7 ms·

The data isn’t the risk, it’s more the ability for CCP to leverage influence. https://stratechery.com/2020/the-tiktok-war/ https://stratechery.com/2020/the-tik

The data isn’t the risk, it’s more the ability for CCP to leverage influence. https://stratechery.com/2020/the-tiktok-war/ https://stratechery.com/2020/the-tiktok-war/ Dialing up things to cause unrest, dialing down stuff critical of the CCP. It’s not an issue about data, or even an issue about speech, it’s an issue of ownership of a media company by an adversary that will weaponize it against you. Who controls and owns media companies is a reasonable national security question. The CCP knows this risk, they don’t play fair.

n0tahacker 4y ago
I think this attitude is wrong. A strong democracy doesn't need to fight "fake news" legally and doesn't need their own propaganda op in foreign states like Radio Free Asia etc. If you are banning foreign media in your own country, you are doing the same as China in the end. Why not establish a great firewall?
- xcrunner529 4y ago
  [dead]
- collaborative 4y ago
  A strong democracy does as it pleases within its democratic laws
- gonehome 4y ago
  Do you think the USG would have allowed the USSR to buy NBC? These aren’t new issues, there are certain types of corporations where there is a national security interest in American ownership and capability (see also: Intel). Ownership of airlines is another example, you can’t have a foreign controlling interest in a domestic airline (Richard Branson couldn’t save Virgin America due to this). There are good reasons for a nation to have rules about foreign control in certain types of companies that carry a national security risk.
  - caf 4y ago
    In the case of airlines it is just straight up protectionism. There's no national security risk there: if push came to shove in time of war the government could simply seize the assets and operate them as they saw fit.
    - creato 4y ago
      If that’s your view, then it seems better to be up front about the ownership limitations than pretending otherwise until a war comes along and pulling the rug.
      - sudosysgen 4y ago
        It is already law in the United States that companies may be compelled to act in certain ways during emergencies. There is no pretending, it's all there in plain writing in the USC. Look up the Defence Production Act.
- nanidin 4y ago
  A well informed electorate is a prerequisite to democracy. Fake news and undue outside influence absolutely must be protected against.
  - i-use-nixos-btw 4y ago
    A well-informed electorate isn’t a prerequisite to democracy. This is precisely why fake news proliferates - it’s relatively easy to elicit an emotional response, and that tends to win over critical thinking. While fake news and undue outside influence absolutely must be protected against, the line is hard to draw. For instance, would Snowden have been considered undue influence, would Wikileaks have been considered fake news, at least sufficiently enough to cross the ban threshold? There are pros and cons to both approaches, and it really doesn’t come down to whether or not people agree with a statement that contains such vague terms. It comes down to interpretation of those terms.
  - mistermann 4y ago
    The government is free to add philosophy to standard curriculum so people aren't so helpless. It's funny it's not there already, with all the talk of the "need" for more critical thinking. Democracy theatre.
- subpixel 4y ago
  We are starting from a place of weak democracy. I don’t think the tea leaves can be read otherwise. We aren’t alone - but that’s not much succor.
- shepherdjerred 4y ago
  The United States does not have a strong democracy. Half (more or less) of the population believes the election was rigged.
  - dragonwriter 4y ago
    > The United States does not have a strong democracy. Half (more or less) of the population believes the election was rigged. From various recent polls, it looks like somewhere between 30-40%, somewhere under 2/3 of Republicans and Republican-leaners and basically no one else.
    - soderfoo 4y ago
