I suspected this since Day 1 and never downloaded the app. Don't have a problem with Chinese people, just the government. China is known for its callous authoritarian state that openly express their goal of surpassing America. By law, Chinese companies have to comply with authoritarian demands from their government (iirc there is even a CCP member assigned to each company) and at any time can turn into an pseudo arm of the state. On top of that, China has had numerous scandals where they send Chinese spies to various institutions like universities and companies and steal research and trade secrets. I also distanced myself from most social media in general as American companies are still horrible when it comes to privacy. Surprised by the amount of people that hate China spying on Americans via TikTok but say nothing about our tech companies. Big Tech hands out our data to our government so they can circumvent the fourth amendment as well as other nefarious acts.
It amazes me to no end that some people appear to be genuinely surprised by stuff like this. Or they just continue business-as-usual, entirely ignoring massive risks.
In Germany, chancellor Scholz is actively trying to enable the sale of a third of Hamburg’s port (one of the largest in Europe) to Chinese investors by blocking a chamber vote about it. All security services and ministries sound alarm, yet if no vote is completed or investigation into the matter started by the end of the month, the contract passes by default.
Germany has not even encountered the worst effects of the energy crisis brought on by the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine. Yet the highest ranked executive politician tries to ensure that whenever China decides to follow Russias example, Germany’s economy will be destroyed in an instant.
It’s lunacy. It doesn’t even make headlines. What is going on regarding China? Is everyone with economic interests still simply blinded by the volume of the potential Chinese market? Does the Chinese government have career-ending dirt on all of them? I don’t get it. This is not regular, rational behavior for a head of state within Europe.
Trade is normal, selling out your countries’ critical infrastructure to a country holding very different values is plain unconscionable.
Are you asking if the US COULD be better than it is, or if it IS better for the average citizen than many places in the world, including China? The answer is an obvious YES to both.
Competing and yet also colluding? Corporations want to fulfill consumer or shareholder desires in exchange for money. The CCP wants to dominate you and determine your way of life. They want to tell you what you’re allowed to desire. It’s very different.
I would not say that corporations in America are characterized by merely fulfilling consumer desires, rather creating consumer desires—often without precedent—and then fulfilling those desires that were created. As can be seen by the sheer quantity and market size of advertisement (which is the business of manufacturing desire itself).
It appears that we can be encouraged to desire almost anything, or at least an incredible amount of things…
>wants to dominate you and determine your way of life. They want to tell you what you’re allowed to desire.
I'd like to note that corporations do want the same thing. I believe all power structures converge to this, no matter their origins - an abusive partner, a out of control corporation, a totalitarian government, a fanatic cult, law enforcement when given too much power.
So what remains? Forces that keep the system in balance, "checks and balances" as they say. I don't know the recipe and I don't believe anyone does. What I'd just like to point out is that corporations, as they are, are not exempt from abuses of power.
Oligarchies. See the Canadian telecom and CRTC situation. It looks like competition from the outside, but really it's collusion with false attempts at competition.
The result speaks for itself. The desire to dominate is identical, there's just more or less legal or culturally acceptable ways to going about getting there.
You're right, but I half agree with the intention. Sure, one could say HN was built in the US, domiciled in the US - but it's still a tech forum on the global internet. As for whether "most" people on HN are from the US, look I can't really prove or disprove you here, I have no statistics, but I'll say that the US is ~1/4th of the english speaking population (330M/1.3B).
Obviously, I'd guess the demographics of Americans is more than a quarter here, but I (think) there are enough non-Americans that you can't really be certain that the individual you're speaking to is actually American.
Yes it's better, because in America we don't get whisked off in the night to a work camp or straight up killed for simply airing our grievances about government or corporate control. It absolutely sucks that American companies have near total control over our lives here, but at least you and I are free to mention that fact online.
Interesting question. Well, both are now capitalist hells, but very different forms.
Both individualism and collectivism have positive and negative sides. With individualism, the positive is e.g. self-expression, creativity, innovation, while the negative is e.g. selfishness and disconnection. With collectivism, the positives are e.g. connection and supporting others, while the negative is e.g. imitation and lack of diversity. Ironically, when pushed to extremes the negatives of individualism and collectivism seem to kind of equate with each other (though it may not look that way at first glance from the outside).
All this to say that yes I mostly agree with you, though it’s complicated since the pros and cons are often quite different. And I think this is often misunderstood (since people may, for example, for their own more individualist country focus on the positives of individualism while for another more collectivist country focus on the negatives of collectivism—-or vice versa).
Nearly content-free article. The meat seems to be:
> TikTok spokesperson Maureen Shanahan said that TikTok collects approximate location information based on users’ IP addresses to “among other things, help show relevant content and ads to users, comply with applicable laws, and detect and prevent fraud and inauthentic behavior."
> But the material reviewed by Forbes indicates that ByteDance's Internal Audit team was planning to use this location information to surveil individual American citizens, not to target ads or any of these other purposes. Forbes is not disclosing the nature and purpose of the planned surveillance referenced in the materials in order to protect sources. TikTok and ByteDance did not answer questions about whether Internal Audit has specifically targeted any members of the U.S. government, activists, public figures or journalists.
