29 ms·

FCC commissioner wants TikTok removed from app stores over spying concerns

536 points by breitling 4y ago

joanfihu 4y ago
This is a silly political statement
Melatonic 4y ago
Is this the FCC itself as an org or just the guy they mention in the article who works for the FCC? It is not entirely clear
- hoppyhoppy2 4y ago
  It's a letter from one particular FCC commissioner (there are multiple) on official FCC letterhead with his job title printed on it. You can view it at https://mobile.twitter.com/BrendanCarrFCC/status/1541823585957707776 https://mobile.twitter.com/BrendanCarrFCC/status/15418235859... or https://nitter.net/BrendanCarrFCC/status/1541823585957707776 https://nitter.net/BrendanCarrFCC/status/1541823585957707776 .
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- WarOnPrivacy 4y ago
  Just one guy. One very political, anti-consumer guy. ref: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Brendan+Carr+net+neutrality https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Brendan+Carr+net+neutrality
johnwheeler 4y ago
I'm not sure why we don't do this; not just the privacy is an issue but the fact that China bans so much US internet like Facebook.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- xboxnolifes 4y ago
  My understanding is that Chinese bans on US technology have reasons clearly codified in law and would not be banned if they followed the regulations. That being said, what US laws does TikTok not follow?
  - Shared404 4y ago
    This is a good point. I would much rather we codify data protections, and then ban TikTok (and domestic) apps that do not comply.
    - xbar 4y ago
      I think you're right. I'd love to see a BRICS-oriented data protection law for the US, for example.
    - angio 4y ago
      That's what the EU is doing and it's a great approach.
  - tablespoon 4y ago
    > My understanding is that Chinese bans on US technology have reasons clearly codified in law and would not be banned if they followed the regulations. My understanding is that Chinese law is usually pretty vague and unclear, especially in areas like this, and in any case doesn't actually bind the government.
    - connicpu 4y ago
      Yeah, my understanding is a lot of Chinese laws are vague on purpose so that they can be interpreted to benefit companies the state likes, while punishing those the state does not like
      - workingon 4y ago
        Sounds like America. Didn’t we just ban Juuls while countless other electronic fruity vapes are on the market?
- izacus 4y ago
  Is there a reason why you want to model yourself after China?
- ziddoap 4y ago
  >but the fact that China bans so much US internet like Facebook This seems like a poor reason to ban an application/website/whatever. Reminds me of elementary school drama. Find a legitimate and/or legal reason (e.g. the mass harvesting of biometric data, unbeknownst to the users, being fed into some opaque government-ran database) or it should not be banned.
  - tablespoon 4y ago
    > This seems like a poor reason to ban an application/website/whatever. Reminds me of elementary school drama. Find a legitimate and/or legal reason (e.g. the mass harvesting of biometric data, unbeknownst to the users, being fed into some opaque government-ran database) or it should not be banned. Um, no. Reciprocity is a pretty key concept in international relations, and a legitimate reason to take retaliatory measures. Also "we would rather not grant our adversary this advantage" is another legitimate reason to take action.
    - ziddoap 4y ago
      >Um, no. Um, yes? >Reciprocity is a pretty key concept in international relations This makes much more sense in the context of physical goods and materials and international trade. It makes much less sense (I argue near-zero sense) in the context of some random non-lawbreaking, legitimate application or website. Edit to clarify: Refusing to export X to country Y hurts country Y, assuming they want X. Banning legitimate application X developed in country Y does not hurt country Y (unless the majoity/all revenue is from your country), it just hurts your own citizens who may rely on application X. "Cut off your nose to spite your face"
      - tablespoon 4y ago
        > This makes much more sense in the context of physical goods and materials and international trade. It makes much less sense (I argue near-zero sense) in the context of some random non-lawbreaking, legitimate application or website. I'm sorry, I'm not seeing the difference. Even if the context was only business/trade (which it isn't), the American company is not able to operate in or make money from the Chinese market, while the Chinese company is currently has free reign to make money in the American one. The obvious thing to do is to reciprocally restrict the Chinese company to incentivize the removal of restrictions from the American company.
- Barrin92 4y ago
  Because as Milton Friedman pointed out, don't do to yourself what you do to an enemy in war. China banning American services is to the detriment of Chinese users and competition in China, there's no reason to emulate censorship. If data harvesting was a genuine concern you might as well ban Facebook and every other social media app while you're at it. It's just hysteria and nationalism.
  - 30944836 4y ago
    >China banning American services is to the detriment of Chinese users and competition in China, there's no reason to emulate censorship. This is not true. China financializes everything, and pumps capital into projects at rates unseen and unmatched in the history of the world. There is plenty of competition, as evidenced by the fact that China has apps that are fare more efficient and feature rich than anything in the US. See: WeChat.
    - bigcat12345678 4y ago
      > China financializes everything, and pumps capital into projects at rates unseen and unmatched in the history of the world. Evidence please? I have long been suspicious of China's financial strategy, and had not found satisfactory sources on this topic.
      - 30944836 4y ago
        https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03085147.2020.1718913 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03085147.2020.1...
        bigcat12345678 4y ago
        Nah, the title itself is too propagandist. What the hell is "authoritarian capitalism"?! Corporations are all authoritarian, to facilitate individual control of large resources owned by the corporation. Capitalism is just a nice term to coat the brutal underlying profit seeking gangster. Corolally, there is no such idea of liberal capitalism.
- viktorcode 4y ago
  You either operating on an open market, or in the government-controlled market.
- dirtyid 4y ago
  Because China doesn't ban US internet platforms, US internet platforms choose not to comply to PRC laws, which domestic PRC companies has to abide. Facebook/Twitter left because they couldn't/wouldn't censor calls of revenge killings during 2009 minority riots in PRC. It wasn't until NZ shooting and FB role in Rohigya genocide years later that political culture changed globally/domestically in US enough for FB to up the moderation game, around the time they wanted to re-enter PRC market. Except their employees protested and killed the initiative. Flip side is Bytedance/TikTok bending backwards to follow US laws, because Douyin is used to dealing with PRC regulatory bullshit, meanwhile their employees just want to make money instead of undermine company expansion plans with geopolitical culture wars. Like it's not hard, follow the law in the country you operate in and be competitive. TBH that really leaves some Google services, a lot of western platforms simply can't hack it against PRC competitors for domestic PRC market.
  - john_yaya 4y ago
    Bytedance/TikTok are ignoring US law, as we saw in the news last week.
    - dirtyid 4y ago
      >ignoring US law, They didn't. The entire Project Texas / Oracle / CFIUS agreement is in process of implementation. The drama is over China-based staff accessing data while working on Project Texas (to silo US data/traffic), even though Chinese nationals were not on the United States Technical Services team. The ultimate concern is China-based staff will have access to protected US data/traffic after and the effectiveness of implementation. No laws were broken, but doubt whether Bytedance efforts would effectively prevent access. No laws were broken.
  - tatrajim 4y ago
    And when US companies attempt to obey Chinese law and are banned anyway? Nice to know that Apple was given "equal legal consideration" in China in 2016 when its iBooks store and iTunes movie store were suddenly ordered shut after six months of operation. Oh, wait. . . they weren't given any legal recourse at all and the Obama administration did nothing about it while Silicon Valley grandees kept conspicuously silent. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/22/technology/apple-no-longer-immune-to-chinas-scrutiny-of-us-tech-firms.html https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/22/technology/apple-no-longe...
jareklupinski 4y ago
What data? Which videos I watched for how long :P
- LegitShady 4y ago
  biometrics including face and voice prints, your phone contacts, your location etc
  - jareklupinski 4y ago
    good thing I keep a piece of tape over my camera :)
  - dividedbyzero 4y ago
    Is location actually considered biometric? I'd have thought that's PII, but not biometric.
    - LegitShady 4y ago
      there are commas separating items - the first item is biometrics. Your phone contacts aren't biometrics either.
- chimeracoder 4y ago
  TikTok's privacy policies include the ability to store biometric information. They have been caught bypassing privacy controls on iOS and Android before to collect data that they're not supposed to have access to, and they even settled a lawsuit a couple of years ago for illegally storing data of minors.
  - jareklupinski 4y ago
    what biometric information? I don't remember tiktok asking me for my fingerprint before I could start watching videos... does it do that now?
    - 4y ago
deleted 4y ago
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andrewstuart 4y ago
Google and Apple are both deeply connected to China, so I'm guessing the answer will be, in an indirect way: "No thanks, we won't be doing that"
- mupuff1234 4y ago
  How is Google deeply connected to China? I know they have an office there, but aren't most of its service blocked there?
  - can16358p 4y ago
    Hardware of Google's own Pixel and many many Android phones.
    - mupuff1234 4y ago
      Other android phones are also other companies, wouldn't exactly call that deep connection, but a connection nonetheless. Re pixel, that's a pretty small business relatively speaking. If anything Google probably has more to gain as TikTok is eating an increasing part of the ads & entertainment pie, a business which is much more crucial to Google as of now.
- tablespoon 4y ago
  > Google and Apple are both deeply connected to China, so I'm guessing the answer will be, in an indirect way: Apple is utterly dependent on China, but what about Google? It famously pulled out of that market years ago.
  - sneak 4y ago
    The phones that run the Google OS are approximately 100% manufactured in China, just like the phones that run the Apple OS.
    - lostmsu 4y ago
aranelsurion 4y ago
asks them to [consider] removing TikTok, according to the article itself.
- bdcravens 4y ago
  I believe that was implied by the title, otherwise it would have said "tells", "orders", or "instructs"
reset-password 4y ago
> "At its core, TikTok functions as a sophisticated surveillance tool that harvests extensive amounts of personal and sensitive data." Smells like jealousy to me.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- adventured 4y ago
  Not likely. It's rational superpower competition behavior in action. The US Government isn't lacking in harvesting extensive amounts of personal and sensitive data.
gernb 4y ago
Curious what this app does that other apps don't. In other words, applying the same criteria to other apps what other apps should be removed from the store because they do the same things? You post video in it so the app gets camera and mic access, assuming you give it permission. Can you use it without giving permission? IIRC Apple requires apps to work without permissions? I tried installing it and it requires an account so uninstalled. Not really into TikTok but was able to view in a browser without an account.
- izacus 4y ago
  I think the only thing this app really does is upload all the data to Chinese owned company instead of an US owned one. And that can be enough to trigger national interest concerns from US.
  - ashwagary 4y ago
    The US supports free market capitalism for everyone+. + ~7.9 billion people may be excluded.
    - cm2012 4y ago
      China banned almost all US social networks, this is fair play
      - est 4y ago
        Well, at least China didn't ban MySpace
      - maccolgan 4y ago
        Balkanizing the internet sounds great, honestly.
- zwkrt 4y ago
