13 ms·
The forced US hosted tik-tok sale is all about hiding information from the US public that most people in the rest of the world have easy access to.
by mark_l_watson 9mo ago
The forced US hosted tik-tok sale is all about hiding information from the US public that most people in the rest of the world have easy access to.
- kspacewalk2 9mo ago[flagged]
- direwolf20 9mo agoThe forced US hosted tik-tok sale is about stealing China's cyberweapon so our own elites can use it.
- aprentic 9mo agoWe have Trump's word on that. mark_l_watson has the more believable take.
- jfengel 9mo agoWhat kind of cyber warfare? Just knowing what kidz today are into? Or is it an actual malware? Is it targeting certain people? I'm sure it leaks privacy like crazy, just like any other social app. I'm just still unclear on just how useful it would be, and whether that really merited intervention at the very highest levels.
- kspacewalk2 9mo agoSomething along the lines of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywxENdhYoXw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywxENdhYoXw
- gruez 9mo ago>is all about hiding information from the US public that most people in the rest of the world have easy access to. Are we talking about the Trump administration or the Biden administration? The current ban was passed under Biden with supermajorities in both houses. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efforts_to_ban_TikTok_in_the_United_States#Biden_administration_(2021%E2%80%932025) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efforts_to_ban_TikTok_in_the_U... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protecting_Americans_from_Foreign_Adversary_Controlled_Applications_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protecting_Americans_from_Fore...
- duskdozer 9mo agoI think you'll find that pro-privacy, anti-right-wing people often don't have the highest opinion of "their" guy
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- throwforfeds 9mo agoBoth. I'm not sure why the meme on the right is that the left wants to protect Biden or anyone else. Who cares, they all can come crashing down.
- gruez 9mo ago>I'm not sure why the meme on the right is that the left wants to protect Biden or anyone else. No, the point isn't "protecting Biden", it's pure self interest. Tiktok is a social media platform that's very popular with Democrat's electorate and is already left leaning. Why risk it falling into the other party's control (especially near the end of Biden's term), just so you can maybe push more left leaning talking points?
- wat10000 9mo agoBecause the concept of limiting state power for when the other side takes power is not in the American political vocabulary.
- gruez 9mo agoThe difference here is that unlike expanding the NSA or DHS, control of tiktok doesn't pass to the next administration, because it's held in private hands.
- wat10000 9mo ago> Why risk [TikTok] falling into the other party's control > control of tiktok doesn't pass to the next administration Huh?
- reliabilityguy 9mo ago> the rest of the world have easy access to. Except for China, where TikTok is nothing like the TikTok for the rest of the world
- LauraMedia 9mo agoWhich is basically what the US also wants.
- Swoerd123 9mo agoexcept with a different brand of fascism.
- embedding-shape 9mo agoWhich used to be seen as "Ew, China has their own version? Crazy censorship" but after some time it seems like the US is aiming for the very same thing. Classy.
- andsoitis 9mo ago> hiding information from the US public It is literally on the front page of news papers.... Also, you can see it on Instagram, X, etc. Even a cursory search on TikTok reveals anti-ICE content...
- hairofadog 9mo agoTikTok is hugely influential, and the younger people they're trying to influence don't read newspapers and don't hang out on X or Instagram (both of which also censor certain political content). https://www.npr.org/2024/03/26/1240737627/meta-limit-political-content-instagram-facebook-opt-out https://www.npr.org/2024/03/26/1240737627/meta-limit-politic... https://www.reddit.com/r/OptimistsUnite/comments/1i9zf5u/rconservative_speaks_out_against_instagrams/ https://www.reddit.com/r/OptimistsUnite/comments/1i9zf5u/rco... https://arxiv.org/html/2508.13375v1 https://arxiv.org/html/2508.13375v1
- andsoitis 9mo agoI am willing to bet that the vast majority of young people are very much aware of what ICE has been doing. Do you believe otherwise?
