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Multiple glitches in the matrix.

OF COURSE what would really help with data privacy in the US is if there were more robust laws to protect consumers.

OF COURSE Meta, Twitter, and Google do a ton with data that is way beyond what the average person even understands.

OF COURSE the US has installed spying tools all across our own telecommunications, monitoring pretty much everything we do online.

That can be true and it can also be true that TikTok has been unable to properly assure anyone that data flowing through the app isn’t able to be read/shared with the CCP. In fact, there has been little driblets here and there that suggest the opposite. Namely, that Chinese-based personnel snooped on America journalists and Chinese-based developers have complete DB access.

In short: China is a black box. There may be absolutely no real concern here. There may be a massive spying campaign. Odds are it’s somewhere in between.

The problem is that we can’t know. It’s like how they handled COVID—we still don’t know the origin, we’ll never know the origin because China will never cooperate, and it’s clear they lied for quite awhile about the seriousness of the issue, even after everyone knew about it…even still today.

We can’t trust that a person who resides in China isn’t completely and utterly beholden to the CCP’s whims on this.

This should have happened a long time ago.

As they should.

But I’m guessing shills for China are going to invoke the “whataboutism” distraction tactic again by bringing up American social media companies collecting data on its own citizens, which is a bad thing, for the record, just a false equivalence because in no way is it the same as a hostile nation collecting data from the citizens of their enemy.

Can you imagine if Russia’s VK had penetrated the US the same way TikTok has? You would have to be nuts to still use social media run by a hostile nation.

Is this free market or state capitalism? Is US becoming China?

It's what Trump tried to do, and for all the things he was wrong about, I actually think he was right back then too.

1. The app, even if necessary to function properly, harvests a lot of user data that the company has repeatedly failed to control. (just last year their employees accessed data on US journalists)
2. There is no independent judiciary in China. The CCP controls the courts. You can't expect Bytedance to refuse, let alone challenge, an invasive attempt by the CCP to access user data.
3. I don't understand why we allow a double standard with countries who don't allow Western companies to independently operate, let alone enter, a foreign country. While we allow companies from those countries that blacklist Western companies without a problem? There should be some basic element of reciprocity here.

I think it boils down to a trust issue where one cannot trust the CCP. Because even if we believed Bytedance to take corrective steps (which they have repeatedly failed), there is nothing to stop the CCP besides trust.

There have always been guardrails on the free market such as child labor laws or other consumer protections. If we wanted a true free market we would allow everyone to freely immigrate to the US and have no minimum wage. That is pure capitalism.

This is still a free market but this would be just another type of common guardrail like we already have. The aim is to protect consumers privacy and national interests (such as if we were drawn into a conflict with China)

Trump tried to do it because people in there hurt his feelings.

Yeah, I'm always mixed on his motivations. Was it xenophobia, was he angry at Tik-Toker's making it look like no one attended his event? (be reserving all the tickets and not going)

But this is one of those things where, regardless of motivation, he had the right instinct or idea of what needed to be done.

Yeah that was it. Totally forgot why but you nailed it.

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There is no such thing as a free market. Never has been, never will be.

On one hand there will always be someone who wants to manipulate and control the market. On the other hand we've pretty well established by now that neurologically, the way that we expect consumers in a "free market" to behave doesn't happen. And between those two realities, the market is there to convince us, quite literally, that the market is fair, while making it as unfair as it possibly can.

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It's entirely possible to do the right thing for horrible reasons.

I'll bite, in which a way is china a hostile nation? They do not operate anywhere near as hostile as the US has with the CIA or our industrial war complex. You are buying into state department propaganda. Honestly this move seems to be more about using the state apparatus to remove foreign competition in the tech space and to consolidate it into our in house monopolies. Notice how this is now a discussion of selling assets. I wish they were being honest but hey these are the same people who lied about nukes in Iraq.

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So as long as it's not China own stakes they don't mind data being harvested in another country?

