> Many of the concessions the government asked of TikTok look eerily similar to the surveillance tactics critics have accused Chinese officials of abusing.
I support a domestic ban on TikTok, and this is embarrassing. You're not supposed to be worse than the country you say is spying on your citizens. This undermines any moral authority they could claim, and makes their argument look like: "we want to ban you because we can't stand anyone doing a better job spying on Americans than us".
> The agreement would let agencies examine TikTok’s US facilities, records, and servers with minimal prior notice and veto the hiring of any executive involved with leading TikTok US data security organization.
Granting access to TikTok servers to multiple US agencies is 100% about letting the US spy on users (just as they have the right to under US law, such as the US CLOUD Act, and also via the well-documented and illegal warrantless surveillance programs we all know about). Blocking executive hires is clearly so they can prevent whistleblowers from working in the organization, and is exactly what the US did when it was using Crypto AG to spy on its allies:
Anyway, I'm against a ban of TikTok for the same reason that laws that target specific companies or individuals are unconstitutional. Instead, we should ban the things TikTok does that we think should be illegal, and then apply the law equally to US and foreign social media companies.
> Instead, we should ban the things TikTok does that we think should be illegal, and then apply the law equally to US and foreign social media companies
This would would destroy billions of dollars in profits, take down most of the ad-tech industry, which is why I suspect it will never happen. It's much easier to target individual companies like TikTok, or Cambridge Analytica while leaving the gravy train going.
For the record, I fully agree with you on what the remedy ought to be - just cynical about viability.
> laws that target specific companies or individuals are unconstitutional
This is a misunderstanding. The constitution prohibits “bills of attainder”, which are laws that short-circuit the justice system and punish past behavior legislatively rather than via the judicial system, basically declaring “it is the law that x is guilty of crime y (and will be punished with z)”. Targeting an individual or small group is only one of the several criteria that need to be satisfied for such a law to be unconstitutional.
> Instead, we should ban the things TikTok does that we think should be illegal, and then apply the law equally to US and foreign social media companies.
This is how the previous "Ban Tiktok" bill basically made VPNs illegal.
Make no mistake - western governments are envious of the spying tools that China has. Our freedoms are in spite of central government and thanks to an independent judiciary and wise founders. Some like Trudeau have even explicitly expressed admiration for the flexibility of the Chinese dictatorship. FBI, CIA, etc. would never decline to use the types of tools that China has.
> There's a level of admiration I actually have for China. Their basic dictatorship is actually allowing them to turn their economy around on a dime.
It's wrong, too - the Chinese economy is in trouble, and has been since Covid. Xi has accumulated more autocratic power, but if he's able to use it to "turn their economy around on a dime" then he's not doing so.
On the contrary, I’m not sure that those big government interventions have often worked out. There may have been a grain of truth to what the libertarians have been saying all along. What have we gotten for our interventions? Wildly bloated asset prices? A younger generation that can’t afford a home?
nit: You don't have to be a libertarian to be opposed to government interfering with market dynamics, when its not for explicit safety (i.e. FDA, EPA, etc).
"The King is happy on his Throne, and the people are pleased" obviously winning in battle is a good outcome, since your enemies are now dead or slaved.
"Rome demands victory from her Generals" .. and those who tried and failed, were publicly killed. As they still do in China actually.
You don't think China has and uses tools that the US can't? That they're at the same level?
I'm a major fan/paying contributor to the EFF, but that seems absurd to me. We don't have to equate the US with China in order to say the US is doing terrible things and needs to stop. In fact doing so just distracts from the issue by changing it into an argument about something else.
The US intelligence agencies is literally copying all the traffic from every US citizen(except maybe if you're some elite sorcerer wizard hacker) in real time and have been doing so for almost two decades. They have the same capabilities as China.
And yes, the US and China are not the same. But they both have the same capabilities. Parent poster argued that the Chinese government had a greater capacity to spy on their citizens("better tools"). I simply pointed out that it's false.
IIRC it was just the metadata (which is still a very big deal ftr) not all the bytes. Also you would have to believe that they have compromised AES/RSA/etc in order to break the encryption.
China also has a lot more surveillance and filtering controls, especially with traffic leaving/entering the great firewall. They have the social credit system and things as well, which the US could have with credit card and banking information, but (at least for now) the US has to get a warrant whereas the Chinese just gobble all of it up. That's probably moot though since the banks will store that info forever so a warrant can be gotten later. Anyway we could debate whether those are "tools" or not. But overall I'd bet we agree on the vast majority of things. Even if I think you're being a bit hyperbolic, it always makes me happy to see other people passionate about this topic, so thank you!
A ban on TikTok is not about the US government caring about their citizens. It's about a political enemy having access to data the US government also wants access to.
If it was about preserving privacy or any moral argument, they would also ban domestic social media. They have no reason to do this since they already have access to domestic data.
A second reason might be to mitigate foreign influence and propaganda, but this is also rampant on domestic social media, and they apparently have no desire to prevent this either. This seems ludicrous to me, as these tools are the primary weapons of information warfare.
It's actually mostly about US tech companies (especially social media) being inferior in the market at this point. Most of the security concerns are actually just hyped up because Byte Dance ate their lunches.
No it isn’t and this is a Chinese talking point. All social media is a privacy nightmare, this one is a privacy nightmare controlled by a geopolitical adversary. This is common sense and no one can seriously pretend to not understand the difference.
Ah yes, must be a “Chinese talking point”. No sensible American could have come to that conclusion on their own. Thank you for illuminating us with your Serious analysis.
I can point out that as far as the result to our economy and health social media has been a dounle edged sword. I think people don't understand why you'd use and how to make it effective.
I am against the US spying on its citizens. With that said, the US's ban on Tiktok is not a moral one. It's purely a competitive one. Why would we want our competitors to obtain more information on us?
I am curious why. A foreign government has almost no power over you. They cannot put you under surveillance, lock you up, or put you on naughty lists that mean anything. Your own government, domestic data brokers, and other corporate entities can have more direct control over your fate.
There’s no way you’re “curious” here. A foreign adversary now has real-time data about the inter working of the U.S. population down the the individual level for tens of millions of people. This is a treasure trove of intelligence gathering so don’t play coy or devils advocate.
