8 ms·
Spying and data collection isn't remotely the main concern. The main concern is control over how Americans consume information. See e.g. https://networkcontag
by readams 3y ago
Spying and data collection isn't remotely the main concern. The main concern is control over how Americans consume information.
See e.g. https://networkcontagion.us/wp-content/uploads/A-Tik-Tok-ing-Timebomb_12.21.23.pdf https://networkcontagion.us/wp-content/uploads/A-Tik-Tok-ing...
"The conclusions of our research are clear: Whether content is promoted or muted onTikTok
appears to depend on whether it is aligned or opposed to the interests of the Chinese
Government. As the summary data graph below illustrates, the percentages of TikTok posts out
of Instagram posts are consistently range-bound for general political and pop-culture topics, but
completely out-of-bounds for topics sensitive to the Chinese Government."
It's not even theoretical. This is happening now.
- justrealist 3y agoIt's honestly incredibly lucky for us that the Chinese propagandists couldn't resist pulling the bias trigger over issues that don't really matter. Talk about keeping your powder dry. They could easily have pretended TikTok was a neutral actor until they needed to sway US opinion over Taiwan (or something bigger). Instead they made the control obvious on a dozen issues and are going to get cut off way earlier.
- alephnerd 3y agoHaving travelled across Asia, TikTok has definetly played a major role in helping build Chinese soft power. Vietnam for example is fairly anti-China due to memories of the Sino-Vietnamese War, the PRC's support of the Khmer Rouge (edit: spelling), and the South China Sea dispute, but in my experience views among the younger generation have started to trend towards a Chinese view of the world because of TikTok. South Korea and Japan still have massive soft power in the region, yet products like TikTok are definetly undermining it.
- SR2Z 3y agoIt's also been a huge part of why Gen Z skews extremely anti-Israel, IMO. There is a _massive_ anecdotal gap between TikTok users and people of the same age who avoid it in my experience. (not to say that criticism of Israel's handling of the war isn't valid, of course)
- alephnerd 3y ago[flagged]
- robocat 3y agoDo you think that Hamas (or supporting countries) has successfully been using psyops/propoganda? Anti-Israel skew is not being driven by government interests. Well, except for multiple hamfisted footguns by Israel (where their influence has backfired causing harm to Israel).
- op00to 3y agoI think it's other actors (China, Russia) who are driving discord in the rest of the world, including stoking the fires in the middle east.
- Biganon 3y agoSmall nitpick: Khmer Rouge*
- alephnerd 3y agoDoh! Fixed.
- bjourne 3y agoHas this report been peer-reviewed or published in a reputable journal? Otherwise I would just dismiss it as more pro-regime propaganda from another American think tank.
- phantomathkg 3y agoAre you saying anything anti-china is pro-us-regime?
- ziddoap 3y agoNo, it doesn't look like they said that.
- sorenjan 3y ago"Among adults, those ages 18 to 29 are most likely to say they regularly get news on TikTok. About a third of Americans in this age group (32%) say they regularly get news there" https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/11/15/more-americans-are-getting-news-on-tiktok-bucking-the-trend-seen-on-most-other-social-media-sites/ https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/11/15/more-amer...
- notyourwork 3y agoThis is extremely concerning that perception of current affairs is fed to people using social media.
- tharmas 3y agoNot sure if this is sarcasm but the main stream media are basically propaganda. MSNBC, CNN, FOX NEWS, WASH POST, NYT et al. AIPAC wants Tiktok shut down because it doesn't censor content on Gaza.
- timeon 3y ago> main stream media are basically propaganda I'm not from US, rarely I have even watched anything from these (MSNBC, CNN, FOX NEWS, WASH POST, NYT) in my life. Blank statement like 'main stream media are basically propaganda' seems wild to me. There are also other 'mainstream media' from US... are those propaganda as well? Like AP? There is bias, sure, but how can you say propaganda? I read 'main stream media' - not just in English language and content there is not that bad - usually there is delay - which is good, because not everything what is posted is accurate.
- tharmas 3y agoRead Noam Chomsky's "Manufacturing Consent". Then you'll realize where my "wild" statements are coming from.
