The problem should be that the data is collected and provided to the government whenever they want - not that it's not the Chinese government. We had this discussion after the Snowden leaks and nothing changed whatsoever. Back then it was the US government and the US gov had the chance to change the rules so this could not happen. Now they're up in arms because other governments do the exact same thing. It's really annoying.
Ban every app that collects "problematic" user info. Make the collection itself illegal, give users control about their data but don't argue that the practice suddenly becomes problematic when others do it.
The differentiator here is national security, which raises an entirely different set of issues than the typical data collection and user privacy ones.
It's like the difference between sharing your bank password with your wife vs. some dude you aren't very friendly with who has a history of wire fraud. "Treat everyone the same" is not a workable policy.
The thing is, yes Facebook and Google's data collection is horrendous, but TikTok it literally on another level.
Quite a good explanation here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/fxgi06/comment/fmuk...
From the data listed, it's a lot but personally with the current state of mobile os computing none of this seems all that out of the ordinary, it's just what is the sad state of those platforms. This is why I think the data is being used as an excuse.
The problem with privacy law is that some foreign powers won't abide by the laws. It's not unlike violence- a country can try to make a global law saying "Nobody is allowed to have a military", but if they actually get rid of their military, they will just get taken over by a different country which does have a military.
Data collection aside - relying on a single Appstore that is governed by US law is not acceptable.
Here is another idea that could give users control about their data, and that could be more easily accepted by governments and companies.
All the data of user X living in country Y should be stored on a server handled by country Y. Moreover, add the following features:
- User X should be able to see all the people and companies that have access to his or her data.
- Country Y could put some tax on each request, that should cover at least the costs for maintening the servers.
This would give users more control about their data, and this would give countries more compensation on the monetizable data coming from its land.
The compensation would be a motivation for the governments to implement and maintain these servers.
Moreover, as opposed to a full ban on data collection, this approach might be accepted by companies since they would still be able to work with users data: just now they would need to pay for them and also they would need to let users know exactly who they sell the data to. In particular, if they sell the data to agressive ads companies, this would be known by the users and this could decrease their reputation.
From a technical point of view it seems doable and a service with similar features is already implemented in Estonia for example [1].
[1]: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12553-017-0195-1
Yes western governments are totally full of shit too, the proof of this is that Julian Assange is still being crucified for leaking information, for being a whistle blower.
We're all so trained to thinking the Government is ok now that it's really hard to know what to do about it.
As consumers, we do have a horse in the race. I would cheer for the horse with fewer regulations, but that's just me...
0. https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/5458430 (Russian)
This is too simplistic. All systems of government are not equal. It’s disingenuous to claim otherwise.
The same rules mostly do get applied across the board, which is why this story is about some guy writing a letter to private companies asking them to please find TikTok in breach of those companies' terms of service.
He doesn't actually have sweeping powers of censorship that would allow him to just ban them on a whim, so he does the next best thing and raises his political profile so he might get considered for a more important job the next time his political party is in power.
I think it's unlikely that Apple or Google will find TikTok to be in breach of their terms, and even less likely that Americans will be completely banned from accessing TikTok.
I disagree, because this is a "both things can be true" situation. It's true that data collection is a problem inherently and it's true that China's unprecedented scale of use and abuse of data escalates the urgency of Tiktok's case in particular.
I also think as a practical matter, "we should apply this to all apps" has the functional effect of being a poison pill ensuring nothing gets done. I think we should accept imperfect forward iterations to improve security over poison pills.
Less free nations are worthy of special attention.
Furthermore the behavior of intelligence agencies sanctioned this kind of surveillance. Ironically the decreased trust will be vastly more relevant to lessened security than their surveillance attempts could ever make up for. So they failed their primary mission too. In a supposedly free country it is a strategy that only produces losers and there is not change in sight.
That's a matter of perspective. From the US perspective, it's much more problematic for an adversary to have information about their personnel.
Which shouldn’t be too big of a surprise I guess, especially since ‘national security risk’ almost always means ‘threat to gov’t security in practice’.
That won’t change unless there is some kind of disaster that makes it untenable. I mean, just look at Nuclear proliferation for a really clear example.
Eligible US Voters can elect a new US Government at various branches and change what US companies do with data through regulations/legislation.
