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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

#311

Post by gman83 »

avocado4 wrote: post #129
Consultant32452 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Profitability is not required if you are an intelligence asset for the state. In this case, the state is China. Maybe it's legitimately profitable, maybe the Chinese govt is purchasing ads with other companies it owns, maybe the books are entirely cooked. It's hard to tell in China.

You're being downvoted but state subsidies are one of the largest concerns US/EU have with China, so it's a valid point. Not to say that TikTok doesn't have any revenue at all, they have ads.

I've seen maybe 3 ads in using TikTok for 6 months every day.

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

#312

Post by dang »

saturdaysaint wrote: post #257
ryanmarsh wrote: post #79

The censorship argument against TikTok seems odd given that Trump supporters are a prominent voice on the platform (I'm a huge TikTok user). Wouldn't its Chinese masters want to silence support for him as well? Why haven't they? To be clear, I don't like the idea of foreign state controlled major social platforms opaque to US oversight. I'm commenting specifically on the argument that TikTok silences Hong Kong suppor…

Autocratic states around the world are quietly thrilled to see an isolationist, flailing wannabe tyrant in the White House.

Please don't take HN threads into partisan flamewar. Would you please review the site guidelines and stick to them when posting to HN? You broke several of them here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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

#313

Post by root_axis »

mindslight wrote: post #303
root_axis wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> free speech in a public forum has now become de-facto mediated by private companies acting in their own interest This statement is misleading. Some public internet forums owned by large corporations are mediated by companies acting in their own interest. Nobody is required to use those forums and many alternative forums exist, other individuals or firms are also able to create their own online public forums subject…

You're being disingenuous. Your assertions apply in some narrow senses, but are seemingly inapplicable to the overall situation. For most of society, webcrapps are currently the de facto town square. A clique of companies has obtained the position of censoring the vast majority of interpersonal speech, period. But sure, there are practical angles in the US where, for example, if we could shift the popular focus to Fr…

> For most of society, webcrapps are currently the de facto town square

They're not public squares though, they're privately owned webservers, they don't become nationalized just because they're popular. That's like saying the dive-bar in your local town is the de-facto town-square because everyone meets there after work. Those individuals made the free choice to interact in a privately owned establishment thus they are subject to the rules of that establishment, if they don't like the rules they are free to go to another establishment with more favorable rules.

> A clique of companies is now in the position of censoring the vast majority of interpersonal speech, period.

100% false. They are within their rights to refuse to rebroadcast content you upload to the servers they own, but they cannot prevent you from rebroadcasting your content anywhere else.

> We could regain society's Freedom of Speech

Freedom of speech existed before Facebook and Twitter, so your suggestion that their business practices have caused free speech to go away is incorrect.

> So perhaps you're focused on the technicality because you want to work towards that - and please do! But state it constructively rather than dismissively. It helps nobody to perpetuate a stubborn idea that there is some kind of strict distinction between USG and the S&P 500

This is pretty hilarious. You're suggesting I self-censor the "technical" truth in favor of your editorialized version of the truth because "it helps nobody to perpetuate a stubborn idea that there is some kind of strict distinction between USG and the S&P 500"... even though there is a very obvious "strict distinction" between the government using the threat of force to censor speech vs a private company operating a platform they own and pay for.

> Whether the political bureaucracy controls corporations or corporations control bureaucracy, it's all government.

So are you saying you want to ban corporate lobbying or that we should nationalize large influential corporations so that we can ensure they function in service of the people instead of share holders?

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

#314

Post by mindslight »

root_axis wrote: post #313
mindslight wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're being disingenuous. Your assertions apply in some narrow senses, but are seemingly inapplicable to the overall situation. For most of society, webcrapps are currently the de facto town square. A clique of companies has obtained the position of censoring the vast majority of interpersonal speech, period. But sure, there are practical angles in the US where, for example, if we could shift the popular focus to Fr…

> For most of society, webcrapps are currently the de facto town square They're not public squares though, they're privately owned webservers, they don't become nationalized just because they're popular. That's like saying the dive-bar in your local town is the de-facto town-square because everyone meets there after work. Those individuals made the free choice to interact in a privately owned establishment thus they…

As I said, disingenuous and dismissive. One can use your framework to justify anything USG or state governments do, under a theory that citizens have assented to a contract by being physically present. Clearly, overall constructive behavior matters.

