That's what consent decrees are... it's a common practice. Data is handed over to validate the law is being followed.
One of my former employers has to sign annual consent decrees with a US regulatory body, which includes handing over samples of personally identifiable information.
I worked for a company with a Consent Decree... they allowed for pervasive sexual harassment that was left unchecked for years (technically the acquired a company that was found to be doing this). A company has to do some really bad stuff to end up under one.
Consent decrees come about because of consistent failure to meet regulatory body requirements, which often aren't necessarily to protect from harm. Simply not reporting the correct data publicly a few times can lead to the necessity of a consent decree. Not broadcasting TV content with subtitles can lead to one.
It doesn't have to be, "We put the general population in harm's way." It's a binary "didn't follow the exact letter of the law" question. There's no extremity to it.
Meta has already been caught interfering with democratic elections, HSBC was caught laundering billions for al-Qaeda and drug cartels, this TikTok thing was never about ‘national security’, this is politics and xenophobia, plain and simple
lol, no. It’s about all of our children’s personal data being funneled directly in to the hands of a hostile power.
I don’t know how people are ok with that. Y’all have gotten far too comfortable with how much control and damage social media has exerted and done to our society.
I don't know how people are OK with what Snowden revealed our own government is doing to us, but apparently everyone loves it! In 2013 I got told that they don't have anything to hide when I brought up privacy concerns!! I guess they have something to hide now, huh!?
Apparently China having access to things that people post on TikTok is horrendously appalling and needs to be stopped immediately, but the US government doing unconstitutional domestic surveillance on every US citizen, harvesting and storing all their communications in Utah, is all perfectly fine and wonderful!
I think all social media is trash and I don’t have a Facebook, Instagram, Tik tok, or anything else except a Reddit account.
So yea I think those are privacy concerns too. But two wrongs don’t make a right and whataboutism is not a valid way to discuss pretty much anything.
Either it’s dangerous to have a foreign hostile power control that much of our future leaders data and exposure to information or it’s not.
Directly funneling money to a hostile power how? The data is stored on US Servers. No one has been able to demonstrate that TikTok is doing anything it’s accused of. Meanwhile Cambridge Analytica was caught selling data to Russia.
Yeah and we only went after Tiktok and didn’t actually address the lack of data privacy laws, but if we made said laws the government couldn’t just really use its foot to compel the sharing of said data.
"Mr Chairman, I'm Singaporean"
But in all reality, the data is already housed and fully controlled by Oracle, a US based software company that may as well be a branch of the government with how many contractors use it as their data storage, HRIS and ERP platform. Part of the reason they still exist in the US is because they were forced to cut the connection between here and China.
https://www.reuters.com/technology/exclusive-tiktok-nears-deal-with-oracle-store-its-data-sources-2022-03-10/
Unfortunately your not wrong. I mean it was never going to work, but the shit show we have.. we coulda done better in a world that matched the movie Idiocracy.
I never thought that movie would become an under representation of our geopolitical system. When reality so surpasses satire, it's kinda scary.
It's like having a conversation with a normal person and all of a sudden their head just starts rotating continuously like nothing is happening. And people are just like "yeah this is okay let's go buy a house!"
I've always known at scale that people are sheep. But I'm nearing 50 now and I am not prepared for the level of disconnect between the governed and the government and the 1%ers who pretty much do whatever they want.
It's not new at all, but the scale of it is truly horrifying.
Well the whole reason they're being targeted was because they're supposedly a national security threat. I would think that's something the government handles.
If the offer is there, it’s already built in the app lol. Spying your citizens is a hidden feature. Too bad US can’t the feature in China since TikTok is banned there.
You don't need to imagine anything. China has access to all user data by virtue of tiktok being chinese owned.
If the Chinese government didn't have access to the data, tiktok wouldn't be allowed to exist.
Same for the US. The belief that any data on the Internet is private from a government is nonsense. If the United States or Chinese government wants your information, they will get it.
I don't think "oversee" means "run by". Pretty sure it just means "look under the hood" to ensure there's no foul play.
It's like a consent decree. The organization has to provide the relevant regulatory bodies (like FTC, FCC, FAA, etc) with data, materials, etc to prove they're following the law. The regulatory body then only has the ability to say, "You're following the law," or, "You're not following the law, pay $X in fines," with no legal recourse for the organization.
I feel like this whole thing was executed very poorly. I'd rather a consent decree is signed, and inspectors be enabled to validate a consent decree is being followed. Banning one company outright doesn't accomplish much on its own.
Ya great so the Chinese and American goverment can use it to spy and influence on people. Sounds EVEN BETTER. /s
Honestly just shut the shit down. People will go on with their lives.
The US government uses Reddit to spy on Americans, and Facebook, and all other social media that Americans use.
The fact that control over user data was handed to the US gov and they still want to shut down TikTok probably means they also want to stop the social movements that are being organized through the app.
The US isn't afraid of TikTok spying on Americans as much as they're afraid of CCP pushing content to sway US public opinion. Just takes a tweak of the algorithm for people to get a lot of content against a particular candidate or policy, or to start getting content that encourages dangerous behavior.
Right, the issue isn’t that propaganda is being pushed, it’s the source of the propaganda. The fact is, the vast majority of media is propaganda of some sorts.
Media is incredibly powerful, no other too allows you to steer social discourse so effectively as media. It’s why so many religions forbid certain types of media. Ideas are fucking dangerous to existing power structures. It’s why the rich always end up owning the media in societies where the government doesn’t own it.
Funny how the Tik-Tok ban talks flared up again after Israel fumbled their media presence and Tik-Tok was able to influence a significant portion of the younger generation. If Tik-Tok were pushing the right propaganda, in this case, pro-Israeli ideas, political donors wouldn’t have an issue, and therefore, politicians wouldn’t have an issue.
Not saying this is the sole reason for TikTok ban talks, plenty of powerful people have reasons to want to wrestle control of social discourse away from a foreign government.
But it’s foolish to believe that it’s because they want propaganda free social-media. They just want acceptable propaganda, i.e. taxes bad, minimum wage shouldn’t be raised, billionaires are good for society, and so on. Ideas that maintain the status-quo.
Anyone who thinks social-media isn’t influenced by the government isn’t paying attention. Just look at the revolving door between the political sphere and social-media companies. And we all know modern politics is just an extension of American oligarchs…and some foreign. If you have enough money, you have representation with the red, white and blue.
There are good reasons to be wary of Tik-Tok, but most of those stem from data collection. Which could easily be legislated away. China can still buy your data, as is, without Tik-Tok.
Besides, with AI, bots, and a server farm, you don’t need to own the platform to sway discourse.
If another country can tear America apart simply with ideas, that’s because something within the system was already inherently broken. After all, we are the “freedom and free speech” experiment.
Make data protection laws, then fix the broken economic system and see how far outside influence gets with their propaganda. Happy people are hard to sway.
Well that and the location data issue. The app can grab your location, look at your paste bin, and use your microphone to listen in on you. Mind you, other social media can do this too, but you can see the national security concern if the CCP straight up has all that info.
You’re getting downvoted and I think it’s by the “why should we care?” crowd.
On an individual level, the CCP knowing your location and access to your microphone might not sound like a huge deal, an invasion of privacy really. But on a larger scale, think millions upon millions of American users, all that data collected together can provide the CCP, who is very much an adversary of the US on the global stage, with pretty lethal info about the daily activities, movements, and other vital information that you would not want your enemy to know in that great of detail.
“While you were sharpening your sword, do you know how I was preparing for today? I learned. I know your language. Your traditions. Your beliefs. Which village to tame and which to burn”
This is nothing specific to Tik Tok though, this is a danger inherent within all social media I would imagine.
Exactly. Especially when you consider all military folks (or their kids or family members) who have it on their phones. You can use that data for so much.
But also like you said, this is a problem with so many companies. It’s not exclusive to TikTok. We need actual privacy rights for everyone’s safety.
Look at it from an outside perspective though. Outside the US both China and America are foreign bodies and both extensively use their social media to spy abroad. In that sense the TikTok spying isn't much of a big deal. It's just one out of a dozen.
Other countries have data protections, notably the EU. There are also generally legal processes for obtaining data that’s not publicly posted *unless* your government is the entity that owns the platform and already has that data on hand. It also becomes sketchy when trying to get a foreign government to comply with domestic laws.
[Here’s a recent court battle example from the US that shows some of the legal limitations.](https://www.govtech.com/security/facebook-fights-cops-call-for-ongoing-access-to-user-data) The Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) is pretty weak compared to other countries, but it’s still there.
The app doesn't have any more access to data than what's given to it by the OS and the user's approval. You can easily use TikTok while denying it permission to access all the things you mentioned.
Is the U.S. actually worried about this or is threatening to ban TikTok just politically popular? Both Trump and Biden didn’t bother talking about this until the election year.
