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EFF statement on U.S. Supreme Court's decision to uphold TikTok ban

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Re: EFF statement on U.S. Supreme Court's decision to uphold TikTok ban

#171

Post by gunian »

jazzyjackson wrote: post #161
gunian wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The leopard hat was indeed the best :) I didn't know anonymous was active on 4chan it's kind of uncomfortable for people of my ilk to be there so I avoid but that kind of checks out Do you think there is/was any advantage to having a group labelled as a freedom fighter / vigilante perform hacking operations as opposed to official state actors during color revolutions?

I guess I'm thinking of the Guy Fawkes era. I'm scarcely aware of what anonymous means outside of what was reported in mainstream media about it. Now that I think of it that too was a case of one group choosing not to correct anyone when credited with the accomplishments of somebody else. They would produce all these cringe videos about how any day now they'd spill the beans on the powers that be. Kind of a WikiLeaks…

No one who knew enough about the powers that be to spill the beans would live to spill aforementioned beans all we can do is look at and correlate publicly available data to infer plays the aforementioned powers maybe calling such is the life of poor peasants like me lol

Idk how we went from color revolution, hacking, social engineering to Guy and DDoS but now I gotta watch V for Vendetta a peasant can always dream :)

Re: EFF statement on U.S. Supreme Court's decision to uphold TikTok ban

#172

Post by est »

lolinder wrote: post #3

> Shutting down communications platforms or forcing their reorganization based on concerns of foreign propaganda and anti-national manipulation is an eminently anti-democratic tactic, one that the US has previously condemned globally. These platforms are fundamentally anti-democratic in their very nature, increasingly so in the age of LLMs. They're places where people buy a voice and the illusion of support by astrot…

yes these platforms are BAD. But still, tiktok is a tailored app for US market and bends to US regulations. You think this is bad? There are worse, some US users even chose to signup Douyin or REDnote. How would you ban THAT? Build a national firewall like the communists?

Re: EFF statement on U.S. Supreme Court's decision to uphold TikTok ban

#173

Post by herbst »

dzogchen wrote: post #91

Extremely weak argument. Just because one platform is shut down does not mean the right to free speech is affected. A platform, mind you, under full control by the Chinese Communist Party, who do not allow ANY form of free speech to exist in the country they have under their thumb.

Building your own great Firewall definitely is a thread to your free speech. I don't know how this can't be extremely obvious.

Re: EFF statement on U.S. Supreme Court's decision to uphold TikTok ban

#174

Post by lemoncookiechip »

troupo wrote: post #164
sfjailbird wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The counter to incorrect information is facts - not trying to hide it. What's next? Should we prevent giving air time to people from 'adversarial' countries at all? Or only allow it when accompanied by a sanctioned commentary to 'correct' any unwanted information? While we're at it, how about 'adversarial' parties within our own country? Why should they be allowed to mislead gullible people?

> The counter to incorrect information is facts - not trying to hide it. We've seen how well it worked with Fox News, ONN, Alex Jones...

And how well did kicking them out of the mainstream social platforms to hide them under the rug do? Rumble, Truth Social, Kick, and how many more echo chambers?

You even gave the example of Alex Jones, he was silenced by the mainstream social media sites.

Yes, fake and misleading news is easier to spread than issuing corrections or fact checking, but that doesn't mean that we should pretend they don't exist, because it's NOT working.

EDIT: Mind you, I'm not advocating for what Twitter has essentially become, but hiding away these people is also not working very clearly based on how well things are going.

Re: EFF statement on U.S. Supreme Court's decision to uphold TikTok ban

#175

Post by tmnvdb »

cship2 wrote: post #105
tmnvdb wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are glancing over the fact that American media platforms are not really controlled by the US government except for legal restrictions on hate speech and violence, and that there is an extremely diverse set of voices that can be heard on the 'American' (or rather non-Chinese) internet. It is also not clear to me how TikTok is supposed to provide better "checks and balances" just because it is owned and manipulated…

>You are glancing over the fact that American media platforms are not really controlled by the US government except for legal restrictions on hate speech and violence, and that there is an extremely diverse set of voices that can be heard on the 'American' (or rather non-Chinese) internet. Think Binney, Snowden, Assange would probably disagree with you.

> Think Binney, Snowden, Assange would probably disagree with you.

I guess you are trying to muddy the water here by invoking the names of people who are known for their resistance to a certain kind of American misbehaviour. That behaviour is not really the same as the kind of wide-ranging and complete media restrictions we are talking about, but it sounds kind of similar so this is a good way for you to do some whataboutism with extra steps.

