[HN Gopher] TikTok updated privacy policy to collect faceprints ...
___________________________________________________________________
TikTok updated privacy policy to collect faceprints and voiceprints
(2021)
Author : thesecretceo
Score : 411 points
Date : 2022-06-29 14:37 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.pandasecurity.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.pandasecurity.com)
| moomoo11 wrote:
| People who use TikTok don't care so if they're cool with it
| that's on them right? Nobody is forcing them to use it.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _if they're cool with it that's on them right?_
|
| If their nonchalance impacts my security, no, it's on me as
| well.
| moomoo11 wrote:
| I don't like TikTok so I don't use it. How does it impact my
| security when nobody I know or associate with uses it?
|
| It's like drugs. I'm pro drug legalization but I'm not
| interested in using them just because it's legal.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| Until you are injured by someone high off their ass? Or
| robbed by someone looking for their next fix? Or your kid
| becomes an addict?
|
| These aren't wild jumps.
| hungvn94 wrote:
| hungvn94 wrote:
| yur3i__ wrote:
| Worth noting that this article is from June 2021, still terrible
| but not a brand new change.
| sakutea wrote:
| hahaha
| randomperson_24 wrote:
| I am really suspecting a lot of these comments from throwaway and
| new accounts.
|
| Are they bots, paid chineese actors, or something else is to
| think about.
| tut-urut-utut wrote:
| Great news.
|
| The fact that a company from the _unfriendly_ country collects
| biometrical data may finally provoke enough outrage that such
| data collection gets _forbidden_ for _everyone_.
| theplumber wrote:
| Not really. Tiktok is bad because all of the sudden China
| became bad. It wasn't bad few years ago; some western countries
| such the UK loved to say how good China is. The U.S apps are
| "good" because they are PRISM-enabled and your have nothing to
| hide from the U.S gov, right?
| easytiger wrote:
| > _It wasn 't bad few years ago; some western countries such
| the UK loved to say how good China is._
|
| Hmm. What are you basing this on?
| theplumber wrote:
| A quick google search may bring you some results. Until
| very recently(i.e the Huawei thing) the main idea was that
| China is the best thing since the sliced bread. I believe
| leaving Europe and focusing on China was seen as the next
| step in trade and foreign policy. That didn't age well
| though...
|
| >> In 2015 George Osborne, the then chancellor, promised a
| 'golden decade' for Chinese-British relations as he drummed
| up support for new trade opportunities and inward
| investment.
| easytiger wrote:
| There was a lull when globalist enthusiasts, such as
| Osborne, were more than happy to sell us out. China is a
| distinct evil that should never have been allowed to hack
| our economic system with their hyper scale authoritarian
| meat-robot control systems. People are not people to the
| party any more than cells are alive to anyone making a
| game of life clone
| Brometheus wrote:
| It all started to go downhil when Xi decided he wanted to
| become the Chinese Kaiser.
| antonymy wrote:
| I wish this was the case, but sadly people seem to have a
| massive blind spot when it comes to their own government having
| the same powers as the totalitarian CCP. One would think the
| implications are obvious and striking, impossible to miss, and
| yet I continually have to explain to people why these systems
| of surveillance are terrifying and inherently damaging to free
| societies.
| K0SM0S wrote:
| Unless the lesson lies later down the road, when the
| biometrical of X billion people gets used for <insert nefarious
| purpose>.
|
| They say that we don't learn by knowing but by doing, and a
| significant part of the incentive to do is pain.
|
| The tragic irony lies in the fact that apparently, it only
| takes about 80 years to forget the last horrors --approximately
| one maximized average lifespan, makes sense I guess... Though
| what a piss-poor historical-attention span. Or about as much to
| collectively resign sensitivity to horror, as in the case of
| CCP-led China (1949-now).
|
| You know the problem with things that concerns _everyone_ :
| everybody thinks somebody else is taking care of it; in the end
| _nobody_ does.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| except this is not new.. what is happening here?
| ziddoap wrote:
| One can dream.
|
| But, I would imagine any such hypothetical regulation would
| have specific carve-outs for the US-based companies collecting
| the same/similar data. Because $.
| belval wrote:
| Won't hold my breath. The unfortunate truth is that most people
| aren't really bothered by any of this and/or fail to grasp it
| entirely.
|
| Bringing up that TikTok collects biometric data will usually be
| met with blank stares and/or someone implying that it's a
| conspiracy theory.
| krapp wrote:
| It won't, because the abortion data collection industry is is
| about to explode, along with whatever other data collection
| opportunities arise in the aftermath of the repeal of Roe v.
| Wade and the privacy arguments it depended upon. It seems far
| more likely to me that more US apps and services will be
| following TikTok's lead in the future, not fewer, and they will
| be more difficult to regulate.
| paskozdilar wrote:
| I don't think it will.
|
| Invasive data collection benefits the powerful, and harms the
| individual.
|
| Nobody powerful gives a rat's ass about the individual.
| tqwhite wrote:
| Come on people. This is ridiculous.
|
| If they had the perfect privacy policy, they could simply tell
| their clients to view a video that you have uploaded for them to
| see.
|
| Tik Tok is a dumpster fire but his is not interesting.
| cybervaz wrote:
| I will repeat my comment:
|
| Stop generalizing the "country of origin" as if it does not
| matter like the Chinese Comunist Party isn't a threat to the
| world. - There will always be a ruler, and which ruler is
| killing, slaving, censoring and selling it's own people as meat
| tools for foreign companies?
|
| - China will kill, torture it's own people and their families if
| they think they are a thread (even if remote) to their government
| party (CCP).
|
| - China put on a HEAVY surveilance tool and actually forced
| people to behave like they want using social credit
|
| - China is actively removing ANY historical filosophies, tales,
| traditions, religions that could be a thread to the CCP's
| beliefs.
|
| - Have you ever seen a CCP convention? Their plan is to remove
| the worlds countries boundaries in order to rule over everything
| from culture to politics and economics. Australia is suffering a
| lot on their hands, they even sent spies to patronize elections.
| cwkoss wrote:
| US kills and tortures its own citizens if they are labeled
| 'criminals' or 'terrorists', or just lets cops murder activists
| without being charged.
|
| US has heavy surveillance infrastructure, and a kafkaesque
| 'private' credit system that I have no doubt the TLAs can
| manipulate with their banking partners.
|
| US politicians are currently working to ban the histories of
| racism and genocide from public schools when they make the
| country look bad. US media frequently participates in
| disinformation campaigns coordinated with state intelligence.
|
| US has done more successful election manipulation/coups than
| any other country on the planet.
|
| As a US citizen, I am vastly more afraid of of the US
| government than I am the CCP.
| upupandup wrote:
| A security researcher wrote an article while back and it was
| shocking to see how much data TikTok was collecting:
|
| - biometrics
|
| - what words are mentioned in the video, popularity
|
| - surrounding wifi, location data
|
| - your contacts (presumably to cross link to social media
| platforms)
|
| I just can't believe that a powerful country like America is
| letting a not-so-friendly military/civilian complex infiltrate it
| for somewhat unknown purpose.
| wongarsu wrote:
| Apart from biometrics all of these are things you would more or
| less expect them to collect. Words mentioned in the video and
| the videos popularity are important for the recommendation
| algorithm, and the censorship of "age inappropriate content".
| Location data similarly goes into the recommendation algo. Any
| social app asks for contacts nowadays (as much as I despise
| it).
|
| The insidious thing is how the data is used. For example
| knowing the exact content of each video allows them to filter
| certain topics and promote others. Knowing your location allows
| them to use this geopolitically (showing content about the
| Ukraine war in some places, but not in others).
|
| Whether intentional or unintentional, their recommendation
| engine infers demographic information. I'm pretty sure TikTok
| thought for a while that I was gay; videos with reasonably
| accurate predictions like "if this is recommended to you, you
| are a male between 25 and 30 who is introverted. You like to
| start projects but never finish them" were a trend for a while.
|
| All of this gives TikTok and by extension China a great tool to
| influence opinions and moods in a finely targeted way. Take all
| the scandals about what Facebook experimented with, and how
| targeted ads influenced elections and votes, and give that
| power to one party with no oversight. That's TikTok.
| lizardactivist wrote:
| It's TikTok. Funny jokes and dance videos. And they're
| collecting no more than American IT companies are doing.
|
| "I just can't believe that a powerful country like America is
| letting a not-so-friendly military/civilian complex infiltrate
| it for somewhat unknown purpose."
|
| Are you for real? The one country that fits the description of
| not-so-friendly military-complex is the U.S. itself.
|
| A more pressing problem and question is that despite everything
| we learned from the CIA and NSA leaks, American companies and
| their software is inside every country, government, business
| and IT infrastructure, and is collecting vast amounts of
| sensitive data still to this day.
|
| All while people like you are drawing attention to TikTok.
| vanillax wrote:
| Exactly. Plus the product is free. What do you expect? Oh no
| im gonna get targeted for ads on another site because of
| tiktok. What an uproar!
| mean_pigeon wrote:
| This comment makes it pretty clear you don't use tiktok or
| have a very clear understanding of its content. A huge
| portion of content is political, and especially divisive.
| People are constantly targeted with content that either
| reinforces or insults their more extreme political beliefs.
| This is exactly how personal data is being used against
| individuals - to target divisive political content and
| maximize political angst. It's clearly working.
| posterboy wrote:
| Yah nuh, it's not as if youtube don't do the same. More to
| the point, ycombinator is infamous for being a neoliberal
| silicon valley poster child. Nobody forced me to come here,
| or to tik tok
| hellomyguys wrote:
| You're literally describing every major user generated
| content platform.
| fortuna86 wrote:
| "Yes but what about the US Government?" is not an actual
| response to concerns about Tiktok, it's a lazy attempt at
| deflection and distraction.
|
| And the US Government doesn't use private sector data to
| round up and imprison their citizens in concentration camps.
