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The FBI alleges TikTok poses national security concerns

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Re: The FBI alleges TikTok poses national security concerns

#221

Post by TinkersW »

mromanuk wrote: post #31
uniqueuid wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This one's pretty simple: China is a totalitarian regime that is in direct conflict with western constitutional values. So if influence is aimed at democratic foundations, of course it's a bad thing.

Doesn't banning a social network undermine the democratic principles you mention?

I don't see why those principles should apply to a foreign country with malign intentions, they aren't a person nor do they represent a populace given that China is authoritarian.

The spying seems secondary to the influence they can wield by pushing certain stories while burying others.

Re: The FBI alleges TikTok poses national security concerns

#222

Post by SuoDuanDao »

encryptluks2 wrote: post #141
sgu999 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Critical thinking would be a good start... but TikTok also targets a very young and immature audience that is already protected from many other things by rules.

In public elementary school here in the US they literally taught me indoctrination everyday by doing cult like rituals and allegiance to a cloth and history that whitewashed the crimes. How are young people in America supposed to be taught to think freely when they are shunned for thinking outside of the American way?

There's a golden mean between insufficient patriotism to defend your kin domain from an outsider whose victory would be genuinely worse than the current status quo, and insufficient self-criticism to prevent your kin domain from becoming worse than the current status quo through inertia. Navigating that kind of dichotomy can be learned through practice, I think the challenge in the US in particular is that the two political parties so associate the other one with one of the unhealthy extremes that the center has trouble holding.

Re: The FBI alleges TikTok poses national security concerns

#223

Post by piva00 »

clashmoore wrote: post #201
piva00 wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are oversimplifying the issue. It's not about having your birthdate, it's about capturing data about your tastes and preferences over time to feed into a profiling model. It's a way to capture data to use inference models to understand who you actually are, your tastes and personality. Yes, Instagram/FB/Meta do the same, Google does the same, the difference is that Meta and Google are not the government or, worse…

The article mentioned the company sharing birthdates which is why I used it myself. I'm just failing to understand why China using whatever data TikTok has on me to understand my tastes and personality is a national security issue for the United States. The fear seems to be that China could tweak a US citizen's feed, based on their profiling, to inject Chinese propaganda?

> The fear seems to be that China could tweak a US citizen's feed, based on their profiling, to inject Chinese propaganda?

Yes, that's the assumption. And just to be clear, not feed you direct Chinese propaganda but drip-feed behaviour-changing content to make you more or less sensitive to some topics, and not necessarily you but maybe a different cohort they identify as being more easily manipulated. For example: teenagers or young adults (which are the majority of users on TikTok) that are still not mature enough to have developed critical thinking about what they are being fed.

It's exactly to avoid this kind of possible operation that the bells are ringing. Not necessarily because they are already exploiting it but because it's definitely a massive risk to allow such data to be vacuumed by an adversarial government.

Re: The FBI alleges TikTok poses national security concerns

#224

Post by xadhominemx »

zthrowaway wrote: post #199
bbzealot wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re claiming that a relevant amount of Americans accused Trump of being Xenophobe due to his remarks on TikTok. Do you have any source to back that claim?

- https://www.inquirer.com/opinion/commentary/trump-tiktok-ban... - https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2020/7/23/21334871/tiktok-ban-... - https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/08/10/banning-ti... - https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/07/can-the-trump-admini... - https://www.wired.com/story/trump-tiktok-drama-security-dist... There's plenty more. Look at previous threads about Trump wanting to ban TikTok on hackern…

Only the Inquirer and Washington post pieces said Trump was going to ban TikTok because of racism/xenophobia; and those were both published in the editorial sections. Is that the best you got?

Re: The FBI alleges TikTok poses national security concerns

#225

Post by allisdust »

It's banned overnight in India along with a lot of other Chinese apps. I don't see why that can't be done in USA under national security policies. It's ridiculous to let an app from foreign adversary which can manipulate citizen behaviour through its algorithms while being able to keep track of what interests whom is allowed to operate freely. Its frankly surprising they are even having this debate. Yes meta, Google and God knows what other companies are also in a position to do this. But then the government can always drag the executives to trial legally. They can't do any of that with a foreign company.

Re: The FBI alleges TikTok poses national security concerns

#226

Post by Eisenstein »

mhb wrote: post #144
cscurmudgeon wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> can we not have targeted-by-nationality bans and instead have .. rules? Let's have reciprocal rules. If country X bans US social media then why shouldn't the US do the same?

Because, ceteris paribus, unilateral free trade benefits an entity regardless of whether its counterparty taxes or restricts its trade. Because comparative advantage. Because you don't jump off a bridge because Johnny jumped off a bridge.

> Because you don't jump off a bridge because Johnny jumped off a bridge.

Why not? Is 'below the bridge' a place we need to get to, and do we have a parachute?

Re: The FBI alleges TikTok poses national security concerns

#227

Post by jononor »

kube-system wrote: post #190
thesuitonym wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Levy fines on app stores that allow surveillance apps.

How would an App Store possibly know? Surveillance often happens out of band, and under foreign jurisdiction. The apps themselves may not even know or may be prohibited from disclosing it.

That is something the apps and App stores can solve in collaboration. And if they are required to in order to make money, they very likely will.

Re: The FBI alleges TikTok poses national security concerns

#228

Post by aeze »

I have a couple questions:

1) How is TikTok worse than other social media apps? Both in terms of privacy and "the algorithm".

2) What another country's government does with my data is far less important to me than what my government is doing with my data. Am I wrong for thinking that?

Re: The FBI alleges TikTok poses national security concerns

#229

Post by p0pcult »

ApolloFortyNine wrote: post #198
angio wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

American companies are allowed to operate in China, as long as they follow local regulation. If TikTok behaviour is concerning (it is, like google/facebook/etc are also concerning), then introduce regulations that protect users' privacy and only then ban TikTok.

The local regulation is to parter with a Chinese company to operate the service. Giving that company a substantial percentage of revenue.

And the ability for government/regulatory oversight.

Re: The FBI alleges TikTok poses national security concerns

#230

Post by tenpies »

josefresco wrote: post #197
derefr wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Build a local clone” — the obvious answer is that both Instagram and Snapchat already have; and that nobody wants to switch. If only the US blocked TikTok, that’d just mean there’d still be a TikTok that every other western country has access to except the US, full of content interesting to Westerners. People with Android devices would just sideload it, and use VPNs to access it if necessary. The less-obvious answer…

> nobody wants to switch There's no reason to switch now. Ban TikTok and people will switch.

Will it? Part of Tiktok's genius is that you don't even need an account to view content, or even the app - the browser experience is quite good.

Now compare the friction between wanting to see a Tiktok right now, versus trying to see one of whatever Snap's equivalent is, or Facebook and Instagram's.

Tiktok is absolute butter, on browser or app.

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