  The way I see it is that TikTok is basically a psyops app. We can argue all day whether it is controlled by the Chinese government, by advertisers, by both, whether it is intentional, what its purpose is, etc. But anything that is free and funded by ads is at the end of the day trying to sway the mind and behavior of its users, that is the name of the game. So to answer your question, it doesn't /do/ anything that other apps don't. But what it does it does rather effectively, and it isn't controlled by a company that is ultimately beholden to the US government. So from the gov's perspective, TikTok somewhere between a nuisance and a threat to national security.
malcolmgreaves 4y ago
Carr is against net-neutrality. [1] He's a Trump appointee. It's clear that this is not a principles-based ask to remove a data-hungry application. Carr isn't saying that applications shouldn't harvest this data. He's saying a Chinese company shouldn't be playing the same game that American companies do. Thus, the logical conclusion to "why is Carr making this statement?" isn't necessarily "it's because TikTok does something abnormally bad," but rather political: it's anti-China propaganda. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brendan_Carr_(lawyer) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brendan_Carr_(lawyer)
- viktorcode 4y ago
  I disagree with the premise. Supposedly, Carr continues to run Trump's agenda, but then it would banning TikTok for the reason that the social network was used to organise anti-Trump activities during the last elections.
  - malcolmgreaves 4y ago
    > Supposedly, Carr continues to run Trump's agenda, Trump's most clever political tactic is to be a hypocrite and exceptionally effective liar: his agenda is always a superposition of contradictory claims. Even the GOP couldn't keep up and decided to forgo any semblance of a political platform for 2020 [1]. Despite the lies, there's a few consistent policy themes that emerged from his presidency. Notably, is a broad, across-the-board, blanket opposition to everything China. This includes decidedly not Chinese things, such as racism and condoning violence against Asian Americans [2] It also extends to economic opposition at all costs. *Here* is the central truth behind Carr's statement. It's a continuation of the Republican party's current strong anti-Chinese policy. [1] https://prod-cdn-static.gop.com/docs/Resolution_Platform_2020.pdf https://prod-cdn-static.gop.com/docs/Resolution_Platform_202... [2] https://www.businessinsider.com/un-report-trump-seemingly-legitimizing-hate-crimes-against-asian-americans-2020-10 https://www.businessinsider.com/un-report-trump-seemingly-le...
- car_analogy 4y ago
  > He's saying a Chinese company shouldn't be playing the same game that American companies do. In America, yes (just like Facebook is banned in China). Will you next complain that Carr is okay with American troops marching in Washington, but doesn't like it if Chinese troops do the same? While Facebook and surveillance in general are anything but a boon for common Americans, it's understandable that those pulling the strings would get worried when a foreign country moves in on their turf.
TMWNN 4y ago
- mhh__ 4y ago
  Trump did apparently want to withdraw the US from NATO entirely so what does right mean? That German buying of Russian gas is a problem, of course, but what is Stoltenberg supposed to do about that. Also German gas imports are something like 30% Russian which in turn makes up I think 13% of power generation, since the information trump states is vague.
pessimizer 4y ago
Take formal action or don't, but public intimidation is a bizarre action for a government to take. We can't get them to regulate when there are rules, but when there aren't, and US diplomacy has decided to punish a country for some episode of disobedience, a media blitz of press releases.
viktorcode 4y ago
As I get it Carr haven't presented any hard evidence, instead linking to the open publications with various levels of research. Privacy breaking apps must be thrown out. However, this mustn't be decided on the basis of hearsay.
- izacus 4y ago
  It'd be great if this could be codified in a proper regulation (that also has to be obeyed by US companies, not just Chinese ones). But that's hard - it's easier to demand that private corpos play the enforcer (and corpos themselves were dumb to even get themselves into a situation of playing the moral and political arbiter).
2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
I'm conflicted. TikTok collects data for an adversary at scale. Many complain that the US does the same but that doesn't change the fact that I live in the US. The Chinese government is an adversary of the West whether we like it or not. With that said- It's pretty telling that the FCC only needs to go to Apple and Google. It would be really nice to have some antitrust regulation so that the FCC doesn't have this power.
- Abishek_Muthian 4y ago
  > The Chinese government is an adversary of the West whether we like it or not. It's not like they became an adversary overnight, China's economic success was predominantly sponsored by the West; Their abysmal human rights regulations were favorable for Nike to Apple for employing child labor and they in-turn used that economic growth to increase their defense budget 6-fold in just two decades. Of course autocracies and democracies would be adversaries; But the sabre-rattling without holding the West's capitalist interest in China accountable seems disingenuous(In general, not your comment).
- ALittleLight 4y ago
  There's likewise a conflict for Google, which runs a TikTok competitor/clone in the form of YouTube Shorts. "Well, if we have to ban our competition... I guess..."
- tomatotomato37 4y ago
  While I agree Apple & Google have a near perfect duopoly on the mobile space, the addition of more companies wouldn't give the FCC any less power. The "Federal" part of FCC still gives them jurisdiction over electronic communication happening in the US federation; whether they have to enforce it through 2 entities or 2000 doesn't really make a difference
  - 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
    How would you enforce it though? It's like in the 90s when PGP was export controlled. It was a total unenforceable joke.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
can16358p 4y ago
I think the appropriate action is to force them to fix their privacy policies if there's something incorrect there, and to be clear about what data is collected. After that anyone should be free to know what data is collected and decide to use or delete the app. I mean, if someone wants to use the service, just let them use, it's their personal choice.
- xbar 4y ago
  It is a mistake for people in the EU and US to think of Chinese-based data collection companies as the same as EU- and US-based companies. TikTok in the US is not the same as Google in France, and even they were recently fined for signifcant privacy concerns. It is important to protect citizens. People often don't have enough information about sharing their data to make the best privacy decisions without legislation to protect them.
  - can16358p 4y ago
    Well, education is the key then. Instead of banning people from using it, they should educate the public about potential followups of sharing on/using TikTok. Banning use is never an answer. If I want to share my data, it should be my choice, not the government's.
cwkoss 4y ago
What data is tiktok collecting that google isnt? Is there a fairly applied rule here, or is sinophobia driving this?
- chimeracoder 4y ago
  > What data is tiktok collecting that google isnt? Is there a fairly applied rule here, or is sinophobia driving this? While I agree that sinophobia plays into discourse around TikTok, TikTok has an established pattern of collecting data against the user's wishes (even bypassing system permissions), and of collecting and storing data about minors in direct violation of the law[0]. They are not an unknown entity; they are an established bad actor when it comes to Dara collection and storage. [0] https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-56815480 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-56815480
  - cwkoss 4y ago
    The only concrete claim in that article that I see is insufficient age verification. How does youtube age verify users who are under 13 and trying to create an account? Does google search/ad tracking have a mechanism to avoid tracking < 13yos? I suspect they just say "its against terms" but allow it to happen, because to verify children they'd need to collect information on them...
- xdennis 4y ago
  > Is there a fairly applied rule here, or is sinophobia driving this? Don't hide behind sinophobia to defend China's communism. This has nothing to do with ethnicity. China is using its laws to effectively ban competition from foreign companies which don't want to cooperate with its totalitarian form of government. The US should do the same and not allow competition from totalitarian countries.
  - cwkoss 4y ago
    nah, i'm a freedom of information maximalist. restricting the free flow of information between citizens of countries whose corrupt leaders are engaged in a dick measuring contest only benefits the corrupt leaders. advocating that we need to impose blinders on ourselves as well to punish them is just short sighted self-punishment
AdamH12113 4y ago
Is this actually an official request from the FCC? The letter[1] makes it sound like personal grandstanding on the part of the Trump-appointed commissioner rather than an official action by a regulatory agency. If it's the former, the headline is misleading. [1] https://twitter.com/BrendanCarrFCC/status/1541823585957707776 https://twitter.com/BrendanCarrFCC/status/154182358595770777...
- che_shirecat 4y ago
  Brendan Carr is also notably anti Net Neutrality. Reading the screeds of the supposed cypherpunks of hacker news begging the federal government to BAN access to an app by private individuals is hilarious.
  - AlexandrB 4y ago
    Seriously. And I can't figure out how the CCP having information about me is worse than the US government having that same information when I'm likely to interact with the latter but not the former. I'd love for the FCC/FTC to enforce some kind of privacy standards on all apps, but that's not what's happening here.
jhallenworld 4y ago
As a USA resident, which is more likely to adversely affect you: CCP collecting data on you, or US government collecting data on you?
- loudmax 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - cute_boi 4y ago
    You failed on first line. They aren't democratically elected if there are only two choice: dems & republication. Both don't care about people, and constantly blames each other to divert people interest.
  - dylan604 4y ago
    >The US government, imperfect as it is, is democratically elected by US citizens. Because of so much social media influencing, this is very much up for debate at this time from those that have been heavily influenced. That's just one example of how all of the social influence is just not good for society at large.
  - fabianhjr 4y ago
    > The US government, imperfect as it is, is democratically elected by US citizens. The US president is elected by electors from the electoral college; the number of electors per state was influenced by the pro-slavery states. (Research the three-fifths-clause: https://www.wikiwand.com/en/United_States_Electoral_College#/Three-fifths_clause_and_the_role_of_slavery https://www.wikiwand.com/en/United_States_Electoral_College#... ) Even soviet democracy is way more democratic than the US democracy: https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Soviet_democracy https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Soviet_democracy
  - miguelazo 4y ago
    Survey says most Americans don't think they live in a democracy, while vast majority of Chinese think they do. It's easy to see why when you think about how little the average Americans' interests are represented by their government. Not to mention the totally gerrymandered districts, voter suppression and absurd legalized corruption that says money=speech. https://www.newsweek.com/most-china-call-their-nation-democracy-most-us-say-america-isnt-1711176 https://www.newsweek.com/most-china-call-their-nation-democr...
winternett 4y ago
