It's been said elsewhere in here but I'm going to parrot because this caught me by surprise and this is on the level of importance of the SOPA [1] craziness back in 2012.
The TikTok ban has very little do with TikTok. It's yet another Patriot Act (now, the Restrict Act [2]) style back door to slip in some seriously heinous legislation that could find you fined to the tune of millions, or worse, thrown in jail for 20 years.
> A person who willfully commits, willfully attempts to commit, or willfully conspires to commit, or aids or abets in the commission of an unlawful act described in subsection (a) shall, upon conviction, be fined not more than $1,000,000, or if a natural person, may be imprisoned for not more than 20 years, or both.
I do view TikTok as a covert military campaign (ideological subversion) and do think it should be limited in the West, however, not via this bill.
> The TikTok ban has very little do with TikTok. It's yet another Patriot Act (now, the Restrict Act [2]) style back door to slip in some seriously heinous legislation that could find you fined to the tune of millions, or worse, thrown in jail for 20 years.
Yep. They couldnt put the backdoors through the 'we are fighting pedophilia' excuse. Now they are using Tiktok...
> I do view TikTok as a covert military campaign (ideological subversion) and do think it should be limited in the West, however, not via this bill.
I'd like you to expand on the idea that is it is "a covert military campaign (ideological subversion)". It's common talking point, but I literally do not understand it. Sure there are some Chinese based creators that are spreading lies like how everything is super cool in Xinjiang with Uyghurs, but I can go on Twitter and find some American tankie saying that as well. The *VAST* majority of stuff on my FYP is cosplayers, dancing girls, dumb and intentionally awkward jokes, and skateboarders. Are Warhammer 40k and 3d printed Star Wars droids a CCP plot on par with the CIA and modern art[0][1]? To what end? To crash our economy by trying to get us to impress skateboarding leggy Chinese girls with the size of our 7-foot Imperator Titans[2]? Chinese girls that would no doubt a face swapped APT-2 officer, ala Azusagakuyuki[3][4]?
I'm not trying to be dismissive, but it does seem far fetched. So what's the best argument?
Interesting that you've been downvoted enough to get the light text coloring, but the only reply to you so far is the parent commenter's concern about "gender ideology and feminism".
I'll get downvoted for it, but the lot of it is around gender ideology and feminism. It's also around the general infantilisation of younger populations in the West (i.e., promotion of victimhood as a virtue).
As for a why: look at the parallel of how the Chinese raise their youth, specifically in relation to combat and military service [1]. If your biggest adversary is the United States/its Western allies and you intend to perform a military strike down the road, it's in your best interest to weaken their fighting population physically and mentally to an extent where they're either non-existent or easily destroyed.
That military strike could either be Taiwan, or, on the continental United States in conjunction with other BRICS countries (namely, Russia and now, Iran and Saudi Arabia).
I get that the idea is unsavory and triggering (just me having to say that is evidence that the campaign was/is successful), but it's a reality that people need to be aware of in the West. Western hegemony is coming to an end and the geopolitical vultures are taking flight.
So when would you say that China started this operation? 10/15 years ago when Tumblr was arguably at its cultural peak? Maybe when Obama was elected? Or 25/30 years ago when MTV was one of the first national TV stations broadcasting LGBTQ-friendly content several hours a day? Or maybe in the 70s/80s when the message began spreading across the "liberal elite" institutions?
Because the things you talk about in your first sentence saw their rise many years ago, and you are only seeing people in relative positions of power now who were raised or grew their careers in places surrounded by these ideas. And they've been raising kids along the way. It stands to reason their kids might be a little more radical.
Quite the long game China is playing!
Can you describe how TikTok's algorithm works? Because there's plenty of people on TikTok who only see street fights, or only rich person fridge organization, or military life "pov"s. Or Minecraft gameplay. And so on. TikTok is known for providing hyper-local content too, so if you're in say, rural Mississippi, you're less likely to see the feminism and gender ideology videos.
The fact is, the modern Western mind is built entirely with advertising, propaganda, and mass-media manipulation. I'm sure foreign adversaries are attempting to use these mechanisms to weaken us too, but even if they somehow weren't, domestic market forces are sufficient to turn our brains to mush.
You think you're a rebellious independent-minded feminist sticking it to the patriarchy (or [insert identity here])? Yeah maybe, but you're also being tricked into spending money on stupid unhealthy shit by a real-life cartoon villain. [0]
They are afraid of China getting unchecked access to the data and being able to manipulate the recommendation algorithm to subtle manipulate to public opinion about some topics.
> apply some oversight to this process...
They don't care about that, they also get the data they need from other companies they have much more influence one. Like phone companies, Facebook, Instagram, Google, Twitter, etc. etc.
We aren't going to go to war vs the owners of Facebook any time soon. But maybe for the owners of TikTok.
China's Navy is already more numerous than the USA's Navy, and they include advanced stealth destroyers and probably Hypersonic Missiles.
I don't want to be a racist asshole like some others online. But there is a geopolitical reality coming towards us and we need to start preparing for it. Nothing against the Chinese people or their culture or whatever, but their leaders have some goals that conflict with the USAs goals, and it could turn hot over the next 10 years.
> We aren't going to go to war vs the owners of Facebook any time soon
Speak for yourself! From my perspective, entrenched business interests have very much been at war with the people of this country for a long time.
A growing military competitor notwithstanding, the real issue we're facing here is that we've based our society around this fiction that wealth makes right - under an assumption that the wealthy will compete amongst themselves to grow their own wealth in a straightforward (short term) manner. This framework is utterly unprepared for dealing with large (extremely wealthy) actors that push in more structured and less immediately profitable directions, with the goal of reaping dividends decades in the future.
I recognize that we use the word "war" with much hyperbole here in the USA.
But when I'm using "War with China", I'm talking about true war, like the kind going on in Ukraine. I'm talking about vicious weapons designed to kill hundreds, or thousands, in the blink of an eye, and at risk of escalation into Nuclear Armageddon.
In this context, I am not taking the word "war" with any amount of whimsy or hyperbole. This isn't a "class war", or "war on poverty" or "war on drugs". What we're unfortunately preparing for is a true war.
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With any luck, China will back down and keep the tenuous peace and status quo.
I'm talking about Taiwan. If China attacks Taiwan, it will be as obvious as Russia attacking Ukraine.
And the USA should support Taiwan. Not only because we get AMD, Apple, NVidia, Qualcomm, automobile chips, and F35 RADAR chips from that island... But also because Taiwan is our ally from WW2 days and we have a long history of friendship with them.
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Let me be clear, once again. Taiwan manufactures Xilinx FPGAs that are in direct support to the F35 project.
There is a geopolitical reality here that cannot be ignored.
The United States recognizes the People's Republic of China as the sole legal government of China and acknowledges the Chinese position that Taiwan is part of China. This is known as the "One China policy".
The United States needs China for industrial and consumer goods. Our economy is brittle and will quickly break without them. This is the logical result of US policy. China clamping down on Taiwan from the official US position is effectively China more tightly controlling thwir existing territory.
Not even close to what happened in Russia vs. Ukraine situation.
The Kuomintang were our allies in WW2, and were forced to retreat to Taiwan in 1949.
When the famous WW2 Pilot Doolittle did his famous raid on Japan and crash-landed in China, it was the Kuomintang who saved those pilots and returned them safely to the USA, despite the Japanese atrocities that were occurring. (Well, Imperialist Japan did capture some of those pilots... but the Kuomintang did what they could)
Communist China then took over most of China and forced Kuomintang to retreat to Taiwan by 1949. And we call those people "Taiwanese" today. Historically, they are the rightful owners of China, though they lost the civil war.
Today, we're strategically ambiguous to try to not piss off China about our different viewpoints of history. But we're quickly coming to the point where ambiguity no longer helps. We're likely heading for war unfortunately.
China has built hundreds of Naval ships and is beginning to overtly threaten Taiwan with flyovers.
We all see where this is going. We know Xi wants Taiwan. Selling weapons to Taiwan so that they can better defend themselves is the moral thing to do.
Its the same thing as how the Russians blame USA for "extending" the war in Ukraine. Erm, yeah. That's the point. When we see evil and decide to do something to stop it, it makes it harder for evildoers to do what they want to do. And I think its a good thing to make Taiwan harder to get taken over.
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All China has to do, to avoid the war... is to not start it. Its not like Taiwan is in any position to attack China right now or anytime in the foreseeable future.
> ... we see evil and decide to do something to stop it ...
Hilarious. Do you actually believe US foreign policy has anything to do with "good and evil," and if so, could you explain how this drove the decision to, oh I dunno, bomb Guatemala city? Or annex Hawaii? Or arm Saudi Arabia to the teeth? Or pick virtually any foreign intervention since WWII, really.
I point out that your moral posturing is pure bullshit, and you reply with more moral posturing about Evil, an accusation of "whataboutism," and demand a solution to "the Taiwan situation." Sorry, I'm not equipped to handle this.
I'm not entirely sure what Saudi Arabia, Hawaii, or Guatemala have to do with Taiwan.
I see that you're pissed off about these other world events, but I'm not sure what any of that has to do with the subject matter. As such, I conclude you're trying to do the Russian propaganda technique "whataboutism", where you detract from the primary discussion point by talking about unrelated subjects. The way I try to defeat this is by simply staying focused and avoid trying to be distracted by the obvious red herrings.
> Sorry, I'm not equipped to handle this.
Are you equipped to talk about Taiwan in any capability? Do you have any perspective worth sharing on that subject? I recognize that various people of the world have anti-American views, good or bad, worth sharing.
But with regards to this topic (TikTok ban), its clear that Taiwan and the military situation stands front and center.
> I conclude you're trying to do the Russian propaganda technique "whataboutism"
Please don't take HN threads further into political/national flamewar, and please follow the HN rule against calling names in arguments a little more broadly. The epithet "whataboutism" qualifies as the latter—it's a label that's used to silence argument rather than respond to it. If someone brings up an example that's not relevant, a counterargument should explain what the difference is that makes it irrelevant—not simply denounce it based on what side it's on.
I mean, I could use the term "non-sequitur" (ie: an argument that is ultimately irrelevant in the current discussion, designed to distract rather than inspire) but it feels like you're just following it up with the fallacy-fallacy.
At some point, describing the opponent's argument style in what I feel is going on is important. Its a meta label. If you think "whataboutism" is a poor term, then I'll substitute non-sequitur from here on out. But I don't think my discussion point changes.
It is a fallacy to distract from an argument by posting irrelevant stuff. If I make a challenge with whataboutism (or non-sequitur), the correct response is the same. The opponent should better describe why their words are relevant to the discussion. Or alternatively, change their argument's form so that it is relevant to the discussion.
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You're right that over use of fallacies / labels can lead to a fallacy, ie: the fallacy-fallacy. That is, someone using fallacies could be making a good point and still be contributing to the discussion. And its a mistake to focus on their poor form rather than their good points.
But the labeling of points / fallacies / and naming of those points is very useful at speeding up debates in my experience and in the typical case. It concisely describes my opinion and sets up a pattern of understanding. So I don't think its a bad thing. It very much depends on the situation.
That is to say: its only a "fallacy fallacy" if I'm ignoring the good points and killing the debate. I'm not sure if I've committed this sin in this case. The other poster seems to have simply stated "What about Hawaii?" without much elaboration on why or how Hawaii could be even relevant to Taiwan... or Tiktok.
I think you already made that core point in your first sentence. There wasn't any need to add further epithets, and when you stoop to 'you're trying to do the Russian propaganda technique "whataboutism"' that's definitely pouring unwanted fuel on an unwanted fire, as well as arguably a personal attack, or at least something that's pretty likely to land as such with the other person.
Can you please stop posting in the flamewar style to HN? You've been doing it a lot lately and we have to ban such accounts because we're trying to be a different kind of site than that, and would prefer not to burn to a crisp. Scorched earth isn't ineresting. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
Shooting down a spy balloon won't start a war. And similarly, sending a spy balloon over won't start a war either. Both sides (USA and China) are smarter than that.
The only thing that really has a chance to start a war is this Taiwan situation. I don't see any room for diplomacy anymore.
The USA's count of China's ships ignores the 224 close-to-shore coast guard ships.
China has 351 surface combat ships, against the USA's 294. Yes, our Navy is still superior by capabilities, but China continues to mass produce ships, including large cruisers and carriers. They are not a threat to take lightly anymore.
If we include the 224 coast guard ships, then China's fleet is well over 575 ships as of 2022. I'm talking only of the 351 combat ships that would likely play a role in a hypothetical Taiwan confrontation.
I mean, the US has 243 coast guard ships, if you want to be pedantic (ignoring the 1400+ boats less than 65' long).
But yes, China keeps producing ships. I have no idea what will happen in a Taiwan Straight conflict where we've escalated to open conventional war looks like. I imagine that the air-to-surface and surface-to-surface missiles will be the determining factor.
