Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

South Dakota first to ban TikTok on state-owned devices

gizmodo.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 307 posts

Re: South Dakota first to ban TikTok on state-owned devices

#151

Post by DiogenesKynikos »

nradov wrote: post #132
DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recommend going to China and seeing for yourself. What you read from afar and what you see on the ground are very different. Imagine if all you heard about the US were constant stories about gun violence, drone strikes and homelessness. You'd have a very distorted view of life in America. That's basically the situation with China, if your only point of reference is what you read in the English-language media.

Only an idiot would risk traveling to China at this point. You could be detained and held as a political bargaining chip. https://www.politico.com/news/2022/06/19/families-biden-admi... I should have visited China back when it was opening up and relations were relatively friendly. But now that we have entered a new Cold War it's too late, I missed my chance.

About 150 million tourists (or shall we call them "idiots"?) travel to China without incident every year.

I don't know what, specially, is happening in the 200 cases described by the Politico article you linked to. Politico mentions one accusation of drug trafficking and another of spying.

Re: South Dakota first to ban TikTok on state-owned devices

#152

Post by hammock »

cauthon wrote: post #57
hammock wrote: post #5

The bigger deal (bigger than the tracking that people usually focus on) might be how the algorithm is specifically tuned to reward dumb content in the US, compared to rewarding STEM and other educational content in China. One minute video that explains: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hus9fWz0RRk Further reading: https://www.opindia.com/2022/07/tiktok-china-engineering-oth...

The primary source of your "further reading" article is Tucker Carlson. Not saying the claim is incorrect, but are there any trustworthy sources supporting it?

No post body was provided.

Re: South Dakota first to ban TikTok on state-owned devices

#153

Post by [deleted] »

onetimeusename wrote: post #45
hammock wrote: post #5

The bigger deal (bigger than the tracking that people usually focus on) might be how the algorithm is specifically tuned to reward dumb content in the US, compared to rewarding STEM and other educational content in China. One minute video that explains: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hus9fWz0RRk Further reading: https://www.opindia.com/2022/07/tiktok-china-engineering-oth...

I think this is a serious issue but underestimated. People in the US believe that the top science and engineering roles should be filled by immigrants which I don't think is sustainable or even a healthy view of education. I am basing this on the huge foreign population of our top schools and the push for H1-B visas. It can be a self fulfilling prophecy if people remove themselves from the running for STEM in earlier…

[deleted]

Re: South Dakota first to ban TikTok on state-owned devices

#154

Post by DiogenesKynikos »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #127
DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recommend going to China and seeing for yourself. What you read from afar and what you see on the ground are very different. Imagine if all you heard about the US were constant stories about gun violence, drone strikes and homelessness. You'd have a very distorted view of life in America. That's basically the situation with China, if your only point of reference is what you read in the English-language media.

Quoted post unavailable.

I don't know what the subject we were discussing (whether TikTok is part of a plot to dumb down Americans) has to do with Xinjiang.

> every single message you have posted is defending China

I just comment on what interests me at the moment, and because of the rising level of paranoia about China (paranoia which I think is dangerous), I've been commenting more on these sorts of issues - which I happen to know a bit about.

Shill accusations go against HN rules, by the way.

Re: South Dakota first to ban TikTok on state-owned devices

#155

Post by sofixa »

Cyberdog wrote: post #82
gjsman-1000 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The FCC has the authority to ban swearing and nudity on public television. States can ban nudity, profanity, and (in my state) adult video-store ads from highway signage. States can control what teachers instruct students with (who wants a flat-earth teacher?) I don't see why a law, which generically states that recommendation algorithms operated by a publicly-owned company must bias towards intellectually stimulatin…

I don’t like the idea that the First (or any other) Amendment should be violated because there is already so much precedent for it.

Or maybe it could be amended to be adapted to the today's world (i doubt recommendation algorithms were on the minds of 18th century lawmakers).

Re: South Dakota first to ban TikTok on state-owned devices

#156

Post by hammock »

unethical_ban wrote: post #69
hammock wrote: post #5

The bigger deal (bigger than the tracking that people usually focus on) might be how the algorithm is specifically tuned to reward dumb content in the US, compared to rewarding STEM and other educational content in China. One minute video that explains: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hus9fWz0RRk Further reading: https://www.opindia.com/2022/07/tiktok-china-engineering-oth...

Opindia citing Tucker Carlson, Stephen Crowder, and using "alleged" videos of non gender normative people as examples of bad content is pretty revolting. I'll also say that Instagram is just as much trash as TikTok, but it's our trash instead of china's. Infinite-scroll short form trash content is this generation's trash TV, yet more addictive.