      30% is about par for the course when it comes to contemporary controversial POTUS elections [1][2]. It seems to ebb and flow: each side takes their turn being the aggrieved party and then alternate next go around (2000, 2016, 2020). Consecutive cycles of animosity on one side could be worrying. The tapestry of dysfunctional patchwork that make up the American Constitutional Republic, while tattered and frayed before, has found ways to persist. [1] https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2000/12/01/many-question-bush-or-gore-as-legitimate-winner/ https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2000/12/01/many-questio... [2] https://news.gallup.com/poll/4687/seven-americans-accept-bush-legitimate-president.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/4687/seven-americans-accept-bus...
      - rootusrootus 4y ago
        > Consecutive cycles of animosity on one side could be worrying. Is that not what we're experiencing now? It's hard to 'both sides' this issue with a straight face, when the biggest election denier in America is a former president and current presidential candidate. When was the last time that happened?
        dragonwriter 4y ago
        > It’s hard to ‘both sides’ this issue with a straight face, when the biggest election denier in America is a former president and current presidential candidate. When was the last time that happened? The closest parallel was probably Aaron Burr and his…whatever exactly he was trying to achieve in 1806-1807 in the Southwest after being dumped as VP in 1804 in part resulting from Jefferson’s suspicions that he was trying to pull electoral shenanigans in 1800. But that’s a long time ago, in very different circumstances, and not a particularly close parallel. So, never anything really similar.
- jsdeveloper 4y ago
  > A strong democracy doesn't need to fight "fake news" legally and doesn't need their own propaganda your argument to me sounded like : > Brave people don't fear heights, you are brave and hence you should jump from empire state building. And you don't need protection, remember you are brave.
  - goatlover 4y ago
    Since you are straw manning the argument, brave people should be protected from their foolishness by banning rock climbing and base jumping. How does that sound?
    - jsdeveloper 4y ago
      Your analogy is again flawed. Brave people are not banned, they are free to do rock climbing and base jumping. A specific unrelaible/untrusted tool and equipment they use for adventure is banned. You are arguing as if people are banned. But they are not.
- satvikpendem 4y ago
  This is the Paradox of Tolerance in action. One must fight against intolerance in order to preserve their tolerant ideals in the first place. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
  - stametseater 4y ago
    Of course the clear meaning of this paradox is that everybody who disagrees with me is intolerant of me, therefore it is my moral imperative to be intolerant to everybody I oppose. /s Or here's a better idea: The Golden Rule. Eye for an eye is how you run a war, not a civil society.
    - satvikpendem 4y ago
      That doesn't always work so well. If some Viking expedition is coming to pillage your "civil society," for example, there's really not much you can do except to fight. Of course, you can decide who to support or oppose as your moral imperative, but don't be surprised if it has negative consequences to you.
      - stametseater 4y ago
        If a war comes to you, then you've got to fight a war and an eye for an eye is the way to do that. But that's no principle on which to organize a civil society.
  - pyuser583 4y ago
    America used the Paradox of Tolerance to outlaw left wing parties during the Cold War and WWI. It has a really nasty history. It’s not common for tolerant societies to descend into despotism. Liberal deco meadows are very resilient. Allowing intolerance is usually better than systematic political suppression.
- pyuser583 4y ago