>We can’t trust that a person who resides in China isn’t completely and utterly beholden to the CCP’s whims on this.

That's the thing. A Chinese national could be as anti-CCP as they want, but if they own a company, the government has their greasy fingers in the pie, whether said person wants it or not. Every business action has government inclusion by law. Theres no way around it.

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We need data privacy laws yesterday.

I wonder if, after the US bans TikTok (and for the looks of it they will, since both parties agree on this!), other nations will finally adhere to the Chinese method of handling online spaces as another "national border" that needs to be guarded, it looks like we all agree that this is the logical step of any sovereign nation. Maybe not banning foreign apps, like the US and China will, but maybe storing all the data locally is something that all nations will be interested on doing. Or maybe not and it will be limited to banning Chinese shit and nothing else, US aligned countries should follow suit in regards to TikTok but not really care about US apps.

Whatever something that I genuinely believe will happen is blocking any Chinese made app for entering the US led countries, allowing TikTok was clearly a mistake so I doubt they will let something like that to happen ever again.

Reddit is a US nationalist platform. It doesn't matter if foreigners are hurt and the US government should always have a monopoly of power over everything, including its citizens. It's horseshoe theory with Chinese uber nationalists and Reddit being the same people.

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1. A lot of American corporations harvest your data and the American government doesn't really care. When nest got caught doing it no one made a bill to ban them. Amazon even has several products that direct spies on you. We also know about those U.S journalists because byte dance told us and the fired those employees. 2.Bytedance is constantly at odds with the Chinese govt and has refused them before. Which probably won't end well for them. We also learn America doesn't really have one either. WikiLeaks was about how the govt forced corporations to spy on us. The twitter files were about how the govt can force a company to censor a post
2. Capitalism and we aren't the center of the world. We can't force another country to do things America does.

There is strong evidence to suggest this bill only exists because meta paid politicians to push it. It explains why if you look it up. Byte dance has done everything America wants it to do except sell.

> That can be true and it can also be true that TikTok has been unable to properly assure anyone that data flowing through the app isn’t able to be read/shared with the CCP.

Please read up on Project Texas. TikTok has been working toward a solution where all U.S. data are saved on Texas based Oracle servers, with ability to be audited and security verified by a U.S. government approved 3rd party panel.

From a technical perspective, such measure would sufficiently guarantee American users data don't go to China. The government was close to approve it until the recent political climate changed, so politicians want to score points now.

The concern you outlined is very much valid, but the technical response is also valid. Unfortunately this whole thing was political theater funded by Meta in the first place: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/03/30/facebook-tiktok-targeted-victory/

> allowing TikTok was clearly a mistake so I doubt they will let something like that to happen ever again.

Should we just go ahead and ban all apps and websites from China, or in fact, non-U.S. allied countries?

What's next? Banning videogames like Genshin Impact and League of Legends because of national security concerns?

I bet companies like Activision and EA would love to lobby for it, much like how Meta lobbied for the ban of TikTok: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/03/30/facebook-tiktok-targeted-victory/

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I support this too. Markets don't need to be 100% fair for external corporations. While there are a lot of arguments for a fully globalized, free movements of good and service, passively putting yourself into a position external countries can take advantage of you isn't being progressive. It's being a doormat.

Sometimes localisation of markets is the answer.

Yeah, I don't agree with much of what Trump did, but he was absolutely right to take a harder stance on China.

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Just ban it. China will block apps and sales of goods if "not made with Chinese and not 50% owned by PRC". Fuck'em. Tiktok just is load of narcissists and influencers anyway.

As the Dominion lawsuit proved beyond a doubt, you gotta read a Murdoch publication like people used to read Pravda to get the real news.

"Major shift in policy..." -- somebody (Meta) realized their was cash to be made and phoned the politician they owned to call in the favor.

TikTok is likely correct in their claims that nothing would change as far as national security. In fact, the ONLY thing that would change is that the data vacuum would end on Meta servers instead.