- hairofadog 9mo agoThe question isn't whether they've been successful in hiding information. It's whether their goal is to hide information (or I would say, to control the narrative), which it clearly is. This is why the administration has gone out of its way to try to get Kimmel and Colbert off the air, why it has commandeered CBS and tried to kill 60 minutes pieces critical of the administration, why it violated the law in order to keep TikTok (already fervently pro-Trump) up and running, and why allies of the administration have been put in charge of TikTok after the transition. It's why Bezos is slowly strangling the Washington Post, why Patrick Soon-Shiong is doing the same to the LA Times, and why the administration is putting their thumb on the scale for Paramount, rather than Netflix, to buy Warner Brothers Discovery (which owns CNN). It's why Musk bought Twitter. It's why they blatantly lie in their press conferences and statements to the media about how the ICE killings happened. If you walked into a Turning-Point USA meeting in a high school, do you think the kids attending that meeting could accurately tell you what ICE has been doing? I don't.
- ericmay 9mo agoI've never in my life used TikTok. Can you please point to a specific article, news source, journal, any piece of information that is legal in the United States that I don't have easy access to so I can see what I'm missing?
- tdb7893 9mo agoLarry and David Ellison have been buying media outlets and those media outlets have started spiking (or delaying, editing, etc) stories that look bad for Trump. It's not that you don't have access at all, it's that these specific platforms are starting to suppress it. This is the notable example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inside_CECOT https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inside_CECOT
- andsoitis 9mo ago> It's not that you don't have access at all, it's that these specific platforms are starting to suppress it. This is the notable example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inside_CECOT https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inside_CECOT The 60 Minutes Episode on CECOT aired on Jan 18 and it is also on CBS News' website: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/what-deported-venezuelans-endured-at-cecot-60-minutes/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/what-deported-venezuelans-endur...
- woooooo 9mo agoAnd it got a Streisand Effect from the attempted scuttling. That doesn't change what they were trying to do, it just means they're not always executing perfectly. In the long run, they bought out some dying legacy media in CBS and social media has a short half-life. Nobody's saying they're geniuses but it's clear what they're trying to do.
- gruez 9mo agoIt got delayed, didn't it? In the meantime the news cycle moved onto Trump's intervention in Venezuela and even greater ICE violence. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inside_CECOT#Broadcast_postponement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inside_CECOT#Broadcast_postpon...
- mc32 9mo agoI wonder where all the TikTok videos are about all the tanks and hotel shoot outs in Beijing over the last week or so are… where various party factions fought it out over control of the central committee and you have the disappearance of various generals in the PLA.
- pjc50 9mo agoCare to elaborate?
- deadbabe 9mo agoMost Americans are unaware of how China is collapsing. All news is censored.
- pjc50 9mo agoYou must have heard about it from somewhere? Some reliable third party intermediary that is neither US nor China?
- buildbot 9mo agoI haven’t heard anything about this but the claim appears to be mostly true - https://spectator.com/article/has-xi-jinping-fought-off-another-coup/?edition=us https://spectator.com/article/has-xi-jinping-fought-off-anot... The spectator is allegedly a reliable media source, I am not personally familiar.
- techterrier 9mo agoIt is not. It's a contrarian newspaper, gives some interesting folks a platform, but mostly cranks.
- buildbot 9mo agoIs https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/the-spectator-usa/ https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/the-spectator-usa/ Wrong here? (I really don’t know, but it does seem that this info at least is coming from multiple places?)
- Aurornis 9mo ago> that most people in the rest of the world have easy access to The information is everywhere. Visit any news site, open any general social media feed, turn on any TV. We’re discussing it right now in the front page of HN! Everyone in the US has easy access to the same information. Acting like only the rest of the world has easy access to this information is ridiculous.
- bearjaws 9mo ago_you_ have access to it, for an increasingly large number of people TikTok is their only source of news. Same as Fox News or CNN, one news source. Censorship of TikTok is inevitable given the owners, and it will inevitably lead to a new news bubble.