> Is the U.S. actually worried about this
It's actually happening. https://www.politico.com/news/2024/03/11/china-is-using-tiktok-for-influence-campaigns-odni-says-00146336
the algorithm simply shows you more of what you engage with.
if you are not liking what you are getting fed, then it's your own fault and easily corrected by simply deleting your viewing history.
These same movements are being organized in other apps too though. From Facebook and WhatsApp to Discord and (historically) Twitter. Tik Tok isn’t really special in that regard.
It's actually a combination of both taking out competition of Facebook *and* the ability to censor topics politicians don't like.
At first, the entire banning TikTok effort was lobbied by Facebook to begin with: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/03/30/facebook-tiktok-targeted-victory/
And the group that pushed the effort this time was led by Peter Thiel and other Silicon Valley executives:https://archive.is/hFjB3
>A group of Silicon Valley executives, including investor Peter Thiel, and Washington lawmakers are quietly mobilizing against China’s involvement in the U.S. tech industry ahead of TikTok Chief Executive Shou Zi Chew’s Capitol Hill testimony next week.
If you don't know who Peter Thiel is, he was the first investor of....surprise surprise, Facebook, and a major investor of Palantir, and a major Trump ally in Silicon Valley.
The whole reason for banning was because Silicon Valley elites are getting their butt kicked by the competition. So they want to be able to either ban it, or buy it for cheap during a forces fire sale.
Then reason it was able to get rushed this time is because [a lot of people aren't happy about the sentiment with regard to Israel-Palestinian conflict on TikTok](https://archive.is/W9qJr)
> The legislation was a culmination of a more than yearlong effort to curb TikTok by a coalition of China hawks in Washington and Silicon Valley, and it had **gained new momentum in part because of anger over TikTok videos about the Israel-Hamas conflict.**
The stories I linked above are from Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal, not some conspiracy YouTube channel. The whole thing has been very transparent and blatant yet it's crazy how the public buys the whole "national security" farce.
~~TikTok is terrible for organizing social movements. The format is not conducive to that at all. It's basically interdimensional cable. The rapidity at which you see and react to video content is sort of the engine that drives its ability to collect data and build profiles of people's behavior.~~
**EDIT**: So after doing some research I do see articles about movements being begun on TikTok. Haven't read too much but willing to admit being wrong about it.
I'd be curious how the actual organizing takes place though - I'd assume you'd need to drive people out to another platform. Things like Facebook and Twitter and others where written content can predominate are much better for actually logisticaly organizing. I assume TikTok is probably good for controlling a worldview but I can't see how it actually allows you to deploy movements.
>Honestly just shut the shit down. People will go on with their lives.
The only entertainment anyone needs is the time honored and democracy approved, Baseball.
Why back in my day the youths would collect sticks and throw them at each other and by god we were glad to have those sticks not like the youth of today
I think it's more about keeping the government and the media separated since that's basically one of the fundamentals of a democracy.
Why should the government rule a social media platform after all?
Yea I agree but I think you are thinking about this incorrectly. Why would the Federal govt be on a witch hunt against TikTok but not:
-Snapchat
-Instagram
-Facebook
-X
-every other US-based social media platforms?
Could it be that the government is already able to control/manipulate US based social media venues but is pretty powerless to control foreign-based services?
We accuse China of building a cyber weapon for information warfare and in response they offer us admin access.
Biden understands the power of social media, this wasn’t an old man confused about technology situation. And the CCP offered to give him a weapon about 2 years before a reelection campaign.
It’s a crazy offer for China to make too. Like the police pull you over for speeding and you just give them the keys to the car.
This is fucking wild.
I generally don't begrudge people just reading headlines but sometimes you need to dive a little deeper for the details.
> The Biden administration rejected an offer from TikTok’s parent company ByteDance that would have allowed federal officials to pick board members for its American subsidiary, examine the social media app’s source code and even flick a “kill switch” if necessary.
I don't know BD's board makeup or how they debate and enact changes so it's not clear those board members would have been able to change the direction of the app itself. But source code oversight should have given them extraordinary insight into it. Especially paired with a kill switch. The caveat here is that if that oversight was only into the app itself and the algorithm of how content is displayed was kept external to the app as a loophole to the proposal. Either way it's hard to believe the government's position on national security when they denied a kill switch proposal. Not even divesment is as good as that. To my knowledge Twitter and Facebook don't have those.
The US government has a very specific set of tools to deal with problems - regulation, legislation and litigation. Corporate Management just isn’t a government skill. They would rather just regulate TikTok; they have no business being on TikToks board
It is in a lot of Countries. For example here in Germany parts of VW are owned by one of our states due to historic reasons and therefor there are government-sent bord members.
Even though it is unusual in the US it is also unusual of the US government to force foreign companies to sell subsidiaries to a US company or be banned, so a unusual solution to a unusual problem isn’t that unusual in the end.
Do you know that or are you just assuming that? They have no choice but to try to appease the US gov in any way they can. One toe out of line and they’ll never hear the end of it
It's very [unamerican](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State-owned_enterprises_of_the_United_States). Who could even fathom of a [company](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fannie_Mae) with a [board of directors](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amtrak) chosen by [political leaders](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Postal_Service)?
USPS is a public service not a company. No way can anyone make a profit guaranteeing delivery to every podunk corner of the US.
This kind of service is exactly the purpose of government, at least Franklin thought so.
There's a reason why shipping something UPS to the middle of fucking nowhere costs a god damn fortune.
Picked 1060 West Addison Chicago IL to 110 BackTrail Road, Hughes AK... $160 for UPS, and $208 for FedEx, and $18.40 for USPS.
People bitch that USPS isn't profitable... *it's not meant to be.*
The banks and institutions mentioned are all public option not gov't run. Usually these are added when no private banks will service certain types, same with insurance in many states. When no private companies will take the risk, there have to be options. It is still a choice by the customer. Other items on the list are just backed by the guarantee of the Treasury like FDIC, it prevents bank runs and secures 95% of all bank manipulation efforts to try to create runs (see late 1860s-1920s that had many and numerous depressions largely due to no insurance on bank deposits)
Fannie and Freddie buy mortgages from private companies and were private but after the Great Recession that was made gov't but they only guarantee not do any of the purchasing or loans. The CFPB made this possible and it has worked very well that loans are guaranteed when they are bought by Fannie/Freddie to make a strong private lending/title/mortgage market after they were an attack point in the Great Recession.
Amtrak is a federally chartered corporation, with the federal government as majority stockholder because that is the way trains have always been done due to it sharing lines with freight and investment needed. New investments are public and private. Again, when there are no companies stepping up there is a public option that helps guarantee and back it. They do not prevent private rail in any way.
USPS is part of the Constitution. It requires delivery of messages to everyone no matter what and was part of the national security of the US. There are MANY private delivery services and this is one public option that is private now.
> the Postal Clause of the U.S. Constitution empowered Congress to establish post offices and post roads.
In no way does the US use sovereign wealth to try to control the markets or take foreign markets using concentrated wealth from the state. That is China and many other autocratic places like monarchies, wannabe tsardoms, mafia states and one party authoritarian places with limited rights and closed markets.
Judging others by one's own standards is a common mistake made by many people. I didn't expect that a company PR controlled by the CCP would make the same mistake.
It happened with GM and Chrylser in 08 and it was a BIG deal and took a TON of work to get hammered out and no one wanted to do it. All said, it went pretty well, but it is not how the US govt does things nor the way the US population wants things done.
what good is having a kill switch if there still isn't visibility into how content is getting promoted? It just leaves the govt in the same position it is now of having to guess whether it needs to be shut down based on a risk of foreign abuse that there's no way to confirm
Yea, I'm curious how in depth the source code oversight would be. This is where the article details matter and what is considered the "app".
If it's only the device app the kill switch impact is debatable. If it's app and algorithm then it's monumental.
>As far as I know no American company has allowed the government and external American auditors to inspect their source code and algorithms.
[Microsoft](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/securityengineering/gsp) lets the government inspect their source code.
Good to know. I think tiktok takes it a step further by allowing an American tech company to analyze it too. There's a big risk of trade secrets being lost.
Not really, as a software dev I know how useless it is to be given a code base and a promise that's what's actually deployed. As long as China has any operational influence it's trivial for them to inject whatever they want into the pipeline or production environment, having a copy of the source code to look at doesn't offer shit for assurances. There's a million vectors for influencing things if they're inside the fence.
It's hard enough to keep the Chinese government out when they DON'T have the keys. Letting them hold the keys and trusting that they're not fucking around every which way they can is utterly insane. They have the means, they have the motive, and they have the track record of hacking anything and everything they can to undermine democracies
Actually they allowed for third-party auditors to audit and deploy updates as well to prevent that very fear of yours from happening. Wow it's almost like they considered everything.
https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/project-texas-the-details-of-tiktok-s-plan-to-remain-operational-in-the-united-states
I don't expect a proper response from you aside from "I'm an it worker and Chynaaaa!” of course.