I've used TikTok for the past year, it's really not as smart or brilliant as all the hypemasters would have you think. The data it gathers (outside of location, facial recognition, and speech capture) has been really off target for being matched to content. The algorithms across most of these sites are really not useful in building a valid service from what I can gather... Most of the people that use social apps wear out quickly once they realize the level of free work they are doing, and how it goes unrewarded. I personally can do without it, because youtube and other things still exist to host the same exact type of video content, but the entire social app landscape is frought with platforms that are too big to really reward creators with any real growth, and it's overrun with deceptive advertising. I know I sound like I'm jaded, but I've learned some valuable skills in film and editing, so I'm really not. Apps that will win from this point forward will realize that they need to be more niche based, while also integrating into a larger eco system that allows for content to be shared across the Internet, the way the Internet was meant to work... The common tactics of limiting content reach and squeezing creators for ad money are short lived, most of these apps have a huge amount of inactive and outright abandoned user accounts... TikTok is in essence just another video "doom scroller" app, that allows pretty much useless likes follows and shares, it's really put a bunch of suggestive psychology on top of that, but in essence it's the same thing other platforms have been doing just with vertical video and a different UI. It's not replaceable, especially when it takes it's user base for granted and works hard to gather data on users and to manipulate the majority into doing lots of work for them for free (with a really weak creator fund). We can live without it. If there are a hand full of people on the platform that have millions of followers on the same platforms where most of the user base has only hundreds of followers, it's pretty telling that it's a free work exploitation scheme, and it's really the first indication that it's really not going to survive the long haul. As far as the data gathering debacle goes, there is also nothing different happening with many other major social app platforms we all use, instead though, our data is being collected and used against us by private companies across the world instead of by foreign governments. Removing one app won't solve the problem of personal privacy violation. We each need to be a lot more careful about the level of information we share online, and we need to stop being so eager to work online for these greedy and abusive operations for free or it's our own damn fault.
- 4y ago
deleted 4y ago
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fspeech 4y ago
The headline is inaccurate. This is not an official action of the FCC. NYT phrased it more honestly: "An F.C.C. commissioner pushed Apple and Google to remove TikTok from their app stores." https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/29/technology/apple-google-tiktok.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/29/technology/apple-google-t...
- pdabbadabba 4y ago
  Agreed. The CBC story actually gets it right too: "A commissioner with the U.S. communications regulator is asking Apple and Google to consider banning TikTok from their app stores over data security concerns related to the Chinese-owned company." But the headline misleadingly refers to Commissioner Carr as "U.S. communications regulator." One would normally think that this referred to the FCC (THE U.S. communications regulator), not just one of its commissioners.
- dang 4y ago
  Ok, we've reworded it now. Thanks! (Submitted title was "FCC asks Google, Apple to remove TikTok".)
lettergram 4y ago
The spying worries me less than the influence to be honest. China doesn’t allow the same things on tiktok that tiktok promotes in other countries. There’s a reason for that.
- distrill 4y ago
  yeah, i use tiktok a lot and i think about this all the time. it's so odd that this isn't the first thing people are discussing. imagine if the russian government sponsored a social media application, all we would be talking about was political meddling. it's almost exactly the same thing here.
  - nivenkos 4y ago
    Imagine if the US did...
- robonerd 4y ago
  Exactly this. China doesn't allow TikTok as it exists in America to also exist in China, because they believe American TikTok is harmful to America and would be harmful to China as well.
  - baby 4y ago
    ^ this, do we want to be like China?
    - pphysch 4y ago
      (looks at QoL of bottom 25%) Yes
      - lettergram 4y ago
        Have you seen the bottom 70% of China? Many just disappear. The QoL of the bottom 25% of the US is well above the majority of the world. They also have the opportunity to rise, unlike most places.
atwood22 4y ago
There are two issues: 1) Data collection and algorithmic manipulation. This has been discussed to death, but why you'd let an adversary control the information flow to a huge portion of the population is beyond me. This is obviously a national security issue. 2) Fairness in the marketplace. No, I'm not talking about the U.S. marketplace. U.S. tech companies have had their IP stolen and unfair regulations placed on them in China. Why should the U.S. let Chinese tech companies compete in the U.S. marketplace when China doesn't let U.S tech companies compete in their marketplace? I'm not going to feel pity for TikTok.
- unclebucknasty 4y ago
  >let an adversary control the information flow to a huge portion of the population It is mind-numbing that we made it this far without very serious consideration of this point. I've frankly just never understood it, especially given what we know about the power of algorithms to define reality at scale.
  - debacle 4y ago
    I do believe it is because of e.g. Twitters TPP program and other programs that allow the US govt to exert control over "our" social networks.
    - Dan_Sylveste 4y ago
      >Twitters TPP program That returns absolutely nothing when searched for yet seems intriguing. Please elaborate.
  - user_named 4y ago
    Conversely the EU needs to ban the FAANG companies
    - unclebucknasty 4y ago
      I'm not naive with regard to even friendly nations jockeying for control of the information space. But there is something uniquely irresponsible about letting foreign adversaries run algorithms on your populace.
numair 4y ago
The headline is misleading. They’ve been asked by a Trump-appointed commissioner to “consider removing” TikTok. I think TikTok is a giant human rights violation for being utterly stupid, but that doesn’t mean the arguments presented here make much sense. This comment is going to be fed as training data to some stupid AI to spit out comments that sound like I wrote them, which I find much more troubling from an intelligence community perspective. I never agreed to this when I joined Hacker News. TikTok users, on the other hand…
- WarOnPrivacy 4y ago
  Upvote for you. Appreciate you ferreting out the actual story.
4oh9do 4y ago
What are the actual privacy/security issues with TikTok, concretely? Citizen Lab published a report last year - https://citizenlab.ca/2021/03/tiktok-vs-douyin-security-privacy-analysis/ https://citizenlab.ca/2021/03/tiktok-vs-douyin-security-priv... - which found that the app does not engage in any overtly malicious behavior: > TikTok and Douyin do not appear to exhibit overtly malicious behavior similar to those exhibited by malware. We did not observe either app collecting contact lists, recording and sending photos, audio, videos or geolocation coordinates without user permission. And if there's any organization I trust about this sort of thing, it's Citizen lab, owing to their groundbreaking work around Pegasus and other APTs.
- dylan604 4y ago
  Not all malware is the same. If there was a malware bit of code that did nothing that brought attention to itself as it silently sat there retransmitting every piece of data you entered, every interaction with every website, every document created, etc, the owner of that malware would have access to so much information that they could so so many things with that data that may or may not directly affect the user of that device. That would not make that malware any less vile just because it didn't encrypt user data or something obviously hostile to the user like that attracting attention to itself. That type of malware is almost there with social media SDKs used in websites, apps, etc. There are ways that I can't even imagine that other people can imagine how to use that data for nefarious means.
  - hsbauauvhabzb 4y ago
    Did you even read the parents link before spewing that?
- _-david-_ 4y ago
  Even if they are not doing anything bad now, they are controlled by the CCP and could push propaganda or other material to demoralize the West.
  - AlexandrB 4y ago
IYasha 4y ago
Wooow! A rare case of FCC actually doing something to benefit people.
- est 4y ago
  ... by copying chinese style government-led appstore censorship.
whyenot 4y ago
For the sake of clarity, shouldn't the title really be "One FCC commissioner requests Google, Apple remove TikTok As written, the title makes in look like the whole commission is asking for this, and "ask" isn't always a request, sometimes it can be a command (for example a police officer asking for your license and registration when they pull you over).
- dylan604 4y ago
  Personally, I've never had an officer ask for license and registration. It is always phrased as a demand. It's never been "may I see your license and registration?". It's always "license and registration". No please added either.
- WarOnPrivacy 4y ago
  > For the sake of clarity, shouldn't the title really be "One FCC commissioner requests Google, Apple remove TikTok I think you're the only poster who actually caught this. Brendan Carr comes out of a firm that owns a major DC lobbying hydra (Signal Group). His FCC history is all about parroting the (often anti-consumer) talking points of last administration. He's indistinguishable from Ajit Pai. Carr is endlessly supportive of ISP monopolies. He rails against net-neutrality and Section 230. He's everything the FCC ought to protect us from. As far as TikTok+China goes, I tend to be way more concerned about govs that can imprison me. Past that, is TikTok a problem? We don't actually know because we never, ever, ever get meaningful specifics about what's being collected or what how that manifests as an actual risk to us.
andrewstuart 4y ago
In thinking about it, it's actually an opportunity for Google to battle with Apple. Apple has been applying huge pressure to Google on the "privacy" front. Google could ban TikTok and portray itself as caring about your privacy whilst Apple doesn't.
- neilalexander 4y ago
  Who would fall for it?
mbgerring 4y ago
We should start with banning TikTok, and then move on to banning all forms of algorithmic content feeds and behavior tracking for advertising. The reason we know that manipulation via algorithmic content feeds is effective and harmful is that numerous bad actors exploiting the Facebook algorithm have used it to cause real harm worldwide. For the sake of argument, let’s take Facebook at their word that they are merely optimizing for engagement, and the well-documented radicalization spirals that manifest on its platform are the result of clever exploitation. Now imagine that the bad actor wanting to manipulate large numbers of people also had control of the algorithm and all the data. The risk here is blindingly obvious, and we should do something about it before it becomes an even bigger problem.
fabianhjr 4y ago
Ah yes more neo-mercantilism / protectionism in the pro-"free market" country. - https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Neomercantilism https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Neomercantilism - https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Protectionism https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Protectionism
ddtaylor 4y ago
I'm not a TikTok "apologist" but I think these kinds of concerns about data privacy aren't very useful. At best you're just picking which terrible relationship to be in and which company you're okay with harvesting your data - for whatever purposes. IMO a better use of time and effort would be to create mechanisms that make these kinds of tracking less impactful. We have avenues for technical solutions to these kinds of problems and decentralized systems. Whenever we attempt to spread adoption to them we are often met with the argument that "just using X big company platform is easier".
paulcole 4y ago
The idea of China as adversary as logic for nixing TikTok is funny to me. But when we want a microwave for $29, well there are some things that we can live with.
throwaway123989 4y ago
Why is China an adversary of US? Can someone put into succinct evidences of this statement? To the typical talking point: * IP infringement: there is not much unusual rate of IP stealing from China. Considering the size of Chinese economy and foreign trade ties between China and the rest of world, absolute number of IP infringement cases are not a good indicator of the government's policy. * Coercion of South East Asian nations: This one is a natural demand of a rising super power. Putting it in the perspective of any historical rising of superpower, China has been relatively much more peaceful. Again, the sheer size of China make the absolute number terrifying, but please stay rationale, and don't try to paint China as some sort of arch evil of the west Civilization. After all, the West has been nourished by the Oriental civilization, among them China particularly contributed to the advancement of knowledge and inventions (gun powder, magnet etc.). * Confrontation with US over Taiwan: If you are OK with Texas leaving the union, then you are entitled to support Taiwan independence. Enough said. Pick your side, and stick with it. PS: I am Chinese living in US. And I support the peaceful cooperation between China and US. The 2 nations are the most refined examples of the oriental and western civilizations. It's indeed a tragedy that the finest human civilizations cannot work together. We Chinese living in US, as well as the US people having good exposure in China, are in a good position to amplify the cooperative ties between China and US.
- tomerv 4y ago