Not defending TikTok but there’s a wealth of public real time data from not just the US, but the entire world, some public api calls or scraping scripts away. Tiktok isn’t any more invasive than any other social media post, many of which are public and anyone in any country who wants to use the data can do so easily.
What trove of intelligence is being gathered by self obsessed videos of people mouthing a clip of some song or inspirational talk while begging for attention in the form of likes and follows?
I haven’t seen any sign of intelligence on TikTok that they even could gather lol, and if anything the app’s purpose isn’t to spy on us, it’s to make us dumb, inattentive, mindless consumers who all fight over everything and can’t compromise or work together.
My dad literally comes home from his job and scrolls TikToks of increasingly radical political rants and half naked chicks before inevitably passing out in his chair, phone in hand, mouth open, and whatever TikTok was on screen when he fell asleep playing on loop until he jerks awake or the phone dies. He’s not unique. So much of people’s lives are wasted on social media and it does them no positive
> A foreign government has almost no power over you.
1. For now
2. ...unless you have family abroad, particularly in China
3. ...also assuming you don't need to travel to said country (now / in the future)
I'm more worried what a foreign government would do with the private information of every US citizen, as opposed to what a domestic company would do. I'm still worried in both cases, but one of these situations seems much worse to me.
Whenever I see politicians screaming about TikTok, it reminds me of the South Park Underpants Gnome business model.
1. Build platform teens love
2. ???
3. Compromise national security.
Fundamentally, the product isn't an effective way to get into secure spaces. Its core audience does not generally have direct access to those spaces, and if they did, that feels like an institutional security breakdown that they allowed any personal devices or software there.
At this point, War Thunder and Discord have both proven to deliver more high-secrecy documents than TikTok has, yet nobody's demanding widespread bans.
"Ooh, but it will spread propaganda or filter things in a way Beijing likes." And if that happens, the audience moves on. Haven't we noticed that social platforms are hyper-fickle, especially for ones targeted towards a youth and entertainment market? How many "look at China's awesome high-speed rail" videos can you slip into the feed before the kids say "screw this, I'm moving to this new platform which pioneered the Drink An Entire Litre of Bleach challenge"? They actually built a very non-sticky platform compared to Facebook (which will persist for decades because people need to talk to Aunt Bertha who never learned any other platform) or YouTube (which has long-form content of value even if the firehose of new content starts winding down)
It all just reeks of sour grapes. We were perfectly happy with China when they were a passive trading partner, a convenient "elsewhere" to offshore all that pesky polluting manufacturing to. But when they start to represent a real economic and political counterweight, producing a high-margin and culturally relevant product that's outcompeting our own offerings, we immediately start rattling sabres. I figure it's the same spiel as with Huawei and ZTE; if domestic products had been compelling enough to win on their own merits, there would be no meaningful market penetration and we'd never even be discussing a ban in the first place.
I wonder if the Vine people feel vindicated now, it feels like they could have been TikTok 10 years ago.
The issue isn't about propaganda itself, and more that it's hard for anyone to keep up with a fickle audience.
Even a "pure entertainment" product that doesn't need to do any particular ideological heavy lifting has a hard time. If you're taping an episode of a sitcom today, the language you use might have passed to "cringy" by the time it airs, and the trend you used as a plot device might have fizzled.
Social media's ability to stay relevant is managed by constantly eating its own-- people fall in and out of trend. That makes it harder to use as a means to inject a specific message; you'd need to be constantly generating new users and getting them into closed circle communities as the old ones wear out their usefulness. Note I don't say impossible, but it's an interesting set of challenges and probably pretty different from the ones the guys running Radio Havana face.
A foreign government can't execute a no-knock raid on my home, can't garnish my wages, can't throw me in jail from outside of my country...etc. I know you used the wording "domestic company", but we are talking about governments here.
China is building "police stations" worldwide to do just this. See their agreements with Fiji* and how that backfired when Chinese police showed up and rounded up 77+ "suspects" and basically abducted them.
China has shown to have an international police force to enact their will overseas. They probably won’t harm you, but they’re inching closer. I would also be vaguely worried about them sharing data with other companies in China that slowly influence commerce in America.
I support the ban from a competitive perspective. Until meta can spy on Chinese citizens, why should the Chinese spy on Americans?
Also I support it from a privacy perspective. We can’t as easily ban American companies from spying on us, but we should use any power to limit other companies from starting business spying on Americans. Make it less profitable globally.
So you wouldn't be super worried about Russia and its hacker farms having deep info on every US citizen, for one example?
Foreign attacking agents can do much worse than garnish your wages. They can get a no-knock raid sent to your home if they have your info and you're a target of theirs. That's relatively easy. They can drive the US system to attack you by screwing with your life from outside the US where you can't do anything to stop them. And that can be done in so many ways it's rather obscene. Let's talk about the IRS economic ways they could do it; let's talk about the child protective services way they could do it; let's talk about the no-knock SWAT raid way they could do it; let's talk about the way they could go after your identity and bank accounts; let's talk about how they could focus in on your job, boss, co-workers, etc. and try to make your life hell there; and on and on and on it goes.
Yeah right. I dare anybody on HN to proclaim that, I want to see the supporting premise where the foreign party like Russia having all your info is not as big of a deal.
The notion that the FBI would do worse things from that position than Russia would is absurd, given what we've seen out of Russia. And China is absolutely no different in terms of its willingness to attack the US opportunistically (the Obama Admin had to obtain a cease fire agreement with China in regards to aggressively attacking the US re hacking, recall).
There are no chains at all on what Russia can do to screw with the US citizenry, given the information. And more advanced AI systems should make it even easier for them to do it in the near future.
If Russia could push a button and blank out 30 million US bank accounts, via a hacking plausible deniability means (anything that gives them the required minimum cover), they'd do it immediately. There's so little downside from where Russia is sitting these days, it'd be a no-brainer for them. What are you gonna do? Sanction them? We're sure as hell not going to war with Russia over that.
So Russia having info is worse because they would then sick the overreaching and cruel US govt on you? You do see how silly that sounds, don’t you? It proves the parent comment’s point that we should be fearing our domestic government more than a foreign one.
Imagine if the US wasn’t a police state, and the average person had good social/financial protections. We’d make China and Russia powerless according to your logic.