Even that theoretical route is not possible when it comes to a foreign company. Therefore the FCC guy (who is theoretically beholden to US citizens, or wanting to be perceived that way, or wanting to do so for his buddies at Western tech companies) is making the recommendation.
It’s similar to the paradox of intolerance… the paradox of force. Should we live by the rules of fairness while others don’t? Should we expose ourselves to the same risks that others expose themselves just out of fairness?
Huawei went through basically the same thing when western chip companies and telcos were beat to market by nearly a year for 5G. Grinding the red scare axe to an audience of bought and paid for octogenarians is still a pretty good grift it seems.
The extent to which it's problematic depends on who's doing it, even if all cases are problematic.
All countries have primarily a duty to their citizens, and only then to foreign entities. Even though there are plenty of points of improvement the US can make here, accepting that at least some discrimination against external citizens or companies should happen seems to be an axiom of governmental organization.
I'm European btw and have a US-incorporated start-up.
There is no equivalence with western governments.
Very much this. As a European who doesn't intent to set a single foot in China, I'm much more comfortable at the thought of China having my data than my own government.
https://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/06/28/326453204/fa...
It's a numbers game. They have ~80,000,000 Americans tuned in. They can turn knobs when they need to alter US public opinion. A subtle shift of 80,000,000 people is big.
Many people also get their news from TikTok:
> TikTok, on the other hand, has seen a slight uptick in the portion of users who say they regularly get news on the site, rising from 22% to 29% in this period.
https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/2021/09/20/news-consu...
> The problem should be that the data is collected and provided to the government whenever they want
Maybe in someone's ideal world that doesn't exist this could be the problem formulation. In real world, TikTok is not strictly under control of EUSIAN blob so it's a threat and it's natural for state to restrict its influence.
From a geopolitical viewpoint this makes complete sense. You don't want your rival to have a backdoor into influencing/manipulating/discovering how people in your nation are behaving, especially when you consider how much data about sensitive information might be getting onto tiktok, like videos made by military service members on bases, videos showing gaps/issues/etc in infrastructure, or at ports and other locations.
As for me, I'm an American and it is in my best interests that USA stays top dog. I didn't immigrate here to downgrade lol, so I want USA to do whatever it needs to be the top player.
Are you sure? Several months ago I've woke up to learn, that my country start to kill civilians of other country with bombs, missiles and shelling, to become "top player". And, what is even worse, many of my fellow citizens support it.
Now I'm trying to leave this country for some other, which don't have ambitions to be top-player but don't kill civilians and don't attack malls and hospitals.
Second, it's not necessarily in one's best interest to live in a "top dog" country. There are plenty of happy and prosperous people living outside the USA. The USA ranks 26th for median wealth. To give another example, even if China took the top dog spot, the average US citizen would still be better off than the average Chinese citizen.
Thirdly, I don't think the US remaining top dog is a realistic objective in the long term. In my opinion, it would be smarter to lead by example knowing that your successor will be judged by the standard you set.
The country or its people? This seems like a very selfish sentiment. Shouldn't we want everyone to prosper, no matter where they are from? There are countless who may not be able to afford to emigrate to the US
Good for you, but try imagine hearing this from a Chinese national.
"Whatever it needs" to do...
I get the paranoia around China, I honestly do. I'm not at all unsupportive of the Chinese regime either. But this "one rule for us another for them" principle really needs to stop.
The interests of your government might not necessarily be aligned with yours.
Likely, their personal gains or the interests of lobbyists would come first and not necessarily align with borders/the colour of your passport cover. If you wanna stay "top dog", perhaps think it through a bit more and think a bit broader.
I would argue that admitting that the only way to convince Chinese apps to not track American users is to ban them (mostly because it's eating their own dog food with TikTok that's nowadays much more popular than America's own spying apps) doesn't sound much top dog, more like small dog barking at the big one.
I believe that America was founded on the idea that we could be great because we are free, and that giving our people the opportunity to thrive and be productive will only, in the long run, make our prosperity that much greater.
It's been said that the Constitution is not a suicide pact. You would interpret this, I think, to mean that we should toss out the Bill of Rights anytime it seems inconvenient to our short-term ends. But I see it as a statement that, even when it seems contradictory, investing in the people rather than the power over them will lead to a greater nation even when that seems counterintuitive.
World is being destroyed because of this kind of view point. We need more collaboration, not 'me first'.