- Aurornis 9mo agoI think you’re greatly overestimating the number of people who only use one social media platform and never check any other news source at all. TikTok users are also known for being experts at evading filters and censors. Remember the rising popularity of “unalived” when talk of suicide was filtered out on the platform? I’m not saying this ICE censorship is good, because it’s not! I’m saying it’s ridiculous to claim that only people in other countries have easy access to information.
- Forgeties79 9mo ago> I’m not saying this ICE censorship is good I hope not because it’s bad and that’s really all that matters in this conversation. And nitpicking whether or not there are other avenues for information is completely besides the point. I don’t even really understand what point you’re trying to make. If you think this is bad, then say it’s bad and we shouldn’t be ok with it. Saying “I’m not saying it’s good” then muddying the waters reads like you’re trying to defend the action.
- Aurornis 9mo ago> And nitpicking whether or not there are other avenues for information is completely besides the point That was literally the argument I was responding to and talking about.
- zzzeek 9mo agotiktok always censored, it's just now it censors anti-Trump content instead of anti-CCP content [1] both are bad, I liked when tiktok was supposed to be just "banned". it's always been a tool for repressive governments [1] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-11-28/tiktok-huawei-surveillance-censorship-in-xinjiang-china-report/11745494 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-11-28/tiktok-huawei-surveil...
- pousada 9mo agoIf it’s true for TikTok it will likely be true for all other forms of popular social media (twitter, instagram, etc) too, so a ban wouldn’t have made a big difference probably.
- direwolf20 9mo agoTikTok was the only popular platform where you could doomscroll and see bad things the US is doing. All others censored it to please the administration. And now TikTok does too.
- zzzeek 9mo agoI think platforms like Bluesky are better suited towards this and that's what people should be using
- direwolf20 9mo agoDoes Bluesky still randomly ban people?
- complianceowl 9mo ago[dead]
- palmotea 9mo ago> The forced US hosted tik-tok sale is all about hiding information from the US public that most people in the rest of the world have easy access to. No, at least during the Biden administration when the law was passed, it wasn't. This shit is a lot more complicated that a hot take based on today's news.
- nashashmi 9mo agoIt was even during Biden. The idea was to stop pro Palestine videos. Anti ice videos are in the same realm
- cael450 9mo agoForcing the sale of TikTok predates the current war in Gaza by a good bit. It's obviously a complex thing that encompassed a bunch of different people with different motivations. And considering there is pro-Palestinian videos all over American social media, I don't think it is kind of absurd to think this was the motivation.
- NoGravitas 9mo agoIt started out with the "China bad" narrative, but it only got bipartisan support and momentum when US people started seeing Palestinian videos on TikTok.
- nashashmi 9mo agoThe law for a sale was passed after Gaza. The thing you talk about is data sharing with China on Americans, and some in the Trump govt were opposed to this. That part was resolved with Oracle handling their servers.
- gradus_ad 9mo agoNot really. It was about preventing CCP control of information.
- Cyph0n 9mo agoThe CCP angle is the PR version. From last year: https://www.axios.com/local/salt-lake-city/2024/05/06/senator-romney-antony-blinken-tiktok-ban-israel-palestinian-content https://www.axios.com/local/salt-lake-city/2024/05/06/senato... Note that there have been multiple instances over the past two years of high level ex/current officials repeating the same general point.
- palmotea 9mo ago[flagged]
- Cyph0n 9mo agoIt’s January. My bad for not being as infallible as you are. That’s not what Romney said. His - and the wider establishment’s - concern is that unsanctioned content is allowed to be treated the same as any other content. Anyone knows that TikTok simply tailors your feed to your interests & interactions. But even this is not acceptable when it comes to topics the establishment doesn’t want disseminated. And if they had undeniable proof that TikTok was boosting/manipulating such content, why haven’t they revealed it now that TikTok US is under US control? But it’s okay to not be concerned. Just don’t come crying when the book burning starts.
