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The TikTok War

353 points by migueldemoura 6y ago

russli1993 6y ago
Tiktok's parent company, bytedance is incorporated in Cayman islands. It has a Chinese subsidiary operating Douyin in China , and a US subsidiary operating Tiktok in the US. The Chinese national intelligence law is applied to the Chinese subsidiary but not the parent because the parent is not incorporated in China. Hence the US subsidiary is not subjected to Chinese law. If Chinese government demands US data and Bytedance's Chinese subsidiary refuses, the government can shut down the Chinese subsidiary, but the Cayman island parent will still operate. Hence Chinese government has no power over the US subsidiary. Author says that Chinese values and American values are absolutely opposing and because of that Tiktok's algorithms and product design could undermine American values either consciously or unconsciously. Right now Bytedance's US subsidiary is managed by Americans, hires US based engineers, and the content moderation team is staffed with Americans. The goal should be that Tiktok and Douyin will be separate, design, operated and moderated separately. This could be strengthened by having American management at Bytedance parent, and have Bytedance go public and have American board directors. I hope that whatever international fears about Tiktok, the regulatory body/government should make list of rules for Tiktok. Tiktok should be given a chance to defend its positions, and ability to comply with the rules. We should not just straight out ban tiktok, like "bam, after today, its removed from app stores everywhere". that is not in the spirit of rule of law.
- babaganoosh89 6y ago
  "If Chinese government demands US data and Bytedance's Chinese subsidiary refuses, the government can shut down the Chinese subsidiary, but the Cayman island parent will still operate. Hence Chinese government has no power over the US subsidiary." The issue is the Chinese government can compel it's citizens to do whatever they want. Having non-Chinese in the management of Bytedance could help but I can't imagine they could have a truly independent board if Bytedance is majority owned by Chinese citizens.
- summerlight 6y ago
  Zhang Yiming, ByteDance's owner, is a Chinese citizen who lives in Beijing. The real problem is the latter part, in that PRC can do whatever physical enforcement on him. While I don't doubt his intention to keep TikTok separate from international politics as far as possible, but I am 100% sure that if CCP doesn't like Zhang's "lack of patriotism", it will teach him a lesson even if it's a unlawful way. They did it to Jack Ma, so the same thing can happen to Zhang.
- here4U 6y ago
  Your assertion that "Hence Chinese government has no power over the US subsidiary" is incomplete. Tiktok's policy of sharing user data allows the Chinese government all of the power they need, at least in terms of data collection. Re: the influence argument your points are stronger, I think. Thompson's article felt a bit like scaremongering there.
- balola 6y ago
  Says every Chinese internet company, they are all "foreign" companies.
ngcc_hk 6y ago
Tik Tok success as a technology is well argued by the author. That should be copied and cloned and compete as MANY not as one. That is this onesness that I try to argue. This is this oneness that get China and the strategy missing this part of China the problem. Obviously I would be baised in the sense that the author just gave up my whole place and my 2m+ liberty loving followers. U people, HK people, TW people ... is just part of China, we can just dump them (or you can just dump us) because we belong to a "ONE". The whole idea of human rights are about individual not about the rights of nation over you or us in Hong Kong. If you let the oneness grow and ignore that one is evil, you die with us because the evil will expand. HK is the front of the ideological fight. Not sure why the author not noted that the play against HK is a play against the promise and contract by the less powerful China to the future. Read Deng speech in UN, you can see there is a promising China. But look at today you know nothing in the one is preventing it. The West look otherwise by letting China grow so powerful it is near a stat that cannot fail. The west has to feed the hand that is going to kill them. Just cut the tie is not enough. A more aggressive way of engaging is needed. Otherwise the world is just another South China Seas. China has been asserted itself in Internet (speech by Xin please read), UN, WTO, WHO, ... etc. They have number on their side in the past. Now they have money, they have the language (so many good English speakers in the elite and their children), ... There could be millions inside the west and trillion in the bank. It is like Soviet Union evolve and attack USA soil from underneath. But the analysis is so well that seems ok? That we have to deal with China as one. It is partially yes and partially No. The key problem is what we call one-ness of Chinese thinking. You using that you lost already. What America is great and Europe in a sense has built-in immunity is that there are individual (or even the extreme right has the club concept). You do not analysis a world as a world. A world is nothing but its individual and its links among individual. Now the problem when you think the whole China is a whole you have to fight against then you got yourselves a long term problem. I said long term is from time to time China would group itself together into one big nasty empire. The best is when it is weak (like in Sung Dynasty) when the culture of unity does not break human backs. But once they are big and as oneness is built into the pyshce they just go ahead to transform all barbarians and uncivilised into one of them. There is no stop. Nothing internal to the Chinese philosophy has many in mind. Everyone has to be saved is what they think, and it is what ultimately you got. What you need to do is to ensure the individual spirit and liberty mind to survive inside. So the original promise that a great China contribute as part of many, not force its way as one into the world. Just cut into two would not help. HK, Taiwan, Japan, Korea, the whole Asian countries are those many. Not one less! Not just one! :-) ok back to my debugging of the solitaire of C. gdb tracing of pointer structure is hard, isn't it. From 6502 (by guessing), 370 (XA to ESA extension and control block) to now; still you always deal with dump. Sigh. Back to my cave even though the world is collapsing, that you can hack as an individual and do what you enjoy is more important. And that is why this all about. We should have more or one TikTok.
here4U 6y ago
I wonder how true Thompson's assertion about a war of ideology between China and western values is. Are there any examples of TikTok influencing thinking in a pro-Chinese way via algorithm tuning or direct curation?
norswap 6y ago
Nitpick, but this man doesn't really seem to understand what "Marxism" means.
Asad445 6y ago
Tiktok is changing the mindset of our generation
- collegeburner 6y ago
  Current young person here (entering college this fall). I can't think of a single way it's changed "the mindset of our generation", and it seems it's used very heavily by a specific type of person but not by others (as opposed to other social media which is more widely used). How is it changing anything?
  - Asad445 6y ago
    People doing suicides in different countries due to this.. In India in pakistan etc
    - moron4hire 6y ago
      "The kids doing suicides" is a common trope dragged out anytime the establishment wants to put something down. Come up with evidence that TikTok is causing more suicidal ideation than people typically experience, and then we might have a conversation. Until then, this is just fearmongering, and a lazy form of it at that.
caddie 6y ago
i personally enjoy seeing young teenagers recording dancing videos on the beach while prior to tiktok they used to just seat down, heads down on their phone, absent, non-existent.
- kpennell 6y ago
  Agreed. Yeah, you can make fun of them but they are actually doing something now.
azatris 6y ago
I absolutely love using TikTok, but would give it up in a heartbeat for a Western replacement. It has absolutely brought more positivity into my life. I am specifically feeding the algorithm with this intent and I get what I asked for. It is a psychological tool.
- teekert 6y ago
  All I see is girls putting their phone somewhere, dancing in front of it, then getting back into being absorbed by their phones. Can you describe more specifically what is so positive about it? My kids are about to enter the age at which they get a smartphone and these things make me a bit afraid (like, who's watching? Why do they stare at that app for so long? etc). I don't understand the alure, but I want to keep an open mind and not be that old parent that doesn't understand...
  - bstar77 6y ago
    You don't need to understand the allure. Are you not also absorbed by your phone in other ways? What wrong with people smiling, laughing and dancing? I'm an old parent trying to be open minded as well.
    - RspecMAuthortah 6y ago
      Are you not also absorbed by your phone in other ways? > I would argue it is one thing to be absorbed by reading in your phone HN or other productive sources. Laughing and dancing on the other hand, after a certain period of time not so much useful.
      - bstar77 6y ago
        This is one of the most depressing comments I've read in a long time.
        Waterfall 6y ago
        This comment chain is one of the funniest I've seen in a while. Literally laughing so hard at your comment thank you.
YarickR2 6y ago
Next steps in such a war: removal of freedom of speech, and politically motivated and state controlled media. We'll have People States of America in no time . All is fair in love and war, right ?
kpennell 6y ago
I'm not sure how I got sucked into Tiktok but I was quickly hooked. There's something so refreshingly playful, authentic, and raw about so much Tiktok content compared to Instagram. Instagram (explore/discovery) is generally pretty people with pretty things in pretty places. That was fun for a while but it's just not that interesting after a while. I don't need to see more pretty pictures of women doing yoga. I don't need to see more pretty mountain bikes I can't afford. I don't need to see anymore drone shots of Milford Sound in New Zealand. Tiktok, on the other hand, is playful, diverse, and interesting (at least my feed is). Once you start liking content, the feed completely changes from teenage lip sync videos or other teenager-oriented content into such a nice variety of content. I legitimately laugh my ass off or smile happily at so much of it. Other content teaches me about food, gardening, dancing, DIY, media theory, hiking alone, gender bending, etc. etc. The list goes on. Some of the videos delight me and others inform me. Instagram, by contrast, just feels so bland now.
