Why not regulate how the data is used or stored, like the EU does, but ban?
I'm really hoping this doesn't become a reality because if it does, we will end up with partitioned internet and stagnation.
People often forget that the US companies are foreign entity for most of the worlds population and with the WikiLeaks revelations we know for a fact that the US government has access to the data of American tech companies.
Because China is not a good example to follow. It is a dystopian state with full control of what their citizens have access to. Why would you want to have your government to choose the apps for you?
Keeping our markets open is the American way and it's how the US became the preeminent trading nation and the cornerstone and chief architect of the global economic system. The US always pushes hard for other nations to open their markets as well (for better or worse), but it also leads by example.
mrtksn/OP [1] is arguing that you shouldn't just do a tit-for-tat ban on China.
You should figure out what part of what the Chinese apps are doing that you don't like and ban that behavior. Otherwise this year its Tik-Tok from China and next year it's Click-Clock from UAE. Instead ban a behavior and you don't have to play whack-a-mole with countries/apps.
Ultimately US tech firms didn't make effort to follow PRC regulations while PRC tech firms tries to follow US regulations. If goal is to kick PRC platforms out of US i.e. when current rules doesn't generate desired outcome, change the rules to at least uphold the pretense that US cares about "rules based order". It's an optics issue. If US wants to ban tiktok, better to proceed via a less authoritarian lawfare route, because unilateral sanctions (which even PRC hasn't done on US platforms) are more likely to invite blowback down the line when other countries want to curtail US platforms in the future. But short term it's the optics, US going HAM on sanctions/export controls, especially ones that affect rest of world - which I'm guessing longterm goal is to get TikTok off Android/iOS - makes US behaviour much worse than PRC in terms of extraterritorial shenanigans.
China banning US social media is bad for Chinese citizens. US banning any social media is bad for US citizens. TBH, I'm more worried about the rights of US citizens.
Is that really true? I am pretty sure that as long as the data is in China and your tech doesn't connect to other countries you are free to use US tech to do business in China. I think this is how Google and Uber did it when they operated in China, they used the same code but had different infra.
Which is why this seems quite strange to me because TikTok China content doesn't show up on the western TikTok because they are completely separate.
Because it would distort the market for digital identity information even more? When it comes to commodifying online behavior and selling it in digital marketplaces we need less market interference, not more.
Tit-for-tat with an authoritarian regime is a bad idea on several dimensions.
A far better reason is that a nasty authoritarian regime is using Tiktok to gather intelligence in anticipation of doing nastier things. Just one example: one of the obvious things to do with Tiktok data would be to correlate it with the OPM hack[1]. Who knows what kind of insights into people's character you might find? I'm sure a trained handler who actually understands their capabilities can come up with far more interesting uses than that.
And note that in that context, stopping US citizens from foreign exploitation is a legitimate role for government.
SV failed to build social media products that appeal to Gen-Z so this is the "plan B". The only reason why TikTok is getting banned is because its popular. And the only reason why its popular is because US-based entrepreneurs seem to struggle building products that connect with users under the age of 30.
The irony is there was a product, Vine, that filled this niche but it was ultimately killed by Facebook (who promoted Tiktok because they didn't want Vine making inroads with their users) and Twitter (by not developing it further).
> Vine [...] filled this niche but it was ultimately killed by Facebook (who promoted Tiktok because they didn't want Vine making inroads with their users) and Twitter (by not developing it further).
Agreed on the twitter part, but the FB part feels like a pure conspiracy at best, and is just factually provable to be false. For one, Vine was killed off in September 2017, which is the same month that TikTok became available internationally.
This has nothing to do with user data. People are influenced by the content they see on social media. Allowing a foreign adversary to run the main information network for an entire generation of the population is not a wise move.
HN posters are in love with the "people are too stupid to think for themselves and need me to protect them" narrative. Nowhere else do I see that line of thought as frequently as I see it here. Not even Reddit pushes that justification for controlling the ability of others to access whatever media sources they want as much as it is pushed here. We truly must be the intellectual giants of humanity to know so consistently what is best for everyone else.
I agree with the overall sentiment. If it's a country in the EU it's valid. In China though, no one has any control or say on systems and controls. You cannot enforce anything there. Even if you force all servers catering to US citizen must be in the US, how do you even enforce that the data is not going to the CCP machinery? When there is a system (CCP) that the government feels is a threat, how do you convince them that the proper controls are in place? That is not a winning battle. It will just be an exercise in covering over the topic.
