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It really is about national security though. Having talked with legislators and staffers on both sides of the aisle about this issue, they are massively concer

by genmud 4y ago

It really is about national security though. Having talked with legislators and staffers on both sides of the aisle about this issue, they are massively concerned about having a foreign adversary with the capability to inject social commentary and promote propaganda into 150 million americans media stream. The fact that this legislation helps american companies by fucking over bytedance and by proxy the pride of the CCP is just icing on the cake.

blacksmith_tb 4y ago
There may be a security angle, though I am skeptical; what's clear is that banning TT doesn't deal with the actual privacy implications of their competition for normal users. But of course that would be bad for business.
- genmud 4y ago
  It isn’t the privacy issue that’s the issue. It’s the fact they could leverage it in other ways, like for propaganda.
mrguyorama 4y ago
I 100% want to ban tiktok for it's insidious manipulative ability, and I hope that's not just a personal bias, but I still think the RESTRICT act is garbage and should die. "Why not Facebook?" people say. Well for one, absolutely why not ban facebook? They've already been caught trying to manipulate depressed teens without their permission. Arguably they should be under US jurisdiction and force of law, so you could claim we could at least restrain their ability to manipulate Americans, but we haven't exactly done that, and most powerful Americans seem to only care that they aren't manipulating the right people. If TikTok made an American subsidiary that was somehow fully out of reach of the CCP, then I would begrudgingly be okay with not banning it. I think that the short form, low effort, high noise environment of TikTok serves to make it more difficult to tell high quality information from low quality information, and that the "just keep watching the next video" format discourages you from actively thinking about what you just watched. I think these outcomes might not have been intentional, but I don't like them being normalized. The best example of this that I know about is the user Miniminuteman. He's a historian and/or archeologist who did tiktok stuff and eventually moved to do more stuff on Youtube. His tiktok content was short, high tempo stuff where you basically had to take his "debunks" of misinformation at face value, and trust his exact words, because that's all you can really put into a tiktok if you want to do well. Whereas his Youtube content is long form and goes really in depth to actually debunk historical misinformation, and has much more time and content to cite references, explain WHY something is inaccurate, explain how information came to be, and dig into a lot more detail. That detail is important in debunking stuff, because without it you are just another hot take.
ramblenode 4y ago
> Having talked with legislators and staffers on both sides of the aisle about this issue, they are massively concerned about having a foreign adversary with the capability to inject social commentary and promote propaganda into 150 million americans media stream. Replace "foreign adversary" with "American" and you have the status quo. This is the problem with the national security angle: when powerful Americans manipulate people into doing things against their own interest, sow discord in the public sphere, manipulate elections, buy officials, or engage in mass data collection it's somehow not a threat to "national security". Domestic powers have far more reach than China and have done what is functionally the same as a foreign destabilization/misinformation campaign. The politicians aren't concerned about it because they are in the club; they benefit. The real losers from TikTok are the political/economic elite because this is competition for them. To the average person a successful destabilization/misinformation/manipulation campaign would just be a bit more of what we already have.
trilobyte 4y ago
So glad people like you are pushing back on this nonsense. Whether a ban is the right approach, or just a band-aid, this is all a national security issue. No one can seriously look at the cyber security space over the past 5 - 10 years and not conclude there are nation-state actors exploiting technology for spying and cyber attacks.
jacooper 4y ago
Then the US shouldn't always go complaining when its companies(arguably a bigger spy network than China's) get banned too, not only China but around the world.
- genmud 4y ago
  US companies don’t operate as an extension of the US or the intelligence community like they do inside China. Sure, sometimes US companies will sell commercial data, but it isn’t something that they are forced into, like in other countries. The US also doesn’t have laws requiring companies to assist in intelligence collection. Even FISA courts have a process and follow specific legal procedures, which have been fought successfully when those requests are overly vague. We also have laws protecting US citizens from our intelligence agencies acting within the country, unless for counter intelligence or anti terrorism, which are done by domestic law enforcement.
  - jacooper 4y ago
    > The US also doesn’t have laws requiring companies to assist in intelligence collection. Huh? PRISM? CLOUD ACT?

