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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

#281

Post by snehk »

robswc wrote: post #140

I truly wish Trump would have been able to actually ban TikTok (or at least force a sale). The recent twitter files show that the bond between Government and social media companies is a little too close... but it would be foolish to suggest that the lesser of the two evils here is China. It is actually insane that we let China do whatever they want here while US companies are effectively prevented from gaining a foot…

> It is actually insane that we let China do whatever they want here while US companies are effectively prevented from gaining a foothold in China.

I wish people, at least of this site, would stop with this argument. US and European companies in China simply have to follow the same rules Chinese companies have to. It's admirable that they then go ahead and just don't do business there but they're not being prevented from operating there under the same rules as any Chinese company. A German car company cannot sell cars in the US without backup cameras even though that's completely fine in Germany. If someone from Iran wants to do business in the US, it's not legal to discriminate based on religion even though that might be fine in Iran.

Maybe it's time to overhaul the laws altogether. Just make the data collection itself illegal for everyone and be done with it. Then companies from all around the globe can decide whether they want to operate in a market or not and completely banning companies that openly don't follow the law is not really controversial.

If the ban happens because they're collecting data and the collection itself is illegal, I'm all for it. Banning companies on the basis that they're doing the exact same thing as everyone else simply because they're from another nation is problematic.

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

#282

Post by rtkwe »

jbigelow76 wrote: post #276
nier wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It's value as a morale/propaganda tool might out weigh the security concerns

There's also just the fact that soldiers are often a bit crap at opsec it just doesn't always get them killed. I have doubts anyways that China would be feeding Russia strike targets based on tiktok usage anyways so they'd be stuck to using the videos to guide strikes based on the nation-state equivalent of GeoGuesser. That can be fantastically accurate but it's much slower generally.

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

#283

Post by jinonoel »

bioemerl wrote: post #117
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?

Depends hugely on who you are and what happens with the politics. CIA and FBI are very big threats to you, which is why you vote regularly to ensure that your rights are represented and those agencies aren't able to abuse their power. China is a much more distant and abstract, but much more serious threat. If the FBI or CIA fucks up, they will put let's say 10% of people in prison for opposition to the state. If Chin…

>If China is allowed to gain upper hands on the United States, it will result in broad scale societal problems which I couldn't even begin to estimate. Imagine a world where Russia is allowed to take Europe. Imagine a world where the United States is convinced to stand by as Taiwan is invaded and our chip supply is shut down.

When You're Accustomed to Privilege, Equality Feels Like Oppression. The world doesn't need to imagine, because we had to stand by while the US launched illegal wars in Iraq, continues the unjust economic sanctions on Cuba just just for election politics, or all the shenigans the CIA pulled in South America in the previous decades. Heck just this month the US has said it will ignore a WTO ruling[1] just because it says so and everyone will have to stand by.

The multipolar world threatens Americans so much because they'll finally have to live like there's another version of themselves in the world.

[1]https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2022-12-12/supply...

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

#284

Post by naasking »

phpisthebest wrote: post #134
bioemerl wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends hugely on who you are and what happens with the politics. CIA and FBI are very big threats to you, which is why you vote regularly to ensure that your rights are represented and those agencies aren't able to abuse their power. China is a much more distant and abstract, but much more serious threat. If the FBI or CIA fucks up, they will put let's say 10% of people in prison for opposition to the state. If Chin…

>>which is why you vote regularly to ensure that your rights are represented and those agencies aren't able to abuse their power That never works out in practice as the administrative state (which includes the FBI and CIA) are soo far removed from representative government they are basically unaccountable at this point, that is with out even getting into the idea that 1 vote in a nation of 350 million plus holds no r…

> "Democracy" is more or less an delusion those in power perpetuate to ensure the cattle think they have a choice

Like him or not, Trump was very much not the preference of those in power, and very much was the preference of many people in America. That shows the people do have power.