Speaking as a friend - this attitude is becoming an existential problem for the US abroad. More and more countries are wondering if it's the US that's the problem.
How far are you willing to go? Do you give a shit about people being killed so that your country stays rich and "on top"?
Facebook and Google have a NSA servers that get all the traffic even before they reach them and have complete access into their info, then you can't complain when Chinese do the same, after all, they are admiring USA and copying what we are doing.
If we want Chinese to do better, we need to do better, they will follow.
It is your data they are collecting, not some other dog's.
What do you mean by USA though? It's not a monolithic object and has plenty of rivals too. Also if USA is top dog, it may get freedom to do whatever it wants to you, be careful about what you want. When was the last time absolute power produced good results?
It never makes sense from a human rights standpoint.
You can still upgrade, you know.
And yet, Russia heavily used Facebook to influence/manipulate American behaviour during the election.
I am really (I am european) pissed off by the fact that someone decided we needed a war with Ukraine when we do not have anything for/against Russia or Ukraine in principle and they start to make pressure to all private business, etc. to make them do what these people want us to do. Literally in Spain I saw even bad press for people selling clothes (Mango) or yoghurts (Danone) just because they kept selling those products to normal Russian people. So govts can sell/send weapons to Ukraine with our taxes and without our permission at the same time they encourage and point to private company doing regular business so that they stop selling there? Seriously?
I really do not accept that, I want to have friends from wherever, go with whoever and do business with whom I deem appropriate without asking permission to anyone. If I am not selling intelligence for spying or weapons, what is wrong? I really do not get it.
I get it. We want corps to stop hoovering up our data because they can use it to manipulate us with advertising, and they can mishandle it such that other bad actors can exploit it. I'm with you, this is a valid concern that we should address. But I think TikTok's specific case warrants additional concern because it's all that, plus it puts a geopolitical adversary in control of the data, countless devices, and a media channel central to the current cultural zeitgeist.
I don't think it's reasonable to wait for general regulation of social media corps while TikTok continues to do its thing, particularly if targeted action against TikTok is politically viable.
Edit: typo
How were Snowden revelations of USG<>Bigtech relationship materially different from what's happening here? Maybe it was less transparent?
Any "woke" person can see the cognitive dissonance here. It's all fine that you use the geopolitical rivalry argument but not if you try to paint one side of the argument as "free" and "liberal" and "subject to rule of law" when it's clearly not the case
The additional data that TikTok tries to gather from the mobile OSs is insignificant compared to what you can get from videos that people take willingly.
Russian soldiers use VK, that doesn't stop OSINT researchers tracking them down on there.
None of these companies should be allowed to store and abuse the sensitive information people divulge when using many of these services.
Being spied by Russia, no problem. Being spied by China, no big deal either. But being spied by the USA or EU controlled entities can pose a life thread to any EU citizen.
US citizens have it only a bit better, since they are at least protected from the EU, and only their own government has power upon them.
You should interrogate your assumption that the government inside the state lines is less "adversarial" to everyone's interests than the one outside state lines, even at a level of geopolitics.
How can they even collect browsing history or biometric identifiers on Android? Isn't browser history stored in the browser's private storage space, or am I being naive here?
* Browsing history: If a user uses a WebView in your app, you can obtain the history of* that WebView instance.
Xiaomi phones let applications have access to the first (100?) bytes of each pcap line. [note: this is probably unintended, but their bug bounty programme didn't care].
* Keystroke patterns: You can track user keystrokes within your app. If you're a keyboard or accessibility provider, you can access keystrokes globally. I haven't used TikTok, but it's very unlikely that they do either of these, the UX to enable them is not pleasant because they're dangerous actions to take.
* Biometric identifiers: If a user takes a selfie, you have their iris/fingerprint/faceprint
Biometric identifiers, I'm guessing mostly facial features: if you take a selfie/self-video with TikTok (which millions of people do) they can just take the data from there.
- Our phone hardware and operating systems are intrinsically insecure.
- There is no practical/effective data gathering regulation (and I'm not sure it's possible to craft any without destroying innovation)
- All social media companies are doing it, leading to jeers of "hypocrisy!"
- All governments play the same games, reducing the arguments to "Whose side are you on?" That's effectively meaningless in a globalised world. The consequence is more nationalism and an ever more fragmented splinternet.