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/12/14/huawei-
| surve...
| lizardactivist wrote:
| I don't answer to concerns about TikTok because I don't
| think there are any, and so I instead point to the ever-
| present elephant in the IT security discussion room.
|
| And as for the US Government and concentration camp, maybe
| they don't use private sector data for that, but they sure
| do it based on ethnicity and origins, such as Japanese
| Americans in concentration camps during WW2, and South
| American children and their immigrant parents literally put
| in cages just a couple of years ago.
| digisign wrote:
| The original post above framed the issue from a national-
| security angle.
|
| Whether "this side" is-doing/has-done it as well is an
| orthogonal concern, i.e. not pertinent here. We have a
| small but non-zero ability to affect change on our side.
| fortuna86 wrote:
| You responded to a question with a demonstration of your
| politics (ie. who you trust, and who you don't trust).
| Trusting the Chinese Government when they are in the
| midst of using technology to enable horrific crimes
| against humanity is a weird political position to take.
|
| And pointing out anything that has nothing to do with
| Tiktok in a thread about Tiktok is not providing context,
| it's an attempt at distraction and deflection away from
| the thing you trust (the CCP, somehow) towards the thing
| you don't (the US Gov).
| [deleted]
| sakutea wrote:
| they only care about money
| ProAm wrote:
| > I just can't believe that a powerful country like America is
| letting a not-so-friendly military/civilian complex infiltrate
| it for somewhat unknown purpose
|
| This is 100% why their US data is now stored in Oracle cloud
| storage. So the US can mine it too now for free. [1]
|
| [H] https://techcrunch.com/2022/06/17/tiktok-oracle-us-
| traffic-c...
| bogomipz wrote:
| Might you or someone else have a link to that article?
| juanani wrote:
| sakutea wrote:
| maybe you need to ask the President of US why.
| gonzo41 wrote:
| I look forward to the blazing success of "Just say no" to tick
| tok campaigns. Because people are so good with self control
| these days.
| jasonlotito wrote:
| biometrics: Anything involving face scanning for any filter
| based stuff needs access to biometric data
|
| words mentioned in the video: creating captions
|
| location data: helping to recommend people near you, also
| ability to enforce laws based on regions
|
| your contacts: this is something you give them permission to
| access. This is so you can connect with your friends who also
| setup TikToks. You do not have opt into this.
|
| These are just the things I thought off the top of my head.
|
| Does this mean China can't influence the populace? No. But the
| previous administration didn't think that external influence
| into elections was an issue. And the majority of Americans
| didn't seem to care, either. So you have at least one party
| that generally doesn't care. And don't pretend that FB doesn't
| matter. FB might be American, but it doesn't limit itself to
| only working with American companies.
| omniglottal wrote:
| Having an ostensibly valid use does not preclude also having
| nefarious uses. A majority with apathy should not circumvent
| the efforts of those who do care.
| [deleted]
| mariodiana wrote:
| I'm going to guess that the purpose is to use the data to
| eventually build life-like, AI-generated social media
| influencers. The data will show what kind of faces, voices,
| inflections, word choice, etc. is most influential. I don't
| think the technology is quite there yet, but very soon it will
| be possible, with a little hand tweaking, to fake "cool" people
| -- video bots. It will be used as a psy-op.
| posterboy wrote:
| > I'm going to guess that the purpose is to use the data to
| eventually build life-like, AI-generated social media
| influencers.
|
| You think?
|
| > very soon it will be possible, with a little hand tweaking,
| to fake "cool" people
|
| If your worst thread is being out-done by a bot in the ...
| what domain is "cool" in. And whom are you quoting from?
|
| PS: What can I say, you got my goat. Vain people are very
| vulnerable in it (think that's the definition of "vain", but
| I still want to know what "it" is)
| Arrath wrote:
| Reminds me of the AI popstar/persona in Deus Ex 2.
| lattalayta wrote:
| Already starting to happen!
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=huqNdRj16FQ
| mariodiana wrote:
| Yes. I wasn't aware of that, so thank you. The Uncanny
| Valley is still there -- right now. That won't last forever
| though.
| sAbakumoff wrote:
| I think that people like are actually glad that TikTok and
| others collect your data because it makes you feel much more
| important and needed than you really are!
| [deleted]
| chii wrote:
| would you not make the same argument for google?
| kube-system wrote:
| The legal environment is wildly different. Google doesn't
| have an internal board of government officials controlling
| it. All large software companies in China do. Google doesn't
| operate in China for this reason. Apple divested their cloud
| operations to the Guizhou government for this reason.
|
| In the US is it normal and routine for corporations to
| dispute government demands. In China, If you don't play ball
| with the party, your company ceases to exist and you are put
| behind the great firewall.
| theplumber wrote:
| >> In the US is it normal and routine for corporations to
| dispute government demands.
|
| But we already know that's just somescreen and the U.S
| gov/NSA gets the data. Poor Snowden ruined his life for
| almost nothing.
| kube-system wrote:
| The difference is that there is a non-zero amount of
| friction in the US.
|
| We also know that many companies in the US say "no" and
| have the legal ability to do it. For example, when the
| FBI asked Apple to unlock a phone for them, they said no,
| and they never did.
|
| In China, your company doesn't say "no" because the CCP
| members forcibly installed on your company's board always
| vote "yes".
|
| And in fact, the CCP holds the iCloud keys for all
| Chinese iCloud users. (As well as the entire data center)
| AlexandrB wrote:
| > The difference is that there is a non-zero amount of
| friction in the US.
|
| This kind of statement should always end with "for now".
| Data lives forever, laws change. Just take a look at Roe
| v. Wade and how formerly benign data now has potential
| legal implications for users.
| orangepurple wrote:
| Thankfully we have a statute of limitations for many
| legal matters
| Sebb767 wrote:
| Which, funnily enough, is a law.
| Sebb767 wrote:
| Companies don't deploy warrant canaries[0] just for fun.
| Lavabit[1] was also US based and shut down without the
| ability to defend itself thanks to a gag order. It might
| not be just as bad as China, but secret data extraction
| is definitely not exclusive to them.
|
| And, since you mentioned
|
| > And in fact, the CCP holds the iCloud keys for all
| Chinese iCloud users.
|
| Quoting from [1]:
|
| > The court records show that the FBI sought Lavabit's
| Transport Layer Security (TLS/SSL) private key. Levison
| objected, saying that the key would allow the government
| to access communications by all 400,000 customers of
| Lavabit. He also offered to add code to his servers that
| would provide the information required just for the
| target of the order. The court rejected this offer
|
| (I'm well aware that Levinson wasn't a halo figure,
| either. But that's beside the point)
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warrant_canary
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavabit#Suspension_and_
| gag_ord...
| kube-system wrote:
| Lavabit would have never voluntarily shut down if it were
| operated in China, because the CCP members on the board
| would have voted to hand over the keys.
|
| Of course, governments in every country collect data in
| at least some circumstances, and the details of those
| circumstances are a topic of great public debate in
| western democracies. This friction is how democracies
| continually improve. It isn't an indication of disaster,
| it's an indication of progress being made. Disaster is
| when you don't hear about it at all, because it happens
| unilaterally and without contest.
| theplumber wrote:
| The few legislative protections apply mainly to U.S
| citizens. I guess the europeans and the rest of the world
| is doomed. Of course CCP is not same as the U.S
| government but we know that when money/interests of U.S
| corporations or U.S government is at stake bad things
| happen(i.e data is/could be weaponized).
| kube-system wrote:
| What I'm mostly referring to are the laws that enable
| autonomy of business decisions, and those implications
| apply regardless of citizenship.
| BobbyJo wrote:
| Doesn't Google not operate in China for just this reason?
| crmd wrote:
| Google is banned in China
| asimpletune wrote:
| If you're china then absolutely
| runjake wrote:
| Yes, but Google is on our, well "my" side.
|
| I would expect an "adversary" nationstate, like China, to
| respond with similar alarm.
| SkyMarshal wrote:
| China has, they've banned most Western social media.
| hunglee2 wrote:
| not quite true, most Western social media companies
| withdraw from China market in order not be subject to
| govt request for information
| Sebb767 wrote:
| Depends on what you do. As long as you don't plan on
| visiting China, them knowing your sexual orientation,
| whether you do drugs is or where you were is pretty
| irrelevant, while it might be quite interesting for you
| government (and therefore Google, if you're in the US).
| andreilys wrote:
| Except when it does matter, say for example you become a
| politican or work in a corporation that has valuable IP.
|
| All of the sudden, private details about you can be
| weaponized and used as blackmail in order to carry out
| the will of a state actor.
|
| It really doesn't take much creativity to think about how
| this information can be weaponized against you.
| salt-thrower wrote:
| Google is on nobody's "side" but their own. They're an
| amoral bureaucracy trying to make money. Nothing more or
| less.
| runjake wrote:
| Hence my use of quotes.
| aurelius83 wrote:
| Is Google an American company?
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| I swear this is a trick question... but they are
| headquartered in America, yes.
| earth_walker wrote:
| I could have sworn they were Irish just a few years ago...
| itake wrote:
| How many of their employees in critical roles are not
| American citizens?
| dspillett wrote:
| Many would, yes. But Google can use the "but we are an
| American company, so you are threatening to harm American
| industry" argument and can afford to pay for a large army of
| lobbyists to push that agenda if America tries to reign them
| in.
| xbar wrote:
| TikTok is a spectacular example of both human- and democracy-
| hacking. It's like an authoritarian regime saw facebook in 2012
| and said, "hold my beverage of choice."
| rjzzleep wrote:
| > authoritarian regime saw facebook in 2012 and said
|
| What a weird statement. Facebook has been taking all of that
| data for a long time. Some of the protections in Android and
| iOS were specifically added to inhibit Facebook from
| recording the surroundings in the background. TikTok just
| does more of the same partly because they just have more
| audio and video data to work with. Remember how Uber showed
| how cool they can track hookup dates? All of that is
| potentially blackmail-able information.
|
| Are you somehow insinuating that Facebook is somehow okay
| because they are in a "democratic" country?
| geerlingguy wrote:
| I think the comment is insinuating that any country that
| wants deep personal data on a huge subset of the population
| should make sure it has a popular social network, so its
| citizens (and in some cases, citizens from around the
| world) willingly sit there inputting any and every detail
| about their lives and relationships into the database.
| nhinck wrote:
| That's not the insinuation at all
| lucakiebel wrote:
| I think the ,,2012" comes from the notion that Facebook was
| somehow more widely used in the past. I also think it's the
| case from time to time since my family &friends don't use
| FB, but they have quadrupled their DAUs since 2012
| vore wrote:
| No, I think they're saying Facebook is bad but having an
| entity tied to a not-so-friendly government do it on a much
| larger scale is worse.
| jacooper wrote:
| As if the U.S is a totally friendly government to the
| entire world ? Iraq, Afghanistan and many other countries
| the US destroyed would sure disagree.
| [deleted]
| mistrial9 wrote:
| my intellectual colleagues loudly decried Facebook on Day
| One; Facebook itself is the original darkness here. ill winds
| blow
| Tao3300 wrote:
| I tried it during the election to see what it was about, and
| was almost immediately bombarded with political content and
| pizzagate-adjacent garbage. And you're just supposed to let
| it feed you the next engaging thing? Yikes.
| Krasnol wrote:
| It could become hard to argument since the rest of the US
| digital industry is collecting the same data. So why prevent it
| with one while allowing it with others?
| dannyphantom wrote:
| I recently saw that TikTok is moving all US traffic to Oracle
| servers [0] as to mitigate any potential claims of the app
| being a threat. Would appreciate anyone expanding on the
| implications.
|
| [0]: https://techcrunch.com/2022/06/17/tiktok-oracle-us-
| traffic-c...
|
| My view of TikTok isn't so much that it's purpose is to be used
| as an threat; but rather a way to create an (insanely)
| lucrative e-commerce market in the same what it's being used in
| China. [1]
|
| [1]: https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/China-tech/Move-over-
| Alibab...
