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Comment by Aloha | Hacker News Reader

While I'm not always thrilled that about the amount of monitoring United States Government does, as a United States Citizen, my government is at least marginally accountable to me - if enough of us are bothered by this policy, we can choose to elect representatives who will change it.

I can't say that about China, certainly not to me as a United States Citizen, and not even really to Chinese Citizens either - which is why it's another thing entirely when a foreign government is doing this level of monitoring on United States Soil.

China is welcome to monitor its own citizens on its own soil to the extent it desires - and monitor communications in and out of China - they're however not welcome to do that level of monitoring on United States Soil on anyone who resides here - at least not without the explicit consent of the United States Government.

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> While I'm not always thrilled that about the amount of monitoring United States Government does, as a United States Citizen, my government is at least marginally accountable to me - if enough of us are bothered by this policy, we can choose to elect representatives who will change it.

On the other hand it's our own ostensibly accountable government that we have to worry about violating our freedoms, abusing and misinterpreting this data, targeting innocent people, etc. If China has this kind of data they still have no power to throw me in prison (provided that I stay out of China) and very little impact on my day to day life. I'm still not happy about them collecting my data, but I have much less to fear from it.

> my government is at least marginally accountable to me - if enough of us are bothered by this policy, we can choose to elect representatives who will change it

Except https://www.politico.com/news/2024/03/11/china-is-using-tikt...

Not sure why you're discounting the potential for foreign influence campaigns from reducing the accountability your government has to you.

> and very little impact on my day to day life

It doesn't until it does at which point it would be too late & you're dealing with damage instead of preventing harm.

> Not sure why you're discounting the potential for foreign influence campaigns from reducing the accountability your government has to you.

I don't discount that potential. I'm certain it exists. I'm also certain that it exists on youtube and facebook and twitter and reddit and will continue to influence US politics long into the future. Yet the US government has never once spoken about banning facebook and youtube or any other platform doing exactly the same things as TikTok, they're focused only the threat of the one Chinese platform while allowing China, Russia and anyone else to influence Americans though US owned platforms. They're even fine with letting China influence Americans using TikTok as long as TikTok is owned by a US company.

I'm just not buying the argument that TikTok represents a threat to our democracy any greater than the threat posed by youtube or twitter. I don't see how taking away our freedom to access/use a Chinese platform that isn't violating any US law and isn't doing anything different than similar US platforms are doing is really helping to protect us here. Congress telling Americans what software we can have installed on our own devices, and preventing us from accessing platforms in other countries seems much more likely to lead us down a slippery slope than one Chinese owned social media platform being allowed to do what all the US owned platforms are doing.

You'd probably change your tune if you actually saw all the propaganda being pushed on Douyin and other Chinese social media.

I might if we saw that same propaganda being pushed on US users of TikTok but since we haven't... In fact, I suspect that the minute TikTok started feeding US users Chinese propaganda instead of whatever moronic thing is popular there currently US users would stop using the app and get the mind-numbing bite sized entertainment they crave on other social media platforms.

I don't think you've been paying attention then. It's already happening.

-For example, try saying something critical about China or something in defense of Taiwan. If the post gains traction, your account will get banned.

-Observe the amplification of r/latestatecapitalism type of content. https://www.businessinsider.com/capitalism-tiktok-america-pr...

-Whitewashing of life in China and China's accomplishments. https://apnews.com/article/china-tiktok-facebook-influencers...

I often see people online extol the virtues of China's progress, it's technological advancement, it's focus on the climate and equality for people, etc. I say this as someone who has lived in China, and I even like China, but people buy into the bullshit. China isn't some utopia. There are many good things about it, but there are a multitude of odious aspects that get glossed over.

This is about sowing dissent and creating doubt in our values.

I don't think you have any business making so many comments in this thread when you have no idea what is going on.

> I'm just not buying the argument that TikTok represents a threat to our democracy any greater than the threat posed by youtube or twitter.

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMMbYJYmU/

I looooove TikTok, but if I was running a regime, taking it down would be Job #1.

