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Are YouTube algorithms open? I don't really see a difference here. Nation state vs. private corporation is different on paper, but I don't see why. They're both

Are YouTube algorithms open? I don't really see a difference here. Nation state vs. private corporation is different on paper, but I don't see why. They're both going to react to material stimuli to increase their standings.

azinman2 6y ago
It’s about allies versus active enemies. There are shootouts on a regular basis between India and China, and they’ve intensified recently.
- seamyb88 6y ago
  Ah right. Because the U.S. is never involved in war, it's a different story for youtube etc...
- ianleeclark 6y ago
  So it's just opportunism, then? Condemn the other; refuse reflection. Or am I misunderstanding you?
  - azinman2 6y ago
    I can’t say what India’s motivation is for sure. Maybe there’s a credible threat in a way that Facebook isn’t. Maybe it’s just anti-Chinese fervor. But saying anything outside of India should be treated the same is not taking into account geo-politics and individual country’s behaviors.
    - josephv 6y ago
      Coordination with the US means jobs and economic opportunity for both sides. Coordination with China means gunfights and border tension. It's pretty simple if you don't try to extrapolate everything to logical extrems. India and US is ally, India and China is rival. Full stop, it ends there. KISS
    - petre 6y ago
      We live in interesting times, ripe for manipulation and propaganda, both if which China and Russia have spread in the EU during the last months. India's ban is completely warranted. The fact that they also have a border dispute with China only makes things worse. I'd rather they ban a few apps than escalation and war.
  - bobthepanda 6y ago
    It's about harm and risk reduction. All other things held equal, you would expect your enemies to be doing more to undermine you than your allies would.
  - saiya-jin 6y ago
    Using opportunity to actually perform a good thing for privacy (tiktok at least was found snooping all it can from users phones, not sure about the rest but given how chinese run things that would be expected). No tear will be shed for those apps, regardless from which country they come from (I know this is very targeted due to recent tensions, but its still a step in the right direction re privacy)
- ra7 6y ago
  > There are shootouts on a regular basis between India and China, and they’ve intensified recently. There are no "shootouts". There are standoffs sometimes (think once a year if you want to define regularity) due to the loosely demarcated Line of Actual Control (LAC) between India and China. It's usually a melee. Even the recent escalated incident wasn't a shootout. There are agreements between Indian and Chinese governments that prevent usage of firearms in standoffs like these.
  - stickfigure 6y ago
    I agree that "shootouts" is the wrong word, but "melee" doesn't quite capture the gruesomeness of human beings beating each other to death with spiked clubs.
  - azinman2 6y ago
    20 Indian soldiers died just two weeks ago: https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/16/asia/china-india-border-clash-intl-hnk/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/16/asia/china-india-border-clash...
    - ra7 6y ago
      Yes, I'm aware of the news. It still wasn't due to a "shootout". > What’s happening along the Himalayan border is an unusual kind of warfare. As in the brawls last month, Chinese and Indian soldiers fought fiercely without firing a shot — at least that’s what officials on both sides contend. They say the soldiers followed their de facto border code not to use firearms and went at each other with fists, rocks and wooden clubs, some possibly studded with nails or wrapped in barbed wire. From https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/16/world/asia/indian-china-border-clash.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/16/world/asia/indian-china-b...
deleted 6y ago
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jankassens 6y ago
If India (or any other country for that matter) would be in an armed conflict with the US, they would probably also consider banning various US controlled services.
- ianleeclark 6y ago
  I asked about the algorithm thing--that's what I'm curious about. Where specifically does that belief end.
  - systemvoltage 6y ago
    I'd guess that double-standards are inevitable and desired when there is an armed conflict between nations. If Indian government sees no harm in US apps whilst banning Chinese apps, this is the definition of diplomatic pressure. Asymmetry is the tool used to apply this pressure. Your point is valid - we have no way to know Facebook algorithms and it is a blackbox, but this isn't supposed to be a symmetric comparison for aforementioned reasons.
- pvelagal 6y ago
  China is not in armed conflict with US , why does it ban every app that civilized world uses ? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_websites_blocked_in_mainland_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_websites_blocked_in_ma...
  - dis-sys 6y ago
    protectionism.
saltedonion 6y ago