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| ranger_danger wrote:
| > I just can't believe that a powerful country like America is
| letting a not-so-friendly military/civilian complex infiltrate
| it for somewhat unknown purpose.
|
| You mean the same country that also just overturned Roe v Wade
| AND Miranda rights ?
| NaturalPhallacy wrote:
| >I just can't believe that a powerful country like America is
| letting a not-so-friendly military/civilian complex infiltrate
| it for somewhat unknown purpose.
|
| Because it provides a very convenient back door for our three
| letter agencies? Speculation, but the data that True the Vote
| was able to simply purchase on the open market legally was
| pretty shocking in its detail. What's to prevent our government
| from doing that? They haven't respected the 4th amendment for
| decades.
| aaomidi wrote:
| And something it does that nearly nothing else does (twitter
| has started, but in a less shitty way). The share links are
| unique per user, not unique per content.
|
| This gives them full graph of relationships building
| technology.
| jodrellblank wrote:
| Stackoverflow does this; your shares are tagged with your
| user id so they can be tracked around the web.
| guessbest wrote:
| It was a politically untenable situation to ban data collecting
| software applications as the courts overruled the federal
| decision.
|
| >After Trump proposed to ban TikTok in the U.S on July 31,
| 2020, security researchers expressed their concern about
| limitations of freedom. In one article, PCMag quoted Jennifer
| Granick of the American Civil Liberties Union Surveillance and
| Cybersecurity Counsel who said that "banning an app that
| millions of Americans use to communicate with each other is a
| danger to free expression and is technologically impractical."
|
| > On 23 September 2020, TikTok filed a request for a
| preliminary injunction to prevent the app from being banned by
| the Trump administration.[62] This request was filed with the
| District Court for the District of Columbia. Just a week prior,
| a different preliminary injunction from WeChat users filed with
| the United States District Court for the Northern District of
| California was approved by Magistrate Judge Laurel Beeler.[63]
|
| > The preliminary injunction was approved by Judge Carl J.
| Nichols on September 27
|
| > The following June, new president Joe Biden signed an
| executive order revoking the Trump administration ban on TikTok
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump%E2%80%93TikTok_co...
| bombcar wrote:
| And today we hear: FCC Commissioner Calls for Apple and
| Google to Ban TikTok Over 'Surreptitious' Data Practices
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31921200
| guessbest wrote:
| Unfortunately regulating tech companies is politically
| untenable since he was nominated by the previous
| administration. They will replace him with someone who will
| toe the line.
|
| > Commissioner Carr was nominated to the FCC by President
| Trump and confirmed unanimously by the United States
| Senate.
|
| https://www.fcc.gov/about/leadership/brendan-carr
|
| > His term runs from July 1, 2018 to June 30, 2023.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brendan_Carr_(lawyer)
| bombcar wrote:
| The Senate did something _unanimously_ under Trump?
| _-david-_ wrote:
| Multiple things were done unanimously. In 2020, several
| nominations along with H.R. 748. Some senators did
| abstain from voting, but every senator who voted did vote
| yes.
| favourable wrote:
| iOS' App Store has a good breakdown of what's collected too.
| It's sort of like a nutritional label of what's collected. It's
| why I won't install this app. It's a data grab by TikTok to
| turn personal info into gold ingots.
|
| One thing I do though, since missing out on TikTok bothers me,
| is to watch YouTube clips of TikTok videos which have been
| downloaded and shared on YT. Not that YT is better in terms on
| privacy, but it's better than having a Chinese malware app on
| your phone.
| winternett wrote:
| Twitter is doing exactly the same things.. So is Instagram,
| Google, Microsoft, etc...
|
| It's no different for many other social apps. Even user
| accounts are often linked to individuals that harvest and scape
| data from most of these platforms routinely.
|
| I'm not saying that TikTok isn't nefariously aligned with
| political agendas, but we've really got to ask ourselves at
| this point just what exactly ALL of these social app platforms
| are doing.
|
| They make so much money and share so little with the creators
| on them which of course creates a windfall of funding for them
| to integrate complex tracking and manipulation into the
| platforms year over year.
|
| Right now, the only reason why these sites are beginning to
| come under scrutiny is because people who are considered "High
| value assets" (i.e. congress people and government leadership)
| are realizing that these apps, and the phones that run them
| exist within their homes now, listening to vital conversations
| that these people have.... How? Because their children use the
| apps, even if their parents don't.
|
| There is a mesh network everywhere now, based on the devices
| we've purchased that provides intel to anyone who knows how it
| works and it's gone widely ignored for years... Phones with
| lidar that can scan rooms for occupants, multiple pictures and
| selfies saved under real names of individuals, voice recordings
| galore, etc...
|
| All content provided by children and adults alike in the quest
| for social media popularity.
|
| If we're worried about just TikTok weaponizing this data, we're
| worried about water on a duck's back. The types of information
| that can be collected by apps now has completely crossed the
| line in terms of privacy. The biggest offense is that personal
| devices (the only ones we CAN purchase any more, and the
| devices we're supposed to be owners of) all allow this data to
| be gathered and shared with apps, not that apps are harvesting
| the data.
|
| Two factor authentication alone often forces users of services
| (considered vital to their work) to share their phone numbers
| with private companies, and from there it's sold to others, and
| used to track users across the web. Now private companies
| collect more data on individuals than the US government, and it
| can be easily accessed to determine anything from credit and
| insurance-worthiness for individuals to being used in deepfake
| content (potentially by BOTH companies and by individual users
| on platforms) all without our knowledge, and with our unwitting
| consent -- buried deep into EULA agreements everywhere.
|
| Congress has dropped the ball, too busy being enthralled into
| public theatre, and many congresspeople actually being invested
| into many of these tech companies profit-wise themselves.
|
| It's a tragic game of "shoot yourself in the foot" because most
| of the profiteers from the data mining game never realize the
| damage they do until they find out their own children become
| victims of it.
|
| It's not really about TikTok in my opinion, it's about get rich
| schemes and all of the corrupt Ponzi schemes we keep fostering
| and permitting to run freely in this country. It's been going
| on forever, and that's the thing undermining America most, our
| domestic impulse to both salute and coddle those that make
| profit without accountability or morality.
| lloydatkinson wrote:
| Meanwhile last time I brought this up typical HN contrarians
| denied it!
| hammock wrote:
| Is this collection different from, say, Meta? I believe they
| collect all the same information via Instagram.
|
| And before someone says Meta is an American company, not
| controlled by an adversary, let me recall that it's controlled
| by Zuckerberg who spent $419 million to influence US election
| administration in a seemingly partisan way ("democracy hacking"
| as another commenter said). Meta may not be YOUR adversary, but
| that fact is not necessarily true of all (or even most)
| Americans
| resfirestar wrote:
| For the biometrics part, yes: Instagram never used
| biometrics, or at least they didn't until this week when they
| started using it for an age verification process, but even
| then there's no collection of biometrics in regular usage.
| Facebook used faceprints until 2021, when they shut down
| those features under regulatory pressure, but even while the
| feature was active it was off by default rather than a
| condition of using the service.
| tiborsaas wrote:
| They did use a video ID to capture my face from different
| angles, but it stopped after a few weeks.
| resfirestar wrote:
| According to Instagram that is a manual review process,
| not facial recognition: https://twitter.com/InstagramComm
| s/status/146078561073870438...
| kube-system wrote:
| It's a little bit different, because Meta operates in a much
| different legal environment. You give up a lot of control of
| your company to the CCP to operate in China, and if you
| don't, you're forced out of the market.
| rglullis wrote:
| It's different only in paper. The US also can put lot of
| pressure on the companies via TLAs.
| kube-system wrote:
| The situation in the US is not without valid criticism ,
| but it is not even close to comparable with the legal
| environment in China. The US has a judicial branch that
| frequently operates at odds against its own executive
| branch, by design.
| rglullis wrote:
| For the people who end up with their data on a government
| database, this is a distinction without a difference.
| kube-system wrote:
| The likelihood of that data being there and the way it is
| used varies greatly between the two systems.
|
| The reason you don't see stories like this [0] in China,
| is because of this [1]
|
| 0: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/14/apple-refuses-barr-
| request-t...
|
| 1: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208351
| posterboy wrote:
| > frequently
|
| once every blue moon?
|
| > by design
|
| that sounds much bigger than it is, a little like
| _inteligent design_.
|
| > not even close to comparable with the legal environment
| in China.
|
| So, you are literally saying that you are not in a
| position to compare them. Or at least you are saying it's
| so out of this world, it may be on another planet, a
| parallel universe even.
|
| Really, I have discovered a legitimate branch of legal
| research is in constitutional comparation (or whatever
| it's called). Sounds more promissing than it likely will
| be, surely a small field, but damn I'm intrigued.
|
| I do concede that this thread should focus on less
| whataboutism.
| simion314 wrote:
| >The US has a judicial branch that frequently operates at
| odds against its own executive branch, by design.
|
| Maybe if you are from US, if you are not from US you have
| no rights, US gov can spy on you, or even kill you
| without any legal consequences because it will be legal
| from US POV
| kube-system wrote:
| I'm mostly referring to the rights of private companies
| operating under US law to dispute executive action.
| Apple, for example, refuses to unlock phones regardless
| of the citizenship status of user.
| dirtyid wrote:
| Apple unlock drama was over "all writs act" where FBI
| compelled Apple to write new software to access user
| hardware versus using alleged (non)existing capabilities.
| FBI ended up using third party solutions, but after US
| gov decided to simply cirvumvent user layer via CLOUD act
| to simply legistate that manufactures have to make such
| remote access capabilities available, aka adopting PRC
| requirements. Seems to me, functionally US is not
| substantively different than PRC in having legal
| framework to gather any user cloud data. And with respect
| to Apple, for reference Apple maintain they didn't have
| capability to give user data to any government including
| PRC. They also handed icloud keys to PRC control a few
| months after Cloud Act, so technically Apple was
| "compromised" in US before PRC. At end of the day, US
| domestic lawfares achieves it's nationals security goals.
| simion314 wrote:
| Do we know any case where Apple or Google defended the
| privacy of a non US person ignoring the laws that force
| them to give access? I want to see this case and
| understand what happened. The reality is that if you are
| not an US citizens you don't have rights, and corporation
| would defend you only if there is profit in it otherwise
| they will defend you rights only on PR articles( like
| company X supports LGBT then same day CEO shakes hand
| with politicians that just stoned some person to death
| because there is money to be made)
| kube-system wrote:
| I'm not defending the CLOUD act, but it is _definitely_ a
| substantively different type of a situation than having
| your company completely nationalized as it was with GCBD.