Your question is basically, “Why would France not want Nazi Germany to have an analytical device attached to 2/3 of its citizens in 1940?”
This is a foreign government we have a decent chance of being in a great power military conflict with, the first of such since the Second World War. It is so obviously a tool that would be used in such a conflict that I have a hard time accepting this is a good faith question you’re asking. If it is, then you need to stop thinking of it as a social media platform and remember that’s just the front end of the network.
The PATRIOT act does this by just existing and continually being extended. Room 641a. Julian Assange's case. Mortal authority left the building in the early 2000s.
TIL. Unfortunate timing for what would have otherwise been front-page headline news, if not for the entire world as we otherwise knew it coming to a sudden crashing end.
It really didn't, though. Parts of it have already been reauthorized through different acts that are still in effect. Point is, we didn't have a referendum, we didn't bolster our laws to prevent such a thing from happening again, and zero investigations of abuses of power have credibly been done in it's wake.
"Letting it expire" is not some accomplishment other than kicking the can further down the road.
I'll just ask a simple question, if you are an American citizen which governments uniformed thugs have the ability to kidnap or kill you: the American or Chinese government? Which of these does not even need to send secret agents or beat your country in a war and has free legal permission to kidnap and kill you?
If you computed the results of this problem, the next question I ask is whom are you at more risk from?
If you have ties to China, without question it's the Chinese government. They will go after your family back in China for what you say and do in the US.
Is that a measurement problem? Is that a boosted story issue? Propaganda is delivered via an equalizer that boosts and suppresses different dimensions of reality.
Look I'm all for reminding people that the US government has done a lot of awful stuff, but..
No. It's not a measurement problem or a propaganda issue. It's just the truth. USG just literally doesn't 'disappear' US residents in modern times. It happens with nontrivial frequency in China.
I trust my government to not infringe on my free speech but I don’t trust that another government that doesn’t have good diplomatic relations with mine doesn’t detain me if I happen to fly through one of their airports because of my beliefs. I avoid China and Chinese airlines because I don’t feel like censoring myself on the internet. Luckily China doesn’t have too many allies.
The Chinese police has little to no power to arrest you if you are an American citizen while you are in America, legally not at all, and practically they would need to expend great effort to do so. The American police has a "god gifted" power to arrest and kill you while you are in America, both legally and practically. These are simple, plain facts of the geopolitics and how governments are organized.
Moreover any such Chinese agents if caught will go through some rather unpleasant processes, does not seem usually the case for American cops even brazenly caught in various misdeeds.
Of course the CCP is your biggest threat when you are in their territory, just like how the American government is your biggest threat back home. Actually not even only in your home, given its extraditionary powers which I haven't checked but should be one of the stronger ones when it comes to 'extradited to usa'. Either case, on American territory and especially as an American citizen, the American police and American government is your biggest threat vs any other foreign power.
Again, I don’t have a choice in the matter if I want to live in the US. But I don’t have to open myself up to authoritarian governments who have a track record for targeting those who participate in free speech in other countries.
The consent referred to by the other commenter is entirely fabricated and false. I challenge anyone within the US to show the contract giving the current administration explicit consent to govern us.
This level of narrative and dogmatic belief is how governments gain influence. They're simply the local bullies. If you need proof, look at how much they put into caring about struggling people. I.e. next to nothing. Our country betrays us daily and has the gall to demand obedience. We are not dogs.
I think that's a other huge reason to not let China into our kid's hands. If it was a country that is well known for building and maintaining diplomatic relationships that would be great.
And how many do your governments officially stamped thugs arrest? You don't even need to look up any stats to guess its in the ballpark of thousands or perhaps even the million per year.
In 2016, there were an estimated 1.2 million violent crimes committed in the United States.[88] Over the course of that year, U.S. law enforcement agencies made approximately 10.7 million arrests, excluding arrests for traffic violations.[88] In that year, approximately 2.3 million people were incarcerated in jail or prison.[89]
Also, which steals more of your stuff, on average? This Washington Post article's title offers a clue: "Cops took more stuff from people than burglars did last year."
Its almost tautological and by definition that your local government has legally granted power (might even say monopoly practically speaking) for violence and kidnapping over you. A distant foreign government has to expend great resources to do the same for you which your government would do with a stroke of the pen. Sometimes even without that thin veneer.
If you want to be incredibly pedantic, something can be tautological without being part of the definition, and something can be part of the definition without being tautological (by way of contradiction).
Ever heard of Guantanamo bay? Ask those people (those alive) if our country’s government has the ability to illegally arrest and detain people, torture them, kill them. They straight up said all this shit is illegal so we can’t do it in the US, we have to break our laws in some place we can’t be held accountable to them. That’s our government. Want more examples of illegally detaining, beating, and letting people die? Ask the folks locked up in cages when they come here seeking asylum, some of them kids, who die of starvation while being held against their will for showing up at the door and knocking. I’ll stop there but we should knock off the “them bad, us good” bullshit because all of the governments are shit that do horrible things, and america is world famous for drone striking entire families just to get one dude we labeled terrorist (our free pass to do whatever the fuck we want to someone), and dropping nuclear bombs on cities filled with innocent civilians, twice, when intel suggested a surrender was imminent without having yet dropped one.
When you point your finger at someone, you have 4 pointing back at yourself.
The US government doesn’t have legal permission to kidnap and murder you, not within the US. So it seemed to me like the comment was about china, sparking my reply. The comment could honestly apply to either imo, and maybe that’s the point. Do cops arrest people and kill them? Way too often. Those cops should be charged with crimes. But cops not being charged with crimes is not the same as it being legal, even if the end results are both the same. Or are we talking about the ability to imprison a criminal and put them to death for their crimes?
This is the problem with the original comment, it’s way to vague, or I’ve failed to make sense of it.
I am speaking of america or whichever your own local government or country is. Your government practically speaking has the legal monopoly to murder, torture and kidnap you. Chinese (if you aren't Chinese and not on their territory) does not have any legal power over you.
Isn't most of "surprising new vulnerabilities" NOBUS? (NObody BUt US)
I didn't believe for a second that the MS Exchange vulnerability was not known & abused since forever. Now the Chinese have created what Zynga, Facebook, Pinterest, and the rest of the silicon valley failed to succeed. Get everyone meth-ed on an app. 150m Americans is nearly half the population. If you leave out the under 4 and the over 70, that's the majority of active population, having a homing beacon in their pocket reporting to China.