You have a good point. But TikTok is much more risky, and as as such requires much more scrutiny given existing body of knowledge between how chinese social media / chat companies such as WeChat enforce government censorship and aid in propagating misinformation. This might be a shock to most people in the western world, but if you go on almost ANY news website in china, the headline news is dedicated to government propaganda. The reality is that Chinese firms and government operates together intimately. Nearly all sizable firms have a party secretary that is involved in board level decisions, and steps in when things get political. You can ponder who has the final say.
- ianleeclark 6y ago
  > The reality is that Chinese firms and government operates together intimately No, I get this, but here's the thing: YouTube and, more specifically, it's advertisers do everything that you're accusing China of. There are material consequences if YouTube doesn't keep in line. What this means is that a status quo that pleases advertisers will be maintained. It's every bit propaganda as dropping leaflets, but you can't point out a boogeyman pulling the strings.
  - pyuser583 6y ago
    The concern is the coordination between Chinese foreign affairs/security services and the commercial sector. For US-based firms, that’s simply not the case. Yes, YouTube needs to make sure Nike is happy. But Nike didn’t just kill two dozen Indian soldiers. Certainly there’s privacy related concerns with US companies - as with Chinese companies. But nobody had accused the DoD of manipulating YouTube search rankings. If the DoD wants to conduct a YouTube propaganda campaign, they can buy advertising like everybody else.
    - RobertoG 6y ago
      I don't know, I still remember how, in a poll before the invasion of Iraq, a majority of Americans though that Saddam Hussein was connected to the 11S attacks.
no_wizard 6y ago
Biggest difference is motives, as long as we are making the assumption you mean private corporations that aren’t proxies for their respective government(s) A private company will optimize profit, all things being equal. Sometimes this means it’s product/platform can be used to disseminate possibly dangerous information, but it also can be regulated in response. Another government? Not so easy Only way to really assert influence is through a much more narrow and limited scope like diplomacy, economic sanction, war, or otherwise influence the state/affairs of the country through target regulations like the ones mentioned in the article
- ianleeclark 6y ago
  > Sometimes this means it’s product/platform can be used to disseminate possibly dangerous information, but it also can be regulated in response. I don't think this is true specifically in the case of America. Who are you going to get to actually grapple that beast of a multi national? Yeah, lots of people talk about it, but politics ultimately requires a degree of consensus. When you have investors calling up their representatives saying they will donate to their opponent next election or they will move jobs out of the area, politicians are going to start falling off. Oh, these politicians are all probably invested in these companies to some degree, or maybe they rent apartments to their workers. There's also the gridlock issue that likely can't be resolved unless we start adding states, so legislation will be hard there. Companies like alphabet and Facebook are the culmination of the last 40 years of politics in America.
  - no_wizard 6y ago
    Never intended for this to mean it was easy or anything. As you noted already it isn’t always. However this also admits it can be done as I mentioned too. You can’t pass legislation that makes another government open itself up to transparency though. That’s the fundamental difference
    - ianleeclark 6y ago
      > However this also admits it can be done as I mentioned too. That wasn't the intention
StreamBright 6y ago
Not to mention state sponsored private firm, being private is just optics.
dathinab 6y ago
Good point. But YouTube is not controlled by an authoritarian fascist-like government which has a world view in direct opposition to what you could refer handwaveingly as "western" and is currently pushing to become the dominant power in the world. If you furthermore consider how bad the "western world" (mainly Britten and the East India Company) had treated it in the past, some aspects of the Chinese culture and the current Goverment direction western countries expecting any fair or reasonable treatment once china succeeded to become the worlds dominant power is kinda a sad joke.
- colordrops 6y ago
  YouTube isn't controlled by an authoritarian fascist-like government - it is run by the fascist-lite corporate oligarchy which runs the US. The US may not be as bad as china in some ways but that doesn't absolve them from responsibility.
  - banachtarski 6y ago
    Trying to draw a parallel between Google and a country that literally tortures and murders its citizens for "unsanctioned beliefs" is disingenuous. Cut the bullshit.
    - colordrops 6y ago
      Ignorance of US history of endless human rights abuses (including torture) both domestic and foreign by the US is not an excuse for being condescending and overly confident on an internet forum.