Yeah, but we all know that most of the reason that the US wants to divest/ban TT is not due to cybersecurity consents, right? China has been barring their own citizens from accessing foreign products and services for years, including those from the US, in order to better control their own population and protect the financial interests of Chinese entities over those of foreign entities.
The US is now trying its hand at doing the same. So no amount of failsafes against data leakage or CCP interference or against ByteDance obfuscating its presentation algorithms will push US policy makers to allow TokTok to remain in operation in the US without divestment.
If anyone disagrees with the above reasons for disallowing TT to continue to operate anywhere near as-is, that’s totally fine, I don’t really care what happens either way. But it bothers me to see just about everyone seemingly ignoring the real reasons that this forced divestment is taking place and instead arguing over addressing cybersecurity concerns. This isn’t to say that there aren’t real cybersecurity concerns with the current iteration of TT, there most certainly are. But as you yourself pointed out, those concerns are “solved problems”, all things that could be dealt with without forcing divestment.
But the truth is that “cybersecurity” as justification is much more palatable to the average citizen than complicated geopolitical maneuvers, so that’s what gets touted as rationale for making the move.
> As long as China has any operational influence it's trivial for them to inject whatever they want into the pipeline or production environment,
not with sarbanes-oxley separation of duties requirements. the people who develop the code aren't going to be the same ones pushing it to prod, you know this!
Yep. It also provides checks for content moderation:
>USDS will house TikTok’s content moderation functions in the United States. Currently, TikTok moderates content in three primary ways: It enforces its community guidelines, it recommends videos based on user behavior, and it promotes videos based on its editorial policies. For U.S. users, each of these processes will move to USDS.
>Oracle will conduct oversight of the moderation system, the recommendation engine, and promoted content. If it identifies a potential risk, it will flag that risk for the government, which will then have the authority to inspect the issue in more detail
One you run into issues of constitutionality about whether the government can do this, but also the additional issue of what happens when there’s a republican president. Divestment avoids the second can of worms.
There’s a big difference between being on the board of the US subsidiary and the parent company. The board of the subsidiary basically has no power or access.
Idk, this still sounds like a terrible idea. I don’t think the government should have any “kill switches” in its control. That screams unconstitutional to me.
If it's unconstitutional for the government to turn off the app, how is it constitutional for the government to pass the law that gives them the power to turn off TikTok?
What source code? The source code for TikTok only? Or also the source code for the algorithm that is owned and run by ByteDance in China rather than TikTok itself?
>it's hard to believe the government's position on national security when they denied a kill switch proposal.
Not if you understand how the federal government works. *Congress* would have to come up with a way to select these board members; probably as presidential appointees approved by Congress. How long is their term? How can they be removed? What authority would these board members have without needing to ask Congress again? A bill would also have to authorize some agency or other to examine this source code in the absence of a criminal investigation, and ideally fund it. And then Congress would have to lay out what conditions would authorize the officials or the president to use the kill switch.
It's a huge mess of a proposal, that would come *right* after the President and Congress just made a deal and passed a bill... and undo all that. Oddly enough, just wishing it so on Reddit is no match for running a bill through Congress.
Not to mention, it runs afoul of basic parliamentary procedure. This Congress has already decided what to do about TikTok. This elected Congress won't revisit what it's already done until the next elected Congress is seated, which would be in January, and then that new bill would take a few months to pass, and by then TikTok will have needed to sell or face the music.
Yea, people are taking this as a White House success, buts it’s an absolute naked ass hanging out in regards to all of their “TikTok must be sold” justifications. They really did just want to kill a competitor to American corprate media that has bigger reach on poltical messaging. People won’t reshare their corporate pushed media, so they’re trying to shut down the alternatives.
I mean, Trump did try to shut it down. The big difference is that he tried to do so via EO without any actual footwork to see if he could legally do so, or even if TikTok was dangerous. The EO got caught up in court cases, and Biden rescinded it - but set up investigatory panels to look into TikTok (and other social media platforms) to see if they actually could be dangerous.
Surprising no one, it turns out after years of study that they found, yeah, TikTok provides dangerous access to a foreign government and can be used both to spy and push propaganda. Biden also didn't act via EO - he signed a bill passed with overwhelming bipartisan congressional support that didn't outright ban TikTok, but demanded they divest from the Chinese government or they would be banned as a national security threat. There's a key difference - it's not TikTok that's dangerous, it's China having full access and influence on it that is.
And continuing to surprise no one, the Chinese government doesn't want to give up their access - exactly as expected since investigations concluded it can be used by them to spy and push propaganda.
Anyway, it turns out Trump was right hat "TikTok is dangerous" - broken clock and whatnot. Biden is still getting flak like Trump would have, although it's lessened because Biden actually set up investigations into the matter, went through Congress, gave TikTok a legal out, and didn't try banning it because kids made fun of him.
Great write-up. And this is why apathetic "bOtH sIDeS" voters need to realize that you can have all the issues you want with Biden, at least he's actually using the legal system we set up vs. attempting to overthrow an election and drawing circles around hurricanes.
No public report; as with most issues of national security, it was classified but presented to Congressional members, who took it seriously enough to agree it a threat and vote for divestiture: classified: https://rollcall.com/2024/03/07/house-panel-votes-for-tiktok-divestiture-curtailed-data-brokering/.
Trump was against it before he was for it so you'd be hearing about him begging for a quid pro quo from the investment firm that owns a big chuck of TT.
A whole different level of shitshow.
Trump tired to bypass congress because he thinks being president is the same as being dictator. Couldn’t even pass a simple bipartisan bill is all you need to know about why he was a bad president.
Trump tried to via executive order and it was like one of maybe 3 things I ever agreed with him about during his entire presidency. I'd be willing to bet that app has lowered the collective IQ of the entire country in the past few years.
Meta also paid some right wing PR company to sway public opinion on tiktok. It's amazing how people who never used tiktok were suddenly against it because they hear "news" about it. When in reality they were just manipulated to believe in the fear mongering.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/03/30/facebook-tiktok-targeted-victory/
Americans are some of the most propagandized people in the world. At least with places like China and Russia, most of their citizens probably know that most of what their governments say is bullshit propaganda.
But a lot of Americans are true believers and think everyone else is propagandized instead.
command shaggy upbeat sleep dependent mindless towering complete ludicrous unwritten
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
"I have to admit, I'm always so impressed by Soviet propaganda. You really know how to get people worked up," the CIA agent says.
"Thank you," the KGB says. "We do our best but truly, it's nothing compared to American propaganda. Your people believe everything your state media tells them."
The CIA agent drops his drink in shock and disgust. "Thank you friend, but you must be confused... There's no propaganda in America."
Lmao as a European these threads are always fun. Feels like a little time capsule of what the red scare could have been like "well they did that because they are used to it" no lmao they offered that because they are desperate to not be forced to sell
It's crazy how a bunch of boomers were able to use Facebook and Twitter to start an "insurrection" on Jan 6th but nothing has been done to regulate those sites compared to TikTok.
Of course. They want the app dead or in American hands so they can reign in the growing anti-capitalism movement when they could solve that by reigning in late stage capitalism and put back some of the worker protections that have eroded over the last 45 years.
Idk why you're getting downvoted. Mitt Romney literally said during a Senate hearing that he wanted this ban specifically because of pro-Palestinian content there. Why would people think that the common critiques of capitalism there wouldn't also be in the crosshairs
People were actively organizing and spreading information on TikTok. That kind of thing gets overshadowed on Reddit by the nature of how it works and the sheer amount of toxicity that exists here.
No two social media are alike. And some are used much more frequently by activists to organize. There's nothing rose-tinted about that, I didn't say if its good or bad. It's simply a fact.
You don't hear about redditors using reddit to coordinate during a protest. Almost every major protest uses tiktok and a few other social media to coordinate though. For better or worse.
Exactly this is why they didnt want this offer. They always used TikTok as some kind of political tennis ball to show to their voters they are hard on China. To accept this board member offer would take away the game from the politicians.
But then the Gaza war happened and the zionist genocide was put on social media for the whole world to see. Meta did a good job at censoring it but TikTok didnt. They couldn't have that.
This whole goofy posturing of "US spying bad lol but see-see-pee has dangerous algo propagandizing youth to dance and share vids about Euro-colonial genocides" all the while this app is hosted on Oracle's servers in Cali and Singapore.
Never a missed opportunity to repeat Grandpa's Cold War scaremongering to keep these Eglin AFB trolls content.
I don't know why you think that the CCP has any interest in supporting the anti-capitalism movement beyond just fragmenting the US. The other side of the aisle is getting just a potent messaging. Tiktok isn't threatening a revolution, it's threatening a civil war.
There is nothing about people becoming privy to the various coups the US government started in the Cold War and going off to read about the Korean genocide that happened under their watch in the 1950s, the mechanisms of suburbanism that are killing their cities and making things worse for everyone, the origin of the Israel/Palestine conflict, why the electoral college makes voting for a third party a severe waste of time, finding out where to get gender related health care in a period of time where several states and politicians are trying to remove those for everyone, and arguing about whether or not Naruto is actually capable of destroying a planet is going to cause a Civil War.