- The only proposed solutions amount to more authoritarian, controlling and regulatory responses.
What can we do?
There is a solution. Stop protecting these companies. Burn down WIPO. Tear up practically all "intellectual property" laws. Revoke millions of patents. Repeal all DCMA type laws regarding reverse engineering. Kick trademark and brand protection law to the curb.
The real problem is gargantuan monolithic, captive audiences that exist because incumbent monopolies enjoy protectionist measures that amount to a giant international trade racket.
Creating a real market that forces radical interoperability would solve many of the problems we see today. Who would care about TiKToK or Facebook if they were one of 500,000 small "Social Apps" that connected to a standardised international network.
Hell, we could even give it a catchy name, like "The Internet".
Yes there is: Don't
Anything that is not fully and obviously intentionally completely public is e2ee and inaccessible outside of the user's device. Information that is provably necessary for providing a paid service can be collected and kept until the second it is no longer necessary so long as the process is publicly documented. Any weights, faux anonymized data or similar derived from the pii must also be deleted.
Lawyer that opposed net neutrality and now voicing his disapproval of apps built by the China.
Sounds like he's making a play to become a career politician using his version of what 'ok authoritarianism' is.
I'd like to see someone actually prove a security risk rather than hypothetically posing it. I.e. show me 1000 tiktok downloaded videos run through a program with their metadata something of strategic importance to a nation state (like the location of nuclear missiles haha).
We as individuals don't have access to that data, only tiktok does.. so we as individuals can't prove this to you.
Edit: Removed ask to share all personal data, because its bad form.
A security risk is by nature hypothetical. If the risk comes to fruition, it's no longer a risk, it's an event or an incident or whatever.
I think it's right to say such data harvesting posses a security risk. I don't necessarily think the nationality of the corporation collecting it makes a huge difference though. If the concern is state level abuse of the harvested data, sure, it's much easier for any given state to access data when the data is stored by an entity that has strong state influence, but given the patterns of hiring at large scale data collectors, it can't be too hard to get state operatives into positions where they have large scale discrectionary access to data.
Also, I'm not really convinced that the FCC is expected to consider national security concerns, or if they have significant regulatory oversight of the app store market either?
Even if we could access all the data, the proof would come too late, by definition.
Of course seeing the proof would be interesting, but that's not the point. Rules are created to protect interests, weighing advantages and disadvantages. That's why allies get more leeway than enemies.
I don't know what your position is, but there are various people in this thread calling such a measure "dangerous" and comparing tiktok to facebook. First: there's more than one dangerous thing in the world, and calling outlawing tiktok dangerous probably says more about their addiction than it does about liberties. Second, facebook is also "social media" that collects data, but that's where the similarity ends. You can't expect two entities to be treated identically just because they share some features. I cannot believe people make such arguments seriously and in good faith.
Foreign countries controlling what information a coming generation is exposed to is IMO much more concerning than collecting and profiling (of course also troubling, but a slightly different league). There is little oversight into what bubbles are formed, who is fed what, etc.
Want to create division in a foreign country? What better place to start than on social media and malleable kids.
This applies equally to TikTok as Facebook, for different reasons. I don't trust TikTok because of CCP, and Facebook because everything is for sale.
Corporations in China are extensions of the state and tools of foreign policy in a way they just aren't in the West. The US government can also be replaced. That's why China and the US just aren't equivalent here and why something like Tiktok is of greater risk and concern than any US Big Tech app or platform.
Yes, US law enforcement can get access to, say, messages. There's a process for that. Some of it is pretty questionable (eg FISA court, pen registers, NSLs) but at least there's a process. I don't for a second believe that US intelligence has a firehose of everything posted on Twitter and Facebook just because I don't believe the US government has the storage capacity required.
Secondly, China is completely protectionist about access to its market. There are Chinese versions for every app and platform. China uses access to its market as a giant carrot to exact concessions from Western companies but they're chasing a phantom: China will never let any Western company "win" in China.
Part of getting access to China is playing ball with the CCP, which means giving access to data on a whole level above the US government. It means enforcing the Great Firewall and, for example, censoring mention of the Tiannamen Square massacre.
Trade needs to be recipricoal so if China restricts access to the Chinese market, I see no issue with Western countries responding in kind.
The threat model for something like Tiktok is a whole lot worse than any Western equivalent.