  Hasn’t America traditionally regulated foreign press ownership? It’s not like we would let the Soviets, Nazis, British, Prussians, etc just buy the New York Times. And non-news media has been protectionist too. We allow foreign news distribution - but there are limits.
solarpunk 4y ago
This is just censorship apologia.
Hilarity1 4y ago
TikTok is one vehicle for influence - and there are hundreds. Millions use TikTok. To them, you’re not removing their “adversary”, you’re removing their fun. From the outside, this looks like the United States is controlling the media - something it’s already accused of by 1/2 of Americans. This action will reiterate that for some and make it true for more.
- gonehome 4y ago
  New accounts on issues like this always make me wary of the 50cent party (kind of a case-in-point example of the kind of nation state influence operations and risk). [0] It shouldn’t have gotten to this level, but it’s where we are. Users will move to reels or something else that takes its place without the national security risk. [0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party
  - Hilarity1 4y ago
    I don’t even know what “reels” is. TikTok clone? And, yeah, I can see the apprehension regarding the new account.
    - gonehome 4y ago
      It's it's the meta/instagram tiktok clone.
      - groggo 4y ago
        It's a clone, but you can't directly compare one social network to another like that. There are differences in the culture and community that won't necessarily survive being transplanted.
        gonehome 4y ago
        I don’t claim there is nothing lost, only that the cost is worth it on net. An even simpler threshold is that banning it is a reasonable position to hold given the issue even if you may disagree.
andrekandre 4y ago
> it’s more the ability for CCP to leverage influence. like they cant influence twitter, facebook and all the rest?
- dragonwriter 4y ago
  > like they cant influence twitter, facebook and all the rest? Well, no, that’s more Maximum Bone Saw’s purview than the CCPs, and that foreign influence isn’t (at least per the initial list written into the proposed law) considered adversarial. (EDIT: That’s specific to Twitter, not Facebook and all the rest.)
  - andrekandre 4y ago
    i think the point is, banning tiktok just means influence can move to these other platforms via other means (troll farms etc), it doesn't solve the issue (unless you want to ban twitter et. al) but perhaps i am missing some obvious point?
    - gonehome 4y ago
      There’s a distinction between adversaries trying to cause trouble within American companies and a foreign hostile government effectively owning the company and dictating policy in its own interests.
      - andrekandre 4y ago
        if they were forced to divest from bytedance would that be satisfactory?
        gonehome 4y ago
        Probably? I think that was one of the options iirc (ownership by an American company via a sale), but I don't really know enough about the specifics to have a strong position on the implementation.
ramblenode 4y ago
This argument could make sense to me in a world where powerful corporations, PACs, and monied individuals didn't wield so much control over the media and politics. These domestic entities have far more influence than the CCP, and to the average American I don't think they are any less harmful. These entities profit from disunity and a chaotic government the same way a foreign adversary might. The current divisiveness in America is due to the outsized influence of powerful domestic actors. They are a much bigger concern.
- berniedurfee 4y ago
  Right… and they don’t want to share that power with an foreign entity.
throwaway4837 4y ago
This is an excellent point and I agree. Social media apps are basically brainwashing devices, and whoever controls the knobs and buttons can change how people think. Very easy to get radicalized with propaganda, or in this extreme case, even be convinced to end one's own life.
whoisthemachine 4y ago
Maybe we should then pass laws restricting what companies can do with our data? What kinds of algorithms they can run if they want to be treated as a platform rather than a publisher?