      - banachtarski 6y ago
        Let's talk about modern day since that's the topic at hand. Who was the last US citizen you know of to be arrested, detained, and killed for voicing opposition to the way the government is run. I'm not saying the US government is perfect (especially in this time, far from it), I'm just saying the comparison isn't remotely apropos. I would say I have the "correct" level of confidence in this regard.
mtgp1000 6y ago
You don't see a difference between an ideological party which interns millions of people by ethnicity (among other glaring issues), and a corporation seeking profits from a video platform?
- ianleeclark 6y ago
  On the question of black box algorithms, no because it's not relevant.
  - seemack 6y ago
    I would think that the reputation of the creator becomes even more critical when considering a black box algorithm.
lala26in 6y ago
3/5 board of directors of ByteDance that owns TikTok are western.
hyko 6y ago
Because YouTube doesn’t have nuclear weapons and a plan to invade western allies?
Bayart 6y ago
YT has a legal framework that gives it protection to an extent from government interference, especially where it touches upon freedom of speech. Whether they want to use it or not is another question. But the Party can just put officials in the Douyin (TikTok) offices and ask for any encryption key without having to divulge anything and without the company having any recourse. This in complete legality. Large corporations becoming the end point for debate is a real problem, but I don't think it really overlaps with public/private collusion (or the lack of true private in China's case).
thuruv 6y ago
Politics does. That's the difference. Acting on above is solely depends on political bias instead of a concrete notice. No official research conducted and released stating the harm about the apps, right?
SuoDuanDao 6y ago
Let's be honest here; if India's relations with USA had soured to the same degree as with PRC, Youtube would be the one getting banned.
- suyash 6y ago
  USA and India are friends unlike CCP which can't be trusted by anyone.
  - sudosysgen 6y ago
    No one in the entire world with half a brain trusts the US, or any state for that matter. Too much backstabbing. Ask the Kurds.
slowmovintarget 6y ago
TikTok apps add a vector for arbitrary code download and execution. What "algorithm" you get would seem to depend on what they'd like to run on your device that day.
seebetter 6y ago
The Chinese State is based on Marxism-Leninism and wants to dominate the world. There is a difference in that and any other country that acknowledges natural rights. If you believe rights are innate, then you can’t openly tolerate a state that denies them. I often think what would California look like if it had the laws of Texas. Or what would China look like if it had the structure and motivations of Nevada? Both have Elon Musk and gambling.
cocktailpeanuts 6y ago
China is a special case because they are among the very few number of countries in the world where the government openly controls the media and the private companies. A U.S. company like Twitter even bans the U.S. president's posts on their platform, and so does Facebook. Something like that is impossible in China as whoever does that will instantly get shut down. Think about the implication of this. This means you have to assume that any Chinese tech company will have to comply when the government tells them to spread some propaganda through their media. This is what has been called in a science fiction as "information warfare", and it can be even more catastrophic than a real war, but I don't think most people realize this because they've never seen one before. What's even scarier is that even as this is happening, nobody knows this is happening, which is worse than a war because, unlike a physical war where everything is visible, one country can "attack" another country without anyone else realizing, causing a huge damage to their economy.
- concordDance 6y ago
  Forget the economy. The damage to social infrastructure and trust is far more serious. Groups violently turning on eachother, families splitting over political divides, lynchings... these matter a lot more than whether people have nice cars.
trekrich 6y ago
hmm google or the ccp. Take your pick!
everdrive 6y ago
> Nation state vs. private corporation is different on paper, A nation state and a company are different in substance as well. I am sympathetic to the idea that companies (in America) can do more to curtail your freedoms. But, this is only true because of our system of government. In principle, a government can do much more than a company to curtail your freedoms. In practice, this is often less true. (although if you bump into eminent domain, or similar laws, then the government is much more threatening to you.) We don't have to look far for this theoretical: the Chinese government rounds up people and puts them in camps, and disappears people for having the wrong opinions.
SllX 6y ago