Corporations are an extension of the state in this process, as we have learned thanks to Edward Snowden. They have no choice but to facilitate the use of state power on foreign nationals.
As a non-American I don't see the difference for me. If you are an American all you're saying is "only my government should spy on me".
A single data warehouse used by the NSA stores exabytes of data: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Data_Center
A single exabyte is enough to support Facebook's entire business operations for 5+ years. Photos, videos, posts, everything. I doubt the NSA is storing every photo on Facebook on their own servers, but it's clearly enough space to store every text message, all browsing history, all texted photos, all emails, all voicemails, all financial transactions into perpetuity for every person on the planet.
We need better privacy and social media reform instead of targeting tiktok. Also, why should we listen to Brendan Carr who shouldn't be able to speak for entire FCC. He is from Ajit Pai who takes lobbies from Facebook, Microsoft and Twitter. Looks like they are worried that their accomplices can't steal more data than tiktok. Lastly, the funny thing is Facebook was asking me for photo and phone number for verification which I denied.
The Economist discussed this last week:
>The bigger, underappreciated problem with TikTok is the chance it offers China to manipulate what the app’s vast foreign audience sees. TikTok has gone beyond sunny entertainment to become a major news platform. Open the app and among the songs and skits you may see Supreme Court protests or a flailing Boris Johnson. A quarter of American users say they consider TikTok to be a news source. In countries with weaker mainstream media the share is as high as 50%.
>That makes TikTok’s Chinese ownership a serious worry. The Chinese government actively meddles in domestic media; four years ago it shut down another popular ByteDance app, unamused by the subversive jokes being shared on it. TikTok’s content moderators are outside China. But the app’s algorithm is nurtured in Beijing. A tweak here or there could give more traction to videos questioning covid-19’s Chinese origin, say, or blaming nato for the war in Ukraine. Because each user gets a personalised feed, tampering would be hard to spot.
>TikTok insists no such meddling has taken place. But a company vulnerable to bullying by an authoritarian government obsessed with media manipulation is clearly a risk. Anyone who considers this paranoid should consider China’s record in Hong Kong. Without new safety mechanisms, Western countries might one day have to shut TikTok down.
https://www.economist.com/leaders/2022/07/07/whos-afraid-of-...
More risky? Probably pretty easily. There is legitimate risk though, especially depending on who you are, where you work, who your family is, etc.
Also, China is not the US.
This is a Giant Thing.
China would never, ever, ever allow US companies to have direct influence over their media, so even by basic tit-for-tat rules, this is reasonable.
Moreover, even from a 'trade' perspective, if China does not allow such social media apps from US over there, which denies US companies that Ad revenue, the same should be applied in reverse. No sense in letting TT get Ad revenue, it should go to some entity playing by the same rules US, Europe, Japan etc.
Hiding behind pretexts to make it seem based on law will only add an absurd legal precedent to app developers.
Republicans had a chance to ban TikTok during the last administration. They did not do it.
World is > US and China, Europe, SA, Africa, the rest of Asia - this is a clear cut message "you need to have your social networking in-country to prevent others from compromising you".
Sure, we could lose some app integrations but if the internet was more segregated API standards would be developed to mitigate this.
> When challenged if the CCP has seen any non-public user data, he said, “We have never shared information with the Chinese government nor would we […]
Such easy misdirection. Never shared, doesn't mean CCP doesn't just injest it. Most people don't have the ability to understand how information works in tech anyway. I don't blame them. We're in a situation that's way worse than "the 1%", it's the 0.001% that know how information technology works.
As an aside...
I can't tell if it is a comedy, tragedy, or thriller when the story-line that ends up creating AGI most likely will be an Intelligence Agency. With all the data collection they're doing and prediction, they may even already have invented it decades ago.
This would force many who would otherwise never think about the consequences of these walled garden ecosystems and their lack of control, to suddenly have to do so.
A lot of people generally really don't care a hoot about this stuff.
What US law requires US companies above a certain minimal (~50 employees) size to "hire" government employees to supervise their operations at the innermost layers?
What US law makes all US corporate intellectual property and information legally owned by the government?
Google barely even complies with subpoenas.
Are we going to see a future where every country/economic block has their own separate social media/search engines like China and Russia?
It's is an attack on users freedom but it could also be a big economic opportunity for those who decide to foster their own internal technological ecosystem.