| dirtyid wrote:
| GCBD didn't nationalize Apple in PRC, it's data
| soverignty requirement same way TikTok was
| coerced/pressured to moved US data to Oracle US servers.
| Legal minutiae matterse less and less when outcomes
| consistently comparable. In terms of differing market
| environment, TikTok/Bytedance was one Trump EO away from
| being force sold to US companies (actual
| nationalization), which is more aggregious than PRC joint
| venture scheme that's at least upfront about requirements
| foreign companies operating in PRC. Apple didn't have to
| take GCBD deal, they wanted cloud business in PRC to keep
| selling iproducts. Meanwhile TikTok is bending backwards
| to follow US laws and still subject to various
| shenanigans according to changing admin whims.
| Functionally, it's not substantively different, US have
| alleged "better" laws, but also better lawfare to
| circumvent said laws.
|
| IMO this is just reality of mediating "strategic" foreign
| companies operating domestically, especially from
| "adversarial" countries. Set legal compliance onerously
| high and hope they leave. Western platforms left PRC
| because they couldn't stomach the filtering requriements
| that every PRC company has to shoulder. And when they
| finally adopted improve moderation due to
| requirements/pressure in their host country, they tried
| to get back into the PRC market. Meanwhile TikTok is
| sticking around US because Douyin survived burdens of PRC
| regulatory environment so what's another difficult
| market. Both markets are difficult, TikTok just better at
| playing ball in such enviroments. FB/Google can't even
| control their own employees from sabotaging their return
| to PRC.
| kube-system wrote:
| GCBD is nationalized iCloud. It was founded by the
| Guizhou government and is wholly state owned and
| operated.
|
| Apple "chose" to agree to this deal with a gun to their
| head, the only other "option" being that they would be
| banned from the Chinese market. This isn't just because
| they have a data sovereignty requirement, but also
| because they have requirements regarding the sovereignty
| of a company's corporate governance structure.
|
| >TikTok/Bytedance was one Trump EO away from being force
| sold to US companies (actual nationalization)
|
| I'm not defending that idea, but a forced sale is
| categorically not nationalization. The whole impetus for
| the idea was that Trump's "eye for an eye" approach
| regarding what he saw as unfair practices against other
| US companies that tried to operate there. And in the end,
| Bytedance challenged it, and it never came to fruition.
| dirtyid wrote:
| Is Trump EO not also a gun to bytedance head? Apple could
| choose to discontinue cloud services and setup backdoor
| to physical iDevices access which would have made their
| products not competitive, but they chose to play ball
| same way Bytedance did. It's both lawfare coercion. It's
| functionally the same - subborn domestic data within
| framework accessible by domestic legislation. As for
| defending either idea, I think it's fine, everyone
| watches out for their interest including putting guns to
| heads.
| [deleted]
| kube-system wrote:
| No, because EOs do not hold ultimate power in the US.
| Bytedance also had the (quite realistic) option to
| challenge the executive through the US's independent
| judiciary. Ultimately, they took this option and they
| were successful, and they maintain ownership of TikTok
| assets in the US to this day.
|
| There aren't any functional counterparts to these checks
| on power in China that would have been relevant to
| Apple/GBCD. There's no independent judiciary or
| alternative ruling party.
| dirtyid wrote:
| Is Trump EO not also a gun to bytedance head? Apple could
| choose to discontinue cloud services and setup backdoor
| to physical iDevices access which would have made their
| products not competitive, but they chose to play ball
| same way Bytedance did. It's both lawfare coercion. It's
| functionally the same - subborn domestic data within
| framework accessible by domestic legislation. As for
| defending either idea, I think it's fine, everyone
| watches out for their interest including putting guns to
| heads.
| throwaway29812 wrote:
| Has the US Gov utilized data from private companies to
| aid in the targeting and internment of their own citizens
| ? https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/12/09/china-big-data-
| program-t...
| rglullis wrote:
| Not _yet_.
|
| The only way to make sure that it continues like this is
| if _nobody_ can collect the data.
| throwaway29812 wrote:
| > Not yet.
|
| So no, the answer is no. And there are laws in place that
| prevent such a change from occurring.
|
| > nobody can collect the data.
|
| It's unrealistic to think no one will be scraping data.
| You just need laws around who can do it, can for what
| reasons. And enforcement. (all of these things only
| possible in non-autocratic countries)
| rglullis wrote:
| > laws in place that prevent such a change from
| occurring.
|
| Haven't you learned anything from Snowden?
|
| > You just need laws around who can do it, can for what
| reasons.
|
| You just make illegal to use personal data for any other
| thing that is not the service being directly provided to
| the customer.
|
| Personalized ads? Tracking cookies? Ad bids? Make all
| these illegal and the collection of data will stop being
| profitable. Stop making it profitable, and companies will
| no longer be interested in doing.
| throwaway29812 wrote:
| We are talking about private industry working together
| with governments. The US has no intention nor legal
| ability to force private industry to work with them,
| outside of when they choose to.
|
| Unless a new patriot act comes along, which is highly
| unlikely to pass in 2022.
| CyanBird wrote:
| > Is this collection different from, say, Meta? I believe
| they collect all the same information via Instagram
|
| And they do it for people whom are not signed in too, shadow
| profiles [1]
|
| Also, Google sniffs wifi addresses while doing Google earth
| [2]
|
| [1] https://www.cnet.com/news/privacy/shadow-profiles-
| facebook-h...
|
| [2]
| https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2010/may/15/google-
| ad...
|
| But anyhow, let's just all remember that they are our
| friendly global conglomerates :))))) unlike China :(((((
| because "China" is Bad :(((((( while friendly conglomerates
| are good :))))) /s
| throwaway29812 wrote:
| China uses data from private industry to target and
| imprison undesirable ethnic and religious minorities at an
| unthinkable scale.
| https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/12/09/china-big-data-
| program-t...
|
| "China bad" is a casual way of dismissing these crimes,
| which I find to be quite repulsive.
| CyanBird wrote:
| > ...
|
| > Yet something odd happened when Borden and Prater were
| booked into jail: A computer program spat out a score
| predicting the likelihood of each committing a future
| crime. Borden -- who is black -- was rated a high risk.
| Prater -- who is white -- was rated a low risk.
|
| > Two years later, we know the computer algorithm got it
| exactly backward. Borden has not been charged with any
| new crimes. Prater is serving an eight-year prison term
| for subsequently breaking into a warehouse and stealing
| thousands of dollars' worth of electronics.
|
| > Scores like this -- known as risk assessments -- are
| increasingly common in courtrooms across the nation. They
| are used to inform decisions about who can be set free at
| every stage of the criminal justice system, from
| assigning bond amounts -- as is the case in Fort
| Lauderdale -- to even more fundamental decisions about
| defendants' freedom. In Arizona, Colorado, Delaware,
| Kentucky, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Virginia, Washington and
| Wisconsin, the results of such assessments are given to
| judges during criminal sentencing.
|
| > ...
|
| You mean, algorithms such as these above right? If so,
| then yeah, I feel for them, just like I feel for the
| black demographics living under such distopia right now
| in supposed democratic countries
|
| https://www.propublica.org/article/machine-bias-risk-
| assessm... (2016)
| throwaway29812 wrote:
| You can find individual cases of data misuse all day
| long. Comparing those awful but isolated cases to a
| large, purposeful, systemic, government run system of
| internment is absurd.
| https://thediplomat.com/2022/05/xinjiang-police-files-
| show-x...
| L0stRegulator wrote:
| TikTok doesn't operate in China. All TikTok data is
| stored either in the USA or Singapore. There's a Dublin
| data center underway.
|
| Douyin is the original TikTok. It operates exclusively in
| China and all it's data is in China.
| throwaway29812 wrote:
| > All TikTok data is stored either in the USA or
| Singapore
|
| And is still sent back to China.
|
| https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/emilybakerwhite/tikt
| ok-...
|
| Where data is stored does not matter at all if it's still
| being accessed by undeclared third parties.
| piggybox wrote:
| Ask any TikTok employee how many meetings they have each
| week with people from Beijing HQ...
| rglullis wrote:
| Do you think that any of it is acceptable?
| eric__cartman wrote:
| It should be unacceptable regardless of country of origin.
| rglullis wrote:
| I agree. But until then, what do you think the people
| should do?
| edm0nd wrote:
| Twitter should bring back Vine so we have a US ran
| equivalent.
| rglullis wrote:
| Or maybe we should just support and adopt open source
| alternatives, so that the rest of the world doesn't get
| stuck into pointless geopolitical disputes?
| tablespoon wrote:
| > Or maybe we should just support and adopt open source
| alternatives...
|
| That's a fantasy that makes the perfect into an enemy of
| the good.
| omniglottal wrote:
| People who say it cannot be done should not interrupt
| those who are doing it.
| tablespoon wrote:
| >>> Twitter should bring back Vine so we have a US ran
| equivalent.
|
| >> Or maybe we should just support and adopt open source
| alternatives...
|
| > People who say it cannot be done should not interrupt
| those who are doing it.
|
| You misunderstood. I'm objecting to the either/or framing
| that implicitly says that something like Vine should not
| be brought back. If you want to create an open source
| alternative, go ahead and I hope you're successful.
| However, the chances of that succeeding are much smaller,
| therefore it's not a good choice to focus on to solve the
| particular problem at hand.
| rglullis wrote:
| You know what mastodon/pixelfed/peertube needs to be
| "successful"? _Users_.
|
| Users who are not willing to accept their data being
| mined. Who are not willing to be sold as eyeballs. Who
| are willing to pay a few bucks a year just to keep other
| smaller providers running.
|
| The software exists. Unlike Vine, millions of people use
| it already.
| kube-system wrote:
| The license of the source code has little to no relevance
| on data privacy concerns, whether state or private.
| rglullis wrote:
| How can Google/Facebook/Twitter/Apple/TikTok track me or
| my users, from my Germany-hosted servers?
| kube-system wrote:
| They can't, but the reason has nothing to do with
| software license. You can write proprietary software and
| Google/Facebook/Twitter/Apple/TikTok still can't get your
| data. And Google/Facebook/Twitter/Apple/TikTok use plenty
| of FOSS software to run their platforms.
|
| The privacy of your data is more impacted by where it is
| and who controls it, not the copyright license of the
| software that moves it around
| rglullis wrote:
| You seem to be very good at pontificating while
| _completely_ missing the overall point.
|
| Of course the software license is not related directly
| with privacy and access control. But there is no way that
| a private company will be able to offer a global social
| network while keeping user privacy a priority. The moment
| that any single company becomes big enough, they will
| either exploit the data for their own benefit (like
| Google/Apple/Meta/Microsoft/Amazon) or they will be
| pushed into it by some government.
