4 ms·

Can we please stop pretending China, as a national entity, is doing anything at all with TikTok USA? It is absurd and not worthy of a board like this. I'm sure

Can we please stop pretending China, as a national entity, is doing anything at all with TikTok USA? It is absurd and not worthy of a board like this. I'm sure many you know people that work at TikTok? This just isn't happening, at all. The sum total of what China is doing with TikTok is restricting what people in China see, which is what China is worried about.

aaomidi 3y ago
> It is absurd and not worthy of a board like this. I'm sure many you know people that work at TikTok? This just isn't happening, at all. Honestly, I feel like you're right. But at the same time, it'd be a genius strategy to destabilize a country. We'd be getting beat at our own game we pull on other countries.
xyzelement 3y ago
What justifies the strength of your confidence? From game-theoretic point of view: is China a geopolitical adversary? Yes. Does China control TikTok? Yes. Is TikTok a tool to tweak how citizens of your adversary think? Yes. Is that powerful? Yes. So the facts our - our adversary is in control of a tool which can influence how we think, which is valuable to them. We don't know for sure that they use the tool but... why wouldn't they?
- hwillis 3y ago
  > Does China control TikTok? Yes. No. Not in any meaningful way. The data and employees are in the US. Every intelligence agency in the US is watching those buildings and reading their data. The US has no laws against inspecting every single packet sent internationally, the employees are subject to US laws, and tiktok has distanced itself from china. https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/07/tech/tiktok-leaving-hong-kong-intl-hnk/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/07/tech/tiktok-leaving-hong-kong... They are not meaningfully different from any other US company. It's not like they don't give data to china: https://www.businessinsider.com/google-gave-user-data-to-hong-kong-authorities-last-year-2021-9 https://www.businessinsider.com/google-gave-user-data-to-hon... Tiktok is just the new banana republic, the new gulf war, etc. The US government is aggressively anti-competitive with non-domestic corporate threats to its largest industries. It has always attempted to destroy competition and maximize domestic control of furs, then produce, then oil, and now social media and advertising.
  - justrealist 3y ago
    Do you even read your own links? Google answered 44 police requests for user data. That's not the same as the TikTik firehose.
  - nikkwong 3y ago
    There are at least several credible reports from several Bytedance employees who claim that the CCP has a much stronger influence on TikTok than is publicly stated; as recently as a year ago. Even if those claims are not true for whatever reason—why is the claim that they want to polarize the west through TikTok hard to believe? We're currently in a zero sum ideological war with them in which they have meddled in at least two of our last elections, they have spyware in internationally exported Huawei equipment, etc. Their recommendation algorithm is a black box, and if they weren't doing anything heinous they could possibly provide some audit trail for US regulators or US employees to inspect. As far as I know they haven't provided much here to improve public perception or lower their risk of getting shut down.
    - rightbyte 3y ago
      > We're currently in a zero sum ideological war with them in which they have meddled in at least two of our last elections Oh come on stop with this. People need to chill.
      - xyzelement 3y ago
        Without taking sides on the content, your response to him sounds like what one would say after they ran out of actual argument.
        rightbyte 3y ago
        No, it is the response of someone about to become psychotic from all the war mongering that got into fashion lately.
        3y ago
- blackoil 3y ago
  > What justifies the strength of your confidence? Not OP but have a similar view. Behavior of TikTok isn't any different from other social media companies like FB and YouTube. The algos everywhere push higher engagement content and that is mostly dumb or polarising in nature. TikTok is in general averse to political content. It is full of misinformation but so is Youtube and Facebook. Short video is in general a worse format for nuanced content but great for engagement and AI. Now FB and Google have copied that. We should look at harms of social media in collective and not trying to find some political scapegoats ignoring the root cause.
  - xyzelement 3y ago
    I find your view true and naive at the same time. It’s true in the sense that all of these things are powerful and destructive. The naive thing is to ignore the added danger of the powerful and destructive thing being controlled by your adversary.
kube-system 3y ago
> Can we please stop pretending China, as a national entity, is doing anything at all with TikTok USA? You are arguing against a claim that the parent did not make. It it true that political polarization of rival nations is advantageous. It is also true that filter bubbles do this naturally. There's no need for the CCP to tell TikTok to politically polarize the content they show to people.
- hwillis 3y ago
  > There's no need for the CCP to tell TikTok to politically polarize the content they show to people. That's exactly what the parent was saying. > China's benefit to encourage moves in both directions It's disingenuous to suggest that people are talking about tiktok because they think it's just an inherently divisive app. If people want to ban apps that polarize people, twitter would certainly be higher on the list.
  - kube-system 3y ago
    We could also say: "It is to the US's benefit to encourage the Chinese people to learn about democracy." This is true. And it is a reason that the CCP has banned western social media. These facts do not require any specific action by US authorities to pressure US-based social media companies to carry it out, because those platforms are full of pro-democracy content already. > It's disingenuous to suggest that people are talking about tiktok because they think it's just an inherently divisive app. I didn't. There are many reasons people are talking about TikTok, depending on who it is and what they care about. There's not even a single US government view on the matter.
bronsonkhmai 3y ago
[flagged]
miles 3y ago
Analysis: There is now some public evidence that China viewed TikTok data https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/08/tech/tiktok-data-china/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/08/tech/tiktok-data-china/index.... "US officials have long insisted the Chinese government may be able to view the personal information of TikTok users — but that claim was purely speculative. Until now. "In what appears to be a first, a former employee of ByteDance, TikTok’s Beijing-based parent company, has outlined specific claims that the Chinese Communist Party accessed the data of TikTok users on a broad scale, and for political purposes."
stjohnswarts 3y ago
It's absurd to think that a country as adversarial to the USA as China would not take advantage of such a vast chance to poison the mind of America's youth. It's as obvious as night vs day. In this case that is Occam's razor.

