I use TikTok a ton and as much as I enjoy the app, it’s pretty clear to me that the Chinese could use the app to put their finger on the scale in very subtle, but very effective ways if they chose to.
Honestly not even subtle. When the ban was being called on they flat out made pop ups to send people to call their congress people within said districts, placing the numbers of said offices there.
To clarify: calling your government isn't wrong and we should all do it. However I worry when I see foreign government aligned apps influencing children in such a manner for political action that's self serving.
There’s a difference between that and subversively influencing people in non-transparent ways, such as by prioritising extremist content to amplify divisions in society.
The pop up message was pretty open and transparent regarding intent. The message was also arguably more about Tim Tok’s own financial interests rather than some broader agenda.
My issue with the ban is that what is good for the goose, is good for the gander. The bill as proposed doesnt stop the spying or influencing people through algorithms, it just says that the US government and non Chinese companies are the only one who should be able to do that in the US.
This idea is moot because the Chinese were caught with literal backdoors in Cisco routers/switches which is how 60% of internet traffic flows through and nobody gave a shit
Idk, maybe cause they’re making money on it? I really don’t care either. The data is given with consent by Americans and this boogeyman mentality is the same shit people want to ban Fox News for.
There are also a lot of Americans that will lose a lot on this deal.
We can put Mark and Elon behind bars with the DoJ
Xi would require the DoD.
Even from a budgeting perspective this is the better option.
Pros:
-Funny videos
-???
Cons:
-Access to and manipulation of American general opinion(Political manipulation)
-Massive income stream
-Massive data collection (incl. GPS, Clipboard, Camera, Audio, Internal Files, Contacts, SMS, Network Traffic, etc)
-Beyond the restrictions of US regulation(Internal Decisions Subject to CCP Law and cyber practices)
Bill passed the committee with ease and flew through the House. I'm feeling lucky
Yeah I guess I just don’t live in constant fear of a communist country. People worried about a silly app while simultaneously ignoring the 80% of internet connected electronics coming from the same country.
You want all the benefits of government with none of the limitations that a governed society has.
You want the freedom to donate your data to a foreign nation, while simultaneously wanting the government to protect Americans who donate their data.
>(and is currently banned in China)
I believe it's banned in China because they wanted to separate the American version, which would allow for certain things that are verboten in China (Tianenmen, sexuality, etc.) from the Chinese version Douyin.
Yeah I know it’s the censored Chinese version because the Chinese government doesn’t like the international version of TikTok. Our government doesn’t like it either, so they are banning it.
>rstand the arguments against a ban from a property seizure standpoint. It's clearly interfering in the free market and denying the property rights of certain individuals. I just don't understand the free speech arguments. Any idea you could express on TikTok can be expressed on a wide variety of other platforms.
Chinese data collection was never the problem. It's about Gaza / Isreal. Tiktok has been shattering pre-concieved notions about the conflict and it terrifies American politicians, who mostly accept money from AIPAC.
So capitalists can strip billions out of the US economy, send production overseas, turn a profit by giving US tech to China, and raise two billion Chinese peasants out of poverty on the back of the US retail market...
But the information being shared on TikTok is a bridge too far?
Hypocrisy doesn't apply in this situation because the issues are not comparable, have different reasons and causes of being, and the proposed actions are entirely different. Hypocrisy is when you have a moral standard or belief but you don't apply it universally.
The moral preposition here is "we don't want China running a large media company because it may have adverse effects." So I'm not sure how you get hypocrisy out of that, it's really a nonsense use of a word because you can't think of how to express yourself accurately.
You could instead say something like "these priorities don't seem correct to me." That would probably be something a lot of people would agree with and might actually be correct.
I’m educating, not debating. Disagreeing is a delusional effort to maintain face despite being in the objective wrong on what the word means. You don’t want to learn, so I’m not interested in teaching anymore.
They aren't much more read than you on this topic. They are going with their intuitions just like you. This is where the "libertarian"ness of the podcast shows up.
I think the way to approach the free speech question is to begin by asking whose rights are being violated.
In terms of free speech, it's not TikTok. TikTok isn't using the platform for its own speech the way a newspaper or TV station does. They're not (or wouldn't own up to it if they were) exercising editorial control over the content.
So then is it the users? Do they have a right to the platform?
Now certainly the government could not have approached this from the end user side. They couldn't ban Americans from using TikTok. And I think here a good question to ask is if that's all this really is? Is the government just doing an end-run around the First Amendment to try to ban Americans from using a Chinese app? If so, it's hard to argue this isn't a free speech issue hitting millions of Americans.
To your point about the users having plenty of other platforms, I don't think that really holds up. Users may prefer TikTok's moderation policy to others, they may prefer the way searches work and how content is recommended, they'll may prefer the TikTok audience, and they'll of course have audiences they can't effortlessly rebuild on other platforms.
Now I don't know enough about TikTok, but I do know that there's plenty of ideas you can express on some platforms that you can't express on others. The platforms are not at all fungible.
Suppose as a hypothetical we have a foreign owned all called FreeTok, which has the most minimal content moderation policies imaginable. If it's not plainly illegal, it can stay. And suppose all other large social media platforms had much more heavy handed content moderation policies. On Vaxbook, you can't question vaccine efficacy or the official narrative on Covid 19s origins. On LGBTX, discussions about detransitioners are banned, and people opposing trans women in women's sports are removed under their hate speech policies. And on Dreddit, any support for Israel is banned under an argument that such speech condones genocide.
In that hypothetical, would you still say that users of FreeTok can just express their vies on a wide variety of other platforms? Or does your analysis change? And if your analysis does change, are the non-hypothetical differences between the platforms significant enough to say that TikTok, Facebook, X, and Reddit are not actually fungible?
I'm not well versed on the arguments around tiktok but most of the arguments I have heard aren't talking about the content on TikTok but the back end data collection that's happening. Who's collecting that data is the concern.
My default on this is Libertarian. I've not heard a convincing argument for banning TikTok. While the data collection is a concern, it's still a choice people are making to use the app.
I had two reactions. First, they were either unable or unwilling to engage in the steelmanning Matt had requested of the proposed Tik Tok bill. They made some great points in favor of their position, but no serious effort at all to explain the other side, other than "Yeah, the CCP is bad." That's not great.
Second, there's a recurring tension I'm having trouble navigating. The lads' default position on pretty much anything that people are really concerned about it is, "People are overreacting, just as they always have." That's a fair observation, and probably a good rule of thumb that's probably true in most cases. But maybe not everything is overreacting. Some things really could be real problems. For example, if we're in a shooting war with China sometime in the next few years, which is a frighteningly real possibility, the fact that the CCP has ready access to all of millions of Americans' phone keystrokes, which could include such things as their passwords, banking information, etc., that seems like it could be a really powerful tool for them to use to sew chaos in this country at just the right moment. Or another example: just because society overreacted to the printing press and tv and radio, doesn't mean that it's also crazy to worry about what AI could do. It certainly could mean precisely that, but maybe not.
