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ByteDance confirmed it used TikTok to monitor journalists’ physical location

forbes.com

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Re: ByteDance confirmed it used TikTok to monitor journalists’ physical location

#241

Post by DiogenesKynikos »

yummypaint wrote: post #221
DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TikTok isn't a state actor. Contrary to the current American discourse, not everyone in China is a government bot.

The idea that government and companies could have significantly different goals and operate under different authority is seen as a very western notion in china. It isn't possible for a chinese company to directly defy the wishes of the chinese government. Jack Ma is a good case study, one of the most influential and successful businesspeople in china, and he was summarily thrown in jail for merely discussing ideas th…

> is seen as a very western notion in china

No, it isn't. The idea of private companies existing to make money is exactly the same in China as everywhere else. Companies talk about serving the public good (as they do in the US as well), but they really just care about the bottom line.

> he was summarily thrown in jail for merely discussing ideas the CCP didn't like

He wasn't thrown in jail. He was pressured to stop directly criticizing the government, after he publicly criticized China's financial regulators.

Right now, TikTok faces much greater political pressures from the US government than it does from the Chinese government. It's a private company trying to make money, and trying to avoid scrutiny from both the Chinese and the US governments.

Re: ByteDance confirmed it used TikTok to monitor journalists’ physical location

#242

Post by d110af5ccf »

NERD_ALERT wrote: post #239
bioemerl wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Democracy" is more or less an delusion those in power perpetuate to ensure the cattle think they have a choice I had a much larger post, but I'm going to only respond to this one now, because it sums up basically off the disagreements and no further discussion is going to resolve anything. I don't agree with this sort of cynicism at all, and I very much do believe that while it is very flawed, democracy ultimately…

Ask the citizens of Guatemala, Chile, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Bolivia etc. about how wonderful the CIA is at spreading democracy.

In your scenario the CIA plays the equivalent role of a Chinese agency in the original one. Agencies within their own local government play the equivalent role of CIA.

Re: ByteDance confirmed it used TikTok to monitor journalists’ physical location

#243

Post by d110af5ccf »

wuiheerfoj wrote: post #213
spookie wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can point out individual points of data as much as you want, the end result is what matters. Have you seen journalists attacking a dictatorship while living there, and go unpunished? Have you seen the same, but on democratic countries? That should answer it.

Perhaps the leaders of the democratic countries realised that journalists attacking them keeps the illusion alive

What you wrote there effectively amounts to:

> perhaps the illusion not actually being an illusion is what keeps it alive

Re: ByteDance confirmed it used TikTok to monitor journalists’ physical location

#244

Post by CamperBob2 »

causality0 wrote: post #131
phpisthebest wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I often wonder why the average american should be more concerned about China than the CIA or FBI? the FBI has the power to put me in a cage, China does not... I am confused as why china is a bigger threat to me personally than the FBI?

Would you be concerned if your childrens' school curriculum had to get pre-approval from the Chinese government? That's the quantity of exposure we already have. An entity beholden to the CCP has an iron grip on the attention of America's youth.

Faced with a choice between preapproval from China and the status quo, which is de-facto preapproval from right-wing Christian Confederate revanchists in Texas [1], I... well, I honestly don't know which option I'd pick.

Either way, I'm not getting an objective education.

1: https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/10/19/conservati...

Re: ByteDance confirmed it used TikTok to monitor journalists’ physical location

#245

Post by DiogenesKynikos »

Eisenstein wrote: post #208
DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is rewriting history. Production moved to China because China began allowing foreign investment, and Chinese labor was cheaper. Foreign companies made their own decisions to take advantage of cheap Chinese labor. This wasn't some sort of nefarious Chinese plot. The US also wanted China to open up to American investment.

> This wasn't some sort of nefarious Chinese plot. No need to put 'nefarious' in there, or 'plot' even, but it was a goal. If not, then why did they want to join the WTO so badly?

They wanted to join the WTO so that their exports wouldn't be subject to high tariffs and other barriers.

The issue is that there were no

> Chinese strategic efforts to locate our industrial production there

There was a Chinese policy of encouraging foreign investment, but that's not a strategic plan to remove another country's industrial capacity, which is how OP framed it.