  > If you are OK with Texas leaving the union, then you are entitled to support Taiwan independence. That just doesn't make any sense.
- CameronNemo 4y ago
  Confrontation with US over Taiwan: If you are OK with Texas leaving the union, then you are entitled to support Taiwan independence. Enough said. Pick your side, and stick with it. 1. Those are not even close to equivalent. For so many reasons. 2. Sure, Texas can leave if they want. Florida and California too. Definitely Puerto Rico and Hawaii.
- adultSwim 4y ago
  Despite areas of friction, China and US are each other's #1 trading partners. We are literally allies. I suggest we try to build upon that already productive relationship.
lastofthemojito 4y ago
This could end up being an interesting case study for the "that app is so simple, I could build it in a weekend" crowd. People ask why Elon Musk is willing to pay so much for Twitter when the software could be replicated at much less expense - the software isn't the point, the network effect is. It doesn't matter how good your Twitter clone is, if no one is using it, then no one will use it. If TikTok is banned (or can't grow in the US due to being removed from app stores), there's actually an opening for a clone. I wonder what sort of TikTok clone would succeed - one backed by existing social media companies? One that's just like TikTok, or one that introduces some killer new feature?
adultSwim 4y ago
I just don't see the issue. This isn't how US companies want to be treated, even when the US govt is acting badly. TikTok doesn't appear to be uniquely different. I also struggle to view China as an adversary. US and China are each other's number one trading partners. We are allies. Why not try to build on that productive relationship?
jmpman 4y ago
I spend way too much time on TikTok, and have noticed that the Chinese propaganda is about 2-5% of my feed. It should be removed for that reason alone.
ok123456 4y ago
Can we also ban Facebook and Instagram while we're at it?
ok123456 4y ago
It's time for the daily moment of hate and yellow peril on hackernews. Facebook GOOD! TikTok BAD!
- tatrajim 4y ago
  And Apple? More like China invoking a variety of "white peril" in 2016. I have yet to see a single China defender on Hacker News explain the treatment of the iBooks and iTunes stores in China after they were suddenly ordered shut after six months of operation, given no legal recourse at all. The Obama administration did nothing about it while Silicon Valley grandees kept conspicuously silent as well as all my Chinese friends here in the US. The were afraid of Xi Jinping and the Gonganju and still are. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/22/technology/apple-no-longer-immune-to-chinas-scrutiny-of-us-tech-firms.html https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/22/technology/apple-no-longe...
aasasd 4y ago
Ah, so the US govt can't stop people from saying something, but can decide what they can't read and watch? Is that how it works? If not, then no one at government agencies should be making such suggestions.
lesstyzing 4y ago
Curious what people think the consequences would be if the US was the only western country locked out of TikTok. Is it a big enough market that the app would lose its influence? Or is the app so popular globally that US entertainers would lose out on the opportunity to build their careers (thinking of the various TikTok “celebs” who have built businesses of varying sizes around the app)?
kennywinker 4y ago
This is dumb. Don't "remove it from app stores" these are companies doing business is the US and Canada - pass privacy laws that protect people, and then fine the living crap out of them until they comply.
cryptonector 4y ago
<insert joke about removing the platforms in question over spying concerns>
1vuio0pswjnm7 4y ago
This is the result of a request in 2020 by two senators to the FTC to investigate TikTok for collecting MAC addresses on mobile computers with corporate OS, e.g., iOS and Android. (Another reason these OS are inferior, IMHO. We cannot chose our own MAC address. Randomisation of MAC address for WiFi is a poor substitute for having the ability to set MAC address to whatever value we choose, random or non-random, i.e., control. "We'll do it for you", with no option to DIY, may be providing a convenience, and only in response to user complaints, but it is also taking control away from the owner of the computer. Corporation controls the MAC address, not the owner of the computer.) The senators were alerted to the issue by the WSJ: http://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/tiktok-tracked-user-data-using-tactic-banned-by-google-11597176738 http://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/tiktok-tracked-user-data-usi... TikTok (Musica.ly) was caught violating COPPA rules in 2019 and fined more than double the amount that Disney was fined in 2011, which was the highest fine ever issued for COPPA violations: http://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/cases/musical.ly_proposed_order_ecf_2-27-19.pdf http://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/cases/musical.ly_p... There were allegations after 2019 that TikTok was violating the terms of the 2019 injunction and were still violating COPPA. Like Google and Facebook have done in their communications after being caught acting unethically and/or illegally, TikTok rolled out the cosequent changes to their website/app with the accompanying phrase "You are in control". Nothing could be further from the truth. If you were in control, you would disable advertising, for starters. :) When you thought you were controlling tracking by changing your advertiser ID in Android, you were being misled. TikTok had stored your MAC address and could link it to the prior advertiser ID. MAC addresses are PII under COPPA. In 2021, the Dutch DPA also fined TikTok for violating online privacy laws protecting children: https://autoriteitpersoonsgegevens.nl/sites/default/files/atoms/files/decision_to_impose_a_fine_on_tiktok.pdf https://autoriteitpersoonsgegevens.nl/sites/default/files/at...
- NoPicklez 4y ago
  I know that in the iOS 14 beta Apple implemented MAC address randomization to help prevent organisations identifying you in places like retail stores where your MAC address could be obtained when left on. For the average user and I'd say the absolutely majority of users, this is a better alternative than being able to set your own. Only hardcare security enthusiasts would have an appetite for setting their own MAC addresses and knowing what to do with it.
cde-v 4y ago
I'd rather my data went to China than a republican state government trying to punish abortions.
quantum_state 4y ago
The Snowden revelation showed what had been done … Not surprising fear of other nations would do the similars …
xnx 4y ago
It's hard for me to interpret all of this ill will toward TikTok as anything but sour grapes from Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter (cough Vine) for getting fairly out-competed by an app that's way more fun and innovative than any of their social efforts have achieved in over a decade.
- Underphil 4y ago
  Not just from them. I really despise the short video format and the culture that surrounds so I can't take an unbiased view on this. I'm sure there are many others like me. Something would pop up in its place anyway.
tjpnz 4y ago
Why does it have to just be about spying? The mental health issues related to use of this app are downright insidious not to mention well documented.
stjohnswarts 4y ago
Isn't this like the 3rd time? and the general public is still salivating over tiktok lol
n4bz0r 4y ago
Could someone please share some articles on what data TikTok actually collects? In the last year or two, I've seen a lot of concerned commenters, a fair number of news articles have popped up on the topic stating the bad state of affairs, but nothing explaining what exactly this is all about. And I don't know, this crap is so sad, this all is such a misdirected effort. The operating systems must provide the users means to regulate the access to data and device functions instead of laws and committees deciding what apps are not hostile enough to be distributed. What laws and committees must enforce is properly equipped operating systems. Legally enforce full control of the devices, sand-fucking-box everything. Not on this planet, huh?
hakfoo 4y ago
To me, the interesting question is why a foreign company is doing a better job of understanding what American teenagers wanted than domestic firms with seemingly infinite bankroll to work with. Nobody forced anyone to install TikTok at gunpoint. Presumably, if there was a more compelling domestic product, the kids would go there instead. Why has that product failed to materialize? I know, you can't really set out to manufacture "cool", but maybe we need to get back the spark in this sector. I don't think the existing players are capable of creating an appealing blank-slate social platform. They might have the cash and technical chops, but they have negative social currency. Facebook/Meta's brand is hopelessly tainted: if it's not creepy spying, it's still where Mom and Dad hang out to swap antivax memes. Google might have a little more cool left-- not much-- but they're also attached to such teen favourites as "crappy limited school-provided Chromebook" and "we have 92 chat apps on our phones and still can't reach each other".
- rexreed 4y ago
  These things come in waves. Myspace - Facebook - Snapchat - Tumblr - Vine - Tiktok. There will be something next, and it will come from somewhere new. Don't ask why, just ask when.
- Balgair 4y ago
  Forgive me if I'm totally wrong, but it's copyright law, right? TikTok lets you put current popular music on the videos without a care for copyright, correct? As they are Chinese, they don;t really care about any lawsuits. The same is not true for US based companies, thus they don't have as good of music on it. Also, again, sorry if I totally wrong here!
  - anomie31 4y ago
    I'm pretty sure ByteDance does license music. I don't know if they license all of it, but I'm pretty sure the RIAA or ASCAP could easily get an injunction if they didn't license any music that was theirs.
    - ajhurliman 4y ago
ngcc_hk 4y ago
They can be in but you cannot. Unless equal access why allow.
nikanj 4y ago
Related? https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/06/tiktok-cant-stop-users-from-doxxing-the-supreme-court/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/06/tiktok-cant-stop... Totally a coincidence, probably..
dillondoyle 4y ago
100% for it - but afraid of the political ramifications. It will be spun as 'cancel culture' and potentially piss off young voters we especially need to turn out. I liked the previous idea of a transfer of ownership which would grant actual legal protections and oversight.
ftyhbhyjnjk 4y ago
The true reason is that tiktok has triumphed US companies and now US government is getting involved to handle this capitalist debacle. US is doing anything in it's power, even involving government now to somehow overthrow Tiktok's dominance. Same as what happened in Mexico with united fruits company.
TrackerFF 4y ago
Two points 1) There are lots of American soldiers, the majority of these are young people. TikTok could have a real effect on American opsec, in these times. That, of course, also goes for other apps - and should / is probably regulated by the military itself. But it is more worrisome when the app used is owned not only by a foreign company, but a foreign company that's friendly with your current enemy. 2) Influence. In the case of any big conflict, the propaganda machine will run at full steam - this means controlling opinions. China has rightly observed that TikTok is influencing on steroids, and at a much higher velocity. When you're very young, and living the dream life by being TikTok famous - getting that rug pulled from under your feet can make you do irrational and desperate things. Such as promoting whatever agenda the owners tell you to. They may not tell this explicitly, but by what content will be shadow banned, and what will be promoted heavily.
Xorakios 4y ago
What bewilders me is that an FCC commissioner is weighing in on this at all. FCC's mandate is to regulate telecom infrastructure - devices, bandwidth allocation, licensing, etc. Nothing at fcc.gov mentions anything about a mandate to regulate content being distributed over that infrastructure. There is a long history of debate over whether FCC using broadcast licenses to enforce decency standards, but this is the first I've heard of them implying that iOS and Android are subject to the commission's authority. If it's a national security issue, it seems that Homeland should be addressing it; if it's consumer fraud over privacy violations, it would be FTC. The letter (which is not on the FCC.gov website, so I found it through the commissioner's Twitter post) doesn't go into that at all, and it seems like pretty significant overreach that a commissioner can demand software companies to choose their customers according to his will. https://twitter.com/BrendanCarrFCC/status/1541823585957707776/photo/1 https://twitter.com/BrendanCarrFCC/status/154182358595770777...
jacksnipe 4y ago
Meta can only dream
tikiman163 4y ago
How is this only now becoming a thing? We've know TikTok was spying on Americans for years.