Right at the beginning. I thought the rest of the article would make this interesting, but instead it talked about what Uber did and what Facebook did (I assume to fill space), then told a story about people feeling suspicious and nothing interesting happening.
Forbes is a shitty outlet, like the International Business Times, where you float dubious stories, then get an army of bots and enraged nationalists to tweet links to them, then the NYT and WaPo both write stories about the Forbes story so they don't have to sign any claims it makes, but they can still spread them. Then I assume the FBI will open an investigation into the NYT story about the tweets about the Forbes story about nothing, and somebody on the floor of Congress will demand to know why we're treating China with kid gloves when at this very moment the FBI is investigating the NYT reporting on the tweets about the Forbes story about how TikTok collects location data just like everybody else.
This story should be taken as of a similar quality to the rest of Forbes' journalism (however little of it there is.)
Forbes has really gone downhill over the past decade. I think anyone who's been around the block takes their stories with a giant pinch of salt nowadays.
> In 2017, the New York Times reported that Uber had identified various local politicians and regulators and served them a separate, misleading version of the Uber app to avoid regulatory penalties. At the time, Uber acknowledged that it had run the program, called “greyball,” but said it was used to deny ride requests to “opponents who collude with officials on secret ‘stings’ meant to entrap drivers,” among other groups.
I read this more as Uber and Kalanick going for "full free market capitalism/libertarianism" in the US's economic and legal system, move fast/break things etc etc, than any nefarious data collection effort.
This says more about Uber's callous disregard for legal regulations, labor rights and the hyper-aggressive-venture-capitalist-funded environment that it exists in as a corporation than anything about data mining.
Basically "f the government, we do as we please" by Uber.
Though obviously the data collection itself is terrible as well.
Uber's practices are what happens when you take a bunch of young aggressive business school grads who think Ayn Rand is the best thing since sliced bread and give them hundreds of millions of dollars to hire engineering employees.
My take-away from that is that obviously localized small to medium scale corruption and buddy-buddy networks where things are done face to face, verbally, in cash, and without any advanced database/record-keeping are obviously much harder to discover and disrupt than something that's run as a centrally coordinated business effort.
As just about anyone who has done business in an entirely cash-based economy where things are done verbally and on handshakes with little or no electronic or paper based record keeping will know all too well.
Is this an actual Forbes article? I was under the impression that articles published under forbes.com/sites/<username> were blog posts from unaffiliated people.
Interesting. That's gotta be a new thing right? I think before there was a separation between sites and forbes proper. Do they intend to imply they stand behind everything, or behind nothing?
She’s on staff. Where it says “Forbes Staff” under her name, a contributor would say “Guest Contributor” or “Subscriber” and have a disclaimer (i) button.
I don't use TikTok, but it seems to be video entertainment. It gets access to your location, and it knows a ton about what videos you like, but is that really all that useful? TFA cites "phone numbers, birthdays and draft videos" -- the first two are hardly secret, and the latter is specifically stuff that you were planning to make not-secret.
Sure, it's not great that they're following you, but TikTok is hardly alone in that. Your location is also a terrible secret.
I can see objecting to TikTok as a propaganda machine (even if the US is hardly in any position to be complaining about others' propaganda machines). But I'm unclear on just what kind of surveillance they think is going on here, or why the Chinese government would find it especially useful.
> Location of residence and work, correlating different IP addresses such as if your client device often appears from a certain 'home' IP address during non work hours, and another set of IP addresses during work hours.
> Location of where you go on vacation, and for how long (based on entirely new IP address in some other geographical location)
> Facial recognition data, likely good enough over long term use with enough angles of your face to develop a high confidence model of your uniqueness as a human in the world. Getting even better all the time as front-facing cameras on phones improve in video quality.
> Facial recognition data of any other persons who appear in your videos and where they are in your social graph of contacts.
> Object recognition and categorization of what things appear in the background of your videos, consumer electronics, art, religious symbols, furniture, vehicles, electrical outlet shape (can be used to distinguish geographical location).
> Time of day use/usage patterns
> Social graph of who you're friends with, whose other tiktok clients login from the same netblocks (likely to be in the same residence, etc). Who do you like/follow and who follows you
> Telemetry data from device itself for unique ios or android device fingerprinting
> What content you watch that might be even slightly politically, economically or religiously related and how that content is perceived by Beijing.
> Who and how many and which other people in your social graph watch anything political/business/religious related and all the other data gathered about them.
> How many and which one of your friends have client devices that appear from known VPN exit endpoints or IP addresses that look "suspicious" to data sets used in the back end of the domestic China great firewall. I'd be shocked if they don't collect data when a large % of somebody's friends and social media graph are apparent VPN users.
Who's going to grant permission location for a video app?
> Facial recognition data
seems plausible, but only if you're producing content, in which case everything you record is already public and tiktok gathering data is the least of your problems. also, at least on ios surreptitiously capturing facial data with front camera is risky because there's a recording indicator displayed by the OS.
> Facial recognition data of any other persons who appear in your videos and where they are in your social graph of contacts.