- duxup 6y ago
  I feel the same way about a lot of social media personalities, YouTube ... there's all these youtube-isms that every youtuber eventually adopts. You follow someone, they get popular, then they do some reaction videos, or they decide to evolve into some sort of lifestyle / social media pundit / etc... I really don't care to watch folks react to things or any of that other stuff. They all encourage a lot of nasty / outrageous content over time as that's what gets eyeballs. I think much more positive, authentic, curated / focused content would be great. I'm done with filtering twitter, youtube, instagram ... endlessly as content eventually goes sour.
- manishsharan 6y ago
  Instagram seems to be evolving into Home Shopping Network or QVC.
  - addflip 6y ago
    That's a great way to put it. I couldn't quite put my finger on it but that's totally what is happening on IG. A lot of DTC brands have basically saturated my feed. I'm not sure how much longer this can continue without losing engagement. Anecdotally my own interest in IG has been waning the past year almost to the point of deletion.
actuator 6y ago
Ben is absolutely right and something needs to be done to fight for the values of liberalism, democracy etc we hold dear but I don't see how this will happen. The world seems more divided than ever. Just 2-3 countries unilaterally acting on these issues isn't going to make a difference, how I wish there were strong leaders in some of the nations who knew how to work well for those ideals in the long term together with others. Also, this is not just about Tiktok as Ben mentioned. When American corporations like NBA start censoring things on their own soil, it is beyond reprehensible.
- vorpalhex 6y ago
  Speak with your money, call in complaints to advertisers, communicate the importance of these actions to your friends.
  - actuator 6y ago
    I am all for activism but does this work unless it reaches a sizeable mass, look at how FB brushed aside the impact of protests by their advertisers.
    - vorpalhex 6y ago
      The current Facebook situation is a bit of a different beast. Most of those advertisers were already cutting their marketing spend because Covid, and are using the current cause to still get attention while reducing direct spend (though I'm sure they'd like Facebook to be a bit heavier on the censorship all the same). Facebook is likely doing the math now on what makes sense in terms of keeping advertisers happy while resisting temporary market pressure. The answer will probably be a discount on ads, not actually changing content policies, which is what the advertisers are likely gunning for anyways.
      - chillacy 6y ago
        Facebook ads are sold as an auction so the discount on ads is already happening. It also tends to produce the type of tempting situation which makes it impossible for brands to resist going back in if they can sneak an advantage in over their competitors.
duxup 6y ago
The scale of information available to an app is potentially huge. Thus they're automatically involved in some sort of information warfare. I guess there's two options, either by default the the ecosystem doesn't allow for them to have that information ... or they're in play for these types of things. I don't think there's any other options...
Pandabob 6y ago
I guess the sentiment that TikTok should be sold is gaining ground. It's pretty clear from a regulatory perspective that Facebook won't be allowed to buy it and probably Google neither. The app also seems to be kind of a wonky fit to Amazons, Microsofts or Apples portfolio (although Amazon does own twitch, so who knows). I can't make a solid argument for it, but I wouldn't rule out either Netflix or Disney making a bid for TikTok. Both companies are great with video, and I think the current CEO of TikTok is the former COO of Disney. IDK.
- esperent 6y ago
  If it does get sold, hopefully it's not to an US company. The web is already far too dominated by US socal media companies.
- giantrobot 6y ago
  If TikTok were to be sold, the new company would still have a EULA clause stating they'll share data with partners. One partner will be ByteDance or a wholly owned subsidiary. So the same information will flow into the CCP panopticon. The only way that wouldn't happen is if the new TikTok owner incorporated in a jurisdiction that forbid such a relationship. That seems unlikely since ByeDance could pay the spun off TikTok dump trucks full of money for the data.
jjuel 6y ago
I recently deleted TikTok from my phone. I didn't have it for too long, and until the recent press I had no idea it was a Chinese app. Honestly, I understand companies will mine my data, but I have an issue with those companies being forced to submit my data to the Chinese government on a whim. And it was really all the same thing. People doing the same skits or dances. Most of which were just chicks doing it in bikinis to get more views and likes.
- chosenbreed37 6y ago
  Are you actually concerned that the Chinese government might get access to your data or is it a matter of principle? What do you think they want to do with it? If they really wanted it could they not acquire it by other means? I ask as I'm genuinely curious. I'm considering install it on my phone to try it out and see how it compares to youtube. I'm not dissatisfied with my youtube feed. Just curious as to how much better TikTok would be based on the descriptions on the article and on this thread.
  - scruple 6y ago
    > Are you actually concerned that the Chinese government might get access to your data or is it a matter of principle? Both. > What do you think they want to do with it? Absolutely no idea. Much like I had no idea what Facebook was doing, or planned to do, with my data back in the 00s. I think we've been down this road enough in the modern era to be distrustful of any entity, especially a government, especially my own government, and especially the Chinese government. > If they really wanted it could they not acquire it by other means? If they really wanted to target me as an individual, I am sure they could dig up $THINGS. That doesn't mean I want to do their job for them. Your line of questioning here, as I've read it, boils down to: "What are you afraid of if you have nothing to hide?"
    - blacksmith_tb 6y ago
      Possibly, but it could be just be pragmatic - if I lived in the PRC, I would be very, very nervous about sharing some kind of unfiltered feed of my data with state entities. Living outside of the PRC, it's harder to imagine what kind of practical use they'd put that same data to - though that might get more exciting if I traveled to China at some point in the future...
netcan 6y ago
This tiktok "war" is, ultimately, changing the way people politicians think about media tech. With Twitter or Facebook, it's a lot easier to dismiss the magnitude of their influence. After all, they're not in business to influence politics. They just want to make tech & sell ads and make money. They don't care what becomes news, who wins elections etc. Benign commercial interests, that's all With tiktok and the chinese government's explicit approach of combining public & commercial interest... That argument falls apart. That and the fact that it is a foreign entity potentially affecting american politics. Ultimately, the argument will swing back to FB & such... hopefully.
- djohnston 6y ago
  i think if anything tiktok's rise will probably bolster US domestic support for big tech. who wants to be the senator that creates a power vacuum filled by chinese tech?
- moron4hire 6y ago
  > After all, they're not in business to influence politics. Dude, I personally know people who work in Facebook's own lobbying department. I would be very surprised if Twitter didn't have the same thing.
  - xapata 6y ago
    There's a difference between Facebook lobbying and Facebook using its products to disseminate propaganda.
    - moron4hire 6y ago
      Where the hell have you been for the last 4 years? That's been the only conversation about Facebook. EDIT: Mark Zuckerberg had to appear before Congress in 2018 specifically to address Facebook disseminating propaganda!
      - xapata 6y ago
        > Mark Zuckerberg had to appear before Congress in 2018 Exactly. Whereas with TikTok the government is pushing the propaganda.
chvid 6y ago
As an European I am happy that someone is finally breaking the American monopoly on social media. It just feels wrong only being surveilled by the NSA.
- nix23 6y ago
  Install yandex tiktok and facebook and you have the holy trinity ;)
  - 082349872349872 6y ago
    Eurasia, Eastasia, and Oceania ;) (by the end of the year Airstrip One will have always been part of Oceania)
- moron4hire 6y ago
  Ah yes, the well-known comfort of having even more security services pawing through your personal data. Mmmmm.
  - PuffinBlue 6y ago
    It's only fair that they all get a turn.
- sschueller 6y ago
  I find it funny how the US is freaking out that they don't own it. Now you know what it feels like when the US owns all the large social media networks and you have to deal with their politics and censorship.
flattone 6y ago
Tiktok could offer to pay your mortgage im still confused and disgusted people use it
pastaking 6y ago
Maybe a correction: The article mentions that Amazon asked its employees to delete the app. But Amazon later retracted that decision.
- mikikikik 6y ago
  this is already mentioned in the article.
k__ 6y ago
I don't see the problem. TikTok will be banned. SV will do a US based replacement. All will be good.
amadeuspagel 6y ago
Interesting that only India's decision to ban TikTok made that possible in the US. Shows how polarized the US is. If one side suggested banning TikTok, the other side would immidiately defend it, but India banning it can bring it into the conversation in a way that doesn't force everyone to adopt a view on it reflexively.
babesh 6y ago
There seems to be a concerted effort from both China and the US to create sides. It feels like a new Cold War is looming. Stratechery is playing on one side. The reality is that US companies are quite willing to censor and manipulate information as well. Facebook and YouTube censored coronavirus information for the US government. Facebook is fine with right wing manipulation. These propaganda efforts by US companies affect people from other countries. Both sides are just trying to amass and maintain power. The CCP needs to control information to maintain power. The US is a consortium of entities amassing money and power and likewise tries to destroy institutions preventing that. I bet if you look inside the CCP, you would likewise see multiple groups vying for power. If you follow Stratechery’s logic, then non US countries should likewise ban Facebook and YouTube. The more ethical solution would be worldwide standards on censorship.