It is hard to imagine this ever passing given how popular TikTok is in the US. Certainly strong privacy regulations are more popular among the people than banning apps.
> Why not regulate how the data is used or stored, like the EU does, but ban?
That is also a good idea and the US can do that too. In the past, Facebook got a multi-billion dollar fine from the FTC for violating user privacy. The exact same should happen and apply to all social networks worth over $1BN and repeat violations should be in the billions of dollars; not in the millions that the EU is doing.
If that is enough for them to stop these privacy violating operations or even better, to make them leave like what the EU is doing, rather that than companies worse than Facebook to continue their repeated invasive privacy violations just like TikTok.
Totalitarian governance introduced in the name of national security. It's pretty wild how fast Americans move to shred the constitution if scared by a boogyman, real or otherwise.
Internet is already partitioned, especially when it come to China (Great firewall). You say to do like EU but it made things worse; For example, this is what i get when i try to browse yahoo.co.jp:
Not serving a country because you can’t be bothered to comply with their data laws is completely different from banning your people from accessing foreign media products simply because they are foreign of the wrong kind.
China heavily subsidizes industry. The reason they can't compete on EVs is just because they don't make anything that would be viable on the US market. They make a HUGE number of EVs, but they're primarily for the domestic market. Almost half of the EVs in the world are in China.
Partitioned Internet is a foregone conclusion. There was no way that sovereign states were ever going to permanently allow the uninhibited cross-border exchange that characterized the early Internet before anyone was paying attention. It was just a question of when they caught up.
Language like this exaggerates individual-user harms of TikTok by comparison to lethal street drug, conflating them with public, national-interest harms.
This is disingenous, as reported by common-sense. For example, my city does not have sidewalks lined with tents full of TikTok users, but the same cannot be said of the comparand.
This has either or both of the following knock-on effects:
- Undermine trust in the speaker for people who feel the 'seam' in the analogy. American institutions are really good at undermining themselves in this way. Remember DARE? It took me years to trust any authority again after hearing their nonsense about cannabis, back in the nineties. They used to call it things like "herbal heroin", etc.
- Promote stigmatization of TikTok users, and social-media users more generally. It's like taking the Smudge Tool in photoshop and moving some of the stigma from fentanyl to TikTok. This will have the unintended effect of further isolating people who depend on social media because they are disabled and/or shut-in; socially isolated; physically isolated; LGBTQ; autistic; etc. You aren't accessing community now, you're ~high on fentanyl~. Like.
American politicians love lines like this because they feel good in the short term but contribute to the ruin of polity in the longer run. Which is why these quips are the proper analog of fentanyl.
We already had a partitioned internet for years now
Imo this legislation makes sense because our companies are more or less banned from entering China’s domestic market. Why should we allow their tech companies in when they’ve banned ours
The US is known for involvement in the policies of other nations and even organising coups etc. With documented access of the American government into the American tech giants, I don't have reason to believe that Instagram is any different than TikTok. What makes you think that CIA didn't infiltrate Meta or made a deal to manipulate political situation in its friends and foes? What makes you believe that they won't work with Musk to achieve their goals?
The TikTok situation is new for the USA but it's nothing new for the rest of the world.
With that logic the EU should ban Facebook/Instagram/Reddit/Twitter
Legislation how data is acquired/stored/used will solve every problems, banning the people you don't like only solve one specific problem and makes you look like a fool
The US built a monopoly on online social media and communications, this move is another evidence that it wants to remain the sole big eye
This is true! But also much worse; agents from the CCP appears to have infiltrated Google and META and have injected primitive versions of TikTok into both the YouTube app and the Instagram app. No one is safe and the communist conspiracy reaches the highest level!
"TikTok is digital fentanyl that’s addicting Americans, collecting troves of their data, and censoring their news."
Is the conclusion that all forms of digital fentanyl should be banned or just Chinese ones? Because the reality is there's nothing too exceptional about TikTok's underlying algorithms. Will lawmakers be willing enact legislation against companies marketing similar "digital fentanyl" but that are American or European in origin?
Any country with a track record that makes it prudent to keep a watchful eye on whatever it is they're up to, and to defend your population and strategic interests against it. The CCP is openly an opponent of liberal democracy both at home and abroad. You could take their word for it, or you can judge by their actions. Either way, you arrive at the same conclusion. You treat them the way they ask to be treated.