The government is auditing TikTok, not using TikTok to spy on US citizens.
The US is trying to determine to what extent TikTok is a domestic security threat.
CFIUS is an organ of the US government designed to prevent foreign intrusion that risks national security. That's the entity involved here. They don't touch ordinary US citizens.
This is not domestic spying. It's investigating the capabilities of a foreign power on US soil.
All I can tell you is I've worked for a company that had to comply with CFIUS agreement, and honestly, there are no surveillance capabilities whatsoever. They have oversight capabilities and can audit the parts of the business that are covered by the security rules. Ironically, these rules we had to comply with were called the National Security Agreement (NSA) but that entirely coincidental. It was not anywhere near as exciting as people commenting here are speculating.
It's arguable that the public outcry about the risks of spying and the threats of state or country-wide bans on the service are exactly the kind of tactics that would be used to leverage this sort of access by the US.
I don’t use any social media, so apologies if this is a dumb question. What is TikTok doing that other ones like YouTube, Instagram, Facebook isn’t? The only difference I am seeing is that the parent company is China. Misinformation is omnipresent across all those channels too. So on what basis should we ban them?
No, you're correct: it being China is the main reason. And it's a sufficient reason for banning it in my mind: cyber warfare is real warfare. It is understood that the government is spying on users of social media (one of several reasons I don't use any either). It's embarrassing for them to admit it, and it undermines any other arguments they could try to make about it, though. If you are claiming a moral high ground, you can't just openly admit you're as bad as the other guy.
How do you spy on users of social media? Are we talking surreptitiously getting access to cameras/microphone or just getting data on user behavior? The former is obviously a major issue, but the latter can be obtained by anyone because tracking for ads is so ubiquitous and China can just pay to get it.
Quite a few ways, whether through device/session fingerprinting [1], in-app browser keystroke tracking [2], frequent third-party post requests [3], individiual app usage patterns [4], geo-tracking [5], dark-patterned user onboarding [6] and continual facial recognition [7].
A canary blog series kicked off by the company itself is worth keeping an eye on to see the 'myths' they want to debunk most scrupously (such as keytracking)[8].
A: Funneling data from its users directly to the CCP (Chinese Communist Party). Corps in China have a special relationship with the government, unlike the US. A CCP party member accompanies the CEO and is present for major decisions. Often, company policies are dictated by the government and handed down by the party member assigned to the company. The CCP has access to the data that companies collect, which includes all the data generated by American citizens. This does not only include the video content, but location information and any other kinds of device fingerprinting they can come up with.
B: TikTok has different algorithms for different countries, the algorithm in China is tuned to show young people science, technology, and inspirational content, which was dictated by the CCP. The US algorithm shows young people anything that will keep them "engaged", which usually includes ragebait and all kinds of unhealthy things.
The text indicates that they are trying to spy on the company, not the users. And this is a logical attempt if you don't trust the companies masters. Isn't china basically doing the same with every company, just in other ways?
You can freely assume that (also not American). I think they are toying with their citizens.
It is better to think that the gov is incompetent than outright malicious (which is definitely the case). Gor some reason they NEVER drop the ball into giving more freedoms but they ALWAYS drop the ball on taking some away.
They are not in fact 100% correct. CFIUS doesn't have authority over or interest in ordinary US citizens. They are 100% concerned with foreign intrusion of national security. That's their singular mandate.
This is an auditing operation to determine the extent to which TikTok is a national security threat.
CFIUS closely works with US intelligence agencies. That in itself isn't damning. But it also bears pointing out that the NSA also doesn't have authority over or interest in ordinary US citizens and is ostensibly 100% concerned with foreign intrusion of national security. Actual activities can and do go much further than intelligence agencies' public mandate.
I would be surprised and upset if CFIUS did not work closely with intelligence agencies. CFIUS is an agency charged with risk mitigation from foreign actors. Doing that effectively requires good information and risk assessments. If CFIUS did not work closely with intelligence agencies, they would either be incapable of performing their function or running their own intelligence agency.
> You're not supposed to be worse than the country you say is spying on your citizens
The state ran media calling actually peaceful american flag waving re-opening protestors terrorists and murderers for spreading COVID, then literally a matter of days later called the costliest riots in U.S history mostly peaceful protests that were incapable of spreading COVID. This was probably the sign that it was all over and we had entered the biological terrorism era.
The article has an inflammatory headline, obviously, because that’s how the internet works.
If you read the article though the actual content does not suggest they were asking for anything other than the ability to ensure TikTok/Byte Dance weren’t doing anything nefarious… and anyway it fell apart when it became obvious how hopeless that was because of how shady they (Byte Dance) are.
> Forbes reports that the draft agreement, dated Summer 2022, would have given the US government agencies like the Department of Justice and Department of Defense far more access to TikTok’s operations than that of any other social media company. The agreement would let agencies examine TikTok’s US facilities, records, and servers with minimal prior notice and veto the hiring of any executive involved with leading TikTok US data security organization. It would also let US agencies block changes to the app’s terms of service in the US and order the company to subject itself to various audits, all on TikTok’s dime, per Forbes. In extreme cases, the agreement would allow government organizations to demand TikTok temporarily shut off functioning in the US.
Can you share evidence that US regulators are holding US-based social media companies to all of these same requirements?
> Can you share evidence that US regulators are holding US-based social media companies to all of these same requirements?
This moves goalposts. American social media companies don’t have CCP members in their senior ranks.
The problem is the “records and servers” bit could let the Feds execute illegal searches on any American’s data with zero oversight. Not that we’re being mean to TikTok.
There are credible questions regarding ByteDance's independence from the CCP [1][2][3]. They have a track record of censoring anti-Chinese content, e.g. regarding the Tianamen Square massacre [4][5]. Anyone claiming claims of CCP infiltration into ByteDance are "nonsense" is operating outside the window of evidence.
> There are credible questions regarding ByteDance's independence
No there isn't. There is no question at all that any major company - tech, media, oil, banking, etc is independent. All major companies, anywhere in the world, are state corporations.
> They've shown a troubling bias in censoring anti-Chinese content
They've got to fight disinformation somehow. Right? It's funny how you, one of the biggest champions in the fight against disinformation, is upset when the chinese do it.