eclipsetheworld 6y ago
Why is TikTok allowed to gain market share in Western countries? China banned Google, YouTube, Facebook, etc. while Chinese companies such as Baidu, Sina Weibo, WeChat were able to capture the entire Chinese market share. It seems that companies not adhering to censorship cannot expand into China, however, Chinese companies adhering to censorship (e.g. TikTok) are able to expand into Western countries. Isn't this anti-competitive?
- rvz 6y ago
  Good question. If you want to get into the Chinese market, you must comply with its laws and not get in the way of angering the CCP. China is one of Apple's largest markets due to its access to over 1B+ people and it now has its hands tied and anything the CCP wants removed, Apple will do it. [0][1][2] Like you just said, TikTok already compiles with this security law and censors/bans whatever the CCP requests. By moving outside of China it can either lose access to the Chinese market and get banned by China or still comply with its laws and get banned by the US. The thing is, TikTok has offices out side of China due to the Musical.ly acquisition (Located in the US) so can still operate there whilst Bytedance being headquartered in Beijing. A takedown request can be made to the App Store owner. Apple and Google. [0] https://9to5mac.com/2017/01/04/new-york-times-apps-removed-in-china/ https://9to5mac.com/2017/01/04/new-york-times-apps-removed-i... [1] https://9to5mac.com/2017/11/21/skype-china-app-store/ https://9to5mac.com/2017/11/21/skype-china-app-store/ [2] https://9to5mac.com/2019/10/10/protest-app/ https://9to5mac.com/2019/10/10/protest-app/
  - Udik 6y ago
    > or still comply with its laws and get banned by the US. How does complying with China's laws in China will get you banned from the US? The US has all the right to establish the laws for products distributed on its own territory, as China does for its own.
  - throw57654 6y ago
    TikTok is banned in China. The company has an isolated version called Douyin that is only available in China.
fossuser 6y ago
There’s a lot of false equivalence in these comments along with a focus on the app itself. My worry is about CCP influence and their ability to both spread misinformation and at the same time suppress stories the party doesn’t like. Easy current examples are the democracy protests in Hong Kong, and the sterilization going on in the Uyghur camps in China. On Twitter you can talk about both things, on TikTok they will be shut down by the CCP and it’s set up in such a way that users wouldn’t even notice. On Twitter you can also be critical of the USG. That’s the risk to me, that the CCP turns down the knobs on speech they dislike and the public is too focused on dance videos to notice. It’s an even greater risk to people like Joshua Wong, not only would his speech be suppressed on TikTok, but the company would also hand over whatever personal or location data they had on him to the government itself. (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joshua_Wong https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joshua_Wong) The CCP should not be stewards of the services we use.
- YarickR2 6y ago
  Twitter the company shouldn't be a steward of the Twitter the tool, too - do you agree with that ?
dilap 6y ago
A popular social-media app not under US govt control is a threat to its ability to propagandize its citizens. So a ban would make sense. Ah, the land of the free!
Schnitz 6y ago
"the Chinese Communist Party very much believes that Marxism is the means by which that must be accomplished" This is BS, the economic system in China is in no way Marxist, nor is it going in that direction. It's worse, lol. This sounds like someone is simply rehashing propaganda he heard somewhere that was intended to either smear Marx or China or both.
- quicklime 6y ago
  It's unfortunate that you were downvoted for this; you're absolutely correct. No one in China gives a fuck about Marxism, and the CCP certainly isn't trying to wage some ideological war to establish some sort of Marxist utopia. To think so is to completely misunderstand the CCP's motivation, which is a dangerous thing when the tensions are escalating and war could be the result.
  - chillacy 6y ago
    This link was included in the article: https://sinocism.com/p/engineers-of-the-soul-ideology-in https://sinocism.com/p/engineers-of-the-soul-ideology-in While China has certainly strayed pretty far from its state-controlled economy in recent years, it also seems pretty clear that Xi is more ideologically "hardcore" than his predecessors.
euix 6y ago
In the last century the prevailing line the U.S. was that the U.S. would change China through economic engagement, I think what is really going to happen is China is going to change the U.S. Mainly in the sense that in order to adapt to the competitive threat from China the U.S. has to become more state capitalism and industrial policy guided. Using strong government to guide industrial policy, fend off or cripple foreign competitors, enact infrastructure. These are the standard tools in China. As for China, I wonder in the long term if this is not pioneering a completely new mode of the human species. What is the logical end of total surveillance and censorship? Eventually unifying every person into the mind of the state until individualism dissolves and we are all subsumed into a common entity. Maybe I am speculating too far but if you could have everyone carry an implant from birth wired to a single network then you could achieve the common science fiction trope of an unified collective conscious. Maybe even the leading Party theoreticians haven't even sought about it this far yet.
dustinmoris 6y ago
Americans are losing everything at the moment because of their own shortcomings. Now just get to grips with it and stop constantly demonising other nations, whether it's the Middle East, Russia, China, the EU or whoever else, in order to prevent other countries and internet companies to become successful. America is losing dominance economically, socially and military and it scares them and so we should all expect to be fed more US anti China, anti Russia anti Asia, anti East, anti EU propaganda to keep the power in the house for as long as possible, but whatever bullshit they try to feed us nothing will prevent the inevitable change of power to take place over the next decade.
crazygringo 6y ago
This piece is ridiculous. Mainly: > What matters more in an ideological war, though, is influence, and that is why I do believe that ByteDance’s continued ownership of TikTok is unacceptable. What's implied but unsaid here is that somehow the CCP is going to fill TikTok with political propaganda that... a bunch of teens are going to somehow become influenced by? Sorry, but that's just completely far-fetched. Facebook is something to be concerned about, with people sharing political stories, memes, etc. But TikTok? A bunch of funny videos? There's nothing that could be further from ideology. > Perhaps the most powerful argument against taking any sort of action is that we aren’t China, and isn’t blocking TikTok something that China would do? Yes, this is precisely why we don't need to do this. We're better than China. Things like freedom of speech, democracy, and the free market set a moral example to the world. Once we start censoring things, we lose that moral leadership. (And sure you can argue all you want about our declining moral leadership and the state of our democracy, but let's not make it even worse, shall we?) > If China is on the offensive against liberalism not only within its borders but within ours, it is in liberalism’s interest to cut off a vector that has taken root precisely because it is so brilliantly engineered to give humans exactly what they want. Isn't every product trying to be brilliantly engineered to give customers exactly what they want? All this boils down to is, it's a good app, so let's kill it. Again, totally opposite the American values of competition, the free market, and consumers. Sorry, but there is absolutely zero logic in this analysis.
- narrator 6y ago
  TikTok users flooded the Trump rally with fake ticket requests. https://nypost.com/2020/06/21/tiktok-campaigns-ensure-hundreds-of-unused-seats-at-trump-tulsa-rally/ https://nypost.com/2020/06/21/tiktok-campaigns-ensure-hundre... The plausible deniability is easy. No one will ever find out if it was specially promoted. They could just throw up their hands and say that it all happened all by itself. The algorithm is a mystery and a trade secret! U.S Teens are making "I Love China" videos on TikTok. https://www.recruitmentnewsuk.co.uk/2020/05/28/why-us-teens-on-tiktok-are-making-i-love-china-videos/ https://www.recruitmentnewsuk.co.uk/2020/05/28/why-us-teens-... The algorithm could interfere to remove any pro-Trump or anti-China TikToks and noone would be the wiser. There is zero transparency. The Chinese government can lend these institutions billions forever and undercut rivals and overpay programmers if it buys them political influence. Speaking of a free market in ideas. 90% of the U.S media is owned by 5 companies. I think a good idea would be to reverse the Telecommunications Act of 1996 which allowed for massive TV and Radio consolidation. Local radio was actually good in the late 80s and early 90s and new music styles were discovered and promoted by disk jockeys on local stations. After 96, the conglomerates bought up all the radio stations and IMHO, popular music more or less froze in place with just the names of the bands rotating.
raphlinus 6y ago
Relevant to the topic of political propaganda and in particular conspiracy theories, the leftist blogger Digby wrote a good post [1] critical of TikTok even though she was sympathetic to the punking of the Trump rally in Tulsa. In particular, she cites reporting from the Daily Beast that Pizzagate conspiracy theories are circulating widely on the platform. I'm not endorsing this reporting as fact, but do think it is good food for thought. In any case, the platform seems to be very poorly optimized for critical thinking, which is fine for "laughter and dancing" but less fine in other domains. [1]: https://digbysblog.net/2020/06/tiktok-isnt-the-answer-folks/ https://digbysblog.net/2020/06/tiktok-isnt-the-answer-folks/
kindly_fo 6y ago
Everyone who uses tiktok retard, even if tiktok was us company.
codekansas 6y ago
An under-appreciated aspect of this "war" is how bad US companies have been at building ML-first products. ByteDance in particular is just fantastic at it - their products feels designed with the algorithm in mind, as if everyone involved in the development has some understanding of machine learning. This exposes some weaknesses with existing social media platforms that were built before the deep learning boom, as he says in the article. It is probably worthwhile for American innovators to think about what otherwise-impenetrable areas this could expose.