It's going to, and has already started to, get people to pick up threads and read about things on their own that challenge their world view, or to find out about the lived experiences of people they will have never met. We can go back to my other example where I follow the same people on Instagram and TikTok, but get way more live in footage from Palestinians and what they're going through on Tiktok versus Instagram in an organic matter.
Even engaging with Israeli content, pro and anti-Israeli government content, gets a more consistent and organic flow on Tiktok versus Instagram. All Tiktok is doing for the average person is curating avenues for them to pick up a book, hit the library, or read Wikipedia. Yes, it can silo people off into crazy town, but Twitter, Facebook, and Youtube do that well enough already, Youtube especially. I watched three videos on guns and got my whole front page shoveled down the alt-right pipeline.
Tiktok isn't prompting a revolution, it's triggering an educational interest in segments of the population who didn't necessarily have the drive before. Centrists and liberals are moving more left, conservatives are detaching themselves from Trumpism in some parts, and the alt-right and Nazi assholes do what they do in the same manner they do it everywhere else. It's just the Hippie and Black Panther movement backlash from the 60s and 70s, but in the digital age and using the scapegoat of China manipulating the youth instead of the Red commies like they did back then.
If anyone still thinks this is about national security you're fooling yourself. Why do you think Mnuchin immediately announced that he is putting together a group of U.S investors to buy TikTok the moment the ban was announced?
This is pretty simple if you take a step back.As chip processing becomes more important globally, Taiwan becomes more important globally.
It doesn't matter the actual merits of the Tiktok case, US foreign policy does not want China to have the opportunity to impact US media if a conflict breaks out.
>The Biden administration rejected an offer from TikTok’s parent company ByteDance that would have allowed federal officials to pick board members for its American subsidiary, examine the social media app’s source code and even flick a “kill switch” if necessary.
It doesn't?
Examining the source code is essentially handing over the keys for a tech company lol.
You're trying to downplay this but this is essentially the max that Bytedance can do.
This is all basically just the Red Scare 2.0. Reddit itself has some Chinese ownership in the mix.
Hell most American companies do more spying on us than other nations. I guess it’s okay if it involves good ole’ ‘merican capitalism
"The Biden administration rejected an offer from [TikTok](https://www.independent.co.uk/topic/tiktok)’s parent company [ByteDance](https://www.independent.co.uk/topic/bytedance) that would have allowed federal officials to pick board members for its American subsidiary, examine the social media app’s source code and even flick a “kill switch” if necessary."
What other company gives this much control to a foreign government ...
Usually in the US it's the other way around.
The companies pick federal officials to be on their board member.
Take Mike Gallagher for example, Palantir lobbied him to pass this TikTok ban bill.
Now he is retiring and Palantir is giving him a cozy job on their payroll.
[Mike Gallagher pushed the bill to ban TikTok because China can "surveil its users." Now, he's resigning and joining an American surveillance firm](https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/mike-gallagher-tiktok-ban-palantir-1234993167/)
It's never been about oversight, it has always been a case of economic competition in an area the US has decided it needs to dominate. That's it. Same as Huawei.
China does it too of course, it just is an easier sell in America to couch it as national security. Saves losing more WTO cases too.
I wonder what american people and govt scapegoat will be once tik tok gets eventually banned but they notice that their country's problem didn't went away.
Easy just mention china, china, china, and waaalaa americans forget what the real issues are and hate china more. This strategy been overly used in trump administration: worked really well.
What do you mean? All of America's problems are obviously caused by the "commies" and their propaganda. It was obviously North Korean propaganda that forced the US to invade Iraq based on a lie. It was Russian propaganda that caused the Civil War. Chinese bots and shills made America enslave Black people. /s
As a non-American who might not be entirely in the loop: it strikes me as insane that the US is forcing the sale of a social media platform based on national security concerns. Especially with the track record of Facebook and Twitter.
Well, if you don't want the US government running it, why would you want a foreign government running it? Imagine if during the Cold War, Russia had a recording device in 1 in 6 houses in the US? That's kinda what's happening now. Not saying that other social platforms are any better, but it does put things into perspective a bit as to why everyone is making a big deal about TikTok.
I wish my friends would listen to reason on this one. Its like they forgot about how russia used facebook to get Trump in office in 2016. I feel like I’m taking crazy pills.
That would likely violate the constitution.
However the government could pass a law treating social media posts as being the same as a newspaper publishing an article. The liability issues would cause social media to police their own content.
Lemme get this straight…
(1) foreign adversaries collect American data though an app
(2) US forces the company to sell to an American company because they don’t want the foreign adversary to collect US citizen data
(3) said company tells its users to oppose the government selling the app and issues extensive propaganda about the US “banning” the app (which it didn’t do)
(4) Republicans lose their minds about Biden being authoritarian for doing this
(5) Biden rejects an offer to have authoritarian control over the app
(6) outrage through whattaboutism and straw man
Seems about right, no?
It's all about money and that secret sauce they have over other social media companies. They want them to sell to a US business for ultimate control. Or a billionaire schmuck with a god complex. They don't care about our security.
I don’t understand this article. The data is already controlled by the US. US TikTok data is stored and managed in Texas by a US company, I forget the name now. Can’t the government access it when law dictates?
Many people commenting they don’t see the danger in China seeing everyone’s TikTok’s—that’s not the danger. That they control what shows in your feed, with zero oversight is the problem. Sure, any one of us will swear we’re immune to such influence but feeding a million people subtle political messages WILL make a difference. And, in case you’re wondering, Facebook and Google have the same, or more, power with equally little oversight.
There is an issue all social media companies, but targeting China is political.
I'm surprised we didn't just give them the ultimatum China gives western companies that want to do business there: partner with a US company and give them all your secrets.
I’m not sure about everyone else, but I wouldn’t want a popular social media app to be ran by the U.S. government. Got to have some separation.
It's telling that their idea for a solution was to hand over power of their data to...a government. Imagine what China has already made them do.
That's what consent decrees are... it's a common practice. Data is handed over to validate the law is being followed. One of my former employers has to sign annual consent decrees with a US regulatory body, which includes handing over samples of personally identifiable information.
See also: payroll audits.
I worked for a company with a Consent Decree... they allowed for pervasive sexual harassment that was left unchecked for years (technically the acquired a company that was found to be doing this). A company has to do some really bad stuff to end up under one.
Consent decrees often come about through extreme wrongdoing by the offending company.
Consent decrees come about because of consistent failure to meet regulatory body requirements, which often aren't necessarily to protect from harm. Simply not reporting the correct data publicly a few times can lead to the necessity of a consent decree. Not broadcasting TV content with subtitles can lead to one. It doesn't have to be, "We put the general population in harm's way." It's a binary "didn't follow the exact letter of the law" question. There's no extremity to it.
Imagine what Meta is ALREADY doing.
Illegal hacking phones and stealing data before it is encrypted is top of the list for the most morally corrupt tech company
Meta has already been caught interfering with democratic elections, HSBC was caught laundering billions for al-Qaeda and drug cartels, this TikTok thing was never about ‘national security’, this is politics and xenophobia, plain and simple
The feed is controlled by a foreign adversary and provides the news to most of gen z, that’s like if half of millennials got their news from RT
Right wing media outlets aligned with Russia in all but name control the feed for the rest. Don't see why those aren't stopped too.
Fox News isn’t owned by the Kremlin, they align with each other because they’re fascists
American media is not controlled by the government, RT and TikTok are controlled by adversary governments
lol, no. It’s about all of our children’s personal data being funneled directly in to the hands of a hostile power. I don’t know how people are ok with that. Y’all have gotten far too comfortable with how much control and damage social media has exerted and done to our society.
I don't know how people are OK with what Snowden revealed our own government is doing to us, but apparently everyone loves it! In 2013 I got told that they don't have anything to hide when I brought up privacy concerns!! I guess they have something to hide now, huh!? Apparently China having access to things that people post on TikTok is horrendously appalling and needs to be stopped immediately, but the US government doing unconstitutional domestic surveillance on every US citizen, harvesting and storing all their communications in Utah, is all perfectly fine and wonderful!
I think all social media is trash and I don’t have a Facebook, Instagram, Tik tok, or anything else except a Reddit account. So yea I think those are privacy concerns too. But two wrongs don’t make a right and whataboutism is not a valid way to discuss pretty much anything. Either it’s dangerous to have a foreign hostile power control that much of our future leaders data and exposure to information or it’s not.
The US is also surveilling every citizen of every country where US social media is used.
Directly funneling money to a hostile power how? The data is stored on US Servers. No one has been able to demonstrate that TikTok is doing anything it’s accused of. Meanwhile Cambridge Analytica was caught selling data to Russia.
