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South Korean regulator accuses DeepSeek of sharing user data with ByteDance
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- codydkdc 2y agom8 they shared their database with the entire world: https://www.wiz.io/blog/wiz-research-uncovers-exposed-deepseek-database-leak https://www.wiz.io/blog/wiz-research-uncovers-exposed-deepse...
- observationist 2y ago"Unintentionally exposed" and "deliberately gave" are two meaningfully different actions, both of which are examples of why much better regulation and legislation of individuals rights over their data are needed.
- tokioyoyo 2y agoIf they sold it, isn't that like what... literally almost every single company does nowadays unless you pay up?
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- nialv7 2y ago*even if you pay up.
- criddell 2y agoI don't think so. You can't buy user data from Google or Facebook or Apple or Microsoft and they probably have more of it than anybody else.
- bolognafairy 2y agoNo, but they let you leverage it.
- lolinder 2y agoWhich is in this case a pretty important distinction. Letting another company leverage user data within the bounding zone which you've defined is not the same thing as is being alleged here, which is actually sharing data. It's quite literally the difference between exposing a public API and actually handing over the contents of the database.
- tokioyoyo 2y agoFacebook buys (well at least used to) buy data from other brokers. So you can think Bytedance = Facebook, Deepseek = data broker in this scenario.
- inetknght 2y ago> Letting another company leverage user data within the bounding zone which you've defined is not the same thing as is being alleged here, which is actually sharing data. Both are real violations of users.
- lolinder 2y agoI didn't say they weren't, but it's an important distinction nonetheless.
- lmm 2y agoYou and I can't buy it because they don't want their competitors getting it. But they'll happily use it to target ads at you, and the US government has access to it and can use it to decide who they want to send their CIA kidnap-torture squads after.
- tiberius_p 2y agoLol I'm so glad I'm running it offline with Ollama.
- blackeyeblitzar 2y agoThat won’t protect you from its propaganda/censorship. Some versions of DeepSeek’s models have bias built in - as in it’s not just implemented by their service/app. But offline does protect you from privacy/security issues.
- gruez 2y ago>Some versions of DeepSeek’s models have bias built in Is this empirically supported? IME it doesn't hesitate to talk about Tienanmen Square or whatever, so if there's "bias" it must be very well hidden.
- blackeyeblitzar 2y agoYes if you search, lots of people have shared evidence of this. But it depends on which model you’re using, as some seemingly don’t have the bias built into their training.
- nickthegreek 2y agoAnd they also shared how trivial it is to bypass. It is one of the most uncensored released models that you can run privately from my understanding. If you have a better model for the OP to run, please present it. Edit: https://huggingface.co/perplexity-ai/r1-1776 https://huggingface.co/perplexity-ai/r1-1776 Just released.
- tiberius_p 2y agoThe 1.1B model which I used refuses to talk about Tienanmen Square.
- joseppudev 2y ago[dead]
- DyslexicAtheist 2y agowait, is this a bad thing for US Tech companies? Guess if that's a yes this is good for Europe?
- lelandfe 2y agoThe US decided ByteDance and TikTok were national security threats, so presumably this is not a "good thing" from the US's perspective.
- DyslexicAtheist 2y agoagain, ... bad for who? For Trump and his Silicon Valley sycophants? If that is a yes, then I don't see why this is a bad thing for Europe.
- xiphias2 2y agoThere was data sharing between Twitter, Google and Facebook as well. USA has to make a decision between safety and national security.
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- TheRealPomax 2y agoSorry how is a story about South Korea about the US?
- itishappy 2y agoDoes DeepSeek only share South Korean data?
- Sohcahtoa82 2y agoThis is my surprised face -_- If you're shocked or even the slightest bit surprised, then I can't imagine how blissful your life is to be so unaware about how much corporations are sharing data with each other. Like, I wholeheartedly expect that if I mention Beyblade toys on Facebook, then the next time I visit Amazon, they'll be suggesting Beyblades even if I've never even searched Amazon for toys, let alone Beyblade.