You are way too late to this part of the discussion.
Asking the stores to remove one app won't do it though, time to adopt EU-like regulations.
Now that they have what they need, they use the same excuse for market protectionism, trying to remove TikTok so US alternatives can take its place.
A tactic well-used by the US.
“It’s not logging what you’re typing. It’s an anti-fraud measure that checks the rhythm of the way people are typing to ensure it’s not a bot or some other malicious activity.”
Same for trying to ban Turkey selling drones, Europe using Huawei, Europe buying Russian gas instead of American LNG, etc.
Uncle Sam asking the 2 great censors of the west to get rid of the most popular app in their stores, so that the east will cease competing with said Uncle on who gets to brainwash their citizens. Gold.
Whichever way this goes, one of these parties loses big, which is a good thing for us humans.
“My data, my attention, my choice!”?
Why should federal government infringe on individuals right to install apps.
I am not sure what makes the most sense from a foreign policy perspective. But we should be careful about our selective attention.
It's perfectly fine for our governments and corporations to work together to collect our data.
Western ethics dictate that its NOT ok for Eastern governments and corporations to work together and collect our data. That's a security risk.
For the individual, the analysis is clear. All government involvement is a security risk. The are all immoral, and seek ever greater control and power.
This is nothing about security (either represents an insecure position for the individual). This is about which government has greater power and control over individuals.
It's all so filthy...
Which inversely correlates with the importance of the debate to the participants. We see it in this thread
But I don't want to avoid important topics to people for the sake of civility, rather I would like, as is happening here, for those topics to become the best places for people to learn inquisitive engagement
To me, it sounds like our government is just trying to play favorites with domestic evildoers.
Now instead imagine that TT decreased the ranking of content by 10% that went against the agenda of the CCP. Users, the government, and creators never know.
As an aside, what? Is this an opinion? Like... Is the FCC just dumping their shower thoughts on the internet?
I remember Bill Gates once said in one of his interviews that Microsoft showed the source code of Microsoft Windows to various governments around the world in order for them to review it because they were afraid of NSA surveillance. Maybe that's the way for TikTok instead of going full open source but who knows.
It was made by Brendan Carr, who works for the FCC, but the request is not an official FCC request.
It woke me up to a profoundly different worldview than the one we've been raised with in the west. That's what this is really about, not privacy. Or more precisely, yes security is a concern, but I can't believe that's the only reason, because we've all been lied to so many times that all I hear now is the establishment crying wolf.
In previous, less enlightened times, this might have been seen as treason.
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/facing-hostile-chine...
I mean here brilliant computer engineers build content platforms that are virally additive to the brain. The platforms track every users movement and decision, yet there is zero regulation! What could possibly go wrong here?
Yeah! Why do I have to sponsor hires who happen to be not legal citizen. I have to hop all these hops to hire while your local grocery store doesn't have to sponsor anyone! So annoying /s obviously
Google and FB and beholden to US regulations, and have shown zero evidence that they would defy Uncle Sam. They aren’t the same thing at all.
Ban TikTok now. China banned our apps decades ago. What is taking us so long?
They don’t want the possibility that another country could be doing this, even though there’s no evidence China is doing this, like Snowden unleashed for the USA. They could solve this with a law requiring data on US citizens be stored in the USA but then that’ll fuck up 5 eyes agreements for them and they can’t have that.
Personally: burn them all down, I would be fine with this happening because we need to eliminate all social media, period.
As far as I can tell, this is just some random commissioner (who also wants to get rid of net neutrality and Section 230) making a political statement, and nothing more. Yes, you should be worried about big companies collecting your data. Yes, you should be worried that the CCP has a direct line to VERY influenceable kids. Both of these are legal; the first amendment guarantees the right to publish propaganda that is potentially bad for national security. If you want to stop propaganda, start investing in education, Congress.
I don't see how TikTok is doing anything out of the ordinary here and why they should be specifically targeted. Everyone is doing the same things they're doing. I get that the US is scared that China is going to replace them as "the superpower". Getting rid of some social media app is not going to change that. We're closing the barn door after the horse has bolted. We lost this battle decades ago, and it's too late to stop it.