- palmotea 9mo ago> That’s not what Romney said. His - and the wider establishment’s - concern is that unsanctioned content is allowed to be treated the same as any other content. The axios article you linked was not actually very clear about what Romney said, and the actual quotes are consistent with my points. > Anyone knows that TikTok simply tailors your feed to your interests & interactions. You'd have to be pretty naive to think that's all that it does or all that it will ever do. Think about it: the most effective kind of influence and manipulation would also be "[tailored] to your interests & interactions," and subtle enough that you don't perceive it as manipulation. > And if they had undeniable proof that TikTok was boosting/manipulating such content, why haven’t they revealed it now that TikTok US is under US control? They don't need undeniable proof, just like I don't need undeniable proof that I've been hacked to lock down my router. Are you saying I should enable remote admin and leave a weak password until I have undeniable proof I've been compromised? Because that's the standard you seem to be setting for mitigating vulnerabilities.
- lingrush4 9mo ago[flagged]
- amarcheschi 9mo agoHow is uploading video of Ice related operations brain washing?
- tehjoker 9mo agoAmericans have racistly insinuated that asians brainwash our sweet young people since the Korean War when we killed 20% of North Korea. POWs were treated somewhat humanely and educated by Korean communists, many of them denounced the United States for criminality. This led to a CIA program to try to replicate "brainwashing" including eventually the MKULTRA program. This kind of history resonates today as you can see people continue to make these kinds of accusations because we are the good guys and revealing derogatory information about our society is basically treason.
- crawfordcomeaux 9mo agoRights don't actually exist. That's a made-up idea to avoid the very real concept of human needs and putting liberation into that context. The issue is you can't easily justify oppressing people if you have a finite checklist of needs. You clearly can if you use a nebulous debatable term like "rights".
- conductr 9mo agoFor most, the deportation of criminals isn’t the issue. It’s the process and methodology being employed people are disagreeing with. It’s creating unconstitutional situations and chaos/death in the streets. People like you overwhelmingly misunderstand the position of others and in making incorrect assessments create more noise to divide the nation further. You try it is “criminal” to lump together the cartel death squad and MS13 street gang type people together into the same cohort as people who simply came here illegally and have lived here peacefully even contributing to our society and economy positively.
- thewebguyd 9mo ago
- cael450 9mo agoThis information is all over American social media... Even the article references that Megan Stalter posted her videos on Instagram.
- boelboel 9mo agoA lot of American propaganda hasn't been about strict censorship (as in making it strictly impossible to find out about things). It's about shifting the narrative enough. Most people have been made lazy enough to the point they don't read anything, certainly not fringe opinions. As long as people get their Mcdonalds, Soda and TV they won't do much. I don't think the original intent of the tiktok sale was about censorship as much as it was about the chinese not allowing american platforms in china. Doesn't change that they're trying to use it to its 'fullest'.
- roxolotl 9mo agoJust because the information is out there doesn’t mean it’s where people are looking. You see this based on the news people watch where things they don’t cover might as well not exist. Which has always been true but it’s especially true today.
- imgabe 9mo agoOf course, because TikTok is the only way people in the US can access information.
- SilverBirch 9mo agoNo, they also access information through Facebook owned by Trump ally Zuckerberg, X owned by Trump doner and DOGE former official Musk, or via media organisations like CBS who have recently had their editorial standards changed to be more friendly to the regime. It's fine though people can here about the regime through neutral pundits like Jimmy Kimmel, who definitely hasn't come under any pressure to comply with the regime talking points. It's alright we've got NPR, which is definitely not under attack. If you haven't noticed a sweeping attack on free speech in US media, then I just don't think you're paying attention, and playing it off as if it's "just" Tiktok is at best disingenuous.
- _DeadFred_ 9mo agoWe were so naive in the 2000s. 'Tech will democratize everything' forgetting they will just flood us with bullshit so that nothing means anything.
- imgabe 9mo agoYou flooded yourselves with bullshit. The people yearn for bullshit. Always have.
- jimt1234 9mo agoBack in the late-90s, I was watching a panel on CNN discussing the new "information age". Everyone talked optimistically about how the internet was gonna benefit humanity because people would be better informed - only the best information would make its way to the top, all the crap would be filtered out. But there was one naysayer, and I'll never forget what he said: More information is not better information. Others on the panel couldn't believe his cynicism; said he didn't understand people. I think about that a lot these days.
