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The FBI alleges TikTok poses national security concerns

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Re: The FBI alleges TikTok poses national security concerns

#251

Post by spacemadness »

aeze wrote: post #228

I have a couple questions: 1) How is TikTok worse than other social media apps? Both in terms of privacy and "the algorithm". 2) What another country's government does with my data is far less important to me than what my government is doing with my data. Am I wrong for thinking that?

I’m not making strong claims, but I think it’s a fairly simple formula.

1) Do you believe social media algorithms can have large negative outcomes concerning human social behavior?

2) Does the entity controlling those algorithms then matter assuming 1 is true?

Re: The FBI alleges TikTok poses national security concerns

#252

Post by glitchc »

darkteflon wrote: post #12

Utterly ridiculous to allow TikTok to continue to operate in the current geopolitical climate. China is a surveillance autocracy and has been engaged in adversarial conduct against the West for years - including extensive psyops. Shut it down, yesterday. Build a local clone so that people can get their fix or whatever. China sure as shit doesn’t allow its citizens to cough up their personal information for algorithmi…

You know not what you ask for. You are giving up freedom for safety.

How do we cut the app off? Remove it from the app store? People will post apps disguising a Tiktok connection. Block connections to servers in China? Doing that means creating a great firewall controlling what sorts of connections are made to American clients. If we get there, China will have proved that their method of government is better than ours. They will have already won.

Re: The FBI alleges TikTok poses national security concerns

#253

Post by computerfriend »

xwolfi wrote: post #250
computerfriend wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You think the CCP are planning a forced takeover of Western democracy? Forced or otherwise, yes. This is the whole point of the "making the world safe for dictators" thing.

But are you sure you're not being manipulated a bit ? China and many dictatorships, already have enough problems ruling their own shit, you think they want to like ... take over americans ? What does that even mean, how can they even do that when they cant even take Taiwan ? The "Republic of China" Taiwan... All they seem to want is make sure you dont talk to their own sheeps while you focus on yours lol

I am extremely sure, thank you.

Re: The FBI alleges TikTok poses national security concerns

#254

Post by 63 »

II2II wrote: post #76

There are a couple of things we have to be careful of in these discussions: one is that the US has strong motivations for (economic) protectionism. We should be focussing on evidence of wrongdoing, not innuendo. The second is how the accusations are being made. Too much of it reeks of borderline racism and there seems to be an uptick in outright racism against Chinese people. Remember, it is acts of the Chinese gover…

I don't think it's racism for the most part, but I do agree that some people seem to have some incredibly strong feelings about China without great justification. I wonder how much of it is caused by the US's anticommunist history.

Maybe it's right to dislike China for ideological reasons. But even if that is the case, isn't banning Tiktok hypocritical? If you dislike China because they censor information coming from other countries, don't follow the will of their citizens, and regulate speech, it appears to me that urging an executive agency to ban Tiktok is doing those same things in the US.

I genuinely don't see much harm in Tiktok but plenty of people on HN seem to hate it just because it's from China and that doesn't seem like a valid reason to me.

Re: The FBI alleges TikTok poses national security concerns

#255

Post by standardUser »

NickC25 wrote: post #247

I have no idea if it's a legitimate security risk, but regardless, if China wants to play the game with us that they are currently playing (banning non-Chinese apps from their country) we have to play that game, too. It makes no sense to play the "we'll take the high road" approach with them. If they ban our applications and services in their country, we need to ban their applications and services in our country. Ful…

"if China wants to play the game with us that they are currently playing (banning non-Chinese apps from their country) we have to play that game, too"

That's not the American way. The United States became the center of the modern global economy because it said "you can sell your goods here, and we're gonna push really hard to make you let us sell our goods there, too. But if you don't, fine, you can still sell your goods here".

It's basically the opposite approach of a trade war.

Re: The FBI alleges TikTok poses national security concerns

#256

Post by glitchc »

NickC25 wrote: post #247

I have no idea if it's a legitimate security risk, but regardless, if China wants to play the game with us that they are currently playing (banning non-Chinese apps from their country) we have to play that game, too. It makes no sense to play the "we'll take the high road" approach with them. If they ban our applications and services in their country, we need to ban their applications and services in our country. Ful…

Sorry to hear you got shafted by Tsinghua U. But this is a race to the bottom. GenZ is our future. They will be in charge of our country and will make their own choices.

Re: The FBI alleges TikTok poses national security concerns

#257

Post by Kukumber »

RadixDLT wrote: post #149
Kukumber wrote: post #37

"When we look at all of these wide-ranging apps that are connected to Chinese firms, it's actually almost nonsensical to ban just one when we see platforms in areas like precision agriculture, communications, gaming, all connected to Chinese firms," she says. "So what's really important is to develop more robust data privacy regulations in the United States to protect users. TLDR: It has nothing to do with "national…

this is laughable, it's more about data collection

it's nothing about data collection

a law and data collection problem is fixed

the problem is: it's a Chinese company, and they do better than US companies

it happened in the past with European companies and Japanese ones, also with Samsung and their chip

Re: The FBI alleges TikTok poses national security concerns

#258

Post by shkkmo »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #181
zug_zug wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the connection to China? Is there a belief that China was slower at removing these videos that an American firm would be? Because that's the substantive question.

The Chinese government owns tiktok. The algorithm that decides what videos americans will consume is signed off on by the Chinese government. That is an enormous national security threat.

> The Chinese government owns tiktok

Only figuratively in the hacker/gamer sense. TikTok is owned by ByteSense.

The "TikTok can be used to spy on americans" is much like "Russians interfered in our elections". Both are true, both are legitimately very concerning, but both are also things that the USA has been doing for decades with minimal domestic outcry.

So implicit in our attempts to reign in other countries behavior is that other countries should be attempting to reign in ours. If these are behaviors we think the world would be better off without, the best place to reign in that behavior is by starting with our own government.

Re: The FBI alleges TikTok poses national security concerns

#259

Post by onetimeusename »

p0pcult wrote: post #106

A recent tiktok trend hitting my city and others seems to be calling in/airdropping/swatting/posting active shooter threats at local schools. So far, this has shut down my kid's school several times this year. TikTok gets to be the vector for this new scale of virality, America loses future economic competitiveness. Who is the winner in this scenario? https://www.spieltimes.com/news/what-is-tiktoks-active-shoot... ht…

that's interesting. Reminds me of other social media sites where there used to be bomb threats and such. TikTok is clearly kind of the wild west of the internet right now. It still has human moderation which people deliberately game and so far the leadership has evaded public scrutiny.

I have seen other destructive trends happen on TikTok too. I don't know if it is good the things people do to get more followers. The minimum age is 13. It seems like TikTok has a lot of unmoderated content, dangerous trends, and the path to gaining a lot of followers, seems morally grey too.

I can see how TikTok can shape society. Look at how college athletes can earn money on it and promote themselves. Imagine if universities began to recruit athletes with higher TikTok earnings potential and then modify the sport to appeal to that market more. Yes, I am being vague deliberately. It's probably worth asking what effects TikTok has on people.

Re: The FBI alleges TikTok poses national security concerns

#260

Post by 2devnull »

xvector wrote: post #210
2devnull wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That falls into “whataboutism.”

I would say it falls into "pointing out hypocrisy."

We agree. “The other guys are hypocrites too” is a truism. Great power competition is real a thing. People tend to be hypocrites, and whatabouttism is commonplace. But we can do better.
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