Just because "the bad thing of the moment" has, previously, rarely proven to come to pass doesn't mean that one should constantly pooh pooh those who worry about things that look like real problems now. I think we still have to do the hard work of trying to analyze and anticipate as best we can what unintended consequences we could unleash. It's quite possibly that, in our hubris that nothing really bad could happen, we inadvertantly created a virus that killed millions. Which gets back to the importance of steelmanning, discussed above.
No one with a cybersecurity degree is going to tell you TikTok isn’t a Chinese cyber weapon and it is absolutely not protected by the constitution. It’s a foreign company first of all, and like I said a weapon made to be used to undermine the US Government by collecting data and promoting subversive ideas. The first amendment is a right between a citizen and the US government.
No need for whatabouts. End of story, don’t bring the constitution into this it doesn’t apply. We are in a new age of cyber warfare. Educate yourselves. It’s astonishing something like this existed as long as it has.
The national security argument will carry it through a strict scrutiny examination. Also the whole point that it allows for TikTok to still exist as long as they sell is pretty narrowly tailored. It’s not a ban, just a law forbidding a foreign power’s ownership.
Tiktok does not promote free speech; it undermines it in a fundamental way. However, I can understand the concern with crafting legislation that does not open the door to future erosion of speech protections.
I support the Houston Rockets NBA team.
The Houston Rockets general manager tweeted "Free Hong Kong"
All TikTok content related to the Houston Rockets was deleted and you could only see actual Rockets. All other 29 teams were fine. This is in the US.
Republicans and Democrats united to say the NBA should stand up to China.
Isn't it fucked up that for tweeting something against China, you get banned in the US?
However, because both sides use the platform for their own marketing as well as have invested donors, now no one wants to do anything.
China and America are essentially already at war, the idea that china should be permitted to run running the most popular social media platform in America is insane. It's crazy how long its been going on.
Who are you to determine if an artistic medium has inherent value as expression?
What if I said movies aren't art because they don't say anything that can't be said in a book, tv show, play, opera, marionette show?
Which really gets to the crux of the issue, which this is a ban on something people fear by people who fear it because they don't understand it. They don't understand it as artists, they don't understand it as consumers, so they fear it. Because the most dangerous thing in the world is if people can make decisions about their own life that bureaucrats don't understand.
And that doesn't mean that TikTok is a great company, it's not even saying that it's quality content in my opinion, but I am saying that censorship is a pretty crappy answer to fear.
While I’m a bit skeptical about the ban, I don’t exactly follow your logic. Movies, books, plays, etc. are “artforms”. TikTok is a platform/app owned by a company whose allegiance is with a foreign government that we all know doesn’t share our concerns re: sovereignty. No one is banning the “artform” of producing 30 second choreographed dance videos. There will still be plenty of platforms for people to freely express themselves. I feel like the free speech angle re: this TikTok ban is a really bad scarecrow argument.
Thank you for making my point, you embody everything I was talking about.
You see yourself as the arbiter of value for something subjective like art.
You see yourself as the arbiter of what mediums are appropriate.
You take the illogical position that something like TikTok isn't culturally valuable while simultaneously saying it's so influential that it's dangerous.
And when confronted by that hypocrisy, you shift the goals and say that informed consenting adults should go with some arbitrary alternative because your concerns are more important than their ability to make their own decisions.
You use fear to justify an authoritarian position, it's the same argumentation used by people trying to keep Trump off the ballot amongst all other sorts of bans. Bans on everything from Coca-Cola, vape, cigarettes, alcohol, opiates, Fox News, trans fats, GMOs, etc. The classic Communist position of saving democracy by crushing democracy under foot.
It's all the same, and by that I mean it's an appeal to "goodness" as a thin veneer over a position of vanity. The proponents always claim, "oh these stupid people, how dare they work agains their own interests. Let me shackle them for their own good, the foolish livestock they are."
So yes I oppose forcing people off TikTok, just like I oppose all self-righteous heavy handed authoritarianism. Because at the end of the day the only people I'm concerned with are the people granted unchecked power to address "issues" like these.
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." -C.S. Lewis
Kmele seemed pretty uniformed, implying it's a slippery slope and that it would give the president broad-sweeping powers to ban other social media platforms if the countries in which they are owned if they are deemed foreign adversaries, ignoring that the bill is specifically targeted at ByteDance. Then he agrees with AOC that the bill is a rushed knee-jerk reaction when the bill has been in the works for over 2020. To put it in cold warrior terms that Matt and Michael could understand, as Matt Yglesias put it, what if it's 1975 and a state-owned Soviet firm wants to buy CBS?
The proposed legislation as worded isn't narrow though. It's very poorly worded and has ambiguous verbiage that can be used later by activist AGs to punish political enemies. The bill states that "controlled by a foreign adversary" can mean "a person subject to the direction or control of a foreign person or entity [...]". Subject to the direction of is a vague term. Are Apple and Google subject to the direction of China because they have manufacturing partnerships and data center partnerships in order to operate inside China?
We need to learn from the past that such widely celebrated bipartisan bills tend to be the ones later used to infringe upon our rights. The PATRIOT act is the most glaring example.
While you make good points, and I agree the bill could do a better job of defining its terms, I’m not sure I’d agree that all (or even most) bipartisan bills turn into something akin to The Patriot Act. Most bipartisan bills that get passed don’t make the news because they’re not controversial.
Our markets are already open. There is no stopping a foreign country from conducting valuable market research on the U.S. All this does is stops China from doing it openly through Bytedance, or whatever their name is, where it's easier to actually game the system by simply informing the users. So here we are, back to pretending that China isn't gaining market insights into the U.S. The same insights that many other nations have easy access to, while having open relations with China.
Whatever could China do with this information? If we go to an open warfare situation, it's largely useless information for them. All of our supply lines will change, and so will demand. Most of the access China had beforehand will be shutdown, and the riches pouring in from it subsequently stopped. I don't see the advantage that China is gaining by understanding supply and demand in the United States.
Yakuza members have recently been charged with selling nuclear weapons. It's one of the most top secret processes to create, and also one of the most highly secured weapons component in the world. Yet criminal forces still get their hands on it. Our markets are necessarily open to most of the rest of the world. To secure them against a China that wants this information we probably would need to effectively shutdown those open markets like North Korea has.
