The US government's entire beef with TikTok is they believe it's spying on Americans for the sake of the Chinese government, as opposed to American social media companies who spy on Americans for the sake of local, state, and federal law enforcement and various intelligence agencies and literally anyone else who is willing to pay for that data.
Which is why they want TikTok sold to an American company willing to hand that data over to them instead of instituting actual privacy regulations.
@gwynnion I think what is implied in the word "spying" is the real issue.
As we keep finding, Russia is constantly experimenting with ways to hack our society and sow further divisions. China is doing the same, but they're staying out of the headlines for now.
Giving Russia or China a free laboratory to experiment on how to push the buttons in American society to amplify chaos and distrust is not something we should give them. Sure, they would find other ways to experiment and fine tune their operations, but we don't have to make it easy for them.
What about the other platforms owned by careless billionaires who may have foreign sympathies and secret alliances? Yeah, those are problematic too. Maybe action on TikTok opens the door to enacting long overdue regulation of our new media environs.
@sysop408@gwynnion If that was the real issue why not do something about the known Russian interference through Facebook and other social media? Just making a ban on a specific company that will almost certainly be overturned in the courts not only is ineffective but by kicking the can down the road actually delays the implementation of anything that is likely to solve any real problem with interference in our politics.
@wormrunner that'd be great. We could use some renewed regulation of our "airwaves" and if this is a first step toward getting there, I'm all for it.
Is the ban somewhat racist? Yup. You can see from my profile pic that I might be a bit more sensitive to that aspect than most people, but is it without merit? I don't believe so.
China is on course to dictate the order of the world sometime in the next century. I don't think that's going to be a positive thing for humanity. Whatever misgivings I have of my own government, the limited experiences I've had with the government of China make me not want to find out what that day might be like.
@sysop408@gwynnion Why would PRC need Tiktok when they can just buy the data from data brokers? Data which apparently NSA are not allowed to have lol. I only see a tiny bit of Tiktok but its far cleaner than any other social media. I see far more psyops here. Who are they spying on? Tiktok is ads and gen z memes. I just don't understand what the issue is. But not an expert, would like someone better versed to show their work. It's a clown show afaict.
@nf3xn the data isn't the point and psyops are going to exist no matter what.
The issue is that you don't want to give the people doing the psyops an easy way to perform A/B sentiment testing on their target population.
The damage from Cambridge Analytica wasn't so much that they were able to test messages like "your elections are rigged." The damage was that they were able to leverage Facebook to identify personality traits that would make someone much more likely to respond to certain messaging.
It doesn't take a genius to say that liking country music makes one more likely to be conservative and respond to anti-liberal messaging. Cambridge Analytica made it easier to identify people who'd fall in the cracks who were stereotype adjacent that could be targeted.
Data... they will get all the data they want no matter how hard we try to stop that. What we don't want to make easy is the ability to use the data in feedback loops to fine tune how they use that data.
@sysop408@nf3xn@gwynnion there is something up that such a ban would sail through with little opposition, something we wouldn’t see outside a SCIF. That being said, it’s a very bad look because “trust us we are the government” expired in 2017: the doors were publicly thrown open to foreign influence because large chunks of the government thought they had more to gain by letting it happen than by doing their duty
@flyingsaceur the way this came down is partially what rattles me about TikTok. There’s something we don’t know.
Also, I agree that “trust us, we’re the government” isn’t a good look, but it’s a much better look than “trust us, we’re the Chinese government.”
I’ve worked on Web projects served into China. I’m scarred by the limited exposure I’ve had to what goes on there. Giving China more access than it needs is not OK.
@sysop408@nf3xn@gwynnion having dealt with the Great Firewall and the accommodations vendors make, i see the asymmetry and i have an online gof where you’re coming from and i agree with you. There’s some
dossier that a legislator reads and they Get It. That’s one known unknown, but i can at least take
solace that they’re taking it seriously
There was also an influence campaign by a certain other foreign power that was downplayed and buried and probably succeeded, and the response appears to be to try to clean up the mess without acknowledging the existence of the mess. Was it because one major political party stood to gain a lot by just letting it happen, and they’re now hedging their bets if it works again? The reason for inaction, or at least giving the appearance of inaction, is a much bigger unknown and problems that are allowed to fester keep me up at night more than ones that are being handled
@nf3xn@sysop408@gwynnion the PRC building a social media platform and then making it popular in the us in order to try to control us access to anti Chinese news stories and therefore take over the world is the most insane movie plot I've heard this century.
@failedLyndonLaRouchite I don't think we need to get into conspiracy theories about that. Tesla's are facing some serious headwinds in China as is.
Supposedly China considers Tesla's to be a security risk, but it may simply be gamesmanship because we've slapped large tariff's on China largest EV maker, BYD.
BYD is also now the largest EV manufacturer in the world and they're able to make solid models at very competitive prices. The reason why we're not seeing BYD's in the US except for industrial fleet vehicles is because they're not price competitive after the tariffs.
Also, there already are tariffs on Tesla's to the Chinese market.
Virtually nobody in the US government gives a shit about privacy or safety, even of minors. It's all about American entities controlling and sharing access to what they consider lucrative data.
There has never been any evidence that TikTok collects more data than any other social media network. If it's spying on people then literally so are Twitter and Facebook, which begs for the broader application of online privacy protections.
But it is another example of Biden endorsing something that was first proposed by Trump -- even though he was acting out of both obvious anti-China hysteria and a desire to have his right-wing buddies buy out a lucrative brand for their own benefit.
@gwynnion I really hate how the US constantly makes excuses for putting Chinese companies at a disadvantage simply to push their own companies! 😡 It's pure racism! Also, it's so hypocritical as they keep talking about how great a free market economy is!
That's not the entire beef. There is also the propaganda / influence aspect that you glossed over. Was that an intentional omission?
> The problem with TikTok is that a large number of Americans use it, and China may have the ability to direct misinformation through it, as well as collect data from it, said Plumb.
> There has never been any evidence that TikTok collects more data than any other social media network.
You seem to be misinformed about this app. There is, in fact, some evidence that TikTok uses techniques that maximize the amount of information collected.
> In aggregate, TikTok’s data collection is more intrusive than other apps.
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