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ByteDance confirmed it used TikTok to monitor journalists’ physical location

forbes.com

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Re: ByteDance confirmed it used TikTok to monitor journalists’ physical location

#461

Post by lazyeye »

TechBro8615 wrote: post #400
sergiotapia wrote: post #394

We should ban this app from the United States. What dirt will China have on our politicians 30 years from now?

How do you propose we "ban" it from the United States? Should it be illegal for me to run TikTok on any of my devices? Do you want the US government to compel Apple and Google to delist TikTok from their app stores? Before answering, consider carefully whether this is a precedent you want to set. Some in government may want to do the same for Twitter.

In the context of any other trade relationship would it be acceptable for China to block all access to its own market, whilst still expecting full access everybody elses?

Re: ByteDance confirmed it used TikTok to monitor journalists’ physical location

#462

Post by 1attice »

cormacrelf wrote: post #416
msla wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the UK is welcome to try to enforce the GDPR against the PRC.

Last I checked TikTok has a huge office in London. They’re not invulnerable to penalties.

No, but UK enforcement is now quite vulnerable to, say, an HQ move to Paris.

Wouldn't want those jobs to go missing during a Brexit war deepfreeze winter.

A pity there wasn't some way of harmonizing laws and enforcement with other nearby nation-states. Some sort of "Union".

Thinking aloud

Re: ByteDance confirmed it used TikTok to monitor journalists’ physical location

#463

Post by BudaDude »

sergiotapia wrote: post #410
TechBro8615 wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you propose we "ban" it from the United States? Should it be illegal for me to run TikTok on any of my devices? Do you want the US government to compel Apple and Google to delist TikTok from their app stores? Before answering, consider carefully whether this is a precedent you want to set. Some in government may want to do the same for Twitter.

I don't know, what did India do? I read some time ago that it got banned completely there.

India's version of the internet is also very different than ours. I doubt TikTok even had much of a market there

Re: ByteDance confirmed it used TikTok to monitor journalists’ physical location

#464

Post by malshe »

trasz3 wrote: post #430
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> China, which didn’t invade anyone in half a decade, militaristic? Let me guess, you’re American? Nobody's claiming America isn't militaristic. But it's not a dictatorship. And it's acting in its self interest. China blocks every foreign social media app. Whataboutism doesn't make rhetorical sense here.

[flagged]

> US is a partial democracy, just like China

China is a partial democracy? What bs!

Re: ByteDance confirmed it used TikTok to monitor journalists’ physical location

#465

Post by BlueTemplar »

signatoremo wrote: post #448
trasz3 wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We should also shut down all the US-based media in Europe then, for the exact same reason.

Who is we? Are you European? Twitter, FB and Google have been banned in China, so banning US companies isn’t a new concept. Whether Europe join that is up to European countries. They haven’t shared your opinions so far. Maybe they value the relationship with the US? Especially after seeing Russia’s “special operation” in Ukraine

US companies effectively have been "banned" in EUrope since 2015 for this exact reason :

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Schrems#Schrems_I

Re: ByteDance confirmed it used TikTok to monitor journalists’ physical location

#466

Post by BlueTemplar »

trasz3 wrote: post #431
bagacrap wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you haven't noticed, Europe has passed laws making it nearly impossible for American (and only American) tech companies to operate there. I would probably be less inclined to want TikTok banned if China were in the midst of saving my entire continent from an unhinged, marauding neighbor.

Not true, American companies like Google are still the de facto monopolies in Europe. You might also check out how China is draining Russian economy - instead of focusing on making an appearance of doing so. But yeah, this is one aspect where I do agree. I’m really happy to see USA being the good guys again.

They are still operating illegally in the EU. Hard to say whether law enforcement will start to (seriously) wake up, whether denial will make the EU and the US come to an agreement, or whether the US will stop treating non-citizens like a police state (haha, fat chance).

Re: ByteDance confirmed it used TikTok to monitor journalists’ physical location

#467

Post by anakaine »

1attice wrote: post #462
cormacrelf wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last I checked TikTok has a huge office in London. They’re not invulnerable to penalties.

No, but UK enforcement is now quite vulnerable to, say, an HQ move to Paris. Wouldn't want those jobs to go missing during a Brexit war deepfreeze winter. A pity there wasn't some way of harmonizing laws and enforcement with other nearby nation-states. Some sort of "Union". Thinking aloud

You could probably put a bunch of spin on it that "China has been committing human rights abuses right here in the UK", "threatening journalists", "accessing personal data to track them in their home life", and that "as the government of the people we say that this is not ok".