Nation states have military, intelligence, diplomacy and police corps. They reserve the power to stop, detain, arrest, jail, try, sentence, imprison, and kill. That’s why how we go about those things is a Big Deal, and why we have so many rules about who can go about it, how, under what circumstances, what the laws are that they’re enforcing, what the processes and procedures are for enforcement and how guilt is determined. Corporations as a rule, and there have been exceptions, but as a rule have none of those powers. Theoretically the worst crimes they’re going to commit are fraudulent in nature and crimes of negligence. They’re not just a separate org chart ultimately serving as a private arm of the State with its own private rules that it self-enforces; they’re different beasts entirely. The problem with PRC-based corporations is that they muddy the waters entirely between what is private and public. As far as the PRC is concerned, all private life is subject to the State and should serve the interests of the State. Google and Facebook and your favorite café or tea house can and do have interests that lie entirely outside of the State and are free to pursue them. That is the difference between a free society and an authoritarian State.
- xwolfi 6y ago
  I think you forget a detail. Nation state, or any state, are sovereign. If the national community agrees on something, it's all that matter. We don't have to abide by other countries standards on everything especially if we dont like it. Im thinking as a French I had to fight a lot with free speech absolutists abroad, while at home we're quite okay with selective censorship... it sounds scary to an American sometimes, but hell we dont care :D
  - SllX 6y ago
    We can respect another nation’s sovereignty without respecting their authoritarianism. I very much believe we should be disrespecting the hell out of authoritarian States, much more than we do so now because authoritarianism doesn’t stop at the borders, it stops at the practical limit that a State can enforce its laws which is why when the NBA was quite literally kowtowing to the PRC, we had a problem with that. PRC corporations have a history of behaving in a mistrustful manner, combined with their obligations to the PRC State which treats its citizens as subjects, and sometimes not even its citizens, but anybody of Chinese descent, PRC corporations absolutely should be singled out and treated with mistrust. Our corporations have the obligation to turn a profit for their shareholders and sometimes that even means entering into a contract with the government, but theirs also have the obligation to advance the interests of the State. Dual mandates, even when not initially at odds with each other, often eventually come into conflict with each other, and State-owned or controlled corporations often don’t even have the profit incentive but are instead subject to politics. See also: the American corporations Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for examples of why they’re a bad idea, although their enterprises are domestic. This is off topic but since you brought it up, we’re not the free speech absolutists that we believe we are. What we took issue with specifically was the idea of a central government regulating speech, assembly, the press and the establishment of churches. We still had established churches for quite some time, but they were governed by the States, not the United States. Let me quote you the First Amendment: > Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. Everything you really need to know is in the first five words. It’s a prohibition on Congress, not a grant of rights, and this would later come to be incorporated against the States as well such that their legislatures have the same restrictions. The reason this amendment exists at all was 1. To quell dissent from the Anti-Federalists which campaigned against the Constitution in the ratification conventions and 2. Because then and now, we’re a nation of dissenters. Many of the people that migrated from Europe to the United States were religious dissenters or penal colonists living in exile. I don’t know to what degree you studied the Huguenots in French history, but they made a few attempts to establish themselves, each time French politics seeking their resupply attempts after the initial landing, before receiving a land grant in what is now Brooklyn, and then was part of the New Netherlands.
rossjudson 6y ago
I mean, they both are made of people, right? And those people have brains that they use, right? And brains are made of molecules, right? At the end of the day it's all just molecules reacting to stimuli, and basically there's no difference. Because they are molecules.
zahreeley 6y ago
because China is enemy and America is friend.
deleted 6y ago
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NicoJuicy 6y ago
Xi is censoring protests on their platforms, but it's clear that Trump can't. That's a clear proof of difference.
john4532452 6y ago
On YouTube at least the user has the option to search and subscribe the videos, there by controlling what is shown, it is not the same with TikTok
Nginx487 6y ago
There are no private companies in China, all of the corporate entities directly or indirectly depend on CCP, which uses every opportunity to damage national security of its enemies.

