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US government accuses TikTok of being a mouthpiece for the Communist Party

57 points by ETHisso2017 6y ago

rshnotsecure 6y ago
Tiktok/ByteDance was interviewing pretty furiously in the Bay Area last year. All around I heard good things about the process. An interesting thing about their interview process is that they often required a night time slot for at least one round. This was because many teams had their direct manager or VP in mainland PRC, which has a 15 time hour difference.
- mitfahrener 6y ago
  12 or 13 depending on daylight saving time, never 15 hours.
  - CharmingOpp 6y ago
    Bay Area (PST) to China Standard Time is 15 hours ahead during summer, 16 in winter.
    - zeckalpha 6y ago
      Or -9 (+1d). There are much worse time zone overlaps.
Synaesthesia 6y ago
"The Trump administration, however, did not offer any direct evidence that TikTok's U.S. data has ever been assessed by Beijing officials."
- curt15 6y ago
  I.e. the usual smoke and mirrors.
- 3327 6y ago
  Why should they reveal confidential intelligence? Does any government ever really do? Its stupid to do so. Its tiktok job to show and prove that the suspicion is not the case.
  - bobthepanda 6y ago
    Is it? The US legal system is supposed to operate under the assumption of "innocent until proven guilty."
  - DiogenesKynikos 6y ago
    Weapons of Mass Destruction
  - ketzu 6y ago
    > Why should they reveal confidential intelligence? Because it is in their economic interest for people to believe that and they are in a large trade dispute with the origin country. So without any proof this is essentially trade war propaganda.
  - takeda 6y ago
    Even with Iraq they at least bothered to fabricate one. In terms of TikTok what kind of secret thing they could possibly hold in addition what they are already saying? It's not like to get that information they used a new spy satellite that trump shared image from agree assassination of Soleimani allowing to identify it, or disclosing that Israeli intelligence knew about planned operation by Islamic State and many other disclosures [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump%27s_disclosures_of_classified_information https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump%27s_disclosures_o...
  - zepearl 6y ago
    > Why should they reveal confidential intelligence? From my point of view the US administration lost a lot of credibility during the last months & years => they might be right, but at this point stating something like this without presenting proof is not enough anymore.
Kaknut 6y ago
How does this even matter now when TikTok has successfully partnered with Oracle? They are now free to operate.
- bobthepanda 6y ago
  > Trump said he gave a deal to save TikTok involving companies Oracle and Walmart his tentative blessing, but an agreement never materialized, as the U.S. firms and ByteDance appear at odds over a number of details, including what firm would hold the largest stake in the new company. TikTok acquisition talks are ongoing.
  - Kaknut 6y ago
    It's still very unclear, these companies would be part of the Pre-IPO investment and the new govt is also about to come.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- stjohnswarts 6y ago
  that's not true the deal is still in flight. The USA government has to review it and it's contracts in a final form as do the CCP reps.
sunkenvicar 6y ago
TikTok’s algorithm shadowbans videos that expose the Chinese Communist Party.
Gaelan 6y ago
@dang the headline on the page (as well as the <title>) now refer to TikTok's owner. That seems like an important distinction.
- pattisapu 6y ago
  The memorandum says "its founder and CEO has publicly affirmed that ByteDance is a mouthpiece for the CCP in that it is committed to promoting the CCP’s agenda and messaging."
tertiary 6y ago
The whole ban is so gross. It's clearly politically targeted to deplatform Trump critics all while firing people up about China. For those that aren't familiar. TikTok is pretty ubiquitous in the under 21 crowd while being practically unused by older people. It's sort of like when young people fled to Twitter and Instagram to get away from their parents on Facebook. It's basically the next Twitter for that age group. TikTok (the community, not the company) is also quite critical of Trump. For instance, the buying up of rally tickets a few months ago so he would show up to an empty political event was organized on TikTok and we know that it pissed Trump off [1]. That level of age and political specificity in their audience makes it easy to target them for their ideas. This type of laser focused ban on specific conpanies (rather than, say, disallowing data to be stored in China or banning Chinese owned companies from operating) reveals the nakedly political motivation behind this action. "China is bad" is just the excuse here. It's really about banning a popular meetingplace for a political demographic opposed to Trump. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/21/style/tiktok-trump-rally-tulsa.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/21/style/tiktok-trump-rally-...
- acqq 6y ago
  Also a possible trigger: Sarah Cooper lip syncing him on TikTok and getting possibly "higher ratings" than he. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Cooper https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Cooper See: "Satirical videos" The major impact exactly as he promoted light in the lungs and disinfectants in the body as the treatment: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/may/14/trump-lip-sync-video-memes-sarah-cooper-tiktoks-interview https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/may/14/trump-lip-sy... For him it's all about his ratings. The reality show continues.
  - tertiary 6y ago
    Ha, really? I missed that. Thanks for pointing it out.
- Udik 6y ago