I really feel like this is a token stance against China and not a whole lot else. They won't stop buying our soybean exports if we take a hard line against TikTok, whereas they would if we took a hard line stance against stealing American intellectual property or invading Taiwan, which is the problem we're actually worried about. So nothing changes, but when Commissioner Carr runs for some political office (his term is up next year, and I'm guessing Biden isn't going to re-appoint him), he has some token "I did a thing" to point to. (And knowing his political affiliation, "I hurt people that aren't white" is probably a good selling point for his candidacy. Sad that such a thing is true in 2022.)
If someone wants to do something about this, Congress should make some laws. "It's illegal at the federal level to bypass device privacy protections to sell ads." or "It's illegal for a US company to help law enforcement track users." or "We don't import goods from countries that have concentration camps that kill ethnic minorities." This will never happen. Congress loves it when companies bypass device protections to sell ads, and they demand that companies like Apple break the security on their devices to aid law enforcement.
Finally, if the FCC really wanted Apple and Google to delete an app from the app store, I doubt that posting a poorly-researched rant to Twitter would be how they go about doing it. I'd be surprised if Tim and Sundar even read this letter.
Maximize division, influence elections, spread misinformation, censorship, the like. Already happening in US-owned social networks, imagine what China can do on a China-owned network.
From [0]:
> The above code taken from the TikTok APK, shows the collection of cellphone data, specifically the IMEI of the cell phone. The IMEI number of a phone is literally created to identify the phone.
> We at Penetrum believe that everyone should have the right to know what data is being harvested by companies and would like to give our readers a clearer understanding of what happens when you download the mobile application TikTok. From our understanding and our analysis it seems that TikTok does an excessive amount of tracking on it’s users, and that the data collected is partially if not fully stored on Chinese servers with the ISP Alibaba.
So essentially, a 900GB data breach at Alibaba suggests that TikTok user tracking data which ties hundreds of millions of users has been exposed out in the open to be used by criminals, and scammers. This is nothing new or surprising as I have already questioned a TikTok fanatic about the excessive tracking in this app but decided to deflect with more whataboutsims. [1]
On top of that denial from their own users, all this tracking was made possible due to TikTok's spyware and their mass collection programme, with the additional fact that TikTok staff in China DID have access to US data after lying and denying it. [2]
So something that is even worse than Facebook is hardly 'The best thing to have happened to the Internet.' [3] Especially when TikTok was found to do even more invasive tracking than Facebook with sending biometrics, IMEI numbers and voice prints, and is required to give up and funnel all this data and traffic to the China and the CCP meaning it is another honeypot surveillance tool luring in the sheep to willingly give up all their data and they cannot be trusted.
TikTok should get either a massive fine in the billions just like Facebook did or it should be totally banned until it is verified to rid of its invasive data collection just like what India did recently. Failing to comply, it should get both.
[0] https://penetrum.com/tiktok/Penetrum_TikTok_Security_Analysi...
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28137000
[2] https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/emilybakerwhite/tiktok-...
[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28135484
[4] https://www.nrk.no/osloogviken/xl/tiktok-doesn_t-show-the-wa...
TikTok is an ominous name. It's literally creating tics in teenagers. TikTok also seems like a psychological weapon, which is a ticking time bomb until the Chinese take over the world (their stated goal)
Tic defined as "an idiosyncratic and habitual feature of a person's behavior." Yesterday, Tucker Carlson (bad man) did a segment on the difference between American TikTok and Chinese Douyin. It's clear that the Chinese are curating the algorithms differently. Douyin content is made to be good for society, whereas TikTok content is degenerate. The algorithm is everything.
China has every incentive to push our young people to be mental cases and TikTok has the potential to do this.
For example, TikTok is likely speeding up the rate at which teen girls experience rapid onset gender dysphoria. A teen may be confused about who they are, they watch one or two videos related to the topic, then they are sent down a rabbit hole of this content.
I am happy to see the FCC of this administration speaking out. TikTok was going to be banned by the last administration but this administration put a stop to that in their effort to roll back all of Trump (bad man) policy.
Imagine what would happen if a Chinese regulator decided that Tesla's telematics stack was a massive national security risk? One random comment from some loser trying to build a political career (like this guy) and you'd see the stock go through a small crash.
The capture of American bureaucracy by paid interests is going to be the downfall of the country. Michael Lewis has been talking about this quite a bit recently, and will apparently make this the subject of his next book. I hope everyone reads it.
