok which will prove this.

You contradict yourself by asserting "arbitrary action X, which will prove this" implying the party is guilty by mere speculation about unknowns.

I never implied the party is guilty, although my prediction is that they are.

My point is that it's impossible to prove what the commenter was asking for.

"which will prove this" is not a prediction, it's an assertion of absolute truth.

That's a bit of a ridiculous standard. Mostly because I don't think China is liable to hand out the records they've been gathering to cross check findings from other study.

You don't need records conduct research if a specific message is being spread on TikTok against chance, to at least back up an unsubstantiated theory — even if not practical in the court of law.

For anyone who uses TikTok regularly, it's evident there frequently political content that outright contradict's China's positions, spreading unfettered through the platform.

Even if there is zero evidence supporting an influence campaign on the platform, the ease of collecting user data or spying on users is something I would expect an active adversary to do. Like it or not, China and America are at odds with each other, and it's almost silly to assume that China would not be exploiting a successful tool for their own means.

They sent a push notification to every American user asking them to ask their congressman to not ban tiktok.

That's hardly the subtle influence that we're all supposed to be afraid of. If that's the only example you cas come up with... that's not a strong case.

That’s overt influence showing they aren’t afraid to use their muscle. Of course they’re willing to use more subtle messages.

The same govt that screwed the entire world with Covid-19 will use tiktok for nefarious purposes. This isn’t a stretch.

Does this count?

https://www.amazon.com/Unrestricted-Warfare-Chinese-Wang-Xia...

How does someone do data collection on how the Chinese government weaponizes a social media platform? That would almost certainly involve Tailored Access Operations (or whatever they are calling offensive cyber warfare these days), not only of questionable legality but definitely compromising the sort of Tactics/Techniques/Procedures you REALLY don't want made public.

You misread OP. With all spies they should have found some evidence of CCP trying to influence.

They may well have done. It seems a lot of lawmakers moved toward the opinion of banning tiktok after receiving classified intelligence briefings.

As a non-american (Canadian) citizen, I'm genuinely curious why this evidence can't be made public? Wouldn't that be a far better way to end this debate and un-fracture opinions?

I'm Canadian too, but my guess would be that sharing what they know publicly would give away too much about how they learned it, and would give adversaries a better chance of hiding more in the future.

They use Meta systems to do the same thing? What is special about Tiktok?

They control what is boosted on tiktok

Do you have any evidence of that?

https://www.forbes.com/sites/emilybaker-white/2023/01/20/tik...

This is a common practice on social media sites and is not evidence for your claim.

We should block the behavior, not target specific companies or groups because we don't like them. If influencing our elections is bad (and I agree it is) then we should ban corporations from influencing our elections. If we think collecting and aggregating a bunch of data on people is bad we should ban that, rather than picking a single company to ban from doing it while allowing a bunch of others too.

I actually truly believe we should do this- a GDPR style bill for the US that protects people's right to privacy and limits corporations ability to influence our governments. The fact that we know how easy it is for companies to do this but are just upset that a specific company is doing it tells me we're approaching this in the wrong way.

How could we ensure that ByteDance follows such a law? It’s unlikely they would let us perform the necessary level of auditing.

I’m not against such a privacy law but I think it’s orthogonal to the TikTok issue.

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