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U.S. opens a national security review of TikTok’s acquisition of Musical.ly

reuters.com

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Re: U.S. opens a national security review of TikTok’s acquisition of Musical.ly

#211

Post by vkou »

wil421 wrote: post #151
cabaalis wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't make the mistake of thinking that the Chinese don't know that. It's long been my opinion that you simply cannot destroy the west without mutually assured destruction, so nukes are out. You can't invade and subsequently operate because Americans will never acquiesce to foreign rule, and we are individually armed. The only way to undo the US/west is to have it undo itself. Seed dissent and promote divisions and h…

Agreed. Authoritarian governments with morally questionable methods were and are better than the West at Humanint and propaganda. Russia and China are two good examples. I recently saw a documentary about North Korea. It was talking about the Clinton talks, NK would study everyone they would speak to. They also knew with an election would change guards and wait to get what they wanted. Foreign adversaries must be lov…

> Agreed. Authoritarian governments with morally questionable methods were and are better than the West at Humanint and propaganda. Russia and China are two good examples. I recently saw a documentary about North Korea. It was talking about the Clinton talks, NK would study everyone they would speak to. They also knew with an election would change guards and wait to get what they wanted.

Do you think that the US Department of State, or the foreign ministries of any other country of note don't do this sort of thing?

Re: U.S. opens a national security review of TikTok’s acquisition of Musical.ly

#212

Post by plurple »

wongarsu wrote: post #97
joshgachnang wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have an example? The only things I can think of are illegal (like child porn) which everyone should be able to agree should be banned.

Europe is much more relaxed about nudity (exposed breasts in prime time TV are fine) but much more restrictive about violence and gore. Instead US companies enforce US standards on us. Even child porn isn't an easy subject. Everyone can agree that liking 12 year olds sexually is pedophilia and images about that are child porn. But when we are taking about 16 year olds it's muddier since we are taking about child porn…

And yet you can’t say anything negative about Muhamed in Europe without fearing punishment from the government.

Re: U.S. opens a national security review of TikTok’s acquisition of Musical.ly

#213

Post by ceejayoz »

hnuser77 wrote: post #186
dv_dt wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While the US doesn't hard censor media like China, I'd agree there is something of a soft censorship/ignoring of many topics. And, if you think about US based hard restraints, there are certainly onerous restrictions with rules attached to financial services imposed by the US into foreign nations.

Some teachable moments about the soft censorship system are when 1) it misfires, like when a teenager stands around on video with a smile in the general vicinity of a Native American man and has his reputation immediately smeared by multiple national networks and thousands of other highly credentialed professionals, 2) when a dozen major online platforms and infrastructure services "independently" ban the same person…

> when a dozen major online platforms and infrastructure services "independently" ban the same person in a 72 hour period

This is a weird complaint. One site bans Alex Jones (after a major news event covered internationally). Media gets wind (likely due to him complaining very loudly about it) and starts asking the other major social networks why they aren't following suit.

No conspiracy required, for the same reasons multiple independent news sites writing about Fitbit today doesn't require collusion.

Re: U.S. opens a national security review of TikTok’s acquisition of Musical.ly

#214

Post by joyeuse6701 »

LudwigNagasena wrote: post #133
EpicEng wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>we're subject to American censorship policies. Tumblr / Facebook / YouTube being most notable in their filtering of LGBT content and suspending accounts of LGBT users, because of the American governments stance on human sexuality No, you're subject to corporate censorship policies. Let's not pretend that individual platforms regulating content is the same as government censorship. Please show me how their policies a…

Let’s not pretend a monopoly regulating content is much different from government.

Oh it is when the entity with a monopoly also has a monopoly on violence a.k.a government. A Uighur detention center, U.S. concentration camp etc. can only enforce their views with threat of violence. It is on an entirely different level of cardinality. To equate them would be to undermine the misery that those that suffer under such extreme regulations of content/thought.

Re: U.S. opens a national security review of TikTok’s acquisition of Musical.ly

#216

Post by Merrill »

mgraczyk wrote: post #176
Merrill wrote: post #75

Musical.ly was started by entrepreneurs in Shanghai. Although it may have had US and Japanese investors, I don't think it was an American company. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musical.ly >"It’s the first company to be headquartered in China, designed in China, but popular in the US," said Greylock investor Josh Elman. "Finally we’re seeing talented people who live in that ecosystem in that world and actually transce…

I've heard this myth that musical.ly was founded in China before, but it's hard to believe if you look at some basic facts. One cofounder worked full time at SAP in SF bay area for several years before and after musical.ly was founded. The other says on his LinkedIn that he was working in Santa Monica for several years on either side of the founding. They lived, worked, and founded the company in CA.

According to Pitchbook https://pitchbook.com/profiles/company/149415-13

>Primary Office 16/F, No. 127 Guodao Road, Yangpu District, Shanghai China

musical.ly appears to have always had its head office in Shanghai until the acquisition. The fact that it also had significant operations in California doesn't make it a US company. Only those operations are subject to US law and would have to be divested due to disapproval by CFIUS.

