5 ms·

This case is very interesting to me. China is clearly using TikTok for the nefarious purposes and it is clearly perceived as threat, while West wasn't able to d

This case is very interesting to me. China is clearly using TikTok for the nefarious purposes and it is clearly perceived as threat, while West wasn't able to do anything about it for a while due to Western way of conducting business and following laws.

krapp 2y ago
What clearly nefarious purposes are you referring to? As far as I know, the argument for forcing TikTok to divest is simply that Americans don't trust a Chinese owned company not to be used as a secret CCP weapon to undermine American democracy as a pretext to total war (or something,) but TikTok hasn't actually done anything to merit that mistrust. They're just another app full of memes.
- newprint 2y ago
  > They're just another app full of memes. That meme app got banned from US military bases. > TikTok hasn't actually done anything to merit that mistrust. Between dumping all the info to China and having an excellent exploit window on millions of phones, don't see why we should trust them ?
  - krapp 2y ago
    I don't see why we should trust them any less than our own government and its relationship with every domestic large social media platform. I couldn't care less if China gets my TikTok browsing history or whatever, they can't touch me. I do care that my own government seems to be rapidly trying to censor and weaponize social media while telling me to stay scared of a nebulous foreign enemy they've been trotting out in the name of authoritarianism since the 1950s. All of our data is already being sent to the NSA and they probably already have root on every electronic device you use, and they still kill people over metadata. Meanwhile someone's Google search/maps history can land them behind bars in some states, just for reading the wrong books or searching for the wrong kinds of medicine, because it turns out inalienable rights are very much alienable. So yeah. Tell me why I should be more concerned about what China might do, as opposed to what my own government is already doing?
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - alanwreath 2y ago
      It’s easy to dream up scenarios from something as simple as the way that China treats GPS: in addition to the regular block-google-maps-from-showing-military-bases they also use an entirely different system whose purpose is only to occlude real locations (https://medium.com/@anastasia.bizyayeva/every-map-of-china-is-wrong-bc2bce145db2 https://medium.com/@anastasia.bizyayeva/every-map-of-china-i...) TikTok harvests the very thing china occludes.
      - krapp 2y ago
        I don't understand what the implied threat is supposed to be here. That TikTok harvests... American GPS data? That the CCP might use TikTok to find the real world locations of American military bases? How would that even work? Why would China need TikTok to accomplish this? They have spy satellites. If they want to send the ICBMs over they already know where Washington DC is. This is comic book logic, this isn't rational.
        alanwreath 2y ago
        Again, there must be value to China with regard to GPS data if they have spent so much effort in obscuring it for so long. Therefore it would make sense that there is an interest in harvesting it. It shouldn’t be required of me to dream up scenarios that you may or may not agree with. You have no view into their government or our government either. But to play the game, as you’ve already pointed out: anyone can determine military base locations without the thousands of social media accounts in TikTok that would dot those bases. So what could that give them? Correlation. I’m sure that there are plenty of different avenues they have to get intel on who works where, and as a government contractor we received plenty of training to avoid publishing it anywhere (e.g on LinkedIn or Facebook). Would a government, that harvests data for future use, limit itself to a few chosen avenues?
    - staticautomatic 2y ago
  - amadeuspagel 2y ago
    I like the idea that everything that's banned from military bases should be banned everywhere. That's definitely the way to run a free country.
- orangecat 2y ago
  As far as I know, the argument for forcing TikTok to divest is simply that Americans don't trust a Chinese owned company not to be used as a secret CCP weapon Essentially yes, and that seems like a perfectly valid argument to me. TikTok hasn't actually done anything to merit that mistrust They've lied about storing data in China and spied on journalists. But that actually doesn't matter; the point is that it's crazy to allow the Chinese Communist Party to have access to loads of personal information about hundreds of millions of Americans.
ahtaarra 2y ago
[flagged]
- newprint 2y ago
  So you are saying that if the US audited the entire TikTok cloud stack and code, this all could have been avoided ?
  - ahtaarra 2y ago
    Not the US govt. but independent audits of TikTok US from e.g. Oracle which never fully went through. I find the Tiktok ban more of a geopolitics thing, less of a national security reponse. You cannot just make assertions about something, and without substantiating them _adequately_, say 'they just told a lie, so everything that they said are lies'. This is rooted in an anti-China rhetoric and only undermines the US position since for more than a decade many western companies' complaints against Chinese partners were about forced technology transfers. Edit: correct wording and grammar
    - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
      > say 'they just told a lie, so everything that they said are lies' It wasn’t something random, he lied about the CCP’s access to Americans’ data. It almost doesn’t matter that he lied—the truth per se is enough to warrant suspicion.
    - digital_sawzall 2y ago
      They did go through and are currently on-going. I though I read that Oracle has full source code access.
- blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
  TikTok also lied under oath about where US data is stored [1]. So I’m not sure why anyone should trust anything about them even if they are sold. Even a code and security audit would leave a lot of room for things like AI driven feeds conducting propaganda campaigns. It’s not just code or infrastructure as a point in time but also data. In the end it comes down to trust. [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexandralevine/2023/06/21/tiktok-confirms-data-china-bytedance-security-cfius/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexandralevine/2023/06/21/tikt...