Why not? I mean either that or buying the Chinese companies so China can't extract benefits from the Market and yeah there's market protectionism in play here too, it's obvious like most apps copied the format of TikTok, and once it's gone they will have the market to themselves but I genuinely believe there's national security concerns over this, TikTok just pushed to the mainstream the East Palestine derailment, that was a nothing burger, so I think it's a perfect example of how it can actually manufacture a certain narrative, whether it was intentional or not doesn't matter, the fact that the US government can't intervene on it to regulate discourse there is bad enough to warrant a ban.

> TikTok just pushed to the mainstream the East Palestine derailment, that was a nothing burger

Are we for real here???

I believe in tit for tat and that China has a lot of tat coming.

Entirely not my point. China does have the right to ban foreign companies if they wish. However, there is a double standard for non-Chinese companies unless their countries treat Chinese companies the same.

I simply do not believe that data like that can be secured in ANY manner. There are always way to transmit data, ways that cannot be detected or audited.

"In which way is China a hostile nation?"

You are kidding me, right?

JFC, there's a version of this article every week.

I want to know if Google and Meta-two companies that's tried to do what Tiktok does to varying levels of success-are "donating" money to have the app looked at. For altruistic reasons, I'm sure.

A bit of a "whataboutism" here. American companies nor America are perfect. But it's a far cry from China. All governments want as much data as possible and conduct espionage. The issue is how much private companies are involved and how much privacy rights are truly protected under the law. (or if the law is a facade) E.G. Apple would not be able to tell the FBI to screw off when the wanted a backdoor under CCP laws. (and in fact has to have any encryption technology approved by the CCP)

1. Bytedance self-reported because of other prior violations. They didn't really have a choice with the current political climate because if they tried to hide it then it would backfire horrendously. The point is they don't have internal safeguards to stop this and targeting journalists is especially egregious.
2. Bytedance cannot be truly at odds with the CCP under Chinese law. The CCP is a board member as required by law at Bytedance. Any information the CCP wants under national security means must be given. Any idea you can challenge the CCP or "push back" via a judicial process is ludicrous." Any notion that Bytedance can "push back" is naive at best.
3. I'm not saying force China to open their borders or treat companies the same. I'm just saying treat them the same way they treat other companies. They are not a developing country anymore (which is why they had the foreign partnership program).

No, please enlighten me. Is China flaunting war ships and planes around the gulf of Mexico to check the power balance of our own Monroe Doctrine? Is china doubling their military budget right now and creating pacts with our surrounding countries to curtail our own presence in our own waters? The only way that I see them as opposition is that they don't play by the rules that our capitalist oligarchs want, and they are actively capturing the world market with their economic philosophy that opposes our own. They have not shown to be a militaristic nor hostile nation(US calling the kettle black). They are just market competition that we want to snuff out.

Yeah, if it was something really bad the US government would have been busy covering it up, I hear derailments are usual so this one isn't special other than because people were panicking.

And TikTok definitely pushed the narrative of a disaster that would poison everyone on the area will the government clearly say that it wasn't that bad and didn't pose a threat for anyone's health.

> if it was something really bad the US government would have been busy covering it up

You think the US government could have covered up this?????

> I hear derailments are usual

When was the last time a derailment looked like this? Do you have an example?

https://i.imgur.com/BZGHPcC.jpg

> And TikTok definitely pushed the narrative of a disaster that would poison everyone on the area will the government clearly say that it wasn’t that bad and didn’t pose a threat for anyone’s health.

Again, are you for real here????

Gee, I guess without TikTok everyone who lived under that black mushroom cloud would have just took the government’s words for it, and obviously TikTok is faking all the symptoms people are suffering /s

It's probably worse than most derailments but it was being pushed as a disaster on par with Chernobyl, it was overblown, again whether or not it was intentional TikTok had a narrative about how disastrous it was, some people got sick but no one has even died form this, it was badly exaggerated

If TikTok is such a threat to Americans privacy, then why aren't they writing laws to protect our privacy from ALL threats, like Facebook or Twitter?