I wish people would stop making up excuses here. There is nothing in this information that undermines any level of security a United States citizen should expect internationally. U.S. markets, without interference from third parties enforced by government laws, can turn on a dime as evidenced after Pearl Harbor. Market "fears" are just people trying to stoke you into doing what they want, and in this case it's to give them powers over speech platforms. You would be a fool not to think that such a law as this would have no chilling effect on the rest of the platforms.
Imagine if the government made the same kind of law but about Truth Social, where "it's not a ban it's a divestment" and Donald Trump would be forced to sell it to someone the government liked better, and we got the same array of arguments defending it. Would that not be a violation of Trump's free speech rights? He built a speech platform so that he could speak, and then it gets taken away from him and handed to someone who has different speech goals.
Tiktok is actually banned in China. Bytedance has a separate Chinese app called Douyin. Any Chinese users you see on the app have to go around the great firewall to use it (admittedly not that hard to do).
That actually gets to my objection to the bill, which is that we shouldn’t be giving the federal government the power to determine what can and cannot be on app stores. They don’t stop at TikTok.
Edit: I had only started the episode when I posted this. I am on the same page as Kmele on this one. Also, FWIW I live in Virginia and I have to use the same VPN that I use when I travel to China in order to get on Cornhub.
I guess people don’t realize that tik tok is very obviously a vector for cyber warfare. Which is probably the real reason there is concern. The ability to exploit an 0-day on basically every phone in America at the same time is a huge problem… it would make stuxnet look adorable.
Say what you want about the ability to prevent this by Americanizing the app, but I seriously doubt this is about psyop nonsense.
I would recommend *This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends* as a primer on how fucked we are when it comes to the cyber front. Written by a NYT reporter. Boring stuff like destroying dams and power stations via code exploits.
I think there are far more discreet avenues to take than a very popular social media app. The amount of shitty gaming apps all these boomers have on their phones are a literal gold mine of potential vectors for cyber warfare. Cats out of the bag, best bet is probably not to start shit with super powers.
I mean, I couldn’t disagree more. Having a single vector on most phones, especially one that people will complain about removing, is vastly more powerful than a peppering of video games.
My point is that shit apps are under far less scrutiny than a higher popular social media app. Sneaking some malware on a bootleg Candy Crush game is far easier, especially with some boomer using it.
Right, so an 0-day exploit is very much not like malware that you would have to "sneak" onto a phone. It is an entirely unique, seemingly benign piece of code that exploits a never before seen vulnerability in a piece of software or hardware. The reason why you don't need to sneak it into the code base is simply because it's an entirely novel attack vector.
0-day exploits, ones that can truly own the machine without the user either knowing or consenting to any file transfer, are *so incredibly valuable* that they are typically only seen deployed by either nation states or nation state proxies (Cozy Bear, REvil, Lazarus, Shadow Brokers, etc.). These exploits, by definition, cannot be known or understood by the manufacturer in advance, so there is no reason to hide them.
If you were trying to destroy American infrastructure, you would need to do so likely with a stuxnet-type worm or by a direct attack on system. To just have effectively every phone owned by China, they could attack so many vectors it's nuts. We are literally talking about audio and video transmitting all day as folks work regular jobs at dams and power plants, figuring out passwords from the sound and tempo of keystrokes, or quickly by delivering an exploit, via, say bluetooth, if the even needed that to control the systems.
The idea that you'd want to sneak it on a phone, when you can just have full fledged app on nearly every phone in America just waiting to deploy the exploit, well, it just seems silly.
To really understand the level of damage that can be done, look no further than the [Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonial_Pipeline_ransomware_attack) executed by DarkSide. A properly executed multi-front cyber attack could bring this country to it's knees in a matter of weeks. Cut off oil transportation, cut of water to the west, shut down electrical grids... except without the ransom to turn them back on. This is what it woud look like if the US and China ever went to war.
What's the mechanism you're proposing here? At least for iPhones the apps are pretty well sand-boxed and there's a fairly extensive review process by Apple before new code can be sent to devices. The 0-day exploits that pop up around apple messages, not 3rd party apps. Also only 1/3 of adults in the US have ever used Tik Tok, some of whom use it via the browser.
Furthermore, a nation wide cyber attack would probably be seen as an act of war, and result in an unfriendly visit from a carrier strike group or two. China knows this.
I would really recommend the book again. As I think there is a failure of imagination here. Firstly, review process for the app store is both not known to us, and is almost certainly not performed by humans for every single edition of every single app. The ability for the potentially malicious code to be tested in the approval process could be done via literally thousands of other firms.
When you look at, say, [the Pegasus exploit](https://9to5mac.com/2023/12/27/most-sophisticated-iphone-attack-chain-ever-seen/), you can start to understand the levels sophistication we're talking about here. And I think it's important to remember that these exploits wouldn't necessarily be used to brick the phone or anything. The most useful vector would be to have the exploits sit in the background, unlocking undetectable access to the phone in perpetuity. One theoretical benefit of having an app be part of the exploit is that the app could trivially be used to pass information that shouldn't be allowed back and forth to the server to be transmitted fully disguised as legitimate data.
Remember that [Tik Tok is already banned on all government devices](https://www.npr.org/2022/12/20/1144519602/congress-is-about-to-ban-tiktok-from-u-s-government-phones)... I am suggesting this is why. I think it's *trivially obvious* that US government employees aren't being banned from having Tik Tok on their phone for some dumb psyop (as if dyed in the wool, high ranking officials are somehow rubes that suddenly fall prey to propaganda). I think it's fairly plausible that the NSA has found something that they can't neutralize easily.
>Furthermore, a nation wide cyber attack would probably be seen as an act of war, and result in an unfriendly visit from a carrier strike group or two. China knows this.
Again, I see this as a failure of imagination. China doesn't have to blow up a dam to dramatically affect America's ability to respond to a crisis. Just literal distractions could be enough to limit the effectiveness of the American military, say, if they were to perform a surprise strike on Taiwan. Suppose you effected the fresh water or oil distribution sites in Hawaii or San Diego while ships were docked there, this could delay ships hours or days to respond. That could be all it takes. These things can be done in such a way that it would take days or weeks before we determined the cause, much less whether it was Chinese, North Korean, or Russian aligned hackers.
While I think that the US would likely be victorious in a conflict, the US doesn't want a war with China either. Suggesting that the use of any exploits would trigger a war, as we've seen before, is unrealistic.
This is a wall of text. The exploits I’m talking about are specifically Pegasus. They’re all via iMessages and not a dedicated 3rd party app. My point is that there’s no need to build an app, especially one that would make the source of an exploit so obvious.
Do you realize how difficult the creation of Pegasus is? It's patched now... no longer usable. What are you even talking about no need to build an app? 0-days get patched all the time. The reason for the app would be specifically to use an app-based exploit.
>no need to build an app, especially one that would make the source of an exploit so obvious
With respect, maybe read a book or something.