|
| Our best alternative is to have not to trust any
| particular company, but to use federated/distributed
| services, and the easiest way to have that is by ensuring
| that we are supporting and adopting open standards and
| open source systems that can be hosted by many different
| players.
| CyanBird wrote:
| Or rather, which system is more actionable for the local
| public, the answer to that is ofc the US, if you can't
| even get your own country to not spy on its citizens
| either through corporate espionage or through direct gov
| espionage, what hope do you hold of tangling with foreign
| countries to coerce them to also not spy? If anything it
| seems hypocrite to do that!
| hungvn94 wrote:
| rglullis wrote:
| Sorry, I don't know which comment you are responding to.
|
| Is there any _concrete_ action that you think people can
| do?
| cybervaz wrote:
| Stop generalizing the "country of origin" as if it does
| not matter like the Chinese Comunist Party isn't a threat
| to the world.
|
| - There will always be a ruler, and which ruler is
| killing, slaving, censoring and selling it's own people
| as meat tools for foreign companies?
|
| - China will kill, torture it's own people and their
| families if they think they are a thread (even if remote)
| to their government party (CCP).
|
| - China put on a HEAVY surveilance tool and actually
| forced people to behave like they want using social
| credit
|
| - China is actively removing ANY historical filosophies,
| tales, traditions, religions that could be a thread to
| the CCP's beliefs.
|
| - Have you ever seen a CCP convention? Their plan is to
| remove the worlds countries boundaries in order to rule
| over everything from culture to politics and economics.
| Australia is suffering a lot on their hands, they even
| sent spies to patronize elections.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > Stop generalizing the "country of origin" as if it does
| not matter like the Chinese Comunist Party isn't a threat
| to the world.
|
| It's important to generalize in order to show that some
| people are having arguments about principles, and others
| hate China. Sometimes you mistake the latter for the
| former, and waste your time making principled arguments
| with someone who just wants to kill.
| rhn_mk1 wrote:
| Country of origin matters for the consequences, but
| doesn't matter for the principle.
| xeromal wrote:
| One is committing a genocide of muslims and one is playing
| fast and loose with your data.
|
| It's disingenuous to assume their capabilities are the same.
| [deleted]
| cwkoss wrote:
| Meta, Google and the USG are all much more relevant to my
| personal threat model than the CCP.
|
| CCP has little power (or motive) to imprison me as long as I
| don't travel there.
| PontifexMinimus wrote:
| > it's controlled by Zuckerberg who spent $419 million to
| influence US election administration in a seemingly partisan
| way
|
| Like all US billionaires, then?
|
| > Meta may not be YOUR adversary, but that fact is not
| necessarily true of all (or even most) Americans
|
| The US government and ruling class doesn't see Meta as
| _their_ adversary, even if it this the adversary of some
| Americans.
| mrweasel wrote:
| There's also the small issue that many of us aren't
| Americans, so if offers little comfort that Meta is an
| American company.
| secfirstmd wrote:
| Cough...PRISM...Cough
| hammock wrote:
| >Like all US billionaires, then?
|
| Sheldon Adelson is the only other billionaire that comes to
| mind in recent times who is spending on this scale. In the
| 2020 cycle for Trump, he spent about 40% less than what
| Zuckerberg did this past cycle.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/oct/31/sheldson-
| ade...
| [deleted]
| tablespoon wrote:
| > Is this collection different from, say, Meta? I believe
| they collect all the same information via Instagram.
|
| Who's doing the collecting often matters much more than what
| is actually collected.
|
| The important context here is we seem to be transitioning
| away from the era of kumbaya free market globalism into an
| era of tenser geopolitical rivalries and more conflict.
| CyanBird wrote:
| > Who's doing the collecting often matters much more than
| what is actually collected
|
| Correct, therefore far more attention ought be put to
| domestic corporate and government spying on the public
| because they have got a far stronger leverage over the
| public's mind than foreign companies whom do not
|
| Also, wouldn't it just be _funny_ if Meta had some internal
| deals to acquire Tiktoks data? Lastly, if memory serves
| Tiktok makes use of Oracle (approved US gov contractor) to
| handle US data, so this is already under scrutiny [1]
|
| [1] https://www.reuters.com/technology/exclusive-tiktok-
| nears-de...
|
| So it might seem that the powers that be, wants us to be
| attentive regarding this deal
| tablespoon wrote:
| >> Who's doing the collecting often matters much more
| than what is actually collected
|
| >> The important context here is we seem to be
| transitioning away from the era of kumbaya free market
| globalism into an era of tenser geopolitical rivalries
| and more conflict.
|
| > Correct, therefore far more attention ought be put to
| domestic corporate and government spying on the public
| because they have got a far stronger leverage over the
| public's mind than foreign companies whom do not
|
| You're missing the point, so I quoted the context again
| for emphasis.
|
| To make it more explicit: the fact that US has leverage
| over Facebook means it's far less likely that Facebook's
| data collection will be used to attack US interests.
| That's why TikTok's collection is different, from the
| perspective of the US and allied countries.
|
| You can make a pretty close personal analogy: I don't
| care as much if a close family member collects real time
| location data of my movements, because I trust they don't
| have incentives to use it in particular ways that are
| very harmful to me. I care a lot more if a personal or
| business rival collects the same data, because their
| incentive is to use it in the context of their rivalry to
| harm me or prevent me from achieving some of my goals.
| CyanBird wrote:
| And to make myself even more explicit, I am saying that
| desires of the US Public are indeed _different_ from "US
| (Gov) Interests" as noted from the Snowden leaks, the
| Pentagon Papers, the Church Committee, Afghanistan
| Papers, Manning Leaks et al we can see that there's a
| (rather) serious divergence between the desires of both
| and should not be conflated
| tablespoon wrote:
| > And to make myself even more explicit, I am saying that
| desires of the US Public are indeed different from "US
| (Gov) Interests"
|
| Sure, but it's also worth noting the interests of the "US
| Public" are more in alignment with "US (Gov) Interests"
| than they are "Chinese (Gov) Interests," at least when it
| comes to geopolitics and stuff like this. That's far more
| relevant to a discussion of TikTok, _which this is_.
| sieabahlpark wrote:
| judge2020 wrote:
| > Who's doing the collecting often matters much more than
| what is actually collected.
|
| Unless something is actually done - then the actor and its
| properties are of utmost priority in discussion.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31852384
|
| Why didn't the Italian government just ban data collection
| in this form? They want to promote EU / local companies to
| collect this data rather than international companies.
| nova22033 wrote:
| _in a seemingly partisan way_
|
| Seemingly doing a lot of lifting here
| L0stRegulator wrote:
| Let's not forget a lot of the smear campaigns against TikTok
| were secretly funded by Facebook/Meta
| https://www.engadget.com/meta-targeted-victory-tiktok-
| smear-...
| pjlegato wrote:
| Even if they are, that would be irrelevant, a "tu quoque
| fallacy": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque
| ppsreejith wrote:
| > let me recall that it's controlled by Zuckerberg who spent
| $419 million to influence US election administration in a
| seemingly partisan way
|
| For more context, from:
| https://www.protocol.com/newsletters/policy/zuck-bucks-
| consp...
|
| > He offered nearly half a billion dollars in grants to any
| election official who wanted one, as long as those officials
| spent it on what a lot of people would consider mundane
| essentials: ballot sorters, drop boxes, poll workers and --
| because it was 2020 -- hand sanitizer.
|
| > And when those election officials applied for more money
| than he originally offered, he kicked in another $119 million
| to satisfy the rest of the requests.
|
| > At a time when Republicans are rapidly restricting access
| to the ballot box in states across the country, spending
| nearly half a billion dollars to do the exact opposite of
| that is tantamount to a partisan choice. Or, at least, it was
| bound to be viewed that way.
| irthomasthomas wrote:
| "Zuckerberg and Chan tapped prominent Republican election
| lawyer Michael Toner to review the grants CTCL awarded last
| year to counties and other jurisdictions across the
| country." Toner, a former chairman of the Federal Election
| Commission, "discovered that more Republican jurisdictions,
| defined as municipalities that voted for Trump in 2020,
| applied for and received grants from CTCL"
|
| https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/zuckerberg-funded-
| el...
|
| Looking past the raw number of grants to the total amount
| of money granted, however, from zucks form 990 IRS filing.
| CTCL awarded all larger grants - on both an absolute and
| per capita basis to deeply Democratic urban areas.
|
| E.g.
|
| https://capitalresearch.org/article/shining-a-light-on-
| zuck-...
| philjohn wrote:
| On pure scale alone, surely urban areas have far more
| voters, and therefore more need for funds than much
| smaller red counties?
| OrvalWintermute wrote:
| >The group that got the bulk of Mr. Zuckerberg's money --
| the Center for Tech and Civic Life -- sent some 2,500
| grants to government elections offices in 48 states.
| Defenders of Mr. Zuckerberg contend that more grants went
| to Trump areas while conveniently ignoring the fact that
| the vast amount of money was targeted to critically
| important areas for Mr. Biden. In fact, approximately 160
| of the 2,500 grants were for $400,000 or more and totaled
| a whopping $272 million -- and 92% of the money flowed to
| jurisdictions that Mr. Biden carried. [1]
|
| >Much of Mr. Zuckerberg's money is documented by CTCL's
| tax filings. The January 2022 report shows grants of
| $860,000 to Kenosha, $1.2 million to both Green Bay and
| Madison, $1.7 million to Racine, and $3.4 million to
| Milwaukee. These five critical cities alone received
| about $8.5 million of the $10.1 million that flowed into
| Wisconsin from CTCL, and $5.1 million dollars of Mr.
| Zuckerberg's money was spent in Arizona. Four difference-
| making counties -- Maricopa, Pima, Apache and Coconino --
| were carried by President Biden and received nearly 76%
| of CTCL's grants. This funding helped Biden grow his
| turnout by nearly 700,000 votes in funded counties over
| Hillary Clinton's 2016 total. CTCL sent $45 million to
| Georgia -- more than any other state in the country --
| and 94% of the funds went to jurisdictions carried by Mr.
| Biden. [1]
|
| It is pretty clear that pushing extremely well-funded get
| out the vote operations in highly democrat areas in the
| most key swing states is enough to swing an election.
|
| This is dangerously partisan.
|
| [1]
| https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2022/apr/12/mark-
| zucker...
| generj wrote:
| Expanding and insuring ballot box access shouldn't be
| considered partisan.
|
| That it is represents a failure in whatever party seeks to
| restrict voting.
| hammock wrote:
| generj wrote:
| But couldn't that simply be explained by GOP counties
| applying for less aid?
|
| So long as every county could receive funds equally, the
| fact some received less isn't at all damning.