This is a trade dispute. The US no longer feels that China will ever open their domestic market to outside competition, so why should we keep our domestic market open to Chinese companies?
I think it's less about chinese, and more about foreign power.
if russia made tiktok, I think you'd see a similar response.
given what we know about how people's attention works on these apps, and how impressionable people turn out being, I can understand how putting that power in the hands of another state could be problematic.
That being said, it's also problematic for US-owned entities. They just get a by because capitalism, and because we're still figuring out what social media guard rails would even look like. Foreign ownership/control could be an obvious one.
I wish they'd do this via a slightly different criterion, which IMO would be more fair: ban foreign companies from operating in the US whenever American companies in the same field can't operate in the same way in the foreign company's home country (so TikTok would end up banned here since Twitter, etc. is banned there).
> would be more fair: ban foreign companies from operating in the US whenever American companies in the same field can't operate in the same way in the foreign company's home country
This blows up global trade. Different countries value different industries for different reasons. The French aren't going to sell wine like Americans, and Americans don't care enough about the difference to get into a fight over it.
The concrete laws that say things like "you must censor any posts that acknowledge the Tiananmen Square Massacre happened, or that the Uyghur genocide is currently happening" you mean?
I don't think ByteDance would be able to get themselves unbanned under my scheme without the CCP changing its laws, but it's hard to view that as a negative when ByteDance is basically an extension of the CCP.
"national security concerns" and "what about children" have always been used by government to pass useless bills.
Instead of banning Tiktok, how about enforcing proper rules and regulations that every social media should follow? Why not make a proper privacy that every people in US deserves.
Many people are probably glad that they are banning Chinese tech, but at the end it is gonna be superseded by Instagram which supply more data to three letter organization. The probability that three letter organization abusing our data is more than Chinese government.
I totally agree with your main point but it is very wrong to equivocate the three letter agencies to the threat authoritarian governments gaining knowledge and thus power over a nation pose.
Agree - in my opinion, the threat from three letter agencies (if one considers the entirety of the things they get up to) far exceeds the threat from China.
I believe TikTok is a MASSIVE threat to those running the show in the US, as it may be the most potent propaganda tool out there, and the US government has many juicy attack vectors that TikTok as a platform is perfect for attacking.
I tend to keep my feed pretty clean of stuff like that, but it does creep in every now and then, who knows how much anti-US propaganda is on the platform that I never encounter but others do (like the agencies who go looking for it, since "Public Relations" dominance is their job).
Because there's essentially no way to enforce the rules.
All user data is processed in China and de software is also Chinese-made. There's no way in hell you'll get access and you can regulate all you want but in the end they'll simply ignore you.
This has been a MOT (major ongoing topic) for a while (I don't mean Tiktok in general, just the regulation/bannage aspect). Below are the threads I was able to find.
Technical and security issues aside, I wonder how the users are going to take it.
My generation (1992) didn’t have a major cultural phenomenon being attacked in this way, though there was still the moral panic around things like social media and research chems.
The closest comparison I can draw is the crackdown on raves which affected western Gen X youth, but TikTok is more pervasive and more heterogeneous as a form of cultural expression.
Copycats? Underground tiktok? Gen Z influencers calling for action against the feds? Acceptance of the government’s position?
If you think that's bad, you should read up on how the record industry intentionally partitioned music by ethnicity back in the early 1900's. Ever wonder why radio stations break down by race in the US?
It didn't start out that way, but then there was a big moral panic over interracial marriage.
(Similarly, but unrelated to music, check out sentencing law disparities for expensive white collar fresh cocaine vs. cheaper inner-city preserved cocaine.)
I remember vine from my undergrad and cannot see how tiktok is different, yet… I know a bunch of tiktok users and vine went the way of the Harlem shake, side parted hair and tribal print on everything.
If TikTok was to actually get banned I could see IG Reels scooping up most of that userbase. Though they can replicate the functionality, replicating the algorithm is going to be difficult. One of the things that's made TikTok such a phenomenon is that their algorithm is crazy good at figuring out what you like and boosting small content creators.
The "attack" is equivalent of trying to rescue opioid addicts from heroin. Or like you said, cracking down on raves (because we all know what really fuels and motivates those parties.
I hope more ethical companies take over the void. In fact, I see YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter in a position to fill the void since they've introduced "shorts" and some things similar to tik tok.
