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It’s incredible that the US allowed TikTok (which is by all measures a chinese spy tool) to become such a dominant social network. India got it right from the

It’s incredible that the US allowed TikTok (which is by all measures a chinese spy tool) to become such a dominant social network. India got it right from the beggining by banning TikTok. They saw the immense threat and didn’t hesitate. China, by principle, has always banned all foreign information technology companies. What seemed hostile for us, it’s a reasonable play if you understand the unmeasurable power of massive information products such as Google or Facebook. Meanwhile the US is just focused on attacking its own homegrown tech companies and diminishing their ability to compete in global contexts. We are on a declining trajectory and we willingly paved that road. It’s sad.

BeFlatXIII 4y ago
As far as the populace is concerned, we'd rather be spied on by Chairman Xi than by our own government. Which one can more directly affect our lives? That said, it's surprising the governing class allowed TikTok in.
frozencell 4y ago
By not banning it they can legitimate a war with CCP, a parallel to the US letting Russia threat and attack the west first.
nemothekid 4y ago
The fact that India would consider TikTok a threat but not Meta leads me to believe that it wasn't done on a purely espionage basis. The threat of TikTok, today, it still theoretical, while Facebook has done measurable harm to India's neighbors.
- sieabahlpark 4y ago
- actuator 4y ago
  Tiktok is a far worse threat to India than Meta though. Unlike China, US is not an adversary of India and US didn't kill Indian soldiers just two years back. So it makes sense they would go after Tiktok. The harm is just not espionage, it is also manipulation of sentiment by propoganda. Also, I am not really sure with all the equivalence to Meta in this thread. Sure, Meta has things to be criticized about but if one thinks West has threat from Meta on the same level as Tiktok, that seems delusional.
  - Jackpillar 4y ago
    [dead]
  - sdk16420 4y ago
    WhatsApp has led to dozens of brutal deaths in India https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_WhatsApp_lynchings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_WhatsApp_lynchings
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - causi 4y ago
      That's an absurd claim. The rumors about thieves and child abductors could have just as easily been spread over Telegram or AOL Instant Messenger or SnapChat. The chosen platform is completely immaterial.
  - nemothekid 4y ago
    Is India the West now? This alone tells me that you aren’t coming this from a data pov and simply playing team sports. My problem with this “analysis” is it stems from xenophobia rather than the actual problem with these social networks. The idea that we must “act now” with TikTok when Meta has been a worse actor is just anti-Chinese; we are pretending that Meta wont just bend over to the CCP as well if given the chance - we already have several of our companies self-censoring on issues that might anger the CCP. Banning TikTok won’t fix the underlying problem and if your concern is China collecting data on US citizens you should understand there are very little controls in place, today, to prevent that from happening with any foreign actor. I don’t think China would have to pull teeth to exfiltrate data from any of the other social networks. >Also, I am not really sure with all the equivalence to Meta in this thread. Which company is implicated in a genocide in India neighboring states? Again is your concern actually about people or is it just “China scary”.
    - actuator 4y ago
      Did you not read what I wrote? > Unlike China, US is not an adversary of India and US didn't kill Indian soldiers just two years back. So it makes sense they would go after Tiktok.
- 29083011397778 4y ago
  Meta's entrentched. While I agree with sibling poster about the different levels of information gathered, there's also a difference between what can be gotten away with politically. Banning a network very few of your citizens are on is much easier than banning one of the primary networks that nearly everyone uses and relies on.
- karaterobot 4y ago
  By theoretical, do you mean TikTok doesn't collect data that is made available to the Chinese government? In my mind, that's the practical use of an espionage tool. If not that, then what else do you mean? There was an allegation earlier this month, with what appears to be strong evidence to support it, that engineers in China have access to data from U.S. users: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/emilybakerwhite/tiktok-tapes-us-user-data-china-bytedance-access https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/emilybakerwhite/tiktok-... Even if you ignore how suspicious that is, once the data is in China you have to assume it's made available to the government, since that's the official policy as far as I am aware.
cronix 4y ago
Trump tried to ban it in 2020 out of "national security concerns" similar to Huawei. The ACLU and media painted it as anti free speech and xenophobia and never gave the claims any serious scrutiny. > On July 7, 2020, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced that the government was considering banning TikTok.[26] In response, experts[weasel words] suggested that Trump's proposed TikTok ban may threaten free speech and "set a very problematic precedent" for banning apps in the United States.[27] Patrick Jackson, chief technology officer of privacy company Disconnect, said the app sends an abnormal amount of data—mostly information about the phone—to its server, but there is limited evidence that TikTok is sharing these data with the Chinese government. He also noted that the amount of collected data was similar to that collected by American-originated social media platforms and was less than that collected by Facebook.[28] > After Trump proposed to ban TikTok in the U.S on July 31, 2020, security researchers expressed their concern about limitations of freedom. In one article, PCMag quoted Jennifer Granick of the American Civil Liberties Union Surveillance and Cybersecurity Counsel who said that "banning an app that millions of Americans use to communicate with each other is a danger to free expression and is technologically impractical."[35] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump%E2%80%93TikTok_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump%E2%80%93TikTok_co...
- generj 4y ago
  Sort of a fruit of a poisoned well - if prior trade action hadn’t been transparently lying about a national security pretext warning about TikTok would have been received better.
  - jaywalk 4y ago
    Oh please. The people who complained didn't care about that. They didn't like Trump, and would complain about anything he did regardless of the merit. They are nakedly partisan.
    - generj 4y ago
      The ACLU dislikes any restriction based on national security. I imagine they’d make the same arguments regardless of which party removed TikTok. But the broader public, reporters, and experts absolutely base their decisions on how trustworthy they find rationales. National security arguments often boil down to “we are correct but can’t tell you why, trust us.” Mixing trade wars into that certainly helps skepticism.
sakopov 4y ago
> Although video-sharing app TikTok was developed by Chinese company Bytedance, it is not available in China. Instead users can download a twin app, Douyin, which was also developed by Bytedance. Douyin features restrictions such as blocks on international content and limits on children’s usage. The Chinese state owns a stake in the Bytedance subsidiary that controls its domestic Chinese social media and information platforms. [1] So China deploys and app to the US market that China itself doesn't use. The app aggressively collects location and biometric information about the users while promoting copious amounts of destabilizing and divisive political content among other things. I don't want to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but it's hard not to see this as a trojan horse and it's shocking that the powers that be in the US are not assessing this situation more seriously. The OP is right in that this seems like one of many troubling signs that the US is in a decline of sorts. [1] https://time.com/6139988/countries-where-twitter-facebook-tiktok-banned/ https://time.com/6139988/countries-where-twitter-facebook-ti...
- dirtyid 4y ago
  Douyin collects a fuck load data too, maybe less than TikTok one day once new PRC privacy rules come into effect. But that's somethign US doemstic politics have to sort out for their territory. >promoting copious amounts of destabilizing and divisive political Ant that's more fault of US political culture than TikTok being Chinese/PRC. IMO TikTok would like nothing better to ban politics from platform, but that's how you get the muh-free-speech types reeeing about PRC censorship. Large reason WHY TikTok/Douyin is successful is from lessons learned maturing in PRC/Chinese censorship enviroment - platforms are very good at censoring/filtering destablizing political content to focus on light hearted content that produce casual engagement and political serenity. Chinese social platforms are calibrated for stability, but when in rome... see all the western media campaigns trying to smear tiktok for censorship when it first gained popularity, of course now that TikTok as calibrated to political reality of US market, the "destablizing" narrative gets pushed.