  > "China is bad" is just the excuse here. Wait. "China is bad" is not necessarily an excuse, it might be an end in itself. Populism needs enemies and threats to find and maintain support. By demonizing China (as it did previously with immigrants, BLM protesters, Iran, etc.) Trump effectively injects fear in the political discourse and creates the need for a savior with a strong attitude. Which is himself, of course. Readers of HN are heavily leaning to the left and naturally very far from Trump's voters demographic, reflecting California's and the US's tech workers predominant political sympathies; but I see that the fear and distrust of China has taken solid roots and I wouldn't be too surprised if some of them ended up voting republican, driven by the fear that a democratic president could be less resolute against China. Such is the power of creating enemies.
resfirestar 6y ago
The evidence that TikTok is a mouthpiece for China, according to NPR's account of the Commerce Department memo (I still need to read it myself): 1. Bytedance employs 130 Party members. 2. The party members had a rally with Communist salutes and pledges and such. 3. Bytedance's CEO once apologized over an app that the authorities shut down because, as far as I can tell, the memes were too dank. The first two are normal for big Chinese companies, though I suppose one could say that just means all Chinese companies are propaganda outlets. The third one...yes, if authorities go after a company in any country you will generally see leadership either challenge the decision or apologize, this isn't even unique to authoritarian countries. In other words this sounds like generic natsec scare tactics where you could insert the name of any Chinese corporation rather than anything interesting.
- takeda 6y ago
  Let's assume TikTok is the mouth piece of Chinese propaganda. Why aren't we doing anything about another mouthpiece that we already got confirmation that it is being used by both our and foreign intelligence. Is that one accepted because it benefits the president? What kind of leader of free nation would accept something like that?
  - justcuz00 6y ago
    Just because they talk about it being a free country doesn’t mean much What’s the math of your time economy look like? You’re a servant of their economy. Any challenges to that, it’s slower police responses, more austerity, and strongman bashing figurative genitals on TV all day to prove his grit Why don’t we do anything about it? Because we’re entitled to our stuff! Technology is just your salon. The level headed man is the scourge of modern times. My iPhone is the same as Buffets. I can be distracted the same. I can’t get the same healthcare to stay alive. That’s the reality of your nation.
    - stjohnswarts 6y ago
      Is this a free form poem?
charliebrownau 6y ago
Isnt that EXTACTLY the same with APAC , its a ISRAEL ZIONIST state agent
ilaksh 6y ago
My understanding is that all Chinese companies, especially very successful ones, absolutely are beholden to the desires or supposed needs of the Party. Especially when it comes to anything they consider to be relevant to national security or military interests. Which is pretty much everything unfortunately. This is not a special case. It's the core structure of their system. Personally I think it's very obvious that this is a national security issue for the United States. And I think if the political climate were different, it would not be disputed in any way. I think the underlying issue is not ByteDance or Trump. The core issue is the extreme cultural/idealogical and political divergence between the two large countries. Until there is a serious plan for resolving that, I don't think we can just pretend those problems don't exist. Young people really have no idea that the paradigm the world operates on is actually quite brutal. We definitely should change that. But until we do.. well honestly the way kids seem to be begging for censorship, and love garbage like TikTok, and are insisting on entitlements that will bankrupt the country with no serious plan for increasing revenue.. I feel like it's almost over already. So it doesn't matter what I say. I should just start studying Mandarin already.
cynusx 6y ago
It's not a particularly big secret that big companies in China need party-support to remain in the original owners' hands. What I find interesting is that China has extorted US tech companies for almost a decade now and they are finally at a point where their own tech companies are served the same treatment. It's this type of tit-for-tat that creates a forcing function for both parties to enter into fair trade agreements as it becomes mutually beneficial for both.
addicted 6y ago
Apparently bleating about Tik Tok is all this government can do to try and hide the fact that it’s been bleating about Tik Tok for months and not achieved anything besides having increased the deficit with China to record numbers while still paying Midwest farmers tens of billions for that privilege. It’s also failed to actually do anything about Tik Tok for months despite having committed some blatantly illegal acts that have reduced the government to little more than a PRC style ruling party. I guess actually solving the stated Tik Tok problem would prevent the daily headlines that are distracting from those same record deficits.
- ericmay 6y ago
  It looks more and more like a negotiation battle. Trump can ban it within an hour for the most part but hasn’t. If you didn’t think this was true, all you had to do was watch college football on Saturday and see the numerous TikTok “download before Sunday” ads.
  - aaomidi 6y ago
    A judge put a stop to the ban.
    - ericmay 6y ago
      The judge gave the illusion of actually stopping the ban. It's for show. Do you really think that Trump was like, hey I'm going to ban this TikTok app due to national security reasons and then a judge in California was like no you can't do that and he just sat on his hands about it? There's way more going on behind the scenes here than is apparent. Trump could within the hour, literally within the hour, ban TikTok and nobody could really do much until/unless Congress decided to do something about it. Unfortunately, in America we've given the president too much power under the guise of national security. For that I blame Congress, of course, because whenever their team is in power they conveniently forget about restricting presidential authority. With that being said, I do want to see Chinese social media companies banned from the US until/unless US companies can operate in China freely. There just isn't really a reason to let them operate here.
