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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 e

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?
- CameronNemo 6y ago
  "Walking round the land of the free, yelling 'free for who?'"
- stjohnswarts 6y ago
  What other mouthpiece/personal data sink is on 100 million American devices? You start with the 800lb gorilla not the 10 spider monkeys who are there for support and logistics.
verst 6y ago
Expanding on (1): It is important to explain to HN readers the reality of CCP membership. You can consider it the equivalent of national honor society in high school in the US and various honor societies in college, but with membership dues you must pay. Membership is symbolic and people must attend mandatory propaganda classes which they don't take seriously. Why would they do this? Because this is the way to get into many leadership roles in government. So CCP membership is driven by capitalist motives. I personally am friends with quite a few CCP members. I assure you they are critical of the government and have no insight into what the leadership is doing. CCP membership in itself means little. Really depends on how high up an individual is within the party.
- bad_user 6y ago
  > CCP membership is driven by capitalist motives You probably mean _selfish_ motives. I was born in the communism of Eastern Europe. Back then being a party member was also for selfish reasons. About 20% of people from our country were members of the communist party. Party members had a higher status, of course, hence the phrase "in communism, everybody is equal, but some people are more equal than others". I can assure you that membership in the communist party wasn't meaningless. Yes, you had party members criticizing the party (always in private of course, and only for the show), yet they were tools of the party nonetheless. Every single one, succumbing to doing dreadful deeds whenever the party required it, and doing everything they can to preserve the status quo. And that's not capitalism my friend. That's just being immoral. --- Interestingly I see more and more CCP propaganda on HN. Someone like me can smell the bullshit from a mile long, unfortunately other people aren't as lucky to have been born in a Warsaw Pact country.
- xmprt 6y ago
  Thanks for the clarification. It seems like a lot of the boom in Chinese industries is because of them adopting capitalistic policies (although maybe not publicly).
- yorwba 6y ago
  This squares with my experience as an exchange student in China. Once I went on a hiking trip organized by the Communist Youth League (as a non-member, obviously) and when I told some friends about it, they were surprised because their only interaction with the CYL was paying 2 cents a month in membership dues. They didn't even know there was supposed to be anything more to it... (The reason they gave for being members in the first place was that all students with good grades were encouraged to join.)
mitfahrener 6y ago
Saying that TikTok employs 130 CCP members doesn't mean much. How many Republicans and Democrats do a typical American company employ?Maybe they don't talk about politics at work in China either?
- tjpnz 6y ago
  Last I heard Republicans and Democrats weren't involved in the systematic genocide of an ethnic minority.
  - resfirestar 6y ago
    That’s silly, of course you can point to things American governments have done that the average voter wouldn’t feel personally responsible for. Many Democrats would accuse the current administration of trying to carry out a genocide against Latin American immigrants, and both Obama and Trump are guilty of countless crimes against humanity overseas.
    - tjpnz 6y ago
      If you're referring to ICE I would still take my chances being incarcerated in one of their detention facilities over a Uighur concentration camp. Much more likely to get out alive and not sterilized.
      - resfirestar 6y ago
        That wasn’t the comparison I was making, it was about whether a rank and file Republican non-politician would feel personally responsible for ICE’s actions if they are ever found to be criminal.
      - __m 6y ago
        An apt comparison would be the West‘s war on terror. In terms of civilians killed I highly doubt that they are anywhere near our numbers.
  - hutzlibu 6y ago
sudoaza 6y ago
isn't like 10% of chinese population party members? How many employees has Bytedance in total?
- whoevercares 6y ago
  That’s true and if you are willing to extrapolate by connecting family relationship, you are basically implying most of the Chinese people can’t be trusted. And THAT is a dangerous claim that mixes Chinese people and the ruling government/party.
- ketzu 6y ago
  According to Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Communist_Party https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Communist_Party) the CPC has 91,914,000 members in 2020. Which is around 6.5% of the population of the PRC or around 1.2% of the world population (assuming around 7.8 bil people). Byte Dance has around 30k employees in total (world wide) according to https://craft.co/bytedance https://craft.co/bytedance so by random sampling we would expect 350 employees to be CPC members. So if they have 130, that would be less than you would expect from complete random sampling all over the world. Of course that's a naive approach in many ways.
  - lightroast123 6y ago
    bytedance has 70k employees right now
Firebrand 6y ago
Although heavily redacted, part of their claim is that US user data is stored on servers leased by a PRC state owned enterprise located in Virginia (China Telecom?). TikTok has repeated said American user data is safe because it's stored in the US, and it would never give data to the PRC government. This arrangement could (depending on the specifics) be a circumvention around both of those promises. Maybe it’s not nefarious, but certainly not good optics.
stjohnswarts 6y ago
I think the evidence is that any Chinese company is under the umbrella of the omnipotent CCP who do as they please. Placing 100 million (and growing) US persons' location, likes, dislikes, contacts, and sms messages in the hands of the CCP on a silver platter is why this is happening.