rhacker 6y ago
As the instagram teenagers that made it popular are now 22 - 25, it's their turn to see a new generation overtake what is cool. Don't worry you guys will see them in 10 years sad-facing when BlopChop is popular with the now 5 year olds...
spinach 6y ago
It is hardly just Tiktok policing content with an agenda. Twitter, Youtube, Reddit are particularly bad if you are conservative or have gender critical ideas. Reddit recently banned a ton of subreddits that are simply critical of the idea that men can literally become women (they say it's to stop hate, but they leave up violent porn subs and other subs that hate women). Even subreddits like PCOS - a very serious condition that only females have - ran into trouble because they aren't inclusive enough with their language. Someone got suspended on twitter for saying only females get cervical cancer (this is apparently hate speech), Meghan Murphy got banned from Twitter for using the pronoun 'he' about Yaniv about a profile of his when he was presenting as a man. People get their videos taken down on youtube for "misgendering" people, or demonetized for not having the correct opinion. American companies are absolutely policing content to their own political agenda.
- andreilys 6y ago
  Yes although I’m more concerned about the CCP policing western discourse and influencing it based on the moderation policies and algorithm choices they make. You already see organizations like the NBA, Disney, etc. self censoring to preserve their market in China so to assume a Chinese based company won’t do the same is a bit of a stretch.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- driverdan 6y ago
  > are particularly bad if you are conservative or have gender critical ideas I downvoted you because this is not true. Watch YT logged out and you will discover it quickly starts recommending far right videos, recommending more extreme videos as you watch them. As for "gender critical" and your following paragraph, people aren't being banned for simply misgendering people. It's intentional misgendering from hateful people, often as a final straw after many similar hateful actions.
  - manfredo 6y ago
    Doing what you suggest has an immense issue of selection bias. You go into youtube trying to see if it recommends right wing videos, and you're going to be a lot more likely to click on right wing videos. Which then informs the algorithm that you're interested in right wing videos. The correct way to test this is to write a program, not to just watch youtube while logged off. I used selenium to do exactly this. Start at a video, and do a breadth based search based on recommendations. No such preference for far right videos exist. It's frequently get into a hole of certain topics (e.g. first recommendation is on knitting, subsequent recommendations have a higher chance of being about knitting, and so on), but there was no substantial representation of right wing content. And it's not just me with a selenium driver. Other researchers have examined youtube and reached the same conclusion: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1912.11211.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/1912.11211.pdf
ngcc_hk 6y ago
Save yourselves, please! A message from Hong Kong.
coliveira 6y ago
Because of the dominantly racist view prevailing in the US: if it is a Chinese company, it must somehow be bad, anti-democracy. If it comes from an American company, then it must be democratic and good (even when it does harm).
- dang 6y ago
  Please don't take HN threads into racial and nationalistic flamewars. They're predictable and nasty and we don't want them. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23833749 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23833749.
- gpanders 6y ago
  There are a plethora of reasons to be concerned and wary about Chinese companies that have nothing to do with race or nationality. There is an intense ideological divide and, as the article mentions, the Chinese government freely uses every power available to them to both suppress the influence of liberal democracies in their own country as well as propagate their own ideology to the rest of the world. To quote from the article, > A leaked internal party directive from 2013 describes “the very real threat of Western anti-China forces and their attempt at carrying out westernization” within China. The directive describes the [Chinese Communist] party as being in the midst of an “intense, ideological struggle” for survival. According to the directive, the ideas that threaten China with “major disorder” include concepts such as “separation of powers,” “independent judiciaries,” “universal human rights,” “Western freedom,” “civil society,” “economic liberalism,” “total privatization,” “freedom of the press,” and “free flow of information on the internet.”
- _-david-_ 6y ago
  I don't think it is a racist view. It is more of an anti-communist view. Americans were not a big fan white communists in Hungary, Poland, Russia, etc when the Soviet Union was a thing.
  - coliveira 6y ago
ausjke 6y ago
actually not just tiktok, others like wechat, taobao, all the eCommerce, messengers, USA is behind China by a few years these days. in the early days they cloned and studied, now they actually took over and Facebook etc barely can even catch up
kbenson 6y ago
> I can’t emphasize this point enough: one of the gravest errors made by far too many people in the U.S. is taking an exceptionally self-centered view of U.S.-China relations, where everything is about what the U.S. says and does, while China is treated like an NPC. Indeed, it is quite insulting to China, a great nation with a history far longer than that of the United States. Culturally, China has a very long history. Governmentally, which is what's being talked about here because we're discussing trade, they're less than a century old. We should expect the ruling government of China to behave as they have in the past, not as previous governments have.
mchusma 6y ago
Good article, but I do feel disagree strongly with this statement: "while I mourn the end of a free and vibrant Hong Kong that I have had the pleasure of visiting on multiple occasions, I am unmoved by complaints about China’s promised adherence to the Basic Law; that was an agreement imposed on China by a colonial power, and Hong Kong is unquestionably a Chinese city, ultimately subject to Chinese law." Hong Kong is a unique place, with a unique history, unique government, and more. Yes a Chinese imperial government leased land to British under duress. That imperial government no longer exists, period. The British gave it to a different government under clear terms that were violated. So where does that put Hong Kong? I think you can argue a bunch of different positions, but not that it is unquestionably under authoritarian Chinese communist rule. This is disregarding the liberal traditional opinion in the West (and Locke, etc ) that people have universal rights period, and that governments that violate those rights are not valid governments. I think there are stronger philosophical positions to take, including that Hong Kong should be Independent by right, and that China violated it's agreements with the citizens of Hong Kong.
- vincvinc 6y ago
  Hey, I see you've struck a nerve with some people - even talking about the idea of an independent Hong Kong will send your comment to the absolute bottom. Have my upvote.
igammarays 6y ago
It's interesting that we are beginning to realize the paradoxical nature of "free speech". It's unfortunate that free speech cannibalizes itself. Since there are other powers with significant influence who can enforce their speech protectionism, it necessitates a response of the same kind, or risks collapsing free speech entirely in favor of an opponent. It's a power struggle, plain and simple.
blackrock 6y ago
--yawn-- Another dude advocating for the suppression of a foreign government. Been there, done that, seen it all, happened before, will happen again. To think that a little app that promotes a bunch of videos of kids acting silly, is a national security threat, is ridiculous. All you need for counter-evidence, is to look at Twitter, Facebook, and all the American news media sites and outlets. They routinely and actively brainwash the population, with the same repeated bombardment of information, even though they claim to be independent reporting agencies. In fact, all the American news agencies, are increasing the aggressiveness of the rhetoric, and appear to be drumming up the mood for war against China. You, as Americans, should be very disturbed by this. Because, if the United States engages into a war with China, then it is you, and your children, that will face the brunt of the violence of war. The American elites, and their children, will be safely kept away from any of that violence; and they will be benefiting financially from it all, while you and your children die in the Pacific Ocean. If you want to ban TikTok, then just ban them. Just say, that you don't want any Chinese media presence on American airwaves. Simple as that. Begin your own censoring of the internet. Don't bother with making some far-fetched reasoning that some fictitious enemy is out to get you. This is, in fact, what scares Americans the most - the creation of some fictitious bogeyman.
nindalf 6y ago
> the service censored #BlackLivesMatter and #GeorgeFloyd I feel like this claim isn't well substantiated. TikTok claims it was a bug where 2 billion+ views were shown as 0 views. That specific number - the limit on a 32 bit signed integer, makes me think that it was a bug.
greyhair 6y ago
I am just going to repeat the best link here: https://sinocism.com/p/engineers-of-the-soul-ideology-in https://sinocism.com/p/engineers-of-the-soul-ideology-in Wow.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
haecceity 6y ago
> What is increasingly clear, though, is that China’s insistence that the West ignore the country’s “internal affairs” is a sentiment that is not reciprocated; the list of Western companies bullied by China for Western content is long and growing, the country is flooding Twitter and Facebook with coronavirus propaganda, and is leveraging WeChat to spread misinformation and to surveil the Chinese diaspora. None of those are "internal affairs" to any Western country. Those are international companies that have an interest in not pissing off their cash cow. If they poured money into the Cascadia independence movement then that would America and Canada's internal affairs. But the only party doing that is the State Department and NED. There's a lot of inaccuracies in this article. He seems to think knowledge in tech translates to knowledge in other things. Pity.