The left-leaning head of the FBI made similar comments today: https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/nation-politics/fb...

And you won’t believe me when I say this, but in US-China diplomatic terms, an official saying a technology “allows them…if they want to” to perform influence operations means they already are.

As further corroboration, Andrew Schultz revealed earlier this week on the PBD podcast that sources at the State Dept confirmed these influencing operations were happening in the US via TikTok

Re: South Dakota first to ban TikTok on state-owned devices

#157

Post by 2OEH8eoCRo0 »

nemothekid wrote: post #146
2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not that it's owned by Chinese, it's that it is based in China with demonstrated links to the Chinese communist government. It's not sinophobic to distrust the Chinese government. Are the Chinese protestors sinophobes?

If you want TikTok banned in the US because they don't have proper data hygiene and you believe that data could be used by the CCP in the future that is fair. If you want TikTok banned in the US because you believe that they promote dumb content as part of some strategic Chinese plot and you conveniently ignore Meta and Google, I'm going to assume that your reasoning comes from irrational fear of the Chinese. It does…

The first one. I agree with your second point.

Re: South Dakota first to ban TikTok on state-owned devices

#158

Post by dmix »

throwawayhx wrote: post #126
emodendroket wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As US confrontation with China has become more open, the evidentiary standard for any stories about China has headed toward North Korea levels, where we constantly read about people being executed in baroque ways before a couple months before they make new public appearances, apparently risen from the dead.

Oh come on. China has basically been getting a pass from Western media for their concentration camps for Muslims. Probably because nobody on the west wants to look "racist"

There was plenty of coverage. The western media went as hard as you’d expect them to in response to that story.

The fact the western governments had their own balancing acts to maintain and didn’t do much still never stopped the media from being honest about it.

Re: South Dakota first to ban TikTok on state-owned devices

#159

Post by heavyset_go »

nemothekid wrote: post #103
gjsman-1000 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So he made it up thinking it was fake - but now it has been independently shown to be likely true. In which case he made up a conspiracy theory then demonstrated to be accurate when he thought it was a joke. https://www.china-briefing.com/news/china-passes-sweeping-re... https://www.deseret.com/2022/11/24/23467181/difference-betwe... CBS 60 Minutes Interview with an IT expert just 3 weeks ago: https://www.youtube.com…

The claim isn't fake. But the idea that this is some TikTok plot to poison America is ridiculous and sinophobic. Douyin is happy show low brow garbage to Chinese netizens, just like chinese gaming companies were happy to let teens play video games 24/7. The difference is the Chinese government won't let them. America could easily do what China did here: enforce regulations on what kind of content social media compani…

> The claim isn't fake. But the idea that this is some TikTok plot to poison America is ridiculous and sinophobic.

Oh please, all countries do it. The US uses Twitter and other social media to instigate civil unrest all over the world. Literal revolutions and genocides have been instigated over US-run social media platforms.

I don't know of a superpower that doesn't use the internet as a vector to sow discord and propagate misinformation.

Re: South Dakota first to ban TikTok on state-owned devices

#160

Post by nemothekid »

musk_micropenis wrote: post #148
nemothekid wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The claim isn't fake. But the idea that this is some TikTok plot to poison America is ridiculous and sinophobic. Douyin is happy show low brow garbage to Chinese netizens, just like chinese gaming companies were happy to let teens play video games 24/7. The difference is the Chinese government won't let them. America could easily do what China did here: enforce regulations on what kind of content social media compani…

Please don't resort to conflating criticism of China (however speculative) with Sinophobia. It lowers the tone of the discussion and imputes a motive onto your peers which isn't warranted. If you have a problem with the facts of the discussion then address them directly.

Repeating a previous comment:

If you want TikTok banned in the US because they don't have proper data hygiene and you believe that data could be used by the CCP in the future that is fair.

If you want TikTok banned in the US because you believe that they promote dumb content as part of some strategic Chinese plot and you conveniently ignore Meta and Google, I'm going to assume that your reasoning comes from irrational fear of the Chinese. It doesn't make sense to distrust the Chinese when they are doing the same thing as Americans (unless you don't like them just because they are Chinese).

>imputes a motive onto your peers

If my peers don't realize they are are repeating sinophobic talking points, they should be made aware of them. My concern is chiefly that sinophobia is simply a vector that allows American social media giants to get rid of competition without being forced to clean up their own backyards. If your concern is "algorithmic dumb content", then just banning tiktok is the wrong solution. Secondly, the reason why China has different content on TikTok is through government regulation, and we could do the same thing here! It's not a Chinese conspiracy that keeps Americans from regulating corporations.

Post reply on HN