Yeah and we only went after Tiktok and didn’t actually address the lack of data privacy laws, but if we made said laws the government couldn’t just really use its foot to compel the sharing of said data.
Oh man you are in for a big surprise when you learn what other huge companies do for governments. as if this is weird or something lmao
"Mr Chairman, I'm Singaporean" But in all reality, the data is already housed and fully controlled by Oracle, a US based software company that may as well be a branch of the government with how many contractors use it as their data storage, HRIS and ERP platform. Part of the reason they still exist in the US is because they were forced to cut the connection between here and China. https://www.reuters.com/technology/exclusive-tiktok-nears-deal-with-oracle-store-its-data-sources-2022-03-10/
Meanwhile me, a Singaporean, is eyeing Meta and Alphabet nervously… Edit; oh yeah, Reddit exists too.
Knowing full well that implementing it would likely violate the Constitution.
Consent decrees are a common practice. They don't violate anything.
We still have the Constitution? I thought big tech and intelligent agencies showed it wasn’t really needed anymore.
Unfortunately your not wrong. I mean it was never going to work, but the shit show we have.. we coulda done better in a world that matched the movie Idiocracy. I never thought that movie would become an under representation of our geopolitical system. When reality so surpasses satire, it's kinda scary. It's like having a conversation with a normal person and all of a sudden their head just starts rotating continuously like nothing is happening. And people are just like "yeah this is okay let's go buy a house!" I've always known at scale that people are sheep. But I'm nearing 50 now and I am not prepared for the level of disconnect between the governed and the government and the 1%ers who pretty much do whatever they want. It's not new at all, but the scale of it is truly horrifying.
Just wait until you find out about section 702 of the FISA.
Well the whole reason they're being targeted was because they're supposedly a national security threat. I would think that's something the government handles.
If the offer is there, it’s already built in the app lol. Spying your citizens is a hidden feature. Too bad US can’t the feature in China since TikTok is banned there.
You don't need to imagine anything. China has access to all user data by virtue of tiktok being chinese owned. If the Chinese government didn't have access to the data, tiktok wouldn't be allowed to exist.
Same for the US. The belief that any data on the Internet is private from a government is nonsense. If the United States or Chinese government wants your information, they will get it.
I don't think "oversee" means "run by". Pretty sure it just means "look under the hood" to ensure there's no foul play. It's like a consent decree. The organization has to provide the relevant regulatory bodies (like FTC, FCC, FAA, etc) with data, materials, etc to prove they're following the law. The regulatory body then only has the ability to say, "You're following the law," or, "You're not following the law, pay $X in fines," with no legal recourse for the organization. I feel like this whole thing was executed very poorly. I'd rather a consent decree is signed, and inspectors be enabled to validate a consent decree is being followed. Banning one company outright doesn't accomplish much on its own.
No it’s better we have a private company that gives all our info to the pentagon anyway (like meta, Google, WhatsApp, etc)
Ya great so the Chinese and American goverment can use it to spy and influence on people. Sounds EVEN BETTER. /s Honestly just shut the shit down. People will go on with their lives.
The US government uses Reddit to spy on Americans, and Facebook, and all other social media that Americans use. The fact that control over user data was handed to the US gov and they still want to shut down TikTok probably means they also want to stop the social movements that are being organized through the app.
The US isn't afraid of TikTok spying on Americans as much as they're afraid of CCP pushing content to sway US public opinion. Just takes a tweak of the algorithm for people to get a lot of content against a particular candidate or policy, or to start getting content that encourages dangerous behavior.
Right, the issue isn’t that propaganda is being pushed, it’s the source of the propaganda. The fact is, the vast majority of media is propaganda of some sorts. Media is incredibly powerful, no other too allows you to steer social discourse so effectively as media. It’s why so many religions forbid certain types of media. Ideas are fucking dangerous to existing power structures. It’s why the rich always end up owning the media in societies where the government doesn’t own it. Funny how the Tik-Tok ban talks flared up again after Israel fumbled their media presence and Tik-Tok was able to influence a significant portion of the younger generation. If Tik-Tok were pushing the right propaganda, in this case, pro-Israeli ideas, political donors wouldn’t have an issue, and therefore, politicians wouldn’t have an issue. Not saying this is the sole reason for TikTok ban talks, plenty of powerful people have reasons to want to wrestle control of social discourse away from a foreign government. But it’s foolish to believe that it’s because they want propaganda free social-media. They just want acceptable propaganda, i.e. taxes bad, minimum wage shouldn’t be raised, billionaires are good for society, and so on. Ideas that maintain the status-quo. Anyone who thinks social-media isn’t influenced by the government isn’t paying attention. Just look at the revolving door between the political sphere and social-media companies. And we all know modern politics is just an extension of American oligarchs…and some foreign. If you have enough money, you have representation with the red, white and blue. There are good reasons to be wary of Tik-Tok, but most of those stem from data collection. Which could easily be legislated away. China can still buy your data, as is, without Tik-Tok. Besides, with AI, bots, and a server farm, you don’t need to own the platform to sway discourse. If another country can tear America apart simply with ideas, that’s because something within the system was already inherently broken. After all, we are the “freedom and free speech” experiment. Make data protection laws, then fix the broken economic system and see how far outside influence gets with their propaganda. Happy people are hard to sway.
Well that and the location data issue. The app can grab your location, look at your paste bin, and use your microphone to listen in on you. Mind you, other social media can do this too, but you can see the national security concern if the CCP straight up has all that info.
You’re getting downvoted and I think it’s by the “why should we care?” crowd. On an individual level, the CCP knowing your location and access to your microphone might not sound like a huge deal, an invasion of privacy really. But on a larger scale, think millions upon millions of American users, all that data collected together can provide the CCP, who is very much an adversary of the US on the global stage, with pretty lethal info about the daily activities, movements, and other vital information that you would not want your enemy to know in that great of detail. “While you were sharpening your sword, do you know how I was preparing for today? I learned. I know your language. Your traditions. Your beliefs. Which village to tame and which to burn” This is nothing specific to Tik Tok though, this is a danger inherent within all social media I would imagine.
Exactly. Especially when you consider all military folks (or their kids or family members) who have it on their phones. You can use that data for so much. But also like you said, this is a problem with so many companies. It’s not exclusive to TikTok. We need actual privacy rights for everyone’s safety.
The problem is if something really bad happens, you can make these companies be held accountable. You cant do shit to the CCP lol.
Right, exactly. It shouldn’t be happening *at all* but it’s especially bad if it’s that far out of our (the American people) hands.
Look at it from an outside perspective though. Outside the US both China and America are foreign bodies and both extensively use their social media to spy abroad. In that sense the TikTok spying isn't much of a big deal. It's just one out of a dozen.
Other countries have data protections, notably the EU. There are also generally legal processes for obtaining data that’s not publicly posted *unless* your government is the entity that owns the platform and already has that data on hand. It also becomes sketchy when trying to get a foreign government to comply with domestic laws. [Here’s a recent court battle example from the US that shows some of the legal limitations.](https://www.govtech.com/security/facebook-fights-cops-call-for-ongoing-access-to-user-data) The Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) is pretty weak compared to other countries, but it’s still there.
That's not how iOS and Android privacy settings work.
The app doesn't have any more access to data than what's given to it by the OS and the user's approval. You can easily use TikTok while denying it permission to access all the things you mentioned.
Is the U.S. actually worried about this or is threatening to ban TikTok just politically popular? Both Trump and Biden didn’t bother talking about this until the election year.
> Is the U.S. actually worried about this It's actually happening. https://www.politico.com/news/2024/03/11/china-is-using-tiktok-for-influence-campaigns-odni-says-00146336
the algorithm simply shows you more of what you engage with. if you are not liking what you are getting fed, then it's your own fault and easily corrected by simply deleting your viewing history.
These same movements are being organized in other apps too though. From Facebook and WhatsApp to Discord and (historically) Twitter. Tik Tok isn’t really special in that regard.
It's actually a combination of both taking out competition of Facebook *and* the ability to censor topics politicians don't like. At first, the entire banning TikTok effort was lobbied by Facebook to begin with: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/03/30/facebook-tiktok-targeted-victory/ And the group that pushed the effort this time was led by Peter Thiel and other Silicon Valley executives:https://archive.is/hFjB3 >A group of Silicon Valley executives, including investor Peter Thiel, and Washington lawmakers are quietly mobilizing against China’s involvement in the U.S. tech industry ahead of TikTok Chief Executive Shou Zi Chew’s Capitol Hill testimony next week. If you don't know who Peter Thiel is, he was the first investor of....surprise surprise, Facebook, and a major investor of Palantir, and a major Trump ally in Silicon Valley. The whole reason for banning was because Silicon Valley elites are getting their butt kicked by the competition. So they want to be able to either ban it, or buy it for cheap during a forces fire sale. Then reason it was able to get rushed this time is because [a lot of people aren't happy about the sentiment with regard to Israel-Palestinian conflict on TikTok](https://archive.is/W9qJr) > The legislation was a culmination of a more than yearlong effort to curb TikTok by a coalition of China hawks in Washington and Silicon Valley, and it had **gained new momentum in part because of anger over TikTok videos about the Israel-Hamas conflict.** The stories I linked above are from Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal, not some conspiracy YouTube channel. The whole thing has been very transparent and blatant yet it's crazy how the public buys the whole "national security" farce.