But there's also a major difference. The US has a blue-water navy that can project power globally - enough power that it's an open question if the largest country in the world with the second-highest GDP can stand up to it in their back yard. There's no symmetric threat to the US where the Chinese Navy can get close enough to the West Coast have a similar threat.
US Navy will have to expose itself to Chinese missiles and Chinese Air Force, and those small Missile Patrol Boats, to defend Taiwan.
China isn't thinking about attacking Hawaii or the West Coast. What China is trying to do in the near term is complete its takeover of ... well... what it believes to be part of China.
And because various F35 chips are made in Taiwan, its a threat we cannot afford to ignore. (Along with all of our video game consoles, GPUs, AI Tensor processors, and other strategic level computer systems)
Yes, the US Navy is unrivaled. But in a local, regional conflict... especially supported by the largest Airforce in the world (China has a lot of airplanes), and some of the largest ground-based missile forces in the world (China also has a lot of advanced missiles), the US Navy very well could lose the fight to defend Taiwan.
I'm pretty sure the US Navy will park on the far side of Taiwan and attack stuff outside line of sight. Missiles and air force attacks I can see. Those Patrol boats will be barely different than land-based missile launch platforms.
> supported by the largest Airforce in the world (China has a lot of airplanes)
The US Navy has more aircraft than the Chinese Air Force does. The US Air Force has like 4 times as many, and can stage a good chunk of them over the Straight as well.
South Korea and Japan combined have about as many planes as China, and I have no idea if they (or India) get involved.
But yeah, I have no idea what happens if it stays conventional, and I have no idea how likely it is that it stays conventional (and obviously WMDs mean no one knows what happens). Given the number of fast options (e.g. missiles) to sink ships, I imagine we'll know who will win the fight quickly, but it might take months to actually slog it out.
They don't really need to park themselves between mainland and China, they already have enough forces amassed on the Ryukyus, they don't even need to bother using aircraft carriers.
Projected Marine MLR deployment in Ryukyus and whatever JP is throwing to fortify is nowhere near "mass". It's not close to replacing sortie/fires output of carrier groups. Ryukyus is TW "alternative" in terms of peacetime PRC containment, i.e. stationing signit, dragging sosus infra, stationing some irbms, but it's just as much a deathtrap as TW proper during hot war. The argument for Ryukyus is that even if TW falls, US has comparable geographic access to 1st island chain containment, not that it's really significant/survivable forward stationing during war. Dissenting analysis (imo the more reasonable assessment) of Ryukyu posture is boils down to, marines need a reason to justify defense pie in IndoPac, but rationale not not great because island groups that close to PRC are unsuppliable death sentence once shooting starts.
The YJ-21 is 1500km, more than enough to strike Japan's mainland let alone the nearby Ryukyus. If the US Navy wishes to support Taiwan, we will be open to those missiles.
So? You don't think the USA has the same missiles in Japan and Korea ready to go as well? If China wants to launch missiles at Japan, what would stop the USA from launching similar missiles at China?
But they have the capability to launch missiles at a US Carrier Strike Group who has retreated towards Japan. That means that our Navy will be within Chinese missile range during Taiwanese defense operations.
We aren't going to support Taiwan from Japan or Korea. We're going to use our Supercarriers to sail closer and then support Taiwan in a more direct fashion. But that means our carriers have a high chance of being shot at, and possibly sunk, by these missiles. And we'll need to sail very far away (far in excess of Japan) before our CSG is safe from the Chinese missile range.
I absolutely expect our Carriers to be attacked, and possibly even sunk, in the upcoming fight.
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There's still a lot of ocean to hide in when our CSGs enter that missile range. It will be a matter of killing the Chinese sensors (ex: drones, spycraft, and avoiding satellites) which are looking for our carriers.
We're gonna need our Carriers to be closer so that there's a reasonable response time to scramble and defend Taiwan. If it takes 2-hours for our airplanes to launch from a Carrier and support Taiwan (because they're cowards and hiding in Japan), then our airplanes simply will be too late to help with the defense. I don't know how fast the Chinese can scramble and attack Taiwan, but they have gross advantages in terms of distance. Only a Carrier can even the odds, and that carrier needs to be physically close to Taiwan. That's just how the fight will go.
Yes they do. And so does the USA. The only question is how far China is willing to go to take Taiwan, and how far the USA is willing to counter them over the island. Technically speaking, the USA is already in the region, they placed a bunch of resources in the Ryukyus specifically as a deterrent to China invading Taiwan, and why they don't need to be in Taiwan proper for that deterrent to be effective.
The USA does not need carriers anywhere near Taiwan when China invades. They can handle everything from island airstrips. And we totally would support Taiwan from the Ryukyus, thats the whole reason we are there to begin with.
Yes and if european countries are afraid the US is leaning on facebook to manipulate their views, they should ban facebook!
But if some social media network starts in france, then even if it could manipulate users, france probably doesn't care because they can "control" it with force of law.
This is no different than wanting a domestic steel and fertilizer industry. You want powerful entities to be under your control.
Ok, so you think the government should police every app and if they are developed in a country they consider to be adversarial, then they should ban it? Do you at least see the potential for abuse here?
Don't put words in my mouth, I didn't say "every" app. There are lots of infrastructure you don't want to give away essentially. A flashlight app? Yeah that's probably fine. Gambling? Sure go ahead chinese companies and take people's money for your mobile game. What if splunk was a chinese company? For example, I think we should continue to discuss whether zoom is trustworthy, didn't they get caught routing (maybe accidentally) most stuff through china?
Facebook once purposely manipulated depressed kids by adjusting what was shown to them in their feed. They should have been burned down the second that happened, and no country should allow that nonsense, even if you trust the american legal system to work. In much the same way, we should not trust tiktok, as chinese companies are incredibly opaque, so we would have a much harder time finding red flags to key us in to any nefarious activity.
In the same way, we probably shouldn't let a secretive private company have a thumb on the scale of a significant amount of american life. If we only have the political capital to ban tiktok right now because "China bad" then oh well, sometimes doing the right thing for the wrong reason is okay, like when Trump pushed for transparency in medical pricing. I don't think a free market health system is a workable system, but that was still a beneficial step in our current system.
Others say all this talk is cover because the actual law being discussed is much more draconian and gross. I would not be in favor of that.
They can, as can everyone else, just in different quantities. But you have a very low opinion of people who aren't you in assuming that everyone but you is going to be brainwashed if you can't decide what they are and are not allowed to be exposed to.
> A warrant signed off by a judge is required to compel companies to comply with requests.
It’s…not. Administrative subpoenas (some of which have their own unique names, like “National Security Letters”) are a thing, and if legally valid compliance is mandatory. Sure, ultimately, if there is a disagreement about validity that can be taken to court, and a judge will be involved, but that’s not the same thing as a warrant.
The state of the law in the US is that information you share with a company no longer carries an expectation of privacy, so the government can get it without a warrant. This is called the "third-party doctrine."
Any areas where higher scrutiny is required have been specifically added by statute.
There's been some slight pushback recently against this state of affairs from the Supreme Court in the area of geolocation data, but the general rule still stands.
The federal government is the biggest spender on the planet. Sure, if they ask you for some data it wants and you refuse, they'll need to resort to legalistic methods of forcing you to get that data. Or they can dangle the prospect of their spending going elsewhere if you don't comply. Can you afford to turn down the largest economic entity on the planet?
This assumes that the government is sincere in its complaint that their concern is about user's data. I think that's cover for what they're really concerned about: user's beliefs.
TikTok is arguably the most powerful means to spread ideas, and people in that line of business do not appreciate outsiders on their turf.
The whole TikTok thing itself seems like a distraction from the contents of the bill they've drafted under the guise of only banning TikTok.
Democracy as it is is a giant magic trick, and TikTok is pulling back the curtains in it, so it must go.
I don’t know if it has been, and it would be extremely difficult to prove one way or the other.
But the potential is obvious. China already heavily manipulates content for domestic consumption, and foreign information in other contexts. Why would TikTok be an exception?
US television censors, program directors, editors “heavily censor” acceptable content. Before the internet TV was the goto black box of censored and cultivated information.
No official government body does not prevent unofficial collusion. People go to dinner, play golf, define how to scratch each others backs given the rules.
Americans are no less propagandized and experiencing information shaping. Prattling on about the authority of dead men’s political documents and philosophy is propaganda.
That is a solution, but there's nothing simple about it. Obviously there's an even much simpler solution than coming up with what would be a very very complex set of regulations and laws, that would have impact across all the industry, and that btw tech giants would love. The really simple solution could be done tomorrow, without the need of figuring out what "proper" is in this case.
Not that what you're saying shouldn't happen, but it's a different battle that needn't be intertwined with this one.
Technically I don't think the legislature or FTC can cherry pick losers. Though I suppose that's the reason for all the discussion around the implications of allowing TikTok to continue in light of trade imbalances and alleged cultural subterfuge.
Complex regulation like that is much harder to sell U.S. voters. A lot of Americans are libertarians or libertarian-leaning, so their first instinct is to reject regulation out of hand, unless it can be shown to be extremely necessary.
Regulation in general is a double-edged sword. While it may be great in the short term if your goal is to rein in the bad behaviour of large companies, in the long run it can act as a pretty effective moat for established companies, preventing startups from effectively being able to compete. A lot of people attribute Europe’s less competitive tech sector (vs the U.S.) to an abundance of complex regulations in the EU.
Americans are almost universally against corporate surveillance though. (Look at the percent that opt out on iOS).
We should pass a constitutional amendment guaranteeing right to privacy, and it should apply to both the US government, and to firms operating withing the US.
The proposed law specifies it's targeting China, Iran and Russia, as well as North Korea, Cuba and (the Moros regime of) Venezuela. It also has rules for adding or removing countries from that list going forward.
If you want a fair and simple solution that applies to all companies, how about this? If an American company isn't allowed to operate in a foreign country, then don't let companies in the same industry from that country operate here. So TikTok would be banned here since China bans Twitter, etc.
Massive fine(s) for repeat offences would be even better. The EU does it for GDPR and takes companies single digit percentage of worldwide annual revenue(s).
The majority of these US companies have already been fined like this. The same should happen to TikTok if they want to continue to follow the regulations in the US.
Friendly reminder that the TikTok ban is actually the Restrict Act, and that is a much larger, more aggressive and powerful piece of legislation that's being pushed through than just a "TikTok Ban":
To add, sections 9 and 10 read to me (very paraphrased)
"Any telecom, etc, product where someone in the parent post's list has partial ownership, including voting stocks and has >= 1 million users"
So, that includes a lot of video games (Genshin Impact, League of Legends, Gunfire Reborn, etc) and also Reddit and Epic Games, maybe? I'm sure an argument would be made that since the CEO of Telegram was born in Russia, it would count, too, somehow.
Edit: whoever downvoted the above comment, that's literally section 8B
Addendum: I'm not a lawyer, I'm just a layperson trying to read this thing.
People don't realise how ridiculously asymmetric the relationship between China and the rest of the world is.
Spin up a cloud VM in China now. Go do it. Try.
I can, literally in minutes, go create a virtual machine hosting a web site in some random middle eastern country I probably would not visit because they're anti... everything. Anti-female, anti-christian, anti-gay, anti-freedom, anti everything I hold dear.
But I can create a virtual machine there, right now, no problems.
China? Hah... no.
That would require paperwork, in person, in chinese, paid for in renminbi, from a Chinese bank.
I'd have to get a chinese id, and submit it to a police station to get an authorisation number, which I would then have to display on every page of that web server.
Chinese companies can spin up whatever they want in any country they please.
Every other country has to sign up to Chinese censorship laws to publish anything at all on that side of the Great Firewall.
it is not about them, its about why should there be some entity out there that censors my information and decides what I'm allowed to see and what I'm not allowed to see? why does the government here feel like it must interfere with me, censor and babysit me?
The proposed ban on TikTok is not about you. No one cares to babysit you. They want to punish china for the perceived injustice (and security risk).
China has an asymmetric market, and it’s bad for US businesses but good for Chinese businesses. The US wants to send a message to china that it can also punish businesses that it doesn’t like.
yeah but it amounts to straight up censorship. Someone in the government decides what is safe for the citizens to see. How do you even ban it, does the US have mechanisms in place to enforce a government ban on a web site/app?
It’s incidental censoring. The content can and will move elsewhere, so it’s not preventing speech just limiting where it can go.
Yes the US has a mechanism to ban a company and that should apply to that company’s app. It’s just trade restrictions like with Huawei. Banning a website will be harder, but by banning advertisers from paying for ads it’ll destroy the profitability of serving American consumers.
