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TikTok goes dark in the US

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Re: TikTok goes dark in the US

#531

Post by aqme28 »

Vegenoid wrote: post #367
jmkni wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mention “grey zone conflicts” then opine that people don’t know what that is…then don’t actually explain what it is!

This is the very top of the "Description" section of the Wikipedia page for "Grey-zone (international relations)"[0]: > Use of the term grey-zone is widespread in national security circles, but there is no universal agreement on the definition of grey-zone, or even whether it is a useful term, with views about the term ranging from "faddish" or "vague", to "useful" or "brilliant" It goes on to say: > Grey zone warfar…

OP maligns people for not knowing what it means, but it seems like it’s a nebulous term with no concrete meaning.

Re: TikTok goes dark in the US

#532

Post by zifpanachr23 »

IAmNotACellist wrote: post #331
jandrewrogers wrote: post #308

A point I think most people don’t understand is that the government interest in TikTok has little to do with exploiting user data per se, a lot of other companies do that. The issue is that TikTok is somewhat unique in being aggressively weaponized in currently very active “grey zone” conflicts. This has been an open secret in national security circles but the average person on the street has no idea what a grey zone…

"Grey zone conflict" sounds a lot like our powers are upset they don't have the level of control over information that the adversary has. They want to be the ones to censor, suppress, and promote, rather than another country. The goal isn't more open access to information.

It has absolutely made things more difficult not having distinct spheres of information with well defined boundaries. It's genuinely made things much more difficult to plan about. The global Internet absolutely has made a lot of people upset for a lot of reasons that make intuitive sense.

That's what growing conservative "anti globalist" movements backed by national security elements are really about. Not ultimately immigration or racism or tax cuts (that's how you get the tubes on board), but about how the inability to keep civilians out of information conflicts has made running countries incredibly difficult.

This is one area where China absolutely has the right approach and we need to wake up about what it means in the public rather than complain that we can't scroll silly waste of time videos all the time. The US public is incredibly uneducated about this concept and why it poses a threat, so the discussion needs to be had.

I think we should be far more critical of American internet companies as well and quite a few of them should probably be banned because they are creating the same sort of problem w.r.t how we can practically organize a functioning society. That's the unfortunate thing, is a bunch of libertarians in silicon valley a while back decided to invent a business model that could cause a global war.

Re: TikTok goes dark in the US

#533

Post by Aachen »

safety1st wrote: post #138
AirMax98 wrote: post #98

It's a shame that it's come to this. I feel that all arguments that TikTok is unhealthy or spyware and bad for our general public are valid, but the same arguments also apply to Instagram/Twitter/Whatever. Rather than have some sort of further regulation for what data any application can collect and present to Americans, we've just brought the hammer down on the millions of people that use this application for their…

I'm going to quote a CBS News article here because I don't feel Congress' arguments in favor of banning TikTok are being well represented. You can agree with them or disagree with them but everyone should at least understand them accurately. TLDR TikTok is not comparable to the other services you mentioned because ByteDance is required to comply with Chinese intelligence, and China has made many public statements in…

> You can agree with them or disagree with them but everyone should at least understand them accurately.

> "[...] it can read your text messages, it can track your keystrokes. It has access to your phone records."

Is that quote accurate though? For accessing text messages, you need to give them an OS permission. For tracking keystrokes, they need to install a keyboard app and you need to select it and use it in the app whose keystrokes they're interested in. For phone records, you again need to grant a separate permission.

I don't use Tiktok but the current gatekeepers of this world don't usually allow unnecessary permissions

Re: TikTok goes dark in the US

#534

Post by tomjen3 »

ChicagoDave wrote: post #376

I'll bet none of the people responding here actually read the Supreme Court decision. This isn't about data that people agreed to allow ByteDance to scrape. It's about ByteDance going beyond that and scraping contact information of NON-TikTok users, which could be used for blackmail or in other illegal and adversarial ways. Everyone knows U.S. companies gather user data. Oracle had been doing it for decades. This is…

The supreme court also said you don't have a right to control your own body a few years ago. They have been political (and thus unreliable) for years.

Re: TikTok goes dark in the US

#536

Post by gman83 »

daemoens wrote: post #231

The app was shutdown a couple of hours ago in the US and this was the message all TikTok users saw when they opened the app.[1] The same guy who pushed for a ban massively last year, is going to save the app despite the security concerns he and most of our government said they had. If only we knew what happened in that classified briefing that made them vote together across party lines. [1] https://a57.foxnews.com/st…

He received $100 million from Jeff Yass, the largest American investor in TIkTok. That did the trick.

Re: TikTok goes dark in the US

#537

Post by dns_snek »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #308

A point I think most people don’t understand is that the government interest in TikTok has little to do with exploiting user data per se, a lot of other companies do that. The issue is that TikTok is somewhat unique in being aggressively weaponized in currently very active “grey zone” conflicts. This has been an open secret in national security circles but the average person on the street has no idea what a grey zone…

Do you have any evidence supporting anything you claimed as a matter of fact? "grey zone conflicts", "aggressively weaponized", "national security circles" are just scary/serious sounding phrases that sound a lot more legitimate than I suspect they actually are.

AOC published a video talking about how she (and some other representatives) believed that the arguments that were presented to them were just as vague, nonspecific and theoretical as these online arguments I keep reading.

Re: TikTok goes dark in the US

#538

Post by nico »

elfbargpt wrote: post #260
daemoens wrote: post #231

The app was shutdown a couple of hours ago in the US and this was the message all TikTok users saw when they opened the app.[1] The same guy who pushed for a ban massively last year, is going to save the app despite the security concerns he and most of our government said they had. If only we knew what happened in that classified briefing that made them vote together across party lines. [1] https://a57.foxnews.com/st…

I have a feeling the ban is likely the result of "special interest" groups as opposed to a "classified briefing"

Of course. TT is to China as WMDs were to Iraq

No real anything presented to the American public, just handwaving and finger pointing

It just barely needs to make sense and it becomes the center of the conversation, derailing any meaningful or real discussion

Very effective propaganda

Re: TikTok goes dark in the US

#539

Post by amcsi »

popcalc wrote: post #441
mediumsmart wrote: post #135

Always nice to see the American population kept safe from propaganda, affordable rents, a working healthcare system and fresh food for 90 cents.

LoL you have to bribe doctors to take care of you in not only China but also multiple EU countries: Hungary, Bulgaria, Greece, Romania.

In Hungary they banned Gratitude Payments since 2021.

Re: TikTok goes dark in the US

#540

Post by joenot443 »

dns_snek wrote: post #537
jandrewrogers wrote: post #308

A point I think most people don’t understand is that the government interest in TikTok has little to do with exploiting user data per se, a lot of other companies do that. The issue is that TikTok is somewhat unique in being aggressively weaponized in currently very active “grey zone” conflicts. This has been an open secret in national security circles but the average person on the street has no idea what a grey zone…

Do you have any evidence supporting anything you claimed as a matter of fact? "grey zone conflicts", "aggressively weaponized", "national security circles" are just scary/serious sounding phrases that sound a lot more legitimate than I suspect they actually are. AOC published a video talking about how she (and some other representatives) believed that the arguments that were presented to them were just as vague, nons…

Grey Zone is a pretty well documented concept in geopolitics, it's a fascinating read if you're interested.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grey-zone_(international_relat...

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