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TikTok Owner Had 'Backdoor' for CCP Access to US Data, Lawsuit Alleges

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Re: TikTok Owner Had 'Backdoor' for CCP Access to US Data, Lawsuit Alleges

#231

Post by COGlory »

lopkeny12ko wrote: post #133

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.

Be that as it may....

> Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents, and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: TikTok Owner Had 'Backdoor' for CCP Access to US Data, Lawsuit Alleges

#232

Post by echelon »

mplewis wrote: post #218
echelon wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much traction could a lawsuit against Reddit, Twitter, etc. have against the practice of banning or shadowbanning? If a user could show good faith participation, could they claim they've been prohibited from exercising freedom of expression in a public forum? Suppose someone was banned from a subreddit for their particular hobby or, worse, city or region. This might be the single biggest forum for that person to…

Are you talking about the First Amendment?

Yes. How close are these platforms to being de facto public squares?

If you're banned from /r/sanfrancisco etc., what do you do? Your voice and ability to participate in the community has been blinded and muffled.

Reddit and Twitter are bigger than Reddit and Twitter. If you're banned, you have less of an ability to participate in modern life. Events, jobs, commentary, and more are gone. There is no alternative, because platforms Hoover up as much as they possibly can.

Ideally these platforms would be protocols, but in the meantime the common carriers that operate them should be held to preserving accessibility.

Moderation isn't easy. It should probably be an order of magnitude more expensive than it already is so that safeguards against "personhood erasure" can be put in place.

You don't want racists, trolls, and bigots spouting hate speech, but you also need to keep the lines open for when these individuals are behaving. Because the pendulum swings and sometimes you find yourself on the other side of the censorship zeitgeist.

Perfectly salient thoughts and people can be memory holed. And that's not just a possibility - it's happening right now.

Re: TikTok Owner Had 'Backdoor' for CCP Access to US Data, Lawsuit Alleges

#233

Post by gs17 »

tpmx wrote: post #208
bostonwalker wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

One example from the Soviets: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_you_are_lynching_Negroes

Re: TikTok Owner Had 'Backdoor' for CCP Access to US Data, Lawsuit Alleges

#234

Post by jknoepfler »

pessimizer wrote: post #193
makach wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how does this differ from newspapers, books and the spoken word?

It doesn't. "Propaganda" is a western word for any argument coming from the eastern enemies of the state, and "Brainwashing" is a western word for being convinced by them. The way we control behavior is by depriving people of unfiltered information, not showing them cat videos and remembering if they liked them.

The modern sense of the word "propaganda" emerged during the first World War to describe information deliberately disseminated to influence political opinion. I'm pretty sure that's still what people mean when they use the word.

Usage then and now also conveys a sense of purposeful distortion or fabrication.

Re: TikTok Owner Had 'Backdoor' for CCP Access to US Data, Lawsuit Alleges

#235

Post by muglug »

janalsncm wrote: post #149
muglug wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you ask a Chinese citizen what their biggest problem is, many of them would say too much federalism. Presumably that’s because protesting against the central government endangers not just your own livelihood but also the livelihoods of your relatives. Much safer to criticise the region next door.

This logic doesn’t pass the smell test. It’s not any less illegal to protest your regional government than the central Chinese government.

Yeah, but it's easier to complain about a different region's government.

Re: TikTok Owner Had 'Backdoor' for CCP Access to US Data, Lawsuit Alleges

#236

Post by joenot443 »

kelipso wrote: post #185
lopkeny12ko wrote: post #133

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.

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.

Based off your past comments, you have some pretty strong feelings about both China and the USA which might lead one to think you’re not really approaching this discussion in good faith.

Re: TikTok Owner Had 'Backdoor' for CCP Access to US Data, Lawsuit Alleges

#237

Post by bsder »

pessimizer wrote: post #177

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…

> Non-Chinese have little to fear from Chinese government monitoring of their activity on TikTok. Chinese people know their government (which openly censors, rather than laundering their censorship through covert means like the Five Eyes), and know how to act to keep safe.

This is so laughable that I don't even know where to start.

How many Chinese individuals got busted for "corruption" because the Chinese Communist Party told people down the line to "do something" and conspicuous social media posters were easy targets? How many Chinese got busted for posting something that happened to contradict the party narrative about Covid?

Even if a Chinese citizen understands how to act right now in the moment (and I don't even concede that), when Dear Leader decides to change the standards you can easily wind up on the wrong side of "proper and correct" with a nice big trail to justify shutting off your social credit.

Surveillance is bad and evil and a threat. Period. It doesn't matter which government is doing it.

Re: TikTok Owner Had 'Backdoor' for CCP Access to US Data, Lawsuit Alleges

#238

Post by syndacks »

klabb3 wrote: post #158
throwaway038519 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding your comment about behavioral management at scale. Carl Sagan once said: "If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We're no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It's simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we've been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back." It would b…

This is pretty much Plato’s cave. But yeah, it seems to be absolutely true.

Not sure Plato’s cave applies here.

Re: TikTok Owner Had 'Backdoor' for CCP Access to US Data, Lawsuit Alleges

#239

Post by adultSwim »

j-bos wrote: post #197
jchook wrote: post #103

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?

A big push for it comes from the fact that many peoples, spread across two continents, identify as American. Our continents are the Americas.
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