Apart from what vineyardmike mentioned, there's a few additional levers, like having the app removed from app stores. I don't know what the current state of their traffic and DNS filtering capabilities, but if they really wanted to go nuclear they have jurisdiction over the com TLD. Wouldn't be the first time they've seized a domain on "national security, etc." grounds.
You can do all that easily in HKSAR, but you're mostly correct about the mainland. (technically you don't need a Chinese ID, just a permanent residence)
Funnily enough, spinning a cloud VM is quite easy actually. You can do it in seconds on Alibaba Cloud. Getting port 80 unblocked on the other hand...
Arguing that the relationship is inherently completely asymmetric isn't really true either. Chinese companies can't really just create a single website that serves both western and Chinese customers. While nothing legally is stopping them, doing this is just going give your western customers a bad time overall, since content delivery across the Chinese border is all but impossible at any reasonable speed. TikTok is an American company, fully owned by Bytedance yes, but they went through incorporating in America and complying with all local laws to do so.
How many Chinese made websites do you use? Unless you're a Chinese immigrant, TikTok is almost certainly the only one. You might use e-commerce websites like AliExpress, but, again, AliExpress is a specially made website that was designed to follow foreign regulation. Chinese companies don't generally operate in other countries. The only reason TikTok is so popular is because they bought their way into the western market with millions of dollars with the acquisition of musical.ly. You have not shown any empirical evidence of any Chinese tech company actually being successful in the west, that hasn't just bought out some American competitor.
Also, nothing is requiring you to setup servers in China to serve your Chinese audience, and in fact it's almost certainly much more expensive to do that, not just for an ICP license but for bandwidth as well. You can serve your Chinese audience well with servers in Japan, Korea, Hong Kong (for now), or other East Asian countries and as long as you follow Chinese laws, the GFW won't block you.
Sure, following Chinese laws is hard and goes against a lot of free speech principles, but at the end of the day the laws are enforced reasonably uniformly. Banning TikTok or Chinese companies in general just shows that Americans can't handle foreign competition. Instead I believe that a better solution would be to simply create uniformly enforced laws that create federal data processing regulation ... like Europe has already done with the GDPR ...
When President Trump raised tariffs on China in 2017 - economic soundness aside - the media commentary initially lambasted it as unprovoked xenophobic aggression. But the outrage soon died down as people looked at the numbers and saw it was a mere reciprocal setting of our tax rate to match or reach a fraction of China’s (and hopefully would enable future lowering negotiations). Now, in 2023, President Biden has maintained that course and the public has come around to more hawkish policy.
Pushing back on China, economically, has been broadly popular for a long damn time. It's just unpopular-among-actual-voters neoliberal trade policy, which has been the consensus policy of both major parties for decades, that's kept us from doing it—Trump, very notably, was the first major party Presidential candidate to run since probably some time in the '80s, on a platform with such a strong anti-neoliberal stance.
The media were freaking out about the trade restriction on China, but my circle of D-voting friends and I (and I'm about as libby-lib as a lib can lib) who mostly hated Trump were like "fucking good, more of this please".
I think he mostly caught at least as much shit as he deserved over his shenanigans (far less, in some cases—my "oh no, this is gonna be really bad for the health of our democracy" moment was when he made his "2nd amendment people" remark and suffered no meaningful consequences, back in the '16 campaign) but there were a handful of cases like that, where the negative media response was sharply at odds with our (as, again, solid D voters who AFAIK all voted against him twice) reactions to things he did.
I can think of one - banning superior foreign products and services mean that people have to use inferior local substitutes. Just because the CCP doesn't want Chinese people to use the best available products is no reason to deny them to Americans. Americans should have access to the best products that they can afford.
This logic is "they make themselves worse off, so we should match them". That is lose-lose scenario logic.
That being said, there is always an argument for banning foreign social media companies (really all media companies) from making commercial profits in other countries. The political and military risks are significant.
When the product is commercializing and manipulating its users, though, things aren’t so clear. Is it a gift, or a Trojan horse? That’s the open question here, regardless of Congress’s demagogic motives.
> banning superior foreign products and services mean that people have to use inferior local substitutes.
TikTok is only superior in poisoning the minds of people using it here in US. That's why the Chinese version is different. I think zero is lost if people use the inferior local ones in this case.
> This logic is "they make themselves worse off, so we should match them". That is lose-lose scenario logic.
Sure, the optimal solution for the prisoner's dilemma is that both cooperate. But once one doesn't cooperate, the optimal solution is not to cooperate. US looks like a dummy waving the flag of morality while China laughs in its face.
TikTok is superior in rapidly distributing relatively niche information to enormous quantities of interested parties.
I believe the current recommended example is "Go look up France on TikTok vs look up France on Instagram"
Addendum: TikTok is also superior at dynamically generating an advertisable collective that are specifically interested and desiring of the ads they're given. Five million small businesses found their place on TikTok entirely because they found their 2000-person size niche that would be interested in buying their product, and even encouraged them to buy it.
That's fine but domestic businesses should be held to the same standard. China doesn't allow TikTok BS to be disseminated in their territory. The same reasoning should apply to FB and Twitter.
The contention here is that one country does not allow the other to do business in their territory, yet complains when their product is threatened with a ban.
The contention is _not_ that double standards are being applied to TikTok vis-a-vis FB/Twitter.
I'm not sure if banning foreign businesses is "censorship".
But if you insist on calling money "speech" and banning foreign businesses "censorship" then it turns out, under your very broad definitions, censorship is sometimes a very good thing!
TikTok is not being banned because of what they say, they're being banned for what they are. Ergo it's not censorship.
Same thing when RT was banned across Western Europe. It's not what they were saying that was banned, it's what they are: an arm of the Russian government. Russian shills are still free to peddle their propaganda.
Sometimes two wrongs don't make a right. Sometimes you fight fire with fire. We can all pull aphorisms out of our butts to support our side of the argument.
Exactly the same arguments against TikTok can be made for basically any social media, "dumbing down the population". Only difference is what country's laws the company is regulated under, which hardly makes one better than the other.
Because American citizens (are supposed to) have rights that Chinese citizens don't. The first amendment covers access to information. Banning TikTok is a violation of all Americans' first amendment rights.
Banning the operation of a foreign-controlled corporation from a state that harshly restricts foreign economic activities in their borders is hardly a first amendment issue. It's not even close.
[EDIT] Case law citations would be a lot more convincing than downvotes.
Banning TikTok even runs counter to the value we hear used to justify the first amendment: diversity of thought and discourse is inherently good; it allows people to decide for themselves using their faculties of rationality. We even have Benjamin Franklin and polemic if not mis-attributed Voltaire quotes[1] used to inspire a basis for free speech.
Except for some reason, diversity of thought and free speech ideals aren't actually used to justify speech people disagree with, namely China's. This two-mouthed approach is noticed. It de-legitimizes the diversity of thought value.
To anyone who has argued for free speech before but is silent now, your silence says more than your speech ever could.
I'm not sure what Ben Franklin quote you are referring to. While I'm sure he valued diversity of thought and discourse, I don't know of a clever phrase of his that gets often used.
His security-liberty quote. It's easy to frame this as "trading the liberty of free speech and free association for the security of being free from Chinese propaganda," and I agree that we should be discussing the validity of that framing as fervently as we possibly can because at the face of it, it appears to be exactly that. Every argument against that framing seems to be trying to carve out an exception for the purpose of security, often with extreme language of existential threat.
I don't see why anyone would argue on security. They keep American social networks and software products out unless they "partner" with a Chinese company. It seems obvious we shouldn't allow a double standard here.
We gave up on forcing China to keep opening up to US trade if they want us to reciprocate. We shouldn't do that.
Did not vote, but it's because the "and nothing of value was lost" sentiment is trite. People might even agree, but there are more hacker-newsy ways of delivering that message and a better rhetorical delivery might find better reception.
I agree that banning TikTok on the grounds of its algorithm being controlled by China is dubious. After all, it is content, it is information, and it is up to an open society to call out the fact that social media is trash, that Chinese social media is anti-American disinformation poison.
However, it is reasonable to believe tiktok's recommendations are crafted to harm American intellect, prey on vanity to reward shallow behavior, and gather large scale behavioral and physical activity (site tracking, habits, physical location, items in homes, etc) for the purposes of the Chinese government. If it is recognized as a spy tool of a hostile government, why permit it?
Yes, yes, yes, but I will defend to the death for their right to say it! Free speech means accepting speech one doesn't want to hear, especially if it leads to outcomes one doesn't desire.
>As suspicious as the US federal government is, I don't think what those companies do is as tightly coupled with the government as TikTok and China.
They have backdoors to all major tech companies, they actively try to control discourse in social media and they just bailed out their tech sector. If that's not being tightly coupled, I don't know what is.
>Do you think the Chinese government is generally hostile to the long term success of Western liberalism?
No
>Do you think the Chinese government has meaningful influence on the behavior of TikTok or its recommendation engine?
Probably but no concrete evidence exists
>Do you think TikTok data on its hundreds of millions of users is available for general analysis to the Chinese government?
To the same extent our data is available to the US and its allies, yes. But China cannot do much with my data, my government can.
"If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them"
Combine this with "lies spread faster than truth," and you can see why advancements in communication technology proceed periods of social upheaval, at least until inoculating social technologies are developed to moderate the synergy of these two effects.
> Combine this with "lies spread faster than truth,"....
Even more complicated:
- this applies to all piecs of information, including mainstream "truths" that are not actually true
- there is an important distinction between lies, speaking untruthfully, speaking misinformatively, etc
- most people are not just bad at epistemology (and related fields), they think they are good (because it seems that way, and "seems true equals true" in our culture) - epistemology is highly counter-intuitive
Yep, the critique of social facts on HN gas gotten me some of the most extreme responses. It's also frankly, delightful to frame personal opinion in the language of social fact and have folks wires get fried not knowing how to respond. Espistomology can have it's entertaining and playful side too. :)
On top of that, maybe we shouldn't put tolerance itself as a goal? It's a tool. And a tool that can be greatly abused. But nowadays it seems to be a goal by itself. Which both opens up a lot of abuse and seems a wee meaningless as a goal by itself.
China is an existential threat for western block. She is buying almost all mines of raw materials needed for batteries and green economy, generally speaking, she's going to buy russian gas at great discount, she's undermining western established institutions.
Maybe it's a good thing for the world to be more balanced towards a so big autocracy, it seems majority of people don't care about democracy. But I'm egoist, I live in the west and I care about the future of my country.
I've been hearing this for years, possibly decades. If China is such an existential threat, why didn't we (the wealthiest country in the world) buy up those mines ourselves?
Why is TikTok of all things where we're making our stand? I don't buy it.
The US Government has very little interest in becoming the employer of mines overseas... and rightfully so. The accusations of colonialism when applied to the United States are quite appropriate.
Having arbitrary companies buy the mines is something that they occasionally do - however, that comes with the risk of exposing themselves to the corruption and issues of the country where the mines are located. The FCPA https://www.trade.gov/us-foreign-corrupt-practices-act makes it difficult for companies that aren't going to use bribery to compete against other companies and countries where corruption isn't seen as an issue.
These can make it rather difficult for the United States government or a company based in the United States to try to "buy up" the raw materials of other countries.
TikTok, however, is a way for one government that the US has a strained relationship with to potentially direct the public discourse in the US or use it to track / identify individuals. The spying that was mentioned is https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/dec/22/tiktok-by...
> TikTok has admitted that it used its own app to spy on reporters as part of an attempt to track down the journalists’ sources, according to an internal email.
> The data was accessed by employees of ByteDance, TikTok’s Chinese parent company and was used to track the reporters’ physical movements. The company’s chief internal auditor Chris Lepitak, who led the team involved in the operation, has been fired, while his China-based manager Song Ye has resigned.
> ...
> ByteDance and TikTok had initially issued categorical denials of the allegations when they were first reported. The company claimed it “could not monitor US users in the way the article suggested”, and added that TikTok had never been used to “target” any “members of the US government, activists, public figures or journalists”. Those claims are now acknowledged to be false.
As a consequence of the US war with the Islamic State across Iraq and Syria; IS had previously occupied Eastern Syria where the oil fields now controlled by the US are located.
> Crickets in the media - because it wouldn’t look good.
Crickets in the news media largely because the news media covers news and static situations aren’t news (same reason whey the occupation of Crimea got intense coverage for a short time in 2014 and then critics until 2022, which wasn’t because Russian aggression and occupation looks bad for the US.)
The news media covers events related the US presence in Syria, but the ongoing fact just isn’t news.
"The news media covers events related the US presence in Syria, but the ongoing fact just isn’t news."
I hard disagree - smuggling out oil in multiple large convoys by the US military from a region just after a significant natural disaster is most certainly news. But the US media will never cover something like this.
> In 2020, a U.S. firm called Delta Crescent Energy LLC secured a deal with the Kurdish authorities under an authorization from the U.S. government. The firm’s partners include former U.S. ambassador to Denmark James Cain, also a Republican campaign donor; James Reese, a former U.S. special forces officer; and an experience oil executive, John Dorrier Jr.