Because TikTok isn't bribing our lawmakers. Sorry, "lobbying."

Yeah I agree, can’t stand the guy but he was in the right about banning it. Just wish that he didn’t go about it in a shoddy way that wouldn’t have held up in court and we could’ve gotten to this point a while ago.

Even if all the US data was sequestered perfectly and never got back to the CCP (something I have severe doubts about), banning it unless they sell is the right move IMO because, due to the CCP issue, the algorithm is subject to the changes China wants. We’ve already seen examples during the Hong Kong protests of different videos showing up based on if you searched about demonstrations in English vs. Chinese characters, and we should not be comfortable allowing the CCP to easily manipulating what we’re paying attention to.

> We’ve already seen examples during the Hong Kong protests of different videos showing up based on if you searched about demonstrations in English vs. Chinese characters

You serious? You can search for that in English and Chinese on YouTube and you'd get very different results. The hashtags and titles are in different languages dude.

>we should not be comfortable allowing the CCP to easily manipulating what we’re paying attention to.

That's literally China's "excuse" for banning social media from the U.S. "Malicious foreign influence" as they call it, which is par for the course for a country with no freedom of speech.

So far no one has seen any evidence that TikTok uses its algorithm for any political manipulation (in fact you can drown yourself in anti-CCP propaganda on there if you want), so start building our version of the Great Firewall when all the accusations are just things that "could" happen is very concerning.

What's next? Start banning more apps and websites from countries that are not U.S. allies?

I think it's more that the people coercing TikTok is the CCP. The real issue is national security, not individual privacy.

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First off, there is proof of algorithm manipulation.

Second, I don’t understand how bringing up China banning Western social media is an argument against banning TikTok in its current state. Why are we playing to a double standard where they can ban our apps but we can’t ban theirs? If China does this because they believe Western social media would manipulate its contests to cause unrest, then they’d have no issue using TikTok to do the same and we shouldn’t allow it.

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> Why are we playing to a double standard

Because I’d very much for us to have a different standard than China when it comes to personal freedom and free speech.

This isn’t a personal freedom or free speech issue, it’s a data and influence issue. If China doesn’t trust Western social networks having their citizen’s data or subject to their algorithms, than we shouldn’t trust the CCP’s either. We wouldn’t have allowed the USSR to buy NBC, and I fail to see how this is any different.

> This isn’t a personal freedom or free speech issue, it’s a data and influence issue.

It’s both.

> If China doesn’t trust Western social networks having their citizen’s data or subject to their algorithms

That’s what China says. In reality they want a censored internet for their citizens and full control of what their people sees online. US is heading down the same path once we start banning apps and websites from countries that are not US allies.

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Yeah I’m sure they couldn’t censor their internet if they allowed Google, what an asinine argument lol

Of course they couldn't. How could they censor Google without cooperation from the company or a blanket ban? Do you know how internet works???

In fact China's law requires American companies to have server inside China and cooperate with Chinese government for censorship. Google and Facebook didn't wanna play ball so they were blocked. Apple and Microsoft did play ball which is why iMessage and FaceTime and iCloud and LinkedIn and Skype and Bing are allowed. I bet you didn't know that.

It requires cooperation on the companys' part. Without that you can't selectively censor content.

Got it, so you’re resorting to technicalities. Obviously the version of Google that would be in China would have to play ball with the CCP and follow their rules on things like data governance and local control. So I ask again, if China is going to treat Western companies as adversaries on this topic, why should we lowering our walls and allow them to export authoritarianism through TikTok? It’s pretty simple; if TikTok is willing to sell off their US arm so that it’s not required to follow Chinese law (either implicit or explicit), than it should be banned for both the data and influence issues.

> China is going to treat Western companies as adversaries

But they don’t? They allow all western companies as long as they follow Chinese laws, the same laws that Chinese companies have to follow themselves. They’ve never banned a tech company just for being American.

Did you know more than 20% of Apple’s revenue is from China? Does that sound like a country that treat Western companies as adversaries?