> Anyone claiming claims of CCP infiltration into ByteDance are "nonsense" is operating outside the window of evidence.
Morons who watch too much youtube nonsense spout ccp nonsense. That a major tech company is 'infiltrated' by the state is nonsense because as I said, all major tech companies are state companies. It would be like morons watching chinese version of youtube and spouting nonsense like google or facebook is 'infiltrated' by US state actors. Google and facebook are US state actors, they aren't infiltrated by us state actors.
It's funny how you just 'randomly' started spouting ccp nonsense as soon as the media and 'alt'-media started spouting the ccp nonsense. Hmmm.
> Can you share evidence that US regulators are holding US-based social media companies to all of these same requirements?
This is whataboutism, but I'll answer anyway.
This article concerns the actions of a US governmental agency known as CFIUS.
CFIUS is not concerned with domestic issues, but rather foreign intrusions that impair national security: foreign businesses spying on US soil, foreign entities buying controlling interests in US companies and technologies, foreign real estate purchases near sensitive locations, etc. It is a regulatory body that can block sales and mergers and put a stop to such activities.
CFIUS wants the ability to audit TikTok so that it can ascertain the extent to which is or can be used to spy on US targets. From this data, they can themselves block certain business activities or recommend further actions to be taken by the government.
> The Chinese do not think that they are doing anything nefarious either.
"Nefarious" is very dependent on context. The CIA spying on China is what the CIA is _supposed_ to be doing -- it's not nefarious in the US context, but surely, to the Chinese, it's "nefarious activity" and the CIA is aware of that. Surely the Chinese know that they're up to no good from the US point of view, even if it's ethically fine from their point of view.
During a hot war, it’s reasonable to be more concerned about enemy surveillance than domestic surveillance. In either case, you lose some privacy. But enemy surveillance can cause you to lose the war, or at least for more people to die before winning.
We aren’t at war with China, but the possibility is taken seriously by the US foreign policy establishment, which knows more about the situation that you or I do. The most reliable way to avoid war is to be impossible to beat. So preempting the ability of potential enemies to collect data about our citizens reduces the chance of war.
I agree with this stance, it's naive to think that countries wouldn't prefer to block others from having as much information about their own citizens than themselves. This just seems like a reasonable position any government would adopt and defensive in nature as you point out. The discussion then can be on where you set the privacy bar for each case:
- your country spying on your own citizens
- your country spying on foreign citizens
- other countries ability to spy on your own citizens
We don't do hot wars anymore, and peace is just (to paraphrase Paul Valéry) the period during which you wage war by other means. We're definitely in a conflict with China, it's just not a gun-based conflict.
Sorry, maybe my taxonomy is different. I mean a full-scale war, not whatever those were. A war with roughly equivalent militaries and economies, where there is a threat and war footing that might justify changing the lives of civilians and their relationship to their government. Technically, Congress hasn't declared war since 1942, even though we've been in some big ones since then, but that's not what I mean either. We probably need a broader vocabulary to describe the various uses of force in international relations, which distinguishes between war and military actions, however expensive.
I think any context in which the US invades another country and kills a million civilians is a “hot war.” Otherwise, you’ve gone so far down a “war is peace” rabbit hole that you’re no longer in touch with reality.
What did the US foreign policy establishment know about Afghanistan and Iraq than you or I do? Last I heard from reliable sources, Iraq had WMD's and were a clear and present danger? Why not just preempt China's nuclear capability too by nuking them?
I think you are just making a rhetorical flourish, but we should be clear that Iraq didn’t have WMDs, wasn’t an urgent danger, and any sources that said they did should not be treated as reliable.
> any sources that said they did should not be treated as reliable.
American GEOINT, MASINT, SIGINT and TECHINT are likely the best in the world. American HUMINT, OSINT and--somewhat paradoxically--FININT are atrocious. Unfortunately, we frequently ascribe confidence intervals to our clandestine services based on experience with e.g. the NRO.
They might be the best in the world- but it doesn't matter because they don't answer to citizens. I trust that they have good information- I don't trust that good information gets to us, our politicians, etc.
The bulletpoints from the original Forbes reporting ("https://www.forbes.com/sites/emilybaker-white/2023/08/21/dra...") look not like domestic spying, but more like close oversight of a party who isn't trusted but can't be shut down. With possible exception of this one:
> * Examine TikTok’s U.S. facilities, records, equipment and servers with minimal or no notice,
Such as if it includes arbitrary access to user data, or opportunity to modify the systems rather than only examine.
Forbes included this interesting other bit, separate from its bulletpoint list, and I didn't see Gizmodo mention it:
> It would also force TikTok U.S. to exclude ByteDance leaders from certain security-related decision making, and instead rely on an executive security committee that would operate in secrecy from ByteDance.
BTW, why is Forbes calling this a "free speech platform"? Is that now accepted terminology, or is there some spin they're promoting?
> Were it to be finalized, the agreement would provide the government near unfettered access to internal TikTok information and unprecedented control over essential functions that it does not have over any other major free speech platform.
Is the explanation really as simple as:
> Forbes (/fɔːrbz/) is an American business magazine founded in 1917 and owned by the Hong Kong-based investment group Integrated Whale Media Investments since 2014.[3][4]
I'm inclined to think that the best defense against hypothetical threats from an app like this is a smart, critical-thinking, principled citizenry. But since Rupert Murdoch, and the culture that followed, have decimated that capability, maybe we need more help from government.
What's the real threat of TikTok to the US? It should have nothing to do with spying since there isn't anything important that's submitted to the app(Who uses TikTok DMs?). If the app has a backdoor functionality or purposely made vulnerabilities and the feds are concerned by it, then it's a question to Google and their store's security/review policies/practices, and could be negated entirely by a mandate for TikTok to store all non-video traffic sent to the US users with a US based third party, in an unencrypted form. But it would be going overboard since in actuality it would be insane to for Chinese intelligence services to use TikTok to send exploits -- it could be easily detected and would be the casus belli for shattering the company, which is an 8 billion dollar business in the US.