> The Daily Beast reported that Delta was to earn $1 per barrel of oil exported from Syria, according to government filings. Dorrier, the firm’s CEO, had worked with a U.K. oil company with offices in Syria. He told the Military Times that Delta “had some $2 billion in contracts to sell oil into the international market that will benefit American allies in northeast Syria that have helped in the fight against the Islamic State group.”
> The Assad foreign ministry called it all a U.S. plot to “steal Syria’s crude oil.” The ministry described the Kurdish forces as “terrorist militias,” and predicted they would be defeated by the government.
> Delta Crescent Energy was the only firm licensed by the U.S. government to work in Syria. The license was permitted despite U.S. Treasury sanctions aimed at punishing the Assad regime.
> Things changed when the new Biden administration did not renew Delta’s sanctions waiver this year.
> In February, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said that the 900 American troops then in Syria were there to resist IS and “are not authorized to provide assistance to any other private company, including its employees or agents, seeking to develop oil resources in Syria.”
---
Do you have any additional sources that support the US is using Syrian oil fields for supplying US Bases?
You have to look at non MSM and non US media sources. What is declared "formally" by the US is not what goes on under the hood. US is generally famous for underhanded stuff like this in the middle-east.
Smuggling out and plundering valuable resources from a region that has undergone a disaster is what I call "evil" by any definition.
Also, you may wish to find and talk to some savvy educated Syrians. They will laugh if you suggest the US is doing nothing of the sort. Of-course, usually, there will be no American citizen doing this - it will be all done by third parties. They made a mistake here by explicitly involving the US Army and thus this got extensively publicised (in the non Western media).
What do you mean by existential threat? Walk me through the scenario that starts with the US not banning TikTok and ends with the non-existence of the US.
I agree with the sentiment, but in this case the value TikTok provides for free speech outweighs China's unfair trade policies, which have been this way for a couple decades.
I don't understand why China is allowed to have web products in our markets but we don't seem to be allowed Google, Facebook, WhatsApp etc. in theirs.
We need to just make it a fair playing field and if they want to have software startups on the Internet and in App Stores they need to open their markets to our products too.
> I don't understand why China is allowed to have web products in our markets but we don't seem to be allowed Google, Facebook, WhatsApp etc. in theirs.
Because we're a democracy with free speech and open markets, and China is not? Banning foreign speech and competition is not the victory for our way of life that some people seem to think it is.
There is a problem with TikTok - like ALL social media it uses opaque ranking algorithms that serve nefarious interests, and like ALL social media it spies ruthlessly on its users. How about we address those issues, thereby indirectly resolving the TikTok issue too?
There's no such thing as a free market, regulations are everywhere. One such regulation that I think is perfectly reasonable is that if you want to sell us things we need to be able to sell you things. This is largely true with hardware (e.g. Apple, Tesla sell into China just fine) but most software companies and especially social media have been outlawed.
Just because we are a democracy with different values to the CCP does not mean we should be taken for fools.
But we aren't banning foreign speech, we are banning a foreign platform for information dissemination. I don't see anyone promoting not allowing Chinese citizen's posts to be viewable in the USA. That is what banning foreign speech would look like.
Banning TikTok is a completely rational thing to do, given the control that the CCP has over the app. We can't poison our minds with letting China control the algorithm and affect hundreds of millions of Americans. We aren't talking about a company motivated by money, it's motivated by power and control. It is 100% a national security threat.
We should absolutely ban it, the same way China bans Instagram, Facebook, Google, etc for the same reasons: national security threat.
And I personally love TikTok, I'm active on it for a couple of hours a day, but I know that it's a threat.
> We should absolutely ban it, the same way China bans Instagram, Facebook, Google, etc for the same reasons: national security threat.
China has not banned those. Foreign internet companies can operate in China if they obey the same rules that Chinese internet companies have to obey, such as Chinese censorship requirements and requirements to share data with the government.
Most US internet companies aren't willing to meet those requirements, so don't operate there.
If the US wants to ban TikTok it should do the same thing here: make privacy and transparency rules that all social media companies that want to operate in the US must follow.
> China has not banned those. Foreign internet companies can operate in China if they obey the same rules that Chinese internet companies have to obey, such as Chinese censorship requirements and requirements to share data with the government.
Those rules, however, are official state secrets, and western companies who wish to operate in China must infer what they are themselves lest they get kicked out. China works on the standard that "there are rules that you must break, we won't tell you what they are, so be very very very careful." Not transparent at all (incidentally, China rejects rule of law as a western imperialist concept).
> Censorship decisions are arbitrary, opaque, and inconsistent, due to weak rule of law in China’s political system and because so many individuals and processes are involved. Regulations issued by government and CCP agencies establish censorship guidelines. The impact of content restrictions may vary depending on factors like timing, technology, and geographic region. ISPs reportedly install filtering devices differently, including in the internet backbone or even in provincial-level internal networks.99 Lists of prohibited websites and sweeping censorship directives are closely held secrets, but are periodically leaked. There are no formal avenues for appeal and they cannot be challenged in the courts. Criticism of censorship is itself censored.100 There is also no transparency surrounding private companies’ day-to-day censorship in China, and users similarly lack avenues for appeal.
You aren't given a bunch of laws to follow when you do business in China, instead you are just told "don't make us angry." In a rule by law rather than rule of law country, what else do you expect?
No one has succeeded in doing that, despite a number of attempts by companies that have operated in the country for decades. Microsoft was the most recent to give up by stripping the social features from LinkedIn in china a few years ago.
The laws on paper might be entirely fair, but what those laws say doesn't matter.
> We should absolutely ban it, the same way China bans Instagram, Facebook, Google, etc for the same reasons: national security threat.
China has not banned those. Foreign internet companies can operate in China if they obey the same rules that Chinese internet companies have to obey, such as Chinese censorship requirements and requirements to share data with the government.
Most US internet companies aren't willing to meet those requirements, so don't operate there.
Wow. Talk about being disingenuous. “oh you can vote - you just have to take a literacy test first and show us 5 different types of ID we’re sure you don’t have - it’s just the law”.
“It’s just the rules” - what else could it be? Censorship isn’t this mystical thing the government does - it’s implemented with rules. Sounds like “go back to your country” at company scale.
That's not what they meant and probably you know that, it's more like coming up with a standard set of rules that applies for all the apps and TikTok can either choose to obey them or exit the US market. Exactly like how American companies exited China.
What the government perceives as a threat for apps from other nations must also apply to home grown apps. It's not like US based apps haven't been unethical, or didn't cause a crisis.
From a European perspective, I don't see TikTok as any different from American platforms. America has been caught spying on other countries and interfering with democracies before.
The question you should ask, as a fellow European, is whether reducing influence from the US government, a stable but somewhat flawed democracy, is worth the price of losing access to US social media. Think in geopolitical terms, with all this entails of long-term divergence in cultural values, trade and other forms of economic compatibility.
And whether this judgement is significantly different from whether reducing influence from the CCP, an obviously totalitarian government that does not balk at overtly undermining of democratic values within your own borders, is worth losing access to TikTok.
I am confused by your questions, honestly. Maybe my English skills are lacking, but could you clarify?
Here:
- Is it worth losing access to US social media to reduce the influence of the US government?
- Is it worth losing access to TikTok to reduce the influence of the CCP?
Are these the questions your are asking? I really want to understand your comment because I think the same as the parent commenter. And even though I don't understand what you're try saying, it seems like they are important questions I should ask myself.
I think the previous commenter was implying that one may be worse than the other and trying to get you to reevaluate the idea that you see banning tiktok to be the same as banning US social media because of the differences between the Chinese government and the US government.
Yes. Banning US social media will in my estimation be a net loss for Europe, whereas banning TikTok would be a net win.
Subtle US interference and soft power, unpalatable though it may be, is not a real problem for European quality of life even in isolation, certainly not compared to the benefits of cultural exhcange & compatibility, and the following long-term trade and geopolitical cooperation with the US.
Whereas interference and soft power from the CCP deliberately undermines multiple core values of our society. It’s pretty damn obvious.
I guess to which degree Europe & the EU actually follows democratic values is a separate and very worthwhile discussion; maybe it’s closely related. Certainly looks like that from where I sit, at the northernmost border of the economic block.
imo, our data is getting harvested regardless, and if we were to have a say, I'd choose whichever country that does not have a tendency towards violence and let's be honest, between the options on the table, which one has a longer track record of waging wars? I don't want that country.
I'd rather the country that spent 800,000 lives ending slavery than the one that executed tens of millions in the great leap forward for petty and ideological reasons.
In geopolitical terms, the US has spent the last decade antagonising China for internal political gain. Resulting in the present situation where they've chosen not to align with the west on Russian sanctions. Not to say that China is entirely free from blame either.
As a European, I'm more likely to be extradited and tortured by the US than the CCP. I'm sure much of the world hasn't forgotten their penchant for assassinations, support for dictators, and destabilisation of democratically elected governments. Let's not forget the decades long mess that was the Iraq war.
Given China's cozying up to Russia, I'd think harder about which countries are really on your side when push comes to shove.
As a European you're effectively only protected from Russian aggression (or re-invasion, depending on which country you're in) because of NATO, which is substantially led by the US. Germany, Poland, the Baltic states, etc. would be completely up shit creek right now if it wasn't for US military involvement in NATO and arms in Ukraine. It's why you see Finland etc. racing to join after years of non-alignment.
> Given China's cozying up to Russia, I'd think harder about which countries are really on your side when push comes to shove.
Why wouldn't China cosy up to Russia? The US has spent much of the last decade tearing apart most of the progress they made over the last five. The Trump administration took an overtly hostile stance to relations.
> As a European you're effectively only protected from Russian aggression (or re-invasion, depending on which country you're in) because of NATO, which is substantially led by the US. Germany, Poland, the Baltic states, etc. would be completely up shit creek right now if it wasn't for US military involvement in NATO and arms in Ukraine. It's why you see Finland etc. racing to join after years of non-alignment.
Russia can barely deal with Ukraine's largely irregular army. They'd get wiped trying to invade any of the EU states.
Has there been some kind of collective amnesia regarding Guantanamo bay or the torture that took place in Iraq and Afghanistan? Did America's campaign of drone strikes simply not occur?
In less recent memory we might recall the US "protecting democracy" by providing direct financial, training, operational training, and the occasional assassination to military coups/dictators in Latin America[0].
Allies of the US certainly have it a lot easier but it doesn't mean their leaders communications won't be monitored [1].
China's behaviour is certainly objectionable but as someone that lives in neither country the US has a much more worrying history of foreign interference.
> The administration of President George W. Bush abducted hundreds of "illegal combatants" for U.S. detention, and transported detainees to U.S.-controlled sites as part of an extensive interrogation program that included torture.
> Extraordinary rendition continued under the Obama administration, with targets being interrogated and subsequently taken to the U.S. for trial.
> A June 2006 report estimated that one hundred people had been kidnapped by the CIA on European Union soil
either the one decision destroys something (no slope into an uncontrollable outcome) or there are multiple decisions which appear as a single destructive decision (multiple independent decisions, rather than a slope into an uncontrollable outcome) even though any decision could have been the one to stop the unintended effect feared in the beginning. the outcome is always under control. maybe not by someone you favor, but it is always under control.
it's literally called "The Slippery Slope Fallacy."
there isn't. slippery slopes are a mythical problem.
the outcome is either the result of a single decision (not a slope) or a result of multiple independent decisions, any one of which could stop the forecasted unintended consequence (not slippery).
There's a section of that page dedicated to non-fallacious usage. If a decision makes a subsequent decision more likely, the former is a slippery slope to the latter.
There is very little risk that I hurt myself doing cocaine responsibly once. The risk in doing cocaine is that if I do it once, I will be inclined to do it again and so on until I'm a broke addict. If slippery slopes were a mythical problem, I could just commit to doing cocaine only once.
If you ban alcohol, private citizens will be more likely to decide to start a criminal enterprise to supply it outside of the law. If someone is running a profitable criminal enterprise, they'll be less concerned about breaking the law in general and more likely to branch out to violent crimes. If slippery slopes were a myth, we could institute prohibition without risking a massive expansion of the criminal underworld.
I can't find it now, but I saw a comment on HN the other day where a UK citizen expressed how foolish Americans were for disliking their knife laws. Of course they should ban knives in public- knives account for the majority of homicides in their country. No one in the US could be convinced by that argument until effective gun control made it true. Instituting gun control makes it more likely for citizens and politicians to support knife control. (Whether this is worth it is another matter.)
Independent decisions are a myth; every decision is made in the context of the ones that came before.
This is not always a matter of not being united - it can be the sheer difference in power.