Ok, but if you agree it’s a problem and “why aren’t we also banning or more carefully regulating other social platforms”, I don’t disagree with you. Let’s. There’s broadly enough accepted truism that they do probably do pose a threat (not just to democracy, but in terms of harms).

But a foreign one that’s directly controlled by an adversary is certainly one we can tackle immediately and it’s easier to muster the political will. They don’t need to be connected. Of course it’s hard to trust the government when they have a history of lying, but there’s every reason to believe the threat they’ve been communicating out as real in the wake of the attacks the Russians launched on us in 2016 and given it’s an election year. It’s like all those people who didn’t trust when Biden said Putin was gearing to attack Ukraine imminently.

On the other hand, there is reason to be skeptical of that claim since the tiktok ban won’t happen until well after the 2020 election. So maybe it is the US trying to kill a major tech adversary that’s managed to dethrone our own oligopoly in the space. But that’s the starting point of the argument - is it really going to be used by the Chinese governments for election meddling or is it protectionism to hide the rot within the US regulatory framework that’s simply entrenched interests.

> Not sure why you're discounting the potential for foreign influence campaigns from reducing the accountability your government has to you.

People often bring up this point, and yet if China poured every resource they had available into spreading chaos and disinformation, it would not touch what domestically-sourced influence campaigns are currently achieving.

You might say that, nonetheless, it's a step in the right direction. But when disinformation and manipulation is as ubiquitous as it is now, the real effect of this law will simply be to protect informal alliances between legislators, media companies, and intelligence agencies. There's a handful of things they all agree on (which may not be in your best interest), and this law helps make sure conversations about those things never gain traction.

China collecting data is not the reason it was banned, and is largely a diversion meant to derail conversation about tiktok. The threat of tiktok is that the Chinese government has direct control over what content it's users consume.

American social media is motivated by money. Chinese social media is motivated by state power.

> The threat of tiktok is that the Chinese government has direct control over what content it's users consume.

The same can be said of every single website hosted in China, but they aren't (yet) banning all Chinese websites or all content hosted in any other countries. Why not?

The vast majority of the content US citizens view on TikTok was created by other US citizens and that content is no different than the content available on youtube or any other social media platform. Certainly China can influence what types of content people see (and they've done a lot of messed up stuff in the past like filtering out "ugly, poor, and disabled" people's videos) but it isn't as if they can flip a switch and start only showing children dancing to "The East Is Red" and expect to keep their popularity. There seems to be no evidence that TikTok is any more manipulative or dangerous than any other social media platform. Youtube is just as happy to push extremist content to increase engagement but nobody is talking about banning them.

> The same can be said of every single website hosted in China, but they aren't (yet) banning all Chinese websites or all content hosted in any other countries. Why not?

I imagine the US audience for tiktok is larger than all chinese websites combined.

I'm not very comforted by the idea that our government won't censor content from other countries as long as we aren't looking at it. If the content is legal, it should be allowed.

I agree completely but there's so many negatives in your sentence it took me a while to parse. "I am concerned about any censorship, regardless of how popular the content is"

Th difference is that none of those platforms have an interest in the toppling of western powers.

And yet every one of those platforms allows China, Russia, or any others who do want to topple western powers abuse them. They know their algorithms push the most extremist divisive content it can find to drive views/engagement and they know full well that while they're stuffing their pockets with cash they're also threatening our mental health, our safety, and our democracy. US owned social media platforms might not be dead set on ending America, but they'll happily help that along if it'll increase next quarter profits and they don't have to pay more humans to moderate or fact check.

I think you're right about it being a diversion, but I think it's because the American government specifically does not want to make this into a free speech issue because it would directly undermine American businesses that do exactly the same thing and pose almost exactly the same risk of being weaponised by foreign powers (... as we know they have been already) against American citizens.

If it turns out that maybe "good speech" simply can't counter "bad speech" when the latter is applied with the resources of nation states behind it, that doesn't feel like an argument the government can win (because of 1A).

Ironically, the data collection angle is still critically important for US businesses and limiting the access and use of citizen data would be great for everyone, but it seems very clear that is not on the table for the same reasons.