azinman2 6y ago

It’s about allies versus active enemies. There are shootouts on a regular basis between India and China, and they’ve intensified recently.

seamyb88 6y ago
Ah right. Because the U.S. is never involved in war, it's a different story for youtube etc...
ianleeclark 6y ago
So it's just opportunism, then? Condemn the other; refuse reflection. Or am I misunderstanding you?
- azinman2 6y ago
  I can’t say what India’s motivation is for sure. Maybe there’s a credible threat in a way that Facebook isn’t. Maybe it’s just anti-Chinese fervor. But saying anything outside of India should be treated the same is not taking into account geo-politics and individual country’s behaviors.
  - josephv 6y ago
    Coordination with the US means jobs and economic opportunity for both sides. Coordination with China means gunfights and border tension. It's pretty simple if you don't try to extrapolate everything to logical extrems. India and US is ally, India and China is rival. Full stop, it ends there. KISS
  - petre 6y ago
    We live in interesting times, ripe for manipulation and propaganda, both if which China and Russia have spread in the EU during the last months. India's ban is completely warranted. The fact that they also have a border dispute with China only makes things worse. I'd rather they ban a few apps than escalation and war.
- bobthepanda 6y ago
  It's about harm and risk reduction. All other things held equal, you would expect your enemies to be doing more to undermine you than your allies would.
- saiya-jin 6y ago
  Using opportunity to actually perform a good thing for privacy (tiktok at least was found snooping all it can from users phones, not sure about the rest but given how chinese run things that would be expected). No tear will be shed for those apps, regardless from which country they come from (I know this is very targeted due to recent tensions, but its still a step in the right direction re privacy)
ra7 6y ago
> There are shootouts on a regular basis between India and China, and they’ve intensified recently. There are no "shootouts". There are standoffs sometimes (think once a year if you want to define regularity) due to the loosely demarcated Line of Actual Control (LAC) between India and China. It's usually a melee. Even the recent escalated incident wasn't a shootout. There are agreements between Indian and Chinese governments that prevent usage of firearms in standoffs like these.
- stickfigure 6y ago
  I agree that "shootouts" is the wrong word, but "melee" doesn't quite capture the gruesomeness of human beings beating each other to death with spiked clubs.
- azinman2 6y ago
  20 Indian soldiers died just two weeks ago: https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/16/asia/china-india-border-clash-intl-hnk/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/16/asia/china-india-border-clash...
  - ra7 6y ago
    Yes, I'm aware of the news. It still wasn't due to a "shootout". > What’s happening along the Himalayan border is an unusual kind of warfare. As in the brawls last month, Chinese and Indian soldiers fought fiercely without firing a shot — at least that’s what officials on both sides contend. They say the soldiers followed their de facto border code not to use firearms and went at each other with fists, rocks and wooden clubs, some possibly studded with nails or wrapped in barbed wire. From https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/16/world/asia/indian-china-border-clash.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/16/world/asia/indian-china-b...

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jankassens 6y ago

If India (or any other country for that matter) would be in an armed conflict with the US, they would probably also consider banning various US controlled services.

ianleeclark 6y ago
I asked about the algorithm thing--that's what I'm curious about. Where specifically does that belief end.
- systemvoltage 6y ago
  I'd guess that double-standards are inevitable and desired when there is an armed conflict between nations. If Indian government sees no harm in US apps whilst banning Chinese apps, this is the definition of diplomatic pressure. Asymmetry is the tool used to apply this pressure. Your point is valid - we have no way to know Facebook algorithms and it is a blackbox, but this isn't supposed to be a symmetric comparison for aforementioned reasons.
pvelagal 6y ago
China is not in armed conflict with US , why does it ban every app that civilized world uses ? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_websites_blocked_in_mainland_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_websites_blocked_in_ma...
- dis-sys 6y ago
  protectionism.