- 3y ago
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- wanderr 3y agoIIRC, they did not even bother to align the dates when comparing hashtags, i.e. this includes many instagram posts from before TikTok existed.
- thiagoharry 3y agoSo China sells its point so well that all the numerous tools and huge amounts of money that the United States also has to propagate its point of view and guarantee its own soft power has difficulty competing with a single Chinese tool, and this within its own territory? Or perhaps the problem is that they don't want a Chinese social network to have access and control over people's data, but neither they want to pass laws to protect people privacy like what EFF proposes because the American government also do not want to forfeit the access and control over people's data?
- empath-nirvana 3y agoA) china doesn't let American companies operate freely in China. B) The united states doesn't _do_ state owned media in the United States. Even PBS and NPR are independent.
- ThePowerOfFuet 3y ago>B) The united states doesn't _do_ state owned media in the United States. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voice_of_America https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voice_of_America
- vundercind 3y ago“ Its targeted and primary audience is non-American.”
- freedomben 3y agoI agree that PBS and NPR aren't state-owned, but there surely needs to be a third option between state-owned and independent when they get funding from that source. Economic incentives can be some of the most powerful incentives and need to be clearly acknowledged.
- thiagoharry 3y agoA) China never claimed that it operates under a free market. Neither bully other countries if they do not behave as they dictate that a free market should be. B) Does not matter: it is not owning media that USA spreads its propaganda and soft power.
- Spivak 3y agoPlease people stop posting that "study" or at least read it before you take any conclusions from it. Good god it's terrible science. Like even if it's not obvious to you how using Instagram as a "reference" for hashtags is not a good baseline it still doesn't mean anything in terms of how the content is spread because how are you going to detect algorithmic boosting and suppression by counting user generated content? A million posts with #cheesetastesbad could get less actual views than ten posts with #pro-cheese. And this is before accounting for vastly different tagging culture between social networks and different users entirely. https://newsroom.tiktok.com/en-us/the-truth-about-tiktok-hashtags-and-content-during-the-israel-hamas-war https://newsroom.tiktok.com/en-us/the-truth-about-tiktok-has... > Blunt comparisons of hashtags is severely flawed and misrepresentative of the activity on TikTok. > It’s critical to understand that hashtags on the platform are created and added to videos by content creators, not TikTok. Millions of people in regions such as the Middle East and South East Asia account for a significant proportion of views on hashtags. Therefore, there’s more content with #freepalestine and #standwithpalestine and more overall views. It is easy to cherry pick hashtags to support a false narrative about the platform. TikTok could be completely totally bold-faced evil and this study still wouldn't be good evidence of it.
- DebtDeflation 3y agoIt's not even just how they promote/mute political topics. Watch Tik Tok videos in China and it's all young people helping the elderly, learning job skills, and doing other socially virtuous things. Watch Tik Tok videos outside of China and it's all videos of kids stealing cars, eating Tide pods, and pranking people in Home Depot.
- koube 3y agoI hear this a lot but I'm pretty sure China has mindless social media apps like we do. I think it's called Douyin or something, if you go to https://www.douyin.com/discover https://www.douyin.com/discover you'll even see the tiktok logo. I'm pretty sure you can only watch people help the elderly cross the street so many times before you start looking for something more entertaining. For example do an internet search for Chinese people live streaming under a bridge. I'm pretty sure these people are not all demonstrating job skills.
- Ferret7446 3y agoDouyin is Tik Tok in China. And no they don't, authoritarian governments have quite a bit of leeway in shutting those sorts of things down. While it can be bypassed, the average person isn't going to do it (or get away with it).
- almatabata 3y agoDouyin is TikTok but for China. Operated by the same company but with different servers (https://www.bytedance.com/en/products https://www.bytedance.com/en/products). And i am pretty sure they are effectively telling bytedance to get rid of things that would corrupt the youth (in the governments opinion). Like they banned effeminate man on TV: https://www.npr.org/2021/09/02/1033687586/china-ban-effeminate-men-tv-official-morality https://www.npr.org/2021/09/02/1033687586/china-ban-effemina...
- DebtDeflation 3y agoYou're missing the point. It's not about what content users in a country are uploading to the platform or wanting to consume on the platform, it's which content the algorithm promotes/mutes in a given country based on the wishes of the Chinese government.