| irthomasthomas wrote:
| "Zuckerberg and Chan tapped prominent Republican election
| lawyer Michael Toner to review the grants CTCL awarded
| last year to counties and other jurisdictions across the
| country." Toner, a former chairman of the Federal
| Election Commission, "discovered that more Republican
| jurisdictions, defined as municipalities that voted for
| Trump in 2020, applied for and received grants from CTCL"
|
| https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/zuckerberg-
| funded-el...
| colpabar wrote:
| So if someone like elon musk or peter theil did something
| like this, they gave $419 million to a bunch of red
| states all while aggressively promoting trump, would you
| still claim it's "not damning"?
|
| This is an example of an extremely wealthy person
| influencing an election, plain and simple. It's odd to me
| that we're all just supposed to be ok with it.
| solar-ice wrote:
| Are there stories of red counties applying for the money
| and not getting it? Or perhaps it was only marketed
| towards Dems?
|
| What's the argument as to what happened here?
| irthomasthomas wrote:
| From zucks own form 990 IRS filing. CTCL awarded all
| larger grants - on both an absolute and per capita basis
| to deeply Democratic urban areas.
|
| E.g.
|
| https://capitalresearch.org/article/shining-a-light-on-
| zuck-...
| generj wrote:
| That's not an answer though.
|
| The parent to your comment is asking what caused CTCL to
| give more to Democratically aligned counties. Everyone
| agrees it happened - I am just unconvinced it has a
| strictly partisan explanation. They are asking for proof
| it's malicious. Just stating there is a difference in
| funding isn't proof the CTCL acted with partisanship.
|
| There are many latent variables besides GOP/Dem,
| Urban/Rural that could cause the difference. For example
| when examining barriers to voting, time spent in line or
| number of polling places/capita are easy KPIs. Urban
| areas tend to score poorly on these metrics. If the
| funding was allocated by these metrics urban areas will
| win more funding.
|
| There are many reasons a totally non partisan group would
| prioritize grants to urban areas. Chief among them might
| be that partisans have deliberately underfunded urban
| locations and sometimes been caught saying the reason was
| for their partisan gain.
|
| Or the simplest explanation: a party that discourages
| voter turnout is in charge or rural areas. Officials in
| those counties are less likely to ask for funding that
| makes voting easier.
| OrvalWintermute wrote:
| > And the total amount of the grants was not determined
| based on population. Rather, amounts tracked with blue
| votes. The average grant amount per registered voter for
| a Biden-carried jurisdiction was more than 50 percent
| larger than the average for those that Trump carried. [1]
|
| >Emails from the Office of the Pennsylvania Governor and
| the Pennsylvania Department of State show that former
| Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar and an official in Gov.
| Tom Wolf's office knew about private 2020 election grants
| and invited Democratic-leaning counties to apply,
| appearing to aid the selective process at a time when
| other counties were unaware. No email shows any official
| in either office providing similar information or
| assistance to any of the commonwealth's Republican-
| leaning counties. [2]
|
| It appears that the grant process were overly influenced
| by politics both from an application, and an outcome
| perspective.
|
| I'm against privitization of election processes.
|
| [1] https://www.realclearpolicy.com/articles/2022/03/02/s
| how_me_...
|
| [2] https://broadandliberty.com/2021/10/19/former-sec-of-
| state-b...
| solar-ice wrote:
| Ok so... who asked for the funding and didn't get it? Did
| Republicans apply for large grants in equal numbers and
| not get any? What happened to result in Democratic areas
| getting most of the money?
|
| You'd think that for all this is, there'd be a sob story
| somewhere of the Republican counties that wanted better
| access to voting and didn't get it. So... what happened?
| [deleted]
| gzer0 wrote:
| Voting access expansion and protection should not be
| considered partisan. End of story.
| jibe wrote:
| So if we decided to channel all voter access expansion
| and protection funds to the Koch Brothers that would be
| totally fine because it should be considered non-
| partisan? In the most abstract sense, it isn't partisan.
| In the actual implementation, it is partisan.
| generj wrote:
| I wouldn't want _all_ voter access funds channeled by the
| Koch brothers, but if they decide to fund non-partisan
| GOTV efforts, I would applaud it.
|
| Even if they ended up donating more to areas likely to
| vote their way. More voting is good period. If GOTV
| funding is spread unevenly then more GOTV funding to
| neglected areas is the solution.
| [deleted]
| driverdan wrote:
| Correlation is not causation and Daily Mail is trash.
| klray wrote:
| The Daily Mail's sidebar is trash, selected articles
| sometimes have a high level.
|
| They seem to use their network of paparazzi/journalists
| to actually research facts on the ground. It is paid for
| by the fact that 95% of the content is indeed trash that
| sells.
|
| But the 5% that isn't trash contains classic
| what/when/where/how style facts in great detail. For
| select topics like the trucker protests in Canada the
| Daily Mail is one of the best publications.
| pessimizer wrote:
| No, the Mail is all trash. But they're also notorious
| plagiarists (in the modern way, where you quickly rewrite
| somebody else's story.) So if you have a scoop that
| panders to a reactionary audience, the Mail will steal
| it, not link back to you, and become the outlet who
| becomes the main social media share for it. They will do
| no checking or verification on the story beforehand, but
| if it eventually turns out to be a made-up story, they'll
| just delete it. They've already got the juice, so now
| that it turns out you're wrong they're happy to refer
| people to you for the credit.
|
| I even remember noticing they stole one of their
| uplifting weight-loss stories from another tabloid.
|
| edit: they have lots of photos, though, which is the best
| thing about tabloids.
| piyh wrote:
| Meta is different because of the US fails as a state, they
| lose. China doesn't.
|
| Meta might still be a shitty company, but their incentives
| are not to gather intelligence against US citizens that could
| be used to conduct cyber attacks or plan for military
| operations.
| posterboy wrote:
| > Meta is different because of the US fails as a state,
| they lose. China doesn't.
|
| Oh, so it's _us vs them_. Gotcha.
| hungvn94 wrote:
| lpcvoid wrote:
| It always is. And I'm rather on the side of the west than
| the side of the CCP.
| posterboy wrote:
| As a European I am ... not sure I see the truth in that
| argument. Not anyone who speaks some form of English is
| automatically western, mind.
| hotpotamus wrote:
| What does Meta lose if the US fails as a state? I'm sure
| there are some downsides but isn't it a global company
| anyway?
| fossuser wrote:
| Yes - there's a difference between a company operating in a
| liberal democracy (the west broadly defined) with the
| restrictions that entails, and a company operating under
| control of the CCP without such restrictions or even rule of
| law. There are no companies independent of the state in
| China.
|
| The real threat from TikTok is not so much the collection of
| information (though that's a problem) - it's the way the CCP
| can leverage it to tune influence without users noticing
| (silencing Hong Kong or Uyghur related information for
| example).
|
| https://stratechery.com/2020/the-tiktok-war/
| sebast_bake wrote:
| No, it's not different.
|
| That's why Meta is blocked in the PRC.
|
| The west should do the same for TikTok.
| KaoruAoiShiho wrote:
| This will no doubt be used for NATO's propaganda purposes.
|
| https://www.mintpressnews.com/nato-tiktok-pipeline-why-tikto...
| paskozdilar wrote:
| It's a ticking time-bomb. Tick-tock.
| e40 wrote:
| Watchmen reference?
| walrus01 wrote:
| > faceprints and voiceprints
|
| > tiktok
|
| I am sure the Ministry of State Security (MSS) is very pleased.
| jstanley wrote:
| Do they mean they're collecting faceprints and voiceprints of
| people _viewing_ the videos? Or they 're just doing it on videos
| that people are willingly uploading?
| dstick wrote:
| Good question, I'd like to know this too.
| sva_ wrote:
| Probably also on the people who involuntarily appear in the
| videos (in the background or so).
| Overtonwindow wrote:
| TikTok is a perfect vehicle for collecting biometric data
| Americans, especially if you're a totalitarian state.
| Larrikin wrote:
| I wonder if Illinois residents will be eligible for another pay
| out like with Facebook and Google when they collected this data.
|
| https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/did-you-receive-a-illi...
| faitswulff wrote:
| Exactly what I was thinking. Who's responsible for filing these
| class action lawsuits, anyway?
| SkyMarshal wrote:
| Anyone with standing, eg anyone who was harmed (and their
| lawyer).
| causi wrote:
| Interior, crocodile, alligator, TikTok is a covert surveillance
| aggregator.
| mherdeg wrote:
| This is older, but it checks out. Thanks for this.
| theplumber wrote:
| Like google, twitter, facebook, instagram, apple and more.
| SkyMarshal wrote:
| Except TikTok is operating on behalf of an authoritarian
| regime with no protection for human rights, freedom of speech
| or thought, rule of law, separation and balance of power, or
| any of those quaint things.
| ok123456 wrote:
| Have you been keeping up with rulings from the Supreme
| Court this term?
| encryptluks2 wrote:
| Are you referring to Israel or China?
| noirbot wrote:
| At very least Twitter and Apple have a decent track record of
| declining to provide data without justification. It seems
| pretty safe to assume the Chinese government wouldn't have to
| ask at all to get any of this information.
| angio wrote:
| Apple was part of PRISM.
| theplumber wrote:
| If that's the standard we have on hackernews it's not that
| hard to imagine why the vast majority of people simply
| don't care who trades their data.
| noirbot wrote:
| That's not "the standard", it's just worth mentioning
| that at least some companies have a proper legal team
| that seems to work on behalf of its users. Twitter's
| actually been behind a number of legal precedents on the
| right to be anonymous online.
|
| I also don't speak for HN, clearly, since this post is
| full up on people who see no difference between "almost
| definitely has given full access to the government
| 24/7/365" and "Complies with reasonable court orders".
| vorpalhex wrote:
| You keep jumping into every convo with this weak retort.
|
| Google and Apple aren't rounding up Muslims into camps.
| [deleted]
| smm11 wrote:
| I recall when wifi was first a thing, TV news people would drive
| around with "hackers" who would "war drive" and find networks,
| and egads! Connect! Nothing is safe online!
|
| Now this.
| dpcan wrote:
| Life without TikTok, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram is so much
| better.
|
| There's just no way to tell those people what they're missing.
| whoisjuan wrote:
| It's incredible that the US allowed TikTok (which is by all
| measures a chinese spy tool) to become such a dominant social
| network.
|
| India got it right from the beggining by banning TikTok. They saw
| the immense threat and didn't hesitate.
|
| China, by principle, has always banned all foreign information
| technology companies. What seemed hostile for us, it's a
| reasonable play if you understand the unmeasurable power of
| massive information products such as Google or Facebook.
|
| Meanwhile the US is just focused on attacking its own homegrown
| tech companies and diminishing their ability to compete in global
| contexts.