n0tahacker 4y ago

I think this attitude is wrong. A strong democracy doesn't need to fight "fake news" legally and doesn't need their own propaganda op in foreign states like Radio Free Asia etc. If you are banning foreign media in your own country, you are doing the same as China in the end. Why not establish a great firewall?

xcrunner529 4y ago
[dead]
collaborative 4y ago
A strong democracy does as it pleases within its democratic laws
gonehome 4y ago
Do you think the USG would have allowed the USSR to buy NBC? These aren’t new issues, there are certain types of corporations where there is a national security interest in American ownership and capability (see also: Intel). Ownership of airlines is another example, you can’t have a foreign controlling interest in a domestic airline (Richard Branson couldn’t save Virgin America due to this). There are good reasons for a nation to have rules about foreign control in certain types of companies that carry a national security risk.
- caf 4y ago
  In the case of airlines it is just straight up protectionism. There's no national security risk there: if push came to shove in time of war the government could simply seize the assets and operate them as they saw fit.
  - creato 4y ago
    If that’s your view, then it seems better to be up front about the ownership limitations than pretending otherwise until a war comes along and pulling the rug.
    - sudosysgen 4y ago
      It is already law in the United States that companies may be compelled to act in certain ways during emergencies. There is no pretending, it's all there in plain writing in the USC. Look up the Defence Production Act.
nanidin 4y ago
A well informed electorate is a prerequisite to democracy. Fake news and undue outside influence absolutely must be protected against.
- i-use-nixos-btw 4y ago
  A well-informed electorate isn’t a prerequisite to democracy. This is precisely why fake news proliferates - it’s relatively easy to elicit an emotional response, and that tends to win over critical thinking. While fake news and undue outside influence absolutely must be protected against, the line is hard to draw. For instance, would Snowden have been considered undue influence, would Wikileaks have been considered fake news, at least sufficiently enough to cross the ban threshold? There are pros and cons to both approaches, and it really doesn’t come down to whether or not people agree with a statement that contains such vague terms. It comes down to interpretation of those terms.
- mistermann 4y ago
  The government is free to add philosophy to standard curriculum so people aren't so helpless. It's funny it's not there already, with all the talk of the "need" for more critical thinking. Democracy theatre.
subpixel 4y ago
We are starting from a place of weak democracy. I don’t think the tea leaves can be read otherwise. We aren’t alone - but that’s not much succor.
shepherdjerred 4y ago
The United States does not have a strong democracy. Half (more or less) of the population believes the election was rigged.
- dragonwriter 4y ago
  > The United States does not have a strong democracy. Half (more or less) of the population believes the election was rigged. From various recent polls, it looks like somewhere between 30-40%, somewhere under 2/3 of Republicans and Republican-leaners and basically no one else.
  - soderfoo 4y ago
    30% is about par for the course when it comes to contemporary controversial POTUS elections [1][2]. It seems to ebb and flow: each side takes their turn being the aggrieved party and then alternate next go around (2000, 2016, 2020). Consecutive cycles of animosity on one side could be worrying. The tapestry of dysfunctional patchwork that make up the American Constitutional Republic, while tattered and frayed before, has found ways to persist. [1] https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2000/12/01/many-question-bush-or-gore-as-legitimate-winner/ https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2000/12/01/many-questio... [2] https://news.gallup.com/poll/4687/seven-americans-accept-bush-legitimate-president.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/4687/seven-americans-accept-bus...
    - rootusrootus 4y ago
      > Consecutive cycles of animosity on one side could be worrying. Is that not what we're experiencing now? It's hard to 'both sides' this issue with a straight face, when the biggest election denier in America is a former president and current presidential candidate. When was the last time that happened?
      - dragonwriter 4y ago
        > It’s hard to ‘both sides’ this issue with a straight face, when the biggest election denier in America is a former president and current presidential candidate. When was the last time that happened? The closest parallel was probably Aaron Burr and his…whatever exactly he was trying to achieve in 1806-1807 in the Southwest after being dumped as VP in 1804 in part resulting from Jefferson’s suspicions that he was trying to pull electoral shenanigans in 1800. But that’s a long time ago, in very different circumstances, and not a particularly close parallel. So, never anything really similar.
jsdeveloper 4y ago
> A strong democracy doesn't need to fight "fake news" legally and doesn't need their own propaganda your argument to me sounded like : > Brave people don't fear heights, you are brave and hence you should jump from empire state building. And you don't need protection, remember you are brave.
- goatlover 4y ago
  Since you are straw manning the argument, brave people should be protected from their foolishness by banning rock climbing and base jumping. How does that sound?
  - jsdeveloper 4y ago
    Your analogy is again flawed. Brave people are not banned, they are free to do rock climbing and base jumping. A specific unrelaible/untrusted tool and equipment they use for adventure is banned. You are arguing as if people are banned. But they are not.
satvikpendem 4y ago
This is the Paradox of Tolerance in action. One must fight against intolerance in order to preserve their tolerant ideals in the first place. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
- stametseater 4y ago
  Of course the clear meaning of this paradox is that everybody who disagrees with me is intolerant of me, therefore it is my moral imperative to be intolerant to everybody I oppose. /s Or here's a better idea: The Golden Rule. Eye for an eye is how you run a war, not a civil society.
  - satvikpendem 4y ago
    That doesn't always work so well. If some Viking expedition is coming to pillage your "civil society," for example, there's really not much you can do except to fight. Of course, you can decide who to support or oppose as your moral imperative, but don't be surprised if it has negative consequences to you.
    - stametseater 4y ago
      If a war comes to you, then you've got to fight a war and an eye for an eye is the way to do that. But that's no principle on which to organize a civil society.
- pyuser583 4y ago
  America used the Paradox of Tolerance to outlaw left wing parties during the Cold War and WWI. It has a really nasty history. It’s not common for tolerant societies to descend into despotism. Liberal deco meadows are very resilient. Allowing intolerance is usually better than systematic political suppression.
pyuser583 4y ago
Hasn’t America traditionally regulated foreign press ownership? It’s not like we would let the Soviets, Nazis, British, Prussians, etc just buy the New York Times. And non-news media has been protectionist too. We allow foreign news distribution - but there are limits.