> Object recognition and categorization of what things appear in the background of your videos, consumer electronics, art, religious symbols, furniture, vehicles, electrical outlet shape (can be used to distinguish geographical location).
Again, only applicable if you're posting content, and if you're posting it, it's presumably public and tiktok is the least of your problems.
> Telemetry data from device itself for unique ios or android device fingerprinting
Given that iphones are basically identical, the only thing you'll be able to extract is "this guy is using an iphone 14 pro", which isn't exactly revealing
> Location of where you go on vacation, and for how long (based on entirely new IP address in some other geographical location)
> Time of day use/usage patterns
> Social graph of who you're friends with, whose other tiktok clients login from the same netblocks (likely to be in the same residence, etc). Who do you like/follow and who follows you
I'm having trouble imagining how these can be used in a nefarious way, or can't otherwise be acquired through other sources.
> Social graph of who you're friends with, whose other tiktok clients login from the same netblocks (likely to be in the same residence, etc). Who do you like/follow and who follows you
> How many and which one of your friends have client devices that appear from known VPN exit endpoints or IP addresses that look "suspicious" to data sets used in the back end of the domestic China great firewall. I'd be shocked if they don't collect data when a large % of somebody's friends and social media graph are apparent VPN users.
okay, and then what? so the next time you visit china they throw you in an reeducation camp? At best this information can be used for determining how much support/opposition the CCP has abroad, but you can just use opinion polls for that. It's not like americans are shy about expressing their hate for the CCP.
It also infers social graphs. I'm sure it has the option to collect contacts, but even without it, even the links you share are unique and embed your profile information (there is no easy way to share a canonical link to a video that doesn't link back to your own profile). It also no doubt does a lot of tracking based on IP addresses to find out which users are in close proximity or even share the same internet connection.
You can do a lot with residential IP addresses and home wifi/router connections, since very often a typical DHCP residential internet customer does not change IPs very much. Or at all. DHCP renewal request often comes back for the same IP.
Or only changes IPs to another address in a very small /24 to /26 sized block that's assigned to a router in one very specific geographic area.
Or you have a case like a bunch of customers all behind one cgnat exit point to the internet that also does not change in geographic scope/scale of how many cgnatted customers are behind it. As commonly seen on LTE networks.
Even if you have not granted GPS location permission to an app there is a very high likelihood that other people in the same small netblock have, which greatly improves a third party's correlation of netblock-to-lat/long.
I wouldn't be surprised if they use the video data provided by their users to build said social graph (face recognition), even including people who never used the app and just appear somewhere in the background.
At least the way I use tiktok, it would be terrible at this. 90% of my tiktok 'friends' are people I have never met IRL nor ever expect to interact with outside of the app. The UX encourages you to follow back strangers, so they are intentionally poisoning their own data.
> or why the Chinese government would find it especially useful.
Let’s say you’re an individual that the Chinese government doesn’t like too much - perhaps you protest too loudly about things like Hong Kong, Taiwan, Xinjiang, or Tibet.
Perhaps you’re also originally from China but are now a naturalized citizen (or perhaps your spouse is).
Perhaps the Chinese would like a word with you and want you to come down to the local police station [0] for a friendly chat [1]
It sure would be nice for the government to be able to locate you easily.
Perhaps though you’re aware of the privacy issues with TikTok and you avoid it.
Problem solved - except for your kid who has it installed on her phone so now they know where you live.
So Just ban your kid from using TikTok - problem solved (hah), except they’re also monitoring social graphs so now you need to make sure none of your kids friends use it either.
It’s not difficult to see how such a system could present a problem to certain individuals.
For most people this kind of surveillance isn’t going to mean anything.
But for those certain people of interest it could be a real problem.
Maybe you’ll never cross the line between random individual vs person of interest, but do you know where the line is and how it changes and expands as all systems like this do?
inb4 “but US-based social media companies track you like this too”. Yes they do, and it will become a growing problem depending on how much you trust the government of the day.
> inb4 “but US-based social media companies track you like this too”. Yes they do, and it will become a growing problem depending on how much you trust the government of the day.
The US has literally assassinated people based on exactly that siphoned data you describe.
> It gets access to your location, and it knows a ton about what videos you like, but is that really all that useful?
The app was regularly accessing the iOS clipboard (multiple times per minute), at least until iOS started telling users every time an app did that.
> But I'm unclear on just what kind of surveillance they think is going on here, or why the Chinese government would find it especially useful.
It doesn't have to be useful or make sense to be objectionable.
If the government wanted to know what color socks I'm wearing and designed a surveillance apparatus to collect that information without my consent, I would still object to it when I found out, even though that information seems utterly useless.
I should just wander the country starting half-assed clones of popular apps for clueless non-tech companies. I'll bet the CTO of Wal-Mart's video app division is doing pretty well for himself, a lot better than I am as a FAANG code monkey..
Not for nothing, and I don't know if it has changed in the last years, but I remember that Walmart's tech division was packed with brains that could easily rival anything in SV. They were just focused on different things.
