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The issue is not protection of consumers, worthy as that is as a goal. No one ever said it was. I'd like to see that achieved, too. But your "20+ domestic companies" are not owned by enemy countries.

The issue is surveillance by a hostile nation. It's not a "stupid election year stunt," since we have elections every other year, and that rule would preclude any effort to do anything ever.

> The issue is surveillance by a hostile nation

Which even without Tiktok, can be straightforwardly done by China (and every other foreign power) paying the domestic surveillance companies for access and influence in straightforward business relationships. And if that gets clamped down on in another decade, then by paying more for not so straightforward business relationships.

This simply does not appear to be happening.

China would have to pay Meta and Google a LOT of money to get the same kind of info it gets from TikTok directly. And Meta and Google would report those payments in some way.

Could you expand on specifically what you think is happening? Cynicism is easy but it is no substitute for analysis. Disliking domestic surveillance does not make for a foreign nation automatically getting the info.

That kind of assumes Oracle is lying about the data they host and control for the US instance of TikTok, or that Oracle is unable to secure said data.

A few things are curious to me about all of this, which leads me to believe it’s political posturing.

The EU has a similar arrangement to the US in that they have an “auditor partner” and host the entirety of the EU infrastructure and services within the EU. The EU is not taking severe business actions in the shadow of undisclosed national security grounds.

There’s frequent statements about “massive data collection”. What data? I can only find IP addresses and volunteered contact information being collected. TikTok doesn’t have access to device location data, so IP addresses are the closest there is to geo location. TikTok has said they scrub that when stored - easy to verify.

TikTok has given their auditor (at least in the US) access to the recommendation engine algos. I assume that access comes with some ability to confirm what they audit is what’s actually in use, but haven’t seen reporting that confirms it.

And finally I don’t understand why so many politicians, including all presidential candidates and a not insignificant number of congressional members use TikTok.

Just some of the reasons I think this is more special interest/politically motivated rather than actual national security issues that would be any different than other socials.

> There’s frequent statements about “massive data collection”. What data?

That is a good question. Answer: among other data, the very data of the platform itself. Everything nearly every young person has said in a message on the platform, public or private. Everything they view, and how they view it. Same with interactions. Easily enough to build a complete psychographic profile ("who in this list is most vulnerable to coercion?") and a convincing AI clone if one were so inclined.

And that's if the mere content viewed or posted or interacted with, wasn't itself enough for blackmail. Which it often is. It could be something as simple as coercing a summer intern to visit a website on a vulnerable computer, if they want to prevent those DMs to Alice or Bob from being leaked. Oops, now all those trade secrets, aren't.

> I don’t understand why so many politicians, including all presidential candidates and a not insignificant number of congressional members use TikTok.

Most of them, I assume, aren't reaching out to their mistresses or paramours over tiktok. Location data collected by the app obviously is still an issue there.

It's not great to think about, and it's not a justification for actions about which the blackmail revolves, but that's how some intelligence ops have historically happened.

> That kind of assumes Oracle is lying about the data

No actually. Tiktok at one point already admitted that they spied on journalists.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/dec/22/tiktok-by...

This is something that Tiktok has already done.

This is the argument that Facebook/Google aren't actually selling your information.

I think "selling your information" is a good high level description that conveys the essence of what is going on - your information is being used by whomever will pay to use it. But yes, digging into the details it's more like F/G are trusted third parties who keep comprehensive surveillance records on you, and sell services based on exploiting those records, with an incentive to not leak the whole trove because it's their competitive advantage.

The argument for this topic then becomes if F/G are found to be providing services to foreign governments that undermine national security, domestic laws can then be made to stop this behavior. But this assumes that the way those services can be abused will be blatant, the foreign powers using those services will be easy to spot, and also that foreign governments won't be able to exfiltrate significant parts of the databases through their use of the services (what Cambridge Analytica did).

Focusing on F/G also skips the entire ecosystem of smaller players that don't have the scale, scope, or product to be acting as trusted third parties, but instead do just sell the raw records themselves - to F/G, and also to any startup that comes along with funding and an acceptable narrative. Like the carriers and intermediaries selling phone tower data. And that whole cottage industry of apps and frameworks that collect data. And ANPR and other pure infrastructure providers. And the traditional surveillance industry ("credit bureaus").