I think the issue is that China can use TikTok to run publicity campaigns to sway the voters into supporting policies or political candidates they like. They can do it more effectively with executives residing in China.

The US government won’t be able to do the same thing with the two party systems and with more checks and balances.

Well in the US the gov doesnt do it themselves directly but instead pays russians to do it for them. I guess the chineese werent willing?

The US government never did that.

Russian did use facebook and other social media to influence voters. It was rather effective.

But it is totally different from Chinese government compelling tiktok using full access of its internal data to do their bidding in secret. The effectiveness will likely be much higher.

They wouldn't run publicity campaigns from Beijing; they'd spotlight domestic voices using their 1A rights who say the same thing.

The problem with the TikTok ban is that it is now, as a US citizen, it is exceptionally more difficult to consume content that is not filtered by US hegemony. The Israel/Palestine conflict was an eye opener because on every other platform, pro-palestine content is actively suppressed.

It's also strange that Americans are uniquely afforded this privilege and many consider it a natural right, but don't consider that their relationship with TikTok is same relationship the rest of world has with Meta. French citizens, despite the GDPR, have no recourse for accountability when it comes the US government.

Totally agree and that's why X and TikTok are so precious when the US gov's propaganda is omnipresent on all other social networks (not even talking about traditional media...)

The failure of anti-israel suppression of speech on Tiktok is the main driver for this bill. Yet, everyone keeps saying it is a China problem. it was bundled with a war spending bill. That says loads about the importance and burial of information this carries.

1000x this, I'm not sure why more people do not see that when it's pretty obvious. People that actually use TikTok know what I mean, Israel narration lost and videos from Palestine reporting what's going on were super popular. Now there are pro Palestinian protests at campuses around US against US Israel policy and US government do not like that. TikTok was IMO the main driver of showing what's going in Gaza.

I bet the uni protests were the catalyst behind the passage of the bill

I can't tell if this is serious or not. Do Americans know there are sources of information other than social media apps?

Just watch Al Jazeera on Youtube if you want the Palestinian side.

I don’t think the problem is individual choose, but rather public exposure. Not everyone watches Al-Jazeera or Democracy Now! but the people that do want to share what they learned, and do so on social media where the content gets extra public exposure. With the banning of TikTok, avenues for expanding pro-palestinian content will diminish, even though individual choose remains (mostly) the same.

I don't really get this point; I see pro-Palestinian stuff on other networks CONSTANTLY. I also see information that is incredibly incorrect about Palestine on Tiktok (and others) all the time, like Hamas wasn't targeting civilians etc (obvious lie.) I also see pro-Israel stuff that is incorrect all the time across Tiktok, etc. It's the nature of the beast.

I think people that have this view are pretty new to the internet in general. It's no surprise it's a popular belief with Gen-Z, thinking somehow their "filter bubble" is unique in any way or that they have escaped the filter bubble and stumbled upon "the truth." Complete nonsense. You're hooked into whatever algorithm makes you engage more, that's the whole point of this. To make money from you. You think you're special because you got on a pro-Palestine feed on Tiktok? Hilariously naive.

I don't use TikTok, so I'm not particularly worried about the Chinese government using it to spy on me. What I am worried about is the Chinese government using TikTok to launch influence and misinformation campaigns against US citizens.

Do you feel it’s possible to get information that isn’t filtered or influenced by the US government?

Aka how confident are you that the information you are getting today is honest, accurate and not influenced in any way? That you get the full picture, the good and the bad?

While I do feel like my personal views are more aligned with the US / west. I’m not convinced im getting balanced information. Its a little naive to suggest that only our enemies are doing propaganda.

Disinformation campaigns by my elected representatives are not the same thing as disinformation campaigns by top adversarial governments. If you can't see that, you're not fixable.

> Chinese government using TikTok to launch influence and misinformation campaigns

That is not what anyone is concerned about. The US tried to get Tiktok to suppress pro-palestine information against israel. Tiktok effectively said they are not doing any manipulation of promoted info, even in favor of israel.

congress resurrected a ban for it. The recent uni protests helped in doing that.

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