Is Forbes a tool for pushing Chinese psy ops? Can we trust Chinese owned media to not have nefarious motives? Forbes is owned by Hong Kong–based investment group Integrated Whale Media Investments and are working on being bought by a Chinese SPAK:
I don’t get how these things don’t catch more attention outside the tech community.
Back in the day Snowden basically gave up his life to expose the same horrific crimes against humanity committed by the NSA. Now it’s the Chinese, an enemy to the U.S. and still no one does anything.
Even worse, pop culture glorifies the starlets produced by the app. Bottom of the barrel stupid content gets shoved in our kids faces and people just ignore all the issues at hand.
Apple sells hardware to do this to whoever you want.
Amazon is building an Alexa Spy Dystopia.
Uber had/has multiple campaigns to individually track and divert regulator types.
Equifax, even after hacks that resulted in nearly every citizen exposed, still exists and brags about selling wage data to companies.
Our data security, data privacy, and anonymity potential is farcical here in the USA. Someone please explain why yet this tracking should matter to me... past the "iTs a ChiNesE ComPAnY" excuse. Most of my data's out of the wet paper bag.
To me, it is obvious that TikTok is a tool for all kinds of evil, from exfiltrating personal information to surveillance to refining models for mass manipulation.
It is the one app that I would never allow near one of my devices. Yet, whenever I mention the threat anywhere or to anybody, I get "you are too paranoid" or "but Facebook does it too". Most of the time I just get ignored / downvoted.
Am I missing something? Does the app really have enough redeeming features to warrant the risk of using it?
I also get "But all the big US tech companies do it too.."
Frankly I would much rather that all my private data/whatever go to the hands of the NSA and/or CSE, GCHQ than the Ministry of State Security in Beijing.
At least I have a moderate level of confidence in my actual free speech rights, civil rights and legal rights in the US and Canadian legal systems.
Every domestic Chinese company with "cloud" based whatever is legally obligated to set up a database replication export to the MSS. With active engineering cooperation to make it work correctly.
If the thought of stalking my social graph, whereabouts and interests didn't outright creep me out (regardless of who is stalking), I would be more comfortable with something Chinese than American.
I am not a person of interest to China - even if I do have anti-CCP sentiments, I have zero influence on them so it's not worth their time nor resources to enact extrajudicial punishment on me. Xi doesn't give a shit what some random schmuck in a Western country thinks about him. I'd have to be very influential for them to give a shit about me, at which point I'd have many reasons not to use social media (whether American or Chinese) anyway.
I would be more of a person of interest to my local government (which - as most Western governments - are a puppet to America) because if anything, I have at least some influence/leverage on them in the form of voting and generally being involved in the local community/industry, and they would need much less resources to punish/intimidate me if they so desire.
Yeah because the US govt isn't compromised by Russians, and politcians on their payroll. Lets just ignore the capabilities of Cambridge analytica and how they are able to persuade the mass population with psy ops. I feel like I'm in crazy world right now
NSA can refer it to federal police who can use it for parallel construction at home to imprison you if they wish to retaliate against you for something they don’t like.
CCP can’t do that.
Surveillance by police that have jurisdiction over you is more dangerous than those who do not.
They can they just don’t need to. They can just disappear you. There’s documented evidence of the Chinese gov torturing, defiling, political dissidents but you’re worried about parallel construction from the NSA.
As a reminder, for parallel construction to work you need to have actually done something illegal, which the NSA then backtracks to build a case against you. For the Chinese gov to throw you into an unmarked van and press you into slave labor all they need is to tell someone to do it.
Aside from the fact that the accuracy of that book has been seriously questioned, your bringing it up doesn't refute what you were replying to. You need to have committed a crime for parallel construction to apply. Yes, there are a lot of laws and a lot of crimes defined in the U.S. Code, and people do get ensnared by laws that they didn't know existed. But that doesn't change the U.S. constitutional guarantee of due process.
Why can’t they? Sure, they can’t just call up the FBI or other US law enforcement agencies and refer the matter.
However, they can absolutely use the threat of disclosure of sensitive information to blackmail or otherwise coerce someone. The threat (real or perceived) many times is worse than the reality.
I’d say they each have the capability to cause harm, but the incentives/motivations/safeguards that might drive (or inhibit) them to do so are drastically different.
It is not "just as much a problem in the US". China's treatment of dissidents is far, far worse than the US's. It's not even close. Every reputable political ranking organization, from Freedom House to The Economist, confirms this.
Are you planning to be equivalent in notoriety/influence as Martin Luther King Jr? If not, the motivation/incentives for domestic law enforcement to target you aren’t really there. It would be a waste of their time and finite resources.
The PRC has a bit different motivations/incentives and theirs are not aligned with a perceived U.S. national security interest.
Whether you and I agree with the US national security apparatus's mission, in my opinion, it is at least more oriented towards safeguarding/promoting the US’ self-interest.
That’s not to say I agree with all of its actions, just trying to explain what I mean when I say there is difference in motivations and incentives.
That’s not the experience of Roger Ver, who was imprisoned in inhumane conditions for speaking negatively about BATFE agents at a conference in the US.
Same for Assange.
Retaliation for protected expression happens all the time in the USA.