353 points by migueldemoura 6y ago

russli1993 6y ago

Tiktok's parent company, bytedance is incorporated in Cayman islands. It has a Chinese subsidiary operating Douyin in China , and a US subsidiary operating Tiktok in the US. The Chinese national intelligence law is applied to the Chinese subsidiary but not the parent because the parent is not incorporated in China. Hence the US subsidiary is not subjected to Chinese law. If Chinese government demands US data and Bytedance's Chinese subsidiary refuses, the government can shut down the Chinese subsidiary, but the Cayman island parent will still operate. Hence Chinese government has no power over the US subsidiary. Author says that Chinese values and American values are absolutely opposing and because of that Tiktok's algorithms and product design could undermine American values either consciously or unconsciously. Right now Bytedance's US subsidiary is managed by Americans, hires US based engineers, and the content moderation team is staffed with Americans. The goal should be that Tiktok and Douyin will be separate, design, operated and moderated separately. This could be strengthened by having American management at Bytedance parent, and have Bytedance go public and have American board directors. I hope that whatever international fears about Tiktok, the regulatory body/government should make list of rules for Tiktok. Tiktok should be given a chance to defend its positions, and ability to comply with the rules. We should not just straight out ban tiktok, like "bam, after today, its removed from app stores everywhere". that is not in the spirit of rule of law.

babaganoosh89 6y ago
"If Chinese government demands US data and Bytedance's Chinese subsidiary refuses, the government can shut down the Chinese subsidiary, but the Cayman island parent will still operate. Hence Chinese government has no power over the US subsidiary." The issue is the Chinese government can compel it's citizens to do whatever they want. Having non-Chinese in the management of Bytedance could help but I can't imagine they could have a truly independent board if Bytedance is majority owned by Chinese citizens.
summerlight 6y ago
Zhang Yiming, ByteDance's owner, is a Chinese citizen who lives in Beijing. The real problem is the latter part, in that PRC can do whatever physical enforcement on him. While I don't doubt his intention to keep TikTok separate from international politics as far as possible, but I am 100% sure that if CCP doesn't like Zhang's "lack of patriotism", it will teach him a lesson even if it's a unlawful way. They did it to Jack Ma, so the same thing can happen to Zhang.
here4U 6y ago
Your assertion that "Hence Chinese government has no power over the US subsidiary" is incomplete. Tiktok's policy of sharing user data allows the Chinese government all of the power they need, at least in terms of data collection. Re: the influence argument your points are stronger, I think. Thompson's article felt a bit like scaremongering there.
balola 6y ago
Says every Chinese internet company, they are all "foreign" companies.

ngcc_hk 6y ago

Tik Tok success as a technology is well argued by the author. That should be copied and cloned and compete as MANY not as one. That is this onesness that I try to argue. This is this oneness that get China and the strategy missing this part of China the problem. Obviously I would be baised in the sense that the author just gave up my whole place and my 2m+ liberty loving followers. U people, HK people, TW people ... is just part of China, we can just dump them (or you can just dump us) because we belong to a "ONE". The whole idea of human rights are about individual not about the rights of nation over you or us in Hong Kong. If you let the oneness grow and ignore that one is evil, you die with us because the evil will expand. HK is the front of the ideological fight. Not sure why the author not noted that the play against HK is a play against the promise and contract by the less powerful China to the future. Read Deng speech in UN, you can see there is a promising China. But look at today you know nothing in the one is preventing it. The West look otherwise by letting China grow so powerful it is near a stat that cannot fail. The west has to feed the hand that is going to kill them. Just cut the tie is not enough. A more aggressive way of engaging is needed. Otherwise the world is just another South China Seas. China has been asserted itself in Internet (speech by Xin please read), UN, WTO, WHO, ... etc. They have number on their side in the past. Now they have money, they have the language (so many good English speakers in the elite and their children), ... There could be millions inside the west and trillion in the bank. It is like Soviet Union evolve and attack USA soil from underneath. But the analysis is so well that seems ok? That we have to deal with China as one. It is partially yes and partially No. The key problem is what we call one-ness of Chinese thinking. You using that you lost already. What America is great and Europe in a sense has built-in immunity is that there are individual (or even the extreme right has the club concept). You do not analysis a world as a world. A world is nothing but its individual and its links among individual. Now the problem when you think the whole China is a whole you have to fight against then you got yourselves a long term problem. I said long term is from time to time China would group itself together into one big nasty empire. The best is when it is weak (like in Sung Dynasty) when the culture of unity does not break human backs. But once they are big and as oneness is built into the pyshce they just go ahead to transform all barbarians and uncivilised into one of them. There is no stop. Nothing internal to the Chinese philosophy has many in mind. Everyone has to be saved is what they think, and it is what ultimately you got. What you need to do is to ensure the individual spirit and liberty mind to survive inside. So the original promise that a great China contribute as part of many, not force its way as one into the world. Just cut into two would not help. HK, Taiwan, Japan, Korea, the whole Asian countries are those many. Not one less! Not just one! :-) ok back to my debugging of the solitaire of C. gdb tracing of pointer structure is hard, isn't it. From 6502 (by guessing), 370 (XA to ESA extension and control block) to now; still you always deal with dump. Sigh. Back to my cave even though the world is collapsing, that you can hack as an individual and do what you enjoy is more important. And that is why this all about. We should have more or one TikTok.

here4U 6y ago

I wonder how true Thompson's assertion about a war of ideology between China and western values is. Are there any examples of TikTok influencing thinking in a pro-Chinese way via algorithm tuning or direct curation?

norswap 6y ago

Nitpick, but this man doesn't really seem to understand what "Marxism" means.

Asad445 6y ago

Tiktok is changing the mindset of our generation

collegeburner 6y ago
Current young person here (entering college this fall). I can't think of a single way it's changed "the mindset of our generation", and it seems it's used very heavily by a specific type of person but not by others (as opposed to other social media which is more widely used). How is it changing anything?
- Asad445 6y ago
  People doing suicides in different countries due to this.. In India in pakistan etc
  - moron4hire 6y ago
    "The kids doing suicides" is a common trope dragged out anytime the establishment wants to put something down. Come up with evidence that TikTok is causing more suicidal ideation than people typically experience, and then we might have a conversation. Until then, this is just fearmongering, and a lazy form of it at that.

caddie 6y ago

i personally enjoy seeing young teenagers recording dancing videos on the beach while prior to tiktok they used to just seat down, heads down on their phone, absent, non-existent.

kpennell 6y ago
Agreed. Yeah, you can make fun of them but they are actually doing something now.

azatris 6y ago

I absolutely love using TikTok, but would give it up in a heartbeat for a Western replacement. It has absolutely brought more positivity into my life. I am specifically feeding the algorithm with this intent and I get what I asked for. It is a psychological tool.

teekert 6y ago
All I see is girls putting their phone somewhere, dancing in front of it, then getting back into being absorbed by their phones. Can you describe more specifically what is so positive about it? My kids are about to enter the age at which they get a smartphone and these things make me a bit afraid (like, who's watching? Why do they stare at that app for so long? etc). I don't understand the alure, but I want to keep an open mind and not be that old parent that doesn't understand...
- bstar77 6y ago
  You don't need to understand the allure. Are you not also absorbed by your phone in other ways? What wrong with people smiling, laughing and dancing? I'm an old parent trying to be open minded as well.
  - RspecMAuthortah 6y ago
    Are you not also absorbed by your phone in other ways? > I would argue it is one thing to be absorbed by reading in your phone HN or other productive sources. Laughing and dancing on the other hand, after a certain period of time not so much useful.
    - bstar77 6y ago
      This is one of the most depressing comments I've read in a long time.
      - Waterfall 6y ago
        This comment chain is one of the funniest I've seen in a while. Literally laughing so hard at your comment thank you.