There are no ethical companies in the social media space - they're all trying to maximize engagement and manipulate you for economic gain. This is more like telling opioid addicts: "don't take that Chinese heroin, use our home-grown stuff instead".
> more ethical companies... YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter
What do you use as the measurement for more ethical in this case? I see the companies you mentioned completely equivalent(all pretty bad) in terms of making choices that are best for our shared society.
I don’t understand the bi-partisan dislike of Tik Tok. As far as content goes, it’s pretty wholesome compared to what you see on movies and TV these days. It’s much better at giving kids age appropriate content than other sites. There is also a lot less commercialized stuff. Way better than cartoons that peddle toys and junk.
When I first signed up for TikTok it showed me stuff to figure out what I would like. It showed me some of the most racist humor I'd heard since I was a boy in the deep south. If I'd liked it, it would have shown me more and more and more of it. As it is, I don't see it now because the algo feeds me stuff I actually like.
I do think there's a content problem on TikTok, but I think it's hidden away from the people who would point it out due to the way the algo works.
I don't see the problem you're trying to allude to. Sounds like the algorithm worked as intended. TikTok quickly learned what you like and stopped showing you stuff you didn't.
Unless you're implying (not saying you are, just asking for clarification) that we should limit free speech based on words you (or some government official) find objectionable. Isn't that what China already does and what the US wants to avoid?
Should Andrew Shulz be banned because a lot of his jokes are racial? I'm guessing you'd be offended by a number of them, but I don't think that means Netflix/Youtube have a "content problem".
I'm sure some people can use TikTok responsibly but many can't. I also wouldn't want a foreign government (any foreign government) to have such a powerful psyop tool under their control. The extremely rapid feedback loops allow beliefs to coalesce so quickly that I imagine many people will get stuck in harmful local minima.
For me it started wholesome, it used to make me happy when I used Tik Tok. Comedy, music, interesting self development content. All of it from clever and innovative independent content creators. Then it slid into exclusively red pill and relationship content that pushes a deeply cynical and pessimistic view of relationships. It appeals to something in my brain the same way a car crash or train wreck does. I know it's a distortion and will poison all of my healthy relationships if I really let it sink in, yet I found myself not wanting to look away, so I uninstalled the app.
If Tik Tok stayed the way it was when I first got into it I'd say it's fine, but the content it pushes now makes me concerned it will poison our culture with apathy, pessimism and cynicism.
> I don’t understand the bi-partisan dislike of Tik Tok. As far as content goes, [...]
The quality of the content is the reason. It's excessively cringe.
If it were simply "because China" then this bill wouldn't be targeting social media specifically. But it does, and other Chinese apps aren't addressed. If it were because of foreign social media influence, this bill wouldn't be calling out TikTok solely and specifically, and would presumably also mention WeChat, etc. But it doesn't. It's about TikTok specifically, and I think the reason is a visceral disgust for the content on TikTok.
Exactly. They can use it to boost the opinions that they favor. The feedback loop of "I talked about opinion X and got tons of love" and "I talked about opinion Y and everyone got mad / ignored me" is very powerful, especially on young people.
Why not? China doesn’t allow our social media. Why should we allow theirs? We can easily copy the best parts of the platform and let our companies take their users. Plus, social media can be used for mass political manipulation, and what justifies letting them hold that power over our population?
It’s good for our companies, it’s good for our people, and it takes away a dangerous tool from a country that is more and more an adversary.
I truly hope it is banned. Better late than never. Nothing against this rather brain-dead tech. Let Facebook/Google/Twitter have those users on the clones.
> We can easily copy the best parts of the platform and let our companies take their users.
Billions of dollars have been invested by the biggest US tech companies to try to do this, and they all fuck it up by building the product to serve advertisers first rather than users first.
Think about who is being restricted here, because it's not just TikTok. Why are you ok with the government dictating which apps you can and cannot install?
Because we absolutely do not need to even pretend to play fair when it comes to China. The government dictates what kind of content we can consume for the public good all the time. It’s as easy as saying “counties on this new human rights blacklist do not have the right to access our markets and the minds of our citizens.”
>Why are you ok with the government dictating which apps you can and cannot install?
Well, whether you agree with this statement or not. If an adversarial government is basically controlling what information people see.. especially young impressionable people who might not know any better, isn't that potentially a problem that needs to be addressed?
Sounds like the government should have a say when it's literally trying to protect it's own interests and doesn't want a foreign power being able to so easily push their own agenda.