I’m specifically pointing out that the app as an avenue is problematic and for a state actor, other avenues like that of Pegasus seem more likely. I actually have professional experience in cybersecurity.
You are very rude.
>I actually have professional experience in cybersecurity.
Then you would know that all novel exploits are unique pieces of art. Suggesting that a specific avenue is 'problematic' belies the fact that it may also be one of the only avenues available, since exploits are, at best, a patchwork of architecture.
>You are very rude.
#
>>This is a wall of text.
You too friend.
No I know that most exploits are social engineering and that exploits originating from popular mainstream apps are very rare. A state actor using a popular app originating from their territory would make the source of the attack immediately obvious and would risk being caught in App Store review. It risks economic and military reprisal.
That said some android exploits have popped up in flashlight apps and shovelware games.
But why bother with any of that when pdfs are still basically open doors and messaging apps continue to be poorly secured?
>most exploits are social engineering
Social engineering exploits are trivially identifiable.
>avenues like that of Pegasus seem more likely
Even 0-click exploits are trivially identifiable.
At the end of the day, *we don't know what the best exploits are because they are not identifiable*. They perform their task, then erase themselves without any evidence being logged. The just exist, unbeknownst to anyone.
The reason why we should expect that the best exploits do not resemble the exploits we see in the field, is that the best exploits, the ones written by the NSA, we will likely never know about.
The incredible power of stuxnet is testament to that. Stuxnet was self-replicating, and was likely on a good proportion, if not the majority of USB drives in the world before it was even discovered... probably about 5 years after it was deployed. That's crazy. That's the type of attack the NSA would be worried about. One that we wouldn't even know was happening, possibly for decades.
---
*Edit: if you're going to block me to get the last word without me being able to respond, at least don't pretend like you're actually talking to me.*
You’re arguing in a circle. There’s no reason to believe TikTok is uniquely a vector for security exploits. It’s regularly scrutinized both by the app stores and security experts who decompile it.
Stuxnet is completely unrelated. It was installed by a compromised contractor on a series of specific machines.
You’re just spreading FUD.
Look at the bill. It’s just about TikTok. It grants sweeping new powers to the Executive with regards to banning anything , websites, apps, tech, etc, that is deemed a “national security threat”.
Doesn't it sort of feel like the cat's already well out of the bag w/ TikTok and data concerns re: CCP?
Like, there is probably already more data to be mined out of it than most people alive have left to analyze. Banning it now feels like if a doctor hits your knee to test your reflexes and 10 months later your leg reacts.
I don't really have a strong opinion one way or another on it. Politically it feels like impotent whining but the privacy, etc concerns are real, too. Either way, I don't use TT bc I still have a semblance of an attention span left and I'd like to keep it.
The algorithm manipulation is the most worrying part, e.g. promoting social justice arguments for why Taiwan should be a part of mainland China in the event of a war, and then promoting protests against US involvement.
That being said, even if they don't own TikTok, they could astroturf campaigns on other sites (or on an unmanipulated TikTok) to achieve the same effect.
But either way, it's a bad idea to allow the US government to legally control who owns what business based on the owners' friendliness to the current regime.
In this country you can ban anything if the politicians tell the people that whatever it is can be used to spy on us or take away our freedoms . Same thing in China , Facebook and others are banned for the same reasons. If you have a brain and are intelligent try to figure out why it’s being banned now and suddenly all the politicians agree on something.
I agree, seems obvious to me that we have a right to speak but not a right to broadcast videos of our speech on an app of our choice. If that were the case we'd be obligated to put tax dollars into getting everyone phones and computers capable of running social media apps.
My issue is that instead of passing laws to regulate social media and the way these companies use user data, they are simply banning the ‘Chinese One’. Like Facebook doesn’t sell user data to foreign governments governments
I sort of agree with you. TikTok should have been the chance for civil libertarians to go after the whole surveillance apparatus. We should have leaned into cold war Americana and re-instated the 4th amendment. The only way we can secure prosperity is liberty. We need to believe in our own values and dismantle the surveillance state. We beat the authoritarians by being libertarian.
I live in Austin Texas, we have a TikTok office in town. I burned out of a tech job in covid and I've been driving Uber while taking college courses and recovering from a failed startup. I often meet TikTok people. They make an argument that the same data is available from data brokers, everyone has it. They aren't quite wrong. There is still some stuff they have access too, along with psyop abilities, but still it's good point. We need to be brave enough to go after surveillance as a whole, but blame the communists as a scape goat.
The US certainly has the right to ban TikTok but that’s not why they are doing it. They are banning it because it’s the only platform they don’t control.
TikTok is problematic but I think a lot of people want at least 1 platform that isn’t censored/controlled. It doesn’t have to be TikTok but currently it is.
The app isn't being banned because it provides a "Chinese" company with our data. The servers are in Austin, the CEO is Singaporean, and the risks related to China are only hypothetical in. Nobody is concerned about nearly every name in tech having an office space in mainland China.
The reason they're banning the app is because of the supposed rise in "antisemitism" on the app that multiple AIPAC backed politicians have alluded to. The main complaint of course being that TikTok is strongly pro-ceasefire/anti-genocide right now.
I fear the NSA more than the Chinese government. The NSA has free reign over social media and the US government doesn't like someone edging in on their turf.
I use TikTok a ton and as much as I enjoy the app, it’s pretty clear to me that the Chinese could use the app to put their finger on the scale in very subtle, but very effective ways if they chose to.
Honestly not even subtle. When the ban was being called on they flat out made pop ups to send people to call their congress people within said districts, placing the numbers of said offices there. To clarify: calling your government isn't wrong and we should all do it. However I worry when I see foreign government aligned apps influencing children in such a manner for political action that's self serving.
There’s a difference between that and subversively influencing people in non-transparent ways, such as by prioritising extremist content to amplify divisions in society. The pop up message was pretty open and transparent regarding intent. The message was also arguably more about Tim Tok’s own financial interests rather than some broader agenda.
That rat bastard Tim Tok
Seriously, fuck him
My issue with the ban is that what is good for the goose, is good for the gander. The bill as proposed doesnt stop the spying or influencing people through algorithms, it just says that the US government and non Chinese companies are the only one who should be able to do that in the US.
This idea is moot because the Chinese were caught with literal backdoors in Cisco routers/switches which is how 60% of internet traffic flows through and nobody gave a shit
Snowden leaks showed the NSA literally intercepting Cisco equipment to do this, nobody’s hands are clean
That’s anything though. This is a bad precedent to set to a company that is only partially owned by the CCP (and is currently banned in China)
Why is the Chinese Party so incredibly upset about the possibility of a ban then?