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?
CameronNemo 6y ago
"Walking round the land of the free, yelling 'free for who?'"
stjohnswarts 6y ago
What other mouthpiece/personal data sink is on 100 million American devices? You start with the 800lb gorilla not the 10 spider monkeys who are there for support and logistics.

verst 6y ago

Expanding on (1): It is important to explain to HN readers the reality of CCP membership. You can consider it the equivalent of national honor society in high school in the US and various honor societies in college, but with membership dues you must pay. Membership is symbolic and people must attend mandatory propaganda classes which they don't take seriously. Why would they do this? Because this is the way to get into many leadership roles in government. So CCP membership is driven by capitalist motives. I personally am friends with quite a few CCP members. I assure you they are critical of the government and have no insight into what the leadership is doing. CCP membership in itself means little. Really depends on how high up an individual is within the party.

bad_user 6y ago
> CCP membership is driven by capitalist motives You probably mean _selfish_ motives. I was born in the communism of Eastern Europe. Back then being a party member was also for selfish reasons. About 20% of people from our country were members of the communist party. Party members had a higher status, of course, hence the phrase "in communism, everybody is equal, but some people are more equal than others". I can assure you that membership in the communist party wasn't meaningless. Yes, you had party members criticizing the party (always in private of course, and only for the show), yet they were tools of the party nonetheless. Every single one, succumbing to doing dreadful deeds whenever the party required it, and doing everything they can to preserve the status quo. And that's not capitalism my friend. That's just being immoral. --- Interestingly I see more and more CCP propaganda on HN. Someone like me can smell the bullshit from a mile long, unfortunately other people aren't as lucky to have been born in a Warsaw Pact country.
xmprt 6y ago
Thanks for the clarification. It seems like a lot of the boom in Chinese industries is because of them adopting capitalistic policies (although maybe not publicly).
yorwba 6y ago
This squares with my experience as an exchange student in China. Once I went on a hiking trip organized by the Communist Youth League (as a non-member, obviously) and when I told some friends about it, they were surprised because their only interaction with the CYL was paying 2 cents a month in membership dues. They didn't even know there was supposed to be anything more to it... (The reason they gave for being members in the first place was that all students with good grades were encouraged to join.)

mitfahrener 6y ago

Saying that TikTok employs 130 CCP members doesn't mean much. How many Republicans and Democrats do a typical American company employ?Maybe they don't talk about politics at work in China either?

tjpnz 6y ago
Last I heard Republicans and Democrats weren't involved in the systematic genocide of an ethnic minority.
- resfirestar 6y ago
  That’s silly, of course you can point to things American governments have done that the average voter wouldn’t feel personally responsible for. Many Democrats would accuse the current administration of trying to carry out a genocide against Latin American immigrants, and both Obama and Trump are guilty of countless crimes against humanity overseas.
  - tjpnz 6y ago
    If you're referring to ICE I would still take my chances being incarcerated in one of their detention facilities over a Uighur concentration camp. Much more likely to get out alive and not sterilized.
    - resfirestar 6y ago
      That wasn’t the comparison I was making, it was about whether a rank and file Republican non-politician would feel personally responsible for ICE’s actions if they are ever found to be criminal.
    - __m 6y ago
      An apt comparison would be the West‘s war on terror. In terms of civilians killed I highly doubt that they are anywhere near our numbers.
- hutzlibu 6y ago

sudoaza 6y ago

isn't like 10% of chinese population party members? How many employees has Bytedance in total?

whoevercares 6y ago
That’s true and if you are willing to extrapolate by connecting family relationship, you are basically implying most of the Chinese people can’t be trusted. And THAT is a dangerous claim that mixes Chinese people and the ruling government/party.
ketzu 6y ago
According to Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Communist_Party https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Communist_Party) the CPC has 91,914,000 members in 2020. Which is around 6.5% of the population of the PRC or around 1.2% of the world population (assuming around 7.8 bil people). Byte Dance has around 30k employees in total (world wide) according to https://craft.co/bytedance https://craft.co/bytedance so by random sampling we would expect 350 employees to be CPC members. So if they have 130, that would be less than you would expect from complete random sampling all over the world. Of course that's a naive approach in many ways.
- lightroast123 6y ago
  bytedance has 70k employees right now

Firebrand 6y ago

Although heavily redacted, part of their claim is that US user data is stored on servers leased by a PRC state owned enterprise located in Virginia (China Telecom?). TikTok has repeated said American user data is safe because it's stored in the US, and it would never give data to the PRC government. This arrangement could (depending on the specifics) be a circumvention around both of those promises. Maybe it’s not nefarious, but certainly not good optics.

stjohnswarts 6y ago

I think the evidence is that any Chinese company is under the umbrella of the omnipotent CCP who do as they please. Placing 100 million (and growing) US persons' location, likes, dislikes, contacts, and sms messages in the hands of the CCP on a silver platter is why this is happening.