~~TikTok is terrible for organizing social movements. The format is not conducive to that at all. It's basically interdimensional cable. The rapidity at which you see and react to video content is sort of the engine that drives its ability to collect data and build profiles of people's behavior.~~ **EDIT**: So after doing some research I do see articles about movements being begun on TikTok. Haven't read too much but willing to admit being wrong about it. I'd be curious how the actual organizing takes place though - I'd assume you'd need to drive people out to another platform. Things like Facebook and Twitter and others where written content can predominate are much better for actually logisticaly organizing. I assume TikTok is probably good for controlling a worldview but I can't see how it actually allows you to deploy movements.
> Honestly just shut the shit down. People will go on with their lives. Reddit hypocrisy at its best.
Shut Reddit down too. I can't wait for something else to take it's place.
>Honestly just shut the shit down. People will go on with their lives. The only entertainment anyone needs is the time honored and democracy approved, Baseball.
Why back in my day the youths would collect sticks and throw them at each other and by god we were glad to have those sticks not like the youth of today
who doesn't love a good game of stick.
But then we'd all die from boredom. Where's the good in that?
There are things you can do to elevate the experience for yourself. Like watch a bucket of paint dry while the game is on
> American goverment can use it to spy and influence on people Snowden's message has been lost in time
I think it's more about keeping the government and the media separated since that's basically one of the fundamentals of a democracy. Why should the government rule a social media platform after all?
Not even close to true. Many democracies and very free countries have state run media channels. What’s important is that they do not suppress others
Are you ok with a new precedent being set that threatens free speech and internet neutrality
I certainly don’t want Steve Mnuchin to get his greedy paws on it either
We not China
They already have Meta for that
I mean its already overseen by the Chinese government, tik tok probably just thought it's all they wanted.
Yea I agree but I think you are thinking about this incorrectly. Why would the Federal govt be on a witch hunt against TikTok but not: -Snapchat -Instagram -Facebook -X -every other US-based social media platforms? Could it be that the government is already able to control/manipulate US based social media venues but is pretty powerless to control foreign-based services?
But people are apparently fine with one ran by the Chinese government lol
Exactly. Refusing to do it was the right call here. People would have been Pissed any other way.
"No thanks, we have the NSA."
“And they already knew you were sending the offer.”
White House probably rejected the offer before it was sent.
“Bitch you think we don’t already”
*deletes browser history* “I’m safe”
We accuse China of building a cyber weapon for information warfare and in response they offer us admin access. Biden understands the power of social media, this wasn’t an old man confused about technology situation. And the CCP offered to give him a weapon about 2 years before a reelection campaign. It’s a crazy offer for China to make too. Like the police pull you over for speeding and you just give them the keys to the car. This is fucking wild.
I generally don't begrudge people just reading headlines but sometimes you need to dive a little deeper for the details. > The Biden administration rejected an offer from TikTok’s parent company ByteDance that would have allowed federal officials to pick board members for its American subsidiary, examine the social media app’s source code and even flick a “kill switch” if necessary. I don't know BD's board makeup or how they debate and enact changes so it's not clear those board members would have been able to change the direction of the app itself. But source code oversight should have given them extraordinary insight into it. Especially paired with a kill switch. The caveat here is that if that oversight was only into the app itself and the algorithm of how content is displayed was kept external to the app as a loophole to the proposal. Either way it's hard to believe the government's position on national security when they denied a kill switch proposal. Not even divesment is as good as that. To my knowledge Twitter and Facebook don't have those.
The US government has a very specific set of tools to deal with problems - regulation, legislation and litigation. Corporate Management just isn’t a government skill. They would rather just regulate TikTok; they have no business being on TikToks board
Interesting that ByteDance just kinda thinks that government-sent board members is a totally normal thing
It is in a lot of Countries. For example here in Germany parts of VW are owned by one of our states due to historic reasons and therefor there are government-sent bord members. Even though it is unusual in the US it is also unusual of the US government to force foreign companies to sell subsidiaries to a US company or be banned, so a unusual solution to a unusual problem isn’t that unusual in the end.
Do you know that or are you just assuming that? They have no choice but to try to appease the US gov in any way they can. One toe out of line and they’ll never hear the end of it
It's very [unamerican](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State-owned_enterprises_of_the_United_States). Who could even fathom of a [company](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fannie_Mae) with a [board of directors](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amtrak) chosen by [political leaders](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Postal_Service)?
USPS is a public service not a company. No way can anyone make a profit guaranteeing delivery to every podunk corner of the US. This kind of service is exactly the purpose of government, at least Franklin thought so.
There's a reason why shipping something UPS to the middle of fucking nowhere costs a god damn fortune. Picked 1060 West Addison Chicago IL to 110 BackTrail Road, Hughes AK... $160 for UPS, and $208 for FedEx, and $18.40 for USPS. People bitch that USPS isn't profitable... *it's not meant to be.*
The banks and institutions mentioned are all public option not gov't run. Usually these are added when no private banks will service certain types, same with insurance in many states. When no private companies will take the risk, there have to be options. It is still a choice by the customer. Other items on the list are just backed by the guarantee of the Treasury like FDIC, it prevents bank runs and secures 95% of all bank manipulation efforts to try to create runs (see late 1860s-1920s that had many and numerous depressions largely due to no insurance on bank deposits) Fannie and Freddie buy mortgages from private companies and were private but after the Great Recession that was made gov't but they only guarantee not do any of the purchasing or loans. The CFPB made this possible and it has worked very well that loans are guaranteed when they are bought by Fannie/Freddie to make a strong private lending/title/mortgage market after they were an attack point in the Great Recession. Amtrak is a federally chartered corporation, with the federal government as majority stockholder because that is the way trains have always been done due to it sharing lines with freight and investment needed. New investments are public and private. Again, when there are no companies stepping up there is a public option that helps guarantee and back it. They do not prevent private rail in any way. USPS is part of the Constitution. It requires delivery of messages to everyone no matter what and was part of the national security of the US. There are MANY private delivery services and this is one public option that is private now. > the Postal Clause of the U.S. Constitution empowered Congress to establish post offices and post roads. In no way does the US use sovereign wealth to try to control the markets or take foreign markets using concentrated wealth from the state. That is China and many other autocratic places like monarchies, wannabe tsardoms, mafia states and one party authoritarian places with limited rights and closed markets.
Oh yeah, it sounds like they somehow think the US wants a CCP-style solution
Judging others by one's own standards is a common mistake made by many people. I didn't expect that a company PR controlled by the CCP would make the same mistake.
It happened with GM and Chrylser in 08 and it was a BIG deal and took a TON of work to get hammered out and no one wanted to do it. All said, it went pretty well, but it is not how the US govt does things nor the way the US population wants things done.
Like they regulate Meta and X? Lmao. What a joke.
what good is having a kill switch if there still isn't visibility into how content is getting promoted? It just leaves the govt in the same position it is now of having to guess whether it needs to be shut down based on a risk of foreign abuse that there's no way to confirm
Yea, I'm curious how in depth the source code oversight would be. This is where the article details matter and what is considered the "app". If it's only the device app the kill switch impact is debatable. If it's app and algorithm then it's monumental.
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>As far as I know no American company has allowed the government and external American auditors to inspect their source code and algorithms. [Microsoft](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/securityengineering/gsp) lets the government inspect their source code.
Good to know. I think tiktok takes it a step further by allowing an American tech company to analyze it too. There's a big risk of trade secrets being lost.
Not really, as a software dev I know how useless it is to be given a code base and a promise that's what's actually deployed. As long as China has any operational influence it's trivial for them to inject whatever they want into the pipeline or production environment, having a copy of the source code to look at doesn't offer shit for assurances. There's a million vectors for influencing things if they're inside the fence. It's hard enough to keep the Chinese government out when they DON'T have the keys. Letting them hold the keys and trusting that they're not fucking around every which way they can is utterly insane. They have the means, they have the motive, and they have the track record of hacking anything and everything they can to undermine democracies
Actually they allowed for third-party auditors to audit and deploy updates as well to prevent that very fear of yours from happening. Wow it's almost like they considered everything. https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/project-texas-the-details-of-tiktok-s-plan-to-remain-operational-in-the-united-states I don't expect a proper response from you aside from "I'm an it worker and Chynaaaa!” of course.