When Donald Trump decided to punish Iran he forced EU companies to retract from Iran as well (despite having contracts there). If we were to not comply, there would be sanctions against EU companies operating in the US.
We asked the EU Commission for help on that but ultimately the EU did not have enough weight. So we got off Iran.
Note that I am not addressing the human/ethical aspects of operating in Iran, just the economic imbalance between the US and EU
You don't even need to have an European perspective to realize this. Do you think Facebook, a private company, has any problem with selling (American) data to the CCCP?
Adding to my previous comment: If I lived in the US, I'd be far more afraid of how American companies and government entities use my data. It's a far more real and immediate threat.
Yes it's a fine worry to have on a personal level, but tiktok is a threat at the national level as it threatens the very culture and system of democracy.
Then advocate for banning American social media companies in European countries. This type of "whataboutism" keeps coming up every time the news breaks about the USA banning or restricting Chinese tech companies. It misses the point.
The point is that EVERY country needs to concern itself with its own national security, local laws and regulations. I wish that every country would embrace freedom, free trade and the open Internet and that we could all just get along ... but those are my personal value judgments being applied. In the current world of foreign relations, countries are going to act according to their own national interests, whatever those happen to be. Each will pretend that it is the one taking the "right" position, and each might behave hypocritically in the moment. The question of who is "right" and who is "wrong" will vary according to your own set of moral principals and beliefs.
This is not whataboutism. It is a European saying that from their point of view, the tracking in TikTok is not worse than the tracking by the US Big Data.
They are not saying that it should or should not be banned.
And I do agree: I don't feel more threatened by TikTok than by Big Data.
There is a big difference. American platforms are not state owned and controlled, they are independently owned and operated by private individuals.
TikTok is state owned and state controlled. On top of that, the communist Chinese state has consistently threatened its neighbors with violent annexation. I think it's a dishonest argument to claim that independent American platforms and state-owned Chinese platforms are equivalent.
When you say "they are heavily in bed with government", can you articulate what you mean?
Are you saying that the US government can compel these companies to take certain actions in the same way that the Chinese government can?
Like, as in, being able to force the company to give up all of its users' private details?
Or being able to force the company to inject malware into their software?
>Are you saying that the US government can compel these companies to take certain actions in the same way that the Chinese government can? Like, as in, being able to force the company to give up all of its users' private details?
There is reasonable evidence of this happening. For example: what happened with Qwest. The former CEO claims this was the primary reason for him being targeted. He was openly against the spying by the NSA before the charges were filed. https://www.foxbusiness.com/features/former-qwest-ceo-joe-na...
Are you claiming that because the US has the ability to get individual user data in law enforcement investigations, they also have the authority to get all of their user data?
>But Facebook policy also allows for “emergency requests,” where the tech giant will voluntarily hand over data outside of the legal process when police claim a case involves death or “potential bodily harm.” Increasingly, law enforcement has taken advantage. In 2019, the government made 6,447 such “emergency requests,” compared to 6,000 in 2018 and 3,672 in 2017. Police submitted “preservation requests,” which operate outside of the legal process and preserve user data for 90 days, for more than 110,000 accounts in 2019.
I'm surprised you haven't heard of this by now, its been known for years. Of course you can say police will only use it in "real emergencies" but you're not the one defining what a "real emergency" is and cops lie constantly just to get information
You're not being very clear in your communication:
> ByteDance is financially backed by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, SoftBank Group, Sequoia Capital, General Atlantic, and Hillhouse Capital Group. As of March 2021, it was estimated to be valued at $250 billion in private trades.[0]
> ByteDance says 60% of its shares are owned by non-Chinese investors such as U.S investment firms Carlyle Group and Kohlberg Kravis Roberts and Japan's SoftBank Group. Employees own 20% and its founders the remaining 20%. [1]
> On top of that, the communist Chinese state has consistently threatened its neighbors with violent annexation. I think it's a dishonest argument to claim that independent American platforms and state-owned Chinese platforms are equivalent.
I don't think America has much moral high ground when it comes to violent foreign interference.
On a personal level, yes, I'd be much less concerned with China having my data than my own government.
On a national scale? Well, I certainly do not want an adversary with an interest in overtaking the U.S. have both data and means to manipulate the opinions of its citizens.
Is it really? Both look like hallmarks of an authoritarian society to me: you don't want your subjects to have access to any information that might lead them to inconvenient questions, and you also don't want your subjects to smuggle out information that contradicts official reports.
It seems that you may not be fully informed about the U.S. Information and Educational Exchange Act of 1948, often referred to as the Smith-Mundt Act. This significant piece of legislation aimed to shield American citizens from being influenced by propaganda disseminated by organizations such as the CIA.
In 2012, the act was updated to accommodate the prevalence of the Internet, and has led to an increase in the spread of government propaganda. Individuals who unwittingly perpetuate these false narratives may inadvertently be contributing to the deterioration of the Western world, all for the benefit of a select few who manipulate situations for their personal gain.
It's essential to recognize that remaining ignorant on such matters is not acceptable. We must strive to educate ourselves and be critical of the information we consume. If this is your first exposure to the Smith-Mundt Act, it may be time to reflect on whether you have been misled in the past.
Also, "whataboutism" only serves to stifle meaningful conversation and hinder our ability to understand different perspectives. To foster a healthy exchange of ideas, we must commit to evaluating arguments based on their merits, rather than resorting to discrediting tactics that have been employed by evil political parties you think you're against.
If you ever have conversation with people in meat space and wonder why they don't listen to your incredible wisdom, consider that sounding like a condescending, well, I can't say it on HN.
Being condescending does not help you win arguments.
After I got past your tone, I saw you completely ignored the part where I said my disapproval of Chinese spyware does not imply approval of American spyware.
EDIT- Let the record show that infamouscow substantially edited their remarks above without noting it. The tone was indeed condescending and referred to me as a marionette.
I'm eager to exchange ideas, but it's important to engage with those who are genuinely interested in constructive dialogue and are open to considering different perspectives.
If one chooses not to actively participate in the exchange of ideas, it may lead to a perception that the informed individuals are being condescending, when in reality they're sharing knowledge and perspectives.
You edited your original post to be more acceptable, didn't acknowledge it, then doubled down on implying I don't want to engage. Shame on you.
I'm eager to exchange ideas, but it's important to engage with those who are genuinely interested in constructive dialogue and are open to considering different perspectives.
I am willing and able to debate the nature of all governments and to acknowledge history. I don't enjoy sarcasm, snide remarks, and unacknowledged bad faith edits.
I apologize. I edited the previous messages to come across less snarky; that was not my intention and is why I quickly deleted my comment about being a marionette. I genuinely value open dialogue and the exchange of ideas. However, I must point out the irony that while we both claim to be interested in constructive conversation, this discussion has yet to delve into the substantive aspects of the issue at hand:
"One is my government, one is a hostile government."
Instead, we find ourselves focusing on peripheral points and accusations.
This situation brings to mind the tactics employed by the CIA to discredit truth tellers like journalists and academics. These tactics often involve diverting attention from the core issues, creating distractions, and undermining the credibility of the individuals presenting the facts. Engaging in this behavior we inadvertently contributes to a climate of misinformation and confusion, which hinders productive discourse and prevents us from reaching a deeper understanding of the issues at hand.
The primary focus of the discussion has been on the potential influence of the Smith-Mundt Act on one's opinions and understanding of the issue at hand.
Engaging in a deeper analysis provides a more stimulating conversation, as opposed to simply expressing superficial agreement or disagreement, which isn't thought-provoking or worth commentary in the slightest.
The central point is that when presented with the factual realities of the Smith-Mundt Act being repealed, it's crucial to reevaluate one's opinions to ensure they are not influenced by tainted information. By not acknowledging the impact of the Smith-Mundt Act, it's unclear whether the opinions being expressed are free from propagandistic influences.
I urge you to consider the implications of the Smith-Mundt Act and its repeal in the context of your viewpoints. Engaging with this crucial aspect of the conversation allowing for a more informed and nuanced understanding of the issue at hand, and to help ascertain whether opinions are genuinely untainted by external manipulation.
So is that a yes, that you agree completely that it is correct to be more concerned about actions of hostile foreign governments, and it's Ok to ban those things first?
Because that sounds like a yes to me!
You didn't say no! So I can only assume that this is a yes.
If you do not explicitly include the words "yes" or "no" in your response, I will assume that your answer is "yes".
Actually you already basically said yes here: "The claim on its face was never in dispute".
> One is my government, one is a hostile government. Why do you suggest they are the same?
Your government was the one kidnapping its own citizens through 'rendition flights' totally outside the legal apparatus and holding and torturing them whenever it wanted. It still does that.
Your government has power over you. Not China. If you would be concerned about 'opinion manipulation', there is still the open issue of the Iraqi WMDs lie and the entire false reality created by that very government of yours and its private sector extensions. If you are not worried about that, you would have no grounds to be worried about 'hostile' governments.
And what does 'hostile' even mean? You think that China or any other country cares about what you do as a singular American? And their hostility is toward you, the random American in god knows where in the US and not instead towards your government that is openly, explicitly, directly saying that it is targeting China in total violation of the international laws? Are you aware that any such threat or open admission of intent of economic or actual warfare from a country that can follow up those threats gives a legitimate casus belli against the targeted country and triggers the Article 51 of the UN convention?
Its amazing how the Americans think that they have anything in common with their government and establishment and they literally claim shared interest...
> whataboutism
There is nothing wrong about 'whataboutism'. Those who make moral, legal, ethical accusations have to provide an objective framework for their accustion. You cant just smear others while your own side does even worse things than what you accuse others of. Without an objective framework, any kind of moral accusation becomes a mere smear.
Chinese government does not have the power to abduct you without telling anyone, hold you in an undisclosed location for however long it wants without telling anyone. The US president does. No other president and government in the world has that kind of openly legislated power. Not even any secret service anywhere has been given that power. And yet you worry about 'other governments'.
This behavior pattern seems more like projecting the troubles at home to abroad to avoid cognitive dissonance than any actual concern...
As an American, I'm less concerned with China having this data than I am with US corporations having this data. China has limited interest or means to harm me, personally. US corporations have plenty of interest and means.
Source? They are a totalitarian government that considers the US it's #1 enemy, and has its sights on a military invasion of a peaceful democratic nation and ally in a 2-5 year horizon.
They do indeed. But none of that means that they care even a little bit about me, personally. Why would they? I can neither help nor hinder their efforts.
Understand what I'm saying here -- I'm specifically talking about whether I'd prefer to be spied on by China or by corporations. If that's my choice, I'd prefer to be spied on by China because they don't care much about me, individually.
But really, I'd prefer not to be spied on at all -- and that's my underlying point. When it comes to issues like TikTok, I'm not saying TikTok isn't a problem. I'm saying that the problem TikTok presents is not unique to them. If we are to address the problems -- and I think we should -- we should address it across the board, not just with a single company.
The US does not live in an isloated vaccum where it's not affected by geopolitics. Your life will be impacted, personally when China decides to invade Taiwan.
I don't want to be spied on by either government, but this point you are trying to make that China has 0 influence or means to impart change in American life is incorrect.
The way to prevent China from invading Taiwan was to foster a friendly relationship.
The US has squandered what good will it had with China to the point that they and even India have aligned more closely to Russia as a consequence of the Ukraine conflict.
The inability of the west to effectively put an end to Russian aggression in Ukraine only makes an invasion of Taiwan more likely.
I don't think I've been obtuse whatsoever. The existence of the One China policy doesn't change the fact that since 2015, broader US policy has shifted from viewing China as a partner to a competitor[0]. That policy has been described as "a blueprint for a Cold War 2.0"[1] and that:
> Any effort on the Biden team's part to improve relations (and China has indicated a strong desire to do so) would likely have the administration fending off charges of being soft on China.
The results of this approach have been, among others: a trade war, a president repeating conspiracy theories that blame China for Coronavirus[2], and publicly accusing China of controlling the WHO[2]:
> "I chose not to make a statement today," Mr Trump said on Monday about the event, while describing the body as "China-centric" and "a puppet of China".
> He said the WHO had "gave us a lot of very bad advice, terrible advice" and were "wrong so much and always on the side of China".
More recently we've heard American politicians, in a congressional hearing, repeatedly refer to China as their "enemy". Are we supposed to believe that doesn't indicate how far relations have cooled? Are we supposed to be shocked that China doesn't align with US interests on Russia when the US has been displaying open hostility?
China sees the US as a competitor, not a partner. Why would the USA not respond in kind?
Not only that but China is committing mass espionage in US universities through their Thousand Currents program and National Front Work Programming.
They are using 5th generation war tactics to attack and debase the US society through cultural weapons such as tiktok, as well as Facebook and twitter.
They are attempting to install backdoors in US infrastructure such as the power grid (Biden signed executive order reversing a ban on such equipment) and the communications backbones (huawei, zte, etc).