536 points by breitling 4y ago

This is a silly political statement

Is this the FCC itself as an org or just the guy they mention in the article who works for the FCC? It is not entirely clear

hoppyhoppy2 4y ago
It's a letter from one particular FCC commissioner (there are multiple) on official FCC letterhead with his job title printed on it. You can view it at https://mobile.twitter.com/BrendanCarrFCC/status/1541823585957707776 https://mobile.twitter.com/BrendanCarrFCC/status/15418235859... or https://nitter.net/BrendanCarrFCC/status/1541823585957707776 https://nitter.net/BrendanCarrFCC/status/1541823585957707776 .
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
WarOnPrivacy 4y ago
Just one guy. One very political, anti-consumer guy. ref: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Brendan+Carr+net+neutrality https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Brendan+Carr+net+neutrality

johnwheeler 4y ago

I'm not sure why we don't do this; not just the privacy is an issue but the fact that China bans so much US internet like Facebook.

deleted 4y ago
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xboxnolifes 4y ago
My understanding is that Chinese bans on US technology have reasons clearly codified in law and would not be banned if they followed the regulations. That being said, what US laws does TikTok not follow?
- Shared404 4y ago
  This is a good point. I would much rather we codify data protections, and then ban TikTok (and domestic) apps that do not comply.
  - xbar 4y ago
    I think you're right. I'd love to see a BRICS-oriented data protection law for the US, for example.
  - angio 4y ago
    That's what the EU is doing and it's a great approach.
- tablespoon 4y ago
  > My understanding is that Chinese bans on US technology have reasons clearly codified in law and would not be banned if they followed the regulations. My understanding is that Chinese law is usually pretty vague and unclear, especially in areas like this, and in any case doesn't actually bind the government.
  - connicpu 4y ago
    Yeah, my understanding is a lot of Chinese laws are vague on purpose so that they can be interpreted to benefit companies the state likes, while punishing those the state does not like
    - workingon 4y ago
      Sounds like America. Didn’t we just ban Juuls while countless other electronic fruity vapes are on the market?
izacus 4y ago
Is there a reason why you want to model yourself after China?
ziddoap 4y ago
>but the fact that China bans so much US internet like Facebook This seems like a poor reason to ban an application/website/whatever. Reminds me of elementary school drama. Find a legitimate and/or legal reason (e.g. the mass harvesting of biometric data, unbeknownst to the users, being fed into some opaque government-ran database) or it should not be banned.
- tablespoon 4y ago
  > This seems like a poor reason to ban an application/website/whatever. Reminds me of elementary school drama. Find a legitimate and/or legal reason (e.g. the mass harvesting of biometric data, unbeknownst to the users, being fed into some opaque government-ran database) or it should not be banned. Um, no. Reciprocity is a pretty key concept in international relations, and a legitimate reason to take retaliatory measures. Also "we would rather not grant our adversary this advantage" is another legitimate reason to take action.
  - ziddoap 4y ago
    >Um, no. Um, yes? >Reciprocity is a pretty key concept in international relations This makes much more sense in the context of physical goods and materials and international trade. It makes much less sense (I argue near-zero sense) in the context of some random non-lawbreaking, legitimate application or website. Edit to clarify: Refusing to export X to country Y hurts country Y, assuming they want X. Banning legitimate application X developed in country Y does not hurt country Y (unless the majoity/all revenue is from your country), it just hurts your own citizens who may rely on application X. "Cut off your nose to spite your face"
    - tablespoon 4y ago
      > This makes much more sense in the context of physical goods and materials and international trade. It makes much less sense (I argue near-zero sense) in the context of some random non-lawbreaking, legitimate application or website. I'm sorry, I'm not seeing the difference. Even if the context was only business/trade (which it isn't), the American company is not able to operate in or make money from the Chinese market, while the Chinese company is currently has free reign to make money in the American one. The obvious thing to do is to reciprocally restrict the Chinese company to incentivize the removal of restrictions from the American company.
Barrin92 4y ago
Because as Milton Friedman pointed out, don't do to yourself what you do to an enemy in war. China banning American services is to the detriment of Chinese users and competition in China, there's no reason to emulate censorship. If data harvesting was a genuine concern you might as well ban Facebook and every other social media app while you're at it. It's just hysteria and nationalism.
- 30944836 4y ago
  >China banning American services is to the detriment of Chinese users and competition in China, there's no reason to emulate censorship. This is not true. China financializes everything, and pumps capital into projects at rates unseen and unmatched in the history of the world. There is plenty of competition, as evidenced by the fact that China has apps that are fare more efficient and feature rich than anything in the US. See: WeChat.
  - bigcat12345678 4y ago
    > China financializes everything, and pumps capital into projects at rates unseen and unmatched in the history of the world. Evidence please? I have long been suspicious of China's financial strategy, and had not found satisfactory sources on this topic.
    - 30944836 4y ago
      https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03085147.2020.1718913 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03085147.2020.1...
      - bigcat12345678 4y ago
        Nah, the title itself is too propagandist. What the hell is "authoritarian capitalism"?! Corporations are all authoritarian, to facilitate individual control of large resources owned by the corporation. Capitalism is just a nice term to coat the brutal underlying profit seeking gangster. Corolally, there is no such idea of liberal capitalism.
viktorcode 4y ago
You either operating on an open market, or in the government-controlled market.
dirtyid 4y ago
Because China doesn't ban US internet platforms, US internet platforms choose not to comply to PRC laws, which domestic PRC companies has to abide. Facebook/Twitter left because they couldn't/wouldn't censor calls of revenge killings during 2009 minority riots in PRC. It wasn't until NZ shooting and FB role in Rohigya genocide years later that political culture changed globally/domestically in US enough for FB to up the moderation game, around the time they wanted to re-enter PRC market. Except their employees protested and killed the initiative. Flip side is Bytedance/TikTok bending backwards to follow US laws, because Douyin is used to dealing with PRC regulatory bullshit, meanwhile their employees just want to make money instead of undermine company expansion plans with geopolitical culture wars. Like it's not hard, follow the law in the country you operate in and be competitive. TBH that really leaves some Google services, a lot of western platforms simply can't hack it against PRC competitors for domestic PRC market.
- john_yaya 4y ago
  Bytedance/TikTok are ignoring US law, as we saw in the news last week.
  - dirtyid 4y ago
    >ignoring US law, They didn't. The entire Project Texas / Oracle / CFIUS agreement is in process of implementation. The drama is over China-based staff accessing data while working on Project Texas (to silo US data/traffic), even though Chinese nationals were not on the United States Technical Services team. The ultimate concern is China-based staff will have access to protected US data/traffic after and the effectiveness of implementation. No laws were broken, but doubt whether Bytedance efforts would effectively prevent access. No laws were broken.
- tatrajim 4y ago
  And when US companies attempt to obey Chinese law and are banned anyway? Nice to know that Apple was given "equal legal consideration" in China in 2016 when its iBooks store and iTunes movie store were suddenly ordered shut after six months of operation. Oh, wait. . . they weren't given any legal recourse at all and the Obama administration did nothing about it while Silicon Valley grandees kept conspicuously silent. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/22/technology/apple-no-longer-immune-to-chinas-scrutiny-of-us-tech-firms.html https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/22/technology/apple-no-longe...

jareklupinski 4y ago

What data? Which videos I watched for how long :P

LegitShady 4y ago
biometrics including face and voice prints, your phone contacts, your location etc
- jareklupinski 4y ago
  good thing I keep a piece of tape over my camera :)
- dividedbyzero 4y ago
  Is location actually considered biometric? I'd have thought that's PII, but not biometric.
  - LegitShady 4y ago
    there are commas separating items - the first item is biometrics. Your phone contacts aren't biometrics either.
chimeracoder 4y ago
TikTok's privacy policies include the ability to store biometric information. They have been caught bypassing privacy controls on iOS and Android before to collect data that they're not supposed to have access to, and they even settled a lawsuit a couple of years ago for illegally storing data of minors.
- jareklupinski 4y ago
  what biometric information? I don't remember tiktok asking me for my fingerprint before I could start watching videos... does it do that now?
  - 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

andrewstuart 4y ago

Google and Apple are both deeply connected to China, so I'm guessing the answer will be, in an indirect way: "No thanks, we won't be doing that"

mupuff1234 4y ago
How is Google deeply connected to China? I know they have an office there, but aren't most of its service blocked there?
- can16358p 4y ago
  Hardware of Google's own Pixel and many many Android phones.
  - mupuff1234 4y ago
    Other android phones are also other companies, wouldn't exactly call that deep connection, but a connection nonetheless. Re pixel, that's a pretty small business relatively speaking. If anything Google probably has more to gain as TikTok is eating an increasing part of the ads & entertainment pie, a business which is much more crucial to Google as of now.
tablespoon 4y ago
> Google and Apple are both deeply connected to China, so I'm guessing the answer will be, in an indirect way: Apple is utterly dependent on China, but what about Google? It famously pulled out of that market years ago.
- sneak 4y ago
  The phones that run the Google OS are approximately 100% manufactured in China, just like the phones that run the Apple OS.
  - lostmsu 4y ago

aranelsurion 4y ago

asks them to [consider] removing TikTok, according to the article itself.

bdcravens 4y ago
I believe that was implied by the title, otherwise it would have said "tells", "orders", or "instructs"

reset-password 4y ago

> "At its core, TikTok functions as a sophisticated surveillance tool that harvests extensive amounts of personal and sensitive data." Smells like jealousy to me.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
adventured 4y ago
Not likely. It's rational superpower competition behavior in action. The US Government isn't lacking in harvesting extensive amounts of personal and sensitive data.

gernb 4y ago

Curious what this app does that other apps don't. In other words, applying the same criteria to other apps what other apps should be removed from the store because they do the same things? You post video in it so the app gets camera and mic access, assuming you give it permission. Can you use it without giving permission? IIRC Apple requires apps to work without permissions? I tried installing it and it requires an account so uninstalled. Not really into TikTok but was able to view in a browser without an account.