solarpunk 4y ago

This is just censorship apologia.

Hilarity1 4y ago

TikTok is one vehicle for influence - and there are hundreds. Millions use TikTok. To them, you’re not removing their “adversary”, you’re removing their fun. From the outside, this looks like the United States is controlling the media - something it’s already accused of by 1/2 of Americans. This action will reiterate that for some and make it true for more.

gonehome 4y ago
New accounts on issues like this always make me wary of the 50cent party (kind of a case-in-point example of the kind of nation state influence operations and risk). [0] It shouldn’t have gotten to this level, but it’s where we are. Users will move to reels or something else that takes its place without the national security risk. [0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party
- Hilarity1 4y ago
  I don’t even know what “reels” is. TikTok clone? And, yeah, I can see the apprehension regarding the new account.
  - gonehome 4y ago
    It's it's the meta/instagram tiktok clone.
    - groggo 4y ago
      It's a clone, but you can't directly compare one social network to another like that. There are differences in the culture and community that won't necessarily survive being transplanted.
      - gonehome 4y ago
        I don’t claim there is nothing lost, only that the cost is worth it on net. An even simpler threshold is that banning it is a reasonable position to hold given the issue even if you may disagree.

andrekandre 4y ago

> it’s more the ability for CCP to leverage influence. like they cant influence twitter, facebook and all the rest?

dragonwriter 4y ago
> like they cant influence twitter, facebook and all the rest? Well, no, that’s more Maximum Bone Saw’s purview than the CCPs, and that foreign influence isn’t (at least per the initial list written into the proposed law) considered adversarial. (EDIT: That’s specific to Twitter, not Facebook and all the rest.)
- andrekandre 4y ago
  i think the point is, banning tiktok just means influence can move to these other platforms via other means (troll farms etc), it doesn't solve the issue (unless you want to ban twitter et. al) but perhaps i am missing some obvious point?
  - gonehome 4y ago
    There’s a distinction between adversaries trying to cause trouble within American companies and a foreign hostile government effectively owning the company and dictating policy in its own interests.
    - andrekandre 4y ago
      if they were forced to divest from bytedance would that be satisfactory?
      - gonehome 4y ago
        Probably? I think that was one of the options iirc (ownership by an American company via a sale), but I don't really know enough about the specifics to have a strong position on the implementation.

ramblenode 4y ago

This argument could make sense to me in a world where powerful corporations, PACs, and monied individuals didn't wield so much control over the media and politics. These domestic entities have far more influence than the CCP, and to the average American I don't think they are any less harmful. These entities profit from disunity and a chaotic government the same way a foreign adversary might. The current divisiveness in America is due to the outsized influence of powerful domestic actors. They are a much bigger concern.

berniedurfee 4y ago
Right… and they don’t want to share that power with an foreign entity.

throwaway4837 4y ago

This is an excellent point and I agree. Social media apps are basically brainwashing devices, and whoever controls the knobs and buttons can change how people think. Very easy to get radicalized with propaganda, or in this extreme case, even be convinced to end one's own life.

whoisthemachine 4y ago

Maybe we should then pass laws restricting what companies can do with our data? What kinds of algorithms they can run if they want to be treated as a platform rather than a publisher?