>Frankly I would much rather that all my private data/whatever go to the hands of the NSA and/or CSE, GCHQ than the Ministry of State Security in Beijing.
First, please do not read anything that follows as me accepting TikTok in any way, shape, or fashion.
As a non-Chinese citizen, what exactly can the MSS do to you with all of that data? I would be much more concerned with the gov't that had authority over me having that data. I'm guessing a Chinese citizen doesn't care one wit about what the NSA/GCHQ/etc knows about them either.
We've already asked you once to stop using HN for flamewars. If you keep doing it, we're going to have to ban you. It's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for.
China might do it to us, which is what we don't like. It's much easier to ignore when somebody does the same thing (in your name, with your money, even) but to other people you'll never meet.
We had enormous protests in 2020, aside from those who actually committed real crimes very few people were arrested. Additionally none of them were turned into political prisoners who had to do slave labor.
This is untrue and irrelevant to US citizens not wanting China to have access to our data.
If your Cambodian/Colombian/Panamanian sure, do everything you can to ensure the US gov doesn’t get access to your data if you fear we’ll help your gov kill and imprison you at will, (if that’s even really a thing) but here in the US, it’s not a concern and you’re acting like it’s the same.
After using TikTok, twitter feels like using a windows 95 computer after using modern operating systems. American social media feels way too parasocial, untargeted and clunky to me now.
Tiktok has better content, the fyp learns what you like and so it surprises and delights. I think american social media has been overly focused on the top 1% of content producers and advertisers, so the consumer experience has languished at their expense.
TT is really a consumer-first design, and users get visibility even without followers - it actually connects people so it feels a lot less like shouting into the void. It's cool to find a good post from a stranger that nobody has liked or commented on yet - liking that feels impactful to that person. American social media pretty much only shows you stuff from who you follow or advertisers, so any interaction you have is easy to get lost in the noise.
(Also, for whatever reason, I see a lot less angry shouting on TT, whereas twitter feels increasingly like the 2 minutes of hate from 1984)
The ease of posting leads to the content being much less polished: instagram feels like my friends are doing PR to convince the people they know that they are cool/beautiful/successful sometimes - just feels fake and distant to me.
Through TT I've found a bunch of people with the same interests and sense of humor as me, and I enjoy getting little glimpses into their lives and vice versa.
I think some amount of the 'tiktok is evil' meme is propaganda rooted in sinophobia, tech company PR counterprogramming, and american quasi-journalist influencers fearing their platforms are dissolving. About 2/3 of the criticism I've read seems hypocritical (based on industry standards) and alarmist, so it makes me more skeptical of the remaining 1/3.
Facebook and google being cozy with the feds that have power over me scares me a lot more than the CCP - who can do little to impact me directly.
> (Also, for whatever reason, I see a lot less angry shouting on TT, whereas twitter feels increasingly like the 2 minutes of hate from 1984)
There is an oddly specific reason for this: just about everything that might be controversial is likely filtered away into bubbles.
People will spell gay as gae, use accent marks and spaces, all sorts of things because not doing so will kill your upload pretty much. Tiktok will remove users from being featured if they look abnormal or ugly or low quality, afaik.
Every social network memoryholes certain kinds of controversy. TikTok's choices make for a more pleasant user experience for many users than Twitter's.
I got a brief suspension on twitter recently for 'harassment' for calling a journalist stupid for analyzing something in a nonsensical way to defend the status quo. Mocking powerful people with bad takes was one of the highlights of the platform and they are taking that away because they are too afraid of losing the bluechecks to another platform (which, to be fair, is probably an existential risk for them in their current state).
>Am I missing something? Does the app really have enough redeeming features to warrant the risk of using it?
In my experience (sometimes depending on how it's stated but not always) people see these kinds of comments as a commentary on _them_ specifically. It often doesn't matter what your intention is, they just feel somewhat defensive/challenged, like you're accusing them of poor judgement. So they blow the comment off or even push back to make themselves feel better about their decision.
I understand this comment could be seen as pretentious but I sincerely understand why someone would feel defensive. It's very easy to see it as commentary on their judgment and values, especially in a country like the US that is so focused on being individualistic/protecting individual rights. Most people don't want to be accused of not caring about their privacy. It makes them feel shallow and talked down to, once again, regardless of intent.
Also DJI app that requires GPS lock in and internet connection to operate drones owned by hundreds of thousands of US citizens. Hell, even something off brand from the back streets of Guangdong, something like a Yawei dashcam app wants 1) Location access 2) Contacts and 3) Photos app access. So it can “geo tag your friends in a car’s dashcam stream and bluetooth it to your photos library”.
The cat is out of the box. It must be resolved through a cat exterminator at the highest levels of Gov, forcing Apple and Google to delist this stuff.
Even the best and highly educated citizenry is not immune to this; let alone the rest of USA and the west. Micro actions from individuals wouldn’t be sufficient. No harm meant to cats or any of our furry friends.
Anything that needs to scan wifi (such as to talk to a drone) shows up as location access, because the list of visible APs and their relative signal strengths is the same thing as your location.
I think there's another option which is the devices that run the apps are user agents. Bunk geo data, bunk contacts, the app shouldn't be the wiser. This will take legislation to enact which moves at a snails pace. Hopefully SV will enable granular controls to pollute this data.