- jerbear4328 3y agoThat whitepaper compares the counts of posts in a set of (arbitrarily chosen) hashtags to Instagram. All it proves is that the ratio of posts between these hashtags is different between TikTok and Instagram. Their findings are unrelated to whether content is promoted or muted, they only look at post count. They don't even determine that it isn't Instagram that is biased (as they only compare the ratios), and these differences can pretty easily be attributed to different userbases. They never explain how they chose hashtags that are compared, which could potentially be biased. This isn't to say that TikTok isn't doing these things. This PDF just doesn't prove anything, and its claims are overstated. See the discussion from this whitepaper was posted to HN at the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38754653 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38754653
- readams 3y agoI think you're somewhat missing the idea here. It's _not_ saying that China-sensitive topics are less popular on TikTok than Insta. It's saying that the difference between TikTok and Insta is _hugely greater_ for China hot-button issues than it is for other topics. It doesn't really matter how the hash tags are chosen; the fact that this is uniformly true, by a lot, for all the obvious hash tags you might pick is damning evidence.
- rightbyte 3y agoFundamentally, users should not use closed propertiary blackbox communication platforms I guess. But that is not the critique. The report is quite bad. There is no sensitivity analysis at all. Their methodology does not track bias but user base. I would discard it as a lobbyist hit piece.
- maxglute 3y agoOr it shows US platforms like instagram is thoroughly infiltrated by US propaganda. Or antiPRC people aren't likely on TikTok in the first place. Or how US misinformation networks can't be weaponized on TikTok in the same way as western owned platforms staffed by US ex intelligence. Both in it's abillity to inject narrative or control narrative of others. For all we know, TikTok is the baseline of global sentimentality and Instagram is anomolie of US influence operations. Is TikTok aligned to PRC interests, or neutral but only seeingly aligned because TikTok is simply not specifically aligned to US interests like other US platforms. Ultimately it's the latter that's the problem for US ability to shape narrative.
- alephnerd 3y agoPoint blank - why not allow Facebook, Google, and WhatsApp operate in China without governmental interference? If ByteDance can operate their platform in the US, then Meta and Alphabet should as well.
- maxglute 3y agoStraight up - because domestic players operate with government interferance. Which comes with onerous moderation overheads and compliance costs. Why should western platforms have competitive advantage of... not? Like this is simple as hell. Why should western platforms not follow onerous PRC compliance that PRC companies have to follow? Bytedance operates with respect to US law. If US wants reciprical PRC arrangement, like US platforms operate in PRC, they can legislate to force Bytedance to have local proxy like Oracle, or divest. The former fell apart. TikTok move to silo US data out of PRC... but still accused of retaining access. As if Microsoft in PRC is completely siloed. Regardless, until then, Bytedance is going to abuse the full extent of US law, including 1st amendment challenges. Then it's on Bytedance to comply or withdrawl. They'll likely do the latter and PRC retaliation will be calibrated on whether TikTok is just gone from US or world via app store bans.
- alephnerd 3y agoFair enough! Sorry for being a bit snippy - there have been some weird takes on both sides of this, so I have a bit of a short fuse. > Microsoft in PRC is completely siloed MS China (or at least Azure and all their Enterprise SaaS offerings) are a reskin around Tencent Cloud and Tencent's Enterprise SaaS offerings. Most American Enterprise SaaS Vendors won't sell their product directly in China as Chinese IP Law around Software Patents is a bit unfriendly to foreign offerings. It has lead to the development is a pretty cool domestic Enterprise SaaS market in China though, and has had a positive downstream impact such as with KubeAdmiral. IMO, a western Open Core startup would have an easier time targeting the Chinese market as you can create two different enterprise SKUs - one for China and one for the rest - and not have to worry about IP Law hassles.
- corv 3y agoAnother way of going about it would be to require transparent algorithms. Any mass media platform could be problematic regardless of who owns it.
- johnea 3y agoPolicy makers have clearly spoken: If China wants US citizen data, they should buy it from data brokers like everyone else!
- jredwards 3y agoI'm glad this is the top comment. I see this misconception in every conversation about this issue.