|
| We are on a declining trajectory and we willingly paved that
| road. It's sad.
| frozencell wrote:
| By not banning it they can legitimate a war with CCP, a
| parallel to the US letting Russia threat and attack the west
| first.
| nemothekid wrote:
| The fact that India would consider TikTok a threat but not Meta
| leads me to believe that it wasn't done on a purely espionage
| basis. The threat of TikTok, today, it still theoretical, while
| Facebook has done measurable harm to India's neighbors.
| karaterobot wrote:
| By theoretical, do you mean TikTok doesn't collect data that
| is made available to the Chinese government? In my mind,
| that's _the_ practical use of an espionage tool. If not that,
| then what else do you mean?
|
| There was an allegation earlier this month, with what appears
| to be strong evidence to support it, that engineers in China
| have access to data from U.S. users: https://www.buzzfeednews
| .com/article/emilybakerwhite/tiktok-...
|
| Even if you ignore how suspicious that is, once the data is
| in China you have to assume it's made available to the
| government, since that's the official policy as far as I am
| aware.
| 29083011397778 wrote:
| Meta's entrentched. While I agree with sibling poster about
| the different levels of information gathered, there's also a
| difference between what can be gotten away with politically.
| Banning a network very few of your citizens are on is much
| easier than banning one of the primary networks that nearly
| everyone uses and relies on.
| actuator wrote:
| Tiktok is a far worse threat to India than Meta though.
|
| Unlike China, US is not an adversary of India and US didn't
| kill Indian soldiers just two years back. So it makes sense
| they would go after Tiktok.
|
| The harm is just not espionage, it is also manipulation of
| sentiment by propoganda.
|
| Also, I am not really sure with all the equivalence to Meta
| in this thread. Sure, Meta has things to be criticized about
| but if one thinks West has threat from Meta on the same level
| as Tiktok, that seems delusional.
| nemothekid wrote:
| Is India the West now? This alone tells me that you aren't
| coming this from a data pov and simply playing team sports.
|
| My problem with this "analysis" is it stems from xenophobia
| rather than the actual problem with these social networks.
|
| The idea that we must "act now" with TikTok when Meta has
| been a worse actor is just anti-Chinese; we are pretending
| that Meta wont just bend over to the CCP as well if given
| the chance - we already have several of our companies self-
| censoring on issues that might anger the CCP.
|
| Banning TikTok won't fix the underlying problem and if your
| concern is China collecting data on US citizens you should
| understand there are very little controls in place, today,
| to prevent that from happening with any foreign actor. I
| don't think China would have to pull teeth to exfiltrate
| data from any of the other social networks.
|
| > _Also, I am not really sure with all the equivalence to
| Meta in this thread._
|
| Which company is implicated in a genocide in India
| neighboring states? Again is your concern actually about
| people or is it just "China scary".
| actuator wrote:
| Did you not read what I wrote?
|
| > Unlike China, US is not an adversary of India and US
| didn't kill Indian soldiers just two years back. So it
| makes sense they would go after Tiktok.
| Jackpillar wrote:
| sdk16420 wrote:
| WhatsApp has led to dozens of brutal deaths in India
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_WhatsApp_lynchings
| [deleted]
| causi wrote:
| That's an absurd claim. The rumors about thieves and
| child abductors could have just as easily been spread
| over Telegram or AOL Instant Messenger or SnapChat. The
| chosen platform is completely immaterial.
| sieabahlpark wrote:
| It's measurably a spy tool for China. What do you mean it's
| "theoretical". How much does China pay you?
| cronix wrote:
| Trump tried to ban it in 2020 out of "national security
| concerns" similar to Huawei. The ACLU and media painted it as
| anti free speech and xenophobia and never gave the claims any
| serious scrutiny.
|
| > On July 7, 2020, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo
| announced that the government was considering banning
| TikTok.[26] In response, experts[weasel words] suggested that
| Trump's proposed TikTok ban may threaten free speech and "set a
| very problematic precedent" for banning apps in the United
| States.[27] Patrick Jackson, chief technology officer of
| privacy company Disconnect, said the app sends an abnormal
| amount of data--mostly information about the phone--to its
| server, but there is limited evidence that TikTok is sharing
| these data with the Chinese government. He also noted that the
| amount of collected data was similar to that collected by
| American-originated social media platforms and was less than
| that collected by Facebook.[28]
|
| > After Trump proposed to ban TikTok in the U.S on July 31,
| 2020, security researchers expressed their concern about
| limitations of freedom. In one article, PCMag quoted Jennifer
| Granick of the American Civil Liberties Union Surveillance and
| Cybersecurity Counsel who said that "banning an app that
| millions of Americans use to communicate with each other is a
| danger to free expression and is technologically
| impractical."[35]
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump%E2%80%93TikTok_co...
| generj wrote:
| Sort of a fruit of a poisoned well - if prior trade action
| hadn't been transparently lying about a national security
| pretext warning about TikTok would have been received better.
| jaywalk wrote:
| Oh please. The people who complained didn't care about
| that. They didn't like Trump, and would complain about
| anything he did regardless of the merit. They are nakedly
| partisan.
| generj wrote:
| The ACLU dislikes any restriction based on national
| security. I imagine they'd make the same arguments
| regardless of which party removed TikTok.
|
| But the broader public, reporters, and experts absolutely
| base their decisions on how trustworthy they find
| rationales. National security arguments often boil down
| to "we are correct but can't tell you why, trust us."
|
| Mixing trade wars into that certainly helps skepticism.
| beej71 wrote:
| If we're deciding the government has the ability to shut down
| social media apps for "national security", I want some
| seriously beefy protections in there to prevent abuse. That
| slope is genuinely for-real dangerously slippery, and scares
| me 100x more than the scary stuff TikTok is doing now.
|
| The ban was right to be challenged--if Trump could legally
| justify it, let him do that in court. And if he couldn't,
| there's probably a damned good reason for that.
| akomtu wrote:
| It's not a slippery slope to ban a foreign survelliance app
| made by an adversary. Freedom of speech in the US applies
| only to the US citizens.
| nova22033 wrote:
| Yes Trump would totally have banned TikTok but he didn't
| because he cares about criticism from the media and...the
| ACLU..
|
| It definitely wasn't because he was worried about the
| backlash from young voters...
| jimbob45 wrote:
| Trump had a sale lined up, Biden won the election, and then
| Biden promptly canceled the sale[0]. It's a shame that
| Trump doesn't get more appreciation for his politically
| unpopular yet noble moves. Nobody was talking about China
| before Trump but you can be sure they were content to make
| fun of Trump for doing so[1].
|
| [0]https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/10/tiktok-sale-to-walmart-
| oracl...
|
| [1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDrfE9I8_hs
| sakopov wrote:
| > Although video-sharing app TikTok was developed by Chinese
| company Bytedance, it is not available in China. Instead users
| can download a twin app, Douyin, which was also developed by
| Bytedance. Douyin features restrictions such as blocks on
| international content and limits on children's usage. The
| Chinese state owns a stake in the Bytedance subsidiary that
| controls its domestic Chinese social media and information
| platforms. [1]
|
| So China deploys and app to the US market that China itself
| doesn't use. The app aggressively collects location and
| biometric information about the users while promoting copious
| amounts of destabilizing and divisive political content among
| other things. I don't want to sound like a conspiracy theorist,
| but it's hard not to see this as a trojan horse and it's
| shocking that the powers that be in the US are not assessing
| this situation more seriously. The OP is right in that this
| seems like one of many troubling signs that the US is in a
| decline of sorts.
|
| [1] https://time.com/6139988/countries-where-twitter-facebook-
| ti...
| dirtyid wrote:
| Douyin collects a fuck load data too, maybe less than TikTok
| one day once new PRC privacy rules come into effect. But
| that's somethign US doemstic politics have to sort out for
| their territory.
|
| >promoting copious amounts of destabilizing and divisive
| political
|
| Ant that's more fault of US political culture than TikTok
| being Chinese/PRC. IMO TikTok would like nothing better to
| ban politics from platform, but that's how you get the muh-
| free-speech types reeeing about PRC censorship. Large reason
| WHY TikTok/Douyin is successful is from lessons learned
| maturing in PRC/Chinese censorship enviroment - platforms are
| very good at censoring/filtering destablizing political
| content to focus on light hearted content that produce casual
| engagement and political serenity. Chinese social platforms
| are calibrated for stability, but when in rome... see all the
| western media campaigns trying to smear tiktok for censorship
| when it first gained popularity, of course now that TikTok as
| calibrated to political reality of US market, the
| "destablizing" narrative gets pushed.
| theplumber wrote:
| I don't think we need pandasecurity to tell us that. I believe
| the same info was/is gathered by facebook, google and more or
| less Apple. I guess double standards are still easier and better
| for the U.S instead to "empower" the individuals to own their
| data and secure their communication.
| zip1234 wrote:
| The same info is not gathered by American big tech. There is
| much more in the way of privacy controls in those companies.
| Source: work for one.
| cybervaz wrote:
| guys, don't mind the CCP bots commenting on here. Just ignore
| them
| nazgulnarsil wrote:
| There's no way this isn't kompromat harvesting scheme
| rvz wrote:
| This isn't new [0] even as shown in June 2021 last year where we
| have them already admitting they collect this data and shouldn't
| surprise anyone that after this [1] they are unsurprisingly
| screwing their users data in a worse way than Facebook was and
| now you have reports of China who have always been surveilling
| their user data (even for US users); Also expected and
| unsurprisingly.
|
| There is no defending this indefensible spyware which is beyond
| worse than Facebook and it is really the direct opposite of _"
| The best thing to have happened to the Internet."_ [2]
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28151067
|
| [1]
| https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/emilybakerwhite/tiktok-...
|
| [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28135484
| theplumber wrote:
| It's also worth to remember:
|
| "Facebook Inc. has been paying hundreds of outside contractors to
| transcribe clips of audio from users of its services"
|
| "Social network says it paused human review of conversations"
|
| So again my question is wtf is so big fuss about tiktok. We
| already knew about PRISM and that all the data goes to the
| government. It also goes to 3rd party contractors, advertisers
| and who knows who else...
|
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-08-13/facebook-...
| proactivesvcs wrote:
| Organisation A being bad does not invalidate criticism of
| Organisation B. It's my understanding that Tiktok is
| particularly appealing to younger people, specifically girls,
| which is of great concern to me despite not being a parent.
| salt-thrower wrote:
| I have the same take as you, and reading all these comments
| makes me feel like I'm on crazy pills.
|
| Google and Meta apparently get a pass because they're "American
| companies." Even though we know that they collect personal data
| and manipulate people en masse as part of their core product
| offerings. And of course, through PRISM and other programs, the
| US govt has access to much of it.