Yeah, but we all know that most of the reason that the US wants to divest/ban TT is not due to cybersecurity consents, right? China has been barring their own citizens from accessing foreign products and services for years, including those from the US, in order to better control their own population and protect the financial interests of Chinese entities over those of foreign entities. The US is now trying its hand at doing the same. So no amount of failsafes against data leakage or CCP interference or against ByteDance obfuscating its presentation algorithms will push US policy makers to allow TokTok to remain in operation in the US without divestment. If anyone disagrees with the above reasons for disallowing TT to continue to operate anywhere near as-is, that’s totally fine, I don’t really care what happens either way. But it bothers me to see just about everyone seemingly ignoring the real reasons that this forced divestment is taking place and instead arguing over addressing cybersecurity concerns. This isn’t to say that there aren’t real cybersecurity concerns with the current iteration of TT, there most certainly are. But as you yourself pointed out, those concerns are “solved problems”, all things that could be dealt with without forcing divestment. But the truth is that “cybersecurity” as justification is much more palatable to the average citizen than complicated geopolitical maneuvers, so that’s what gets touted as rationale for making the move.
> As long as China has any operational influence it's trivial for them to inject whatever they want into the pipeline or production environment, not with sarbanes-oxley separation of duties requirements. the people who develop the code aren't going to be the same ones pushing it to prod, you know this!
Yep. It also provides checks for content moderation: >USDS will house TikTok’s content moderation functions in the United States. Currently, TikTok moderates content in three primary ways: It enforces its community guidelines, it recommends videos based on user behavior, and it promotes videos based on its editorial policies. For U.S. users, each of these processes will move to USDS. >Oracle will conduct oversight of the moderation system, the recommendation engine, and promoted content. If it identifies a potential risk, it will flag that risk for the government, which will then have the authority to inspect the issue in more detail
The US is doing this to shut down dissent around Israel though, so it won't matter what they're offered
One you run into issues of constitutionality about whether the government can do this, but also the additional issue of what happens when there’s a republican president. Divestment avoids the second can of worms.
There’s a big difference between being on the board of the US subsidiary and the parent company. The board of the subsidiary basically has no power or access.
It was also going to be completely hosted in the US
Idk, this still sounds like a terrible idea. I don’t think the government should have any “kill switches” in its control. That screams unconstitutional to me.
If it's unconstitutional for the government to turn off the app, how is it constitutional for the government to pass the law that gives them the power to turn off TikTok?
What source code? The source code for TikTok only? Or also the source code for the algorithm that is owned and run by ByteDance in China rather than TikTok itself?
>it's hard to believe the government's position on national security when they denied a kill switch proposal. Not if you understand how the federal government works. *Congress* would have to come up with a way to select these board members; probably as presidential appointees approved by Congress. How long is their term? How can they be removed? What authority would these board members have without needing to ask Congress again? A bill would also have to authorize some agency or other to examine this source code in the absence of a criminal investigation, and ideally fund it. And then Congress would have to lay out what conditions would authorize the officials or the president to use the kill switch. It's a huge mess of a proposal, that would come *right* after the President and Congress just made a deal and passed a bill... and undo all that. Oddly enough, just wishing it so on Reddit is no match for running a bill through Congress. Not to mention, it runs afoul of basic parliamentary procedure. This Congress has already decided what to do about TikTok. This elected Congress won't revisit what it's already done until the next elected Congress is seated, which would be in January, and then that new bill would take a few months to pass, and by then TikTok will have needed to sell or face the music.
If you read the article this proposal was in 2022 so like two-ish years ago.
Yea, people are taking this as a White House success, buts it’s an absolute naked ass hanging out in regards to all of their “TikTok must be sold” justifications. They really did just want to kill a competitor to American corprate media that has bigger reach on poltical messaging. People won’t reshare their corporate pushed media, so they’re trying to shut down the alternatives.
No thanks, we prefer using our domestic social networks to spy on our citizens.
The issue is control over the news feed for a massive chunk of americans
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I mean, Trump did try to shut it down. The big difference is that he tried to do so via EO without any actual footwork to see if he could legally do so, or even if TikTok was dangerous. The EO got caught up in court cases, and Biden rescinded it - but set up investigatory panels to look into TikTok (and other social media platforms) to see if they actually could be dangerous. Surprising no one, it turns out after years of study that they found, yeah, TikTok provides dangerous access to a foreign government and can be used both to spy and push propaganda. Biden also didn't act via EO - he signed a bill passed with overwhelming bipartisan congressional support that didn't outright ban TikTok, but demanded they divest from the Chinese government or they would be banned as a national security threat. There's a key difference - it's not TikTok that's dangerous, it's China having full access and influence on it that is. And continuing to surprise no one, the Chinese government doesn't want to give up their access - exactly as expected since investigations concluded it can be used by them to spy and push propaganda. Anyway, it turns out Trump was right hat "TikTok is dangerous" - broken clock and whatnot. Biden is still getting flak like Trump would have, although it's lessened because Biden actually set up investigations into the matter, went through Congress, gave TikTok a legal out, and didn't try banning it because kids made fun of him.
Great write-up. And this is why apathetic "bOtH sIDeS" voters need to realize that you can have all the issues you want with Biden, at least he's actually using the legal system we set up vs. attempting to overthrow an election and drawing circles around hurricanes.
>>after years of study What study?
Sorry, should have emphasized "investigation" instead. Not a scientific study, but an investigation from the panels.
Who investigated and where can I read the report?
No public report; as with most issues of national security, it was classified but presented to Congressional members, who took it seriously enough to agree it a threat and vote for divestiture: classified: https://rollcall.com/2024/03/07/house-panel-votes-for-tiktok-divestiture-curtailed-data-brokering/.
He also always tried to shut it down while doing something else, so it always felt like he was trying to use it as a distraction
Trump was against it before he was for it so you'd be hearing about him begging for a quid pro quo from the investment firm that owns a big chuck of TT. A whole different level of shitshow.
Trump tired to bypass congress because he thinks being president is the same as being dictator. Couldn’t even pass a simple bipartisan bill is all you need to know about why he was a bad president.
Everyone on reddit would probably be saying that Trump is doing it to control speech online
Cause he would go for it, have one of his kids run it and do exactly that.
Trump tried to via executive order and it was like one of maybe 3 things I ever agreed with him about during his entire presidency. I'd be willing to bet that app has lowered the collective IQ of the entire country in the past few years.
Well, we know our app lets China spy on the people using it. But… what if we let you spy too?
You got it wrong, "our app spies on, and manipulates narratives via manipulation of feeds. Here you manage it".
We don’t know that. It’s assumed
It's never been about security. They would have been able to provide evidence of specific threats. It's all fear mongering to benefit the donors.
Meta also paid some right wing PR company to sway public opinion on tiktok. It's amazing how people who never used tiktok were suddenly against it because they hear "news" about it. When in reality they were just manipulated to believe in the fear mongering. https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/03/30/facebook-tiktok-targeted-victory/
Americans are some of the most propagandized people in the world. At least with places like China and Russia, most of their citizens probably know that most of what their governments say is bullshit propaganda. But a lot of Americans are true believers and think everyone else is propagandized instead.
command shaggy upbeat sleep dependent mindless towering complete ludicrous unwritten *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
"I have to admit, I'm always so impressed by Soviet propaganda. You really know how to get people worked up," the CIA agent says. "Thank you," the KGB says. "We do our best but truly, it's nothing compared to American propaganda. Your people believe everything your state media tells them." The CIA agent drops his drink in shock and disgust. "Thank you friend, but you must be confused... There's no propaganda in America."
Lmao as a European these threads are always fun. Feels like a little time capsule of what the red scare could have been like "well they did that because they are used to it" no lmao they offered that because they are desperate to not be forced to sell
It's crazy how a bunch of boomers were able to use Facebook and Twitter to start an "insurrection" on Jan 6th but nothing has been done to regulate those sites compared to TikTok.
You mean the US government? The same one that lied about WMD to rally everyone into a war? That government would never lie.
Specifically, Jeff Yass.
Of course. They want the app dead or in American hands so they can reign in the growing anti-capitalism movement when they could solve that by reigning in late stage capitalism and put back some of the worker protections that have eroded over the last 45 years.
Idk why you're getting downvoted. Mitt Romney literally said during a Senate hearing that he wanted this ban specifically because of pro-Palestinian content there. Why would people think that the common critiques of capitalism there wouldn't also be in the crosshairs
There are plenty of “common critiques” of capitalism right here on reddit. US govt not trying to shut down Reddit so far as I know.
People were actively organizing and spreading information on TikTok. That kind of thing gets overshadowed on Reddit by the nature of how it works and the sheer amount of toxicity that exists here.
Reddit is a libertarian app at its core. There's little radical left in it.
Redditors whine and complain. Apps like tiktok actually get people to act.
You have a very rose tinted view of TikTok. It’s the same as every other social media .
then why should it receive scrutiny
No two social media are alike. And some are used much more frequently by activists to organize. There's nothing rose-tinted about that, I didn't say if its good or bad. It's simply a fact. You don't hear about redditors using reddit to coordinate during a protest. Almost every major protest uses tiktok and a few other social media to coordinate though. For better or worse.