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

#285

Post by lannisterstark »

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-…

I mean, your govt is banning enough of the shit with some real questionable reasons(while keeping some actual questionable things/traditions alive) that being skeptical is probably still the best bet.

and let's not pretend that the UA govt has had a history of transparency lol. Being better than Russia has been a low bar in the eastern bloc. -30 is better than -70 but it's still far below 0.

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

#286

Post by hayst4ck »

phpisthebest wrote: post #111
bioemerl wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We should do both. This is detracting from the fact that we have an actively hostile actor with a huge platform here in our country, and that needs to be handled as soon as possible. I totally support broad regulation of privacy law. TikTok is a much deeper concern. I don't like seeing a good cause used to distract from another good cause.

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?

You and I, we're nobodies with no power. We share a country with people who do have power. The power they exercise impacts our lives. Those people have weaknesses. Those weaknesses can be exploited.

If you ran an intelligence service, you might want to identify targets, prioritize targets, and potentially create a graph of social connections.

Tiktok provides picture data (geolocation, timestamps, hashes, potentially facial recognition and OCR), location data, time data (hours app is opened), private message data, and data on hobbies/interests, I assume there is profile and private message data as well.

That's all without bringing up the glaring problem which is damaging institutional trust. Promoting anti-science videos or showing one group very pro videos and another group very against videos is damaging to our very social fabric. Amplifying things that feel intuitive but aren't correct is dangerous.

The threat model you perceive is that our authoritarian government would oppress us. The threat model that is happening is that external governments are causing chaos within our borders, amplifying division, and sewing distrust.

You perceive the government to be a bigger threat because of how you imagine you might exercise power, maybe you want to unionize, maybe you worry about police abuse, maybe you worry someone might take your guns, maybe you hate taxes. That misses the bigger picture... out of the following people, would you prefer them to be "compromised" by the CIA or by China? Soldier, Politician, Judge, CEO, Engineer, nuclear scientist, EPA regulator, Chief logistics officers, FCC employees, Bankers, etc.

I think the answer is pretty obvious, but I'm open to an explanation of why it is not.

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

#287

Post by stmw »

dang wrote: post #5

Related: ByteDance planned to use TikTok to surveil specific American citizens - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33280176 - Oct 2022 (208 comments) Leaked Audio from TikTok Meetings – US User Data Repeatedly Accessed from China - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31781146 - June 2022 (12 comments)

Thank you for adding excellent context, as you usually do, dang. It's strange how so many discussions on this topic seem to proceed with no prior inputs, it's puzzling.

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

#288

Post by Yiin »

lannisterstark wrote: post #285
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-…

I mean, your govt is banning enough of the shit with some real questionable reasons(while keeping some actual questionable things/traditions alive) that being skeptical is probably still the best bet. and let's not pretend that the UA govt has had a history of transparency lol. Being better than Russia has been a low bar in the eastern bloc. -30 is better than -70 but it's still far below 0.

I see UA before Zelensky and after as two completely different countries politically. Most of the things UA gov was criticized for seems to be mostly an effect of Russia's influence.

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

#289

Post by Jolter »

phpisthebest wrote: post #139
Jolter wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess there is a tacit assumption that you and the US government have some shared goals, but that you share fewer goals with ByteDance or the government of China. I guess most Americans aren’t very scared of the feds “because they have nothing to hide”, which as we know is a false sense of security in any surveillance state. But it can still be true that you have /more/ to fear from the government of China, given t…

>>tacit assumption that you and the US government have some shared goals My goal is to live my life free from abuse, coercion, and infringement of my natural rights as a living human the governments goal (be it china or US) is power, and control via the exclusive authority to initiate violence on the people with in the sphere of influence I do not share any goals with government.

I think that’s a very cynical outlook on society.

I take it you’re not a huge fan of the US constitution?

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

#290

Post by midoridensha »

Schroedingersat wrote: post #232
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.

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.

>If you delete faceboom...

Is this a Freudian slip? I'll have to start using this term when referring to Facebook in the future.

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