What the US establishment actually doesn't like is that TikTok wields a capability to influence the American public by amplifying certain topics and deranking others, also with their content policy. It's a capability that the US companies enjoy all across the world with few authoritarian exceptions, and even the EU doesn't get to review Facebook or Google's algorithms (there is an effort to force them to explain their algos (Digital Services Act), but as far as I know it's not even close to the intrusive search-like audits and vetos mentioned in this article), and smaller less influential countries/political entities can't even dream of forcing the FAANG to comply with their demands. So it's tremendously hypocritical for the US to rile up paranoia about "personal data" and "national security" especially considering the Snowden revelations. (Draconian)rules are for thee but not for me. Also the US companies' algorithms are probably protected by the first amendment, so I'm not even sure that this crack down on TikTok is even legal.
There is a legitimate problem with mass siphoning of location data by mobile applications. Provided with that information you can identify clusters of activity aligned with identified military activity and infer what is going on, building a model that can then process the location data to predict military activity. Even deliberately choosing to not be trackable is itself an interesting data point.
Strava managed to do most of this entirely by accident.
The big problem is that once you accept you want to control location data why can you justify the ongoing use of it by existing systems? (Google and FB, mainly, though far from exclusively). I once audited an SDK from a YC startup many moons ago that went as far as collecting the altitude and bearing of the user when viewing an advertisement - this stuff is incredibly widespread.
My personal view is a law is needed that bans central collection of location data. (Even anonymised would not be sufficient). It's fair game for a user (and their apps) to have access to encrypted logs of the location of their devices, but that should not be remotely accessible by anyone.
"Anomaly Six — also called A6 — claims it can track billions of devices in near real time. And Zignal Labs leverages its access to Twitter data streams to sift through hundreds of millions of Tweets per day, without restriction. The two combined would be an even more powerful surveillance tool.
During the presentation, A6 tracked the movements of the Russian army along the Ukrainian border, Chinese submarine positions, and even the American intelligence community. This was a bold idea: To demonstrate just how powerful its phone tracking capabilities are, A6 showed Zignal that they could spy on American spies.
On a satellite map of the U.S., A6 sales rep Brendon Clark drew digital boundaries around CIA and NSA headquarters. This is a technique known as geofencing. Within these boundaries, 183 dots appeared, representing GPS pings from phones that had visited both locations.
Lines radiated from each dot, showing where the phones had traveled. As Clark noted: “So, if I’m a foreign intel officer, that’s 183 start points for me now.”
Zeroing in on one dot, A6 showed how its software could reveal this individual’s movements as they traveled throughout the U.S. using the location data pulled from apps on their phone. In their demo, the person they were tracking traveled to a U.S. army base in Fort Bliss, Texas, an airfield in Jordan, and their likely home in suburban Maryland, close to NSA headquarters. The demo concluded with a Google Street View of the person’s house."
The issue is indeed legitimate, but it would be a systematic issue with all non-western/non-US apps, not just TikTok which is being singled out in an ad hoc manner. And it has as much to do with Google's store/android location data policies as it is with the apps.
>My personal view is a law is needed that bans central collection of location data.
Agreed.
...
UPD: I also suspect that preserving location data from state actors is a lost battle and modern SIGINT satellite constellations are already capable of pinpointing location of phones en masse, or will be capable of doing it in the coming years.
> So it's tremendously hypocritical for the US to rile up paranoia about "personal data" and "national security" especially considering the Snowden revelations. (Draconian)rules are for thee but not for me.
China does limit what US companies can do there in far more draconian ways than the US does for any country, and the EU absolutely does have the power to force FAANG companies to comply with their data protection laws.
Like, do you not want countries to have spies or try to defend themselves from foreign spies? I don't really get the complaint here.
But the narrative is "we are not like them", "we are about freedom, free trade, respecting private property and rights". But the moment "national security" gets even tangentially involved a lot of of this goes out of the window I guess.
>the EU absolutely does have the power
As I said their regulation of US companies is not as extensive, and if judged by how ineffectual the cookie law is in the presence of omnipresent browser fingerprinting and actual GDPR practices by the US companies that I know of the compliance is perfunctory at best.
>Like, do you not want countries to have spies or try to defend themselves from foreign spies?
The position where a cross border internet company automatically a spy questions the legitimacy of internet as a communication medium. From that point of view the Chinese have been doing the right thing isolating their citizens from the foreign internet.
Nothing important submitted to the app except for a full psych profile of every user updated in real time. I’m not a very creative person, and I can immediately see how this could be used to identify and recruit potential assets or improve psyops.
And there’s nothing hypocritical about both using and blocking an exploit, although I disagree with the reductive view that US companies are as aligned with US policy as Chinese companies are with China’s policy.
>there’s nothing hypocritical about both using and blocking an exploit
If by exploit you meant the general capabilities granted such app's popularity, then in my opinion it is at least somewhat hypocritical for a nation who's motto partly is basically(or was, I'm not sure as of right now) "free trade and free speech"
>and I can immediately see how this could be used to identify and recruit potential assets or improve psyops.
So should all cross border internet companies be banned by all the countries since cross border activity inevitably "exfiltrates" some data on the populace across the border, which could be used adversarially?
This isn’t a free speech debate. This isn’t a Chinese newspaper being banned. This isn’t a US citizen being blocked from expressing themselves. This is a software product. The US also regulates products like arms and drug shipments without being labeled hypocritical. Free trade doesn’t mean all or nothing.
As a member of this community, you should already know that mobile apps generate certain types of data that distinguish them from “all cross border internet companies,” and whether or not you’re willing to acknowledge the unique geopolitical context of this particular app, neither of the above can be ignored in any productive, nuanced discussion about TikTok.
>This isn’t a Chinese newspaper being banned.
>This isn’t a US citizen being blocked from expressing themselves.
ACLU and EFF consider the Montana ban unconstitutional. So it's about free speech, at least partly.
>This is a software product.
Code == speech argument has been used many times. No settled case law so far as far as I know.
>mobile apps generate certain types of data that distinguish them from
Then make a law that regulates the exchange of this kind of data for all foreign companies. Instead we have the CFIUS commission being used to arbitrarily regulate a particular foreign company, which theoretically doesn't even need to have US presence to function, and it looks very close to the Chinese-style protectionism.
>unique geopolitical context of this particular app
The unique geopolitical situation is that US companies influence (and siphon data) the entire world(the degree of US government's influence on that influence is beside the point, and is a very complex issue), but the US refuses to be influenced(and have data siphoned) by a potential adversary even at the "app where teens dance" level.
