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FCC commissioner says government should ban TikTok

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Re: FCC commissioner says government should ban TikTok

#101

Post by bern4444 »

trunnell wrote: post #97
bern4444 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Couldn't agree more. Lots of responses about 'I only see funny comedians' or 'Tik Tok is only about dumb entertaining videos', etc. This misses the forest through the trees. The dumb videos are the mechanism through which a foreign and often hostile world power is able to create a profile on millions of americans and learn everything about them. All this data is fed back into other Chinese government groups and organ…

You're right, this is probably the main problem (rather than the ability to change the content on TikTok.) So you're implying that their future influence operations could be enhanced and better targeted by using profile-level viewing history on TikTok, similar to how Cambridge Analytica used FB profile data to target political advertising?

Exactly, TikTok is for information gathering and profiling so the government can know what swaths of the population to target more effectively for whatever goal they have.

What's valuable is all the information they can gather: contacts, age group, political affiliations, interest, geographic location, race, gender, interests.

Everything that happens in TikTok is monitored and tracked even the in app web viewer that shows when you click a link. All activity in that is tracked (the page, duration, links you visit etc).

These problems of security/privacy obviously exist for other foreign and domestic companies, TikTok is one of the most egregious and more threatening because the US has no recourse against it. At least if it were a US company, they could become subject to US laws requiring better data management, anonymization, require deletions on request etc.

Being a foreign owned and operated entity means it is subject to no existing US laws and will never be subject to future US laws.

Re: FCC commissioner says government should ban TikTok

#102

Post by nicolashahn »

lostmsu wrote: post #99
nicolashahn wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is a bigger problem, from the article: > Carr highlighted concerns about U.S. data flowing back to China and the risk of a state actor using TikTok to covertly influence political processes in the United States.

Is influencing political processes illegal?

Is that something we want a foreign borderline hostile state to be doing?

Re: FCC commissioner says government should ban TikTok

#103

Post by nicolashahn »

pasquinelli wrote: post #91
nicolashahn wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think preventing the CCP from accessing private data of American citizens probably falls under normal statecraft actions

what private data are they getting? the data american citizens publish on tiktok?

Data which can distinguish a citizen's political leanings so they can serve the proper content to influence elections, harvested just through the data from their viewing habits

Re: FCC commissioner says government should ban TikTok

#104

Post by kevinventullo »

trunnell wrote: post #89
kevinventullo wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My TikTok feed is mostly stand up comics and absurd sketches from American 20-somethings. I think characterizing TT as “internal communication infrastructure” is a massive stretch. That said, I could see the argument that what TT chooses to censor or uprank is a kind of soft power that could influence American attitudes over time. But I’m not sure this is any more significant than say, Chinese influence on what Disne…

Right - it's complicated and nuanced. Some Disney censorship is probably benign, right? This is the argument made by the crowd urging inaction. Consider the recent example of John Cena, an actor in the "Fast and Furious" franchise, apologizing to China for calling Taiwan a country. Is that apology good, bad, or irrelevant? Probably irrelevant by itself, I'd say. But what about China's ability to coerce John Cena into…

I think it doesn’t have to be coercive or even conscious. Basically there’s a million content creators out there saying different things. On their own volition, some will say stuff the Chinese government likes, some will say stuff the Chinese government doesn’t like. The former get upranked, the latter get downranked. The outcome is it seems like “everyone” believes the former.

Re: FCC commissioner says government should ban TikTok

#105

Post by _chu1 »

colechristensen wrote: post #81
mc32 wrote: post #5

TikTok is the new anodyne entertainment that is worse for youth than stale TV was for previous generations because it encourages harmful behavior. If it were only the time wasting aspect it would not be so bad --the bad part is propagating harmful behavior to unrealized adults, specifically wrong self-help information.

Every generation has its hysterics about the thing ruining the children. No matter how much you ban things, teenagers aren’t going to have the mindset of people in their 30s, but for some reason some folks just can’t see this and will keep trying over and over and over. TikTok, Rap, MTV, Rock Music, Jazz, marijuana… etc. etc. etc. are not the reason your teenager doesn’t think like you.

Rap, MTV, Rock, Jazz, even marijuana wasn't controlled by Communist China

Re: FCC commissioner says government should ban TikTok

#106

Post by HWR_14 »

kibwen wrote: post #37

Just like last time this came up, what actual law is the executive branch accusing TikTok of breaking? I'm no fan of TikTok nor of the CCP and its asymmetric corporate warfare, but the executive branch must not be allowed to invent its own laws.

This is not a claim they are breaking the law. This is publicly asking Congress to change the law.

Re: FCC commissioner says government should ban TikTok

#107

Post by afiori »

lostmsu wrote: post #99
nicolashahn wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is a bigger problem, from the article: > Carr highlighted concerns about U.S. data flowing back to China and the risk of a state actor using TikTok to covertly influence political processes in the United States.

Is influencing political processes illegal?

Foreigners cannot donate to political campaigns in the US

Re: FCC commissioner says government should ban TikTok

#108

Post by afiori »

pasquinelli wrote: post #91
nicolashahn wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think preventing the CCP from accessing private data of American citizens probably falls under normal statecraft actions

what private data are they getting? the data american citizens publish on tiktok?

Cambridge Analytica showed that you need surprisingly little* data to learn how to influence people.

* still a lot

Re: FCC commissioner says government should ban TikTok

#109

Post by Workaccount2 »

pasquinelli wrote: post #88
Workaccount2 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't wait until China invades Taiwan and their is a statistically significant shift of gen-z support for Chinese imperialism, or more likely, support of american isolationism.

> or more likely, support of american isolationism. we can only hope.

Only hope that China is the world police?
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