BeFlatXIII 4y ago

As far as the populace is concerned, we'd rather be spied on by Chairman Xi than by our own government. Which one can more directly affect our lives? That said, it's surprising the governing class allowed TikTok in.

frozencell 4y ago

By not banning it they can legitimate a war with CCP, a parallel to the US letting Russia threat and attack the west first.

nemothekid 4y ago

The fact that India would consider TikTok a threat but not Meta leads me to believe that it wasn't done on a purely espionage basis. The threat of TikTok, today, it still theoretical, while Facebook has done measurable harm to India's neighbors.

sieabahlpark 4y ago
actuator 4y ago
Tiktok is a far worse threat to India than Meta though. Unlike China, US is not an adversary of India and US didn't kill Indian soldiers just two years back. So it makes sense they would go after Tiktok. The harm is just not espionage, it is also manipulation of sentiment by propoganda. Also, I am not really sure with all the equivalence to Meta in this thread. Sure, Meta has things to be criticized about but if one thinks West has threat from Meta on the same level as Tiktok, that seems delusional.
- Jackpillar 4y ago
  [dead]
- sdk16420 4y ago
  WhatsApp has led to dozens of brutal deaths in India https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_WhatsApp_lynchings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_WhatsApp_lynchings
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - causi 4y ago
    That's an absurd claim. The rumors about thieves and child abductors could have just as easily been spread over Telegram or AOL Instant Messenger or SnapChat. The chosen platform is completely immaterial.
- nemothekid 4y ago
  Is India the West now? This alone tells me that you aren’t coming this from a data pov and simply playing team sports. My problem with this “analysis” is it stems from xenophobia rather than the actual problem with these social networks. The idea that we must “act now” with TikTok when Meta has been a worse actor is just anti-Chinese; we are pretending that Meta wont just bend over to the CCP as well if given the chance - we already have several of our companies self-censoring on issues that might anger the CCP. Banning TikTok won’t fix the underlying problem and if your concern is China collecting data on US citizens you should understand there are very little controls in place, today, to prevent that from happening with any foreign actor. I don’t think China would have to pull teeth to exfiltrate data from any of the other social networks. >Also, I am not really sure with all the equivalence to Meta in this thread. Which company is implicated in a genocide in India neighboring states? Again is your concern actually about people or is it just “China scary”.
  - actuator 4y ago
    Did you not read what I wrote? > Unlike China, US is not an adversary of India and US didn't kill Indian soldiers just two years back. So it makes sense they would go after Tiktok.
29083011397778 4y ago
Meta's entrentched. While I agree with sibling poster about the different levels of information gathered, there's also a difference between what can be gotten away with politically. Banning a network very few of your citizens are on is much easier than banning one of the primary networks that nearly everyone uses and relies on.
karaterobot 4y ago
By theoretical, do you mean TikTok doesn't collect data that is made available to the Chinese government? In my mind, that's the practical use of an espionage tool. If not that, then what else do you mean? There was an allegation earlier this month, with what appears to be strong evidence to support it, that engineers in China have access to data from U.S. users: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/emilybakerwhite/tiktok-tapes-us-user-data-china-bytedance-access https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/emilybakerwhite/tiktok-... Even if you ignore how suspicious that is, once the data is in China you have to assume it's made available to the government, since that's the official policy as far as I am aware.