Re: U.S. opens a national security review of TikTok’s acquisition of Musical.ly

#217

Post by wil421 »

vkou wrote: post #211
wil421 wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. Authoritarian governments with morally questionable methods were and are better than the West at Humanint and propaganda. Russia and China are two good examples. I recently saw a documentary about North Korea. It was talking about the Clinton talks, NK would study everyone they would speak to. They also knew with an election would change guards and wait to get what they wanted. Foreign adversaries must be lov…

> Agreed. Authoritarian governments with morally questionable methods were and are better than the West at Humanint and propaganda. Russia and China are two good examples. I recently saw a documentary about North Korea. It was talking about the Clinton talks, NK would study everyone they would speak to. They also knew with an election would change guards and wait to get what they wanted. Do you think that the US Depa…

> Authoritarian governments with morally questionable methods were and are better than the West at Humanint and propaganda.

Better than implies they are doing the same thing as the West but are more effective.

Re: U.S. opens a national security review of TikTok’s acquisition of Musical.ly

#218

Post by sjg007 »

sol_remmy2 wrote: post #190
inetknght wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> these are mainly kids making music videos. They aren't using it to organize campaigns. I think that's a dangerously naive interpretation of the platform (or any platform really), particularly when it involves children and young adult minds.

Have you seen the weird articles on Snapchat Discover? "Why I'm never taking my mom to an x-rated convention again" "How my kitten play fetish makes me feel less alone" "Why I've been dressing like a horse for twenty years" If I had a teenage daughter, I'd feel much more comfortable with her using the Chinese tik-tok than whatever tabloid-level trash Snapchat is pushing these days. Some of these American media compan…

Shock factor click bait could be the reason if I were to guess.

Re: U.S. opens a national security review of TikTok’s acquisition of Musical.ly

#219

Post by Scaevolus »

bredren wrote: post #17

It was clear to me how threatened Facebook was by TikTok when I brought it up with an employee in June. They kept mentioning infinite scroll, and that everyone was supposed to be thinking about how to incorporate that into product. After zuck discussed TikTok directly recently, I’m not surprised google and fb lobbyists would press for this investigation. One question I have, is the real-time interests of millions of…

Facebook has released a TikTok clone, Lasso, but they miss a lot of basic things that made TikTok popular, both from a policy perspective and from UX. It's much less competitive than Instagram's cloning of Snapchat.

Initially Lasso only supported registering with a Facebook account, defaulting to exposing your real name to the world. TikTok let you browse anonymously and register with just a phone number or email account, letting users protect their identities much easier. Lasso now allows you to register with an Instagram account.

Lasso has much worse video quality-- seemingly SD vs HD, presumably to save bandwidth, but it makes videos much less appealing since they're noticeably blurrier. This may be because Lasso decided to show me Spanish videos for no apparent reason (or maybe that's where their users are?), and most Spanish-speaking countries have predominantly Android phones which have worse video quality.

The infinite scrolling feels worse because videos fade in from black instead of displaying their first frame while scrolling into view. The feed isn't actually infinite, but refuses to load past a certain point. You can't swipe right from the feed to view a user's profile.

Regarding censorship, I'm not convinced ByteDance's Chinese style "ban anything contentious" censorship is actually a downside for most teen users. Instagram has _very_ loose censorship policies, which easily allow the feed to become very sexualized. I expect this makes younger users feel less comfortable posting publicly-- Instagram is where the bikini models and their followers hang out!-- while TikTok's more carefully curated space feels age-appropriate. That may all be network effects, though, with social networks as always being colonized first by the young.

Re: U.S. opens a national security review of TikTok’s acquisition of Musical.ly

#220

Post by CharlesColeman »

quaquaqua1 wrote: post #199
CharlesColeman wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I absolutely do not understand why there is so much hate for Chinese people, Chinese companies, or the Chinese government. > please do not act as if your statements about Chinese nationals I think it's misleading to bring up the Chinese people in this way: the "hate," if it can even be called that, is for the Chinese government and the CCP . The real or imagined influence of the CCP over Chinese companies is causin…

I agree that the Chinese people are victims of their government. Why then is there no outrage that Americans are the victim of their own government as well? If TikTok is banned by the US because of the actions of the Chinese government, then we are no better than the Chinese government who have banned countless "American" apps, as if apps should even have a nationality in the first place.

> Why then is there no outrage that Americans are the victim of their own government as well?

What makes you think there isn't? There's outrage about that kind of thing all the time.

> If TikTok is banned by the US because of the actions of the Chinese government

Where in the article does it say that TikTok could be banned in the US?

> If TikTok is banned by the US because of the actions of the Chinese government, then we are no better than the Chinese government who have banned countless "American" apps, as if apps should even have a nationality in the first place.

Honestly, I believe you're kinda confused and looking at things too shallowly. Sort of like insisting we condemn someone who killed defending a child from murder the same as we'd condemn someone who committed murder, because they both killed a human being. Identical actions can be rightly judged very differently based on circumstances. The PRC bans American apps because (among other things) its authoritarian ruling oligarchy fears that Western ideas like constitutional democracy and human rights could threaten their power, if taken up by the Chinese people. If the US bans Chinese apps (or disinformation outlets like Russia Today), it will likely be because it values those same ideas and fears losing them.

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