This argument would be more relevant if the concern was "chinese cultural influence", but in tiktok, the algorithm is intentionally different for those in china vs those in the west, with drastic differences in what gets recommended.
Ain't it funny how for themselves, the CCP wants tiktok users to see inspirational content and science and happy stuff, while the west gets whatever addicting smut we can manage to produce. The CCP also says kids in China shouldn't see gay stuff, and a certain 1980s chinese social movement.
TikTok is literally the CCP attempting to influence americans. It's not okay when facebook does it, and should 100% be illegal, but american politicians DGAF about that, but it sure as hell shouldn't be okay for the CCP to do that either. Just because the american government is unwilling to reign in local corporations doesn't mean they should also abstain from doing their job with foreign threats.
> TikTok is literally the CCP attempting to influence americans.
With lots and lots of gay/queer/trans content and cooking/baking on my FYP it seems to be doing an awfully good job at making me want to spend time away from the computer and back in the kitchen making delicious food and putting on makeup.
FYI, both Russia and China believe that "woke" stuff is corrosive to society, which is why they are fine displaying it to western audiences but not for their own people. They genuinely believe that pushing MORE LGBTQ style stuff will destroy western society. It's a common authoritarian pastime to point and scream at the "different" people for all of society's problems. I think they're wrong.
But what kind of content do you get about china? What about Taiwan, or hong kong? What kind of content do you get about the US as a country? How do you know that the CCP isn't influencing you through subtle recommendation changes?
If it's trans people talking about their transition, it seems to be an interest category that would only be offered by TikTok if you're actively interesting in it and engaging with that type of content.
If you mean "generic content made by people who just happen to be trans", that's pretty normal. In the real world you also can't go around asking a street performer to get out of your face because they happen to be trans.
The same with content creators making funny videos and showing a rainbow flag. Why would that be filtered out?
I mean trans creators that are talking about their transition, their struggles, and anything else they want to talk about.
I know I am getting exactly what I am interested in/engaging in... I was simply pointing out that the OP's choice of words stating that TikTok is trying to manipulate users with their FYP seems off-base.
I don't want them to get out of my face. I am not complaining about the content and the selection, I am ecstatic, but its a far cry from media that is meant to make me angry.
Ah thanks. I thought you were one of those who say content is being too 'woke' every time they even see a rainbow flag even though it's nothing to do with LGBTI+ topics at all. I got a bit triggered by that, I'm sorry.
The Netherlands used to be very gay-friendly but there is a large movement which is trying to reverse that (I think spurred on by Trump as American politics still has a lot of influence on the Netherlands). Which bothers me a lot and I rail against it.
And I understand your point, I don't think TikTok are doing so either.
>the CCP wants tiktok users to see inspirational content and science and happy stuff, while the west gets whatever addicting smut we can manage to produce.
If TikTok was a US based company I bet the content would be about the same. It's in the very American capitalism-influenced cultural tradition to have business practices that skirt the edge of the legal/acceptable to maximize profits, and patronizing speech regulations (recommending science instead of "addicting smut") are as un-American as it gets.
“ What the US establishment actually doesn't like is that TikTok wields a capability to influence the American public by amplifying certain topics and deranking others, also with their content policy.”
Ding Ding Ding. Agree the issue is the ability to control the national narrative. Too many US users on TikTok means that US powers may not be able to control all the topics and discourse like they want .
Psyops? They can tweak the algorithm to try to push for certain topics. Not shove them down user throats, but rank them a bit higher a few times and see if it catches on.
> It should have nothing to do with spying since there isn't anything important that's submitted to the app
How can anyone say that's not true today? I thought we all had the same wake-up call that metadata is as important as the data itself a few years ago already.
Quantity being a quality all of its own, who can even say what it's possible to infer if you had the ability to data mine Tiktok? I mean, supposedly it was possible at one point to tell when shit's doing down in DC just because there was a spike in late night pizza delivery.
It's basically a global training program to teach youth to constantly be making and posting videos online in inappropriate places.
you can probably datamine TikTok without being Bytedance, simply by data scraping using fake accounts, going through profiles etc. In that sense it's as much of a threat to the US as Youtube, since people are making all kinds of videos in all kinds of places, and the videos are easily scrapable as of right now
Sure, maybe you can just scrape. Was the CCP supposed to sit around and wait for someone else to do Tiktok, so they could just scrape that instead?
Whatever obnoxious crap is on Youtube nowdays, the content's notably different and unlikely to be timely. And that's if it even leaks the same sort of metadata.
Slowly but surely, I’m beginning to learn that whenever a US government agency has a problem with something, the problem isn’t that they are genuinely concerned about the thing they say they are, the problem is they aren’t the ones benefiting from it.
This arguments keeps popping up, but yes, it's not good when another country does it. You've got no say in it, and it can only be used for nefarious purposes. You've got no idea what your own government is using that info for, but you can be sure that the CCP is not going to prevent terrorism in your country.
You also can't vote Xi out of office, can you? You can however vote the politicians that are responsible for domestic spying out of office, or try to press them into being transparent and implementing proper legislation through various means.
Don't pretend the two are equal. The only thing equal between them is that you don't like either.
The US intelligence community is responsible for more terrorism within America than any it may have prevented.
You can't get rid of them through voting, the next president will just install another stooge and the cycle will continue.
The FBI spied on Trump's campaign, he "cleaned house", Christopher Wray is just as bad as James Comey. It can't be fixed. Merrick Garland is just as bad as Bill Barr. It needs to be abolished.
No. Neither should be allowed, and there is way too much apologism for domestic mass surveillance when you are more likely to be unjustifiably screwed 8 ways from Sunday from your own law enforcement agencies than from the Chinese ones. And America should ABSOLUTELY not be asking the CCP to do surveillance on their behalf, as if this point even needs to be said.
The government asking someone else outside of the jurisdiction of the Fourth Amendment to violate American citizens rights on their behalf is still a violation even if the government technically doesn't directly do it.
Also remember that Barr was first working for Central Intelligence and then became the US Attorney General. If that wasn't so sick I could at least laugh.