I don't think US social media companies are per se banned in China. They just have to obey the same Chinese rules for data storage and content moderation and record keeping that Chinese social media companies have to obey.
It's not all that different from US companies that want to operate in Europe having to obey Europe's stricter regulations in areas such as food safety and consumer protection or have to obey GDPR.
It’s pretty massively different actually. Many US companies tried to operate in China, but the theft of trade secrets and uneven playing field was so bad that they eventually all pulled out. The Chinese government very explicitly wanted to grow its own tech companies by keeping out foreign companies and stealing their trade secrets.
And, so what? It was a great policy that lead to a lot of innovation in the Chinese economy and allowed the Chinese government maximum control so it could maintain the delicate balance of its authoritarian system.
So why the double standard? They banned our companies to keep our influence out. Why not do the same? Are we a prisoner to our principles so much that we can’t even take obvious steps to defend ourselves?
Globalism is over as we know it and the West is on an inevitable collision course with China. Time we all got our heads out of the sand on this one.
Because we are a democracy with freedoms protected by the government. If we copy their tactics on digital democracy, where do we draw the line? Should we also start locking people in their houses if they have covid?
The people who have access are making boatloads of cash. Full stop. Trade is a little different, enable equal access to markets or reply in kind. I fail to see why it's in the interests of the West to do any trade with nations that don't share values. Why enable these authoritarian countries? Would this be a compelling argument for 1930s Germany? "Well, we may not agree with how they're doing things, but the prices are unbeatable!"
When ever has “being a democracy” meant, “we need to give our adversaries unlimited ability to feed propaganda and disinformation directly to our citizens”?
Our rights apply to our citizens, not to foreign governments. They should have no right to speak to us. They should have no right to do business with us. Our elected representatives can and should regulate this international trade.
Readit News
I'm really hoping this doesn't become a reality because if it does, we will end up with partitioned internet and stagnation.
People often forget that the US companies are foreign entity for most of the worlds population and with the WikiLeaks revelations we know for a fact that the US government has access to the data of American tech companies.
You should figure out what part of what the Chinese apps are doing that you don't like and ban that behavior. Otherwise this year its Tik-Tok from China and next year it's Click-Clock from UAE. Instead ban a behavior and you don't have to play whack-a-mole with countries/apps.
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33971695
Apple for instance follows Chinese law, and does a lot of business there.
America loves to talk about the "rule of law", but will just ban anything that competes with it's MIC controlled platforms.
Which is why this seems quite strange to me because TikTok China content doesn't show up on the western TikTok because they are completely separate.
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Dead Comment
A far better reason is that a nasty authoritarian regime is using Tiktok to gather intelligence in anticipation of doing nastier things. Just one example: one of the obvious things to do with Tiktok data would be to correlate it with the OPM hack[1]. Who knows what kind of insights into people's character you might find? I'm sure a trained handler who actually understands their capabilities can come up with far more interesting uses than that.
And note that in that context, stopping US citizens from foreign exploitation is a legitimate role for government.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Personnel_Management...
The irony is there was a product, Vine, that filled this niche but it was ultimately killed by Facebook (who promoted Tiktok because they didn't want Vine making inroads with their users) and Twitter (by not developing it further).
Agreed on the twitter part, but the FB part feels like a pure conspiracy at best, and is just factually provable to be false. For one, Vine was killed off in September 2017, which is the same month that TikTok became available internationally.
https://www.theverge.com/2016/10/28/13456208/why-vine-died-t...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/TikTok
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A courtesy also extended to Beijing [1].
[1] https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/emilybakerwhite/tiktok-...
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/emilybakerwhite/tiktok-...
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That is also a good idea and the US can do that too. In the past, Facebook got a multi-billion dollar fine from the FTC for violating user privacy. The exact same should happen and apply to all social networks worth over $1BN and repeat violations should be in the billions of dollars; not in the millions that the EU is doing.
If that is enough for them to stop these privacy violating operations or even better, to make them leave like what the EU is doing, rather that than companies worse than Facebook to continue their repeated invasive privacy violations just like TikTok.
What's the worst thing Bytedance / China can do with the average amount of "US citizen/TikTok user" data they have?
