TikTok is allegedly staffed with dozens of ex-FBI, CIA, and US State Department officials who moderate content[1]. Somehow PRISM and the closed-doors FISA court hearings, Lavabit, etc seem to be collectively memory-holed by USians. Nowadays their anxiety about state surveillance is reserved for the "CCP". 1. https://www.mintpressnews.com/tiktok-chinese-trojan-horse-ru...
When did USian become a thing? Or rather, what's the etymological path into common use?
Fairly sure that's an online communication thing. Wider geographic reach of messages + it works a lot better written than spoken, and it's been used at least since the early 2000s?
Lol. Dump all the US instances into the memory hole. Only bring it up when China does it. When you bring up how US does it too, it's "whataboutism". Have to say it's a great strategy for maintaining a narrative.
Would China allow US to spy on hundreds of millions of its citizens everyday? Answer: no, reference the Great Firewall.
The Great Firewall is to prevent Chinese people from speaking freely or reading unapproved things. It is not to protect Chinese people.
It's an interesting problem to solve though. For one thing, there are lots of US investors who will lose money. Should they be made whole?
Not an interesting question at all, IMO. The government is not required to protect you or make you whole, if you invest in an enterprise that the government later decides to prohibit, or makes illegal, or decides to regulate in some other manner. I mean, think that through for a second: if the government had to compensate everyone for the negative impact of legislation, it would be almost impossible to pass laws. If…
How about foreign investors? [1]
>Critics also state that treaties are written so that any legislation causing lost profits is by definition a treaty violation, rendering the argument null that only treaty violations are subject to ISDS.
Social media access to user data (whether foreign or domestic) is bad, but it is a distraction from the real evil: behavioral management at scale. When you can target specific demographics and control what they see 8-10 hours of the day, you can change what they think, say, do, and most importantly, how they vote. People are literally being programmed (euphemistically, "conditioned") by the specific triggers and stim…
Highly recommend reading The Age of Surveillance Capitalism on this topic
The Chinese government, like the US government or any other large national government, is not monolithic. Having information available for easy perusal via a commercial channel (which is potentially not even illegal) is very different from having information accessible via use of national-asset intelligence capabilities. Information which can only be obtained the second way is almost certainly going to receive differ…
The Chinese government, like the US government or any other large national government, is not monolithic. In what meaningful way does one part of the Chinese government differ from another part of the Chinese government? Isn't Xi basically the supreme leader for life now?
Isn't that something that would be better to look up than to make up?
Even if they didn't have an official backdoor, they would have many backdoors by just placing people on staff (getting them hired in the normal way.) You can't stop state intelligence agencies from getting into any domestic data that they want, even with law (which they can just ignore.) Social media is full of 'ex-'state intelligence operatives, and objections to that situation are made out to be bizarre, or even ba…
People have plenty to fear from state surveillance regardless of their nationality. The Indian Army had their troop movements monitored by the PLA via TikTok data during a recent conflict, so please don’t pretend that this is merely an abstract fear.
If the Indian Army, in the midst of secret movements, is accessing social networks through their phones, everybody knows where they are and they are incompetent. Please don't pretend the problems of a military force playing on social networks are in any way related to normal people's problems. Ban TikTok from nuclear submarines, too, but I don't know why you would allow any other social network service on there either. I could be running it myself and sending all of your information to the Chinese government.
When it comes to the CCP is it even a "backdoor"? They assert full LEGAL right to all data from companies in their jurisdiction. Everyone who operates in China, domestic or foreign, knows the costs of doing business.
> When it comes to the CCP is it even a "backdoor"?
In the US we would refer to it as a responsibility, or a duty to protect.
Half of the comments in this thread sound like they were written by CCP propaganda chatbots. A dead giveaway is the failure to address the topic at hand and immediately deflect to "but the USA does XYZ too!" No one is disputing such a claim, but that's also not what we're talking about here.
For reference: this specific fallacy being invoked by the CCP astroturfers is called “whataboutism”.
When faced with undeniable criticism: I believe China/CCP learned this "defense" tactic from the Soviet Union, who if, not inventing it, at the very least brought it to new standardized levels.
I'm starting to become fatigued by all this TikTok news. Either ban the app or don't. Causing anxiety over TikTok without any action is the worst of both worlds.
So rather than exposing the cost/benefits of an app, you just want the government to make a decision about what methods of communication are available to everyone? And instead of making a thorough case why a particular method has to be banned for good reasons tangential to the content, you want them to make that choice and announce it? I think banning very invasive social media until it minimizes tracking is a reason…
Better they openly do that than this constant covert hysterical press releasing to whip up public support for it.