The WSJ had an interesting feature on the efforts by US investors (particularly Jeff Yass) on lobbying to keep Tik Tok in the US:
https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/jeff-yass-tiktok-bytedan...
Lawmakers shift gears on TikTok ban
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Re: Lawmakers shift gears on TikTok ban
#12The way I see it is this: If war were to break out between the US and China right now, what could they do with tiktok?
I think they could censor victories and raise losses or fabricated stories, sow doubt at a minimum. Make dead american soldiers trend. Whether we like it or not, most teens get news from tiktok. At a maximum they could brick 150 million phones, use them to ddos, use them to hack/disrupt, etc. steal bank information that is also on your phone. In a war these things would not be off limits. If I were in their shoes that's what I'd do.
Re: Lawmakers shift gears on TikTok ban
#13Earlier quoted context omitted.
The implications, as far as I've understood, is that the Chinese government has access and, theoretically, could be slurping the information that TikTok collects which is seemingly more than some others collect. I'm not purporting to know this is happening but I believe this is the reason for the assertion.
Looking at the content there... i don't think they are getting anything good...
TikTok is the worst "brain junk food" platform I've seen. Sometimes people forward me videos from TikTok that have some horizontal video at the top (the one you are supposed to watch, apparently?), and then completely unrelated video game footage as the vertical "background".
I don't know if it is intended to hook into some sort of attention hack where they abuse the fact that humans are stimulated by movement and color, so a video with a game background is more appealing/attractive than one without, but it's too much stimulus for me to enjoy it. I try to avoid brain junk food most of the time.
Re: Lawmakers shift gears on TikTok ban
#14> "There are real national security risks associated with TikTok, but it’s also an app 150 million Americans use," said Peter Harrell, who served on Biden’s National Security Council until last fall. It would be nice if anyone explained what those risks are, and why they don't apply to Facebook et al. Banning it on government devices makes sense, but I don't understand why they're trying to ban individuals from using…
> It would be nice if anyone explained what those risks are, and why they don't apply to Facebook et al.
First of all, any company operating out of China can be assumed to be under more or less direct control of the CCP. When the Party comes knocking, there is no non-compliance to whatever they want. That alone is more than enough reason to be more skeptical of anything China. (Yes, I'm aware of FISA, but that's nowhere near comparable to having Party members on your board)
The second difference/risk comes with looking whom these apps target: kids. Basically, whoever controls the algorithm that ranks what content kids watch, has a very effective way of mind control... kids are sponges, they soak up whatever they see, and especially compared to the old radio/TV era, a lot of what's available on the Internet is pretty dangerous and not vetted by anyone. Be it all kinds of dangerous "challenges", Incel/Gamergate/far-right propaganda, hate against LGBT or whatever - it's all completely intransparent. That's bad enough if done by Western companies for profit reasons, but even worse as a capability in the hands of an enemy nation.
Re: Lawmakers shift gears on TikTok ban
#15> "There are real national security risks associated with TikTok, but it’s also an app 150 million Americans use," said Peter Harrell, who served on Biden’s National Security Council until last fall. It would be nice if anyone explained what those risks are, and why they don't apply to Facebook et al. Banning it on government devices makes sense, but I don't understand why they're trying to ban individuals from using…
The implications, as far as I've understood, is that the Chinese government has access and, theoretically, could be slurping the information that TikTok collects which is seemingly more than some others collect. I'm not purporting to know this is happening but I believe this is the reason for the assertion.
I always thought that the opposite was the main concern, pushing a narrative rather than collecting data. I don’t know if it is, but it would be mine.
For example, I have seen many videos clearly aimed at young people that casually and weirdly slip in a comment stating that Taiwan is part of China. One example: one of these “a guy asking pretty girls trivia questions” asks two girls a series of questions, to one question she says Taiwan to which says “Taiwan is part of China” in a mocking voice and the other girl laughs at her. Another example: a guy giving statistics about private jet ownership randomly mentioning the number of planes “in China, including Taiwan and Hong Kong”. These all appear to be made by Americans, filmed in LA or Miami, but are clearly either some sort of deliberate attempt to influence public opinion or content creators trying to get their videos promoted by including such comments.
