I am against the US spying on its citizens. With that said, the US's ban on Tiktok is not a moral one. It's purely a competitive one. Why would we want our competitors to obtain more information on us?
I am curious why. A foreign government has almost no power over you. They cannot put you under surveillance, lock you up, or put you on naughty lists that mean anything. Your own government, domestic data brokers, and other corporate entities can have more direct control over your fate.
There’s no way you’re “curious” here. A foreign adversary now has real-time data about the inter working of the U.S. population down the the individual level for tens of millions of people. This is a treasure trove of intelligence gathering so don’t play coy or devils advocate.
Not defending TikTok but there’s a wealth of public real time data from not just the US, but the entire world, some public api calls or scraping scripts away. Tiktok isn’t any more invasive than any other social media post, many of which are public and anyone in any country who wants to use the data can do so easily.
What trove of intelligence is being gathered by self obsessed videos of people mouthing a clip of some song or inspirational talk while begging for attention in the form of likes and follows?
I haven’t seen any sign of intelligence on TikTok that they even could gather lol, and if anything the app’s purpose isn’t to spy on us, it’s to make us dumb, inattentive, mindless consumers who all fight over everything and can’t compromise or work together.
My dad literally comes home from his job and scrolls TikToks of increasingly radical political rants and half naked chicks before inevitably passing out in his chair, phone in hand, mouth open, and whatever TikTok was on screen when he fell asleep playing on loop until he jerks awake or the phone dies. He’s not unique. So much of people’s lives are wasted on social media and it does them no positive
> A foreign government has almost no power over you.
1. For now
2. ...unless you have family abroad, particularly in China
3. ...also assuming you don't need to travel to said country (now / in the future)
I'm more worried what a foreign government would do with the private information of every US citizen, as opposed to what a domestic company would do. I'm still worried in both cases, but one of these situations seems much worse to me.
Whenever I see politicians screaming about TikTok, it reminds me of the South Park Underpants Gnome business model.
1. Build platform teens love
2. ???
3. Compromise national security.
Fundamentally, the product isn't an effective way to get into secure spaces. Its core audience does not generally have direct access to those spaces, and if they did, that feels like an institutional security breakdown that they allowed any personal devices or software there.
At this point, War Thunder and Discord have both proven to deliver more high-secrecy documents than TikTok has, yet nobody's demanding widespread bans.
"Ooh, but it will spread propaganda or filter things in a way Beijing likes." And if that happens, the audience moves on. Haven't we noticed that social platforms are hyper-fickle, especially for ones targeted towards a youth and entertainment market? How many "look at China's awesome high-speed rail" videos can you slip into the feed before the kids say "screw this, I'm moving to this new platform which pioneered the Drink An Entire Litre of Bleach challenge"? They actually built a very non-sticky platform compared to Facebook (which will persist for decades because people need to talk to Aunt Bertha who never learned any other platform) or YouTube (which has long-form content of value even if the firehose of new content starts winding down)
It all just reeks of sour grapes. We were perfectly happy with China when they were a passive trading partner, a convenient "elsewhere" to offshore all that pesky polluting manufacturing to. But when they start to represent a real economic and political counterweight, producing a high-margin and culturally relevant product that's outcompeting our own offerings, we immediately start rattling sabres. I figure it's the same spiel as with Huawei and ZTE; if domestic products had been compelling enough to win on their own merits, there would be no meaningful market penetration and we'd never even be discussing a ban in the first place.
I wonder if the Vine people feel vindicated now, it feels like they could have been TikTok 10 years ago.
The issue isn't about propaganda itself, and more that it's hard for anyone to keep up with a fickle audience.
Even a "pure entertainment" product that doesn't need to do any particular ideological heavy lifting has a hard time. If you're taping an episode of a sitcom today, the language you use might have passed to "cringy" by the time it airs, and the trend you used as a plot device might have fizzled.
Social media's ability to stay relevant is managed by constantly eating its own-- people fall in and out of trend. That makes it harder to use as a means to inject a specific message; you'd need to be constantly generating new users and getting them into closed circle communities as the old ones wear out their usefulness. Note I don't say impossible, but it's an interesting set of challenges and probably pretty different from the ones the guys running Radio Havana face.
A foreign government can't execute a no-knock raid on my home, can't garnish my wages, can't throw me in jail from outside of my country...etc. I know you used the wording "domestic company", but we are talking about governments here.
China is building "police stations" worldwide to do just this. See their agreements with Fiji* and how that backfired when Chinese police showed up and rounded up 77+ "suspects" and basically abducted them.
China has shown to have an international police force to enact their will overseas. They probably won’t harm you, but they’re inching closer. I would also be vaguely worried about them sharing data with other companies in China that slowly influence commerce in America.
I support the ban from a competitive perspective. Until meta can spy on Chinese citizens, why should the Chinese spy on Americans?
Also I support it from a privacy perspective. We can’t as easily ban American companies from spying on us, but we should use any power to limit other companies from starting business spying on Americans. Make it less profitable globally.
So you wouldn't be super worried about Russia and its hacker farms having deep info on every US citizen, for one example?
Foreign attacking agents can do much worse than garnish your wages. They can get a no-knock raid sent to your home if they have your info and you're a target of theirs. That's relatively easy. They can drive the US system to attack you by screwing with your life from outside the US where you can't do anything to stop them. And that can be done in so many ways it's rather obscene. Let's talk about the IRS economic ways they could do it; let's talk about the child protective services way they could do it; let's talk about the no-knock SWAT raid way they could do it; let's talk about the way they could go after your identity and bank accounts; let's talk about how they could focus in on your job, boss, co-workers, etc. and try to make your life hell there; and on and on and on it goes.
Yeah right. I dare anybody on HN to proclaim that, I want to see the supporting premise where the foreign party like Russia having all your info is not as big of a deal.
The notion that the FBI would do worse things from that position than Russia would is absurd, given what we've seen out of Russia. And China is absolutely no different in terms of its willingness to attack the US opportunistically (the Obama Admin had to obtain a cease fire agreement with China in regards to aggressively attacking the US re hacking, recall).
There are no chains at all on what Russia can do to screw with the US citizenry, given the information. And more advanced AI systems should make it even easier for them to do it in the near future.
If Russia could push a button and blank out 30 million US bank accounts, via a hacking plausible deniability means (anything that gives them the required minimum cover), they'd do it immediately. There's so little downside from where Russia is sitting these days, it'd be a no-brainer for them. What are you gonna do? Sanction them? We're sure as hell not going to war with Russia over that.
So Russia having info is worse because they would then sick the overreaching and cruel US govt on you? You do see how silly that sounds, don’t you? It proves the parent comment’s point that we should be fearing our domestic government more than a foreign one.
Imagine if the US wasn’t a police state, and the average person had good social/financial protections. We’d make China and Russia powerless according to your logic.
Your question is basically, “Why would France not want Nazi Germany to have an analytical device attached to 2/3 of its citizens in 1940?”
This is a foreign government we have a decent chance of being in a great power military conflict with, the first of such since the Second World War. It is so obviously a tool that would be used in such a conflict that I have a hard time accepting this is a good faith question you’re asking. If it is, then you need to stop thinking of it as a social media platform and remember that’s just the front end of the network.