by genmud 4y ago

blacksmith_tb 4y ago

There may be a security angle, though I am skeptical; what's clear is that banning TT doesn't deal with the actual privacy implications of their competition for normal users. But of course that would be bad for business.

genmud 4y ago
It isn’t the privacy issue that’s the issue. It’s the fact they could leverage it in other ways, like for propaganda.

mrguyorama 4y ago

I 100% want to ban tiktok for it's insidious manipulative ability, and I hope that's not just a personal bias, but I still think the RESTRICT act is garbage and should die. "Why not Facebook?" people say. Well for one, absolutely why not ban facebook? They've already been caught trying to manipulate depressed teens without their permission. Arguably they should be under US jurisdiction and force of law, so you could claim we could at least restrain their ability to manipulate Americans, but we haven't exactly done that, and most powerful Americans seem to only care that they aren't manipulating the right people. If TikTok made an American subsidiary that was somehow fully out of reach of the CCP, then I would begrudgingly be okay with not banning it. I think that the short form, low effort, high noise environment of TikTok serves to make it more difficult to tell high quality information from low quality information, and that the "just keep watching the next video" format discourages you from actively thinking about what you just watched. I think these outcomes might not have been intentional, but I don't like them being normalized. The best example of this that I know about is the user Miniminuteman. He's a historian and/or archeologist who did tiktok stuff and eventually moved to do more stuff on Youtube. His tiktok content was short, high tempo stuff where you basically had to take his "debunks" of misinformation at face value, and trust his exact words, because that's all you can really put into a tiktok if you want to do well. Whereas his Youtube content is long form and goes really in depth to actually debunk historical misinformation, and has much more time and content to cite references, explain WHY something is inaccurate, explain how information came to be, and dig into a lot more detail. That detail is important in debunking stuff, because without it you are just another hot take.

ramblenode 4y ago

> Having talked with legislators and staffers on both sides of the aisle about this issue, they are massively concerned about having a foreign adversary with the capability to inject social commentary and promote propaganda into 150 million americans media stream. Replace "foreign adversary" with "American" and you have the status quo. This is the problem with the national security angle: when powerful Americans manipulate people into doing things against their own interest, sow discord in the public sphere, manipulate elections, buy officials, or engage in mass data collection it's somehow not a threat to "national security". Domestic powers have far more reach than China and have done what is functionally the same as a foreign destabilization/misinformation campaign. The politicians aren't concerned about it because they are in the club; they benefit. The real losers from TikTok are the political/economic elite because this is competition for them. To the average person a successful destabilization/misinformation/manipulation campaign would just be a bit more of what we already have.

trilobyte 4y ago

So glad people like you are pushing back on this nonsense. Whether a ban is the right approach, or just a band-aid, this is all a national security issue. No one can seriously look at the cyber security space over the past 5 - 10 years and not conclude there are nation-state actors exploiting technology for spying and cyber attacks.

jacooper 4y ago

Then the US shouldn't always go complaining when its companies(arguably a bigger spy network than China's) get banned too, not only China but around the world.

genmud 4y ago
US companies don’t operate as an extension of the US or the intelligence community like they do inside China. Sure, sometimes US companies will sell commercial data, but it isn’t something that they are forced into, like in other countries. The US also doesn’t have laws requiring companies to assist in intelligence collection. Even FISA courts have a process and follow specific legal procedures, which have been fought successfully when those requests are overly vague. We also have laws protecting US citizens from our intelligence agencies acting within the country, unless for counter intelligence or anti terrorism, which are done by domestic law enforcement.
- jacooper 4y ago
  > The US also doesn’t have laws requiring companies to assist in intelligence collection. Huh? PRISM? CLOUD ACT?