aaomidi 3y ago

> It is absurd and not worthy of a board like this. I'm sure many you know people that work at TikTok? This just isn't happening, at all. Honestly, I feel like you're right. But at the same time, it'd be a genius strategy to destabilize a country. We'd be getting beat at our own game we pull on other countries.

xyzelement 3y ago

What justifies the strength of your confidence? From game-theoretic point of view: is China a geopolitical adversary? Yes. Does China control TikTok? Yes. Is TikTok a tool to tweak how citizens of your adversary think? Yes. Is that powerful? Yes. So the facts our - our adversary is in control of a tool which can influence how we think, which is valuable to them. We don't know for sure that they use the tool but... why wouldn't they?

hwillis 3y ago
> Does China control TikTok? Yes. No. Not in any meaningful way. The data and employees are in the US. Every intelligence agency in the US is watching those buildings and reading their data. The US has no laws against inspecting every single packet sent internationally, the employees are subject to US laws, and tiktok has distanced itself from china. https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/07/tech/tiktok-leaving-hong-kong-intl-hnk/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/07/tech/tiktok-leaving-hong-kong... They are not meaningfully different from any other US company. It's not like they don't give data to china: https://www.businessinsider.com/google-gave-user-data-to-hong-kong-authorities-last-year-2021-9 https://www.businessinsider.com/google-gave-user-data-to-hon... Tiktok is just the new banana republic, the new gulf war, etc. The US government is aggressively anti-competitive with non-domestic corporate threats to its largest industries. It has always attempted to destroy competition and maximize domestic control of furs, then produce, then oil, and now social media and advertising.
- justrealist 3y ago
  Do you even read your own links? Google answered 44 police requests for user data. That's not the same as the TikTik firehose.
- nikkwong 3y ago
  There are at least several credible reports from several Bytedance employees who claim that the CCP has a much stronger influence on TikTok than is publicly stated; as recently as a year ago. Even if those claims are not true for whatever reason—why is the claim that they want to polarize the west through TikTok hard to believe? We're currently in a zero sum ideological war with them in which they have meddled in at least two of our last elections, they have spyware in internationally exported Huawei equipment, etc. Their recommendation algorithm is a black box, and if they weren't doing anything heinous they could possibly provide some audit trail for US regulators or US employees to inspect. As far as I know they haven't provided much here to improve public perception or lower their risk of getting shut down.
  - rightbyte 3y ago
    > We're currently in a zero sum ideological war with them in which they have meddled in at least two of our last elections Oh come on stop with this. People need to chill.
    - xyzelement 3y ago
      Without taking sides on the content, your response to him sounds like what one would say after they ran out of actual argument.
      - rightbyte 3y ago
        No, it is the response of someone about to become psychotic from all the war mongering that got into fashion lately.
        3y ago
blackoil 3y ago
> What justifies the strength of your confidence? Not OP but have a similar view. Behavior of TikTok isn't any different from other social media companies like FB and YouTube. The algos everywhere push higher engagement content and that is mostly dumb or polarising in nature. TikTok is in general averse to political content. It is full of misinformation but so is Youtube and Facebook. Short video is in general a worse format for nuanced content but great for engagement and AI. Now FB and Google have copied that. We should look at harms of social media in collective and not trying to find some political scapegoats ignoring the root cause.
- xyzelement 3y ago
  I find your view true and naive at the same time. It’s true in the sense that all of these things are powerful and destructive. The naive thing is to ignore the added danger of the powerful and destructive thing being controlled by your adversary.

kube-system 3y ago

> Can we please stop pretending China, as a national entity, is doing anything at all with TikTok USA? You are arguing against a claim that the parent did not make. It it true that political polarization of rival nations is advantageous. It is also true that filter bubbles do this naturally. There's no need for the CCP to tell TikTok to politically polarize the content they show to people.

hwillis 3y ago
> There's no need for the CCP to tell TikTok to politically polarize the content they show to people. That's exactly what the parent was saying. > China's benefit to encourage moves in both directions It's disingenuous to suggest that people are talking about tiktok because they think it's just an inherently divisive app. If people want to ban apps that polarize people, twitter would certainly be higher on the list.
- kube-system 3y ago
  We could also say: "It is to the US's benefit to encourage the Chinese people to learn about democracy." This is true. And it is a reason that the CCP has banned western social media. These facts do not require any specific action by US authorities to pressure US-based social media companies to carry it out, because those platforms are full of pro-democracy content already. > It's disingenuous to suggest that people are talking about tiktok because they think it's just an inherently divisive app. I didn't. There are many reasons people are talking about TikTok, depending on who it is and what they care about. There's not even a single US government view on the matter.

bronsonkhmai 3y ago

[flagged]

miles 3y ago

Analysis: There is now some public evidence that China viewed TikTok data https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/08/tech/tiktok-data-china/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/08/tech/tiktok-data-china/index.... "US officials have long insisted the Chinese government may be able to view the personal information of TikTok users — but that claim was purely speculative. Until now. "In what appears to be a first, a former employee of ByteDance, TikTok’s Beijing-based parent company, has outlined specific claims that the Chinese Communist Party accessed the data of TikTok users on a broad scale, and for political purposes."

stjohnswarts 3y ago

It's absurd to think that a country as adversarial to the USA as China would not take advantage of such a vast chance to poison the mind of America's youth. It's as obvious as night vs day. In this case that is Occam's razor.