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Let’s be clear about one thing: it’s never about protecting the privacy of private citizens—that’s just the justification. Social networking platforms are amon
by tnt128 2y ago
Let’s be clear about one thing: it’s never about protecting the privacy of private citizens—that’s just the justification.
Social networking platforms are among the most effective tools for mass influence, second only to religion.
The U.S. has held a monopoly on this power, leveraging it to gather data on citizens worldwide and projecting our value systems onto others.
Banning TikTok is simply an effort by us to maintain that monopoly, and making sure a foreign adversary do not wield such power.
- avalys 2y ago[flagged]
- golemiprague 2y ago[dead]
- mullingitover 2y agoThe US censorship of Chinese social media apps on these grounds sure makes it look like China was completely justified in doing it first.
- some_random 2y agoCould you elaborate on that? I have no clue how the US banning TikTok for granting the CCP the ability to algorithmically influence the views of Americans somehow justifies the decade plus of the GFW, blocking Western social media, rampant censorship, etc.
- mullingitover 2y agoThe US government has never provided any direct evidence of their claims of CCP puppet-mastery, the whole thing is generally some combination of "Trust me bro" and "Well obviously China's government is gonna control a Chinese company." Meanwhile China's reasoning for blocking US companies has been eerily similar arguments the entire time. Hard to prove them wrong when we have the major aristocrats of US tech companies completely prostrating themselves at Mar-a-Lago, offering bribes (er, sorry, the going term is "funding inauguration parties") to the incoming administration in broad daylight, staffing themselves with party officials, etc. Arguably both are right, and it's a shame because the general working class people of both nations have more in common with each other than they do with their ruling classes. I think the thing that terrifies those in authority the most is the idea that the citizenry might realize this if there's enough communication.
- Raidion 2y agoI think the OP is saying that both nations are banning software because of the risks of the software/data collection posing risks to the political stability of each nation. You can obviously say "our reason is better because X", but the outcomes being the same means that there is justification. Both sides say it's worth banning "Tiktok/Google for granting the CCP/USA the ability to algorithmically influence the views of Chinese/Americans".
- tnt128 2y agoData sovereignty — the idea that every country should protect and prevent its citizens’ data from foreign entities. We never discussed this seriously before because we held a monopoly on it. For decades, other countries provided us with a direct feed of their data. Only recently have they begun to grasp the ramifications of that. China never bought into that narrative. They have consistently upheld their data sovereignty policy, requiring foreign entities to host servers within their borders to operate, and that looks like the direction the rest of the world is heading. I wish for an open world where data & communication flows freely, but it's unclear who can be trusted to wield that power.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- TulliusCicero 2y ago??? Isn't it the reverse? China has censored/banned many US apps and websites for a long time, surely turnabout is fair play? Hell, TikTok itself is already banned in China, irony of ironies.
- tnt128 2y agoChina didn’t ban U.S. apps. it maintains a policy that sets a high bar for foreign operators, such as requiring domestic servers, domestic partners legally responsible for operations, content access and moderation to meet local standards, etc. U.S. apps and websites simply choose not to operate there due to these requirements. The U.S. has been complaining about this for years, advocating for a free internet without censorship in the Chinese market. But now that Chinese apps have access to American data, we’ve begun implementing the same measures.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- theultdev 2y ago> content access and moderation to meet local standards what a nice way to say forcing a backdoor to identify, spy on, and oppress citizens. but yeah I guess oppression of people is a "high bar" for foreign operators to meet. backdoors are wrong here and are wrong there.
- rez9x 2y agoWe can't have people doing things like searching for Tiananman Square or Mao Zedong or talking about how Taiwan and Hong Kong want complete independence from China. I'm sure a big part of the cost is the additional infrastructure and manpower to implement all of China's censorship, tracking, etc.
- TulliusCicero 2y agoAh, more misinformation from the PRC defense squad, right on time! > China didn’t ban U.S. apps. Yes, it did. It's not just that the websites and apps don't operate as normal businesses within China, but you can't even reach the foreign versions from within China without using a VPN. That's what makes them truly banned. There are plenty of Chinese websites who do not operate as businesses within the US, but Americans can still freely access the sites if they want to, thus they're not banned. Please, read this and educate yourself about China's firewall: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_websites_blocked_in_mainland_China https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_websites_blocked_in_...