- 9mo ago
- dataviz1000 9mo agoIt isn't so much as the rest of the world having easy access. It is what the Chinese want the rest of the world to see. If you are in a South American country using a residential IP in new incognito session, doom scroll, after the initial disturbing content, you will start to notice videos of the United States government physically attacking people born in the country of the residential IP address. The TikTok algorithm in South America. Content about Tiananmen Square and Tibet gets filtered out. Content about the United States government rolling through protesters in armored vehicles, killing people in Venezuela with bombs, and threatening Greenland, straight to top of feed. The most brutally honest propaganda is always the most effective propaganda.
- potatototoo99 9mo agoTikTok US it no longer controlled by the Chinese.
- falcor84 9mo agoSounds like you're in agreement with the parent - outside the US, people see content that reflects poorly on the US, and which is blocked for US citizens
- buran77 9mo agoThe painful to answer question is whether the intention is to block the spreading of lies or the spreading of truth?
- bgirard 9mo agoWhen you have a personality disorder like NPD, you'll believe to your core that every criticism of you is a lie. When you're in an abusive relationship they say intentions don't matter, only impact does. Because victims often focus on the intentions of their abuser and stay in the cycle of abuse. Let me repeat it, intentions don't matter, only impact does.
- 9mo ago
- miki123211 9mo agoThe TikTok ban is the hammer, antitrust is the anvil. Without antitrust regulation, TikTok would have been sold to Meta, and that would be it. We'd have an even worse monopoly (which is not a good thing), but at least we wouldn't have this. With such regulations present, the US government both forced a sale and disallowed a sale to anybody who they didn't like, basically forcing TikTok to choose a government-approved partner. What did that partner do to become government approved? We'll never know. Antitrust in the US (and GDPR in Europe) give regulators wide latitude over who to prosecute and for what. This makes it much easier to do under-the-table deals to achieve objectives that you can't or don't want to achieve by regulation, like restricting free speech. Subjecting companies to such regulation was ok when it was about transporting cattle or selling bricks, but giving governments the ability to regulate companies that have a wide impact on speech, even if the regulations don't seem to have anything to do with speech, is just asking for trouble.
- elAhmo 9mo ago> but at least we wouldn't have this I think you might have forgotten recent moves from Meta about removal of moderation, relaxing rules on hate speech, settling lawsuits with Trump and similar moves that imply they wouldn't really fight hard against what this administration wants.
- xve 9mo agoIt's pretty clear this is a misuse of antitrust. Actually the details of these deals have very little to do with antitrust, it's likely simplecorruption. Antitrust might be used as a cover for those deals, not the other way around. The prevention of monopolies is one of the few regulations necessary for meritocratic capitalism to thrive.
- johnhenry 9mo agoBy preventing uploads, they are preventing the world from gaining access, not just the US public.
- reactordev 9mo agoNo, the rest of the world operates on different servers now.
- PokemonNoGo 9mo agoInteresting. How is it implemented? I opened Tiktok here in Denmark and went to something I, assume, would be in the US and it seems to load fine for me? Do you an example of something I shouldn't be able to view so I can try?
- reactordev 9mo agoI imagine the same way you would link multiple data centers together. Only they don’t own the US ones OR the algorithm that’s used to suggest content. EU is coming. https://newsroom.tiktok.com/cornerstonefinland?lang=en-150 https://newsroom.tiktok.com/cornerstonefinland?lang=en-150 I’m just saying that here in the US we are going to see some funkiness in suggested content soon. Because we hit different servers than you. Even if they are hosted on Oracle Cloud. It’s really no different than a large org having two clouds that need data synchronized. AWS and Azure for example. Systems Design… I’m not a TikTok user so I couldn’t recommend content for you to try.
- DoneWithAllThat 9mo agoYou have no evidence that this is true and it sounds like a para kid conspiracy theory from the depths of the worst subreddits. Stop being silly.
- gdilla 9mo agotech bros voted for this.