7 ms·

The slant I picked up on is that Chinese authorities operating TikTok is the problem because the president can’t just dial Zuck and say “take that shit down imm

by dcow 5y ago

The slant I picked up on is that Chinese authorities operating TikTok is the problem because the president can’t just dial Zuck and say “take that shit down immediately or else”. But in general I agree and find the slant annoying. I do think there is some discussion point buried in here about whether or not it’s strategic for the US to build dependencies on foreign software services… but… not sure if it’s a productive one at the moment. It is really kinda orthogonal to OPSEC.

TheDudeMan 5y ago
Getting pictures deleted from the internet is not a thing. Doesn't matter if you are the president or Zuck.
- munk-a 5y ago
  Precisely, if Mark Zuckerberg could delete pictures from the internet the photo of him wearing sunscreen[1] would never have been allowed to spawn so many memes. 1. https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-static/static/2021-04/27/20/asset/5bc9aff542d8/sub-buzz-855-1619555313-21.jpg https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-static/static/2021-04/27/2...
  - anonymousiam 5y ago
    He was pretty effective at taking down the Hunter Biden stories right before the election.
- laumars 5y ago
  You’re missing the point. The GP was commenting on their impression of the slant the article was taking (and I agree with their point there). They were not suggesting the article’s slant was correct, in fact they specifically stated that they disliked the way the article was slanted. Maybe they could have been more explicit in the way they worded their reply. But I think given the question they were responding to and the typical audience of this forum, it should have been obvious to most people that the GP wasn’t trying to imply pictures can be deleted from the internet. Or at least obvious to anyone that read the OPs question and the source article.
Johnny555 5y ago
I would assume that once a photo hits any social media, the Chinese and other adversaries (and allies) have already scraped it.
- tablespoon 5y ago
  > I would assume that once a photo hits any social media, the Chinese and other adversaries (and allies) have already scraped it. Don't all the social media companies make it hard to scrape their sites, especially in bulk? It's definitely impossible to contain something once it's all over a bunch of blogs like this, but it might be possible to contain some things if caught early enough. There's also the private message angle: something shared through PM on a US social network may be able to be contained to the US, while anything shared on a foreign network may be able to be accessed by a foreign intelligence service, regardless of sharing settings.
  - Johnny555 5y ago
    Don't all the social media companies make it hard to scrape their sites, especially in bulk When you can throw unlimited developers and real humans at it, it's not so hard to scrape. I'd be willing to bet money that there are Chinese affiliated agents (possibly based in the USA or other countries) in every military related Facebook group.
    - GekkePrutser 5y ago
      Additionally, there's corporate tools that can do this. We use one at work that monitors mention of our brand names etc so that our customer care can reply. It's called Sprinklr. It does all the major platforms. In fact there's dozens of tools just like it. I'm not sure whether they're scraping the platforms or get legitimate access. But whichever it is, it's dozens of companies to infiltrate and get a link into their feeds. Trivial for a nation state actor.
  - fragmede 5y ago
    Facebook makes it difficult, but this where the question of "who's your adversary?" comes in. It's one thing to have to change user agent away from curl and rate limit, but when you're a nation-state and can afford to pay teams of people to do nothing else but collect information on your adversaries (in this case, the US military), having an actual person (so the traffic looks organic - because it is) who's full time job it is to just refresh that one Facebook group (never mind actually automating it), paying for a US Visa, a house, an ISP, all of their food needs. Against that level of advarsary (never mind trying to get your spies hired at Facebook as senior engineers), what sort of countermeasures do you imagine is possible by Facebook?

by dcow 5y ago

TheDudeMan 5y ago

Getting pictures deleted from the internet is not a thing. Doesn't matter if you are the president or Zuck.

munk-a 5y ago
Precisely, if Mark Zuckerberg could delete pictures from the internet the photo of him wearing sunscreen[1] would never have been allowed to spawn so many memes. 1. https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-static/static/2021-04/27/20/asset/5bc9aff542d8/sub-buzz-855-1619555313-21.jpg https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-static/static/2021-04/27/2...
- anonymousiam 5y ago
  He was pretty effective at taking down the Hunter Biden stories right before the election.
laumars 5y ago
You’re missing the point. The GP was commenting on their impression of the slant the article was taking (and I agree with their point there). They were not suggesting the article’s slant was correct, in fact they specifically stated that they disliked the way the article was slanted. Maybe they could have been more explicit in the way they worded their reply. But I think given the question they were responding to and the typical audience of this forum, it should have been obvious to most people that the GP wasn’t trying to imply pictures can be deleted from the internet. Or at least obvious to anyone that read the OPs question and the source article.

Johnny555 5y ago

I would assume that once a photo hits any social media, the Chinese and other adversaries (and allies) have already scraped it.

tablespoon 5y ago
> I would assume that once a photo hits any social media, the Chinese and other adversaries (and allies) have already scraped it. Don't all the social media companies make it hard to scrape their sites, especially in bulk? It's definitely impossible to contain something once it's all over a bunch of blogs like this, but it might be possible to contain some things if caught early enough. There's also the private message angle: something shared through PM on a US social network may be able to be contained to the US, while anything shared on a foreign network may be able to be accessed by a foreign intelligence service, regardless of sharing settings.
- Johnny555 5y ago
  Don't all the social media companies make it hard to scrape their sites, especially in bulk When you can throw unlimited developers and real humans at it, it's not so hard to scrape. I'd be willing to bet money that there are Chinese affiliated agents (possibly based in the USA or other countries) in every military related Facebook group.
  - GekkePrutser 5y ago
    Additionally, there's corporate tools that can do this. We use one at work that monitors mention of our brand names etc so that our customer care can reply. It's called Sprinklr. It does all the major platforms. In fact there's dozens of tools just like it. I'm not sure whether they're scraping the platforms or get legitimate access. But whichever it is, it's dozens of companies to infiltrate and get a link into their feeds. Trivial for a nation state actor.
- fragmede 5y ago
  Facebook makes it difficult, but this where the question of "who's your adversary?" comes in. It's one thing to have to change user agent away from curl and rate limit, but when you're a nation-state and can afford to pay teams of people to do nothing else but collect information on your adversaries (in this case, the US military), having an actual person (so the traffic looks organic - because it is) who's full time job it is to just refresh that one Facebook group (never mind actually automating it), paying for a US Visa, a house, an ISP, all of their food needs. Against that level of advarsary (never mind trying to get your spies hired at Facebook as senior engineers), what sort of countermeasures do you imagine is possible by Facebook?