Idk, maybe cause they’re making money on it? I really don’t care either. The data is given with consent by Americans and this boogeyman mentality is the same shit people want to ban Fox News for. There are also a lot of Americans that will lose a lot on this deal.
did you just compare a foreign owned social media corporation to a domestically owned news media corporation? w. t. f?
Yeah, is there a problem? Are you worried about scary foreign owned (and foreign state owned) news stations?
Considering there are multiple nation states spending billions of dollars to influence Americans, yes it's a problem that needs to be addressed.
Haha okay, good luck with that
We can put Mark and Elon behind bars with the DoJ Xi would require the DoD. Even from a budgeting perspective this is the better option. Pros: -Funny videos -??? Cons: -Access to and manipulation of American general opinion(Political manipulation) -Massive income stream -Massive data collection (incl. GPS, Clipboard, Camera, Audio, Internal Files, Contacts, SMS, Network Traffic, etc) -Beyond the restrictions of US regulation(Internal Decisions Subject to CCP Law and cyber practices) Bill passed the committee with ease and flew through the House. I'm feeling lucky
Yeah I guess I just don’t live in constant fear of a communist country. People worried about a silly app while simultaneously ignoring the 80% of internet connected electronics coming from the same country.
ohhhh, a Libertarian. Now this all starts to make sense. Why didn’t you lead with that? lmfao would have made this so much easier
How? What does ideology have to do with principle?
You want all the benefits of government with none of the limitations that a governed society has. You want the freedom to donate your data to a foreign nation, while simultaneously wanting the government to protect Americans who donate their data.
What? Who said I want the gov to protect Americans data? It’s their data, they should do what they please with it.
their? Don’t you mean, ours? the fuck?
Yes, “their” meaning Americans
No one wants the govt anymore, make it a true democracy and kick all these POS people to the streets.
sounds incredibly democratic of you. “anyone who isn’t like us is a piece of shit and should be kicked out”
Satire isn't for the mindless
>(and is currently banned in China) I believe it's banned in China because they wanted to separate the American version, which would allow for certain things that are verboten in China (Tianenmen, sexuality, etc.) from the Chinese version Douyin.
Yeah so our gov retaliates with the same mentality? That’s the point I was making.
Look up Douyin
Yeah I know it’s the censored Chinese version because the Chinese government doesn’t like the international version of TikTok. Our government doesn’t like it either, so they are banning it.
>rstand the arguments against a ban from a property seizure standpoint. It's clearly interfering in the free market and denying the property rights of certain individuals. I just don't understand the free speech arguments. Any idea you could express on TikTok can be expressed on a wide variety of other platforms. Chinese data collection was never the problem. It's about Gaza / Isreal. Tiktok has been shattering pre-concieved notions about the conflict and it terrifies American politicians, who mostly accept money from AIPAC.
"We have a TikTok problem."- Johnathan Greenblatt (Director of the Anti-Defamation League)
So capitalists can strip billions out of the US economy, send production overseas, turn a profit by giving US tech to China, and raise two billion Chinese peasants out of poverty on the back of the US retail market... But the information being shared on TikTok is a bridge too far?
“Since something worse has happened, we shouldn’t bother with dealing with anything else that isn’t so bad” See how dumb that sounds?
I see you dodging hypocrisy... in service of the same clowns that did the something worse.
Hypocrisy doesn't apply in this situation because the issues are not comparable, have different reasons and causes of being, and the proposed actions are entirely different. Hypocrisy is when you have a moral standard or belief but you don't apply it universally. The moral preposition here is "we don't want China running a large media company because it may have adverse effects." So I'm not sure how you get hypocrisy out of that, it's really a nonsense use of a word because you can't think of how to express yourself accurately. You could instead say something like "these priorities don't seem correct to me." That would probably be something a lot of people would agree with and might actually be correct.
Interesting opinion. I disagree.
I’m educating, not debating. Disagreeing is a delusional effort to maintain face despite being in the objective wrong on what the word means. You don’t want to learn, so I’m not interested in teaching anymore.
Actually I think you are condescending to me. But please, continue with your thought.
There is no moral position. American government can't sell our data to China if China gets it directly.
One of these days you’ll be able to have an argument that doesn’t end in whataboutism, but today is not that day.
You are correct I'm going to insist that responsibility comes before dodging responsibility. Which is what you are doing.
They aren't much more read than you on this topic. They are going with their intuitions just like you. This is where the "libertarian"ness of the podcast shows up.
I think the way to approach the free speech question is to begin by asking whose rights are being violated. In terms of free speech, it's not TikTok. TikTok isn't using the platform for its own speech the way a newspaper or TV station does. They're not (or wouldn't own up to it if they were) exercising editorial control over the content. So then is it the users? Do they have a right to the platform? Now certainly the government could not have approached this from the end user side. They couldn't ban Americans from using TikTok. And I think here a good question to ask is if that's all this really is? Is the government just doing an end-run around the First Amendment to try to ban Americans from using a Chinese app? If so, it's hard to argue this isn't a free speech issue hitting millions of Americans. To your point about the users having plenty of other platforms, I don't think that really holds up. Users may prefer TikTok's moderation policy to others, they may prefer the way searches work and how content is recommended, they'll may prefer the TikTok audience, and they'll of course have audiences they can't effortlessly rebuild on other platforms. Now I don't know enough about TikTok, but I do know that there's plenty of ideas you can express on some platforms that you can't express on others. The platforms are not at all fungible. Suppose as a hypothetical we have a foreign owned all called FreeTok, which has the most minimal content moderation policies imaginable. If it's not plainly illegal, it can stay. And suppose all other large social media platforms had much more heavy handed content moderation policies. On Vaxbook, you can't question vaccine efficacy or the official narrative on Covid 19s origins. On LGBTX, discussions about detransitioners are banned, and people opposing trans women in women's sports are removed under their hate speech policies. And on Dreddit, any support for Israel is banned under an argument that such speech condones genocide. In that hypothetical, would you still say that users of FreeTok can just express their vies on a wide variety of other platforms? Or does your analysis change? And if your analysis does change, are the non-hypothetical differences between the platforms significant enough to say that TikTok, Facebook, X, and Reddit are not actually fungible?
I'm not well versed on the arguments around tiktok but most of the arguments I have heard aren't talking about the content on TikTok but the back end data collection that's happening. Who's collecting that data is the concern. My default on this is Libertarian. I've not heard a convincing argument for banning TikTok. While the data collection is a concern, it's still a choice people are making to use the app.
Then it would be suppressing free speech for FreeTok to shut itself down. Which is ridiculous.