Feature-wise, the experience of using it is very streamlined. More importantly, it's where a substantial proportion of youth culture is found nowadays, so to keep up with and contribute to it is to be on the app.
Facebook is more legally scrutinised by almost every concern out there. These replies are not reflective of the legal policies and measures taken in the west against Facebook.
What is the risk? I.e. what bad outcome could happen to me that impacts my day to day life? Perhaps a detailed description could help people realize what you have in mind
It is more a bad large-scale societal outcome that many are worried about. It is a massive CCP-linked propaganda organ; even if content is generated by users, the way in which it is surfaced and promoted is entirely controlled by ByteDance (-> CCP). Furthermore, all sorts of social engineering, spear phishing, and blackmail by a potentially-hostile foreign government are made possible.
But if you want something to worry about as an individual, consider China's increasing global reach and whether the CCP could at any point use their massive reach to systematically make life less pleasant for you if you express views contrary to the party's.
I'm pretty sure the FTC ruling against Facebook only affects Facebook. Do you think anyone in our government is in a position to stand up against China right now?
Some people just don't care about this bigger picture. They aren't a direct target and they are already apart of so many mass analytics models that it just doesn't seem to matter anymore. It's a jaded side effect of a sleazy business model that's become pretty common.
I won't use it and have no interest in it. It just seems like another noisy app filled with misinformation but also poses a real risk at a geopolitical scale. But on the other hand, I get why people just want to connect with other humans and see a skateboarding dog.
Probably not. But that does sound a lot like FB and Google. But they are wildly popular and provide entertainment so it could be everybody is perfectly happy being manipulated. I think everybody will move on from tiktok in a few years time anyway.
I don't personally use TikTok, but I'm not sure that I'd care much if they know that I like to watch videos about pottery or gaming or whatever. Google / YouTube certainly knows already.
1. They collect information on what interests you, makes you upset, and engages you on an extremely granular level. Unlike YT/Google, they push content to you (which you watch/reject)—they can refine a model of your preferences and personality quickly.
2. They push you to engage with that content, leaving comments and sending messages.
3. They have the capability to make you watch content that they know you'll like with the express goal of getting you to react to it.
4. TikTok videos are often recorded in personal spaces, giving insight into individuals' lives and leaking personal information (partners, children, pets, etc.).
5. The app itself can collect information about you and your device, including any information it may have access to you through overly-broad permission collection.
1. Do you use TT? I find the content is very rarely rage-driven, whereas somehow that seems to be the primary flavor of twitter.
2+3. Why should I worry that a company is serving me stuff I actually like in hopes I'll interact with it? Isn't that the social contract of digital advertising, except TT is actually delivering value to the consumer?
Getting you to engage is getting you to provide information you wouldn't have provided unprompted. By delivering value, they're getting you to reveal more about yourself.
"Table stakes" and "a tool for surveillance" are not at all mutually exclusive. Which is all the more reason to be concerned about Mudge's suggestions that foreign bad actors were employed at Twitter. Make no mistake: social media is a tool that can be used for malicious purposes.
It's the latest and greatest in terms of attention grabbing/stealing, so people get defensive about it because they spend lots of time using it.
I get annoyed with the "but facebook does it too" argument as well. I don't really like throwing around the "foreign country disinformation campaign" accusations, but whenever tiktok comes up on this site it's hard to imagine regular people saying some of the things that are said about why it's "no less trustworthy" than american social media companies.
Even with this article, people will respond with "well, they probably weren't surveilling me because I don't have anything to hide." And then I show them the story about the cops that used social media to track a woman who went across state lines to get an abortion, and they get really mad.
All of the best movies and television shows you've ever seen are horizontal. There will never be a great movie released in vertical video. Mark my words. Note the time.
So noted, but I suppose you'll define which movies are great and which ones don't count? TikTok's popularity demonstrates a demand for vertical video, despite how much you don't want there to be, simply because that's how people are viewing video - on their smartphone. Even Netflix is doing vertical video clips for previews. My prediction is we'll see a mainstream movies be recut/reframed to be vertical on Netflix/other online streaming service simply to complete with TikTok's content farms.
The fundamental issue for me is that I never plan to step foot on Chinese/Russia soil or get into any relationship with their government. That way their spying feels less relevant to me than US spying which just could put me for arbitrary reasons on a list and most western governments would comply.
If you are, the CCP kidnaps them to take them home for putting a toe out of line.
And by you and I participating in the CCP’s surveillance apparatus, we make it easier for them to pounce on those who are trying to steer clear of the CCP, sadly, the ones who the CCP likes to kidnap and bring home to torture.
I noticed that you are getting downvoted for pointing out the bots. My post had an interesting vote pattern. It initially received lots of upvotes, but then got downvoted to about 1/2 its peak vote count over the next few hours, presumably by bots / shills.
I usually don't give much concern to privacy issues - so much of my life is online and public (see my username as an example), I'm just not worried about it. If someone finds out about my goat fetish or side hustle selling illegal kinder toys, so be it.