izacus 4y ago
I think the only thing this app really does is upload all the data to Chinese owned company instead of an US owned one. And that can be enough to trigger national interest concerns from US.
- ashwagary 4y ago
  The US supports free market capitalism for everyone+. + ~7.9 billion people may be excluded.
  - cm2012 4y ago
    China banned almost all US social networks, this is fair play
    - est 4y ago
      Well, at least China didn't ban MySpace
    - maccolgan 4y ago
      Balkanizing the internet sounds great, honestly.
zwkrt 4y ago
The way I see it is that TikTok is basically a psyops app. We can argue all day whether it is controlled by the Chinese government, by advertisers, by both, whether it is intentional, what its purpose is, etc. But anything that is free and funded by ads is at the end of the day trying to sway the mind and behavior of its users, that is the name of the game. So to answer your question, it doesn't /do/ anything that other apps don't. But what it does it does rather effectively, and it isn't controlled by a company that is ultimately beholden to the US government. So from the gov's perspective, TikTok somewhere between a nuisance and a threat to national security.

malcolmgreaves 4y ago

Carr is against net-neutrality. [1] He's a Trump appointee. It's clear that this is not a principles-based ask to remove a data-hungry application. Carr isn't saying that applications shouldn't harvest this data. He's saying a Chinese company shouldn't be playing the same game that American companies do. Thus, the logical conclusion to "why is Carr making this statement?" isn't necessarily "it's because TikTok does something abnormally bad," but rather political: it's anti-China propaganda. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brendan_Carr_(lawyer) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brendan_Carr_(lawyer)

viktorcode 4y ago
I disagree with the premise. Supposedly, Carr continues to run Trump's agenda, but then it would banning TikTok for the reason that the social network was used to organise anti-Trump activities during the last elections.
- malcolmgreaves 4y ago
  > Supposedly, Carr continues to run Trump's agenda, Trump's most clever political tactic is to be a hypocrite and exceptionally effective liar: his agenda is always a superposition of contradictory claims. Even the GOP couldn't keep up and decided to forgo any semblance of a political platform for 2020 [1]. Despite the lies, there's a few consistent policy themes that emerged from his presidency. Notably, is a broad, across-the-board, blanket opposition to everything China. This includes decidedly not Chinese things, such as racism and condoning violence against Asian Americans [2] It also extends to economic opposition at all costs. *Here* is the central truth behind Carr's statement. It's a continuation of the Republican party's current strong anti-Chinese policy. [1] https://prod-cdn-static.gop.com/docs/Resolution_Platform_2020.pdf https://prod-cdn-static.gop.com/docs/Resolution_Platform_202... [2] https://www.businessinsider.com/un-report-trump-seemingly-legitimizing-hate-crimes-against-asian-americans-2020-10 https://www.businessinsider.com/un-report-trump-seemingly-le...
car_analogy 4y ago
> He's saying a Chinese company shouldn't be playing the same game that American companies do. In America, yes (just like Facebook is banned in China). Will you next complain that Carr is okay with American troops marching in Washington, but doesn't like it if Chinese troops do the same? While Facebook and surveillance in general are anything but a boon for common Americans, it's understandable that those pulling the strings would get worried when a foreign country moves in on their turf.

TMWNN 4y ago

mhh__ 4y ago
Trump did apparently want to withdraw the US from NATO entirely so what does right mean? That German buying of Russian gas is a problem, of course, but what is Stoltenberg supposed to do about that. Also German gas imports are something like 30% Russian which in turn makes up I think 13% of power generation, since the information trump states is vague.

pessimizer 4y ago

Take formal action or don't, but public intimidation is a bizarre action for a government to take. We can't get them to regulate when there are rules, but when there aren't, and US diplomacy has decided to punish a country for some episode of disobedience, a media blitz of press releases.

viktorcode 4y ago

As I get it Carr haven't presented any hard evidence, instead linking to the open publications with various levels of research. Privacy breaking apps must be thrown out. However, this mustn't be decided on the basis of hearsay.

izacus 4y ago
It'd be great if this could be codified in a proper regulation (that also has to be obeyed by US companies, not just Chinese ones). But that's hard - it's easier to demand that private corpos play the enforcer (and corpos themselves were dumb to even get themselves into a situation of playing the moral and political arbiter).

2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago

I'm conflicted. TikTok collects data for an adversary at scale. Many complain that the US does the same but that doesn't change the fact that I live in the US. The Chinese government is an adversary of the West whether we like it or not. With that said- It's pretty telling that the FCC only needs to go to Apple and Google. It would be really nice to have some antitrust regulation so that the FCC doesn't have this power.

Abishek_Muthian 4y ago
> The Chinese government is an adversary of the West whether we like it or not. It's not like they became an adversary overnight, China's economic success was predominantly sponsored by the West; Their abysmal human rights regulations were favorable for Nike to Apple for employing child labor and they in-turn used that economic growth to increase their defense budget 6-fold in just two decades. Of course autocracies and democracies would be adversaries; But the sabre-rattling without holding the West's capitalist interest in China accountable seems disingenuous(In general, not your comment).
ALittleLight 4y ago
There's likewise a conflict for Google, which runs a TikTok competitor/clone in the form of YouTube Shorts. "Well, if we have to ban our competition... I guess..."
tomatotomato37 4y ago
While I agree Apple & Google have a near perfect duopoly on the mobile space, the addition of more companies wouldn't give the FCC any less power. The "Federal" part of FCC still gives them jurisdiction over electronic communication happening in the US federation; whether they have to enforce it through 2 entities or 2000 doesn't really make a difference
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
  How would you enforce it though? It's like in the 90s when PGP was export controlled. It was a total unenforceable joke.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

can16358p 4y ago

I think the appropriate action is to force them to fix their privacy policies if there's something incorrect there, and to be clear about what data is collected. After that anyone should be free to know what data is collected and decide to use or delete the app. I mean, if someone wants to use the service, just let them use, it's their personal choice.

xbar 4y ago
It is a mistake for people in the EU and US to think of Chinese-based data collection companies as the same as EU- and US-based companies. TikTok in the US is not the same as Google in France, and even they were recently fined for signifcant privacy concerns. It is important to protect citizens. People often don't have enough information about sharing their data to make the best privacy decisions without legislation to protect them.
- can16358p 4y ago
  Well, education is the key then. Instead of banning people from using it, they should educate the public about potential followups of sharing on/using TikTok. Banning use is never an answer. If I want to share my data, it should be my choice, not the government's.

cwkoss 4y ago

What data is tiktok collecting that google isnt? Is there a fairly applied rule here, or is sinophobia driving this?

chimeracoder 4y ago
> What data is tiktok collecting that google isnt? Is there a fairly applied rule here, or is sinophobia driving this? While I agree that sinophobia plays into discourse around TikTok, TikTok has an established pattern of collecting data against the user's wishes (even bypassing system permissions), and of collecting and storing data about minors in direct violation of the law[0]. They are not an unknown entity; they are an established bad actor when it comes to Dara collection and storage. [0] https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-56815480 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-56815480
- cwkoss 4y ago
  The only concrete claim in that article that I see is insufficient age verification. How does youtube age verify users who are under 13 and trying to create an account? Does google search/ad tracking have a mechanism to avoid tracking < 13yos? I suspect they just say "its against terms" but allow it to happen, because to verify children they'd need to collect information on them...
xdennis 4y ago
> Is there a fairly applied rule here, or is sinophobia driving this? Don't hide behind sinophobia to defend China's communism. This has nothing to do with ethnicity. China is using its laws to effectively ban competition from foreign companies which don't want to cooperate with its totalitarian form of government. The US should do the same and not allow competition from totalitarian countries.
- cwkoss 4y ago
  nah, i'm a freedom of information maximalist. restricting the free flow of information between citizens of countries whose corrupt leaders are engaged in a dick measuring contest only benefits the corrupt leaders. advocating that we need to impose blinders on ourselves as well to punish them is just short sighted self-punishment

AdamH12113 4y ago

Is this actually an official request from the FCC? The letter[1] makes it sound like personal grandstanding on the part of the Trump-appointed commissioner rather than an official action by a regulatory agency. If it's the former, the headline is misleading. [1] https://twitter.com/BrendanCarrFCC/status/1541823585957707776 https://twitter.com/BrendanCarrFCC/status/154182358595770777...

che_shirecat 4y ago
Brendan Carr is also notably anti Net Neutrality. Reading the screeds of the supposed cypherpunks of hacker news begging the federal government to BAN access to an app by private individuals is hilarious.
- AlexandrB 4y ago
  Seriously. And I can't figure out how the CCP having information about me is worse than the US government having that same information when I'm likely to interact with the latter but not the former. I'd love for the FCC/FTC to enforce some kind of privacy standards on all apps, but that's not what's happening here.

jhallenworld 4y ago

As a USA resident, which is more likely to adversely affect you: CCP collecting data on you, or US government collecting data on you?

loudmax 4y ago
[flagged]
- cute_boi 4y ago
  You failed on first line. They aren't democratically elected if there are only two choice: dems & republication. Both don't care about people, and constantly blames each other to divert people interest.
- dylan604 4y ago
  >The US government, imperfect as it is, is democratically elected by US citizens. Because of so much social media influencing, this is very much up for debate at this time from those that have been heavily influenced. That's just one example of how all of the social influence is just not good for society at large.
- fabianhjr 4y ago
  > The US government, imperfect as it is, is democratically elected by US citizens. The US president is elected by electors from the electoral college; the number of electors per state was influenced by the pro-slavery states. (Research the three-fifths-clause: https://www.wikiwand.com/en/United_States_Electoral_College#/Three-fifths_clause_and_the_role_of_slavery https://www.wikiwand.com/en/United_States_Electoral_College#... ) Even soviet democracy is way more democratic than the US democracy: https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Soviet_democracy https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Soviet_democracy
- miguelazo 4y ago
  Survey says most Americans don't think they live in a democracy, while vast majority of Chinese think they do. It's easy to see why when you think about how little the average Americans' interests are represented by their government. Not to mention the totally gerrymandered districts, voter suppression and absurd legalized corruption that says money=speech. https://www.newsweek.com/most-china-call-their-nation-democracy-most-us-say-america-isnt-1711176 https://www.newsweek.com/most-china-call-their-nation-democr...

winternett 4y ago

I've used TikTok for the past year, it's really not as smart or brilliant as all the hypemasters would have you think. The data it gathers (outside of location, facial recognition, and speech capture) has been really off target for being matched to content. The algorithms across most of these sites are really not useful in building a valid service from what I can gather... Most of the people that use social apps wear out quickly once they realize the level of free work they are doing, and how it goes unrewarded. I personally can do without it, because youtube and other things still exist to host the same exact type of video content, but the entire social app landscape is frought with platforms that are too big to really reward creators with any real growth, and it's overrun with deceptive advertising. I know I sound like I'm jaded, but I've learned some valuable skills in film and editing, so I'm really not. Apps that will win from this point forward will realize that they need to be more niche based, while also integrating into a larger eco system that allows for content to be shared across the Internet, the way the Internet was meant to work... The common tactics of limiting content reach and squeezing creators for ad money are short lived, most of these apps have a huge amount of inactive and outright abandoned user accounts... TikTok is in essence just another video "doom scroller" app, that allows pretty much useless likes follows and shares, it's really put a bunch of suggestive psychology on top of that, but in essence it's the same thing other platforms have been doing just with vertical video and a different UI. It's not replaceable, especially when it takes it's user base for granted and works hard to gather data on users and to manipulate the majority into doing lots of work for them for free (with a really weak creator fund). We can live without it. If there are a hand full of people on the platform that have millions of followers on the same platforms where most of the user base has only hundreds of followers, it's pretty telling that it's a free work exploitation scheme, and it's really the first indication that it's really not going to survive the long haul. As far as the data gathering debacle goes, there is also nothing different happening with many other major social app platforms we all use, instead though, our data is being collected and used against us by private companies across the world instead of by foreign governments. Removing one app won't solve the problem of personal privacy violation. We each need to be a lot more careful about the level of information we share online, and we need to stop being so eager to work online for these greedy and abusive operations for free or it's our own damn fault.