Yes, we can treat foreign companies differently than local companies, on the issue of data privacy, because of these national security concerns.
https://abload.de/img/screenshot2022-12-13aa4exy.png
NY Daily news:
https://abload.de/img/nydailynews-wearecurrlwd3x.png
Huawei - ban
TikTok - ban
EVs - subsidize tesla
This is disingenous, as reported by common-sense. For example, my city does not have sidewalks lined with tents full of TikTok users, but the same cannot be said of the comparand.
This has either or both of the following knock-on effects:
- Undermine trust in the speaker for people who feel the 'seam' in the analogy. American institutions are really good at undermining themselves in this way. Remember DARE? It took me years to trust any authority again after hearing their nonsense about cannabis, back in the nineties. They used to call it things like "herbal heroin", etc.
- Promote stigmatization of TikTok users, and social-media users more generally. It's like taking the Smudge Tool in photoshop and moving some of the stigma from fentanyl to TikTok. This will have the unintended effect of further isolating people who depend on social media because they are disabled and/or shut-in; socially isolated; physically isolated; LGBTQ; autistic; etc. You aren't accessing community now, you're ~high on fentanyl~. Like.
American politicians love lines like this because they feel good in the short term but contribute to the ruin of polity in the longer run. Which is why these quips are the proper analog of fentanyl.
I guess in practice, if need be economically and politically, you can always launder data.
Deleted Comment
Imo this legislation makes sense because our companies are more or less banned from entering China’s domestic market. Why should we allow their tech companies in when they’ve banned ours
This is not a regular app, but part of information warfare China is engaged in with the West.
The TikTok situation is new for the USA but it's nothing new for the rest of the world.
Legislation how data is acquired/stored/used will solve every problems, banning the people you don't like only solve one specific problem and makes you look like a fool
The US built a monopoly on online social media and communications, this move is another evidence that it wants to remain the sole big eye
https://qz.com/1145669/googles-true-origin-partly-lies-in-ci...
https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/how-the-nsa-spies...
Is the conclusion that all forms of digital fentanyl should be banned or just Chinese ones? Because the reality is there's nothing too exceptional about TikTok's underlying algorithms. Will lawmakers be willing enact legislation against companies marketing similar "digital fentanyl" but that are American or European in origin?
/s?
Congress could easily introduce data privacy legislation.
Fuck TikTok.
Deleted Comment
if russia made tiktok, I think you'd see a similar response.
given what we know about how people's attention works on these apps, and how impressionable people turn out being, I can understand how putting that power in the hands of another state could be problematic.
That being said, it's also problematic for US-owned entities. They just get a by because capitalism, and because we're still figuring out what social media guard rails would even look like. Foreign ownership/control could be an obvious one.
Dead Comment
This blows up global trade. Different countries value different industries for different reasons. The French aren't going to sell wine like Americans, and Americans don't care enough about the difference to get into a fight over it.
Are there concrete laws that local companies adhere to that TikTok can follow besides "don't be Chinese"?
I don't think ByteDance would be able to get themselves unbanned under my scheme without the CCP changing its laws, but it's hard to view that as a negative when ByteDance is basically an extension of the CCP.
Instead of banning Tiktok, how about enforcing proper rules and regulations that every social media should follow? Why not make a proper privacy that every people in US deserves.
Many people are probably glad that they are banning Chinese tech, but at the end it is gonna be superseded by Instagram which supply more data to three letter organization. The probability that three letter organization abusing our data is more than Chinese government.
I believe TikTok is a MASSIVE threat to those running the show in the US, as it may be the most potent propaganda tool out there, and the US government has many juicy attack vectors that TikTok as a platform is perfect for attacking.
I tend to keep my feed pretty clean of stuff like that, but it does creep in every now and then, who knows how much anti-US propaganda is on the platform that I never encounter but others do (like the agencies who go looking for it, since "Public Relations" dominance is their job).
Dead Comment
All user data is processed in China and de software is also Chinese-made. There's no way in hell you'll get access and you can regulate all you want but in the end they'll simply ignore you.
With MOTs, we generally wait for SNI (significant new information) before having yet another thread. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
Proposed bills tend not to count as SNI since they usually don't go anywhere. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que.... I suppose in this case the appearance of the bill itself may be a significant notch in the story?