abc-xyz 6y ago
> ByteDance has had a party committee since 2017 and is headed by CCP secretary and company editor-in-chief Zhang Fuping (張輔評), reported Human Rights Watch. Members of the committee hold regular gatherings at which they study speeches by Chinese Chairman Xi Jinping (習近平) and "pledge to follow the party in technological innovation." > In addition, ByteDance on April 25, 2019, signed a strategic cooperation agreement with the Ministry of Public Security's Press and Publicity Bureau (公安部新聞宣傳局) in Beijing. The agreement was billed as "aiming to give full play to the professional technology and platform advantages of Toutiao and Tiktok in big data analysis," strengthen the creation and production of "public security new media works," boost "network influence and online discourse power," and enhance "public security propaganda, guidance, influence, and credibility," among other aspects. https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/3982027 https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/3982027
- the-dude 6y ago
  Yet, Funny, When Obama Harvested Facebook Data On Millions Of Users To Win In 2012, Everyone Cheered. https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/facebook-data-scandal-trump-election-obama-2012/ https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/facebook-data-...
- powerapple 6y ago
  Since it is from Taiwan I feel that I should correct the translation: >aiming to give full play to the professional technology and platform advantages of Toutiao and DouYin in big data analysis DouYin is the Chinese App, which is hosted in China, and TikTok is hosted in Singapore and Canada I believe. I don't know if the incorrect translation was on purpose or not, thought correcting it can only be fair.
082349872349872 6y ago
"Have you ever seen a commie drink a glass of water? Vodka. That's what they drink, isn't it? Never water? On no account will a commie ever drink water, and not without good reason. Seven tenths of this earth's surface is water. Why, you realize that.. seventy percent of you is water. And as human beings, you and I need fresh, pure water to replenish our precious bodily fluids. I drink only distilled water, or rain water, and only pure grain alcohol. Have you ever heard of a thing called fluoridation? Fluoridation of water? Do you realize that fluoridation is the most monstrously conceived and dangerous communist plot we have ever had to face? Today, war is too important to be left to politicians. They have neither the time, the training, nor the inclination for strategic thought. I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion, and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids." Edit: I am disappointed that "Precious Bodily Fluids", as far as youtube tells me, is not an extant band name.
cblconfederate 6y ago
I mean it s not like they could be a mouthpiece of any other party
thierryzoller 6y ago
Who cares? The US governement lost all credibility.
- Guy2020 6y ago
  China: We would like to compete with you on the world stage. USA: Why would you threaten thermo-nuclear war like this!? You mad men!
- stjohnswarts 6y ago
  No it hasn't. However, it probably has with you. If you believe the CCP over the US government then I think you might want to go over to your local Chinese consulate and have some interesting conversations with the People's Party.
peter303 6y ago
The US government- Trump plus his cabinet- consists of nut cases who make up stuff for imaginary enemies. Perhaps this will stimulate college students who notoriously do not vote to get out and vote for their lifestyles.
xoxoy 6y ago
One of the claims I’ve read about is that there’s fear that Beijing could use TikTok to “brainwash kids”, which I thought was a crazy thought...until I read about how the FDA had to issue a warning begging kids not to do the “Benadryl challenge” they saw on TikTok because it was sending them to the ER.
- Avamander 6y ago
  There's also like a massive amount of false news, hate and vitriol being spewn. No joke, 4chan on average is milder with its "fg" and "n", than what I've seen on local TikTok. Kids can't recognize that, I am quite convinced it could be influencing someone to be worse, especially someone young.
  - andrepd 6y ago
    I think the argument is that that's not a problem specific to tiktok, it's a problem of social media in general...
    - ericmay 6y ago
      Which is 100% true! But the key difference here is... we’re sitting here talking about regulating Facebook and Google, and I think you can safely say the vast majority of people working at those companies don’t want to see bad things happen to the United States.
      - willis936 6y ago
        I agree, but what matters is the power structure and who’s in charge. I wish I could say I honestly believe Zuckerburg cared about anything. Because I can’t, and maybe just because the world can burn because of one person’s disposition, regulation is needed.
      - AnHonestComment 6y ago
        There’s many good people there, but it’s important to understand the FAANG cultural bias: 1. A significant portion of their staff live in just a few extremely left wing cities — two of which (SEA + NYC) are currently listed as special “zones” because of the multiple months of rioting (supported by DAs who refuse to prosecute). 2. Large amounts of their staff come from other countries who could better be described as ambivalent about the US. That said, I agree that US companies are inherently easier for the US to regulate.
sarak153789 6y ago
Tiktok is Chinese app
ConfusedDog 6y ago
As a Chinese, I'm pretty sure it is the case. TikTok has a lot of content. Chinese government can be selective which to "monetize" - and generally they good for both government and TikTok. When you can control what people see, what people post, you control the people. Politicians' wet dream comes true.
- fendy3002 6y ago
  Even if they didn't, they cannot prove it because nobody can know or nobody can inspect. It's always safer to assume that they're having bad intention rather than good.
- hkmaxpro 6y ago