- KeplerBoy 2y agoThat's literally Meta's business model, they will happily explain how thats going for them in public investors' calls every few months. With deepseek and bytedance things are a lot less clear cut.
- simlevesque 2y agoThe terms of use of Deepseek make it very clear they will sell your data.
- baq 2y agowhat is less clear cut? you can safely assume they do at least the same things as meta.
- tokioyoyo 2y agoBytedance's entire business model is based on user-targeting and showing things what they might enjoy watching, so they can push more ads to them. I wouldn't be surprised if they bought the data to train their own LLMs.
- 4ndrewl 2y agoHow-so less clear-cut? Mysterious and Chinesey so perhaps?
- bolognafairy 2y agoThe ostensible business models of the companies at play. Stop looking at any opportunity to bark as Sinophobia.
- FpUser 2y agoHere is my story. I needed to buy central console for my car (purchased it a while ago in used cars lot). Went to Amazon and made my selection. Next thing is I see is the warning: this particular console will not fit you car which is MAKE: XXXY, MODEL: YYYY, YEAR: ZZZZ. How's that for data sharing.
- linkregister 2y agoAt some point you have entered your car data while searching for another car part on Amazon. Amazon caches this information.
- FpUser 2y agoI've never entered ANY car data online. Most likely it was sold to Amazon by my insurance company
- pertymcpert 2y agoNope.
- aaron695 2y ago[dead]
- rfoo 2y ago... in the same way a lot of website in this world 'shared user data' with Google. Through Google Analytics. Yeah, believe it or not. ByteDance has a cloud offering. And it includes a frontend APM product. And DeepSeek used that. How surprising! A Chinese company used a Chinese cloud. Oh, and chat.deepseek.com resolve to a Huawei Cloud IP address in China. It resolves to Cloudflare outside of mainland China, but who knows, maybe they just decided to wrap with another CDN and their servers are still on Huawei Cloud. So they sent data to Huawei, too. I repeat, H-U-A-W-E-I. That cursed telecom equipment company in the States.
- cscurmudgeon 2y ago> A Chinese company used a Chinese cloud. Using a Chinese company for every thing except for distillation for which they used OpenAI lol.
- kccqzy 2y ago> These references suggest deep integration with ByteDance's analytics and performance monitoring infrastructure I mean when I visit a random website or open a random app, I kind of expect that it will use something like Google Analytics or Firebase Crashlytics so that my "user data" is shared with Google. If the article wants me to feel outraged about this practice, I don't. I understand that analytics and performance monitoring are often outsourced to a third party, often without a choice of turning off the analytics and performance monitoring features in the first place. I use the DeepSeek app happily without giving it any data I consider private. I have a separate local DeepSeek distilled model for that.
- ChrisArchitect 2y agoRelated: South Korea bans new DeepSeek AI downloads https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43076325 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43076325
- xizst94 2y agoBruhh, your iphone and android will literally “share” what you are saying even in private with anyone they can find for advertising… so this should not be surprising
- cekanoni 2y agoLike there is no data sharing between OpenAI and other big tech in US....
- buyucu 2y ago[flagged]
- TheRealPomax 2y ago(a) The BBC is not America, (b) South Korea is not America. It helps to at least browse the first paragraph before commenting.
- tokioyoyo 2y agoTo be fair, British (e.g. Experian) and SK (e.g. Samsung) companies do the same.
- itishappy 2y agoFrom the 5th paragraph of the article, Americans are complaining: > Since then, multiple countries have warned that user data may not be properly protected, and in February a US cybersecurity company alleged potential data sharing between DeepSeek and ByteDance.
- bolognafairy 2y agoAlleging something is not complaining. It’s just…a statement. What do you want?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- TheRealPomax 2y agoI guess we know how many bots are commenting on this article based on how many of them are talking about the US, when the article is about South Korea?
- sumeno 2y agoDoes that make you a bot for not realizing the article also talks about US researchers coming to a similar conclusion?
