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Amazon says email banning TikTok from employee phones was ‘sent in error’

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Re: Amazon says email banning TikTok from employee phones was ‘sent in error’

#191
In 2018, Bytedance CEO released a public statement after an incident with the CCP censor. In that statement, he promised that Bytedance apps would strengthen "the work of Party construction" and "socialist core values" etc.

https://chinamediaproject.org/2018/04/11/tech-shame-in-the-n...

I don't know how Bytedance as a company can serve CCP interests AND claim to be independent of CCP interference at the same time.

TikTok is a good product, but it may not be a safe product.

More on the dystopian practices of Douyin (TikTok in China): https://twitter.com/Izzy_Niu/status/1280906443273768960 https://twitter.com/JoshuaDummer/status/1280877750245453828

Re: Amazon says email banning TikTok from employee phones was ‘sent in error’

#192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What recourse do you mean, exactly?

One can successfully sue Facebook, etc. for violating privacy rights - https://techcrunch.com/2020/01/29/facebook-will-pay-550-mill...

That's great for Illinois citizens. Federal legislators are bought off to prevent this from happening nationally.

Re: Amazon says email banning TikTok from employee phones was ‘sent in error’

#193
post #172

I feel like this TikTok backlash is so overblown. I don't think TikTok is spying on US consumers/business, and I don't think TikTok is sharing any US private data with CCP... I believe this because there's no evidence to the contrary, and out of principle you shouldn't assume malintent. In fact, TikTok explicitly left Hong Kong because if they didn't they would have to share private data with CCP to comply with new l…

>It feels like the negative reaction to TikTok is so politicized and just comes from a "China bad" attitude.

The Chinese government is actual, literal, evil.

That is not "PoLiTiCaL" or "China Bad".

It is indisputable that the Chinese government:

* is running concentration camps that house over a million people

* exploits forced labor, a polite term for actual literal slavery

* imprisons people arbitrarily for anti-government sentiment

Anyone who says "buh buh facebookz and NSA" to excuse or minimize the actions of the Chinese Communist Party is so incapable of rational thought that they should be shunned and ridiculed.

You are not put on a government watchlist for comparing the President of the United States to a cartoon character and you are not arrested for subversive thought for selling anti-government books.

And no, YouTube telling bigots to GTFO is not the same thing as being arrested for selling books.

The CEO of ByteDance (the firm that owns TikTok) is on the record has having said that it is his intent to deeply cooperate with the Chinese Communist Party to promote its ideals and policies.

It is probably best to take him at his word.

I invite anyone who disagrees to fly to Beijing and walk around Tian An Men Square carrying this book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1423135792/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_U_...

I will buy the book for you.

edit: or better yet, take a flight to any city in China. Book a room in a hotel and go down to the pool and write out one page about the TianJin explosion, questioning whether or not the offical death count is correct. Then go to a print shop and make a couple hundred copies. Then stand on any busy street corner with a sign that reads: "questions about the TianJin explosion, please take one" (in Chinese, of course).

And here's the kicker: video it and upload it to TikTok.

I won't do it because the Chinese government is evil and I'm scared.

Re: Amazon says email banning TikTok from employee phones was ‘sent in error’

#194
post #109

Looks like TikTok is slowly imploding. I know there's plenty of political implications and a lot of discussion here is on that (which is interesting in its own right), but I wonder if there's opportunity here for a potential competitor.

What does tiktok have that IG stories or SnapChat does not provide? It appears to me that TikTok is just a perpetuation of exclusivity in Social Networks (the same way kids exited FB when their parents signed up) ...

From what I've heard (besides the points mentioned here) the dubbing/scene editing capabilities are on-point (which is the big point of Tiktok

Re: Amazon says email banning TikTok from employee phones was ‘sent in error’

#195
If I had to judge between whether I wanted TikTok or corporate email on my phone, it wouldn't be just about the email. I could live without that. What I really liked, especially back when we actually went into offices, was that I had my calendar available without opening up my laptop, and that it showed the next place I needed to be right on my wrist.

Re: Amazon says email banning TikTok from employee phones was ‘sent in error’

#196
post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, not to defend Tik-Tok, China, or spyware in general, but it's ironic that nobody has a problem with Google, Facebook, and other American companies tracking everything people do, but when a Chinese company starts doing it, it's suddenly a big problem. But then again, TikTok probably doesn't answer their subpoenas...

[flagged]

First of all, that assumes serving ads is somehow better than spreading communist ideals. I'm skeptical, and I doubt there are convincing arguments for either side that don't rely on people's personal preferences.

Second, you're ignoring that many US politicians and government agencies use web services like Twitter and Facebook to spread their own propaganda and control what people see. Unless somebody wants to argue that Donald Trump tweeting "POLITICAL WITCH HUNT"[1] isn't spreading propaganda, or that Facebook flagging political ads is somehow 100% completely unbiased.

Obviously countries have some control over the media and propaganda and manipulation their citizens get to see, but lets not pretend ours is better just because it's ours.

[1] https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/12812603292473999...

Re: Amazon says email banning TikTok from employee phones was ‘sent in error’

#197
post #164
post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China bans American apps. Why wouldn't we do the same?

Because we're not a totalitarian state built on the backbone of censorship and information control. Yet.

So you will allow an app whose company is tied to a "totalitarian state built on the backbone of censorship and information control" to steal your data? You cannot have a company in China without agreeing to the terms and conditions of the CCP. The CCP is the totalitarian state you are so against. They are actively collecting your data. In realtime. And you don't want that app to be banned because you have a moral ideal to uphold. Great logic!

Re: Amazon says email banning TikTok from employee phones was ‘sent in error’

#198
Is TikTok officially the scapegoat now? Sure it's bad, but it seems like an awful lot of attention is being brought to it compared to many of the other companies (and governments!) that are doing... the exact same shit, and often more so.

Re: Amazon says email banning TikTok from employee phones was ‘sent in error’

#199
post #163

Jeff Bezos, Amazon CEO, got his phone hacked and embarrassing text messages stolen off it from a vulnerability in the video parsing library in WhatsApp in a message sent to him by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in 2018. So Amazon as a company is now very sensitive to what applications are installed on staff devices and how data on those devices can be extracted from vulnerabilities in other installed apps. Th…

is the jury still out on whether MBS knowingly sent him that hack? that is, not to put too fine a point on it, a fast path to becoming even more of an international pariah than he already is

The jury is still out on whether there was even a hack to begin with. The analysis team claimed they couldn't decrypt WhatsApp messages, so they never actually analyzed any malware at all. HN called them out on that failure:

https://github.com/ddz/whatsapp-media-decrypt

They never responded with an actual malware analysis on the file they claimed might be responsible.

The only evidence left after that was a claim of higher data usage which has to be weighed against the alternate explanation for how this got out:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/martingiles/2020/01/24/report-b...

Re: Amazon says email banning TikTok from employee phones was ‘sent in error’

#200
post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, not to defend Tik-Tok, China, or spyware in general, but it's ironic that nobody has a problem with Google, Facebook, and other American companies tracking everything people do, but when a Chinese company starts doing it, it's suddenly a big problem. But then again, TikTok probably doesn't answer their subpoenas...

[flagged]

Building profiles on people is not illegal and neither is espousing communist ideology. Hundreds of US based organizations do both.
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