Responding to a lawsuit from video-sharing platform TikTok, the US Justice Department argued that China could order the company to manipulate TikTok’s algorithm and expand Beijing’s “malign influence.”
The US Justice Department defended a law that aims to either ban TikTok or force it to divest its assets in the US after the social media company filed a lawsuit against the legislation.
Under the law, the social media platform will have to find a non-Chinese buyer or face a ban in the US by January 19, 2025.
The Chinese-based TikTok is challenging the law before a US appeals court.
X is owned by a South African and middle easterners, and is actively doing the things they fear TikTok May do today. Where is the outrage and laws banning X?
I know what you’re saying, and I agree that X is extremely problematic.
I think the difference is that X is owned by private individuals, whereas they’re saying here that TikTok is under the control of the Chinese state. I wonder if there are different rules at play for estate actors?
OR…and hear me out, two things might be bad at the same time.
Hell, maybe ALL of the things. Maybe too much information is being shared and traded.
OR…and hear me out, two things might be bad at the same time.
Isn’t that what I said?
Middle easterners?
Saudis financed Muskrat’s takeover
ew
Why stop at just tiktok? All social media and hyper-targeted advertising poses the same threat and can be misused just as easily. It’s almost as if, and this is shocking I know, advertising and online privacy should be very strictly regulated as a national security concern.
Lobbying funds. $20M annually from Meta alone.
https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying/clients/summary?id=D000033563
Fun fact: Tiktok’s main competition are all owned by entities that spy just as much and are beholden to SEVERAL oppressive regimes rather than just one.
Two of them have even been instrumental in foreign actors successfully influencing the results of US elections, unlike Tiktok.
Then again, they’re based in the US and supply politicians with more legal bribes, so they’re exempt from even the most basic accountability.
And for all mankind too.
Man… the red scare really did a number on the American psyche…
This comment section better remember that you can’t even order from McDonalds anymore without creating an account online. Hell, as of a few weeks ago I can’t even update apps on my personally purchased smart TV without creating a fucking account and letting them link my email to data they already have from Experian (all US companies btw). Tiktok is just a fucking scapegoat so y’all wont push for actual privacy protection laws.
If Tiktok gets sold to a US company nothing will change about their practices the CCP will just buy the data from a 3rd party vendor owned by a US LLC.
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Fuck the CCP is what’s going on here.
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You don’t give an authoritarian government with a freedom index of 9 access to international user data.
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And we can reject it. Fuck the CCP (1st), but also fuck Google, Amazon, Apple next.
You’re talking past the other guys point. We all agree that the CCP sucks, but just going after tiktok doesn’t solve the problem when they can just buy user data from a broker. You need to go after all surveillance adtech if you want to keep entities like the CCP from buying that data anyway.
Tiktok isn’t special here, just about every online advertiser will run whatever campaign you want as long as you pay their prices so you have to go after all of them to resolve the issue. Tiktok has CPC ties, yes, but they’re just the tip of the iceberg if you’re serious about the national security risk of adtech.
Edit: if you really want to go after manipulation of public sentiment you’ll also need to mandate disclosure and auditing of social media feed and advertising algorithms to a regulatory agency with extremely heavy fines (say X million $/day) for violators. That’s about the only way you can actually stop the sort of behavior the CCP is engaging in on tiktok.
Adtech itself is an entirely bigger ball of wax, if you want to reduce adtech’s social influence you’re going to have to take ownership of private user data out of the hands of advertisers and give it back to people themselves.
I agree. But first thing first
A chinese owned company, by chinese law, is the CCP’s bitch. An american owned company, by contrast, at least has the chance to refuse government requests, not that they always do.
I thought Snowden already made it pretty obvious that US companies don’t. Basically the only thing you can do as a US company is try to obfuscate your data with encryption so not even you can read it. That’s why some VPN companies advertise about not keeping laws, so they have nothing to turn over when the feds come a-knocking.
The other problem is that you don’t even need official government power to get data from US companies. A lot of these companies will sell their data on you to make a quick buck, anyway.
Unless they get subpoenad by a district court and the C suite is willing to go to jail for not disclosing it.
Also the US govt already has asked for built-in backdoors to iPhones and the like. They even have highly complex de-anonymization algorithms for data that almost every American with a credit card is giving to their “private” bank so we can have FICO credit scores and venmo.
The private ownership isn’t doing shit for our data protections.
Frankly, it doesn’t ensure it, there is no way to fully guarantee data will not be shared. Just makes it harder.
Is it really such a stretch to say a Chinese owned company managing the feeds of the most active social platform would use that platform to sow division and hatred in the US?
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“Whatabout US companies”
US companies have seen similar criticism, antitrust suits, and billions in fines.
It is true that US tech companies have horrendous practices when it comes to data privacy and security, and that the US needs better federal regulation similar to GDPR to protect the consumer. This must be corrected.
It’s also true that the location of the parent company of a social media platform does not protect that platform from bad actors and adversarial abuse. See: Facebook in 2016
However, there is a big difference between selling bits of redacted data to ad companies, and providing raw database access to a foreign adversary with malicious intent.
Add to that the fact that kids/teens use tiktok more than any other platform, and their habits are exposed without their knowledge or consent.
The possibilities are endless, but to name a few concerns:
- The CCP is using this app as a social engineering experiment to attempt to influence public opinion in the next generation of Americans.
- Imagine how much easier it will be to influence the next generation of US politicians who have no privacy whatsoever, and whose thought patterns are well documented.
The EU has already fined them for their negligent privacy practices: https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/15/tech/tiktok-fine-europe-children/index.html
It’s not enough. I don’t think a ban is the right solution, but the problem is clear.
Hey. Keep your facts and logic out of my emotional baggage.
Your reply doesn’t even make sense in response to the comment. Let me spell it out for you.
The CCP uses TikTok to sow division and hatred in the US.
TikTok is not even available in China, they use another much more controlled platform called Douyin where you can’t say shit about anything.
Facebook, YouTube and other social media platforms are used for exactly the same purpose, all you need to do as an adversary is place an ad buy and you’re plopped right into user feeds.
You’ve got the right idea that adtech is a national security risk and should be treated as such but the solution can’t stop at just “tiktok and the CCP bad” - the solution needs to be a whole lot bigger.
Oh I fully agree, but you have to prioritize your battles, this isn’t fantasy land.
TikTok is not even available in China
I think that’s the biggest thing here that defenders of TikTok need to understand. The Chinese think it’s worth the West having but not worth them having it. What should that tell people about their purposes?
Not “the Chinese” btw, it’s Xi fucking Ping, Winnie the Pooh himself, the…ladies and gentlemen…CCP!
I mean, to me, that says that maybe it’s not completely controlled by China? They love spying on their own people after all. They have their own Chinese version of Tik Tok, so it sounds more like they just encourage a more Chinese version of the app.
