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My Concerns about the TikTok Divestiture Bill as a Software Developer

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Re: My Concerns about the TikTok Divestiture Bill as a Software Developer

#21

Post by falcolas »

woooooo wrote: post #5

> House House Resolution 7521, dubbed the “Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act,” passed the U.S. House Of Representatives on a bipartisan 352-65 vote today. 352-65, that's what our congress thinks of free speech. Who's next after we set the precedent?

Well, without even leaving China, you have all the various videogames and other apps owned by Tencent and other such entities.

There's some language that attempts to limit the bill to social media apps, but any multiplayer game would easily pass those tests.

Re: My Concerns about the TikTok Divestiture Bill as a Software Developer

#22

Post by dotBen »

woooooo wrote: post #5

> House House Resolution 7521, dubbed the “Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act,” passed the U.S. House Of Representatives on a bipartisan 352-65 vote today. 352-65, that's what our congress thinks of free speech. Who's next after we set the precedent?

Your argument is that an app which is indirectly owned and influenced by the Chinese Communist Party is a conduit for free speech and the US government banning it would be infringing in your free speech... is a strange hill to die on.

Re: My Concerns about the TikTok Divestiture Bill as a Software Developer

#23

Post by dotBen »

It's impossible to debate TikTok while people still are not on the same page about the fundamentals which makes this an unusual company that's not comparable to other social networks:

1) TikTok is indirectly owned and therefore controlled by Chinese Communist party.

2) Given the footprint and influence that TikTok has in the US, the platform has the ability to editorially control what people see and therefore influence perceptions of things such as elections and other hot button issues.

3) The widespread installation of an app indirectly controlled by the CCP creates fundamental risk. Eg a number of popular TikTok influencers were actually members of the armed forces who were recording videos in their residences on military properties. Gps and potentially camera access provides information such as troop movements and troop readiness to a potential adversary. At a wider scale, there are similar risks with mass location information of members of the public.

The reality is that US companies are not leaned on by the US government for this kind of information about foreign users.

Until we acknowledge that this is not a normal situation, it seems moot to debate TikTok under normal trade custom and practice.

I've never used tiktok, I've never created an account and I've certainly never installed the app.

I was a senior product manager at Uber for a number of years where I witnessed both the encroachment of the Chinese government into our operations and also the significant responsibility of having a GPS enabled app installed on a vast majority of the populations phones while holding all sorts of sensitive demographic information such as the places you visit, your social graph via your contact address book, etc.

Re: My Concerns about the TikTok Divestiture Bill as a Software Developer

#24

Post by woooooo »

dotBen wrote: post #22
woooooo wrote: post #5

> House House Resolution 7521, dubbed the “Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act,” passed the U.S. House Of Representatives on a bipartisan 352-65 vote today. 352-65, that's what our congress thinks of free speech. Who's next after we set the precedent?

Your argument is that an app which is indirectly owned and influenced by the Chinese Communist Party is a conduit for free speech and the US government banning it would be infringing in your free speech... is a strange hill to die on.

It's not about the Chinese, or any other decade's Official Villain. Its about us and our principles. Whether we stick to them.

There's no "unless they're Chinese" clause in the first amendment.

Re: My Concerns about the TikTok Divestiture Bill as a Software Developer

#25

Post by boojums »

aaron695 wrote: post #15

The loss of data from TikTok would be chilling. It's pushing the world forward at the fastest pace in tech and education, also politics and everything else hence the bill. But the next app covered by the bill that would come to mind as the article mentions is Telegram. Here it's not changing US politics but allows us to watch others politics. We are weakening our power by weakening our citizens. Like restricting 5G w…

I vouched for this post because it talks about the Telegram issue and the more general idea of the role of citizen open source intellegence gathering which I think is an interesting and relevant topic.