  Tiktok’s algorithms and moderators were known to censor Tiananmen Square, Tibetan independence, Falun Gong [0], Uighur sympathizer [1], Hong Kong protests [2], and (as another commenter points out) the ugly, poor, or disabled [3]. Their moderation guidelines banned contents “endangering national security” or deemed “uglification or distortion of local or other countries’ history” [4]. It’s just another CCP mouthpiece. [0] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/sep/25/revealed-how-tiktok-censors-videos-that-do-not-please-beijing https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/sep/25/revealed-... [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/26/tiktok-says-it-doesnt-censor-but-a-user-who-criticized-china-was-locked-out.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/26/tiktok-says-it-doesnt-censor... [2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/09/15/tiktoks-beijing-roots-fuel-censorship-suspicion-it-builds-huge-us-audience/?noredirect=on https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/09/15/tiktoks... [3] https://theintercept.com/2020/03/16/tiktok-app-moderators-users-discrimination/ https://theintercept.com/2020/03/16/tiktok-app-moderators-us... [4] https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/tiktok-once-again-comes-under-scrutiny-over-extreme-moderation-and-censorsh/574243/ https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/tiktok-once-again-come...
DLay 6y ago
I’ve seen plenty of U.S. military personnel posting TikTok videos while browsing the app. Many of them are casually posting their experiences of reserve duty life but I’ve seen a couple taken from outposts in Syria. Why is this tolerated if the U.S. Gov has major concerns about the PRC’s having access to TikTok’s data?
- newen 6y ago
  Anyone being actually anti US military (as opposed to the modern, polite, war is bad guys, rhetoric) get completely railed on and abused in Tik Tok.
- stjohnswarts 6y ago
  Yeah I'm surprised it isn't a misdemeanor (or whatever the military calls it) for a milserv person to appear in a tik tok video at all or even have it on their work or personal device.
ngcc_hk 6y ago
If it happened long long time ago in a galaxy far far away, it is more like the satellite released by the Soviet Union. They can do something that the USA cannot. The trouble is it is a) a networked world and hence this is not just radio it sent and b) it is one sided as any innovation can be profited by non-Chinese in Chinese man unless the ultimate winner is China. Big trouble and how it struggled or lost to China is details. Not sure it can win. I will pray it can. Just so one sided how can it win. WHO, UN, WTO, IP ... in fact it is not the wake up call from Hong Kong. But it might be too late.
ykevinator 6y ago
Trump, not "US"
Igorvelky 6y ago
This kind of anti american propaganda is spreading thru TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@flamecatcher2/video/6871036098341014790 https://www.tiktok.com/@flamecatcher2/video/6871036098341014...
- retox 6y ago
  Not available for me, maybe because I don't have an account?
koonsolo 6y ago
I find this quite strange and short sighted. I see my kids look at TikTok all the time. I don't really see how you could spread propaganda through 5 second dances and jokes. Especially since peers are doing that. I would think the Party influence on Hollywood and other entertainment such as Computer Games would be way more disturbing. Injecting propaganda into a real story seems way more effective. Especially when you fully control the medium.
- throwawayforce 6y ago
  I don't mean to be hostile but I think you are clueless. A lot of what shows up on tiktok and gets promoted can have a massive influence on what it's users begin to deem ok. And as kids grow they are far more likely to form opinions based on their peers than parents. Dances may have been tiktoks start but the shift to shortform videos on a specific topic in rapid succession meets the criteria of propaganda. Particularly if they are humorous or provide a dopamine response. China much like twitter and facebook and youtube has complete control over what their supposedly "unbias" algorithms direct users to. It is trivial to push propaganda between dances and jokes. Swaying public opinion has never been easier than in the social media age.
- OwlsParlay 6y ago
  I've been using TikTok on and off for the past six months, at first because I was interested in seeing what you can find on the site. It's mostly teenager dancing stuff, yes. If you start liking political content you'll get political content too. I've found there's a lot of pro-China, both soft-power "look how pretty the countryside is" stuff and straight up Uyghur denial. There's also a decent amount of anti-China activism on there as well, though.
- stjohnswarts 6y ago
  1. It can be used as propaganda to make Americans look stupid an capricious. 2. They can get information on kids now to be used against them in the future as blackmail (and similar) when those same kids become politicians. Say what you want about the Chinese but they are great at long-term 5, 10, 20 year plans.
- 6y ago
stjohnswarts 6y ago
Any insight as to why they would back up to some place like Singapore instead of just some other datacenter in the USA? Seems inefficient and likely a loophole for CCP to easily get access to it. Pull up a mobile datacenter and dump it on 18-wheeler-net and then ship that back on a slow boat to China
dirtyid 6y ago
The irony of this entire shitshow is TikTok was skewered for not being open enough to political content in the west, leading to regional moderation changes that made politics and risk of influence possible on the platform. If TikTok was allowed to operate like Douyin in China - largely apolitical - then much of current worries could have been averted. Chinese style censorship can be useful and complementary to existing partisan platforms. Sometimes you want an apolitical space for impressionable demographics. Overall I still find TikTok pushes less politics to my feed for my interests. I'm anticipating a future where foreign platforms like TikTok are just webapps and can't be banned without implementing great firewall. What will countries do then.