They have police stations in countries all over the world to ensure they can rendition misbehaving expats.
Its likely covid was leaked by improper handling of virus research in the BSL2 parts of the WIV. So they likely are to blame for poor practice's.
The WHO was demonstrably favourable to China giving them a two week headstart and refusing to acknowledge or talk about Taiwan as a country. It doesn't matter what trump said we have video from the source.
They frustrate freedom of movement operations in international water they claim sovereignty over.
And overall they operate in bad faith, using hypocritical unequal double standards, pushing for conditions in the USA and elsewhere that they disallow in China.
So it is no wonder US politicians believe them to be an enemy, when they act like one.
Well if TikTok is obligated by law to cooperate with the military, its main value proposition to the PLA is probably going to be its repositories of data on the citizens of foreign nations (particularly the US and its allies) and you can be pretty sure the data collection efforts are not being used to recommend some tasty local dim sum restaurants. In other words its highly probable that the data collected is used to support its propoganda efforts abroad. Given the close knit nature of the public and private sector fusion in China it might be safe to assume they are one and the same thing. Maybe TikToks role is not limited to just propoganda purposes but thats just too easy and valuable of a use case for it not to be employed in that context. I know of a few people on opposite ends of the political spectrum that eat up content that makes caricatures out of the other side. Not that this problem is limited to TikTok but in thier case being obligated to serve as an extension of the communist government it seems to be a ripe opportunity for spreading division and uncertainty in the citizens of rival countries.
But I was talking specifically about China's ability and interest in harming me, personally, directly. I was not talking about China's ability to do societal harm.
Wrong. Taiwan is internationally recognized as being part of China. Heretofore the United States has had an official policy of 'strategic ambiguity' - play both sides. Pretend Taiwan is part of China when convenient and then pretend Taiwan is its own sovereign entity when convenient. You can thank Kissinger for that cowardly policy.
Taiwan is not the Ukraine.
For better or worse, I'll give Biden credit for picking a side, though I personally think he picked the wrong side.
No. Let's call spades, spades. The Unite States is declaring war on China, not the other way around. Our policy with Taiwan is as stupid as if the EU recognized the Confederacy as not belonging to the United States.
Once again the United States seeks war - and this coming from a U.S. Marine.
Once again the United States will compromise its principles in its pursuit of war. Winston Churchill is credited with the quote, and I'm paraphrasing, "the United States can be relied upon to do the right thing, once it has exhausted all other possibilities."
Here we go again, exhausting all those other possibilities.
True. But TikTok is far from the only company known to do this, so it's not an argument for singling them out. It's a problem that needs to be resolved on an industry-wide basis.
You can be weaponized against your own interests through psychological manipulations. China may not have physical access to do harm to you but they do have digital access and that can do serious damage if you aren't careful.
Moreover, it's not just about "me" and "now". In my opionion that's myopic and selfish. It's also about "we" and the future. What "I" do could be used against my family, friends, neighbors, society, etc in the future.
We already see something similar happening all the time. Totalitarian dictatorships coercing foreign citizens by threatening the wellbeing of family still in the motherland.
Source? From my understanding, tiktok leaves the algorithm highly unconstrained in figuring out what the user wants, compared to its domestic counterpart. Yes, this alone might end up bad, but any restrictions would be exactly the political nightmare we complain about
The government isn't going to come after you. You can stop living your weird libertarian fever dream. That's not a thing that happens. The government is not just going to randomly pick out epups and then do something nefarious with the data.
Instead of banning TikTok, why don't we ban the data collection policies that make it a threat?
I don't really see a fair way to handle this that doesn't end up also banning Facebook, Instagram, etc. The problem is that these companies are collecting enough sensitive data to pose a huge security risk, but our politicians are acting like it's only a problem when someone else does it.
What makes you think a country with a long history of theft and cheating agreements will do anything besides ignore any rules the west attempts to create?
"a country with a long history of theft and cheating agreements will do anything besides ignore any rules the west attempts to create" - kinda ironic you mention this considering your description fits the US like a glove.
"I Know you are but what am I" is not productive. The US has been stealing Chinese IP and reneging on trade deals for the last 2 decades?
No it hasn't. It admitted China into the WTO (only to have China go back on pledges to open their economy), stood up multiple industries domestically in China with expertise only to have all foreign entities kicked or squeezed out.
Why would anyone think China would go along with any international agreement ?
That's missing the point. The point is that this is a problem with US (and other) companies just as much with Chinese ones. Any legislative solution should address the underlying issue and attempt to resolve the problem across the entire industry, not just with one single company.
If a company (Chinese or otherwise) ignores the law, then it would be appropriate to sanction them.
I'm sorry, but what? You haven't cited anything that shows China cares about using TikTok as a means of influencing foreign countries? You're just spouting rhetoric that is made to fearmonger.
China bans western websites because they don't follow China's censorship requirements. Apple services exist in China, why isn't Apple a national security threat? They're the richest tech company on the planet, and based in the US.
Because Apple sucks up to China. And they're not a security threat to China because they're controlled by their shareholders, not the government. Shareholders who will not want to throw their entire investment into the toilet.
And he doesn't have a choice. Google took a stand and had to give up its position in the Chinese market. But Apple as a manufacturer will have to give up their entire business if they go against China.
> And they're not a security threat to China because they're controlled by their shareholders, not the government. Shareholders who will not want to throw their entire investment into the toilet.
Bytedance is majority owned by foreign shareholders:
> ByteDance says 60% of its shares are owned by non-Chinese investors such as U.S investment firms Carlyle Group and Kohlberg Kravis Roberts and Japan's SoftBank Group. Employees own 20% and its founders the remaining 20%.
China is preparing a military invasion of a US Ally (Taiwan) within the next 5 years. They absolutely care about influenceing the US public to oppose military support for Taiwan.
I would go a step further and say that reclaiming Taiwan and triumphing over the US are among the top goals of the CCP.
I’m an American and I’d probably oppose direct military support for Taiwan? Aside from the obvious fact it seems like it could easily escalate into a direct war between the US and China, why is it the USs business in the first place?
The US/UK didn’t do anything to save Hong Kong’s democracy, so I don’t know how much I’d buy the tired “protecting democracy everywhere” approach. Is it just because we have military bases there?
That’s your stance, but look at the comment I was replying to “You haven't cited anything that shows China cares about using TikTok as a means of influencing foreign countries”.
The US (and post WW2 europe) has a long-standing policy of protecting democratic countries against expansionist dictatorships.
WW2 was an battle between two types of nations: democracies and dictatorships that wished to expand their empires. What is playing out in Ukraine and China is no different. If the democratic world shows weakness (e.g letting Russia to take over Ukraine) it threatens the entire democratic world order since suddenly smaller nations are free pickings to expand Russia / China’s sphere of influence.
Even something as benign as adjusting the temperature for Ukraine related content is 100% in China’s interest here. Ukraine cannot defend itself without the support of the US public, and any sign of weakness from the democratic countries will have material consequences.
Obviously its alot more than that. Its about having the ability to control public discourse in its favor. A path that could have drastic consequences to those that the chinese government has already decided should be put under subjugation. For starters there are the Tibetans, the Christians, the Uyghurs, Hong Kong's activists, Falun Gong practitions, journalists, etc. Australia already had issues around that when chinese officials were sent after Australian protesters of chinese decent to shut them down. As if they were criminals engaging in criminal acts in a location subject to its jurisdiction. Its not just about Taiwan. Its about who the party deems undesirable. US citizens potentially pose one of the largest obstacles to its foreign policies. Instead of sending armed troops to dissuade them through military intimidation however, they can just put on a demonstration of force and pit us against each other. The abilities that TikTok provides the government are not limited to dissuading the US from defending Taiwan but things like sowing division in democratic countries, curating data to enact targetted propoganda campaigns, curating data to go after political opponents, tracking and hunting of dissident journalists, etc. "Knowledge is power" is the common expression but more accurately, applied knowledge is power and this gives them knowledge that they are applying. This in and of itself is not too different from what the snowden revalations revealed about the US other than perhaps the extent to which compliance is mandatory. However the biggest point of contention is arguably more in how the knowledge is being applied. Should we empower a government that has a track record of kidnapping falun gong practitioners and harvests thier organs or silencing critics that they deem difficult to manipulate or the government that has a track record of racist policing and military intervention over false pretext? If we can agree that the Taiwan issue is not a false pretext and that the average US citizen is better informed about our previously hidden activities abroad and about the social plights of their fellow americans of different racial and socioeconomic backgrounds would that be an improvement? I think so and in my opinion a future with that type of US righting its wrongs and setting the example would be preferable to one where they give the reigns to the ccp . even better would be where the reigns were given to the international community as a whole but the details of that are a whole seperate diacussion. i do agree however that the worst possible outcome would be one in which we go to war and somebody pushes the nuclear button out of preassure, insecurity, spite, miscalculation, technological distortions, equipment failure, hacking, manipulations, subversion, extremism, terrorism or any other one of the million things that could go wrong and lead to everyones untimely demise.
I oppose banning TikTok. I oppose it even though I dislike the platform. I dislike its data collection. I dislike that the CCP likely can access the data. I dislike that it is a national security threat.
I would accept limited bans within specific contexts (e.g., people in sensitive positions with access to sensitive data).
At the same time, I crave reform to our privacy laws. We, the people, need better protection against data collection and use by both private and public entities.
It sounds like you see banning TikTok as rational out of a sense of reciprocity with the application's country or origin. Is that the operating principle?
If the RESTRICT act passes, TikTok will likely be just the first ICT (Internet Communication Technology) service to be banned. Next on the list may be Russia Today, Rumble, or any other app or site that is not fully US based and controlled. The decisions are at the discretion of the president. Be careful what precedent you set.
Ah, the American freedom of thought... Communism not allowed. Any other political party or group is allowed, and could have a platform. There are a lot of foreign media allowed there. Internally even KKK is allowed. But who were really persecuted were groups like the Black Panthers, which until nowadays have members kept as political prisoners.
Sure, it is very easy and convenient to allow dissent only when it offers no risk. But if there were a chance for them to became popular, then FBI would restart the pogroms from McCarthyist era. There are still Black Panther members jailed and kept in solitary confinement because authorities are afraid that they could talk with other inmates and convince them of their ideology.
Madison Square Garden used to allow Nazi rallies. Now Reddit will have you fired if you make the OK sign because they're too embarrassed to admit they got trolled by 4chan and have no problem destroying the lives of innocents who don't keep up with the latest outrage culture headlines to understand what's suddenly unacceptable common behavior.
Well yeah because this platform is focused on Western markets. TikTok is not available in China itself, there's a different version.
There's no point in hiding these things from western users because we already know about them. If they will block them it will only attract more attention (aka Streisand effect)
Why would they ban those kinds of videos. I'm sure we wouldn't be having this debate if they did, because TikTok would have already been shut down in the US and many other countries. And obviously the content makers would just use the platform replacing TikTok to pick up where they left off. The reasons put forth for banning TikTok extend far beyond censorship.
Moreover, having observability into who and what are publishing such content arguably provides more value than censorship. Now you know who to watch, who/where/when they are, who their friends/family/associates/audiance are, and build out models and networks to provide even better overall observability and predictability over what you might see as a threat.
Yes. I've been delivered John Cena bing chilling memes with slightly racist undertones. I've seen memes about Tiananmen square. Winnie the pooh xi jinping memes.
And we're talking about TikTok content in America, not in Hong Kong.
If you believe that then put it into legislation and fine/ban anyone who doesn't comply. A number of US tech giants, including Apple, have been found to be censoring such terms abroad.
That's not what's happened though. Instead, there's a witch hunt spurred on by US politicians who can't tell the difference between Singapore and China.
but its ok to have "open"AI steal everything on the open web, use it as a training set and rent it to people so that the guys who answers the questions and built the prior knowledge of the web can be paid less or even removed? hell Id take TikTok anyday vs OpenAI
What? China bans Facebook, Google, and Instagram because of censorship, not because they're "national security threats". And it will absolutely be motivated by money once Bytedance sells the platform.
A Chinese company sold Grinder because of privacy concerns. Tiktok will either IPO or be sold off
Ah, yes, the typical HN arrogance that the pee-ons must be protected from any thought or concept that doesn't support the poster's beliefs. It's important for Democracy for the voters to have only a restricted view of the world, lest they vote the wrong way, at which point, where would we be?
Ignoring that nation states are have organized efforts to degrade other countries over time by these mediums doesn't make it any less true. It just means your head is in the sand.
Tiktok gained audience and market share because it happened to be a better product in its niche. Inventing any excuses to ban it is unadulterated hypocrisy.
All the words like "censorship", "free", "CCP", "national security", "china bad" are just euphemisms for childish protectionism of an oversized ego.