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South Dakota first to ban TikTok on state-owned devices - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33836666 - Dec 2022 (291 comments)
The FBI alleges TikTok poses national security concerns - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33653894 - Nov 2022 (418 comments)
U.S. FBI director says TikTok poses national security concerns - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33617301 - Nov 2022 (68 comments)
TikTok is “unacceptable security risk” and should be removed from app stores - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33447285 - Nov 2022 (64 comments)
FCC commissioner says government should ban TikTok - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33423895 - Nov 2022 (112 comments)
TikTok accused of covert plot to track specific US citizens' every move - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33302591 - Oct 2022 (106 comments)
ByteDance planned to use TikTok to surveil specific American citizens - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33280176 - Oct 2022 (208 comments)
FCC: TikTok is unacceptable security risk and should be removed from app stores - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32148218 - July 2022 (848 comments)
As TikTok grows, so does suspicion - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32045339 - July 2022 (617 comments)
FCC commissioner wants TikTok removed from app stores over spying concerns - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31923483 - June 2022 (505 comments)
My generation (1992) didn’t have a major cultural phenomenon being attacked in this way, though there was still the moral panic around things like social media and research chems.
The closest comparison I can draw is the crackdown on raves which affected western Gen X youth, but TikTok is more pervasive and more heterogeneous as a form of cultural expression.
Copycats? Underground tiktok? Gen Z influencers calling for action against the feds? Acceptance of the government’s position?
It didn't start out that way, but then there was a big moral panic over interracial marriage.
(Similarly, but unrelated to music, check out sentencing law disparities for expensive white collar fresh cocaine vs. cheaper inner-city preserved cocaine.)
I hope more ethical companies take over the void. In fact, I see YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter in a position to fill the void since they've introduced "shorts" and some things similar to tik tok.
What do you use as the measurement for more ethical in this case? I see the companies you mentioned completely equivalent(all pretty bad) in terms of making choices that are best for our shared society.
I do think there's a content problem on TikTok, but I think it's hidden away from the people who would point it out due to the way the algo works.
Unless you're implying (not saying you are, just asking for clarification) that we should limit free speech based on words you (or some government official) find objectionable. Isn't that what China already does and what the US wants to avoid?
Should Andrew Shulz be banned because a lot of his jokes are racial? I'm guessing you'd be offended by a number of them, but I don't think that means Netflix/Youtube have a "content problem".
I'm sure some people can use TikTok responsibly but many can't. I also wouldn't want a foreign government (any foreign government) to have such a powerful psyop tool under their control. The extremely rapid feedback loops allow beliefs to coalesce so quickly that I imagine many people will get stuck in harmful local minima.
Content really depends on the user. It's a very tailored experience.
If Tik Tok stayed the way it was when I first got into it I'd say it's fine, but the content it pushes now makes me concerned it will poison our culture with apathy, pessimism and cynicism.
The quality of the content is the reason. It's excessively cringe.
If it were simply "because China" then this bill wouldn't be targeting social media specifically. But it does, and other Chinese apps aren't addressed. If it were because of foreign social media influence, this bill wouldn't be calling out TikTok solely and specifically, and would presumably also mention WeChat, etc. But it doesn't. It's about TikTok specifically, and I think the reason is a visceral disgust for the content on TikTok.
It's not hard to understand, it's literally because it's controlled by China.
It’s good for our companies, it’s good for our people, and it takes away a dangerous tool from a country that is more and more an adversary.
I truly hope it is banned. Better late than never. Nothing against this rather brain-dead tech. Let Facebook/Google/Twitter have those users on the clones.
Billions of dollars have been invested by the biggest US tech companies to try to do this, and they all fuck it up by building the product to serve advertisers first rather than users first.
Well, whether you agree with this statement or not. If an adversarial government is basically controlling what information people see.. especially young impressionable people who might not know any better, isn't that potentially a problem that needs to be addressed?
Sounds like the government should have a say when it's literally trying to protect it's own interests and doesn't want a foreign power being able to so easily push their own agenda.
It's not all that different from US companies that want to operate in Europe having to obey Europe's stricter regulations in areas such as food safety and consumer protection or have to obey GDPR.
And, so what? It was a great policy that lead to a lot of innovation in the Chinese economy and allowed the Chinese government maximum control so it could maintain the delicate balance of its authoritarian system.
So why the double standard? They banned our companies to keep our influence out. Why not do the same? Are we a prisoner to our principles so much that we can’t even take obvious steps to defend ourselves?
Globalism is over as we know it and the West is on an inevitable collision course with China. Time we all got our heads out of the sand on this one.
Our rights apply to our citizens, not to foreign governments. They should have no right to speak to us. They should have no right to do business with us. Our elected representatives can and should regulate this international trade.