57 points by ETHisso2017 6y ago

Tiktok/ByteDance was interviewing pretty furiously in the Bay Area last year. All around I heard good things about the process. An interesting thing about their interview process is that they often required a night time slot for at least one round. This was because many teams had their direct manager or VP in mainland PRC, which has a 15 time hour difference.

mitfahrener 6y ago
12 or 13 depending on daylight saving time, never 15 hours.
- CharmingOpp 6y ago
  Bay Area (PST) to China Standard Time is 15 hours ahead during summer, 16 in winter.
  - zeckalpha 6y ago
    Or -9 (+1d). There are much worse time zone overlaps.

Synaesthesia 6y ago

"The Trump administration, however, did not offer any direct evidence that TikTok's U.S. data has ever been assessed by Beijing officials."

curt15 6y ago
I.e. the usual smoke and mirrors.
3327 6y ago
Why should they reveal confidential intelligence? Does any government ever really do? Its stupid to do so. Its tiktok job to show and prove that the suspicion is not the case.
- bobthepanda 6y ago
  Is it? The US legal system is supposed to operate under the assumption of "innocent until proven guilty."
- DiogenesKynikos 6y ago
  Weapons of Mass Destruction
- ketzu 6y ago
  > Why should they reveal confidential intelligence? Because it is in their economic interest for people to believe that and they are in a large trade dispute with the origin country. So without any proof this is essentially trade war propaganda.
- takeda 6y ago
  Even with Iraq they at least bothered to fabricate one. In terms of TikTok what kind of secret thing they could possibly hold in addition what they are already saying? It's not like to get that information they used a new spy satellite that trump shared image from agree assassination of Soleimani allowing to identify it, or disclosing that Israeli intelligence knew about planned operation by Islamic State and many other disclosures [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump%27s_disclosures_of_classified_information https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump%27s_disclosures_o...
- zepearl 6y ago
  > Why should they reveal confidential intelligence? From my point of view the US administration lost a lot of credibility during the last months & years => they might be right, but at this point stating something like this without presenting proof is not enough anymore.

Kaknut 6y ago

How does this even matter now when TikTok has successfully partnered with Oracle? They are now free to operate.

bobthepanda 6y ago
> Trump said he gave a deal to save TikTok involving companies Oracle and Walmart his tentative blessing, but an agreement never materialized, as the U.S. firms and ByteDance appear at odds over a number of details, including what firm would hold the largest stake in the new company. TikTok acquisition talks are ongoing.
- Kaknut 6y ago
  It's still very unclear, these companies would be part of the Pre-IPO investment and the new govt is also about to come.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
stjohnswarts 6y ago
that's not true the deal is still in flight. The USA government has to review it and it's contracts in a final form as do the CCP reps.

sunkenvicar 6y ago

TikTok’s algorithm shadowbans videos that expose the Chinese Communist Party.

Gaelan 6y ago

@dang the headline on the page (as well as the <title>) now refer to TikTok's owner. That seems like an important distinction.

pattisapu 6y ago
The memorandum says "its founder and CEO has publicly affirmed that ByteDance is a mouthpiece for the CCP in that it is committed to promoting the CCP’s agenda and messaging."

tertiary 6y ago

The whole ban is so gross. It's clearly politically targeted to deplatform Trump critics all while firing people up about China. For those that aren't familiar. TikTok is pretty ubiquitous in the under 21 crowd while being practically unused by older people. It's sort of like when young people fled to Twitter and Instagram to get away from their parents on Facebook. It's basically the next Twitter for that age group. TikTok (the community, not the company) is also quite critical of Trump. For instance, the buying up of rally tickets a few months ago so he would show up to an empty political event was organized on TikTok and we know that it pissed Trump off [1]. That level of age and political specificity in their audience makes it easy to target them for their ideas. This type of laser focused ban on specific conpanies (rather than, say, disallowing data to be stored in China or banning Chinese owned companies from operating) reveals the nakedly political motivation behind this action. "China is bad" is just the excuse here. It's really about banning a popular meetingplace for a political demographic opposed to Trump. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/21/style/tiktok-trump-rally-tulsa.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/21/style/tiktok-trump-rally-...

acqq 6y ago
Also a possible trigger: Sarah Cooper lip syncing him on TikTok and getting possibly "higher ratings" than he. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Cooper https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Cooper See: "Satirical videos" The major impact exactly as he promoted light in the lungs and disinfectants in the body as the treatment: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/may/14/trump-lip-sync-video-memes-sarah-cooper-tiktoks-interview https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/may/14/trump-lip-sy... For him it's all about his ratings. The reality show continues.
- tertiary 6y ago
  Ha, really? I missed that. Thanks for pointing it out.
Udik 6y ago
> "China is bad" is just the excuse here. Wait. "China is bad" is not necessarily an excuse, it might be an end in itself. Populism needs enemies and threats to find and maintain support. By demonizing China (as it did previously with immigrants, BLM protesters, Iran, etc.) Trump effectively injects fear in the political discourse and creates the need for a savior with a strong attitude. Which is himself, of course. Readers of HN are heavily leaning to the left and naturally very far from Trump's voters demographic, reflecting California's and the US's tech workers predominant political sympathies; but I see that the fear and distrust of China has taken solid roots and I wouldn't be too surprised if some of them ended up voting republican, driven by the fear that a democratic president could be less resolute against China. Such is the power of creating enemies.