- hnpolicestate 2y agoThe difference being American citizens used to have the final say while the Chinese never did. Congratulations, you turned the U.S into an authoritarian clone of China.
- some_random 2y agoThat's mostly true and it's a good thing for the US to prevent hostile, autocratic, foreign powers from gaining undue cultural power.
- josho 2y agoI think you've been propagandized because having autocratic private institutions having undue cultural power is proving to be worse for our culture than anything a foreign country has done to us. Don't believe me, we've got lots of data correlating the rise of social media and mental health crisis. As time moves on the evidence linking the two continues to become stronger.
- chinathrow 2y agoI guess the counterpoint here is that we have lots of data how external actors (e.g. Russia) is influencing large parts of the political landscape in Europe right now.
- some_random 2y ago[flagged]
- 8note 2y agohow would you describe musk's control of twitter, or Zuckerberg's over facebook and instagram? there's no democracy involved in the running of social media websites. the rules are what the boss says. sometimes the autocrat is benevolent, sometimes not. the CCP has been more better social media autocrat than musk has, and there is at least more people involved in decision making
- motorest 2y ago> I think you've been propagandized because having autocratic private institutions having undue cultural power is proving to be worse for our culture than anything a foreign country has done to us. That's pure, shameless whataboutism, and one that desperately tries to hide the fact that totalitarian regimes are using social media service as a tool to control you and your opinions. You can bring up any bogeyman you'd like, but you are failing to address the fact that these totalitarian regimes clearly are manipulating you to act against your own best interests.
- xnx 2y ago> Social networking platforms are among the most effective tools for mass influence, second only to religion. Fox News and talk radio demonstrate that isn't true in the US.
- some_random 2y ago[flagged]
- xnx 2y agoWhat are the driving platforms behind the American right wing? Fox News viewers watched 14 hours/week in 2022. The average US Tikok user spends 10.5 hours/week in the app.
- ToValueFunfetti 2y agoIf this is a question that can be answered with user-minutes, it's probably worth factoring in that TikTok has loads more users than Fox News has viewers. I (naturally) can't find a MAU for Fox News, and I can't find a DAU for TikTok, but the apples to oranges comparison is 1.6M daily viewers at Fox to 120M MAU at TikTok, so we're probably talking at least an order of magnitude.
- drawkward 2y agoI think that the amount of information one can consume on tiktok in 1 hour is FAR more than the amount of information one can consume on Fox in 24 hours, nevermind the 10.5-to-14 ratio you cite.
- xnx 2y agoTrue. Fox News picks a few storylines for the day/week and emphasizes them over and over: e.g. LA wildfires are the fault of woke liberals, etc.
- anigbrowl 2y agoJust yesterday the US Senate was holding confirmations for Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense. For the last 10 years he's been a co-host on a Fox News show. I suggest making a substantive argument instead of just posting snark.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago> it’s never about protecting the privacy of private citizens—that’s just the justification ...but it wasn't. It was clearly and explicitly about national security.
- andrewla 2y ago> Social networking platforms are among the most effective tools for mass influence, second only to religion. There is no evidence for this belief. Really for either religion or for "social networking platforms". You could maybe make the claim that this is true in terms of reach, but the implication here is that "these mediums can be used deliberately to influence people in a chosen direction", and this is just kind of silly. It's fun to imagine that some nefarious powers (or benificent powers) have some magical insight into how to make people believe things but this just isn't true and I think intuitively we all understand that. To make the case that this is true you would have to do an examination of all attempts to spread messages, not just look at successful cases where messages catch on. Nobody has the power to do this on demand through some principled approach, or else they would be emperor of the world.