krapp 2y ago

What clearly nefarious purposes are you referring to? As far as I know, the argument for forcing TikTok to divest is simply that Americans don't trust a Chinese owned company not to be used as a secret CCP weapon to undermine American democracy as a pretext to total war (or something,) but TikTok hasn't actually done anything to merit that mistrust. They're just another app full of memes.

newprint 2y ago
> They're just another app full of memes. That meme app got banned from US military bases. > TikTok hasn't actually done anything to merit that mistrust. Between dumping all the info to China and having an excellent exploit window on millions of phones, don't see why we should trust them ?
- krapp 2y ago
  I don't see why we should trust them any less than our own government and its relationship with every domestic large social media platform. I couldn't care less if China gets my TikTok browsing history or whatever, they can't touch me. I do care that my own government seems to be rapidly trying to censor and weaponize social media while telling me to stay scared of a nebulous foreign enemy they've been trotting out in the name of authoritarianism since the 1950s. All of our data is already being sent to the NSA and they probably already have root on every electronic device you use, and they still kill people over metadata. Meanwhile someone's Google search/maps history can land them behind bars in some states, just for reading the wrong books or searching for the wrong kinds of medicine, because it turns out inalienable rights are very much alienable. So yeah. Tell me why I should be more concerned about what China might do, as opposed to what my own government is already doing?
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - alanwreath 2y ago
    It’s easy to dream up scenarios from something as simple as the way that China treats GPS: in addition to the regular block-google-maps-from-showing-military-bases they also use an entirely different system whose purpose is only to occlude real locations (https://medium.com/@anastasia.bizyayeva/every-map-of-china-is-wrong-bc2bce145db2 https://medium.com/@anastasia.bizyayeva/every-map-of-china-i...) TikTok harvests the very thing china occludes.
    - krapp 2y ago
      I don't understand what the implied threat is supposed to be here. That TikTok harvests... American GPS data? That the CCP might use TikTok to find the real world locations of American military bases? How would that even work? Why would China need TikTok to accomplish this? They have spy satellites. If they want to send the ICBMs over they already know where Washington DC is. This is comic book logic, this isn't rational.
      - alanwreath 2y ago
        Again, there must be value to China with regard to GPS data if they have spent so much effort in obscuring it for so long. Therefore it would make sense that there is an interest in harvesting it. It shouldn’t be required of me to dream up scenarios that you may or may not agree with. You have no view into their government or our government either. But to play the game, as you’ve already pointed out: anyone can determine military base locations without the thousands of social media accounts in TikTok that would dot those bases. So what could that give them? Correlation. I’m sure that there are plenty of different avenues they have to get intel on who works where, and as a government contractor we received plenty of training to avoid publishing it anywhere (e.g on LinkedIn or Facebook). Would a government, that harvests data for future use, limit itself to a few chosen avenues?
  - staticautomatic 2y ago
- amadeuspagel 2y ago
  I like the idea that everything that's banned from military bases should be banned everywhere. That's definitely the way to run a free country.
orangecat 2y ago
As far as I know, the argument for forcing TikTok to divest is simply that Americans don't trust a Chinese owned company not to be used as a secret CCP weapon Essentially yes, and that seems like a perfectly valid argument to me. TikTok hasn't actually done anything to merit that mistrust They've lied about storing data in China and spied on journalists. But that actually doesn't matter; the point is that it's crazy to allow the Chinese Communist Party to have access to loads of personal information about hundreds of millions of Americans.

ahtaarra 2y ago

[flagged]

newprint 2y ago
So you are saying that if the US audited the entire TikTok cloud stack and code, this all could have been avoided ?
- ahtaarra 2y ago
  Not the US govt. but independent audits of TikTok US from e.g. Oracle which never fully went through. I find the Tiktok ban more of a geopolitics thing, less of a national security reponse. You cannot just make assertions about something, and without substantiating them _adequately_, say 'they just told a lie, so everything that they said are lies'. This is rooted in an anti-China rhetoric and only undermines the US position since for more than a decade many western companies' complaints against Chinese partners were about forced technology transfers. Edit: correct wording and grammar
  - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
    > say 'they just told a lie, so everything that they said are lies' It wasn’t something random, he lied about the CCP’s access to Americans’ data. It almost doesn’t matter that he lied—the truth per se is enough to warrant suspicion.
  - digital_sawzall 2y ago
    They did go through and are currently on-going. I though I read that Oracle has full source code access.
blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
TikTok also lied under oath about where US data is stored [1]. So I’m not sure why anyone should trust anything about them even if they are sold. Even a code and security audit would leave a lot of room for things like AI driven feeds conducting propaganda campaigns. It’s not just code or infrastructure as a point in time but also data. In the end it comes down to trust. [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexandralevine/2023/06/21/tiktok-confirms-data-china-bytedance-security-cfius/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexandralevine/2023/06/21/tikt...