I am for the solution to make US data privacy and political influence laws that all tech companies have to follow, foreign or domestic. But that wouldn’t happen since this whole thing started because of Meta’s lobbying in the first place.

I respect and agree with the argument that we need comprehensive data protection and algorithm transparency laws. That makes sense.

My fundamental disagreement with you is the level of concern about TikTok specifically. The fact is that ByteDance has to, whether willingly or unwillingly, do what the CCP asks. There is evidence of algorithm manipulation. The CCP does have those levers. We’ve seen ByteDance work with the CCP very openly. As Ben Thompson says, China is using their access to push their ideals. And as Matt Yglesias says, allowing TikTok would be no different from the US allowing the Soviets to buy NBC during the Cold War.

For me banning or forcing TikTok to divest is a five alarm fire we have to take care of, while comprehensive user protection laws are the asbestos in the walls of the house next door that probably should’ve been removed a while ago, but not the main concern with the fire going.

> We’ve seen ByteDance work with the CCP very openly. As Ben Thompson says, China is using their access to push their ideals.

A lot of people say a lot of things these days when it comes to China. But at the end of the day even the US government has not presented any concrete proof as to TikTok’s collaboration with the CCP.

> allowing TikTok would be no different from the US allowing the Soviets to buy NBC during the Cold War.

Well I fundamentally disagree. The US and China are not enemies at the moment and we aren’t even in a Cold War, and the economic ties and relationship between two countries are very different from what the US had with Soviet Union. We have a lot of business interest in them as they do in us. The trade between the two countries just reached all time high: https://www.politico.com/news/2023/02/07/trade-china-relations-economies-00081301

You think there is a fire going on meanwhile even the best evidence brought up by the most staunch anti-China politicians so far is “there could be a fire”.

I personally think this is just the new Red Scare and we are trending toward a new era of McCarthyism. And of course SnapChat and Meta have been funding this whole effort, just look at their stock price in the past few days.

Either way I appreciate your level headed discussion, we may disagree but it’s more pleasant than most discussions I’ve on Reddit when it comes to this topic.

But we're only talking about Tik Tok when Meta has been involved is some very heinous privacy breaches.

This isn't whataboutism, it's asking if we're trying to solve the problem or not. Because forcing divestment in Tik Tok while not enforcing anti trust laws and data regulation on Meta means you aren't trying to solve the problem.

Do you have any idea how much user data Facebook WILLINGLY sells to Chinese companies? Yet that ban that's suspiciously missing from any proposed laws.

Let's just not lie about it, this is a move by the government to "bail out" Meta.

They don't mind if data is harvested here then sold to China.

...just like Meta does constantly...

You're aware that Facebook sells our data to Chinese companies right? Like they openly do this.

If Tik Tok was a Meta company, China would still be getting the data....just with a price tag attached, and we still couldn't opt out do anything about.

So you're right...the American companies are worse because if China is a hostile nation then these American companies are committing Treason in these well-documented and undisputed sales of American user data to Chinese companies.

Maybe we do need to look at the American companies for a minute...

Then maybe we should be addressing American social media companies selling our data to Chinese companies as well...it's literally the same thing with a few extra steps...and possibly a bit more treasonous...

?

If the sell they'd sell it to Microsoft/Apple/Amazon/Oracle/Google/(and most likely) Meta.

I mean yeah those American companies are Chinese shills too because they sell so much user data to Chinese companies, but they are still American companies.

We could do both. But at least American companies are held accountable to an independent judiciary or do enough business in the EU to be forced to be compliant with their rules as well. Comparing the US/EU to the CCP is impossible because they are two different forms of government and judicial accountability.

What world are you living in where a US tech company was held accountable for something they've done with our data?.....

Hopefully this isn't a surprise but yes, TikTok lobbies, a lot https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2023/02/bytedance-ramps-up-lobbying-concerns-over-tiktoks-china-ties-and-data-security-mount/

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