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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

#371

Post by [deleted] »

jasonlotito wrote: post #363
blackbear_ wrote: post #345

> General counsel Erich Andersen wrote to staff that a “misguided plan was developed and carried out by a few individuals within the Internal Audit department this past summer”, adding that those involved “misused their authority to obtain access to TikTok user data” in violation of its code of conduct. Ah yes, straight from the playbook: management gets caught being mischievous and throws a few underlings under the…

In which case, there would be evidence of that. Prosecutors are notorious for wanting the biggest fish out there. While their might be bigger players that are getting away with this, it's also not unreasonable to think that it happened as the evidence shows. Basically, rather than make stuff up, I'd rather go with what the evidence shows and what can be proven. It's easy to hide in a big company, and it's at a bigger…

[deleted]

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

#372

Post by concordDance »

manholio wrote: post #340
lannisterstark wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 mean, your govt is banning enough of the shit with some real questionable reasons I love advocates of democracy and freedom of speech always taking up the time, in the middle of a brutal war no less, to show us the righteous path. Well guess what: war is the absolute worst enemy of democracy, there can be no polite debate and pluralism while the enemy is blowing your children up. A country defending from a aggres…

This attitude leads to generals sabotaging the Christmas Truce and way more deaths than necessary. Very very few wars are against invaders who want to kill everybody.

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

#375

Post by DiogenesKynikos »

philliphaydon wrote: post #280
DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ByteDance is a private company. It's not part of the CCP, nor is the CCP part of ByteDance.

Doesn't matter. China's laws allow it to compell any Company to hand over any information it requires. That means ByteDance is effectively beholden to the CCP, and since TikTok is owned by ByteDance, it gives the CCP unfiltered access to all TikTok data.

ByteDance is beholden to both the US and Chinese governments. The US government also has enormous power to coerce ByteDance (and other tech companies), and right now, ByteDance is under much stronger political pressure from the US than the Chinese government.

ByteDance actually can structure its operations to separate its US and Chinese apps as much as possible, to limit the ability of either government to access data from the other country. It's not a state actor, and is actually trying to avoid coercion from both the US and China.

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

#376

Post by roenxi »

thefounder wrote: post #362
roenxi wrote: post #357

One of the more unexpected parts of the Twitter files (part 7, in fact) is it reveals some well developed linkages between the US intelligence services and media companies. If the US is blurring the corporate-government boundaries, the Chinese are certainly much more aggressive in their activities. And all these agencies run extra-legal kidnapping operations. I'm rare in that although I don't like it corporate spying…

After wikileaks/Snowden this is just not news anymore. I really fail to see what's new. What am I missing?

There is a difference between what people know because it is pushed out to them vs. what someone can deduce by careful research and logic.

Something like Wikileaks/Snowden got the "they're spying on everyone!" part into the public consciousness. The Twitter files is pushing out some slightly different nuances around what the current practice is. Plus the political implications.

People are annoyingly evidence based. There seems to be confusion about whether dictionary-definition fascism is a bad thing and it is important to collect and keep repeating evidence of what is happening as governments agents get involved in running media (or other) companies.

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

#377

Post by KaiserPro »

blackbear_ wrote: post #345

> General counsel Erich Andersen wrote to staff that a “misguided plan was developed and carried out by a few individuals within the Internal Audit department this past summer”, adding that those involved “misused their authority to obtain access to TikTok user data” in violation of its code of conduct. Ah yes, straight from the playbook: management gets caught being mischievous and throws a few underlings under the…

GDPR (which is still in effect in the UK) doesn't really care about _who_ misuses the data.

I really hope that the information commission has the bollocks to nail tiktok for this

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

#378

Post by eimrine »

precommunicator wrote: post #310
eimrine wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually half of Russian internets went south. Do you, Ukrainian, want to google something on your mother language? Use Tor or wait tens of years while Ukrainian-speaking folks use to speak enough for you to be able to google anything on cyrillic languages. Seems like you, English speaker, do not help your not-English speaking nation a lot.

TBH, that applies to anyone. In any field, especially technology, googling in English gives you much better results than in native language. (except country-specific knowledge).

Good luck searching anything about 1c database (maybe the best accounting software I have ever used). And this is only the top of my head, Russian culture used to be huge. A lot of country-specific knowledge get blocked and I very disappreciate that people who use to think that there is anything better than a free access to any information.

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

#379

Post by philliphaydon »

DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #375
philliphaydon wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't matter. China's laws allow it to compell any Company to hand over any information it requires. That means ByteDance is effectively beholden to the CCP, and since TikTok is owned by ByteDance, it gives the CCP unfiltered access to all TikTok data.

ByteDance is beholden to both the US and Chinese governments. The US government also has enormous power to coerce ByteDance (and other tech companies), and right now, ByteDance is under much stronger political pressure from the US than the Chinese government. ByteDance actually can structure its operations to separate its US and Chinese apps as much as possible, to limit the ability of either government to access dat…

The US has to get a court order which bytedance can challenge in a court room.

If the CCP requests data they have no choice but to hand it over. There is no way bytedance can structure its operations to prevent the CCP requesting data.

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

#380

Post by partiallypro »

Bud wrote: post #56
partiallypro wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually liked the Trump method, which was to force them to sell the US arm to a US company and sever it from the Chinese. I don't know why that never came to fruition; it looked like it was nearly a done deal (Microsoft was the leading bidder.) Making a competitor from scratch would just open up the userbase to another state actor, though it could give a window for a Vine return.

Except that this story reveals the obvious reason this wouldn't work. How do you reliably keep that US "arm" from being co-opted? How do you make sure that the software isn't phoning home to China regardless of what the US arm does? Oracle and Walmart reportedly at that time brokered a deal to run the US arm of TikTok. Do you trust them? Walmart certainly isn't politically neutral, by any stretch. Meanwhile, Larry El…

Every person and company you just mentioned are infinitely more trustworthy than the CCP, and that's saying a lot.
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