Let's say TikTok was the same exact company founded in another country, do you believe that the conversation about banning it would be the same? With some exceptions (maybe Russia, for example), I seriously doubt it.
I'm against a TikTok ban and here's why: if user-level data collection and fingerprinting are wrong, ban that. If algorithms to show certain things for certain people are wrong, then ban that too. If a company being owned by a foreign entity who is a "frenemy" at the eyes of the military, then sure, ban it. If US social networks are banned in country X, then ban X's social networks in the US. Again, that's Ok.
But those are rules made for any company in any place, not just TikTok. Just banning TikTok now seems more like making some convenient excuses for doing what some folks already wanted to do anyway as soon as TikTok started getting their cookies and slices of ad revenue and media relevancy.
1. TikTok has a "heat" button. It can make anyone go viral. This is not uncommon to other platforms artificially boosting some content, but this is much more deliberate than the other methods. https://www.forbes.com/sites/emilybaker-white/2023/01/20/tik...
2. Persuasion is two things: exposure and frequency. The native way that TikTok works allows for this to happen easily. Imagine a tool that is very good at this being controlled by a government that is hostile to most of the rest of the world.
3. The idea of the open internet was based on actors working in good faith. The CCP does not do this (the Great Firewall of China).
4. Bytedance (TikTok's parent company, and directly controlled by the CCP) has donated substantial amounts of money to various US-based political caucuses.
Something I find odd is the focus on “data security” in basically all media coverage and politician statements. Is that what’s at issue, or is it the influence the CCP has over people through tik tok? Securing customer data isn’t really what’s at issue… It’s the fact that the CCP have one algorithm for its own people that pushes and popularizes science, economics, and other good subjects but for other countries like the USA it’s basically the polar opposite.
Data security is a red herring. The true danger is that the CCP and business are one and the same, the CCP is in a Cold War with the USA, and the CCP will do whatever it can to gain any advantage it.
> Something I find odd is the focus on “data security” in basically alal media coverage and politician statements. Is that what’s at issue, or is it the influence the CCP has over people through tik tok?
Notice, for the sake of high level rationalism, that this is a false dichotomy.
CCP influence over TikTok is a subset of the bigger problems:
- TikTok, or the medium it operates on, is extremely persuasive, it's the most potent way to spread ideas from one mind to another (for example: the beliefs you hold about China's intents, which you do not actually possess knowledge of).
- The US government does not have a means to exert control over it like the other social media giants.
Well, consider the capabilities of the two platforms, as well as the demographics of users, and so forth and so on.
> any studies/links about that?
Not that I know of, but I have a feeling these discussions have been held at very high levels of the government and various 3 letter agencies, resulting in the mass theatrical spectacle we saw in Congress the other day.....did you watch any of that? Is it not blatantly obvious that in this case, "democracy" is an illusion?
The part where the conversation format, participants, and content was clearly not at a level appropriate for a matter of this importance. High school kids could do MUCH better than what we saw there. If corporations were run as incompetently as much of the government, they'd get crushed by competitors.
Say the CCP invades Taiwan and the United States does not look too kindly on that and helps Taiwan. They could brick a large proportion of phones in the United Sates or maybe just monitor where US military service personnel are. e.g.:
Republicans hate it because they lost both the president and the senate by thin margins due to, arguably, too many young people deciding to vote.
You would think Democrats would welcome more young voters, but only a few do (AOC is one..), because they are corporate democrats and don't really want young people to vote in primaries.
Mainstream media will be on board since they don't want another competitor.
I do not understand how anyone can listen to cenk uygur for more than 30 seconds and believe he is worth listening to. He sounds like an emotional teenager who just got into leftist politics and wants to stick it to his conservative parents.
I do enjoy compilations of him freaking out though.
At least it's worth listening to a variety of points of view. Yes, Cenk is annoying, but there are not so many far-left news sources available in the US these days.
My personal approval of TikTok ban efforts is based on a more nuanced view: yes TikTok is not currently nefarious, but in the event of conflict with China, it will almost certainly be an outlet of CCP propoganda beamed straight into the US, and that is exactly when banning it would be the most politically contentious. Better to ban it now and not when the CCP uses it to influence domestic politics, at which point the optics of banning TikTok will come with the optics of banning political speech.
Since the sudden apparent concern for users' privacy IMO casts doubt on the intent, I think discussion on this issue should start with determining whether we should take those concerns at face value. Is there a legitimate concern for privacy or is it just another form of economic warfare? Are the governments protecting you as an individual or are they protecting FAANG?
There is little point in discussing this if we are all just pretending that it is an issue that it's not.
I wish our leadership would be more direct about their intentions.
Don't dance around with claims of 'national security' and 'spying' and 'protect the children' which seem to always lack vital details on how they expect to use their technological foothold to... mobilize 82 million screen-obsessed teenagers to march across the Pacific and take back Taiwan?
Don't propose bullshit "well, they could keep operating if they just..." standards that you either aren't going to honor, or are inherently unfulfillable. It's farce in the same vein as expecting Saddam Hussein to turn over the WMDs.
Just tell us "the fix is in, we have no interest in actually getting to a mutually agreeable consensus." Then we can ask exactly why.
Is it a single casualty as part of a long-term strategy of antagonizing a new Cold War with China? Or is it a smaller game-- responding because American social-media companies are butthurt that they can't capture TikTok's appeal?
To be fair, the distinction here is about actions by a government, versus actions by private entities. Opposition to the government banning a website does not necessarily mean that you would oppose private companies refusing to provide service to a bad actor.
At the behest of the government, no doubt. The Twitter Files show that the real situation is a lot more messy.
Large internet "infrastructure" businesses are in partnership with government officials, so I have no reason to believe that the Parler takedown was anything but political censorship. Maybe not technically, but definitely in spirit and effect - and after all, that's all that really matters.
The internet is largely made up of private companies. If Comcast decides to not route traffic to you there is nothing you can do. Private companies are the ones who decide if the internet is open or closed. The government can influence these companies behaviour, but companies technically can do what they want.
When I was growing up behind the Iron Curtain, we had a joke: in communism, the companies are owned by the government. In capitalism, it is the other way around.
On this topic, the point is, that something is banned by someone with the appropriate means. It doesn't really matter whether it is government or private enterprise, because they meet in the backroom and coordinate their steps anyway. In the end, it doesn't matter who's initiative it was, who did the execution, but the purpose and result itself.
Parler was taken down because the companies that hosted their services no longer wished to because of the content on the platform. This is complete incomparable with a piece of legislation.
The premise that the Internet is open or was ever open, is fairly absurd given the actual history in question. It started out nation state controlled (ie restricted), and the core difference between then and now is that those controls have become highly localized down to a given nation (and often entirely localized; versus the US previously having dominant control over much of the whole of the Internet).
To argue it's a betrayal of the open Internet, is the same as pretending that somehow nations weren't going to apply their real-world laws, beliefs, economic or political restrictions on the Internet space just as they do in their physical space. Whether we're talking about moral/religious type matters, basic speech issues, human rights issues, commerce/trade, and so on.
The Europeans often think the US is crazy for having something reasonably close to true free speech. There must be restrictions they'll proclaim. Britain has far tighter controls over offending public officials online for example. No open Internet for the Europeans? They'll universally disagree with the premise.
To make that argument, you have to say that every single localized control over the Internet is a betrayal of the open Internet. And even if I agree that that is true, good luck, because it's going to get dramatically worse over the next decade (and all 50 US states are likely to get further into the regulation party).
Morally the US should ban TikTok just on economic reasons alone, in response to China not allowing various foreign competing products into the country (in the social media category in this case). Not just ban it in the US, we should lobby for its economic wipeout across all spheres in which the US has economic influence. The US is in a severe confrontation with China (economically, politically, culturally, etc), and it's only in the 2nd or 3rd inning, there's no sense in pretending at this juncture. That confrontation ends, one way or another, in Taiwan.
The problem is that an open internet is incompatible with [the politics of] the world we live in.
In that world, state and other actors seek to use contemporary surveillance data to drive sentiment and behavior in targeted populations. To put it directly, we (the US) are engaged in memetic warfare both internally and externally.
Tik Tok is correctly being singled out as a singularly powerful platform for surveillance of and control of Americans by a state rival.
Should we come to war (e.g. over Taiwan) hot or cold, it's not viable to have a Tik Tok and its well-publicized ability to determine what goes viral, in the hands of the foe.
This is at heart a conflict between aspirational principles which are incompatible with the reality of human nature and the tools we have built as force multipliers.
open internet does not live in a vacuum. and the world is not perfect.
China has banned so many US applications starting more than one decade ago.
a free and open platform only works when all players in general are following similar rules, if a few big players exploit the system and you do not act about it, you're a fool and doomed.
One example is that, you're rich and liberal and you feel for the poor, that does not mean you will share your luxury house with them or pay more tax voluntarily, point is that, there is never a pure open internet, and there is no pure anything, everything has a limit.
The ban is not having an issue between China and US. US can do whatever to China, and only need balance potential retaliation. There is no moral debate between countries, just power play.
The ban is an issue between US government/politicians and US people. There are some nominal moral contract between the government and people, and the ban need to be justified and satisfied by people's moral belief, such as open internet. Without sufficient moral justification, people's trust against the government is at risk.
If you parrot "tiktok bad, china bad" in response to any pushback then you're hopeless and/or one of warner/thune's paid shills for the restrict act. We need privacy legislation that affects all sites not just tiktok.
If you care so much about america then stop helping corrupt politicians turn it into the so-very-hated-china.
By that logic isn't the requirement for sites to use SSL (for security/safety reasons) otherwise a huge warning/blocking page is displayed also a "betrayal of the open internet?"
Is having a password on my wifi a betrayal of the open net? Me having a firewall/nat? Let the devices be freeeee
I find it rather alarming that, at least in my social circles, those defending TikTok tend to overlap with those people alarmed at the operations by Russian 'troll farms' on Facebook during the US presidential elections.
I had presumed that the tiktok ban was simply "we only want companies that are domestic or from allied countries to monitor and manipulate US citizens"
...which kind of makes sense given how easy it is for a social media platform to deliberately influence peoples' thoughts and feelings.
Saying we should tolerate the influence of a totalitarian state over a major communication platform (https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/10/21/more-americ...) in the name of the First Amendment and democratic values is setting up our democracy to be weakened and fragmented even more than it already is.
We already know that domestically-controlled networks like Facebook directly contributed to electing a demagogue President who tried to disrupt the peaceful transition of power. We'd be morons to accept the same thing but under the influence of an autocratic country which has clear intentions to erode American influence and power.
The whole “ban TikTok” saga reminds me of the South Park episode “Chinpokomon”, where the Japanese were getting Americans hooked on a parody of Pokémon because of their not-so-subtle designs on taking over the world.
TikTok (and other surveillance apps) are what is the betrayal of the open internet.
Banning TikTok alone will not fix it.
But, it is a good start. Banning everything from China would be a better start, considering the insane asymmetry the CCP enforces on everything, and the degree to which they consistently and systematically lie, cheat, spy, and steal from their trading "partners" in order to gain military advantage (and no, don't start with the false equivalency about US companies' surveillance capitalism; although it is also evil, it isn't even close to proportional).
Yes, we've got to fix all of the exploitative surveillance, but banning technology seeded by another nation-state actor like CCP because of it's both data harvesting and asymmetric warfare capabilities does not threaten the open internet.
And certainly, since CCP has banned most US technology because they won't do their dirty work of surveilling and spreading disinformation in their population, banning all CCP tech (which is all China tech) in response is a good step.
Exactly. Most people don't realize that this isn't about free speech and banning some harmless meme videos, but about information warfare and protecting American citizens from hostile aggression.
In the age of social media, information has been weaponized to an alarming extent, with the power to influence masses, incite violence and topple governments. Those Russian troll farms and Chinese bots and CCP shills aren't just doing this for the lulz; they're paid agents working for a government who's found that the easiest and cheapest way to harm your enemy is via the same channels they've built and opened for everyone to use. The East and West have been at war for decades now, and these operations no longer require sophisticated IT knowledge and expensive hackers; they only need thousands of agents willing to spread disinformation and propaganda on the internet. This sows division and panic, which eventually causes societies to crumble from the inside out. There's no doubt in my mind that the mass hysteria we've seen in the past decade has been stirred in part by foreign agents.
I encourage everyone to watch this interview of a former KGB agent[1]. He explains the power of psyops and information warfare. This was well known and in widespread use in the 1980s. Imagine how sophisticated these operations have become today with the internet.
The betrayal occurred when American tech companies assisted the CCP in creating their national firewall, creating an imbalance in the information war which has yet to be redressed.
I own Meta stock, but that’s not why I want the ban. I want the ban because they ban our anchor platforms. They do that not because of propaganda like everyone says. They do it for long term economic advantage. The more the world relies on Chinese infrastructure, the more they rule the world. The US wants to keep ruling the world. I’m on the side of the U.S. not because I’m patriotic so much as I live here, and I’m rational.