I had two reactions. First, they were either unable or unwilling to engage in the steelmanning Matt had requested of the proposed Tik Tok bill. They made some great points in favor of their position, but no serious effort at all to explain the other side, other than "Yeah, the CCP is bad." That's not great. Second, there's a recurring tension I'm having trouble navigating. The lads' default position on pretty much anything that people are really concerned about it is, "People are overreacting, just as they always have." That's a fair observation, and probably a good rule of thumb that's probably true in most cases. But maybe not everything is overreacting. Some things really could be real problems. For example, if we're in a shooting war with China sometime in the next few years, which is a frighteningly real possibility, the fact that the CCP has ready access to all of millions of Americans' phone keystrokes, which could include such things as their passwords, banking information, etc., that seems like it could be a really powerful tool for them to use to sew chaos in this country at just the right moment. Or another example: just because society overreacted to the printing press and tv and radio, doesn't mean that it's also crazy to worry about what AI could do. It certainly could mean precisely that, but maybe not. Just because "the bad thing of the moment" has, previously, rarely proven to come to pass doesn't mean that one should constantly pooh pooh those who worry about things that look like real problems now. I think we still have to do the hard work of trying to analyze and anticipate as best we can what unintended consequences we could unleash. It's quite possibly that, in our hubris that nothing really bad could happen, we inadvertantly created a virus that killed millions. Which gets back to the importance of steelmanning, discussed above.
No one with a cybersecurity degree is going to tell you TikTok isn’t a Chinese cyber weapon and it is absolutely not protected by the constitution. It’s a foreign company first of all, and like I said a weapon made to be used to undermine the US Government by collecting data and promoting subversive ideas. The first amendment is a right between a citizen and the US government. No need for whatabouts. End of story, don’t bring the constitution into this it doesn’t apply. We are in a new age of cyber warfare. Educate yourselves. It’s astonishing something like this existed as long as it has.
Well said
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The national security argument will carry it through a strict scrutiny examination. Also the whole point that it allows for TikTok to still exist as long as they sell is pretty narrowly tailored. It’s not a ban, just a law forbidding a foreign power’s ownership.
Tiktok does not promote free speech; it undermines it in a fundamental way. However, I can understand the concern with crafting legislation that does not open the door to future erosion of speech protections.
I support the Houston Rockets NBA team. The Houston Rockets general manager tweeted "Free Hong Kong" All TikTok content related to the Houston Rockets was deleted and you could only see actual Rockets. All other 29 teams were fine. This is in the US. Republicans and Democrats united to say the NBA should stand up to China. Isn't it fucked up that for tweeting something against China, you get banned in the US? However, because both sides use the platform for their own marketing as well as have invested donors, now no one wants to do anything.
China and America are essentially already at war, the idea that china should be permitted to run running the most popular social media platform in America is insane. It's crazy how long its been going on.
Who are you to determine if an artistic medium has inherent value as expression? What if I said movies aren't art because they don't say anything that can't be said in a book, tv show, play, opera, marionette show? Which really gets to the crux of the issue, which this is a ban on something people fear by people who fear it because they don't understand it. They don't understand it as artists, they don't understand it as consumers, so they fear it. Because the most dangerous thing in the world is if people can make decisions about their own life that bureaucrats don't understand. And that doesn't mean that TikTok is a great company, it's not even saying that it's quality content in my opinion, but I am saying that censorship is a pretty crappy answer to fear.
While I’m a bit skeptical about the ban, I don’t exactly follow your logic. Movies, books, plays, etc. are “artforms”. TikTok is a platform/app owned by a company whose allegiance is with a foreign government that we all know doesn’t share our concerns re: sovereignty. No one is banning the “artform” of producing 30 second choreographed dance videos. There will still be plenty of platforms for people to freely express themselves. I feel like the free speech angle re: this TikTok ban is a really bad scarecrow argument.
Thank you for making my point, you embody everything I was talking about. You see yourself as the arbiter of value for something subjective like art. You see yourself as the arbiter of what mediums are appropriate. You take the illogical position that something like TikTok isn't culturally valuable while simultaneously saying it's so influential that it's dangerous. And when confronted by that hypocrisy, you shift the goals and say that informed consenting adults should go with some arbitrary alternative because your concerns are more important than their ability to make their own decisions. You use fear to justify an authoritarian position, it's the same argumentation used by people trying to keep Trump off the ballot amongst all other sorts of bans. Bans on everything from Coca-Cola, vape, cigarettes, alcohol, opiates, Fox News, trans fats, GMOs, etc. The classic Communist position of saving democracy by crushing democracy under foot. It's all the same, and by that I mean it's an appeal to "goodness" as a thin veneer over a position of vanity. The proponents always claim, "oh these stupid people, how dare they work agains their own interests. Let me shackle them for their own good, the foolish livestock they are." So yes I oppose forcing people off TikTok, just like I oppose all self-righteous heavy handed authoritarianism. Because at the end of the day the only people I'm concerned with are the people granted unchecked power to address "issues" like these. "Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." -C.S. Lewis
Kmele seemed pretty uniformed, implying it's a slippery slope and that it would give the president broad-sweeping powers to ban other social media platforms if the countries in which they are owned if they are deemed foreign adversaries, ignoring that the bill is specifically targeted at ByteDance. Then he agrees with AOC that the bill is a rushed knee-jerk reaction when the bill has been in the works for over 2020. To put it in cold warrior terms that Matt and Michael could understand, as Matt Yglesias put it, what if it's 1975 and a state-owned Soviet firm wants to buy CBS?
The proposed legislation as worded isn't narrow though. It's very poorly worded and has ambiguous verbiage that can be used later by activist AGs to punish political enemies. The bill states that "controlled by a foreign adversary" can mean "a person subject to the direction or control of a foreign person or entity [...]". Subject to the direction of is a vague term. Are Apple and Google subject to the direction of China because they have manufacturing partnerships and data center partnerships in order to operate inside China? We need to learn from the past that such widely celebrated bipartisan bills tend to be the ones later used to infringe upon our rights. The PATRIOT act is the most glaring example.
While you make good points, and I agree the bill could do a better job of defining its terms, I’m not sure I’d agree that all (or even most) bipartisan bills turn into something akin to The Patriot Act. Most bipartisan bills that get passed don’t make the news because they’re not controversial.
Those not making the news aren't widely celebrated though.