cronix 4y ago

Trump tried to ban it in 2020 out of "national security concerns" similar to Huawei. The ACLU and media painted it as anti free speech and xenophobia and never gave the claims any serious scrutiny. > On July 7, 2020, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced that the government was considering banning TikTok.[26] In response, experts[weasel words] suggested that Trump's proposed TikTok ban may threaten free speech and "set a very problematic precedent" for banning apps in the United States.[27] Patrick Jackson, chief technology officer of privacy company Disconnect, said the app sends an abnormal amount of data—mostly information about the phone—to its server, but there is limited evidence that TikTok is sharing these data with the Chinese government. He also noted that the amount of collected data was similar to that collected by American-originated social media platforms and was less than that collected by Facebook.[28] > After Trump proposed to ban TikTok in the U.S on July 31, 2020, security researchers expressed their concern about limitations of freedom. In one article, PCMag quoted Jennifer Granick of the American Civil Liberties Union Surveillance and Cybersecurity Counsel who said that "banning an app that millions of Americans use to communicate with each other is a danger to free expression and is technologically impractical."[35] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump%E2%80%93TikTok_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump%E2%80%93TikTok_co...

generj 4y ago
Sort of a fruit of a poisoned well - if prior trade action hadn’t been transparently lying about a national security pretext warning about TikTok would have been received better.
- jaywalk 4y ago
  Oh please. The people who complained didn't care about that. They didn't like Trump, and would complain about anything he did regardless of the merit. They are nakedly partisan.
  - generj 4y ago
    The ACLU dislikes any restriction based on national security. I imagine they’d make the same arguments regardless of which party removed TikTok. But the broader public, reporters, and experts absolutely base their decisions on how trustworthy they find rationales. National security arguments often boil down to “we are correct but can’t tell you why, trust us.” Mixing trade wars into that certainly helps skepticism.

sakopov 4y ago

> Although video-sharing app TikTok was developed by Chinese company Bytedance, it is not available in China. Instead users can download a twin app, Douyin, which was also developed by Bytedance. Douyin features restrictions such as blocks on international content and limits on children’s usage. The Chinese state owns a stake in the Bytedance subsidiary that controls its domestic Chinese social media and information platforms. [1] So China deploys and app to the US market that China itself doesn't use. The app aggressively collects location and biometric information about the users while promoting copious amounts of destabilizing and divisive political content among other things. I don't want to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but it's hard not to see this as a trojan horse and it's shocking that the powers that be in the US are not assessing this situation more seriously. The OP is right in that this seems like one of many troubling signs that the US is in a decline of sorts. [1] https://time.com/6139988/countries-where-twitter-facebook-tiktok-banned/ https://time.com/6139988/countries-where-twitter-facebook-ti...

dirtyid 4y ago
Douyin collects a fuck load data too, maybe less than TikTok one day once new PRC privacy rules come into effect. But that's somethign US doemstic politics have to sort out for their territory. >promoting copious amounts of destabilizing and divisive political Ant that's more fault of US political culture than TikTok being Chinese/PRC. IMO TikTok would like nothing better to ban politics from platform, but that's how you get the muh-free-speech types reeeing about PRC censorship. Large reason WHY TikTok/Douyin is successful is from lessons learned maturing in PRC/Chinese censorship enviroment - platforms are very good at censoring/filtering destablizing political content to focus on light hearted content that produce casual engagement and political serenity. Chinese social platforms are calibrated for stability, but when in rome... see all the western media campaigns trying to smear tiktok for censorship when it first gained popularity, of course now that TikTok as calibrated to political reality of US market, the "destablizing" narrative gets pushed.