saltedonion 6y ago

You have a good point. But TikTok is much more risky, and as as such requires much more scrutiny given existing body of knowledge between how chinese social media / chat companies such as WeChat enforce government censorship and aid in propagating misinformation. This might be a shock to most people in the western world, but if you go on almost ANY news website in china, the headline news is dedicated to government propaganda. The reality is that Chinese firms and government operates together intimately. Nearly all sizable firms have a party secretary that is involved in board level decisions, and steps in when things get political. You can ponder who has the final say.

ianleeclark 6y ago
> The reality is that Chinese firms and government operates together intimately No, I get this, but here's the thing: YouTube and, more specifically, it's advertisers do everything that you're accusing China of. There are material consequences if YouTube doesn't keep in line. What this means is that a status quo that pleases advertisers will be maintained. It's every bit propaganda as dropping leaflets, but you can't point out a boogeyman pulling the strings.
- pyuser583 6y ago
  The concern is the coordination between Chinese foreign affairs/security services and the commercial sector. For US-based firms, that’s simply not the case. Yes, YouTube needs to make sure Nike is happy. But Nike didn’t just kill two dozen Indian soldiers. Certainly there’s privacy related concerns with US companies - as with Chinese companies. But nobody had accused the DoD of manipulating YouTube search rankings. If the DoD wants to conduct a YouTube propaganda campaign, they can buy advertising like everybody else.
  - RobertoG 6y ago
    I don't know, I still remember how, in a poll before the invasion of Iraq, a majority of Americans though that Saddam Hussein was connected to the 11S attacks.

no_wizard 6y ago

Biggest difference is motives, as long as we are making the assumption you mean private corporations that aren’t proxies for their respective government(s) A private company will optimize profit, all things being equal. Sometimes this means it’s product/platform can be used to disseminate possibly dangerous information, but it also can be regulated in response. Another government? Not so easy Only way to really assert influence is through a much more narrow and limited scope like diplomacy, economic sanction, war, or otherwise influence the state/affairs of the country through target regulations like the ones mentioned in the article

ianleeclark 6y ago
> Sometimes this means it’s product/platform can be used to disseminate possibly dangerous information, but it also can be regulated in response. I don't think this is true specifically in the case of America. Who are you going to get to actually grapple that beast of a multi national? Yeah, lots of people talk about it, but politics ultimately requires a degree of consensus. When you have investors calling up their representatives saying they will donate to their opponent next election or they will move jobs out of the area, politicians are going to start falling off. Oh, these politicians are all probably invested in these companies to some degree, or maybe they rent apartments to their workers. There's also the gridlock issue that likely can't be resolved unless we start adding states, so legislation will be hard there. Companies like alphabet and Facebook are the culmination of the last 40 years of politics in America.
- no_wizard 6y ago
  Never intended for this to mean it was easy or anything. As you noted already it isn’t always. However this also admits it can be done as I mentioned too. You can’t pass legislation that makes another government open itself up to transparency though. That’s the fundamental difference
  - ianleeclark 6y ago
    > However this also admits it can be done as I mentioned too. That wasn't the intention

StreamBright 6y ago

Not to mention state sponsored private firm, being private is just optics.

dathinab 6y ago

Good point. But YouTube is not controlled by an authoritarian fascist-like government which has a world view in direct opposition to what you could refer handwaveingly as "western" and is currently pushing to become the dominant power in the world. If you furthermore consider how bad the "western world" (mainly Britten and the East India Company) had treated it in the past, some aspects of the Chinese culture and the current Goverment direction western countries expecting any fair or reasonable treatment once china succeeded to become the worlds dominant power is kinda a sad joke.