4y ago

deleted 4y ago

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fspeech 4y ago

The headline is inaccurate. This is not an official action of the FCC. NYT phrased it more honestly: "An F.C.C. commissioner pushed Apple and Google to remove TikTok from their app stores." https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/29/technology/apple-google-tiktok.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/29/technology/apple-google-t...

pdabbadabba 4y ago
Agreed. The CBC story actually gets it right too: "A commissioner with the U.S. communications regulator is asking Apple and Google to consider banning TikTok from their app stores over data security concerns related to the Chinese-owned company." But the headline misleadingly refers to Commissioner Carr as "U.S. communications regulator." One would normally think that this referred to the FCC (THE U.S. communications regulator), not just one of its commissioners.
dang 4y ago
Ok, we've reworded it now. Thanks! (Submitted title was "FCC asks Google, Apple to remove TikTok".)

lettergram 4y ago

The spying worries me less than the influence to be honest. China doesn’t allow the same things on tiktok that tiktok promotes in other countries. There’s a reason for that.

distrill 4y ago
yeah, i use tiktok a lot and i think about this all the time. it's so odd that this isn't the first thing people are discussing. imagine if the russian government sponsored a social media application, all we would be talking about was political meddling. it's almost exactly the same thing here.
- nivenkos 4y ago
  Imagine if the US did...
robonerd 4y ago
Exactly this. China doesn't allow TikTok as it exists in America to also exist in China, because they believe American TikTok is harmful to America and would be harmful to China as well.
- baby 4y ago
  ^ this, do we want to be like China?
  - pphysch 4y ago
    (looks at QoL of bottom 25%) Yes
    - lettergram 4y ago
      Have you seen the bottom 70% of China? Many just disappear. The QoL of the bottom 25% of the US is well above the majority of the world. They also have the opportunity to rise, unlike most places.

atwood22 4y ago

There are two issues: 1) Data collection and algorithmic manipulation. This has been discussed to death, but why you'd let an adversary control the information flow to a huge portion of the population is beyond me. This is obviously a national security issue. 2) Fairness in the marketplace. No, I'm not talking about the U.S. marketplace. U.S. tech companies have had their IP stolen and unfair regulations placed on them in China. Why should the U.S. let Chinese tech companies compete in the U.S. marketplace when China doesn't let U.S tech companies compete in their marketplace? I'm not going to feel pity for TikTok.

unclebucknasty 4y ago
>let an adversary control the information flow to a huge portion of the population It is mind-numbing that we made it this far without very serious consideration of this point. I've frankly just never understood it, especially given what we know about the power of algorithms to define reality at scale.
- debacle 4y ago
  I do believe it is because of e.g. Twitters TPP program and other programs that allow the US govt to exert control over "our" social networks.
  - Dan_Sylveste 4y ago
    >Twitters TPP program That returns absolutely nothing when searched for yet seems intriguing. Please elaborate.
- user_named 4y ago
  Conversely the EU needs to ban the FAANG companies
  - unclebucknasty 4y ago
    I'm not naive with regard to even friendly nations jockeying for control of the information space. But there is something uniquely irresponsible about letting foreign adversaries run algorithms on your populace.

numair 4y ago

The headline is misleading. They’ve been asked by a Trump-appointed commissioner to “consider removing” TikTok. I think TikTok is a giant human rights violation for being utterly stupid, but that doesn’t mean the arguments presented here make much sense. This comment is going to be fed as training data to some stupid AI to spit out comments that sound like I wrote them, which I find much more troubling from an intelligence community perspective. I never agreed to this when I joined Hacker News. TikTok users, on the other hand…

WarOnPrivacy 4y ago
Upvote for you. Appreciate you ferreting out the actual story.

4oh9do 4y ago

What are the actual privacy/security issues with TikTok, concretely? Citizen Lab published a report last year - https://citizenlab.ca/2021/03/tiktok-vs-douyin-security-privacy-analysis/ https://citizenlab.ca/2021/03/tiktok-vs-douyin-security-priv... - which found that the app does not engage in any overtly malicious behavior: > TikTok and Douyin do not appear to exhibit overtly malicious behavior similar to those exhibited by malware. We did not observe either app collecting contact lists, recording and sending photos, audio, videos or geolocation coordinates without user permission. And if there's any organization I trust about this sort of thing, it's Citizen lab, owing to their groundbreaking work around Pegasus and other APTs.

dylan604 4y ago
Not all malware is the same. If there was a malware bit of code that did nothing that brought attention to itself as it silently sat there retransmitting every piece of data you entered, every interaction with every website, every document created, etc, the owner of that malware would have access to so much information that they could so so many things with that data that may or may not directly affect the user of that device. That would not make that malware any less vile just because it didn't encrypt user data or something obviously hostile to the user like that attracting attention to itself. That type of malware is almost there with social media SDKs used in websites, apps, etc. There are ways that I can't even imagine that other people can imagine how to use that data for nefarious means.
- hsbauauvhabzb 4y ago
  Did you even read the parents link before spewing that?
_-david-_ 4y ago
Even if they are not doing anything bad now, they are controlled by the CCP and could push propaganda or other material to demoralize the West.
- AlexandrB 4y ago

IYasha 4y ago

Wooow! A rare case of FCC actually doing something to benefit people.

est 4y ago
... by copying chinese style government-led appstore censorship.

whyenot 4y ago

For the sake of clarity, shouldn't the title really be "One FCC commissioner requests Google, Apple remove TikTok As written, the title makes in look like the whole commission is asking for this, and "ask" isn't always a request, sometimes it can be a command (for example a police officer asking for your license and registration when they pull you over).

dylan604 4y ago
Personally, I've never had an officer ask for license and registration. It is always phrased as a demand. It's never been "may I see your license and registration?". It's always "license and registration". No please added either.
WarOnPrivacy 4y ago
> For the sake of clarity, shouldn't the title really be "One FCC commissioner requests Google, Apple remove TikTok I think you're the only poster who actually caught this. Brendan Carr comes out of a firm that owns a major DC lobbying hydra (Signal Group). His FCC history is all about parroting the (often anti-consumer) talking points of last administration. He's indistinguishable from Ajit Pai. Carr is endlessly supportive of ISP monopolies. He rails against net-neutrality and Section 230. He's everything the FCC ought to protect us from. As far as TikTok+China goes, I tend to be way more concerned about govs that can imprison me. Past that, is TikTok a problem? We don't actually know because we never, ever, ever get meaningful specifics about what's being collected or what how that manifests as an actual risk to us.

andrewstuart 4y ago

In thinking about it, it's actually an opportunity for Google to battle with Apple. Apple has been applying huge pressure to Google on the "privacy" front. Google could ban TikTok and portray itself as caring about your privacy whilst Apple doesn't.

neilalexander 4y ago
Who would fall for it?

mbgerring 4y ago

We should start with banning TikTok, and then move on to banning all forms of algorithmic content feeds and behavior tracking for advertising. The reason we know that manipulation via algorithmic content feeds is effective and harmful is that numerous bad actors exploiting the Facebook algorithm have used it to cause real harm worldwide. For the sake of argument, let’s take Facebook at their word that they are merely optimizing for engagement, and the well-documented radicalization spirals that manifest on its platform are the result of clever exploitation. Now imagine that the bad actor wanting to manipulate large numbers of people also had control of the algorithm and all the data. The risk here is blindingly obvious, and we should do something about it before it becomes an even bigger problem.

fabianhjr 4y ago

Ah yes more neo-mercantilism / protectionism in the pro-"free market" country. - https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Neomercantilism https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Neomercantilism - https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Protectionism https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Protectionism

ddtaylor 4y ago

I'm not a TikTok "apologist" but I think these kinds of concerns about data privacy aren't very useful. At best you're just picking which terrible relationship to be in and which company you're okay with harvesting your data - for whatever purposes. IMO a better use of time and effort would be to create mechanisms that make these kinds of tracking less impactful. We have avenues for technical solutions to these kinds of problems and decentralized systems. Whenever we attempt to spread adoption to them we are often met with the argument that "just using X big company platform is easier".

paulcole 4y ago

The idea of China as adversary as logic for nixing TikTok is funny to me. But when we want a microwave for $29, well there are some things that we can live with.

throwaway123989 4y ago

Why is China an adversary of US? Can someone put into succinct evidences of this statement? To the typical talking point: * IP infringement: there is not much unusual rate of IP stealing from China. Considering the size of Chinese economy and foreign trade ties between China and the rest of world, absolute number of IP infringement cases are not a good indicator of the government's policy. * Coercion of South East Asian nations: This one is a natural demand of a rising super power. Putting it in the perspective of any historical rising of superpower, China has been relatively much more peaceful. Again, the sheer size of China make the absolute number terrifying, but please stay rationale, and don't try to paint China as some sort of arch evil of the west Civilization. After all, the West has been nourished by the Oriental civilization, among them China particularly contributed to the advancement of knowledge and inventions (gun powder, magnet etc.). * Confrontation with US over Taiwan: If you are OK with Texas leaving the union, then you are entitled to support Taiwan independence. Enough said. Pick your side, and stick with it. PS: I am Chinese living in US. And I support the peaceful cooperation between China and US. The 2 nations are the most refined examples of the oriental and western civilizations. It's indeed a tragedy that the finest human civilizations cannot work together. We Chinese living in US, as well as the US people having good exposure in China, are in a good position to amplify the cooperative ties between China and US.