- TheRealPomax 2y agoFor a single sentence on an entire article about South Korea and a pundit comment by a company whose job it is to look at this sort of thing? If you pick the US as your thing to comment on in an article like this, maybe you're just a bot, or even hired hand, for making comments about the US without bothering to understand that you're obviously commenting out of place.
- varenc 2y agoSome missing context is that the data is shared via the DeepSeek app's use of ByteDance analytics/configuration frameworks. So not a backroom deal where DeekSeek handed over the chat history for its user base, but rather ongoing analytics data being sent from the DeepSeek mobile app. Here's the SecurityScoreCard article that brought attention to this: https://securityscorecard.com/blog/a-deep-peek-at-deepseek/#bytedance-code-implications:~:text=ByteDance%20Code%20Implications https://securityscorecard.com/blog/a-deep-peek-at-deepseek/#... Besides the usual analytics data (device metadata, user behavior, app performance, errors, etc), it's possible raw chat data is being shared as well, but it's not a smoking gun.
- unclebucknasty 2y agoInteresting, but I don't think those details will be ameliorative to the people who are concerned (e.g. U.S. Congress). In fact, I wonder if it may further underscore their concerns, given that it surfaces the interconnectedness between all of these firms.
- bilbo0s 2y agoYep. No one cares about the details. (Heck, I'd be willing to wager good money that the politicians and most of their staffers don't even understand the details). In the end, it's just one more reason that Chinese models will not be legal in the US in the near future.
- ivewonyoung 2y ago> it's just one more reason that Chinese models will not be legal in the US in the near future This isn't about the model, it's about the mobile app. The open source model weights are different from the website and the app. The model cannot track you. Not just Congress, even techies can be confused about these things.
- pepinator 2y agoYes, exactly, what the guy above was saying is that they're just looking for excuses to keep people from using the Chinese thing.
- blackeyeblitzar 2y agoReminder on various DeepSeek problems: 1. DeepSeek is full of propaganda/censorship (https://arstechnica.com/ai/2025/01/the-questions-the-chinese-government-doesnt-want-deepseek-ai-to-answer/ https://arstechnica.com/ai/2025/01/the-questions-the-chinese...) 2. They already had a serious security and privacy issue when they left their database wide open and leaked everyone’s chat history (https://www.wiz.io/blog/wiz-research-uncovers-exposed-deepseek-database-leak https://www.wiz.io/blog/wiz-research-uncovers-exposed-deepse... ) 3. Multiple teams of security researchers found code that links DeepSeek to the Chinese government through China Mobile, who is banned from operating in the US (https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/researchers-link-deepseeks-chatbot-to-chinese-mobile-telecom-banned-from-operating-in-u-s https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/researchers-link-deepseek...) 4. Other countries like South Korea are banning DeepSeek already over privacy concerns (https://mashable.com/article/south-korea-blocks-deepseek https://mashable.com/article/south-korea-blocks-deepseek) Trump needs to enforce PAFACA and ban TikTok, but also ban DeepSeek, which has the same exact issues since it is also effectively operated by a foreign adversary and poses various security threats.
- gruez 2y ago>1. DeepSeek is full of propaganda/censorship (https://arstechnica.com/ai/2025/01/the-questions-the-chinese https://arstechnica.com/ai/2025/01/the-questions-the-chinese...) Your source doesn't even mention "propaganda". Moreover, while censorship is concerning is concerning, I don't see how that practically affects users. If I want to know how to center a div, who cares if it's cagey about what happened in 1989? "Western" AI is also arguably full of "propaganda/censorship". Remember when chatgpt just came out, and conservatives were lambasting it for being "woke"? >3. Multiple teams of security researchers found code that links DeepSeek to the Chinese government through China Mobile, who is banned from operating in the US (https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/researchers-link-deepseek https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/researchers-link-deepseek...) Seems like a nothingburger? "Neither Feroot nor the other researchers observed data transferred to China Mobile when testing logins in North America, but they could not rule out that data for some users was being transferred to the Chinese telecom." >4. Other countries like South Korea are banning DeepSeek already over privacy concerns (https://mashable.com/article/south-korea-blocks-deepseek https://mashable.com/article/south-korea-blocks-deepseek) That's what this thread is about. Many commenters have mentioned why South Korea's actions were dumb.