But TikTok? I removed it after the first security concerns were raised years ago and have never even considered reinstalling it. It's such a obvious way for the CCP to get their hooks into the US population. Even if they don't gaf about you in particular, it can be used to monitor those around you, or assist in other spying activities like government or corporate espionage by giving detailed info on the digital devices around you. The risk to me personally is minimal, but I have no desire to help the Chinese government steal corporate secrets, locate dissidents or monitor Chinese expats living abroad - all things I'm sure are being done.
LOL I thought this was leaked years ago? I’m not sure why anyone would be surprised by this. They were getting in trouble back when they were musically or w/e it was called.
Good thing ByteDance's plans were thwarted! Now we can feel safe that such things indeed never happen within large social media companies. Oh joy and rapture!
I really enjoy the fact that everyone gets very up in arms because a foreign nation tries to spy on Americans, but the fact that US corporations have to secretly divulge info to the govt regularly is joyously accepted. I'm sure the cognitive dissonance would be astonishing if most of those people were capable of critiquing their own ideology
In agreement with you, it's amazing how much we scrutinize our very own Mark Zuckerberg for this, while giving TikTok a free pass for at least the same level of atrocities (but highly likely even worse things). Why?
Wonder what bubble you're in, I've been seeing a Facebook attack article easily 3-4 times a month for the last three years. I want to see Bytedance's CEO in front of Congress.
Whereas anti TikTok is a recent (and much needed) development. That app is fast tracking through every single pitfall Facebook hit, starting with making users' attention spans less than five seconds, filtering out content based on beauty, giving schoolchildren tics, and all the trust and safety issues.
I think it's because to it's so obviously a bad idea to trust Tiktok that it doesn't make for an interesting debate. Whereas without Facebook you can have arguments going both ways.
I don't think anyone is joyously accepting US corporations divulging information to the US govt., so that hyperbole is completely unnecessary.
I think there is less cognitive dissonance than you think. There is still some belief that the US populace has a hand in the US govt's constitution and governance. If they are unhappy, changes can be effected.
But in the case of a foreign government, an authoritarian one at that, not only are any values and priorities not aligned, there is almost no way for US persons to effect any changes to the CCCP's constitution and governance.
The issue with that line of reasoning is that it will result in a balkanized internet, accelerating what we're already seeing (US companies are under increased scrutiny in the EU, if the US bans TikTok I expect the EU to be more heavy handed on US companies).
We should expect end-to-end encryption and strong privacy from all applications, reducing the attack surface for malicious applications like TikTok or Google.
China has already Balkanized the internet. 1.4 billion people are restricted from viewing outside information and outside access into China is frequently disrupted or just outright blocked. Other countries do the same.
I'm getting strong overtones of "the world revolves around the US". There are lots of non US citizens who are less then pleased that the US is surveilling them but they have no way to effect changes to the US constitution. (in practical terms, does anybody? When was your last amendment made?)
Sir, are you somehow implying a global surveillance system maintained by the American government is undesirable!? Why just because we're endlessly gridlocked, constantly at war, and all our political elites look like Dracula, we're still a very secure and stable nation
Scott Galloway’s take on this is concise and unfortunately I think it’s right. In short, TikTok is a powerful tool of surveillance and influence in the US, and because you can’t decouple the motives of TikTok from the motives of the CCP, it should be banned full stop.
If the CCP wants to play that game, at least demand full access to our apps in their country. Otherwise, I don't see why we would let them have full access to ours.
What’s fascinating is that it took this long for this very common sense opinion to be shared outside of right-wing circles because Trump said it first.
Looks like it was a tough pill for everyone to swallow and realize that even someone like Trump was right on this, despite the whole media screaming 'whataboutism', "Don't ban TikTok", etc.
The only time they realize is when it is too late.
You aren’t wrong, but the two situations aren’t equivalent. The stakes are high when we are talking about a foreign government that isn’t shy about its desire to undermine the United States and its willingness to use everything at its disposal to do so. The FBI, in theory at least, has different motivations, is subject to US law, and can be held accountable.
They are not subject to US law or accountability. Apple is compelled to turn over user data from iCloud to the USG over thirty thousand times per year without a warrant or probable cause via FAA702 which allows the federal government direct access to Apple (and Google et al) servers to download user data.
It hasn’t been subject to US law or accountability for a long time.
JFC everyone is so worried about China, stop the propaganda and division within our own country first. Fox news, InfoWars.. etc, its tearing apart our country and has nothing to do with China, and everything to do with how our own social media and companies use propaganda to destabilize the US.
I would hope that we have the capability to worry about and address both of these very important things simultaneously. I concur that Fox News, Infowars, Newsmax and similar are a threat to democracy and civil society as well.
As the Dining Philosopher's Problem is meant to elucidate, it's not possible to do this.
This is after all why programs keep getting higher latency even though chips have gotten faster for decades. If we could solve more than one problem in a way that's concurrent with each of the problems (computing "parallelly"? dunno), we wouldn't have this problem.
In conclusion, we must solve a problem that isn't the topic of this article before we address the topic of this article.
(Note: I'm hungry, so I won't be able to respond to this thread for an indeterminate amount of time...)