Re: ByteDance confirmed it used TikTok to monitor journalists’ physical location

#246

Post by posguy »

nanidin wrote: post #238
Schroedingersat wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is massively underselling the difficulty. If you delete your facebook and twitter accounts you lose access to the only customer support channel in many places. If you delete faceboom you lose access to local second hand markets, you lose access to information about community events, you cannot participate in group chats, you get harangued at every social event if you try to share another contact channel.

I haven’t found ostracism for using channels outside of Facebook. I have plenty of friends and acquaintances that I keep in touch with via Snapchat, email, and text.

I certainly feel ostracized for not having a Facebook account. Chambers of Commerce, Community Groups, and it feels like most queer people expect you to be on Facebook, and if you aren't your on the outside.

Its very similar to not being a blue bubble in some regards, but Facebook has a much broader scope than just being a messenger platform.

Excited for the EU to fix the closed messenger issue, then I can have 3rd party clients to bridge all my communications securely into one unified view, just gotta make sure that these large companies don't try and open up these platforms by hiding your end to end encryption keys on their servers :D

Re: ByteDance confirmed it used TikTok to monitor journalists’ physical location

#247

Post by papito »

canadaduane wrote: post #231
8f2ab37a-ed6c wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I still have no strength to quit it by myself. This sounds like addiction? Just delete the app from your phone and move on? You'd be surprised by perfectly fine life goes on without Twitter / Facebook / TikTok / Instagram.

"addiction" and "just ___" are kind of mutually opposing forces. It can be difficult to understand addiction from the outside, as the solution seems obvious, but the internal world is not straight forward to navigate.

I think even those who came into contact with addiction and substance abuse may fail to realize that social media dependence is a very similar thing.

We can get technical - drugs and booze are psychoactive, while social media is behavioral addiction. Even so, the habit-building loop and the compulsion that stems from it is effectively the same.

So, I don't think it's condescending to say "just quit it". I suspend my Twitter account from time to time when I realize I built a habit loop again, and the "urge" just goes away.

Re: ByteDance confirmed it used TikTok to monitor journalists’ physical location

#248

Post by nier »

vanadium1st wrote: post #184

I was really pro open internet. I remember the old internet and feel nostalgia about it that probably won't ever completely fade. I am Ukrainian, and when some years ago my government banned the most popular social network at our country - Russian-made VK, I felt strange about it. I kind of understood some of the security concerns, but didn't feel like they were enough to turn off my open internet fantasies and free-…

It was surprising to me seeing the news with Ukrainian soldiers using TikTok out in the field.

Re: ByteDance confirmed it used TikTok to monitor journalists’ physical location

#249

Post by tootie »

danrocks wrote: post #173

I often wonder what high-level American executives that work at these Chinese companies feel like, specially when news like this comes to life. Do they feel like they're just doing their job? Are they afraid of getting arrested? Do they think that the massive comp packages they get is worth the risk? Lots of cognitive dissonance going on, I would bet.

American execs aren't any more or less ethical than Chinese ones. The difference is what is and isn't legal or acceptable. They likely just thought they'd get away with it or they're not culpable if it wasn't their order.

News Corp hacked phones to track people, they just got caught and punished.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/News_International_phone_hac...

Re: ByteDance confirmed it used TikTok to monitor journalists’ physical location

#250

Post by colechristensen »

vanadium1st wrote: post #184

I was really pro open internet. I remember the old internet and feel nostalgia about it that probably won't ever completely fade. I am Ukrainian, and when some years ago my government banned the most popular social network at our country - Russian-made VK, I felt strange about it. I kind of understood some of the security concerns, but didn't feel like they were enough to turn off my open internet fantasies and free-…

In the US I’m not really afraid of China. There are some people who should be, but I’m not. I’m annoyed at American companies who bow to their wishes, but I’m also annoyed at American companies who censor to advertisers so nobody says “fuck” on YouTube and my level of annoyance is about the same.

Some other places would do good to ban tiktok and people concerned about national secrets and the like sure should, but I’m just some dude leaking plenty of information plenty of places and china is among the least of my concerns.

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