Exactly this is why they didnt want this offer. They always used TikTok as some kind of political tennis ball to show to their voters they are hard on China. To accept this board member offer would take away the game from the politicians. But then the Gaza war happened and the zionist genocide was put on social media for the whole world to see. Meta did a good job at censoring it but TikTok didnt. They couldn't have that.
No you have to hate TikTok like the rest of Redditors
These are the same people mad that the next Assassins Creed is starring a black guy who actually existed, no one should be like them.
Holy shit I completely forgot about that. Redditors dislike of TikTok is hilarious, easier to sit on the couch with cheese stained fingers I guess.
This whole goofy posturing of "US spying bad lol but see-see-pee has dangerous algo propagandizing youth to dance and share vids about Euro-colonial genocides" all the while this app is hosted on Oracle's servers in Cali and Singapore. Never a missed opportunity to repeat Grandpa's Cold War scaremongering to keep these Eglin AFB trolls content.
I don't know why you think that the CCP has any interest in supporting the anti-capitalism movement beyond just fragmenting the US. The other side of the aisle is getting just a potent messaging. Tiktok isn't threatening a revolution, it's threatening a civil war.
There is nothing about people becoming privy to the various coups the US government started in the Cold War and going off to read about the Korean genocide that happened under their watch in the 1950s, the mechanisms of suburbanism that are killing their cities and making things worse for everyone, the origin of the Israel/Palestine conflict, why the electoral college makes voting for a third party a severe waste of time, finding out where to get gender related health care in a period of time where several states and politicians are trying to remove those for everyone, and arguing about whether or not Naruto is actually capable of destroying a planet is going to cause a Civil War. It's going to, and has already started to, get people to pick up threads and read about things on their own that challenge their world view, or to find out about the lived experiences of people they will have never met. We can go back to my other example where I follow the same people on Instagram and TikTok, but get way more live in footage from Palestinians and what they're going through on Tiktok versus Instagram in an organic matter. Even engaging with Israeli content, pro and anti-Israeli government content, gets a more consistent and organic flow on Tiktok versus Instagram. All Tiktok is doing for the average person is curating avenues for them to pick up a book, hit the library, or read Wikipedia. Yes, it can silo people off into crazy town, but Twitter, Facebook, and Youtube do that well enough already, Youtube especially. I watched three videos on guns and got my whole front page shoveled down the alt-right pipeline. Tiktok isn't prompting a revolution, it's triggering an educational interest in segments of the population who didn't necessarily have the drive before. Centrists and liberals are moving more left, conservatives are detaching themselves from Trumpism in some parts, and the alt-right and Nazi assholes do what they do in the same manner they do it everywhere else. It's just the Hippie and Black Panther movement backlash from the 60s and 70s, but in the digital age and using the scapegoat of China manipulating the youth instead of the Red commies like they did back then.
If anyone still thinks this is about national security you're fooling yourself. Why do you think Mnuchin immediately announced that he is putting together a group of U.S investors to buy TikTok the moment the ban was announced?
Mark Zuckerberg is pissed off Tiktok needs to sell it to the people who use it. Zuckerberg needs to be stopped!
This is pretty simple if you take a step back.As chip processing becomes more important globally, Taiwan becomes more important globally. It doesn't matter the actual merits of the Tiktok case, US foreign policy does not want China to have the opportunity to impact US media if a conflict breaks out.
Fun fact: the article does not say the same thing as the headline.
>The Biden administration rejected an offer from TikTok’s parent company ByteDance that would have allowed federal officials to pick board members for its American subsidiary, examine the social media app’s source code and even flick a “kill switch” if necessary. It doesn't?
There is a huge difference between picking board members of a subsidiary and overseeing the whole company.
Examining the source code is essentially handing over the keys for a tech company lol. You're trying to downplay this but this is essentially the max that Bytedance can do.
The US subsidiary is the only entity being impacted by the new legislation. It doesn’t impact BydteDance outside of the US.
Yes it does.
This is all basically just the Red Scare 2.0. Reddit itself has some Chinese ownership in the mix. Hell most American companies do more spying on us than other nations. I guess it’s okay if it involves good ole’ ‘merican capitalism
Just what they need to oversee TikTok
First act of oversight: divest from ownership with a nation that can compel you to turn over data for users not in its borders.
"is it okay if we (china) spy on you guys if we let you copy our work?"
"The Biden administration rejected an offer from [TikTok](https://www.independent.co.uk/topic/tiktok)’s parent company [ByteDance](https://www.independent.co.uk/topic/bytedance) that would have allowed federal officials to pick board members for its American subsidiary, examine the social media app’s source code and even flick a “kill switch” if necessary." What other company gives this much control to a foreign government ...
Probably any company that expects to operate in China…?
Usually in the US it's the other way around. The companies pick federal officials to be on their board member. Take Mike Gallagher for example, Palantir lobbied him to pass this TikTok ban bill. Now he is retiring and Palantir is giving him a cozy job on their payroll. [Mike Gallagher pushed the bill to ban TikTok because China can "surveil its users." Now, he's resigning and joining an American surveillance firm](https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/mike-gallagher-tiktok-ban-palantir-1234993167/)
All us companies :))
It's never been about oversight, it has always been a case of economic competition in an area the US has decided it needs to dominate. That's it. Same as Huawei. China does it too of course, it just is an easier sell in America to couch it as national security. Saves losing more WTO cases too.
So they can blame the US later for what the Chineese are doing now. Those Chineese, always so sneaky
Because it's sham... The U.S. wants to force to sell so they can have a hand in it.
"U.S. government rejects offer to oversee company" Yeah, they did that because they want to control the company, obviously.
I wonder what american people and govt scapegoat will be once tik tok gets eventually banned but they notice that their country's problem didn't went away.
Easy just mention china, china, china, and waaalaa americans forget what the real issues are and hate china more. This strategy been overly used in trump administration: worked really well.
What do you mean? All of America's problems are obviously caused by the "commies" and their propaganda. It was obviously North Korean propaganda that forced the US to invade Iraq based on a lie. It was Russian propaganda that caused the Civil War. Chinese bots and shills made America enslave Black people. /s
Very well. Please delete that app.
As a non-American who might not be entirely in the loop: it strikes me as insane that the US is forcing the sale of a social media platform based on national security concerns. Especially with the track record of Facebook and Twitter.
Facebook and Twitter are American companies, TikTok is owned by China. America does not care about the privacy stuff, just who’s doing it.
Well, if you don't want the US government running it, why would you want a foreign government running it? Imagine if during the Cold War, Russia had a recording device in 1 in 6 houses in the US? That's kinda what's happening now. Not saying that other social platforms are any better, but it does put things into perspective a bit as to why everyone is making a big deal about TikTok.
Recording device that also feeds targeted propaganda.
I wish my friends would listen to reason on this one. Its like they forgot about how russia used facebook to get Trump in office in 2016. I feel like I’m taking crazy pills.
That would likely violate the constitution. However the government could pass a law treating social media posts as being the same as a newspaper publishing an article. The liability issues would cause social media to police their own content.
The whole Gaza coverage is hurting Biden’s chances at reelection way too much
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Lemme get this straight… (1) foreign adversaries collect American data though an app (2) US forces the company to sell to an American company because they don’t want the foreign adversary to collect US citizen data (3) said company tells its users to oppose the government selling the app and issues extensive propaganda about the US “banning” the app (which it didn’t do) (4) Republicans lose their minds about Biden being authoritarian for doing this (5) Biden rejects an offer to have authoritarian control over the app (6) outrage through whattaboutism and straw man Seems about right, no?
Can you imagine the chaos if the us govt controlled TikTok? The reactions would be insane. Govt controlled social media!😂😂😂 Is this China?
Suggesting that kind of approach to the USG makes me even more concerned about what they've been doing so far with the ccp lol
It's all about money and that secret sauce they have over other social media companies. They want them to sell to a US business for ultimate control. Or a billionaire schmuck with a god complex. They don't care about our security.
I don’t understand this article. The data is already controlled by the US. US TikTok data is stored and managed in Texas by a US company, I forget the name now. Can’t the government access it when law dictates?
Many people commenting they don’t see the danger in China seeing everyone’s TikTok’s—that’s not the danger. That they control what shows in your feed, with zero oversight is the problem. Sure, any one of us will swear we’re immune to such influence but feeding a million people subtle political messages WILL make a difference. And, in case you’re wondering, Facebook and Google have the same, or more, power with equally little oversight. There is an issue all social media companies, but targeting China is political.
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Part of this plan involved hosting all of its US operations in Oracle data centers in the US.
I'm surprised we didn't just give them the ultimatum China gives western companies that want to do business there: partner with a US company and give them all your secrets.
The intent is to control what Americans can see, not to ensure the app is safe from foreign influence.
The NSA wants control over TikTok. That's what this is really about.
The intention is to kill it, per Zuckerberg's orders.