> Examine TikTok’s U.S. facilities, records, equipment and servers with minimal or no notice,
> Block changes to the app’s U.S. terms of service, moderation policies and privacy policy,
> Veto the hiring of any executive involved in leading TikTok’s U.S. Data Security org,
> Order TikTok and ByteDance to pay for and subject themselves to various audits, assessments and other reports on the security of TikTok’s U.S. functions, and,
> In some circumstances, require ByteDance to temporarily stop TikTok from functioning in the United States.
Knowing that TikTok keeps lying about CCP ties and data security this seems like a way to keep them honest? This doesn't list any domestic spying features.
How else does one prove that TikTok is true to their word about data safety and separating their data from China? What makes you think that the ability to examine their facilities sidesteps the need for courts and warrants?
> What makes you think that the ability to examine their facilities sidesteps the need for courts and warrants?
Nothing sidesteps the legal need. But I’m seeing no evidence that these agreements contemplate any oversight. If the agent doing the examining decides to simultaneously look up an American’s TikTok account, nothing would stop them. (I agree the tone of this discussion is alarmist.)
Presumably Byte Dance is already required to respond to NSLs and warrants. LEOs don't want to have to sift through raw dumps of raw data -- they want nice search interfaces. Intel agencies, on the other hand, almost certainly want raw data, but would prefer continuing feeds over one-time or occasional dumps, so getting to "examine TikTok’s US facilities, records, and servers" doesn't seem all that interesting.
So my take is that “agreement would let agencies examine TikTok’s US facilities, records, and servers” is specifically to enable the audits also mentioned in TFA.
> Presumably Byte Dance is already required to respond to NSLs and warrants
There is a legitimate concern about ByteDance honestly responding to said orders. Wanting to double check first hand isn't a ridiculous ask. What seems an overstep is wanting to do so with zero oversight.
> Congress can do its oversight duty anytime it wants to
This is a terrible mode of executive oversight, particularly when it comes to something like warrantless search. Congressional oversight pertains to entire frameworks, not particulars of specific searches.
Can only think the feds regret not banning it long before anyone had heard of it. Suspect any new pretenders will not be so lucky.
Edit to add: “and veto the hiring of any executive involved with leading TikTok US data security organization” - this is dangerously close to saying the quiet bit out loud.
Yes, and the first and most important of those rules -- the rule that more than any other sets us apart from totalitarian states like China -- begins with the phrase "Congress shall make no law."
We’d be fine if Bytedance were European, Australian, Japanese or even Indian. This is a problem with Russia and China, belligerent autocracies with whom our chances of near-term military confrontation is elevated.
I'm not seeing any "spying" here. What the government is requesting is a audit capability, similar to what the FDA has for domestic food manufacturers.
The FDA can inspect food plants, and if in the public interest, shut them down temporarily.
Let me ask this, without this power how do you propose the government hold TikTok accountable for anything?
The agreement would give feds ability to "Examine TikTok’s U.S. facilities, records, equipment and servers", which no doubt includes user data. So it's not like being able to audit a food manufacturer. It would be like also having the ability to find out which consumer ate every bite of of the food, their reactions, what meals it was part of, where they ate it, who they shared their food with etc.
Or moral panics over Jazz, Rock, Dungeons & Dragons, whatever. People went from not knowing it existed to throwing fits after they found out that it's popular with socially progressive Gen Z-ers, and that a handful of teenagers screwed with a Donnie Dumbass rally via KPop spam.
The emperor has no clothes until the US has an equivalent to the GDPR that legally enforces privacy practices for all companies, and all NSA surveillance is abolished. I'm all for preventing mass surveillance, actually doing it. But this is just a farce, and a culture war facet at that. It's just a vocal minority that's mad about people consuming media other than the conservative crack pipe.
There's plenty of conservative content on TikTok so I wouldn't paint it as some progressive paradise. That platform is mostly misinformation, and is playing a huge role in radicalizing people on the right
Do we know what/how TikTok is "spying"? I mean it is just an app running on a mobile device just like any other app. What data does it collect that the feds would like to get their hands on? Perhaps the ban should be on the ability of any app to collect this data in the first place?
Location, FoaF graph, kinds of things people engage with. It isn't just for direct spying but getting access to cliques. If you know your targets cook likes special kind of porn, you now have leverage to get an APT installed on machine close to the target. People's defenses are down when the lower brain is motivated.
This is worse than the threats to Facebook and Twitter to revoke section 230. NATO and other Natsec employees penetrated TikTok long ago as reported by Alan Macleod. https://www.mintpressnews.com/?s=tiktok
The CIA and, by extension, the US government as a whole have never altered the outcome of elections anywhere for regime change, and have never instigated color revolutions for regime change.
Recruiters mostly pitch me on "working for TikTok," because that's where the name recognition is. No doubt this is even more true for people reading Gizmodo.
TikTok has had nothing but positive effects for me. I mostly subscribe to intellectual content, positivity, and things that I feel improve my mental health. TikTok is what you make of it.
It's positive in the same way eating a bunch of sugary donuts gives you a temporary short lasting dopamine boost. It's easily digestible with zero nutritional value. Rapid videos in succession short video formats that inject you with a quick dopamine hit are in fact NOT good for your mental health. This is why you see people continuously swipe for hours a day There are plenty of studies showing this.
You're just rewiring your brain in a way that it'll want easily obtained dopamine with zero work. This leads to a rebound effect where you'll become bored quickly and depressed without it (similar to a recovering addict)
That might be your experience but it's not mine. A have a lot of really excellent thoughtful content in my feed. I take notes and often save images (long press > save image) for future reference. If it had no value, I wouldn't be sitting here feeling like I've benefited from all the new perspectives I've received.
The format doesn't dictate the content nor what one can get from it.
Same. The TikTok algorithm did more to fix my mental health post-lockdown than multiple therapists or any other social media. Rather than being tuned for maximal negativity it seems ByteDance tuned the algorithm for maximal positivity.
The algorithm is tuned for maximal engagement. It doesn't care if it's good or bad. It cares that you feed it all of your data and all of your friends and family's data. Yum yum.
I support a domestic ban on TikTok, and this is embarrassing. You're not supposed to be worse than the country you say is spying on your citizens. This undermines any moral authority they could claim, and makes their argument look like: "we want to ban you because we can't stand anyone doing a better job spying on Americans than us".