The essential commonality in both of those is that while it feels good to address the most glaring high-level problems, as long as the underlying incentives remain it just becomes a game of wack-a-mole. And wack-a-mole isn't enough to stop determined foreign actors.

And, while this certainly won't happen unless things seriously escalate, the US Government could absolutely pull whatever records they want, whenever they want, and if need be charge the US companies and its members with appropriate crimes.

You cannot do that to a foreign government. I'm not naive enough to think that these corps aren't spying on people or that they're not selling that data to foreign, even hostile actors, but there's simply a different level of consequence.

If you replace China with Russia you can quickly see how fucking absurd this is. Yes NO ONE should be able to do this kind of shit, but it's absolutely another tier of fucked when you don't even have the veil of government as a threat to make people think twice.

> Which even without Tiktok, can be straightforwardly done by China (and every other foreign power) paying the domestic surveillance companies for access and influence

I think your definition of surveillance is too broad. If any data broker can pay Facebook to get my data, then it's effectively public data and therefore cannot really be a national security concern. Alternatively, if TikTok hoards all their user data to use against a presidential candidate in 20-30 years, that is a security concern. It's also a concern that China can, at any time, change the algorithm to promote their own talking points. Second hand data and access is simply a much different ball game compared to direct platform control

A graph of people, who they know, their movements, lifestyles, and political beliefs is mostly certainly a national security concern, regardless of whether it's widely known.

Addressing "change the algorithm to promote their own talking points" is what I meant by "maintain competition by requiring open interoperability". Bundling content publishing/hosting services together with client presentation software (including feed ranking editorialization) is anticompetitive and should be prohibited by requiring published APIs for all interaction between the two products. Then users could use competitive clients to access TikTok content (and Facebook content, etc), rather than having to suffer whatever manipulation has been deemed legally acceptable.

Nobody in government leadership and military command is concerned about authoritarianism and civilian surveillance: These are passionate ethics notions that don't have pragmatic importance. What they care about is giving a major de facto enemy nation (who it's also jointly preparing a conventional and nuclear war against) substantial media production capabilities and backdoor staging areas within its own borders. It's tantamount to granting Germany broadcasting control over most domestic US airwaves prior to 1941. Wars may be decided by the beliefs of the citizens who doomscroll TikTok.

A single foreign company with leadership mandated to have CCP government control.

That was implied, and I don't see how spelling it out changes anything. The nominally domestic corporations aren't exactly sitting around fretting about how to preserve freedom.

> Now that a single foreign company has gained the level of breakout popularity that had already been achieved by 20+ domestic companies, it's time for pearl clutching galore.

Well seeing as this other country is likely to be at war with either us or our allies soon, yes that is a pretty big deal.

If a country that we are likely to be at war with has significant influencer over our population, that is indeed a big deal.

> So I guess the lawmakers' concerns still aren't really about protecting Americans,

Of course it is about protecting Americans. It is about protecting Americans and our allies from the effects of an upcoming war between super powers.

That is very much a reasonable concern.

> We the People are set to lose.

No we don't. If an enemy country is less effectively able to wage war against us or our allies, that would be a win for our country. Us and our allies winning wars is better than us losing them.

> If a country that we are likely to be at war with has significant influencer over our population, that is indeed a big deal.

So, how will the war begin? Who will begin it? How long has the US or its allies been planning to start this war?

> So, how will the war begin? Who will begin it?

China will start it when they invade our ally Taiwan.

It would also, almost certainly involve a pre-emptive strike from china onto american forces. This would be because China knows that the only way to have even a chance of success is to strike first against the USA.

Maybe a politician will be elected in Taiwan that China really doesn't like. Maybe the decades long, existing trends will continue towards the Taiwanese people no longer thinking themselves as having any sort of chinese identity. Or maybe Xi will simply try to distract the population from problems at home with a foolish hopeless war. There are a lot of possibilities!

> How long has the US or its allies been planning

They aren't planning on starting a war. If China doesn't invade Taiwan, there will be no war.

But yes, the USA would absolutely defend Taiwan from an invasion, and already gives Taiwan weapons to do so.

I hope that some of the politicians in china will eventually learn how foolish such an invasion will be. Or, perhaps, China will simply saber rattle and do nothing like it has been sabre rattling for decades.

China has enough problems as it is, but there is still a chance that they will go off the deep end and invade our allies.

If that happens though, the USA will absolutely defend against such an invasion though.