YarickR2 6y ago

Next steps in such a war: removal of freedom of speech, and politically motivated and state controlled media. We'll have People States of America in no time . All is fair in love and war, right ?

kpennell 6y ago

I'm not sure how I got sucked into Tiktok but I was quickly hooked. There's something so refreshingly playful, authentic, and raw about so much Tiktok content compared to Instagram. Instagram (explore/discovery) is generally pretty people with pretty things in pretty places. That was fun for a while but it's just not that interesting after a while. I don't need to see more pretty pictures of women doing yoga. I don't need to see more pretty mountain bikes I can't afford. I don't need to see anymore drone shots of Milford Sound in New Zealand. Tiktok, on the other hand, is playful, diverse, and interesting (at least my feed is). Once you start liking content, the feed completely changes from teenage lip sync videos or other teenager-oriented content into such a nice variety of content. I legitimately laugh my ass off or smile happily at so much of it. Other content teaches me about food, gardening, dancing, DIY, media theory, hiking alone, gender bending, etc. etc. The list goes on. Some of the videos delight me and others inform me. Instagram, by contrast, just feels so bland now.

duxup 6y ago
I feel the same way about a lot of social media personalities, YouTube ... there's all these youtube-isms that every youtuber eventually adopts. You follow someone, they get popular, then they do some reaction videos, or they decide to evolve into some sort of lifestyle / social media pundit / etc... I really don't care to watch folks react to things or any of that other stuff. They all encourage a lot of nasty / outrageous content over time as that's what gets eyeballs. I think much more positive, authentic, curated / focused content would be great. I'm done with filtering twitter, youtube, instagram ... endlessly as content eventually goes sour.
manishsharan 6y ago
Instagram seems to be evolving into Home Shopping Network or QVC.
- addflip 6y ago
  That's a great way to put it. I couldn't quite put my finger on it but that's totally what is happening on IG. A lot of DTC brands have basically saturated my feed. I'm not sure how much longer this can continue without losing engagement. Anecdotally my own interest in IG has been waning the past year almost to the point of deletion.

actuator 6y ago

Ben is absolutely right and something needs to be done to fight for the values of liberalism, democracy etc we hold dear but I don't see how this will happen. The world seems more divided than ever. Just 2-3 countries unilaterally acting on these issues isn't going to make a difference, how I wish there were strong leaders in some of the nations who knew how to work well for those ideals in the long term together with others. Also, this is not just about Tiktok as Ben mentioned. When American corporations like NBA start censoring things on their own soil, it is beyond reprehensible.

vorpalhex 6y ago
Speak with your money, call in complaints to advertisers, communicate the importance of these actions to your friends.
- actuator 6y ago
  I am all for activism but does this work unless it reaches a sizeable mass, look at how FB brushed aside the impact of protests by their advertisers.
  - vorpalhex 6y ago
    The current Facebook situation is a bit of a different beast. Most of those advertisers were already cutting their marketing spend because Covid, and are using the current cause to still get attention while reducing direct spend (though I'm sure they'd like Facebook to be a bit heavier on the censorship all the same). Facebook is likely doing the math now on what makes sense in terms of keeping advertisers happy while resisting temporary market pressure. The answer will probably be a discount on ads, not actually changing content policies, which is what the advertisers are likely gunning for anyways.
    - chillacy 6y ago
      Facebook ads are sold as an auction so the discount on ads is already happening. It also tends to produce the type of tempting situation which makes it impossible for brands to resist going back in if they can sneak an advantage in over their competitors.

duxup 6y ago

The scale of information available to an app is potentially huge. Thus they're automatically involved in some sort of information warfare. I guess there's two options, either by default the the ecosystem doesn't allow for them to have that information ... or they're in play for these types of things. I don't think there's any other options...

Pandabob 6y ago

I guess the sentiment that TikTok should be sold is gaining ground. It's pretty clear from a regulatory perspective that Facebook won't be allowed to buy it and probably Google neither. The app also seems to be kind of a wonky fit to Amazons, Microsofts or Apples portfolio (although Amazon does own twitch, so who knows). I can't make a solid argument for it, but I wouldn't rule out either Netflix or Disney making a bid for TikTok. Both companies are great with video, and I think the current CEO of TikTok is the former COO of Disney. IDK.

esperent 6y ago
If it does get sold, hopefully it's not to an US company. The web is already far too dominated by US socal media companies.
giantrobot 6y ago
If TikTok were to be sold, the new company would still have a EULA clause stating they'll share data with partners. One partner will be ByteDance or a wholly owned subsidiary. So the same information will flow into the CCP panopticon. The only way that wouldn't happen is if the new TikTok owner incorporated in a jurisdiction that forbid such a relationship. That seems unlikely since ByeDance could pay the spun off TikTok dump trucks full of money for the data.

jjuel 6y ago

I recently deleted TikTok from my phone. I didn't have it for too long, and until the recent press I had no idea it was a Chinese app. Honestly, I understand companies will mine my data, but I have an issue with those companies being forced to submit my data to the Chinese government on a whim. And it was really all the same thing. People doing the same skits or dances. Most of which were just chicks doing it in bikinis to get more views and likes.

chosenbreed37 6y ago
Are you actually concerned that the Chinese government might get access to your data or is it a matter of principle? What do you think they want to do with it? If they really wanted it could they not acquire it by other means? I ask as I'm genuinely curious. I'm considering install it on my phone to try it out and see how it compares to youtube. I'm not dissatisfied with my youtube feed. Just curious as to how much better TikTok would be based on the descriptions on the article and on this thread.
- scruple 6y ago
  > Are you actually concerned that the Chinese government might get access to your data or is it a matter of principle? Both. > What do you think they want to do with it? Absolutely no idea. Much like I had no idea what Facebook was doing, or planned to do, with my data back in the 00s. I think we've been down this road enough in the modern era to be distrustful of any entity, especially a government, especially my own government, and especially the Chinese government. > If they really wanted it could they not acquire it by other means? If they really wanted to target me as an individual, I am sure they could dig up $THINGS. That doesn't mean I want to do their job for them. Your line of questioning here, as I've read it, boils down to: "What are you afraid of if you have nothing to hide?"
  - blacksmith_tb 6y ago
    Possibly, but it could be just be pragmatic - if I lived in the PRC, I would be very, very nervous about sharing some kind of unfiltered feed of my data with state entities. Living outside of the PRC, it's harder to imagine what kind of practical use they'd put that same data to - though that might get more exciting if I traveled to China at some point in the future...

netcan 6y ago

This tiktok "war" is, ultimately, changing the way people politicians think about media tech. With Twitter or Facebook, it's a lot easier to dismiss the magnitude of their influence. After all, they're not in business to influence politics. They just want to make tech & sell ads and make money. They don't care what becomes news, who wins elections etc. Benign commercial interests, that's all With tiktok and the chinese government's explicit approach of combining public & commercial interest... That argument falls apart. That and the fact that it is a foreign entity potentially affecting american politics. Ultimately, the argument will swing back to FB & such... hopefully.

djohnston 6y ago
i think if anything tiktok's rise will probably bolster US domestic support for big tech. who wants to be the senator that creates a power vacuum filled by chinese tech?
moron4hire 6y ago
> After all, they're not in business to influence politics. Dude, I personally know people who work in Facebook's own lobbying department. I would be very surprised if Twitter didn't have the same thing.
- xapata 6y ago
  There's a difference between Facebook lobbying and Facebook using its products to disseminate propaganda.
  - moron4hire 6y ago
    Where the hell have you been for the last 4 years? That's been the only conversation about Facebook. EDIT: Mark Zuckerberg had to appear before Congress in 2018 specifically to address Facebook disseminating propaganda!
    - xapata 6y ago
      > Mark Zuckerberg had to appear before Congress in 2018 Exactly. Whereas with TikTok the government is pushing the propaganda.

chvid 6y ago

As an European I am happy that someone is finally breaking the American monopoly on social media. It just feels wrong only being surveilled by the NSA.

nix23 6y ago
Install yandex tiktok and facebook and you have the holy trinity ;)
- 082349872349872 6y ago
  Eurasia, Eastasia, and Oceania ;) (by the end of the year Airstrip One will have always been part of Oceania)
moron4hire 6y ago
Ah yes, the well-known comfort of having even more security services pawing through your personal data. Mmmmm.
- PuffinBlue 6y ago
  It's only fair that they all get a turn.
sschueller 6y ago
I find it funny how the US is freaking out that they don't own it. Now you know what it feels like when the US owns all the large social media networks and you have to deal with their politics and censorship.

flattone 6y ago

Tiktok could offer to pay your mortgage im still confused and disgusted people use it

pastaking 6y ago

Maybe a correction: The article mentions that Amazon asked its employees to delete the app. But Amazon later retracted that decision.

mikikikik 6y ago
this is already mentioned in the article.

k__ 6y ago

I don't see the problem. TikTok will be banned. SV will do a US based replacement. All will be good.

amadeuspagel 6y ago

Interesting that only India's decision to ban TikTok made that possible in the US. Shows how polarized the US is. If one side suggested banning TikTok, the other side would immidiately defend it, but India banning it can bring it into the conversation in a way that doesn't force everyone to adopt a view on it reflexively.

babesh 6y ago

There seems to be a concerted effort from both China and the US to create sides. It feels like a new Cold War is looming. Stratechery is playing on one side. The reality is that US companies are quite willing to censor and manipulate information as well. Facebook and YouTube censored coronavirus information for the US government. Facebook is fine with right wing manipulation. These propaganda efforts by US companies affect people from other countries. Both sides are just trying to amass and maintain power. The CCP needs to control information to maintain power. The US is a consortium of entities amassing money and power and likewise tries to destroy institutions preventing that. I bet if you look inside the CCP, you would likewise see multiple groups vying for power. If you follow Stratechery’s logic, then non US countries should likewise ban Facebook and YouTube. The more ethical solution would be worldwide standards on censorship.