Edit: clarification made before I started to deal with my hunger problem (obviously)
The tricky thing is that labelling speech/media one disagrees with as a threat to democracy is in itself a threat to democracy.
While I agree with you about those specific outlets, I also have no doubt that any powers introduced to restrict them would eventually be turned against the liberal-leaning media as well.
There have always been and always will be misinformed and poorly educated people who believe all kinds of ridiculous things with no factual basis. A healthy democracy doesn't deal with these people by declaring their opinions illegal.
Once you have the state deciding and enforcing what is and isn't true, any hope for a liberal democracy is gone.
There's a line between having an opinion and spreading verifiable lies, and maybe we could do something about the latter category. But yeah, the core of it will probably have to be grassroots, not a government intervention.
Sure there's a line, but it's extremely fuzzy and subjective. Everyone sees it in a different place.
Once you give the state the power to arrest people for spreading "verifiable lies", you now have to determine what "verifiable" means and who does the verifying. It's inevitably going to change a lot depending on the political beliefs of those in power.
It's the halting problem, "who watches the watchers?", etc. There's no way to have the state determining what's true and what's a lie, even in the most seemingly obvious cases, while maintaining freedom of speech and a free society more generally.
No, but it's usually the unsaid implication when stating that certain opinions, ideas, or media outlets are threats to democracy and "we need to do something". Perhaps instead of arresting, it's fining, or silencing, or some other method of enforcement. Regardless, the counter-argument remains the same.
The biggest threat to this country are white nationalists as stated by the FBI not tiktok. this is all a side show to say look over there -> look at the bad guys.
I have seen that and it is indeed very worrisome. I hope that sufficient resources are allocated to domestic counterterrorism and domestic counter-intelligence.
People think Al Qaeda, ISIS etc are a huge threat, and yes they're very concerning... But you know who's even better and motivated at killing Americans? Other Americans.
This has been a known thing since long before Timothy McVeigh, a Ryder truck and Oklahoma City in the mid 1990s. It has not been adequately addressed in domestic law enforcement.
Calling out blatant disregard for law from a foreign company can unite people with clashing views domestically, and isn't prohibiting doing what you suggest.
One of the social and education problems is that the vast majority of people will click "yes/i agree/I consent/etc" on just about any app that does anything they think is fun or cool without thinking about the full ramifications.
This is not good enough. People on this website know not to use TikTok. The message should be: tell your friends and family to get off TikTok. Tell them the unvarnished truth: it’s spyware
In the last 10 years the US has been really ramping up it's propaganda against China, it's amazing to see. Especially since when I was growing up the `evil doers` were the Arab people.
Yeah, China spies with TikTok, the US spies with Instagram, Facebook email providers, telephone records.
It's all shite.
Don't elect politicians who agree with espionage and then complain that other countries are doing the same.
Because they don't support free speech or opposing positions and have never pretended to, whereas we believe that truth will set you free and sunlight is the best disinfectant?
Facts != propaganda. I'm not even going to bother giving you detailed examples. Xi is a bad person and has done a lot of bad things over the past decade.
Are you suggesting that it is a wise idea for a country to cease espionage? Wouldn't that just severely disadvantage that country and only benefit protentional enemy nations? Makes me think "Everyone else is cheating on the test and it will be graded on a curve, but I refuse to cheat" at which point you fail the test. Only the test in this case has an extremely high cost if failed.
No I actually think the CCP is a lot less harmful than the CIA. So many people died because of American imperialism, it's not even funny.
Most countries in the Latin America have seen democratic governments being overthrown by coupes backed by the US with CIA help. The CCP doesn't do this.
you're seriously going to ignore what Facebook and Cambridge Analytica was able to accomplish within our own borders to divide our country. Fox news, etc.. are all propaganda tools.
Almost every comment of yours is "but what about..." while completely ignoring and brushing off the issues of the CCP. The brutality and deaths involved in the last 70 years of their rule. The reeducation camps, the routine murder of dissidents, the refusal of foreign aid during famines which led to millions of deaths, the continued stripping of citizen rights and property, etc...
Not that they should have to accept the atrocities under US expansion, but the fact is it's a conversation, public knowledge, and something they can vote on whereas the CCP represses information, votes, and resorts to rapes and organ[2] harvesting of ethnic groups it doesn't care for.
Can you help me understand why it's of poor taste? I am fully claiming that terrible things happened to the First Nations of the Americas... (ie not denying).
Modern native american issues really aren't part of the national conversation or public knowledge. Missing and murdered indigenous women is an ongoing problem that persists today, with little attention. Our country has only in the past decade started coming to terms with the fact that Columbus was a rapist and a slaver - still has the national holiday.
There are many terrible things that our government has done to indigenous people in the past that are still painful (in addition to the things that are still happening), and it feels in poor taste for someone outside their community to say what they should think "if they have any sense".
Ok thanks for sharing. I simply meant that in my mind the distance between CCP and US government is so far that one seems like an obvious relative improvement. Improvement does not imply perfection or even being on the positive half of the number line/continuum.
That was the part I was trying to communicate, and please for give the hyperbolic presentation.