A move to Paris will both optically look, and could again be headlined as TikTok trying to skirt the rule of law to make sure they can keep stealing your data.

Announce some extra investment into tech industries using the fines collected from TikTok, using any assets you may have frozen and prevented from leaving the country if needs be, in order to bolster jobs.

I think the government of the day could spin it into a PR win.

Re: ByteDance confirmed it used TikTok to monitor journalists’ physical location

#468

Post by DiogenesKynikos »

93po wrote: post #456
DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This story has nothing to do with the CCP. In the US now, every story that has anything to do with China is reduced to "the CCP." This is a story about a tech company abusing its access to user data to try to track down which of its employees were talking to journalists. This could be a story about a Chinese company, an American company, or a company from pretty much any country.

High level executives at ByteDance are members of the CCP and closely work with the CCP. Journalists are reporting on ByteDance because of allegations that are implied in this quote from the article: “TikTok has never been used to ‘target’ any members of the U.S. government, activists, public figures or journalists,” The ongoing controversy with TikTok has always been about the concern of the government of China usin…

Here are the top executives of ByteDance:

* Zhang Yiming, founder / CEO of ByteDance until 2021: not a member of the Communist Party.

* Kevin A. Mayer, COO and CEO of TikTok during 2020: not a member of the Communist Party.

* Rubo Liang, CEO since 2021: not a member of the Communist Party.

* Lidong Zhang, Chairman of ByteDance China: I can't find any reference to him being a member of the Communist Party.

* Alex Zhu, founder of Musical.ly, the predecessor of TikTok, and former CEO of TikTok: not a member of the Communist Party.

I'm sure there are some executives that are members of the Communist Party, but looking at the top people, that just doesn't pop out.

> The ongoing controversy with TikTok has always been about the concern of the government of China using TikTok data and manipulation of its content in clandestine ways.

That's the way literally every issue even tangentially related to China is spun in the US nowadays. This is actually a story about a tech company trying to find leakers by looking at the user data of the journalists they met with. It gets turned into a story about how the Communist Party is going to infiltrate and undermine the United States, using an app that teenagers use to show off their dance moves. The paranoia about China has gone just a bit too far for my liking.

Re: ByteDance confirmed it used TikTok to monitor journalists’ physical location

#469

Post by seanmcdirmid »

DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #468
93po wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

High level executives at ByteDance are members of the CCP and closely work with the CCP. Journalists are reporting on ByteDance because of allegations that are implied in this quote from the article: “TikTok has never been used to ‘target’ any members of the U.S. government, activists, public figures or journalists,” The ongoing controversy with TikTok has always been about the concern of the government of China usin…

Here are the top executives of ByteDance: * Zhang Yiming, founder / CEO of ByteDance until 2021: not a member of the Communist Party. * Kevin A. Mayer, COO and CEO of TikTok during 2020: not a member of the Communist Party. * Rubo Liang, CEO since 2021: not a member of the Communist Party. * Lidong Zhang, Chairman of ByteDance China: I can't find any reference to him being a member of the Communist Party. * Alex Zhu,…

Considering that a lot of kids join the communist party like it’s literally a school club, I don’t see how being a member or not is really very interesting. It’s like registering as a Democrat or Republican in states that require that, except there is a bit of gating in the youth organizations looking for good students, or legacy members, etc…

Re: ByteDance confirmed it used TikTok to monitor journalists’ physical location

#470

Post by 1attice »

anakaine wrote: post #467
1attice wrote: post #462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, but UK enforcement is now quite vulnerable to, say, an HQ move to Paris. Wouldn't want those jobs to go missing during a Brexit war deepfreeze winter. A pity there wasn't some way of harmonizing laws and enforcement with other nearby nation-states. Some sort of "Union". Thinking aloud

You could probably put a bunch of spin on it that "China has been committing human rights abuses right here in the UK", "threatening journalists", "accessing personal data to track them in their home life", and that "as the government of the people we say that this is not ok". A move to Paris will both optically look, and could again be headlined as TikTok trying to skirt the rule of law to make sure they can keep st…

This seems like a lot of typing for what, up until Brexit Got Done, could have been expressed with the two-character word "no", as in, "no, ByteDance, no."

Now it's 'optics' and geopolitics.

These two scenarios are not equivalent. One gives ByteDance vastly more leverage.

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