- drawkward 2y agoI don't recall legacy media spreading tourettes-like tics... https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9553600/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9553600/
- andrewla 2y agoAre you implying that this was a deliberate attempt by an agent to create tourettes-like tics? Are you also asserting that this hypothetical boogieman can do similar attacks on demand because of their understanding of social contagion [1]? The idea of social networking (or other broadcast or widely disseminated media) being able to influence beliefs or behavior is kind of inarguable. In specific cases there might be causal confusion - whether the media was effective because of existing trends or piggybacked on other phenomena vs. creating the effect directly. But this is a far cry from claiming that it can be deliberately weaponized, or that it is more effective for this purpose than other means of information dissemination. [1] Social contagion, a phenomenon that long predates the internet
- drawkward 2y agoI am simply providing evidence for the claim >Social networking platforms are among the most effective tools for mass influence
- hnpolicestate 2y agoIt demonstrates Western weakness. Remember, during the Cold war the "iron curtain" was meant to prevent Soviets from seeing Western culture, political points of views. The United States does not feel confident in its ability to persuade Americans that it's model, culture and political ideals are superior to global alternatives. Hence a Western Iron Curtain.
- antiterra 2y agoSimple exposure to culture, propaganda and points of view is child’s play compared to the modern strategy of inciting discord by amplifying existing differences and mass scale disinformation. Don’t forget that part of the reason there’s a compartmentalization between Douyin and Tiktok is China’s own concerns about their nationals being exposed to outside influence in a manner far greater than what the US dictates the other way. I really enjoyed TikTok and will miss it, but it’s hard to argue that it didn’t at least provide the potential for the CCP to more directly have an intentionally negative influence on western audiences.
- hnpolicestate 2y agoYou fundamentally misunderstand the rights American citizens have that are being violated. The government doesn't get to decide where it's citizens get their information from. We're supposed to be free to come to our own conclusions even if presented with propaganda and disinformation. Once the government decides it has the right to curate what media it's citizens are exposed to you are living in a n authoritarian state. These actions make me more hostile to my country.
- antiterra 2y agoI made no assertions as to whether or not this was an appropriate trade-off. The issue at hand, however, is not about any particular media content being censored but about the manipulation of how that media is presented or suppressed by a foreign source. I think people should be given the freedom to choose what to view, but I am also not naive enough to think that we as a whole are not susceptible to influence, often without even being aware of how we are influenced. To the end that the US has a national security interest here: We have other laws on foreign political influence like FARA and the Logan Act that have similar tradeoffs around free speech and free association, but these elicit much less controversy. There’s a fundamental question: should the ideals of free speech be allowed to undermine the framework that allows that free speech to exist? To some, saying yes to that question is like arguing the US Constitution is a death pact.
- Karrot_Kream 2y agoRepeating my other comment: Here's my big concern: If every big social media provider has to bake American policy position into its algorithm, what's going to happen to approaches like Bluesky or Mastodon/ActivityPub which allow users to choose their own algorithm? From here on out, are only US government collaborating social media apps going to be allowed to scale? If so that is a chilling effect on speech. I want to use my own algorithm. I don't need China nor the USG to tell me what I want to watch. I'm perfectly willing to write my own feed algorithm to do it, I tinker with several on Bluesky right now. Will this be banned?
- bastardoperator 2y agoIs there even a single phone that doesn't have a component that's derived from China? It's never been about security. I agree, the US wants access and they can't make a foreign company comply, even trying exposes the US. Other countries have rules, make rules, the reality is they don't want to make rules because that might persuade foreign companies from not doing business here. Why make rules when you can get a warrant from a fisa court preventing any and all public scrutiny and getting everything you want?
- BLKNSLVR 2y agoGives you some idea of the massive amount of data available to US authorities derived from the US domination of privacy invading services. They know it's a threat because they wrote the book on it. That's also why we'll never get decent privacy legislation.
- JohnClark1337 2y ago[dead]
- eli_gottlieb 2y agoOk. What if I think nobody should have that power?
- Biologist123 2y ago> Social networking platforms are among the most effective tools for mass influence, second only to religion. Religion is distributed through churches, synagogues, mosques etc, the medieval equivalent of a digital social platform. A social media platform is kinda like the Vatican but x10000000.