resfirestar 6y ago

The evidence that TikTok is a mouthpiece for China, according to NPR's account of the Commerce Department memo (I still need to read it myself): 1. Bytedance employs 130 Party members. 2. The party members had a rally with Communist salutes and pledges and such. 3. Bytedance's CEO once apologized over an app that the authorities shut down because, as far as I can tell, the memes were too dank. The first two are normal for big Chinese companies, though I suppose one could say that just means all Chinese companies are propaganda outlets. The third one...yes, if authorities go after a company in any country you will generally see leadership either challenge the decision or apologize, this isn't even unique to authoritarian countries. In other words this sounds like generic natsec scare tactics where you could insert the name of any Chinese corporation rather than anything interesting.

takeda 6y ago
Let's assume TikTok is the mouth piece of Chinese propaganda. Why aren't we doing anything about another mouthpiece that we already got confirmation that it is being used by both our and foreign intelligence. Is that one accepted because it benefits the president? What kind of leader of free nation would accept something like that?
- justcuz00 6y ago
  Just because they talk about it being a free country doesn’t mean much What’s the math of your time economy look like? You’re a servant of their economy. Any challenges to that, it’s slower police responses, more austerity, and strongman bashing figurative genitals on TV all day to prove his grit Why don’t we do anything about it? Because we’re entitled to our stuff! Technology is just your salon. The level headed man is the scourge of modern times. My iPhone is the same as Buffets. I can be distracted the same. I can’t get the same healthcare to stay alive. That’s the reality of your nation.
  - stjohnswarts 6y ago
    Is this a free form poem?

charliebrownau 6y ago

Isnt that EXTACTLY the same with APAC , its a ISRAEL ZIONIST state agent

ilaksh 6y ago

My understanding is that all Chinese companies, especially very successful ones, absolutely are beholden to the desires or supposed needs of the Party. Especially when it comes to anything they consider to be relevant to national security or military interests. Which is pretty much everything unfortunately. This is not a special case. It's the core structure of their system. Personally I think it's very obvious that this is a national security issue for the United States. And I think if the political climate were different, it would not be disputed in any way. I think the underlying issue is not ByteDance or Trump. The core issue is the extreme cultural/idealogical and political divergence between the two large countries. Until there is a serious plan for resolving that, I don't think we can just pretend those problems don't exist. Young people really have no idea that the paradigm the world operates on is actually quite brutal. We definitely should change that. But until we do.. well honestly the way kids seem to be begging for censorship, and love garbage like TikTok, and are insisting on entitlements that will bankrupt the country with no serious plan for increasing revenue.. I feel like it's almost over already. So it doesn't matter what I say. I should just start studying Mandarin already.

cynusx 6y ago

It's not a particularly big secret that big companies in China need party-support to remain in the original owners' hands. What I find interesting is that China has extorted US tech companies for almost a decade now and they are finally at a point where their own tech companies are served the same treatment. It's this type of tit-for-tat that creates a forcing function for both parties to enter into fair trade agreements as it becomes mutually beneficial for both.

addicted 6y ago

Apparently bleating about Tik Tok is all this government can do to try and hide the fact that it’s been bleating about Tik Tok for months and not achieved anything besides having increased the deficit with China to record numbers while still paying Midwest farmers tens of billions for that privilege. It’s also failed to actually do anything about Tik Tok for months despite having committed some blatantly illegal acts that have reduced the government to little more than a PRC style ruling party. I guess actually solving the stated Tik Tok problem would prevent the daily headlines that are distracting from those same record deficits.

ericmay 6y ago
It looks more and more like a negotiation battle. Trump can ban it within an hour for the most part but hasn’t. If you didn’t think this was true, all you had to do was watch college football on Saturday and see the numerous TikTok “download before Sunday” ads.
- aaomidi 6y ago
  A judge put a stop to the ban.
  - ericmay 6y ago
    The judge gave the illusion of actually stopping the ban. It's for show. Do you really think that Trump was like, hey I'm going to ban this TikTok app due to national security reasons and then a judge in California was like no you can't do that and he just sat on his hands about it? There's way more going on behind the scenes here than is apparent. Trump could within the hour, literally within the hour, ban TikTok and nobody could really do much until/unless Congress decided to do something about it. Unfortunately, in America we've given the president too much power under the guise of national security. For that I blame Congress, of course, because whenever their team is in power they conveniently forget about restricting presidential authority. With that being said, I do want to see Chinese social media companies banned from the US until/unless US companies can operate in China freely. There just isn't really a reason to let them operate here.