- yalogin 2y agoShouldn't this be the other way around? TikTok has the most user data for any LLM to train with. I bet they will make a killing with it, unless of course the CCP decrees that they share it for free.
- nomel 2y agoWhat useful textual user data do you see coming from TikTok? All the text seems very low quality, to the point where I naively assume that including it in training data would decrease performance.
- nextworddev 2y agoarguably video data is more valuable
- cwmoore 2y agowhoosh
- vineyardmike 2y agoAs the sibling commenter mentioned, the video data itself is useful as we see a rise in multimodal models, but also.. (1) all videos are captioned, automatically then often again by the content creator manually. This data alone is extremely valuable for training purposes. (2) the videos contain great information about slang terms, and youth vernacular. Which is unique data that is harder to find elsewhere. (3) young people seem to use TikTok as a search engine, so presumably some of the videos' content must be explicitly valuable enough as an information source, similar to YouTube.
- aboardRat4 2y agoFirstly, Bytedance is far more than just Tiktok. Secondly, most data in China is shared among most companies anyway, because, firstly, the government (not necessarily CCP) orders most companies to share data with "technological leaders" and "strategically important" companies, and secondly because computer security is mostly an alien concept to Chinese. Copyright (broadly speaking, most restrictions on unrestricted dissemination if data) is what is killing the US economy.
- LightBug1 2y agoI'll take "headlines that mean nothing when the world has given up the moral high ground" for $200, Alex
- yoyohello13 2y agoshocked pikachu face
- alexey-salmin 2y agoPlot twist: all these people sharing on twitter yet another creative way of mentioning Xi and Tiananmen in a conversation without triggering the protection (count to 11 in roman numbers, leetspeak etc) were in fact collecting the training data for the nextgen LLM-based protection. Well played!
- gruez 2y agoPeople had the same theory for chatgpt, except rather than Xi and Tiananmen, it was how to make meth and anti-"woke" topics.
- cscurmudgeon 2y agoA US Tiananmen-comparable example would be ChatGPT censoring George Floyd's death or killing of Native Americans, etc. ChatGPT doesn't censor these topics
- lmm 2y agoHuh? TPTB in the US do not try to censor those topics; if anything they encourage discussion of them (or at least did until this year). US "AI" systems censor much the same topics as US social networks, just as Chinese "AI" systems censor much the same topics as Chinese social networks.
- ta988 2y agoYes, they probably all do that. Anthropic primised to pay the winner that broke all their protections. That way they get tens of thousands of free workers trying to get the money. Much cheaper than $300k engineers.
- jingyibo123 2y agoThere's nothing technical about it. Funny when many people mentioned propaganda by Deepseek. You're seeing the counter-strike.
- russli1993 2y agoyou mean how every single US tech company shares data with Google and Meta? How you browse a website, and, in an instant, ads show in Meta products? "user behaviour and device metadata [are] likely sent to ByteDance servers", lol, all your user behavior and device metadata are sent to Google and Meta servers. South Korea too afraid to say the same thing about USA. And surprised Pikachu face about all the downvotes in this thread on users pointing out the same thing about US tech companies, lol, propaganda and ethnonationalism is a powerful force
- countrypao 2y agoMajor Chinese tech companies often collaborate with government entities, potentially compromising user privacy. Given China's regulatory environment, where authorities can access data held by domestic firms, users worldwide should exercise caution when engaging with platforms from such backgrounds.
- therealpygon 2y agoWhich countries don’t have a process for the same thing…specifically?
- derelicta 2y agoI think the problem can be solved easily by forcing the company behind DeepSeek to simply redirect all the data they've gathered on their user, directly unto a CIA database. Surely this will be considered a good compromise.