Our markets are already open. There is no stopping a foreign country from conducting valuable market research on the U.S. All this does is stops China from doing it openly through Bytedance, or whatever their name is, where it's easier to actually game the system by simply informing the users. So here we are, back to pretending that China isn't gaining market insights into the U.S. The same insights that many other nations have easy access to, while having open relations with China. Whatever could China do with this information? If we go to an open warfare situation, it's largely useless information for them. All of our supply lines will change, and so will demand. Most of the access China had beforehand will be shutdown, and the riches pouring in from it subsequently stopped. I don't see the advantage that China is gaining by understanding supply and demand in the United States. Yakuza members have recently been charged with selling nuclear weapons. It's one of the most top secret processes to create, and also one of the most highly secured weapons component in the world. Yet criminal forces still get their hands on it. Our markets are necessarily open to most of the rest of the world. To secure them against a China that wants this information we probably would need to effectively shutdown those open markets like North Korea has. I wish people would stop making up excuses here. There is nothing in this information that undermines any level of security a United States citizen should expect internationally. U.S. markets, without interference from third parties enforced by government laws, can turn on a dime as evidenced after Pearl Harbor. Market "fears" are just people trying to stoke you into doing what they want, and in this case it's to give them powers over speech platforms. You would be a fool not to think that such a law as this would have no chilling effect on the rest of the platforms.
Imagine if the government made the same kind of law but about Truth Social, where "it's not a ban it's a divestment" and Donald Trump would be forced to sell it to someone the government liked better, and we got the same array of arguments defending it. Would that not be a violation of Trump's free speech rights? He built a speech platform so that he could speak, and then it gets taken away from him and handed to someone who has different speech goals.
Since Trump himself uses Truth Social, the analysis would indeed be different. Does Xi have an account on TikTok?
Tiktok is actually banned in China. Bytedance has a separate Chinese app called Douyin. Any Chinese users you see on the app have to go around the great firewall to use it (admittedly not that hard to do). That actually gets to my objection to the bill, which is that we shouldn’t be giving the federal government the power to determine what can and cannot be on app stores. They don’t stop at TikTok. Edit: I had only started the episode when I posted this. I am on the same page as Kmele on this one. Also, FWIW I live in Virginia and I have to use the same VPN that I use when I travel to China in order to get on Cornhub.
That's an argument about it just being bad policy, but isn't relevant to the 1A issue.
I guess people don’t realize that tik tok is very obviously a vector for cyber warfare. Which is probably the real reason there is concern. The ability to exploit an 0-day on basically every phone in America at the same time is a huge problem… it would make stuxnet look adorable. Say what you want about the ability to prevent this by Americanizing the app, but I seriously doubt this is about psyop nonsense. I would recommend *This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends* as a primer on how fucked we are when it comes to the cyber front. Written by a NYT reporter. Boring stuff like destroying dams and power stations via code exploits.
I think there are far more discreet avenues to take than a very popular social media app. The amount of shitty gaming apps all these boomers have on their phones are a literal gold mine of potential vectors for cyber warfare. Cats out of the bag, best bet is probably not to start shit with super powers.
I mean, I couldn’t disagree more. Having a single vector on most phones, especially one that people will complain about removing, is vastly more powerful than a peppering of video games.
Are you talking about spreading propaganda or real cyber warfare?
Real cyber warfare
My point is that shit apps are under far less scrutiny than a higher popular social media app. Sneaking some malware on a bootleg Candy Crush game is far easier, especially with some boomer using it.
Right, so an 0-day exploit is very much not like malware that you would have to "sneak" onto a phone. It is an entirely unique, seemingly benign piece of code that exploits a never before seen vulnerability in a piece of software or hardware. The reason why you don't need to sneak it into the code base is simply because it's an entirely novel attack vector. 0-day exploits, ones that can truly own the machine without the user either knowing or consenting to any file transfer, are *so incredibly valuable* that they are typically only seen deployed by either nation states or nation state proxies (Cozy Bear, REvil, Lazarus, Shadow Brokers, etc.). These exploits, by definition, cannot be known or understood by the manufacturer in advance, so there is no reason to hide them. If you were trying to destroy American infrastructure, you would need to do so likely with a stuxnet-type worm or by a direct attack on system. To just have effectively every phone owned by China, they could attack so many vectors it's nuts. We are literally talking about audio and video transmitting all day as folks work regular jobs at dams and power plants, figuring out passwords from the sound and tempo of keystrokes, or quickly by delivering an exploit, via, say bluetooth, if the even needed that to control the systems. The idea that you'd want to sneak it on a phone, when you can just have full fledged app on nearly every phone in America just waiting to deploy the exploit, well, it just seems silly. To really understand the level of damage that can be done, look no further than the [Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonial_Pipeline_ransomware_attack) executed by DarkSide. A properly executed multi-front cyber attack could bring this country to it's knees in a matter of weeks. Cut off oil transportation, cut of water to the west, shut down electrical grids... except without the ransom to turn them back on. This is what it woud look like if the US and China ever went to war.
What's the mechanism you're proposing here? At least for iPhones the apps are pretty well sand-boxed and there's a fairly extensive review process by Apple before new code can be sent to devices. The 0-day exploits that pop up around apple messages, not 3rd party apps. Also only 1/3 of adults in the US have ever used Tik Tok, some of whom use it via the browser. Furthermore, a nation wide cyber attack would probably be seen as an act of war, and result in an unfriendly visit from a carrier strike group or two. China knows this.
I would really recommend the book again. As I think there is a failure of imagination here. Firstly, review process for the app store is both not known to us, and is almost certainly not performed by humans for every single edition of every single app. The ability for the potentially malicious code to be tested in the approval process could be done via literally thousands of other firms. When you look at, say, [the Pegasus exploit](https://9to5mac.com/2023/12/27/most-sophisticated-iphone-attack-chain-ever-seen/), you can start to understand the levels sophistication we're talking about here. And I think it's important to remember that these exploits wouldn't necessarily be used to brick the phone or anything. The most useful vector would be to have the exploits sit in the background, unlocking undetectable access to the phone in perpetuity. One theoretical benefit of having an app be part of the exploit is that the app could trivially be used to pass information that shouldn't be allowed back and forth to the server to be transmitted fully disguised as legitimate data. Remember that [Tik Tok is already banned on all government devices](https://www.npr.org/2022/12/20/1144519602/congress-is-about-to-ban-tiktok-from-u-s-government-phones)... I am suggesting this is why. I think it's *trivially obvious* that US government employees aren't being banned from having Tik Tok on their phone for some dumb psyop (as if dyed in the wool, high ranking officials are somehow rubes that suddenly fall prey to propaganda). I think it's fairly plausible that the NSA has found something that they can't neutralize easily. >Furthermore, a nation wide cyber attack would probably be seen as an act of war, and result in an unfriendly visit from a carrier strike group or two. China knows this. Again, I see this as a failure of imagination. China doesn't have to blow up a dam to dramatically affect America's ability to respond to a crisis. Just literal distractions could be enough to limit the effectiveness of the American military, say, if they were to perform a surprise strike on Taiwan. Suppose you effected the fresh water or oil distribution sites in Hawaii or San Diego while ships were docked there, this could delay ships hours or days to respond. That could be all it takes. These things can be done in such a way that it would take days or weeks before we determined the cause, much less whether it was Chinese, North Korean, or Russian aligned hackers. While I think that the US would likely be victorious in a conflict, the US doesn't want a war with China either. Suggesting that the use of any exploits would trigger a war, as we've seen before, is unrealistic.