eclipsetheworld 6y ago

Why is TikTok allowed to gain market share in Western countries? China banned Google, YouTube, Facebook, etc. while Chinese companies such as Baidu, Sina Weibo, WeChat were able to capture the entire Chinese market share. It seems that companies not adhering to censorship cannot expand into China, however, Chinese companies adhering to censorship (e.g. TikTok) are able to expand into Western countries. Isn't this anti-competitive?

rvz 6y ago
Good question. If you want to get into the Chinese market, you must comply with its laws and not get in the way of angering the CCP. China is one of Apple's largest markets due to its access to over 1B+ people and it now has its hands tied and anything the CCP wants removed, Apple will do it. [0][1][2] Like you just said, TikTok already compiles with this security law and censors/bans whatever the CCP requests. By moving outside of China it can either lose access to the Chinese market and get banned by China or still comply with its laws and get banned by the US. The thing is, TikTok has offices out side of China due to the Musical.ly acquisition (Located in the US) so can still operate there whilst Bytedance being headquartered in Beijing. A takedown request can be made to the App Store owner. Apple and Google. [0] https://9to5mac.com/2017/01/04/new-york-times-apps-removed-in-china/ https://9to5mac.com/2017/01/04/new-york-times-apps-removed-i... [1] https://9to5mac.com/2017/11/21/skype-china-app-store/ https://9to5mac.com/2017/11/21/skype-china-app-store/ [2] https://9to5mac.com/2019/10/10/protest-app/ https://9to5mac.com/2019/10/10/protest-app/
- Udik 6y ago
  > or still comply with its laws and get banned by the US. How does complying with China's laws in China will get you banned from the US? The US has all the right to establish the laws for products distributed on its own territory, as China does for its own.
- throw57654 6y ago
  TikTok is banned in China. The company has an isolated version called Douyin that is only available in China.

fossuser 6y ago

There’s a lot of false equivalence in these comments along with a focus on the app itself. My worry is about CCP influence and their ability to both spread misinformation and at the same time suppress stories the party doesn’t like. Easy current examples are the democracy protests in Hong Kong, and the sterilization going on in the Uyghur camps in China. On Twitter you can talk about both things, on TikTok they will be shut down by the CCP and it’s set up in such a way that users wouldn’t even notice. On Twitter you can also be critical of the USG. That’s the risk to me, that the CCP turns down the knobs on speech they dislike and the public is too focused on dance videos to notice. It’s an even greater risk to people like Joshua Wong, not only would his speech be suppressed on TikTok, but the company would also hand over whatever personal or location data they had on him to the government itself. (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joshua_Wong https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joshua_Wong) The CCP should not be stewards of the services we use.

YarickR2 6y ago
Twitter the company shouldn't be a steward of the Twitter the tool, too - do you agree with that ?

dilap 6y ago

A popular social-media app not under US govt control is a threat to its ability to propagandize its citizens. So a ban would make sense. Ah, the land of the free!

Schnitz 6y ago

"the Chinese Communist Party very much believes that Marxism is the means by which that must be accomplished" This is BS, the economic system in China is in no way Marxist, nor is it going in that direction. It's worse, lol. This sounds like someone is simply rehashing propaganda he heard somewhere that was intended to either smear Marx or China or both.

quicklime 6y ago
It's unfortunate that you were downvoted for this; you're absolutely correct. No one in China gives a fuck about Marxism, and the CCP certainly isn't trying to wage some ideological war to establish some sort of Marxist utopia. To think so is to completely misunderstand the CCP's motivation, which is a dangerous thing when the tensions are escalating and war could be the result.
- chillacy 6y ago
  This link was included in the article: https://sinocism.com/p/engineers-of-the-soul-ideology-in https://sinocism.com/p/engineers-of-the-soul-ideology-in While China has certainly strayed pretty far from its state-controlled economy in recent years, it also seems pretty clear that Xi is more ideologically "hardcore" than his predecessors.

euix 6y ago

In the last century the prevailing line the U.S. was that the U.S. would change China through economic engagement, I think what is really going to happen is China is going to change the U.S. Mainly in the sense that in order to adapt to the competitive threat from China the U.S. has to become more state capitalism and industrial policy guided. Using strong government to guide industrial policy, fend off or cripple foreign competitors, enact infrastructure. These are the standard tools in China. As for China, I wonder in the long term if this is not pioneering a completely new mode of the human species. What is the logical end of total surveillance and censorship? Eventually unifying every person into the mind of the state until individualism dissolves and we are all subsumed into a common entity. Maybe I am speculating too far but if you could have everyone carry an implant from birth wired to a single network then you could achieve the common science fiction trope of an unified collective conscious. Maybe even the leading Party theoreticians haven't even sought about it this far yet.

dustinmoris 6y ago

Americans are losing everything at the moment because of their own shortcomings. Now just get to grips with it and stop constantly demonising other nations, whether it's the Middle East, Russia, China, the EU or whoever else, in order to prevent other countries and internet companies to become successful. America is losing dominance economically, socially and military and it scares them and so we should all expect to be fed more US anti China, anti Russia anti Asia, anti East, anti EU propaganda to keep the power in the house for as long as possible, but whatever bullshit they try to feed us nothing will prevent the inevitable change of power to take place over the next decade.

crazygringo 6y ago

This piece is ridiculous. Mainly: > What matters more in an ideological war, though, is influence, and that is why I do believe that ByteDance’s continued ownership of TikTok is unacceptable. What's implied but unsaid here is that somehow the CCP is going to fill TikTok with political propaganda that... a bunch of teens are going to somehow become influenced by? Sorry, but that's just completely far-fetched. Facebook is something to be concerned about, with people sharing political stories, memes, etc. But TikTok? A bunch of funny videos? There's nothing that could be further from ideology. > Perhaps the most powerful argument against taking any sort of action is that we aren’t China, and isn’t blocking TikTok something that China would do? Yes, this is precisely why we don't need to do this. We're better than China. Things like freedom of speech, democracy, and the free market set a moral example to the world. Once we start censoring things, we lose that moral leadership. (And sure you can argue all you want about our declining moral leadership and the state of our democracy, but let's not make it even worse, shall we?) > If China is on the offensive against liberalism not only within its borders but within ours, it is in liberalism’s interest to cut off a vector that has taken root precisely because it is so brilliantly engineered to give humans exactly what they want. Isn't every product trying to be brilliantly engineered to give customers exactly what they want? All this boils down to is, it's a good app, so let's kill it. Again, totally opposite the American values of competition, the free market, and consumers. Sorry, but there is absolutely zero logic in this analysis.

narrator 6y ago
TikTok users flooded the Trump rally with fake ticket requests. https://nypost.com/2020/06/21/tiktok-campaigns-ensure-hundreds-of-unused-seats-at-trump-tulsa-rally/ https://nypost.com/2020/06/21/tiktok-campaigns-ensure-hundre... The plausible deniability is easy. No one will ever find out if it was specially promoted. They could just throw up their hands and say that it all happened all by itself. The algorithm is a mystery and a trade secret! U.S Teens are making "I Love China" videos on TikTok. https://www.recruitmentnewsuk.co.uk/2020/05/28/why-us-teens-on-tiktok-are-making-i-love-china-videos/ https://www.recruitmentnewsuk.co.uk/2020/05/28/why-us-teens-... The algorithm could interfere to remove any pro-Trump or anti-China TikToks and noone would be the wiser. There is zero transparency. The Chinese government can lend these institutions billions forever and undercut rivals and overpay programmers if it buys them political influence. Speaking of a free market in ideas. 90% of the U.S media is owned by 5 companies. I think a good idea would be to reverse the Telecommunications Act of 1996 which allowed for massive TV and Radio consolidation. Local radio was actually good in the late 80s and early 90s and new music styles were discovered and promoted by disk jockeys on local stations. After 96, the conglomerates bought up all the radio stations and IMHO, popular music more or less froze in place with just the names of the bands rotating.

raphlinus 6y ago

Relevant to the topic of political propaganda and in particular conspiracy theories, the leftist blogger Digby wrote a good post [1] critical of TikTok even though she was sympathetic to the punking of the Trump rally in Tulsa. In particular, she cites reporting from the Daily Beast that Pizzagate conspiracy theories are circulating widely on the platform. I'm not endorsing this reporting as fact, but do think it is good food for thought. In any case, the platform seems to be very poorly optimized for critical thinking, which is fine for "laughter and dancing" but less fine in other domains. [1]: https://digbysblog.net/2020/06/tiktok-isnt-the-answer-folks/ https://digbysblog.net/2020/06/tiktok-isnt-the-answer-folks/

kindly_fo 6y ago

Everyone who uses tiktok retard, even if tiktok was us company.