The open internet is a mirage. There used to be barriers against distributing encryption, there’s bans for copyright violations, there’s blocks for adult imagery and revolutionary (‘terrorist’) speech.
There is no such thing as a truly ‘open’ internet and the real internet is open enough that any constructed really open network will be overrun by content no one wants to host, like racist extremism and pedophilia.
What are all the teens/20 yos going to do when they wake up one morning and TikTok is turned off?
I’m not saying that TikTok or other social media is great, but it would certainly be an interesting social experiment to suddenly force millions of kids to go cold Turkey on something that they’re addicted to.
Maybe they’ll turn to other social media, maybe they’ll start painting, maybe they’ll burn down a city.
> The claims that TikTok will become a covert Chinese Communist Party (CCP) propaganda channel are similarly possible but hypothetical.
Isn't the claim the opposite ? tiktok china (douyin) is all about propaganda, education, tech, nationalism, success, &c. while the international version is dumb challenges, addictive content, memes &co
> Douyin vs TikTok also differs in terms of popular content. The most popular on Douyin is definitely educational content, with videos helping to improve skills and grow personally, while on Tik Tok the most popular is narrating videos, which is a great opportunity for artists, singers, and music producers. Therefore, global TikTok is more art-based, with musicians, dancers, and so on, while Douyin is skills and lifestyle-tips-based, with automatic voiceovers with no personal touch.
> “It’s almost like they recognize that technology is influencing kids’ development, and they make their domestic version a spinach version of TikTok, while they ship the opium version to the rest of the world,” Tristan Harris, a former Google employee, and advocate for social media ethics, said of China’s approach to TikTok.
I get almost no music or dance based content on TikTok. It's algorithm almost exclusively returns videos on topics I'm interested in. Usually a mix of politics, science, cooking, crafts, cat, and couples content.
The simple explanation as to why content popularity varies across countries seems to be that there are cultural differences at play. Frankly, it feels like a lot of people are simply uncomfortable with seeing their cultural values reflected back at them.
I have no hate for TikTok, I'm sure it's useful for many. But I tend to get quickly bored of echo-chambers (HN included sometimes), where if I like some content, doesn't mean I just want to see content like that.
I need to "reset" my history of YouTube sometimes after I "spend" watching 3-4 videos of some topic, and now my YouTube is overrun with just content related to that, instead of different topics.
TikTok is guilty of the same, where after using it for a week or two, I basically see no other content than content related to a couple of videos I watched longer than others.
I liked how the internet was before, where I stumbled upon content wildly different from each other, and could acquire new tastes, instead of just being served what the algorithm have decided I should surely forever like.
I agree that it can be pretty samey at times. Although, I've found it much better at delivering a wider variety of content than Youtube, where my recommendations consist of videos that:
* I watched once, 12 years ago.
* Sit in recommended for a week or more, despite my obvious lack of interest in them.
* Relate to some subset of recent topics.
It's strange how static Youtube recommendations appear to be as well. I often see the same set of Youtube Shorts for a few days at a time.
I do miss when forums were more popular. It's nice when you stumble across one that's still going.
China has passed a law to allow user to disable algorithmic recommendations. It probably is not in place yet, but that's may be something you are looking for.
What is really want is a algorithm that does the opposite of what current social media does. "You liked this content? Here is some content that is on the opposite side of what you might like, just for you to discover new stuff", but that's less about regulation and legislation and more about companies willing to do something different than the rest.
sounds like you just want to a different product. This is interesting by the way. I wonder how easy to use platform as a content source and run your algorithms on top of it to produce things you like. Maybe they will never expose their data, but it is interesting to think about it though.
IMO, the big problem of this world is fueled by the "like" button concept. The internet would be a much nicer place if we replace "like" with "dislike". "like" typically push people to the extreme, and "dislike" will push people to the middle.
> Someone at Tiktok decided that I had to receive this kind of content, no matter what, because of my age and location and sex probably. They were pushing an agenda.
"We need to ban TikTok to protect users and the open internet!"
1 year later
"Keeping a service owned by the CCP that spies on people in hostile countries and purposefully feeds them garbage and incorrect information is against the open internet!"
What? The people here defending TikTok (myself included) are probably more likely to not be fans of Silicon Valley. Why wouldn't Silicon Valley support the ban? It gives them back their monopoly over Americans' data.
It turns out, the "open internet" is, in general, a terrible idea.
Edit: I'm serious. From a national and personal security perspective, as unpalatable as it is, China has the right idea - what sane country allows any stranger from anywhere in the world detailed access to any of their citizens' thoughts and decision making processes?
The people at Verge should interview of the victims of the dangerous TikTok challenges such as the ones that have killed people or left them disabled for life.
They should also should condemn the controversial content such as questionable dance videos from underage teenagers.
And how depressed teenagers are as a result of using TikTok and Instagram.
Or how the entire thing is run by the CCP.
But of course they don't care about any of that. Even during a time where CCP is invading US airspace.
I never saw publications like The Verge proclaiming that e.g. the ban of Parler was a betrayal of the open internet. Either the term open internet is to be interpreted as the internet which reflects my ideology or (to paraphrase a term made popular in the early days of the public internet) my way or no digital highway or there is just not enough money to be had from tiny players like the aforementioned Parler. No matter what it is it does not bode well for these TikTok-astroturfers.
Checking Wikipedia's Perennial Sources list [1] I notice that The Verge is listed as 'green' with a green checkmark, i.e. 'reliable': There is broad consensus that The Verge is a reliable source for use in articles relating to technology, science, and automobiles.. Here reliable probably serves the same function as open in the title of this thread, i.e. that which follows my ideology.
Firstly, the Verge is trash source, no better than the Daily Mail in their reporting alongside their affiliate marketing grifting with clickbait.
Secondly, a better solution is a multi-billion dollar fine for TikTok's egregious invasion of privacy and the like, worse than the other tech companies and they also got massive fines.
Either TikTok pays a multi-billion dollar in the US or they exit the US market. This is much better than a ban and a win-win-win for TikTok, US gov. / regulators and the users and the ball is in TikTok's court.
The threat is the CCP using TikTok for algorithm-directed propaganda, extortion based on video history, and anything else you can imagine.
A one-time fine doesn't fix that, and you can't get the oversight to make sure consumer data is protected because you're dealing with a state actor. But maybe you're thinking of some sort of recurring fine, like a "Sell Americans As A Service?" SAAAS? Innovations like that could help with the national deficit.
> Secondly, a better solution is a multi-billion dollar fine for TikTok's egregious invasion of privacy and the like, worse than the other tech companies and they also got massive fines.
Where is the evidence that TikTok has been much worse than their peers in this regard?
The congressional hearing was hilarious. I thought the TikTok CEO did great, and the vast majority of questions Congress asked were pants-on-head ridiculous. They are so out of touch.
To be honest it sounds like you've only read the titles of those articles.
Your Futurism article directly contradicts the claim that any of this behaviour is unique to TikTok:
> This isn't the first time that a major social platform has been caught spying on specific individuals. In the past, Facebook and Uber have both been in the hot seat for tracking the locations of journalists and political figures.
The byline of your June 2022 Buzzfeed article implies that TikTok was already actively working to remove foreign access to the data:
> an external auditor hired to help TikTok close off Chinese access to sensitive information, like Americans’ birthdays and phone numbers.
This largely appears to have born out based on the PBS article regarding the recent congressional hearing[0]:
> As of October (2022), all new U.S. user data was being stored inside the country. The company started deleting all historic U.S. user data from non-Oracle servers this month, in a process expected to be completed this year, Chew said.
> access to U.S. data is managed by U.S. employees through a separate entity called TikTok U.S. Data Security, which is run independently of ByteDance and monitored by outside observers.
The hearing itself was mostly evidence of how unfit many of your elected officials are for office. From a previous comment of mine:
> Buddy Carter confidently believes that TikTok is tracking it's users emotional response through pupil dilation but has no comprehension of why you'd need to identify someone's eyes to put a motion tracking filter over them[2]. According to Mr. Carter, TikTok isn't doing enough to protect younger users but thinks that asking a user their age and checking whether or not the users public videos align with the age they declared is "creepy".
> Dan Crenshaw used his time to state that Chinese law requires it's citizens to co-operate with their national intelligence agencies. That might have been a good point if not for the fact that TikTok's CEO, the person Crenshaw was questioning, is not Chinese.
> Richard Hudson proved himself unable of forming a coherent question as to whether TikTok attempts to access other devices on a WiFi network. Instead asking "So if I have a TikTok app on my phone and my phone is on my home WiFi network, does TikTok access that network?"
So TikTok not only DID admit to have foreign access to US data, but also lied and denied previously about it then according to the leak in the Buzzfeed New article.
This only proves that TikTok should deservedly get a billion dollar fine from the regulators as I said before, rather than trying to evade responsibility and join the likes of Facebook who did get fined for privacy violations, if they want to continue to operate in the US.
If Facebook can't get away with the fines, neither should TikTok.
> So TikTok not only DID admit to have foreign access to US data, but also lied and denied previously about it then according to the leak in the Buzzfeed New article.
They never claimed their own employees didn't have access to the data. They claimed that access to the data was controlled and it was stored in data centres not subject to China's jurisdiction[0]:
> First, let's talk about data privacy and security. We store all TikTok US user data in the United States, with backup redundancy in Singapore. Our data centers are located entirely outside of China, and none of our data is subject to Chinese law. Further, we have a dedicated technical team focused on adhering to robust cybersecurity policies, and data privacy and security practices.
Furthermore, the Buzzfeed article acknowledges that the "foreign access" was typically in the service of restricting that access:
> In the recordings, the vast majority of situations where China-based staff accessed US user data were in service of Project Texas's aim to halt this data access.
The actions of TikTok don't appear to be that of a bad faith actor. They responded to concerns about data privacy by moving customer data from their own data centres to those of an American cloud provider and have shown that they're working to restrict access to that data further.
> This only proves that TikTok should deservedly get a billion dollar fine from the regulators as I said before, rather than trying to evade responsibility and join the likes of Facebook who did get fined for privacy violations, if they want to continue to operate in the US.
What regulation did TikTok break?
> If Facebook can't get away with the fines, neither should TikTok.
Facebook wasn't fined for allowing internal employees in other countries access to internal data. They were fined for spunking that data all over anyone that winked at them. In the absence of a data breach, I'm not aware of which US law TikTok would have been breaking by allowing specific employees access to internal data.
> They never claimed their own employees didn't have access to the data. They claimed that access to the data was controlled and it was stored in data centres not subject to China's jurisdiction[0]:
That is a clear denial by TikTok since they were already under investigation at the time and denied having such access to US data overseas, then the leak demonstrated that they can (and already did) have access to that data. Showing me a 2019 newsroom post already tells they haven't learned their lesson about overseas data access.
> The actions of TikTok don't appear to be that of a bad faith actor. They responded to concerns about data privacy by moving customer data from their own data centres to those of an American cloud provider and have shown that they're working to restrict access to that data further.
So making it possible for them TO access non-public US user data overseas after saying they couldn't? (and admittedly they already did). Which they did again, when employees accessed the data to trace the source leaks on US journalists and reporters overseas. [0]
With such access overseas also explains why those employees at ByteDance got fired, confirming that ByteDance is able to do it regardless.
> What regulation did TikTok break?
US privacy regulations, like they already have done years before [0]. They are no stranger to getting fined by the FTC, as with Facebook who already faced and paid a massive multi-billion dollar fine.
> Facebook wasn't fined for allowing internal employees in other countries access to internal data. They were fined for spunking that data all over anyone that winked at them. In the absence of a data breach, I'm not aware of which US law TikTok would have been breaking by allowing specific employees access to internal data.
Both cases are unprecedented with the way that user data was handled and accessed. TikTok's case alone is worthy of an extensive investigation by the FTC, since not only they have denied this and then later found to have lied after the leak, it even more deservedly should receive a multi-billion dollar fine with this case as with Facebook has done.
There are no hiding places or defences left for TikTok to fall on. If they can't pay, well they can exit the US market themselves.
The TikTok ban has very little do with TikTok. It's yet another Patriot Act (now, the Restrict Act [2]) style back door to slip in some seriously heinous legislation that could find you fined to the tune of millions, or worse, thrown in jail for 20 years.
> A person who willfully commits, willfully attempts to commit, or willfully conspires to commit, or aids or abets in the commission of an unlawful act described in subsection (a) shall, upon conviction, be fined not more than $1,000,000, or if a natural person, may be imprisoned for not more than 20 years, or both.
I do view TikTok as a covert military campaign (ideological subversion) and do think it should be limited in the West, however, not via this bill.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fgh2dFngFsg
[2] https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/senate-bill/686...