abc-xyz 6y ago

> ByteDance has had a party committee since 2017 and is headed by CCP secretary and company editor-in-chief Zhang Fuping (張輔評), reported Human Rights Watch. Members of the committee hold regular gatherings at which they study speeches by Chinese Chairman Xi Jinping (習近平) and "pledge to follow the party in technological innovation." > In addition, ByteDance on April 25, 2019, signed a strategic cooperation agreement with the Ministry of Public Security's Press and Publicity Bureau (公安部新聞宣傳局) in Beijing. The agreement was billed as "aiming to give full play to the professional technology and platform advantages of Toutiao and Tiktok in big data analysis," strengthen the creation and production of "public security new media works," boost "network influence and online discourse power," and enhance "public security propaganda, guidance, influence, and credibility," among other aspects. https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/3982027 https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/3982027

the-dude 6y ago
Yet, Funny, When Obama Harvested Facebook Data On Millions Of Users To Win In 2012, Everyone Cheered. https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/facebook-data-scandal-trump-election-obama-2012/ https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/facebook-data-...
powerapple 6y ago
Since it is from Taiwan I feel that I should correct the translation: >aiming to give full play to the professional technology and platform advantages of Toutiao and DouYin in big data analysis DouYin is the Chinese App, which is hosted in China, and TikTok is hosted in Singapore and Canada I believe. I don't know if the incorrect translation was on purpose or not, thought correcting it can only be fair.

082349872349872 6y ago

"Have you ever seen a commie drink a glass of water? Vodka. That's what they drink, isn't it? Never water? On no account will a commie ever drink water, and not without good reason. Seven tenths of this earth's surface is water. Why, you realize that.. seventy percent of you is water. And as human beings, you and I need fresh, pure water to replenish our precious bodily fluids. I drink only distilled water, or rain water, and only pure grain alcohol. Have you ever heard of a thing called fluoridation? Fluoridation of water? Do you realize that fluoridation is the most monstrously conceived and dangerous communist plot we have ever had to face? Today, war is too important to be left to politicians. They have neither the time, the training, nor the inclination for strategic thought. I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion, and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids." Edit: I am disappointed that "Precious Bodily Fluids", as far as youtube tells me, is not an extant band name.

cblconfederate 6y ago

I mean it s not like they could be a mouthpiece of any other party

thierryzoller 6y ago

Who cares? The US governement lost all credibility.

Guy2020 6y ago
China: We would like to compete with you on the world stage. USA: Why would you threaten thermo-nuclear war like this!? You mad men!
stjohnswarts 6y ago
No it hasn't. However, it probably has with you. If you believe the CCP over the US government then I think you might want to go over to your local Chinese consulate and have some interesting conversations with the People's Party.

peter303 6y ago

The US government- Trump plus his cabinet- consists of nut cases who make up stuff for imaginary enemies. Perhaps this will stimulate college students who notoriously do not vote to get out and vote for their lifestyles.

xoxoy 6y ago

One of the claims I’ve read about is that there’s fear that Beijing could use TikTok to “brainwash kids”, which I thought was a crazy thought...until I read about how the FDA had to issue a warning begging kids not to do the “Benadryl challenge” they saw on TikTok because it was sending them to the ER.

Avamander 6y ago
There's also like a massive amount of false news, hate and vitriol being spewn. No joke, 4chan on average is milder with its "fg" and "n", than what I've seen on local TikTok. Kids can't recognize that, I am quite convinced it could be influencing someone to be worse, especially someone young.
- andrepd 6y ago
  I think the argument is that that's not a problem specific to tiktok, it's a problem of social media in general...
  - ericmay 6y ago
    Which is 100% true! But the key difference here is... we’re sitting here talking about regulating Facebook and Google, and I think you can safely say the vast majority of people working at those companies don’t want to see bad things happen to the United States.
    - willis936 6y ago
      I agree, but what matters is the power structure and who’s in charge. I wish I could say I honestly believe Zuckerburg cared about anything. Because I can’t, and maybe just because the world can burn because of one person’s disposition, regulation is needed.
    - AnHonestComment 6y ago
      There’s many good people there, but it’s important to understand the FAANG cultural bias: 1. A significant portion of their staff live in just a few extremely left wing cities — two of which (SEA + NYC) are currently listed as special “zones” because of the multiple months of rioting (supported by DAs who refuse to prosecute). 2. Large amounts of their staff come from other countries who could better be described as ambivalent about the US. That said, I agree that US companies are inherently easier for the US to regulate.

sarak153789 6y ago

Tiktok is Chinese app

ConfusedDog 6y ago

As a Chinese, I'm pretty sure it is the case. TikTok has a lot of content. Chinese government can be selective which to "monetize" - and generally they good for both government and TikTok. When you can control what people see, what people post, you control the people. Politicians' wet dream comes true.