colordrops 6y ago
YouTube isn't controlled by an authoritarian fascist-like government - it is run by the fascist-lite corporate oligarchy which runs the US. The US may not be as bad as china in some ways but that doesn't absolve them from responsibility.
- banachtarski 6y ago
  Trying to draw a parallel between Google and a country that literally tortures and murders its citizens for "unsanctioned beliefs" is disingenuous. Cut the bullshit.
  - colordrops 6y ago
    Ignorance of US history of endless human rights abuses (including torture) both domestic and foreign by the US is not an excuse for being condescending and overly confident on an internet forum.
    - banachtarski 6y ago
      Let's talk about modern day since that's the topic at hand. Who was the last US citizen you know of to be arrested, detained, and killed for voicing opposition to the way the government is run. I'm not saying the US government is perfect (especially in this time, far from it), I'm just saying the comparison isn't remotely apropos. I would say I have the "correct" level of confidence in this regard.

mtgp1000 6y ago

You don't see a difference between an ideological party which interns millions of people by ethnicity (among other glaring issues), and a corporation seeking profits from a video platform?

ianleeclark 6y ago
On the question of black box algorithms, no because it's not relevant.
- seemack 6y ago
  I would think that the reputation of the creator becomes even more critical when considering a black box algorithm.

lala26in 6y ago

3/5 board of directors of ByteDance that owns TikTok are western.

hyko 6y ago

Because YouTube doesn’t have nuclear weapons and a plan to invade western allies?

Bayart 6y ago

YT has a legal framework that gives it protection to an extent from government interference, especially where it touches upon freedom of speech. Whether they want to use it or not is another question. But the Party can just put officials in the Douyin (TikTok) offices and ask for any encryption key without having to divulge anything and without the company having any recourse. This in complete legality. Large corporations becoming the end point for debate is a real problem, but I don't think it really overlaps with public/private collusion (or the lack of true private in China's case).

thuruv 6y ago

Politics does. That's the difference. Acting on above is solely depends on political bias instead of a concrete notice. No official research conducted and released stating the harm about the apps, right?

SuoDuanDao 6y ago

Let's be honest here; if India's relations with USA had soured to the same degree as with PRC, Youtube would be the one getting banned.

suyash 6y ago
USA and India are friends unlike CCP which can't be trusted by anyone.
- sudosysgen 6y ago
  No one in the entire world with half a brain trusts the US, or any state for that matter. Too much backstabbing. Ask the Kurds.

slowmovintarget 6y ago

TikTok apps add a vector for arbitrary code download and execution. What "algorithm" you get would seem to depend on what they'd like to run on your device that day.

seebetter 6y ago

The Chinese State is based on Marxism-Leninism and wants to dominate the world. There is a difference in that and any other country that acknowledges natural rights. If you believe rights are innate, then you can’t openly tolerate a state that denies them. I often think what would California look like if it had the laws of Texas. Or what would China look like if it had the structure and motivations of Nevada? Both have Elon Musk and gambling.

cocktailpeanuts 6y ago

China is a special case because they are among the very few number of countries in the world where the government openly controls the media and the private companies. A U.S. company like Twitter even bans the U.S. president's posts on their platform, and so does Facebook. Something like that is impossible in China as whoever does that will instantly get shut down. Think about the implication of this. This means you have to assume that any Chinese tech company will have to comply when the government tells them to spread some propaganda through their media. This is what has been called in a science fiction as "information warfare", and it can be even more catastrophic than a real war, but I don't think most people realize this because they've never seen one before. What's even scarier is that even as this is happening, nobody knows this is happening, which is worse than a war because, unlike a physical war where everything is visible, one country can "attack" another country without anyone else realizing, causing a huge damage to their economy.

concordDance 6y ago
Forget the economy. The damage to social infrastructure and trust is far more serious. Groups violently turning on eachother, families splitting over political divides, lynchings... these matter a lot more than whether people have nice cars.

trekrich 6y ago

hmm google or the ccp. Take your pick!

everdrive 6y ago

> Nation state vs. private corporation is different on paper, A nation state and a company are different in substance as well. I am sympathetic to the idea that companies (in America) can do more to curtail your freedoms. But, this is only true because of our system of government. In principle, a government can do much more than a company to curtail your freedoms. In practice, this is often less true. (although if you bump into eminent domain, or similar laws, then the government is much more threatening to you.) We don't have to look far for this theoretical: the Chinese government rounds up people and puts them in camps, and disappears people for having the wrong opinions.