Re: Lawmakers shift gears on TikTok ban
#16> "There are real national security risks associated with TikTok, but it’s also an app 150 million Americans use," said Peter Harrell, who served on Biden’s National Security Council until last fall. It would be nice if anyone explained what those risks are, and why they don't apply to Facebook et al. Banning it on government devices makes sense, but I don't understand why they're trying to ban individuals from using…
I think people on Hacker News seem to commonly mistake threats to their personal privacy with threats to national security. Facebook having to turn over data to the American government can't be a threat to American national security. This isn't to say the threat to you as a person is any different compared to TikTok handing over data to the CCP, but the concern here is maintaining American strategic military and inte…
Okay, but like, spell it out for me. What are the risks?
Re: Lawmakers shift gears on TikTok ban
#17The way I see it is this: If war were to break out between the US and China right now, what could they do with tiktok? I think they could censor victories and raise losses or fabricated stories, sow doubt at a minimum. Make dead american soldiers trend. Whether we like it or not, most teens get news from tiktok. At a maximum they could brick 150 million phones, use them to ddos, use them to hack/disrupt, etc. steal b…
They could data-mine for the kids of generals and colonels, see when daddy (or mommy) wasn't home until 2am, and infer that something big's happening. They could see on some nobody's kid that lives one town over from the base that traffic has been heavier or lighter at a certain date, just from watching the kid dance down the sidewalk.
Tiktok's like having a spy camera that floats around randomly, taking pictures. 99% of the time those pictures are worthless... in the wrong place, at the wrong time, etc. But once in awhile they have gold.
I still freak out about the Japanese pop star whose stalker managed to see the reflection in her high-res eye photo that had a street sign, found her home address from it. In a war situation, would China ever allow anyone in the US to see a photo of anything inside their country? Would they even allow those to be taken for viewing by other Chinese (for fear it'd somehow leak out to us)?
Re: Lawmakers shift gears on TikTok ban
#18At first, I was all for banning Tiktok, but I'm come around - no social media giant has the users or general public in mind, whether their HQ is in the US or China. Big tech in the US is just upset they didn't come up with Tiktok first and in turn, the intelligence agencies are upset they can't snoop as much as they'd like. This turns off politicians because they're 1) tight with big tech 2) support the federal intel…
Strong agree here. I wish there were significant & substantive items in the reporting that motivated the desire behind the ban (in a manner that differs significantly from what US social giants definitely already do), but it's too abstract and the motivations easily reduce to exactly what you say.
Re: Lawmakers shift gears on TikTok ban
#19> "There are real national security risks associated with TikTok, but it’s also an app 150 million Americans use," said Peter Harrell, who served on Biden’s National Security Council until last fall. It would be nice if anyone explained what those risks are, and why they don't apply to Facebook et al. Banning it on government devices makes sense, but I don't understand why they're trying to ban individuals from using…
> It would be nice if anyone explained what those risks are, and why they don't apply to Facebook et al. First of all, any company operating out of China can be assumed to be under more or less direct control of the CCP. When the Party comes knocking, there is no non-compliance to whatever they want. That alone is more than enough reason to be more skeptical of anything China. (Yes, I'm aware of FISA, but that's nowh…
If we agree that that's bad, why do we allow Facebook to do it? Why not craft a ban on the bad behavior, which would then necessarily also preclude Tiktok from doing it?
Re: Lawmakers shift gears on TikTok ban
#20The way I see it is this: If war were to break out between the US and China right now, what could they do with tiktok? I think they could censor victories and raise losses or fabricated stories, sow doubt at a minimum. Make dead american soldiers trend. Whether we like it or not, most teens get news from tiktok. At a maximum they could brick 150 million phones, use them to ddos, use them to hack/disrupt, etc. steal b…
They could data-mine for the kids of generals and colonels, see when daddy (or mommy) wasn't home until 2am, and infer that something big's happening. They could see on some nobody's kid that lives one town over from the base that traffic has been heavier or lighter at a certain date, just from watching the kid dance down the sidewalk. Tiktok's like having a spy camera that floats around randomly, taking pictures. 99…
Yep. Everything that is physically possible becomes a possibility, limited only by their creativity.