Re: My Concerns about the TikTok Divestiture Bill as a Software Developer

#26

Post by Nostromos »

zer00eyz wrote: post #11
pcarolan wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does this theory hold up when your trade partner doesn’t give you equal access to their markets and has the potential to use this media platform to spread disinformation? I don’t think this is an innovation issue as much as a political one.

No equal access, but Tesla, and apple remain popular in china (for those with the money to buy them) in spite of the propaganda. Our own social media platforms have been doing a perfectly good job of spreading disinformation. And now were building ML systems to accelerate someone's agenda. You beat tiktok by building what's next and watching it fade like every other platform before it.

Tesla and Apple aren't social media companies. They're also American companies. I'd be against the bill if American companies had as much access and freedom to operate in China as we give Chinese companies operating in the US. Since that's not gonna happen, fine with forcing bytedance to divest.

Re: My Concerns about the TikTok Divestiture Bill as a Software Developer

#27

Post by Nostromos »

woooooo wrote: post #24
dotBen wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your argument is that an app which is indirectly owned and influenced by the Chinese Communist Party is a conduit for free speech and the US government banning it would be infringing in your free speech... is a strange hill to die on.

It's not about the Chinese, or any other decade's Official Villain. Its about us and our principles. Whether we stick to them. There's no "unless they're Chinese" clause in the first amendment.

There's also no "free speech at all costs" clause. I've always wondered why we allow Chinese companies almost unfettered access to our market when we don't get the same in return. It used to be part of the deal but China was a special case and we held out hope they'd moderate. They have not, so we no longer have to be the one playing by the rules.

That aside, we're not forcing Tiktok to shut down, just forcing them to find a new owner. We're not stopping anyone from posting online, nor are we stopping anyone from posting on tiktok. If anything, this will be good for speech on tiktok, surfacing topics that were banned or deboosted by a company that has to follow the CCP rules.

Re: My Concerns about the TikTok Divestiture Bill as a Software Developer

#28

Post by Nostromos »

NekkoDroid wrote: post #14

I just want to point out how this bill came to existance and then passed all within ~4 days

I just want to point out that there have been stop and start efforts to regulate tiktok for years. Also this exact bill (or verisons of it) has/have been kicked around the hill for at least 2 months so its not like it came out of nowhere.

Re: My Concerns about the TikTok Divestiture Bill as a Software Developer

#29

Post by woooooo »

Nostromos wrote: post #27
woooooo wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not about the Chinese, or any other decade's Official Villain. Its about us and our principles. Whether we stick to them. There's no "unless they're Chinese" clause in the first amendment.

There's also no "free speech at all costs" clause. I've always wondered why we allow Chinese companies almost unfettered access to our market when we don't get the same in return. It used to be part of the deal but China was a special case and we held out hope they'd moderate. They have not, so we no longer have to be the one playing by the rules. That aside, we're not forcing Tiktok to shut down, just forcing them t…

There's very clear jurisprudence on when free speech can be abridged, and it's not "vague suspicions of being nefarious".

In the 2000s it was the arabs, in the 90s it was the Japanese, in the 80s it was the Russians. What would it look like if we had accumulated laws inhibiting speech from each group? We'd practically have a great firewall by now.

Re: My Concerns about the TikTok Divestiture Bill as a Software Developer

#30

Post by tzs »

libpcap wrote: post #13

This is good for leveling the playing field. If Facebook, X, Instagram, WhatsApp, YouTube, etc. are banned/blocked in the PRC, the US should reciprocally return the favor.

The playing field is already level. If an American company makes a social media app and wants to offer it in the US and in China, and a Chinese company makes a social media app and wants to offer it in the US and China, and those two social media apps are essentially identical they will either both be allowed in China or both be banned/blocked in China. Same in the US: they will both be allowed or both be prohibited.

China requires all social media apps there to implement government directed censorship and to help ID people who post things on forbidden topics. That's not a nice playing field to play on, but it is a level one because it does apply regardless of app origin.

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