tomerv 4y ago
> If you are OK with Texas leaving the union, then you are entitled to support Taiwan independence. That just doesn't make any sense.
CameronNemo 4y ago
Confrontation with US over Taiwan: If you are OK with Texas leaving the union, then you are entitled to support Taiwan independence. Enough said. Pick your side, and stick with it. 1. Those are not even close to equivalent. For so many reasons. 2. Sure, Texas can leave if they want. Florida and California too. Definitely Puerto Rico and Hawaii.
adultSwim 4y ago
Despite areas of friction, China and US are each other's #1 trading partners. We are literally allies. I suggest we try to build upon that already productive relationship.

lastofthemojito 4y ago

This could end up being an interesting case study for the "that app is so simple, I could build it in a weekend" crowd. People ask why Elon Musk is willing to pay so much for Twitter when the software could be replicated at much less expense - the software isn't the point, the network effect is. It doesn't matter how good your Twitter clone is, if no one is using it, then no one will use it. If TikTok is banned (or can't grow in the US due to being removed from app stores), there's actually an opening for a clone. I wonder what sort of TikTok clone would succeed - one backed by existing social media companies? One that's just like TikTok, or one that introduces some killer new feature?

adultSwim 4y ago

I just don't see the issue. This isn't how US companies want to be treated, even when the US govt is acting badly. TikTok doesn't appear to be uniquely different. I also struggle to view China as an adversary. US and China are each other's number one trading partners. We are allies. Why not try to build on that productive relationship?

jmpman 4y ago

I spend way too much time on TikTok, and have noticed that the Chinese propaganda is about 2-5% of my feed. It should be removed for that reason alone.

ok123456 4y ago

Can we also ban Facebook and Instagram while we're at it?

ok123456 4y ago

It's time for the daily moment of hate and yellow peril on hackernews. Facebook GOOD! TikTok BAD!

tatrajim 4y ago
And Apple? More like China invoking a variety of "white peril" in 2016. I have yet to see a single China defender on Hacker News explain the treatment of the iBooks and iTunes stores in China after they were suddenly ordered shut after six months of operation, given no legal recourse at all. The Obama administration did nothing about it while Silicon Valley grandees kept conspicuously silent as well as all my Chinese friends here in the US. The were afraid of Xi Jinping and the Gonganju and still are. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/22/technology/apple-no-longer-immune-to-chinas-scrutiny-of-us-tech-firms.html https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/22/technology/apple-no-longe...

aasasd 4y ago

Ah, so the US govt can't stop people from saying something, but can decide what they can't read and watch? Is that how it works? If not, then no one at government agencies should be making such suggestions.

lesstyzing 4y ago

Curious what people think the consequences would be if the US was the only western country locked out of TikTok. Is it a big enough market that the app would lose its influence? Or is the app so popular globally that US entertainers would lose out on the opportunity to build their careers (thinking of the various TikTok “celebs” who have built businesses of varying sizes around the app)?

kennywinker 4y ago

This is dumb. Don't "remove it from app stores" these are companies doing business is the US and Canada - pass privacy laws that protect people, and then fine the living crap out of them until they comply.

cryptonector 4y ago

1vuio0pswjnm7 4y ago

This is the result of a request in 2020 by two senators to the FTC to investigate TikTok for collecting MAC addresses on mobile computers with corporate OS, e.g., iOS and Android. (Another reason these OS are inferior, IMHO. We cannot chose our own MAC address. Randomisation of MAC address for WiFi is a poor substitute for having the ability to set MAC address to whatever value we choose, random or non-random, i.e., control. "We'll do it for you", with no option to DIY, may be providing a convenience, and only in response to user complaints, but it is also taking control away from the owner of the computer. Corporation controls the MAC address, not the owner of the computer.) The senators were alerted to the issue by the WSJ: http://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/tiktok-tracked-user-data-using-tactic-banned-by-google-11597176738 http://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/tiktok-tracked-user-data-usi... TikTok (Musica.ly) was caught violating COPPA rules in 2019 and fined more than double the amount that Disney was fined in 2011, which was the highest fine ever issued for COPPA violations: http://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/cases/musical.ly_proposed_order_ecf_2-27-19.pdf http://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/cases/musical.ly_p... There were allegations after 2019 that TikTok was violating the terms of the 2019 injunction and were still violating COPPA. Like Google and Facebook have done in their communications after being caught acting unethically and/or illegally, TikTok rolled out the cosequent changes to their website/app with the accompanying phrase "You are in control". Nothing could be further from the truth. If you were in control, you would disable advertising, for starters. :) When you thought you were controlling tracking by changing your advertiser ID in Android, you were being misled. TikTok had stored your MAC address and could link it to the prior advertiser ID. MAC addresses are PII under COPPA. In 2021, the Dutch DPA also fined TikTok for violating online privacy laws protecting children: https://autoriteitpersoonsgegevens.nl/sites/default/files/atoms/files/decision_to_impose_a_fine_on_tiktok.pdf https://autoriteitpersoonsgegevens.nl/sites/default/files/at...

NoPicklez 4y ago
I know that in the iOS 14 beta Apple implemented MAC address randomization to help prevent organisations identifying you in places like retail stores where your MAC address could be obtained when left on. For the average user and I'd say the absolutely majority of users, this is a better alternative than being able to set your own. Only hardcare security enthusiasts would have an appetite for setting their own MAC addresses and knowing what to do with it.

cde-v 4y ago

I'd rather my data went to China than a republican state government trying to punish abortions.

quantum_state 4y ago

The Snowden revelation showed what had been done … Not surprising fear of other nations would do the similars …

xnx 4y ago

It's hard for me to interpret all of this ill will toward TikTok as anything but sour grapes from Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter (cough Vine) for getting fairly out-competed by an app that's way more fun and innovative than any of their social efforts have achieved in over a decade.

Underphil 4y ago
Not just from them. I really despise the short video format and the culture that surrounds so I can't take an unbiased view on this. I'm sure there are many others like me. Something would pop up in its place anyway.

tjpnz 4y ago

Why does it have to just be about spying? The mental health issues related to use of this app are downright insidious not to mention well documented.

stjohnswarts 4y ago

Isn't this like the 3rd time? and the general public is still salivating over tiktok lol

n4bz0r 4y ago

Could someone please share some articles on what data TikTok actually collects? In the last year or two, I've seen a lot of concerned commenters, a fair number of news articles have popped up on the topic stating the bad state of affairs, but nothing explaining what exactly this is all about. And I don't know, this crap is so sad, this all is such a misdirected effort. The operating systems must provide the users means to regulate the access to data and device functions instead of laws and committees deciding what apps are not hostile enough to be distributed. What laws and committees must enforce is properly equipped operating systems. Legally enforce full control of the devices, sand-fucking-box everything. Not on this planet, huh?

hakfoo 4y ago

To me, the interesting question is why a foreign company is doing a better job of understanding what American teenagers wanted than domestic firms with seemingly infinite bankroll to work with. Nobody forced anyone to install TikTok at gunpoint. Presumably, if there was a more compelling domestic product, the kids would go there instead. Why has that product failed to materialize? I know, you can't really set out to manufacture "cool", but maybe we need to get back the spark in this sector. I don't think the existing players are capable of creating an appealing blank-slate social platform. They might have the cash and technical chops, but they have negative social currency. Facebook/Meta's brand is hopelessly tainted: if it's not creepy spying, it's still where Mom and Dad hang out to swap antivax memes. Google might have a little more cool left-- not much-- but they're also attached to such teen favourites as "crappy limited school-provided Chromebook" and "we have 92 chat apps on our phones and still can't reach each other".

rexreed 4y ago
These things come in waves. Myspace - Facebook - Snapchat - Tumblr - Vine - Tiktok. There will be something next, and it will come from somewhere new. Don't ask why, just ask when.
Balgair 4y ago
Forgive me if I'm totally wrong, but it's copyright law, right? TikTok lets you put current popular music on the videos without a care for copyright, correct? As they are Chinese, they don;t really care about any lawsuits. The same is not true for US based companies, thus they don't have as good of music on it. Also, again, sorry if I totally wrong here!
- anomie31 4y ago
  I'm pretty sure ByteDance does license music. I don't know if they license all of it, but I'm pretty sure the RIAA or ASCAP could easily get an injunction if they didn't license any music that was theirs.
  - ajhurliman 4y ago

ngcc_hk 4y ago

They can be in but you cannot. Unless equal access why allow.

nikanj 4y ago

Related? https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/06/tiktok-cant-stop-users-from-doxxing-the-supreme-court/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/06/tiktok-cant-stop... Totally a coincidence, probably..

dillondoyle 4y ago

100% for it - but afraid of the political ramifications. It will be spun as 'cancel culture' and potentially piss off young voters we especially need to turn out. I liked the previous idea of a transfer of ownership which would grant actual legal protections and oversight.

ftyhbhyjnjk 4y ago

The true reason is that tiktok has triumphed US companies and now US government is getting involved to handle this capitalist debacle. US is doing anything in it's power, even involving government now to somehow overthrow Tiktok's dominance. Same as what happened in Mexico with united fruits company.

TrackerFF 4y ago

Two points 1) There are lots of American soldiers, the majority of these are young people. TikTok could have a real effect on American opsec, in these times. That, of course, also goes for other apps - and should / is probably regulated by the military itself. But it is more worrisome when the app used is owned not only by a foreign company, but a foreign company that's friendly with your current enemy. 2) Influence. In the case of any big conflict, the propaganda machine will run at full steam - this means controlling opinions. China has rightly observed that TikTok is influencing on steroids, and at a much higher velocity. When you're very young, and living the dream life by being TikTok famous - getting that rug pulled from under your feet can make you do irrational and desperate things. Such as promoting whatever agenda the owners tell you to. They may not tell this explicitly, but by what content will be shadow banned, and what will be promoted heavily.

Xorakios 4y ago

What bewilders me is that an FCC commissioner is weighing in on this at all. FCC's mandate is to regulate telecom infrastructure - devices, bandwidth allocation, licensing, etc. Nothing at fcc.gov mentions anything about a mandate to regulate content being distributed over that infrastructure. There is a long history of debate over whether FCC using broadcast licenses to enforce decency standards, but this is the first I've heard of them implying that iOS and Android are subject to the commission's authority. If it's a national security issue, it seems that Homeland should be addressing it; if it's consumer fraud over privacy violations, it would be FTC. The letter (which is not on the FCC.gov website, so I found it through the commissioner's Twitter post) doesn't go into that at all, and it seems like pretty significant overreach that a commissioner can demand software companies to choose their customers according to his will. https://twitter.com/BrendanCarrFCC/status/1541823585957707776/photo/1 https://twitter.com/BrendanCarrFCC/status/154182358595770777...

jacksnipe 4y ago

Meta can only dream

tikiman163 4y ago

How is this only now becoming a thing? We've know TikTok was spying on Americans for years.