fendy3002 6y ago
Even if they didn't, they cannot prove it because nobody can know or nobody can inspect. It's always safer to assume that they're having bad intention rather than good.
hkmaxpro 6y ago
Tiktok’s algorithms and moderators were known to censor Tiananmen Square, Tibetan independence, Falun Gong [0], Uighur sympathizer [1], Hong Kong protests [2], and (as another commenter points out) the ugly, poor, or disabled [3]. Their moderation guidelines banned contents “endangering national security” or deemed “uglification or distortion of local or other countries’ history” [4]. It’s just another CCP mouthpiece. [0] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/sep/25/revealed-how-tiktok-censors-videos-that-do-not-please-beijing https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/sep/25/revealed-... [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/26/tiktok-says-it-doesnt-censor-but-a-user-who-criticized-china-was-locked-out.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/26/tiktok-says-it-doesnt-censor... [2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/09/15/tiktoks-beijing-roots-fuel-censorship-suspicion-it-builds-huge-us-audience/?noredirect=on https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/09/15/tiktoks... [3] https://theintercept.com/2020/03/16/tiktok-app-moderators-users-discrimination/ https://theintercept.com/2020/03/16/tiktok-app-moderators-us... [4] https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/tiktok-once-again-comes-under-scrutiny-over-extreme-moderation-and-censorsh/574243/ https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/tiktok-once-again-come...

DLay 6y ago

I’ve seen plenty of U.S. military personnel posting TikTok videos while browsing the app. Many of them are casually posting their experiences of reserve duty life but I’ve seen a couple taken from outposts in Syria. Why is this tolerated if the U.S. Gov has major concerns about the PRC’s having access to TikTok’s data?

newen 6y ago
Anyone being actually anti US military (as opposed to the modern, polite, war is bad guys, rhetoric) get completely railed on and abused in Tik Tok.
stjohnswarts 6y ago
Yeah I'm surprised it isn't a misdemeanor (or whatever the military calls it) for a milserv person to appear in a tik tok video at all or even have it on their work or personal device.

ngcc_hk 6y ago

If it happened long long time ago in a galaxy far far away, it is more like the satellite released by the Soviet Union. They can do something that the USA cannot. The trouble is it is a) a networked world and hence this is not just radio it sent and b) it is one sided as any innovation can be profited by non-Chinese in Chinese man unless the ultimate winner is China. Big trouble and how it struggled or lost to China is details. Not sure it can win. I will pray it can. Just so one sided how can it win. WHO, UN, WTO, IP ... in fact it is not the wake up call from Hong Kong. But it might be too late.

ykevinator 6y ago

Trump, not "US"

Igorvelky 6y ago

This kind of anti american propaganda is spreading thru TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@flamecatcher2/video/6871036098341014790 https://www.tiktok.com/@flamecatcher2/video/6871036098341014...

retox 6y ago
Not available for me, maybe because I don't have an account?

koonsolo 6y ago

I find this quite strange and short sighted. I see my kids look at TikTok all the time. I don't really see how you could spread propaganda through 5 second dances and jokes. Especially since peers are doing that. I would think the Party influence on Hollywood and other entertainment such as Computer Games would be way more disturbing. Injecting propaganda into a real story seems way more effective. Especially when you fully control the medium.

throwawayforce 6y ago
I don't mean to be hostile but I think you are clueless. A lot of what shows up on tiktok and gets promoted can have a massive influence on what it's users begin to deem ok. And as kids grow they are far more likely to form opinions based on their peers than parents. Dances may have been tiktoks start but the shift to shortform videos on a specific topic in rapid succession meets the criteria of propaganda. Particularly if they are humorous or provide a dopamine response. China much like twitter and facebook and youtube has complete control over what their supposedly "unbias" algorithms direct users to. It is trivial to push propaganda between dances and jokes. Swaying public opinion has never been easier than in the social media age.
OwlsParlay 6y ago
I've been using TikTok on and off for the past six months, at first because I was interested in seeing what you can find on the site. It's mostly teenager dancing stuff, yes. If you start liking political content you'll get political content too. I've found there's a lot of pro-China, both soft-power "look how pretty the countryside is" stuff and straight up Uyghur denial. There's also a decent amount of anti-China activism on there as well, though.
stjohnswarts 6y ago
1. It can be used as propaganda to make Americans look stupid an capricious. 2. They can get information on kids now to be used against them in the future as blackmail (and similar) when those same kids become politicians. Say what you want about the Chinese but they are great at long-term 5, 10, 20 year plans.
6y ago

stjohnswarts 6y ago

Any insight as to why they would back up to some place like Singapore instead of just some other datacenter in the USA? Seems inefficient and likely a loophole for CCP to easily get access to it. Pull up a mobile datacenter and dump it on 18-wheeler-net and then ship that back on a slow boat to China

dirtyid 6y ago

The irony of this entire shitshow is TikTok was skewered for not being open enough to political content in the west, leading to regional moderation changes that made politics and risk of influence possible on the platform. If TikTok was allowed to operate like Douyin in China - largely apolitical - then much of current worries could have been averted. Chinese style censorship can be useful and complementary to existing partisan platforms. Sometimes you want an apolitical space for impressionable demographics. Overall I still find TikTok pushes less politics to my feed for my interests. I'm anticipating a future where foreign platforms like TikTok are just webapps and can't be banned without implementing great firewall. What will countries do then.