SllX 6y ago

Nation states have military, intelligence, diplomacy and police corps. They reserve the power to stop, detain, arrest, jail, try, sentence, imprison, and kill. That’s why how we go about those things is a Big Deal, and why we have so many rules about who can go about it, how, under what circumstances, what the laws are that they’re enforcing, what the processes and procedures are for enforcement and how guilt is determined. Corporations as a rule, and there have been exceptions, but as a rule have none of those powers. Theoretically the worst crimes they’re going to commit are fraudulent in nature and crimes of negligence. They’re not just a separate org chart ultimately serving as a private arm of the State with its own private rules that it self-enforces; they’re different beasts entirely. The problem with PRC-based corporations is that they muddy the waters entirely between what is private and public. As far as the PRC is concerned, all private life is subject to the State and should serve the interests of the State. Google and Facebook and your favorite café or tea house can and do have interests that lie entirely outside of the State and are free to pursue them. That is the difference between a free society and an authoritarian State.

xwolfi 6y ago
I think you forget a detail. Nation state, or any state, are sovereign. If the national community agrees on something, it's all that matter. We don't have to abide by other countries standards on everything especially if we dont like it. Im thinking as a French I had to fight a lot with free speech absolutists abroad, while at home we're quite okay with selective censorship... it sounds scary to an American sometimes, but hell we dont care :D
- SllX 6y ago
  We can respect another nation’s sovereignty without respecting their authoritarianism. I very much believe we should be disrespecting the hell out of authoritarian States, much more than we do so now because authoritarianism doesn’t stop at the borders, it stops at the practical limit that a State can enforce its laws which is why when the NBA was quite literally kowtowing to the PRC, we had a problem with that. PRC corporations have a history of behaving in a mistrustful manner, combined with their obligations to the PRC State which treats its citizens as subjects, and sometimes not even its citizens, but anybody of Chinese descent, PRC corporations absolutely should be singled out and treated with mistrust. Our corporations have the obligation to turn a profit for their shareholders and sometimes that even means entering into a contract with the government, but theirs also have the obligation to advance the interests of the State. Dual mandates, even when not initially at odds with each other, often eventually come into conflict with each other, and State-owned or controlled corporations often don’t even have the profit incentive but are instead subject to politics. See also: the American corporations Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for examples of why they’re a bad idea, although their enterprises are domestic. This is off topic but since you brought it up, we’re not the free speech absolutists that we believe we are. What we took issue with specifically was the idea of a central government regulating speech, assembly, the press and the establishment of churches. We still had established churches for quite some time, but they were governed by the States, not the United States. Let me quote you the First Amendment: > Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. Everything you really need to know is in the first five words. It’s a prohibition on Congress, not a grant of rights, and this would later come to be incorporated against the States as well such that their legislatures have the same restrictions. The reason this amendment exists at all was 1. To quell dissent from the Anti-Federalists which campaigned against the Constitution in the ratification conventions and 2. Because then and now, we’re a nation of dissenters. Many of the people that migrated from Europe to the United States were religious dissenters or penal colonists living in exile. I don’t know to what degree you studied the Huguenots in French history, but they made a few attempts to establish themselves, each time French politics seeking their resupply attempts after the initial landing, before receiving a land grant in what is now Brooklyn, and then was part of the New Netherlands.

rossjudson 6y ago

I mean, they both are made of people, right? And those people have brains that they use, right? And brains are made of molecules, right? At the end of the day it's all just molecules reacting to stimuli, and basically there's no difference. Because they are molecules.

zahreeley 6y ago

because China is enemy and America is friend.

deleted 6y ago

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NicoJuicy 6y ago

Xi is censoring protests on their platforms, but it's clear that Trump can't. That's a clear proof of difference.

john4532452 6y ago

On YouTube at least the user has the option to search and subscribe the videos, there by controlling what is shown, it is not the same with TikTok

Nginx487 6y ago

There are no private companies in China, all of the corporate entities directly or indirectly depend on CCP, which uses every opportunity to damage national security of its enemies.