If you think that American media is controlled in the same way at the same scale and intensity as Chinese media please provide your arguments for that view explicitly.

Re: EFF statement on U.S. Supreme Court's decision to uphold TikTok ban

#176

Post by tmnvdb »

gunian wrote: post #113
cship2 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You are glancing over the fact that American media platforms are not really controlled by the US government except for legal restrictions on hate speech and violence, and that there is an extremely diverse set of voices that can be heard on the 'American' (or rather non-Chinese) internet. Think Binney, Snowden, Assange would probably disagree with you.

It's a cool phenomena tbh if I was rich enough to go to college I would love to do a thesis on it We know both China and the US are nation states with global ambitions so it would be logical for both to use digital platforms to surveil and perform social engineering. We also have had whistleblowers on both sides that have come forward and said this is a common practice. We also know based on simple game theory it is…

The obvious answer is that the US is still a democracy with free media and rule of law. That means you're likely to be found out and have a huge scandal if you try to use government resources to manipulate the public at scale. This is somewhat confirmed by the huge scandals causes by relatively small scale manipulations, which form the somewhat worn examples commenters on this website like to bring up whenever criticism of China is voiced. Note that in China there is no such risk of discovery or pushback as media and courts are fully controlled by the Chinese Communist Party.

Re: EFF statement on U.S. Supreme Court's decision to uphold TikTok ban

#177

Post by eviks »

quanto wrote: post #100

A former sausage maker here. I (used to) design these engagement/recommendation engines for a large corp, did academic research in the field, went to conferences, etc. In general, I wholehearted support the freedom of speech, and if it were any other case, I would agree with the EFF statement here. However, knowing how the sausages are made, I am reluctantly agreeing with the ban, at least for now. People underestima…

> People underestimate how powerful these tools can be.

It's rather you're overestimating it (no wonder the ineffectiveness of CA was a surprise to you). It's such a low-power tool that it couldn't even be used to avoid its ban.

> In some cases

In some cases you don't need any of the ML techniques to do that. But at any rate, that's an irrelevant scale when it comes to "massive danger"

Re: EFF statement on U.S. Supreme Court's decision to uphold TikTok ban

#178

Post by throw-the-towel »

petre wrote: post #169
lolinder wrote: post #3

> Shutting down communications platforms or forcing their reorganization based on concerns of foreign propaganda and anti-national manipulation is an eminently anti-democratic tactic, one that the US has previously condemned globally. These platforms are fundamentally anti-democratic in their very nature, increasingly so in the age of LLMs. They're places where people buy a voice and the illusion of support by astrot…

Precisely how Russia tainted the Romanian presidential elections using Tiktok dormant accounts to hijack another PR campaign. I'm with the SCotUS on this.

Hasn't the Russia story been already debunked? https://www.euronews.com/next/2024/12/23/romanian-centre-rig...

Re: EFF statement on U.S. Supreme Court's decision to uphold TikTok ban

#179

Post by tmnvdb »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #102
tmnvdb wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are glancing over the fact that American media platforms are not really controlled by the US government except for legal restrictions on hate speech and violence, and that there is an extremely diverse set of voices that can be heard on the 'American' (or rather non-Chinese) internet. It is also not clear to me how TikTok is supposed to provide better "checks and balances" just because it is owned and manipulated…

> You are glancing over the fact that American media platforms are not really controlled by the US government except for legal restrictions on hate speech and violence, and that there is an extremely diverse set of voices that can be heard on the 'American' (or rather non-Chinese) internet. That's how it's supposed to work in the US. For example, "hate speech" isn't actually one of the things the government is allowe…

> "Suppose you have one platform that censors criticism of the current US administration and another platform that censors videos of Tienanmen. This is better than only having one of those things, because you can then get the first one from the second one and vice versa."

The problem with this analysis is that American internet users don't just have one government controlled website to get their news from. Instead, they can access a wide range of national and international media that is quite diverse. It's not clear how adding the CCP propaganda manipulations to that would be especially useful.

Re: EFF statement on U.S. Supreme Court's decision to uphold TikTok ban

#180

Post by benrutter »

Curious to hear from other people here. I'm UK citizen, and on the whole, my perception is that I'm much more concerned about the effect on democracy from US led fake news and social media (specifically Twitter, Facebook and Truth Social) than TikTok.

I'm not making a case that that is justified, but I'm interested to know if other people in or outside the US share that perception?

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