codekansas 6y ago

An under-appreciated aspect of this "war" is how bad US companies have been at building ML-first products. ByteDance in particular is just fantastic at it - their products feels designed with the algorithm in mind, as if everyone involved in the development has some understanding of machine learning. This exposes some weaknesses with existing social media platforms that were built before the deep learning boom, as he says in the article. It is probably worthwhile for American innovators to think about what otherwise-impenetrable areas this could expose.

rhacker 6y ago

As the instagram teenagers that made it popular are now 22 - 25, it's their turn to see a new generation overtake what is cool. Don't worry you guys will see them in 10 years sad-facing when BlopChop is popular with the now 5 year olds...

spinach 6y ago

It is hardly just Tiktok policing content with an agenda. Twitter, Youtube, Reddit are particularly bad if you are conservative or have gender critical ideas. Reddit recently banned a ton of subreddits that are simply critical of the idea that men can literally become women (they say it's to stop hate, but they leave up violent porn subs and other subs that hate women). Even subreddits like PCOS - a very serious condition that only females have - ran into trouble because they aren't inclusive enough with their language. Someone got suspended on twitter for saying only females get cervical cancer (this is apparently hate speech), Meghan Murphy got banned from Twitter for using the pronoun 'he' about Yaniv about a profile of his when he was presenting as a man. People get their videos taken down on youtube for "misgendering" people, or demonetized for not having the correct opinion. American companies are absolutely policing content to their own political agenda.

andreilys 6y ago
Yes although I’m more concerned about the CCP policing western discourse and influencing it based on the moderation policies and algorithm choices they make. You already see organizations like the NBA, Disney, etc. self censoring to preserve their market in China so to assume a Chinese based company won’t do the same is a bit of a stretch.
deleted 6y ago
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driverdan 6y ago
> are particularly bad if you are conservative or have gender critical ideas I downvoted you because this is not true. Watch YT logged out and you will discover it quickly starts recommending far right videos, recommending more extreme videos as you watch them. As for "gender critical" and your following paragraph, people aren't being banned for simply misgendering people. It's intentional misgendering from hateful people, often as a final straw after many similar hateful actions.
- manfredo 6y ago
  Doing what you suggest has an immense issue of selection bias. You go into youtube trying to see if it recommends right wing videos, and you're going to be a lot more likely to click on right wing videos. Which then informs the algorithm that you're interested in right wing videos. The correct way to test this is to write a program, not to just watch youtube while logged off. I used selenium to do exactly this. Start at a video, and do a breadth based search based on recommendations. No such preference for far right videos exist. It's frequently get into a hole of certain topics (e.g. first recommendation is on knitting, subsequent recommendations have a higher chance of being about knitting, and so on), but there was no substantial representation of right wing content. And it's not just me with a selenium driver. Other researchers have examined youtube and reached the same conclusion: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1912.11211.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/1912.11211.pdf

ngcc_hk 6y ago

Save yourselves, please! A message from Hong Kong.

coliveira 6y ago

Because of the dominantly racist view prevailing in the US: if it is a Chinese company, it must somehow be bad, anti-democracy. If it comes from an American company, then it must be democratic and good (even when it does harm).

dang 6y ago
Please don't take HN threads into racial and nationalistic flamewars. They're predictable and nasty and we don't want them. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23833749 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23833749.
gpanders 6y ago
There are a plethora of reasons to be concerned and wary about Chinese companies that have nothing to do with race or nationality. There is an intense ideological divide and, as the article mentions, the Chinese government freely uses every power available to them to both suppress the influence of liberal democracies in their own country as well as propagate their own ideology to the rest of the world. To quote from the article, > A leaked internal party directive from 2013 describes “the very real threat of Western anti-China forces and their attempt at carrying out westernization” within China. The directive describes the [Chinese Communist] party as being in the midst of an “intense, ideological struggle” for survival. According to the directive, the ideas that threaten China with “major disorder” include concepts such as “separation of powers,” “independent judiciaries,” “universal human rights,” “Western freedom,” “civil society,” “economic liberalism,” “total privatization,” “freedom of the press,” and “free flow of information on the internet.”
_-david-_ 6y ago
I don't think it is a racist view. It is more of an anti-communist view. Americans were not a big fan white communists in Hungary, Poland, Russia, etc when the Soviet Union was a thing.
- coliveira 6y ago

ausjke 6y ago

actually not just tiktok, others like wechat, taobao, all the eCommerce, messengers, USA is behind China by a few years these days. in the early days they cloned and studied, now they actually took over and Facebook etc barely can even catch up

kbenson 6y ago

> I can’t emphasize this point enough: one of the gravest errors made by far too many people in the U.S. is taking an exceptionally self-centered view of U.S.-China relations, where everything is about what the U.S. says and does, while China is treated like an NPC. Indeed, it is quite insulting to China, a great nation with a history far longer than that of the United States. Culturally, China has a very long history. Governmentally, which is what's being talked about here because we're discussing trade, they're less than a century old. We should expect the ruling government of China to behave as they have in the past, not as previous governments have.

mchusma 6y ago

Good article, but I do feel disagree strongly with this statement: "while I mourn the end of a free and vibrant Hong Kong that I have had the pleasure of visiting on multiple occasions, I am unmoved by complaints about China’s promised adherence to the Basic Law; that was an agreement imposed on China by a colonial power, and Hong Kong is unquestionably a Chinese city, ultimately subject to Chinese law." Hong Kong is a unique place, with a unique history, unique government, and more. Yes a Chinese imperial government leased land to British under duress. That imperial government no longer exists, period. The British gave it to a different government under clear terms that were violated. So where does that put Hong Kong? I think you can argue a bunch of different positions, but not that it is unquestionably under authoritarian Chinese communist rule. This is disregarding the liberal traditional opinion in the West (and Locke, etc ) that people have universal rights period, and that governments that violate those rights are not valid governments. I think there are stronger philosophical positions to take, including that Hong Kong should be Independent by right, and that China violated it's agreements with the citizens of Hong Kong.

vincvinc 6y ago
Hey, I see you've struck a nerve with some people - even talking about the idea of an independent Hong Kong will send your comment to the absolute bottom. Have my upvote.

igammarays 6y ago

It's interesting that we are beginning to realize the paradoxical nature of "free speech". It's unfortunate that free speech cannibalizes itself. Since there are other powers with significant influence who can enforce their speech protectionism, it necessitates a response of the same kind, or risks collapsing free speech entirely in favor of an opponent. It's a power struggle, plain and simple.

blackrock 6y ago

--yawn-- Another dude advocating for the suppression of a foreign government. Been there, done that, seen it all, happened before, will happen again. To think that a little app that promotes a bunch of videos of kids acting silly, is a national security threat, is ridiculous. All you need for counter-evidence, is to look at Twitter, Facebook, and all the American news media sites and outlets. They routinely and actively brainwash the population, with the same repeated bombardment of information, even though they claim to be independent reporting agencies. In fact, all the American news agencies, are increasing the aggressiveness of the rhetoric, and appear to be drumming up the mood for war against China. You, as Americans, should be very disturbed by this. Because, if the United States engages into a war with China, then it is you, and your children, that will face the brunt of the violence of war. The American elites, and their children, will be safely kept away from any of that violence; and they will be benefiting financially from it all, while you and your children die in the Pacific Ocean. If you want to ban TikTok, then just ban them. Just say, that you don't want any Chinese media presence on American airwaves. Simple as that. Begin your own censoring of the internet. Don't bother with making some far-fetched reasoning that some fictitious enemy is out to get you. This is, in fact, what scares Americans the most - the creation of some fictitious bogeyman.

nindalf 6y ago

> the service censored #BlackLivesMatter and #GeorgeFloyd I feel like this claim isn't well substantiated. TikTok claims it was a bug where 2 billion+ views were shown as 0 views. That specific number - the limit on a 32 bit signed integer, makes me think that it was a bug.

greyhair 6y ago

I am just going to repeat the best link here: https://sinocism.com/p/engineers-of-the-soul-ideology-in https://sinocism.com/p/engineers-of-the-soul-ideology-in Wow.

deleted 6y ago

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haecceity 6y ago

> What is increasingly clear, though, is that China’s insistence that the West ignore the country’s “internal affairs” is a sentiment that is not reciprocated; the list of Western companies bullied by China for Western content is long and growing, the country is flooding Twitter and Facebook with coronavirus propaganda, and is leveraging WeChat to spread misinformation and to surveil the Chinese diaspora. None of those are "internal affairs" to any Western country. Those are international companies that have an interest in not pissing off their cash cow. If they poured money into the Cascadia independence movement then that would America and Canada's internal affairs. But the only party doing that is the State Department and NED. There's a lot of inaccuracies in this article. He seems to think knowledge in tech translates to knowledge in other things. Pity.