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

#315

Post by shawnz »

mindslight wrote: post #303
root_axis wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> free speech in a public forum has now become de-facto mediated by private companies acting in their own interest This statement is misleading. Some public internet forums owned by large corporations are mediated by companies acting in their own interest. Nobody is required to use those forums and many alternative forums exist, other individuals or firms are also able to create their own online public forums subject…

You're being disingenuous. Your assertions apply in some narrow senses, but are seemingly inapplicable to the overall situation. For most of society, webcrapps are currently the de facto town square. A clique of companies has obtained the position of censoring the vast majority of interpersonal speech, period. But sure, there are practical angles in the US where, for example, if we could shift the popular focus to Fr…

> It helps nobody to push a stubborn idea that there is some strict distinction between USG and the S&P 500.

There is a huge distinction. Facebook doesn't have a military to enforce their policies. They might be the defacto town square but it's only convenience and network effects which make that true. If there was enough dissatisfaction with the way they are running things then they could be gone tomorrow. That's not comparable to kind of censorship that, for example, the CCP imposes.

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

#316

Post by im3w1l »

kmonsen wrote: post #310
yorwba wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If it's a Chinese company, why is TikTok saying that China has zero jurisdiction over the app? ByteDance is trying very hard to run TikTok and Douyin (抖音, the Chinese version) as separate companies that happen to share the same code but not data. For one, this is because they're well aware that Western governments are suspicious of foreign companies having access to their citizens' data. Secondly, having Chinese an…

Not sure how they can do that in a reasonable way since it is not open source? And just because the data is not in China does not mean the Chinese government does not get access, it is more like the other way round. If the data is in China you can be sure they have full access.

> Not sure how they can do that in a reasonable way since it is not open source?

They could do the shared source thing, where select people are allowed to see the source after signing NDA's and stuff.

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

#317

Post by [deleted] »

dang wrote: post #296
rshnotsecure wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://news.ycombinator.com is run by M5 Hosting out of San Diego. M5 Hosting is also known as M5 Computer Security out of San Diego. These firms are a strange choice for a place like YCombinator to host I think.

That insinuation is so obscure that I can't even guess what you're insinuating. It's a small hosting company with good support. It's a nice fit with the spirit of this community. I have no idea what alternate names they have.

[deleted]

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

#318

Post by yorwba »

CharlesColeman wrote: post #291
yorwba wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the "hate," if it can even be called that, is for the Chinese government and the CCP. You may only hate the government, but you should be aware that many of those who seem to be on your side criticising the CPC do in fact hate everything Chinese. They think that not only the government, but all Chinese people are untrustworthy; that all Chinese companies are mere fronts for the government that should not be allowed…

>> the "hate," if it can even be called that, is for the Chinese government and the CCP. > You may only hate the government... Hate is actually not a very good word to describe the situation, IMHO. I only used it because the GP did, but I quoted and questioned the choice. If I had to describe it, I would say it's moral disapproval coupled with a recognition of incompatible goals that requires some kind of response. >…

> I find that a bit hard to square with the support of Chinese things by the same group, like the Tiananmen Square and Hong Kong protests (for instance).

I can only guess, but it could be explained by mentally categorizing Uyghurs, Hong Kongers and even Tiananmen protesters as "not Chinese." I don't think it's so much racism as a binary "us vs. them" classification system that expresses itself as the opinion that "the Chinese" should be punished for oppressing by implementing , where is not specific to oppressors and would also affect . I'm sure it's often just said in the heat of the moment and not to be taken literally, but it still poisons the discourse.

> it's a derail to bring up on a vague prompt like in the parent of this subthread.

Agreed, but since the thread was already derailed I decided to respond anyway.

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

#319

Post by nullc »

dang wrote: post #293
nullc wrote: post #207

So HN changed the headline to remove TikTok which is a name I reconized and replaced it with "ByteDance" and "Musical.ly", which I've never heard of before. It was originally displayed on HN the same as it is in the article. From the article, I know that the new headline is more precise. But it's much less informative, I wouldn't have clicked the article under this name.

We changed the title because the actual story, as stated in the first paragraph, is distant enough from the article title as to make that title misleading. "U.S. opens national security investigation into TikTok" connotes something very different from reviewing a specific acquisition. Actually Reuters is usually a lot more careful than that. As for whether the headline says TikTok or ByteDance, the only thing I care…

Maybe "U.S. to review National Security of ByteDance (TikTok) acquiring Musical.ly."?

I don't envy your work. :)

FWIW, I didn't suspect any foul play... the ByteDance is more accurate but also totally opaque.

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

#320

Post by im3w1l »

justinzollars wrote: post #86

TikTok is actually a great app. When I was a kid in the 00's my friends and I used to carry around a video camera to make music videos. With TikTok you can do it with your cell phone. They beat SnapChat, FB and Instagram on experience. Censorship is something serious to consider, but these are mainly kids making music videos. They aren't using it to organize campaigns.

There are certainly controversies to be had in music videos:

* Songs glorifying violence

* Songs about drugs

* (Partial) nudity

* Songs "belonging" to controversial groups and movements.

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