|
| I think people are just scared because now China is doing the
| same op, but more overtly.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| It might be that China is rounding up Muslims and oh, I don't
| know, putting them in camps against their will?
|
| Maybe just a skosh?
|
| Or that time China shot at several Indian soldiers and killed
| a few?
| salt-thrower wrote:
| Do I really need to bring up the egregious war crimes
| against humanity that the US has been committing in just
| the last few decades?
|
| How many non-combatants has the US slaughtered in botched
| raids and drone strikes across the world? How many people
| have been held in secret American prison camps for decades
| with no formal charges, no trial, and no lawyers, and
| subjected to torture?
|
| I can already hear your response: "so you support China?"
| No, I don't. I think the CCP has done plenty of evil
| things. The US has just done far worse. And when it comes
| to social media apps that collect data, whether it's
| backdoored by the CCP or the NSA is moot; none of it should
| be trusted.
| throw10920 wrote:
| > The US has just done far worse.
|
| How many people have been killed in US wars vs. the Great
| Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution?
|
| Remind me where the US has implemented a concentration
| camp of about a million individuals based on ethnicity
| alone and then continually denied its existence against
| overwhelming evidence from the international community.
|
| Which foreign companies did the US use spies to steal
| foreign IP from during peacetime and also categorically
| deny?
|
| Oh, and what's the name of the US system that censors
| wrongthink in real-time from all US-based social media,
| or the name of the system that controls US resident
| access to the internet?
|
| What were the names of a few US citizens whose families
| were threatened if those citizens didn't stop badmouthing
| the US and returned to their homeland?
|
| How many companies and people abroad did the US threaten
| with economic repercussions if they didn't stop claiming
| that an island nation wasn't just that?
|
| And where's the paid army of anonymous internet
| commentators that the US uses to astroturf foreign
| websites?
|
| --------------------------
|
| The US, while having done a great many bad things, at
| least has a democratic process - there is the _potential_
| for the citizens to positively affect their government 's
| actions, weak as it might be. China doesn't even have
| that - it's a tyrannical dictatorship, full stop.
| jasonladuke0311 wrote:
| > The US has just done far worse.
|
| Nah, you just hear about most of the US's screw-ups. I
| seriously doubt any of us in the West have an inkling of
| the atrocities they commit.
| cute_boi wrote:
| It is not screw-ups when it is done repeatedly.
| theplumber wrote:
| The U.S would not put trade barriers to China for that
| incident in India (why India doesn't join U.S's sanctions
| on Russia now?) or for putting muslims in camps.
|
| Although not being the same thing I've seen children put in
| cages against their will on U.S soil so I'm pretty sure it
| could stomach some reeducation camps in China given the
| terrorism issues.
|
| U.S bombed Iraq unprovoked.
|
| Here we have the old money and power game. U.S finally
| realised that it fed a communist state that has imperialist
| ideas and may challenge its power in Asia.
|
| I would like this rivality to produce a more fair system
| for the world: secure devices, secure communication, open
| protocols with privacy built in etc instead of these
| appstores bans, obfuscation and demonization of the
| "enemy".
| vorpalhex wrote:
| I think we should prohibit the state owned social media
| app which is mass collecting biometric markers for a
| state which is actively rounding up Muslims and putting
| them in camps.
|
| I think if you want to petition for good things in other
| areas, that's great, but please don't stop the people
| currently doing good now with whataboutism.
| theplumber wrote:
| It's no whataboutism. You make a big fuss about tiktok
| but meta owned apps are just as bad. The Muslim camps is
| just a laughable pretext. If the U.S would care so much
| about poor muslims, especially muslim women around the
| world they would not have left Afghanistan in such a
| hurry...
|
| As far as I'm concered I would ban all these spyware
| apps, chinese and american alike. They are pure spyware
| and bad for our health and for democracy.
|
| People should own their data, and their devices.
|
| I'm glad that TikTok is chinese. It raises some important
| questions about appstores, privacy and data ownership.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| Ok, let's start with banning tik tok.
| theplumber wrote:
| Why just tiktok when we can ban them all?
| throw10920 wrote:
| > Google and Meta apparently get a pass
|
| This is a distortion of reality in support of an agenda.
| Google and Meta most certainly _do not_ get a pass - a review
| of _either_ mass media _or_ tech media /news aggregators like
| Reddit/Hacker News/Lobsters will show a consistent pattern of
| strongly condemning data collection from those two companies
| _in particular_.
|
| The alarm is over the fact that, on _top_ of the issues of
| letting _any_ company collect so much personal information
| about you, TikTok has the unique additional problem of being
| effectively controlled by the government of the most
| dangerous (power * malice) country on Earth. Singling them
| out is understandable, reasonable, and somewhat predictable.
| calibas wrote:
| Half the comments here suffer from a bad case of whataboutism.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism
| pessimizer wrote:
| I though "whataboutism" was when the USSR points out that
| you're an apartheid state when you criticize them about their
| economic system, not when your own citizens wonder out loud why
| you're criticizing another country for doing something that you
| also do.
| bena wrote:
| Whataboutism is when instead of engaging with the content of
| the claim, you instead try to deflect by bringing up
| something else. "TikTok is collecting data? What about
| Google?"
| crikeyjoe wrote:
| Now why would they have to do that?
| throwaway_night wrote:
| India is the only country banned tiktok. Huge respect for the
| country
| est wrote:
| Nah, China was the first country to ban Tiktok.
| noisy_boy wrote:
| At least 20 Indian soldiers were killed in a clash with Chinese
| forces in Ladakh border area[0]. Banning Chinese apps isn't
| exactly a severe response.
|
| [0]: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-53061476
| Xeoncross wrote:
| I don't understand the argument that we shouldn't ban tikTok
| because Meta/Google/etc.. also collect data. I would rather ban
| all three, but tikTok is in a whole different league based on how
| that data is used.
|
| The difference is that the CCP is literally on the board of
| bytedance and uses this information to arrest, imprison, and
| harvest the organs of political, ideological, religious, and
| other dissidents.
|
| Yes, the US has done evil things in the past (and present) but
| our abuse of data is a far cry from what happens inside many
| tightly controlled communist countries on a daily basis.
| heretogetout wrote:
| If China really is as bad as all that (and I think it probably
| is) why are we wasting any time or energy on TikTok? It'd be a
| lot more effective to sanction China over those human rights
| abuses than to ban some toy app.
| Xeoncross wrote:
| That sounds good too. It does not need to be either/or.
|
| However, sanctioning them won't protect the millions
| (billions?) of international people who are being profiled
| though. It's a lot easier to identify, blackmail,
| impersonate, predict, locate, and anything else a government
| body might want to do to someone when you have all this
| information.
| heliophobicdude wrote:
| I hope this can bring in some extra context.
|
| https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-ceo-mark-zuckerberg-
| st...
|
| Paywall-less link: https://archive.ph/D7Dao
| fairytalemtg wrote:
| Biometric identifiers, including faceprints and voiceprints.
| https://www.computerworld.com/article/3664942/fcc-commission...
| jotm wrote:
| I tried creating an account yesterday (with a throwaway email,
| because fuck every other way, not giving you my number, Google
| account, whatever else) because a relative started posting videos
| and told me to check them out.
|
| When I tried to enter the security code it said "Too many
| attempts", "Try later". Apparently this means my IP is banned.
| WTF. I've had this IP for years (static from ISP on a fiber
| connection, really nice, I even host shit on it including a
| website and a VPN because torrenting is legal lol).
|
| Either they banned my whole country, or they don't want people
| signing up anonymously, or (my tinfoil conspiracy) it interacts
| with Reddit, where this IP is permabanned.
|
| Anyway, thanks, good riddance. I don't want to get addicted to
| another site, and from what people say TikTok seems stupid but is
| the most addictive.
| wiz21c wrote:
| Is there someone here that work at TikTok who could explain how
| collecting such that brings any value to TikTok.
|
| That's an honest question. I understand that we're being tracked
| with cookies, email address, FB/Google accounts. But the
| biometric stuff, what is it for ? It seems very disproportionate
| to me if it's just for advertising.
| SkyMarshal wrote:
| It's all to feed the AI training database. The more data it
| has, the more insights the AI can provide.
| theplumber wrote:
| I guess it could be used to create social graphs and perhaps
| also run machine learning (i.e people using a specific accent
| may like watching some specific content). More data is almost
| always better.
| L0stRegulator wrote:
| The Biometrics was collected for face overlays.
|
| Want to look like a lion? They scan your face, use their
| algorithm to stretch the lion face on you, and because you're
| moving, it's a compute intense thing so done more in the cloud
| than on-device.
|
| But as it's off device biometrics, it falls into the Illinois
| BIPA category (only focused biometrics law in the USA) so they
| collect consent up front.
| mywittyname wrote:
| The most obvious (capitalist) application would be to use the
| data to build AI "creators". Some of these real people make
| good money as influencers. And if TikTok could use computers to
| generate influencers, they could seriously cash in.
|
| The military applications of this tech would be to stir up
| decent or manufacture outrage in a country for political gains.
|
| Or maybe both. Selling military tech to other countries is a
| good way to make money too.
| nothis wrote:
| >The military applications of this tech would be to stir up
| decent or manufacture outrage in a country for political
| gains.
|
| I didn't need that thought in my life, thank you. Seriously,
| though, this genuinely makes it possible to gently tweak an
| algorithm (which is absolutely invisible to anyone outside
| the company or the Chinese government) to nudge public
| opinion. Like, you could probably nudge elections by a
| percentage point or two, manufacture specific outrage about
| policies unfriendly to China, generate a bit of chaos with
| conspiracy theories when convenient, etc, etc. Black Mirror
| stuff. I
|
| 'm telling myself it's unlikely to actually happen but when I
| ask myself _why_ I can 't come up with a reassuring answer.
| The technology is there. The control is there. The
| willingness is certainly there. I guess it would be a bigger
| endeavor and there might be leaks of it happening. But,
| ultimately, a few dozen people could do a lot of damage.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| My theory is that this is already happening, just with a
| mix of bots and human actors.
|
| Start keeping a list of common "retorts" to certain topics.
| Then jump sites and see if those retorts are used there
| too. You'll find almost copy and paste wording.
|
| There are edge cases where it looks like two of these semi-
| automated groups square off and you get bot gibberish that
| goes on to infinity.
|
| Dead internet theory may be a bit closer to truth then we
| like to admit.
| hellomyguys wrote:
| They've built the best personalized content algorithm by
| collecting mass amounts of data and fingerprinting and indexing
| everything you can from a video.
| TMWNN wrote:
| Trump proven right yet again.
|
| Another example: Trump and Stoltenberg argue on camera
| (<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vpwkdmwui3k>). Who turned out
| to be right about NATO and Russia? Who turned out to completely,
| totally, 100% wrong?
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-06-29 23:01 UTC)