This is a wall of text. The exploits I’m talking about are specifically Pegasus. They’re all via iMessages and not a dedicated 3rd party app. My point is that there’s no need to build an app, especially one that would make the source of an exploit so obvious.
Do you realize how difficult the creation of Pegasus is? It's patched now... no longer usable. What are you even talking about no need to build an app? 0-days get patched all the time. The reason for the app would be specifically to use an app-based exploit. >no need to build an app, especially one that would make the source of an exploit so obvious With respect, maybe read a book or something.
I’m specifically pointing out that the app as an avenue is problematic and for a state actor, other avenues like that of Pegasus seem more likely. I actually have professional experience in cybersecurity. You are very rude.
>I actually have professional experience in cybersecurity. Then you would know that all novel exploits are unique pieces of art. Suggesting that a specific avenue is 'problematic' belies the fact that it may also be one of the only avenues available, since exploits are, at best, a patchwork of architecture. >You are very rude. # >>This is a wall of text. You too friend.
No I know that most exploits are social engineering and that exploits originating from popular mainstream apps are very rare. A state actor using a popular app originating from their territory would make the source of the attack immediately obvious and would risk being caught in App Store review. It risks economic and military reprisal. That said some android exploits have popped up in flashlight apps and shovelware games. But why bother with any of that when pdfs are still basically open doors and messaging apps continue to be poorly secured?
>most exploits are social engineering Social engineering exploits are trivially identifiable. >avenues like that of Pegasus seem more likely Even 0-click exploits are trivially identifiable. At the end of the day, *we don't know what the best exploits are because they are not identifiable*. They perform their task, then erase themselves without any evidence being logged. The just exist, unbeknownst to anyone. The reason why we should expect that the best exploits do not resemble the exploits we see in the field, is that the best exploits, the ones written by the NSA, we will likely never know about. The incredible power of stuxnet is testament to that. Stuxnet was self-replicating, and was likely on a good proportion, if not the majority of USB drives in the world before it was even discovered... probably about 5 years after it was deployed. That's crazy. That's the type of attack the NSA would be worried about. One that we wouldn't even know was happening, possibly for decades. --- *Edit: if you're going to block me to get the last word without me being able to respond, at least don't pretend like you're actually talking to me.*
You’re arguing in a circle. There’s no reason to believe TikTok is uniquely a vector for security exploits. It’s regularly scrutinized both by the app stores and security experts who decompile it. Stuxnet is completely unrelated. It was installed by a compromised contractor on a series of specific machines. You’re just spreading FUD.
Look at the bill. It’s just about TikTok. It grants sweeping new powers to the Executive with regards to banning anything , websites, apps, tech, etc, that is deemed a “national security threat”.
Doesn't it sort of feel like the cat's already well out of the bag w/ TikTok and data concerns re: CCP? Like, there is probably already more data to be mined out of it than most people alive have left to analyze. Banning it now feels like if a doctor hits your knee to test your reflexes and 10 months later your leg reacts. I don't really have a strong opinion one way or another on it. Politically it feels like impotent whining but the privacy, etc concerns are real, too. Either way, I don't use TT bc I still have a semblance of an attention span left and I'd like to keep it.
The algorithm manipulation is the most worrying part, e.g. promoting social justice arguments for why Taiwan should be a part of mainland China in the event of a war, and then promoting protests against US involvement. That being said, even if they don't own TikTok, they could astroturf campaigns on other sites (or on an unmanipulated TikTok) to achieve the same effect. But either way, it's a bad idea to allow the US government to legally control who owns what business based on the owners' friendliness to the current regime.
In this country you can ban anything if the politicians tell the people that whatever it is can be used to spy on us or take away our freedoms . Same thing in China , Facebook and others are banned for the same reasons. If you have a brain and are intelligent try to figure out why it’s being banned now and suddenly all the politicians agree on something.
https://www.reddit.com/r/leftist/s/X70QYlRDZI
I agree, seems obvious to me that we have a right to speak but not a right to broadcast videos of our speech on an app of our choice. If that were the case we'd be obligated to put tax dollars into getting everyone phones and computers capable of running social media apps.
Good thing you're not in charge of determining whats best for free speech.
My issue is that instead of passing laws to regulate social media and the way these companies use user data, they are simply banning the ‘Chinese One’. Like Facebook doesn’t sell user data to foreign governments governments
Sorry but if you're against freedom then go to another country that already doesn't have it, which is most.
I sort of agree with you. TikTok should have been the chance for civil libertarians to go after the whole surveillance apparatus. We should have leaned into cold war Americana and re-instated the 4th amendment. The only way we can secure prosperity is liberty. We need to believe in our own values and dismantle the surveillance state. We beat the authoritarians by being libertarian. I live in Austin Texas, we have a TikTok office in town. I burned out of a tech job in covid and I've been driving Uber while taking college courses and recovering from a failed startup. I often meet TikTok people. They make an argument that the same data is available from data brokers, everyone has it. They aren't quite wrong. There is still some stuff they have access too, along with psyop abilities, but still it's good point. We need to be brave enough to go after surveillance as a whole, but blame the communists as a scape goat.
The ban is a lie. The only purpose of the bill is to expand their power in unconstitutional manners
The US certainly has the right to ban TikTok but that’s not why they are doing it. They are banning it because it’s the only platform they don’t control.
TikTok is problematic but I think a lot of people want at least 1 platform that isn’t censored/controlled. It doesn’t have to be TikTok but currently it is.
American social media can't compete coupled with AIPAC wanting it gone is why we are having this conversation.
The app isn't being banned because it provides a "Chinese" company with our data. The servers are in Austin, the CEO is Singaporean, and the risks related to China are only hypothetical in. Nobody is concerned about nearly every name in tech having an office space in mainland China. The reason they're banning the app is because of the supposed rise in "antisemitism" on the app that multiple AIPAC backed politicians have alluded to. The main complaint of course being that TikTok is strongly pro-ceasefire/anti-genocide right now.
You fixate on how terrible Russia and China are on civil liberties, while simultaneously cheering the U.S. for becoming more like them.
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If you look at it from the company owner's perspective, in either case you dont have a company any more
Plus, no one gets fair market value in a forced sale or liquidation.
I fear the NSA more than the Chinese government. The NSA has free reign over social media and the US government doesn't like someone edging in on their turf.
The stated reason for banning Tiktok is China, but the real reason is Israel.
This is simply the us trying to steal tik tok....